#bigdata

Thomas @thbley@phpc.social · Aug 03, 2026

I've made a new release: DuckDB driver for Laravel

Support for views Bugfixes: year default expression, parameter serialization CI tests: project setup, macOS, Windows more examples in the readme:

read and write Parquet files
copy data from MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL to Parquet
community extensions
performance example
read public data
Eloquent Models, schema and query builder for special types

https://github.com/thomas-0816/laravel-pdo-duckdb

#php #laravel #analytics #duckdb #eloquent #bigdata

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Christoph Schmees @PC_Fluesterer@social.tchncs.de · Jul 31, 2026

Palantir-Angestellte haben Zugriff auf NHS Gesundheitsdaten Ach? Sensible Patientendaten sind bei #Palantir nicht gut aufgehoben? Oh, hm, ja, das wusste ich nicht¹. Das staatliche britische Gesundheitssystem NHS hat 2023 einen mehrere Hundert Millionen schweren Vertrag mit Palantir geschlossen. Die Firma soll eine vereinheitlichte Datenbank zum Datenaustausch zwischen allen am NHS beteiligten Stellen aufbauen und betreiben. Dazu wurde eine Datenschutz-Folgeabschätzung DPIA erstellt. Im Mai musste NHS zugeben, dass die "unkorrekt" sei. Tatsächlich können Angestellte von Palantir auf medizinische Daten zugreifen, die eindeutig ... Weiterlesen: https://www.pc-fluesterer.info/wordpress/2026/07/31/palantir-angestellte-haben-zugriff-auf-nhs-gesundheitsdaten/ #bigdata #datenschutz #digitalisierung #identität #politik #privacy #UnplugTrump #verbraucherschutz #vorbeugen #wissen

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Spotify Engineering @spotify_engineering@robot.villas · Jul 27, 2026

Indexing the Data Lake for Online Point Queries https://engineering.atspotify.com/2026/7/indexing-the-data-lake-for-online-point-queries/ #DataEngineering #BigData #CloudComputing

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kottke.org @kottke@robot.villas · Jul 23, 2026

It's our ethical duty to understand large numbers .... https://kottke.org/26/07/0049381-its-our-ethical-duty-to-u #BigData #Ethics #Numbers

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Mark @paka@mastodon.scot · Jul 23, 2026

Andy Burnham: Kick Palantir out of our NHS! Rumours are Andy #Burnham wants to kick out Palantir from #OurNHS But Palantir’s army of lobbyists won’t give up without a fight - like when they sued Mayor of London for blocking their £50mil #MetPolice deal #Petition text Put patients before #corporate #lobbyists End #Palantir’s contracts with #NHS & #police. Protect our #private #data https://act.38degrees.org.uk/act/Kick-Out-Palantir-eoi?utm_medium=mastodon_fediverse #CorporateTerrorism #privacy #medical #BigData #corruption #lobbying #DemocracyNOW

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DoomsdaysCW @DoomsdaysCW@kolektiva.social · Jul 20, 2026

From 2023... #TechExecs protect their kids from their own products. America’s children deserve the same While #BigTech fights regulations that would protect children, its leaders apply a different standard for their own offspring. BY Katie A. Paul, 5/24/2023 Excerpt: "As detailed in news reports in recent years, members of the tech elite have directed their nannies to keep their kids away from #AddictiveScreens and sent their kids to a private San Francisco school with a strict no-screens policy. 'I just wanted our kids to have a #TechnologyFree start, so that they would be playing and running around and picking up leaves and getting dirty, rather than sitting inside and watching a screen,' said one parent. "This attitude extends to the C-suite. Susan Wojcicki, who recently stepped down as YouTube CEO, admitted in 2017 that she sometimes confiscated her kids’ phones. Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, revealed in 2018 that his 11-year-old son did not have a phone. The following year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that he didn’t want his young children sitting in front of a computer 'for a long period of time.' "One former Facebook executive, Chamath Palihapitiya, put it more bluntly, saying that he felt 'tremendous guilt' about helping to build the social network and that his children 'aren’t allowed to use that shit.' "These admissions have been largely forgotten with the speed of the news cycle over the past five years. But taken together, they reveal an industry that tries to shield its kids from the dangers of technology—while touting the very same products for everyone else. It begs the question: Why shouldn’t America’s young people receive the same levels of protection that Silicon Valley parents provide for their own? While tech executives have gone quieter lately on the subject of how they regulate tech use for their offspring, there are signs that they continue to harbor private doubts about the products they market to the world. When tech-focused publication The Information surveyed more than 1,000 subscribers last year, it found that 'Silicon Valley’s children spend far less time on screens than the average American kid.' [...] By trying to shield their kids from the ill effects of the products they make, tech leaders are following a pattern seen in industries like #BigTobacco, whose executives, in congressional testimony 25 years ago, conceded that they didn’t want their children to smoke." Read more: https://www.fastcompany.com/90900166/tech-social-media-protection-children #NoPhones #TechAddiction #BigTech #TakeThePhonesAway #BigData #SpendTimeInNature #AISucks #MoreGreenTimeLessScreenTime

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DoomsdaysCW @DoomsdaysCW@kolektiva.social · Jul 20, 2026

#VicksburgMS residents #protest planned #AmazonDatacenter Acie Lewis Sun, July 19, 2026 Excerpt: " 'It's being put up right next to the main elementary school for the City of Vicksburg. And there are several #environmental and health concerns surrounding these #datacenters. And so, being right next to a school, that hits home to me because I really care about children. I have kids,' said Stuart English. " 'We know nothing about it. No one said anything about it. So, we're just finding a location and putting it wherever we could fit, no matter how many children are there. These are our babies. We've got to take care of them, and I am,' said Claude Lee, a Vicksburg teacher." Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/vicksburg-residents-protest-planned-amazon-134114884.html #ResistBigData #BigTech #BigData #USPol #Datacenters #DatacentersSuck #NoisePollution #LightPollution #ElectricityConsumption #Secrecy #AISucks #AmazonDatacenters #AWS #Mississippi

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DoomsdaysCW @DoomsdaysCW@kolektiva.social · Jul 13, 2026

#Georgia family says they're forced to sell home to help power #AIDatacenters: "It's theft" By Shannon Luibrand Updated on: July 13, 2026 "Sell your home, or the state will take it — that's the ultimatum some homeowners in Georgia say they are facing amid the AI boom. "Utility giant #GeorgiaPower is planning to build a new transmission line to in part help power new #datacenters. It estimates 70-80% of the power on the new line will help serve data centers and the remaining 20-30% of power will serve the state's growing residential and commercial demand. "According to the company, increasing demand has outpaced the capacity of its existing grid and building a new transmission line requires acquiring more than 300 parcels of land, including residential properties. "Ansley Brown's childhood home that she said was built when she was 5 or 6 years old is just one of the properties impacted. " 'It's ours,' she told CBS News. 'It's our family. We belong here.' "Her mother wanted the property to serve as 'true generational wealth,' Brown said, adding that now 'it's being stripped from us.' "Brown's mother recently came to an agreement with Georgia Power to sell. If she didn't, Brown said the utility could have sought to acquire the property through #EminentDomain — which is a legal process that allows private property to be taken, with compensation, for projects determined to serve a public purpose. " 'To us it's theft. It's literally a billion dollar company stealing land from smaller people, people who can't fight back. We don't have the money to fight Georgia Power,' Brown said. "Holly Lovett, a spokesperson for Georgia Power, said eminent domain 'is always … a last resort for us and it's something we never want to do.' "The company said it feels as if it's done the process responsibly, but Brown disagrees. " 'You can't tear down 35 miles of rural Georgia and it not hurt something or somebody. And to say that you're doing it in the name of data centers is a slap in the face to us, our community, our animals,' she said. "A few months ago Brown took her story to TikTok and began sharing stories of others in similar situations. She said that while she knows it's too late to save her home, she doesn't want to see this happen to others." Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-power-ai-data-centers-eminent-domain/ #NoDatacenters #USPol #AISucks #BigPower #BigData

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Max Resing @resingm@infosec.exchange · Jul 02, 2026

#NVIDIA published a blog post where they present GQE, a GPU-based query engine. Querying data from databases with GPU accelleration is beyond cool, and will certainly optimize the storage requirements for #bigdata due to enabling for more efficient compression algorithms. Here is the blog post: Designing GPU-Accelerated Query Engines with NVIDIA GQE #bigdata #databases #polars #pandas #datascience

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Script Kiddie @scriptkiddie@anonsys.net · Jun 29, 2026

The Circle: The Scariest Part Isn't Big Tech. It's Us. When The Circle hit theaters in 2017, many people saw it as another tech thriller. Today, it feels less like science fiction and more like tomorrow's news feed. The movie is based on Dave Eggers' bestselling novel, often called the 1984 of the digital age. Ironically, the film improves on the book in one important way. Instead of explaining every idea through endless dialogue, it lets us see them. The result is faster, smoother and much easier to watch. But it still feels more like an essay than a real story. Mae Holland lands her dream job at The Circle, a giant tech company that looks like a mix of Google, Apple, Meta and TikTok. The campus is bright, colorful and full of smiling people. Everyone talks about changing the world. That is the first warning sign. Modern tech companies rarely say they just want to build products or make money. They promise to make humanity better. The Circle sells exactly that dream. Soon Mae believes privacy is outdated. If you have nothing to hide, why keep secrets? She starts wearing a tiny camera that livestreams her entire life. Every second. Every conversation. Every emotion. Imagine if your entire life became one endless Twitch stream. This world feels like a strange combination of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Control no longer comes through fear alone. It comes through convenience, entertainment and the promise of a better future. Looking at today's AI boom, smart homes and endless social media feeds, the movie suddenly feels much less fictional than it did a few years ago. One scene stands out. The Circle suggests that voting should happen through its own platform. If everyone already has an account, why not connect democracy directly to the app? It sounds efficient. Maybe even practical. The movie briefly asks whether democracy itself could become a product owned by a private company. That is one of its most interesting ideas. Sadly, it never explores that question. Instead, the ending takes the easy Hollywood route. Rather than challenging the system, it blames a few powerful executives. Once their private emails are exposed, the audience is expected to believe justice has been served. As if replacing a CEO could solve everything. But that misses the real problem. Systems survive because people are replaceable. Remove one tech billionaire and another one will take the job. The real issue is a business model built on collecting more data, measuring human behavior and turning attention into profit. It doesn't matter whether the CEO is friendly or arrogant. If the machine stays the same, the result stays the same. That idea feels even more relevant today. We often argue about individual tech leaders. But should we? The real question is why any company should have that much power in the first place. Whether it is Meta, Google, Apple or the next AI giant, the structure remains the same. The movie also lets us off the hook too easily. It is comforting to blame powerful corporations. Harder to admit that we help build this world ourselves. We accept the cookies. We install the apps. We trade privacy for convenience. We buy smart speakers, connect everything to the cloud and tell ourselves it is worth it because life becomes easier. That may be The Circle's biggest weakness. It criticizes Silicon Valley's worldview but forgets to criticize ours. Most people are not driven by ideology. They simply choose what is new, useful and comfortable. That is how surveillance becomes normal—not because anyone forces us, but because we quietly invite it into our homes. The movie offers only one alternative: rejecting technology completely and escaping into nature. But that feels just as unrealistic as total digital transparency. It presents two extremes while ignoring everything in between. Despite its flaws, The Circle remains a fascinating warning. Not because it predicts the future perfectly, but because so much of its future has already become our present. Why am I writing about such an old movie? Shouldn't we have much smarter, deeper movies about AI, surveillance and Big Tech by now? Or have we simply become so used to these technologies that we no longer notice what is happening? Has Silicon Valley slowly won us over with its own propaganda? If you know any newer movies or series that tackle these questions in a more thoughtful way, let me know in the comments. I'm always looking for the next great warning before it becomes reality. #TheCircle #movie #film #entertainment #cinema #Hollywood #criticism #filmcritic #siliconvalley #bigtech #bigdata #bigbrother #orwell #surveillance #privacy #warning #danger #today #future #ai #technology #software #algorithm #freedom #democracy #economy #power #billionaires #finance #money #company #humanity #ethics #world #life #control

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The Bad Place @TheBadPlace@mastodon.ozioso.online · May 27, 2026

English – The Conversation | Privacy isn’t dead – it’s just that tech companies have made it inconvenient by Sandra Matz, Professor of Business, Columbia University AI generated summary, Read the full article for complete information. The article argues that privacy is not dead; it has simply become inconvenient because tech companies make it easy to surrender personal data in exchange for immediate benefits such as navigation, recommendations, and ride‑hailing services. While many users justify this trade‑off with the “it’s worth it” or “I have nothing to hide” fallacies, the author explains that the hidden risks—ranging from profiling that reveals sensitive health or political information to the potential misuse of data by future regimes—far outweigh the superficial conveniences. Because reading and understanding every privacy policy is unrealistic for most people, the burden of protection must shift from individuals to systemic safeguards: stronger privacy‑by‑design standards, restrictive default settings, decentralized technologies like federated learning, and collective governance models such as data trusts. Ultimately, the solution lies in building trustworthy systems that preserve privacy without sacrificing convenience. Read more: https://theconversation.com/privacy-isnt-dead-its-just-that-tech-companies-have-made-it-inconvenient-278278 #BigTech #BigData #Federatedlearning #Datatrusts #Privacy_by_design

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Autonomie und Solidarität @autonomysolidarity@todon.eu · Oct 30, 2023

Replying to @autonomysolidarity@todon.eu

Total Trust - Totales Vertrauen #Film Wenn das die Gegenwart ist, wie sieht dann unsere Zukunft aus? "Was passiert, wenn der Schutz unserer #Privatsphäre missachtet wird? Wie umfassend sind die aus Big Data gewonnen Informationen über unsere Aktivitäten und Überzeugungen, Abneigungen, Vorlieben und Gewohnheiten? Lässt sich sicherstellen, dass diese Daten nicht in die falschen Hände geraten? Sind sie vielleicht schon in den falschen Händen? „Total Trust“ ist ein zutiefst beunruhigender und bewegender Film über die unheimliche Macht von #BigData und #KI, über ihren Gebrauch und Missbrauch im öffentlichen wie im privaten Leben, über Zensur und Selbstzensur. Anhand eindringlicher Schicksale von Menschen in China, die überwacht, eingeschüchtert und sogar gefoltert wurden, erzählt „Total Trust“ von den Gefahren aktueller Technologien in den Händen einer ungezügelten Macht. Mit China als Spiegel schlägt der Film Alarm: Der zunehmende Einsatz von digitalen Überwachungstools ist längst ein globales Phänomen – auch in demokratisch geführten Ländern." (Pressetext) https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=ZDBLvJoKOtY #Überwachung #Technology #KünstlicheIntelligenz #Antireport #Hamburg #Hansaplatz #Autoritarisierung

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Mark @paka@mastodon.scot · Apr 12, 2026

Switzerland Ends #Palantir Contract Over #Data #Sovereignty Risks - #Cybersecurity

#Switzerland’s decision to discontinue the use of Palantir is not a #technology story.

It's a #risk management story. The platform was not rejected because it failed to perform. On the contrary, it delivered advanced data fusion and operational insight.

It was rejected because the residual sovereignty risk was considered unacceptable.

#security #BigData #insecure #surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism

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Mark @paka@mastodon.scot · Apr 12, 2026

Boosted by

Philip C James @PhilipCJames@mas.to

Replying to @paka@mastodon.scot

This case shows the growing dilemma that many countries now face. In a global supply chain economy, the most capable #digital #platforms are rarely national

They are built, operated, updated, and legally #governed elsewhere

For #sensitive domains such as #defense, #intelligence, #public #safety, and #critical #infrastructure, this creates a structural tension between performance and control.

https://zendata.security/2026/02/14/switzerland-ends-palantir-contract-over-data-sovereignty-risks/

#BigData #privacy #security #corruption #dictators

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Márton Salomváry @mrc@mastodon.berlin · Mar 27, 2026

I might have said this earlier but worth repeating. DuckDB is freaking amazing! Today I worked on a 56G TSV file containing 55 million rows of JSON serialized documents (all of OpenLibrary editions). I can query this file including filtering on nested JSON structures and most queries complete in a few dozen seconds worst case, but I can also create derived indexes to bring down query times to milliseconds. All in memory on an M1 Mac with 64GB RAM. #DuckDB #OpenLibrary #BigData

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