I found some cool stuff on the internet #3

1. In a new paper presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency conference, researchers propose 3 ways that the public can exploit the whole "algorithms are meaningless without data" dogma to their advantage.

Data strikes which involve withholding or deleting your data so a tech firm cannot use it, like leaving a platform; Data poisoning, personally my favourite one, meaning giving false data to firms. A browser extension enabling users to carry out data poisoning is AdNauseam whose modus operandi is simple - click on every ad that Google shows you to confuse their algorithms; and Conscious data contribution which is redirecting the data towards a competitor of the platform that you're against collecting your data.

Unfortunately, individual sporadic action cannot make a difference. Questions like "How many people does a data strike need to damage a company’s algorithm?" need to be answered, computer scientists need to make more tools like AdNauseam and policymakers need to provide support to the peoples' movements to make a dent.

2. Cryptopunks may be the most cherished pixel art to exist. They're collectibles that exist purely on the Ethereum blockchain. Being the first NFTs, cryptopunks are extremely valuable today though they were free at one point - a buyer simply had to pay the Ethereum transaction fee associated with it. 10,000 of them roam around on the blockchain today - as aliens, humans, zombies. Who would've thought that one day, 8-bit style art would cost as much as a fully furnished house?

3. A retail investor is a non-professional investor, and India saw a record 10 million of these accounts opening up last year, according to data from the two largest depositories of accounts in the country.

I witnessed this boom first-hand as a few friends and friends of friends of mine began investing in stocks (and cryptocurrency) with the pandemic forcing everyone to spend more/all of their time on their personal devices, coupled with access to social media influencers educating the public on stocks, and the ease of opening an account on low brokerage-fee trading apps like Zerodha and Upstox.

The Sensex, which measures the Indian economy by keeping track of the most active stocks in the Bombay Stock Exchange, has gained 32% in value since August of 2020 which is partly due to this uptick in investors. For comparison, the S&P - its US counterpart only gained 16%!

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