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Your WIRED daily briefing. Today, Berners-Lee's Solid platform wants to give users - not tech giants - control of their own data, New Zealand now requires travellers to unlock phones for customs, Google has announced an open trial of its game streaming service and more.
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1. Tim Berners-Lee wants to save the web using decentralised data storage
The inventor of the World Wide Web has a plan to help save it by clawing back its users' data from the giant companies that currently store it on their servers (The Inquirer). He's launched Solid, a decentralised, open source platform of data 'pods'. Instead of, for example, Facebook or Twitter storing all your posts and personal information on their servers, that data would be stored on your 'pod' – hosted on your own hardware or on a Solid server elsewhere – and you'd give the services permission to access it, which could be easily taken away if wanted to leave. Key to this idea is that the data would be compatible with a wide range of apps and platforms, creating a common standard for content to be used across many services. Berners-Lee has co-founded a company, Inrupt, to promote the Solid standard, but the real trick will be getting internet giants to adopt it and to stop keeping their own quiet records of our activities.
2. New Zealand now requires travellers to unlock phones for customs
New Zealand has become the latest country to give customs officials the power to demand access to travellers' locked mobile phones and password-protected laptops (The Register). The law requires officers to have "reasonable cause" to believe that an electronic device has been involved in a crime and only covers data stored locally on the device, but civil liberties groups have expressed concerns over the fact that travellers don't have to be told what that cause is. Travellers who deny the request face a fine of NZ$5,000.
3. Google trials Chrome game streaming with free access to Assassin's Creed Odyssey
Google has announced the first trial of Project Stream a game streaming service that will work through Chrome browsers on Windows, Linux, macOS and ChromeOS (Ars Technica). Starting on October 5, the trial will include "a limited number of participants" who sign up on the Project Stream site, allowing them to stream Ubisoft's new Assassin's Creed Odyssey from Google's servers directly to their browser – a 25Mbit/s internet connection is recommended for this. Unfortunately, the trial is only available to US residents for the moment.
4. Neuroscientists identify areas of the brain associated with free will
New research has identified a brain network that, if disrupted, causes people to move without feeling they have volition over what they're doing, indicating that it may be key to our sense of free will (Science). The researchers worked with patients who suffered alien limb syndrome – such as an arm that moves without them intending it to – and forms of akinetic mutism where patients cannot move at will but can scratch an itch or chew food. They found that although lesions associated with the conditions were present in many different parts of the brain, they all interrupted connections to the anterior cingulate cortex. However, the question of whether this part of the brain gives us free will, or merely the impression of it, is still one for the philosophers.
5. YouTube's ASMR artists are going bespoke in search of new thrills
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a spidery sensation felt across the scalp and up and down the spine, triggered by certain sensory experiences (WIRED). YouTube is now so awash with content designed to trigger tingles that those looking to monetise their channels are having to turn to more creative means. Much like how the paid porn industry is being rapidly eclipsed by the abundance of free porn, those in the soon-to-be-oversaturated ASMR business are being forced to turn their whispers to a new revenue stream: custom and bespoke content.
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Forget supersonic, the future of super-fast flight is sub-orbital
Previously the stuff of science fiction, sub-orbital flight would let you travel from one side of the planet to the other in less than an hour. On a London to Sydney trip, it would be difficult to squeeze in an in-flight meal, let alone a Hollywood action film. What makes sub-orbital flight different to orbital space travel? Velocity. In sub-orbital flight, orbital velocity is not achieved, so a vehicle cannot follow a path consistent with the curvature of the Earth - this means it is constantly pulled back down to the surface of our planet. And that makes sub-orbital a real engineering headache.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
