and trying to pass as many in Atlanta was quite new. To checkpoints as possible in 90 make matters some how worse, July 24th seconds. IBM had paid $80 million to the Olympic organizers in order to The game’s controls included a be promoted as the “lead four-position gear shift, a technology integrator”. Max Palevsky steering wheel, and two foot Born: July 24, 1924; pedals, all firsts for arcade games. At one point during the , Illinois design process, there was also a Died: May 5, 2010 Chromecast small printer to print scores, but After working on the logic that was removed at some stage. July 24, 2013 design for the Bendix It was also the first arcade game Google [Sept 7] released the Corporation’s first computer, the to use a solid state ROM to store Chromecast, a 72mm long USB G-15 [March 00], Palevsky sprites, a feature designed by stick that streamed video from joined the Packard Bell Larry Emmons. the Internet (and other sources) Computer Corporation in 1957, The two-player version was to a high-definition TV or where he helped develop the called “Gran Trak 20”, and a monitor. Packard Bell PB250, the first smaller variant was named silicon computer. It possessed the model number “Trak 10” (it should have been H2G2-42, most likely a reference In 1961, he and 11 colleagues “Gran Track 5” surely?). to Douglas Adam's "The left Packard Bell to found Poor management at Atari Hitchhiker’s Guide to the (SDS) to meant that the game was sold to Galaxy" (or “H2G2” for short), build small and medium-size distributors at a net loss of $100 along with 42 as the “Answer to computers, aimed at the per cabinet. This contributed to the Ultimate Question of Life, the scientific and educational a total loss of $500,000 for the Universe, and Everything” markets, a niche being ignored company that year, placing Atari [March 8]. by large companies like IBM. in severe financial difficulties. The formula worked, marked by Nolan Bushnell [Feb 5] was the success of the SDS-940 [Aug forced to reduce the workforce 8]; [Nov 30], the SDS Sigma 7 by almost half. In other words, [Oct 29]; [Dec 5], and others. Gran Trak’s most enduring In May 1969 Xerox bought the legacy was as the game that company for $918 million, with nearly put Atari out of business. Palevsky taking home a tidy 10% share. Little did Xerox know, but SDS had peaked [July 21]. Meanwhile, Palevsky IBM at the A first-generation Chromecast became a founder investor of plugged into the HDMI port of a [July 18]. Olympics TV. Photo by [email protected]. CC BY-SA 2.0. In later life, he complained of July 24, 1996 “the hypnotic quality of Newspaper articles started computer games, the The numbering fun didn't end appearing describing the many there – the Chromecast's power substitution of a Google search problems with the IBM systems for genuine inquiry, the instant adapter bore the code MST3K- at the Summer Olympics in US, which was probably a messaging that has replaced Atlanta. social discourse.” “I don’t own a reference to the TV series computer,” he told The Los In particular, the software that "Mystery Science Theater 3000". Angeles Times in 2008. “I don’t provided competition results to own a cellphone, I don’t own any 12 news organizations was electronics. I do own a radio.” producing incorrect results, and Spy Pixels its data transmission was erratic. At one stage, several July 24-27, 2018 news companies resorted to Gran Trak 10 getting results in the old- At PETS 2018, the 18th Privacy fashioned way – using runners Enhancing Technologies Released who delivered the scores Symposium in Barcelona, July 24 (or Aug 21),1974 written on pieces of paper. Steven Englehardt, Jeffrey Han, and Arvind Narayanan of Part of the problem was that Atari’s [June 27] "Gran Trak 10" Princeton presented their paper until the 1994 winter games, was the first arcade game where "I never signed up for this! IBM’s involvement with the the player drove a car around a Privacy implications of email Olympics had been primarily as race track, as viewed from tracking". a hardware provider. The real- above, avoiding the track edges time scores software being used

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They revealed that about 30% of the emails they analyzed leaked recipients' email addresses to third parties via methods like embedded pixels (aka spy pixels), the majority of them intentionally. Spy pixels are commonly embedded in the HTML of an email as small, imperceptible, transparent graphic files. When the recipient opens the message, the mail client requests the image. The Web server where the file is stored logs the request, and the information is later used for directing a deluge of marketing at the user. Things have only got worse. In Feb. 2021. the "Hey" email service estimated that it blocked spy pixels in about 600,000 out of 1,000,000 messages per day.

Facebook Fine July 24, 2019 The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ended a year- long investigation into Facebook [Feb 4] over its alleged misuse of user data and various privacy scandals (e.g. the Cambridge Analytica debacle [March 17]) by imposing a $5 billion fine. To mere mortals this may seem like a lot, but it should be remembered that Facebook earned revenue of over $16 billion in 2019. Indeed, when the news reached the business markets, Facebook’s stock price went up. The settlement also included blanket immunity for Facebook executives (e.g. CEO Mark Zuckerberg [May 14]) and no real restraints on Facebook’s business model.

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