DataDownload: Remembering Dan Kaminsky, the digital Paul Revere | by NYC Media Lab | May, 2021
DataDownload: Remembering Dan Kaminsky, the digital Paul Revere A weekly summary of all things Media, Data, Emerging Tech View this email in your browser
Daniel Kaminsky died this week. He was an internet innovator, and he was 42. What isn’t as widely known is that he died from diabetes. It was, as we now so often hear, a ‘preexisting condition.’ That phrase was used to explain early deaths from COVID-19, and to battle get American’s decent health care coverage. But the simple fact is, most everyone you know has something. It’s time to acknowledge that improving heath care is a national priority for everyone.
Then we have good news — lots of it in fact. A great piece on the innovations at Spotify. The growth of Crypto among migrant workers. Congress getting schooled on algorithmic misinformation. And some surprising data in who’s reading news platforms (hint, Google isn’t at the top of the list).
This week, don’t miss our Podcast recommendation — This American Life’s episode called: The Herd. It’s a brilliant, chilling look at vaccine hesitancy — and how hard it is to combat it.
And, the big news is our amazing panel on NFTs and the future of Art and Artists. It’s a can’t miss event. And we’re co-sponsoring the WSJ Future of Everything Festival. We have tix, so grab ’em fast.
That’s this week. It’s May — already. So buckle up for a busy spring and summer.
Steve
Steven Rosenbaum
[email protected]
Executive Director
The NYC Media Lab Must-Read Daniel Kaminsky, Internet Security Savior, Dies at 42
It’s sad that the unsung heroes of the internet are really only sung about when they’ve passed on. Daniel Kaminsky, who had taught himself how to code by the age of 5 and got through the Pentagon’s defenses by 11, recently died at the age of 42. In 2008, Kaminsky alerted the Department of Homeland Security, executives at Microsoft and Cisco, and other internet security experts about a fundamental flaw of the internet. He discovered that the Domain Name System, or DNS, protocol had a flaw that would allow hackers to manipulate traffic so that “a person typing the website for a bank would instead be redirected to an impostor site that could steal…