Why not more online facial age estimation to distinguish children from adults?

I bet the technology could be improved!

As a safeguard, facial age estimation ought to be clearly separated from personal identification or login requirements! This could be achieved by e.g. third party providers who do nothing else but facial age estimation.

There are other means of age verification available too in the digital age. Why is e.g. my Google account not age verified! Google are you paying attention!

I bet privacy concerns (like the article below) are overblown here! Why would a selfie video be necessary? Does not a close up photo of your eyes/face suffice.

For example, porn websites could use it to keep children away, but not adults.

"Online facial age estimation is moderately reliable for broad categories like telling adults from children, but it is imprecise for guessing exact numbers. Top algorithms from groups like the National Institute of Standards and Technology have a mean absolute error rate of about 2 to 3 years, making them much better than average human guesses, but still prone to error based on lighting, skin care, and camera quality." (Google Search)

"... However, this is quickly shifting a broad policy problem into a biometric one, where access to ordinary online services can depend on literally showing your face [???]. ...

While facial age estimation may offer platforms a convenient way to respond to youth online safety demands, that convenience comes with serious privacy costs. Required facial scans lower the baseline of privacy for everyone, especially teens, and create a regime where access to everyday social spaces depends on individuals surrendering sensitive information about their faces and, in many cases, their identities. ...

Meta’s implementation of Yoti, a digital identity and age assurance company, on Instagram and Facebook shows how this works.

If Instagram believes an account holder is under 18 years old and the user tries to change that, it can send that user to Yoti for analysis of a selfie video [???].Yoti then estimates whether the person appears to be over 18 and sends that result back to Meta.

Its tests have expanded across the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan, and similar flows have begun appearing on Facebook in Australia. Yoti also presents facial age estimation as part of a broader age assurance system that can include document-based checks, while highlighting that it estimates age rather than identifying the person. ..."

Protecting teens online shouldn't require mandatory facial scans for digital users "While facial age estimation offers a convenient way to respond to youth online safety demands, the tool comes with serious privacy costs [???]."

US Surgeon General warns about Kids’ Screen Time

How much is alarmism and hysteria?

Were not similar warnings issued when video games became popular in the late 1973, early 1980s? You bet!

"Early and excessive screen time can trigger severe neurocognitive delays in young children, harming attention, memory, and language skills, Interim Surgeon General Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos warned on Sunday. ...

To fight back, her office released a framework called “the 5 Ds”: discuss rules as a family, model good habits, divert kids to hands-on activities, disconnect during meals and car rides, and delay device access. ...

"... 

No. 1: [Family] Discuss

No. 2: Do ([parents be a] model the behavior)

No. 3: Divert [children to other activities etc.]

No. 4. Disconnect [like screen free periods]

No. 5: Delay [access to screens]

..."

Monday, July 27, 2026 - Join The Flyover

Too much screen time may trigger lasting brain delays, top health official warns "Interim surgeon general warns early and excessive screen time can trigger neurocognitive delays in young children"

Cassandra or Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos? 😊 (Source)

UK government scraps plans for digital ID cards after millions of Brits opposed

Good news! Some lovely British traditions and customs die hard!

Are we dealing with Luddites or do we need better personal privacy protections in the digital age?

Waw this digital ID scheme another one of those failures/blunders of previous PM Keir Starmer?

"The U.K.’s incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has confirmed the U.K. government is scrapping a controversial digital ID card scheme announced last year by the country’s previous leader. ...

The plan to roll out digital identity cards was introduced by the former prime minister Keir Starmer, who argued that state-issued IDs would crack down on migrants working illegally and would modernize access to government services. ...

Millions of Brits had opposed the plan for mandatory digital ID cards, leading to the second-largest public parliamentary petition on record, gathering close to 3 million signatures rejecting the plan. Critics said that the introduction of ID cards would enable surveillance. ..."

UK government scraps plans for digital ID cards after millions of Brits opposed | TechCrunch

Ein Jahr Digitalministerium: Faxe abgeschafft – sollen wir das glauben?

Neues aus der Bananenrepublik D!

Mir ist z.B. persönlich bekannt, dass das Amtsgericht München immer noch eine Fax Nummer angibt, wenn sie per Email mit Bürgern kommunizieren (Fax 09621/962413115 wie geschehen im Februar 2026).

Bundesministerium für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung Jahrestag | NIUS "Das Bundesministerium für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung (BMDS) feiert seinen ersten Geburtstag. Prominentester Gast ist Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (CDU). Nach einem Jahr ist die Bilanz jedoch ernüchternd."

Why Governments Are Asking its Citizens to Read More with Palki Sharma. Really!

Books are the stone tablets in the digital age! Palki is so nostalgic!

Ein neues Lernzentrum für die digitale Zukunft der Jugend in Frankfurt am Main: TUMO

Das scheint ein sehr interessantes und vielversprechendes, neues Projekt in meiner Heimatstadt zu sein.

Laut Google: "Frankfurt baut mit dem TUMO-Lernzentrum ein kostenloses, außerschulisches Angebot für Jugendliche (12-18 Jahre) zur Förderung digitaler und kreativer Fähigkeiten in Programmierung, Robotik, 3D-Design etc., betrieben von der Volkshochschule im Nordwestzentrum, gefördert durch Stadt, KfW und Stiftungen, um digitale Bildungsgerechtigkeit und Fachkräfte zu stärken. Es ist ein Leuchtturmprojekt für selbstbestimmtes Lernen ohne Leistungsdruck, das im Frühjahr 2026 eröffnen soll."

Ein neues Lernzentrum für die digitale Zukunft der Jugend | FAZ "Ein 2000-Quadratmeter-Versprechen für Programmieren, Robotik und kreative Technologien ohne Leistungsdruck. Frankfurt stellt mit Tumo die Bildungsfrage neu und setzt auf Eigenverantwortung statt Stundenplan."

TUMO kommt! (original Pressemitteilung) "Digitale Kompetenzen, Chancengerechtigkeit und selbstbestimmtes Lernen für Jugendliche zwischen 12 und 18 Jahren – ab Frühjahr 2026"

US Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds 61% of public libraries have health or safety issue, 40% have a failing major system

Food for thought! How much do we still need public libraries in the digital age?

Theoretically, all books out of copyright could be digitized and provided by a single library for access to all the inhabitants of the world. Accommodations for elderly or disabled individuals can be provided.

If I were a radical I would propose to close them all and/or rededicate a few public libraries and/or shrink them dramatically!

As far as public meeting spaces are concerned, perhaps there are better solutions than big buildings with tons of book shelves!

Caveat: I did not read the entire article.

"... About 6,000 libraries nationwide (nearly 40%) say that part of their building is in poor condition, and about 7,000 report having a physical barrier to access for people with disabilities.

Federal funding is generally available for library programs and services, not for construction or repairs. Many libraries cite funding and construction costs as challenges to addressing building needs. ...

An estimated 38 percent (about 6,000) of the nation’s public libraries have at least one building system, such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), in poor condition, according to GAO’s survey of libraries. An estimated 61 percent, or 9,800 libraries, have at least one building system or feature that poses a potential health or safety concern.  ..."

GAO finds 61% of public libraries have health or safety issue, 40% have a failing major system | Just The News "The audit findings are based on a nationally representative survey of about 16,400 public libraries across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and four U.S. territories."

Public Libraries: Many Buildings Are Reported to Be in Poor Condition, with Increasing Deferred Maintenance (original news release)

Denmark Ends Letter Delivery After 400 Years of Postal Service with Palki Sharma

Good news! Bravo! Which country will follow next? The descendants of the Vikings are often very good at surprises.

Why “Parasocial” Is Cambridge Dictionary's Word of the Year with Palki Sharma

Recommendable! I hope I will never be parasocial!

Going viral: How ideas, beliefs, and innovations spread in the digital age

Recommendable! Better explanations for the dynamics of spreading information.

"A new study ... introduces a mathematical model for “self-reinforcing cascades,” processes where the thing being spread, whether a belief, joke, or virus, evolves in real time and gains strength as it spreads. ...

“We were inspired in part by forest fires,” ... “Fires can grow stronger when burning through dense forest, and weaker when crossing open gaps. That same principle applies to information, jokes, or diseases. They can intensify or weaken depending on the conditions.”

The model is simple in theory: each time an idea spreads, it has a chance of increasing or decreasing in intensity. If it weakens too much or finds no receptive audience, it dies out. But if it improves, even slightly, it can keep going, triggering large-scale cascades under a wide range of conditions. ..."

From the abstract:

"Models of how things spread often assume that transmission mechanisms are fixed over time. However, social contagions—the spread of ideas, beliefs, innovations—can lose or gain in momentum as they spread: ideas can get reinforced, beliefs strengthened, products refined.

We study the impacts of such self-reinforcement mechanisms in cascade dynamics. We use different mathematical modeling techniques to capture the recursive, yet changing nature of the process.

We find a critical regime with a range of power-law cascade size distributions with nonuniversal scaling exponents.

This regime clashes with classic models, where criticality requires fine-tuning at a precise critical point. Self-reinforced cascades produce critical-like behavior over a wide range of parameters, which may help explain the ubiquity of power-law distributions in empirical social data."

Going viral: How ideas, beliefs, and innovations spread in the digital age | Santa Fe Institute

Self-Reinforcing Cascades: A Spreading Model for Beliefs or Products of Varying Intensity or Quality (open access)

Fig. 2.

Phase transitions of SRC and directed percolation on Poisson trees of average branching number ℓ = 3. 

Why Fewer People Are Picking Up Books with Palki Sharma. Really

Well, we are not reading stone tablets either anymore! 😊

Human fashion Models Replaced by AI? Why H&M Chooses Digital Clones Now

Recommendable! The shown concerns are rather minor. Will fashion shows go the way of the Dodo? Quite possibly!

Soon life human fashion models will not even be needed any more to train computer models or to create digital clones.

A coalition of law enforcement agencies from the U.S., Australia, and multiple countries in Europe took down and seized two prominent hacking forums

Just maybe law enforcement (cordially aka gum shoes) are finally catching up with digital crime in the 21st century! 😊

"On Thursday, an international coalition of law enforcement agencies from Australia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Spain, and the United States took down and seized two prominent hacking forums and two other related cybercriminal services. 

After the takedown operations were revealed by Europol and Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) on Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) published its own announcement, providing more details about the two forums, which were called Cracked and Nulled.  

According to the DOJ, since 2018, Cracked had over 4 million users who traded in cybercriminal tools and stolen information, producing around $4 million in revenue. Prosecutors say the data on the cybercrime forums affected at least 17 million Americans. ..."

US Justice Department says cybercrime forum allegedly affected 17 million Americans | TechCrunch

Digitalisierung: Deutschland ist weit im Rückstand, kann aber von anderen Ländern lernen

Man könnte auch sagen die Bananenrepublik D ist das Schlusslicht!

"... Vergleich mit dem Ausland ernüchtert

Um diese Ergebnisse besser einordnen zu können, liegt ein Vergleich mit der Digitalisierung im Ausland nahe. Das etablierte Ranking des International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne/Schweiz stellt Deutschland kein gutes Zeugnis aus (Grafik):

Im IMD-Ranking zur digitalen Wettbewerbsfähigkeit für das Jahr 2023 belegt Deutschland mit 80,9 Punkten lediglich Platz 23. ... 

Bedenklich ist zudem der Trend: Seit 2019, als es noch für Rang 17 reichte, hat Deutschland nahezu kontinuierlich an Wettbewerbsfähigkeit im digitalen Bereich verloren. ..."

Digitalisierung: Deutschland kann von anderen Ländern lernen - iwd.de "Im vergangenen Jahr ist die deutsche Wirtschaft digitaler geworden, wie der aktuelle Digitalisierungsindex des IW zeigt. Dennoch bleibt Deutschland im internationalen Vergleich im Hintertreffen. Das IW hat daher herausgearbeitet, was andere Länder bei zentralen Aspekten der Digitalisierung besser machen."

After Drones, Smartphone Apps Are Ukraine’s Next Secret Weapon

Good news! They say wars drive innovation feeding back into civilian life. We will learn more about in coming months!

"Ukraine vowed to become a fully digital country just months ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasion and has continued working towards that goal even as the war intensified. The Ministry of Digital Transformation led the way through its Diia mobile app portal, which now allows more than 21 million Ukrainians to access over 70 government services and to store and access 14 essential digital documents.

The same ministry, headed by Mykhailo Fedorov, has been the driving force behind a whole range of technological innovations. Its work on unmanned aerial, ground and seaborne vehicles – drones – has grabbed the headlines as they are considered to have transformed the way a modern war is fought.

Yet the work his ministry and others have done on mobile apps to support military functions, while much less sexy than drones that sink ships, are just as essential for the protection of the country.

Smart phones for smart air defense

One such area is the use of mobile phones and purpose-built apps to support the air defense effort to counter the ongoing onslaught against Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure by Russian missiles and kamikaze drones. ...

The project developers said the aim was to enlist “the entire population” in helping to spot incoming attacks in what he described as an example of “web-centric war.” As more users registered the aerial targets, an accurate track pattern could be compiled to warn Ukraine’s air defense to engage and destroy the target. ...
Without giving the details of the project, he revealed that it is based on an app that puts an acoustic sensor on the mobile phone. The data acquired by the phone is then fed into Ukraine’s “Virazh” national air defense command and control network, which combines input from around 40 separate kinds of sensors to detect, identify and track incoming aerial threats. ...

The basic idea is now being expanded both in scope and in the technology being used. The next generation system known as Zvook, which is being manufactured by Ukrainian firm Ajax Security Systems, will aim to deploy more than 12,000 sensors in the border regions of Ukraine on likely Russian missile approach routes.

Zvook will use micro-computers, rather than cell phones and is thought to be able to detect drones at a distance of 5 kilometers (3 miles), cruise missiles at 6 kilometers (4 miles), and ballistic missiles at 10 kilometers (6 miles). ..."

After Drones, Smartphone Apps Are Ukraine’s Next Secret Weapon

Bücher wegwerfen, ein Sakrileg? Warum ich meine Bücher ins Altpapier werfe

Bücher sind die Steintafeln des digitalen 21igsten Jahrhunderts!

Bücher wegwerfen, ein Sakrileg? Warum ich meine Bücher ins Altpapier werfe Bücher haben einen kulturellen Wert, Bücherwände machen etwas her? Unser Autor sieht darin vor allem Ballast – also weg damit! Seine Freunde finden das schlimm. Über ein deutsches Sakrileg.

Have Public Libraries Become Obsolete? Can they be Saved? with Palki Sharma

Books are the stone tablets of the digital age! Let's digitize all old books etc. Why is Palki featuring a drag queen story hour with children?

E-Rezept und E-Patientenakte für alle von Bundestag beschlossen

Gute Nachrichten! Manchmal will ja auch etwas gelingen in der ansonsten Bananenrepublik D.!

"... Das Digitalgesetz führt die elektronische Medikamentenverschreibung, das sogenannte E-Rezept, im kommenden Jahr als verbindlichen Standard ein. Damit wird der rosafarbene Papierausdruck nach und nach ersetzt. Ein Jahr später, Anfang 2025, bekommen nach fast 20 Jahren Vorlauf alle gesetzlich Versicherten eine elektronische Patientenakte (ePA) ausgestellt, es sei denn, sie widersprechen aktiv („Opt-out“). Privatversicherungen können die elektronische Patientenakte ebenfalls ausstellen. ..."

E-Rezept und E-Patientenakte für alle von Bundestag beschlossen Das Rezept auf dem Smartphone und digitalisierte Befunde und Laborwerte – das soll bald für alle Bürger in Deutschland verfügbar werden. Am Donnerstag hat der Bundestag die dafür notwendigen Gesetze beschlossen.

1 out of 5 patients listed as alive in California electronic health records are actually dead

Surviving in the digital age! Don't we all want to live longer?

"About 20% of patients whose medical records showed them as being alive with a serious illness were in fact deceased, according to California data, leading to hundreds of unnecessary interactions such as appointment reminders, prescription refills and other kinds of wasteful outreach that strain resources and health care workers’ time. ..."

1 out of 5 patients listed as alive in electronic health records are actually dead | UCLA The discrepancy in California records leads to wasteful follow-up outreach, but the solution is hampered by legal issues

A Thai festival of contradictions in the digital age

Great idea! When traditions meet the digital age!