rosskarchner's blurbloghttps://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/2024-03-25T18:14:49.314000ZrosskarchnerThe website is down. The cloud is up.2024-03-25T18:14:49.314000Zhttps://nathanpeck.com/the-website-is-down/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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It has been well over a decade since I embarked on my journey with the cloud. I spent the first five years of my career as a customer of Amazon Web Services (AWS).Growth is a mind cancer2024-03-23T20:57:23.096000Zhello@manuelmoreale.com (Manuel Moreale)https://manuelmoreale.com/@/page/tWA2annWlQaAVnYd<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<p>I'm following with somewhat vague interest the various legal battles Apple is currently involved in. Reading their response to the EU's DMA makes me sad. Not for the company itself. I honestly could not care less about the company. Nor for the people who run that company. I'm sad because the pursuit of endless growth is such a mind cancer. It consumes and distracts everyone. If you're an artisan, creating amazing objects is your end goal. Ideally, you want those objects to last forever. And if they don't, you want to do such an amazing job that once something is broken beyond repair, people will come to you again and ask you to make something new, rather than buying from someone else.</p>
<p>Apple makes amazing products. I bought the laptop I'm typing this 9 years ago. It still works fine. Sure, it's slow compared to my new machine but I can use it to do calls and write blog posts. And that's great. I love it. I was happy to give Apple my money back in 2015. But you know who's not happy? Apple. Apple is not happy that I bought a laptop in 2015 that was so good that it is still working fine 9 years later. And it's also not happy that I bought a phone more than 4 years ago that still does all the things I need it to do. Because they need to make money. More money. There's no end state here. <em>"More"</em> has no end state. At some point, a company like Apple will inevitably run out of people willing to buy their stuff. Because it's unreasonable to expect people to upgrade phones, laptops, screens, watches, tablets, virtual-ski-goggles every damn year. And so what do they do? They move into services. Music, movies, games, fitness, storage. You name it. But those also can't grow forever. Because guess what? There are other companies out there doing the same.</p>
<p>But they can't stop. They're a public company. If they're not growing enough it means they're failing. Forget that they make amazing products that can last decades with no issues. Forget that they're an almost 3-fucking-trillions dollar company. If they're not growing enough, stock goes down and that's no good. Because remember, there's no finish line here. They can't just be happy with their size. They can't be happy with the idea of employing thousands of smart people and creating amazing products. No, they have to keep growing. And sooner or later, this mind cancer becomes malignant.</p>
<p>Don't get me wrong, this is not just an Apple issue. It's an issue with any big company. It's an issue with everyone who can't accept that they reached their end state.</p>
<p>Cory Doctorow famously coined the enshittification term to describe the sad trend of online services going to shit over time. I don't think that's just an online services issue. It's a societal issue related to the pursuit of endless growth. And if you think about it, it's a deeply human issue. It's what happens when you can't say stop. No matter what you're doing, it can be something positive or negative, if you can't say stop, bad things will happen. Try to go for a run, and don't stop. Ever. Or try to drink water, and don't stop. Ever.</p>
<p>But it's our fault. Our as a society. We celebrate when Apple becomes the first trillion-dollar company but we don't celebrate when someone says <em>"You know what? I think I have enough"</em>.</p> <hr />
<h2>Get in touch</h2> <p>Have something to share? Want me as your <a href="https://manuelmoreale.com/i-ll-read-it">first reader</a>? Get in touch. My inbox is always open.</p> <a href="mailto:hello@manuelmoreale.com">Connect</a> —
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<a href="https://buttondown.email/peopleandblogs">Email</a>A Society That Lost Focus2024-03-20T10:42:36.941000ZPloumhttps://ploum.net/2024-03-18-lost-focus.html<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<h1>A Society That Lost Focus</h1>
<h2 id="soustitre-1">Our Mind, the Bottleneck</h2>
<p>In the early 90s, after tweaking my MS-DOS computer, I was able to play games. One of those game was called "Battle Chess". A Chess game were pieces were really fighting against each other. It was fun. I was, and still am, a mediocre chess player. I was mate in less than 10 or 15 turns at the easiest level.</p>
<p>For the sake of the experiment, I turned the difficulty to the harder level and started playing. Something strange happened: I was still losing but it took a lot more turns. I was able to protect my game, even to manage a few draws.</p>
<p>Was it a bug in the game?</p>
<p>Even as a young teenager, I quickly understood the reason. With the setting set to "hard", the game would try a lot harder to find a good move. On my 386 processor, without the mathematical coprocessor, this would take time. Several seconds or even one minute by turn. During that time, I was thinking, anticipating.</p>
<p>With the easiest setting, computer moves would happen immediately. I knew I had all the time I want but I was compelled to move fast. I could not take the time while the other side was immediately reacting to my moves.</p>
<p>The world we are living in is that same chess game on the easiest setting. Everything happens immediately, all the time. White-collar work can now be summarised as trying to reply as fast as possible to every single email until calling it a day and starting again in the morning, a process which essentially prevents any deep thinking, as pointed by Cal Newport in his book "A world without email".</p>
<p>As we don’t have the time to think anymore, we masquerade our lack of ideas with behavioural tricks. We replaced documents with PowerPoints because it allowed lack of structure and emptiness to look professional (just copy paste the data of the last PowerPoint you received in a text file and see by yourself how pitiful it is. PowerPoint communications at NASA were even diagnosed by Edward R. Tufte, author of the "The cognitive style of PowerPoint", as one of the causes that led to Space Shuttle Columbia’s disaster).</p>
<p>The root problem is that, for the first time in human history, our brain is the bottleneck. For all history, transmitting information was slow. Brains were fasts. After sending a letter, we had days or months to think before receiving an answer. Erasmus wrote his famous "Éloge de la folie" in several days while travelling in Europe. He would never have done it in a couple of hours in a plane while the small screen in the backseat would show him advertisements.</p>
<p>In 2012, the French writer Thierry Crouzet had one of the first recorded "online burnout". Being connected all the time with interesting strangers and interesting ideas to which he wanted to reply quickly was too much for his brain. One night, he had a strong panic attack and decided to spend six months without the Internet, an experience he told in his book "J’ai débranché". </p>
<h2 id="soustitre-2">The Oversold Internet</h2>
<p>The instant feedback of permanent connectivity is clearly a bad thing. But the worst had yet to come. After the 2000s bubble popped and told us that Internet was not "magic money", the question became "how do we monetise the Internet?" A few idealistic geeks replied, "You don’t monetise it, it’s a non-commercial world." But geeks, as everyone, wanted or needed to be paid.</p>
<p>To earn money, they handed the reins of the whole new world they were creating to marketers. That’s it: hackers sold the Internet in exchange for a salary. Until 2000, marketers played along with the idea of selling the work hackers were doing. With one small problem: they oversold it completely, diving in the geek fantasy that, soon, everybody would be on that Internet buying stuff online.</p>
<p>In the 2000s, nobody but geeks wanted to spend their life behind a huge radiating screen. Marketers suddenly waked up to that reality with the dot-com bubble. If not everybody wanted to be on the Internet and nobody would buy anything on the Internet, there were two potential solutions: either monetising the fact that some people were already spending lots of time of the Internet or convincing more people to come on the Internet.</p>
<p>Surviving companies such as Google decided for the easiest one: monetising what people were already giving to the Internet: their time and attention. Advertising was, of course, already part of the web (mostly through the infamous "popups") but Google innovated by inventing a whole new way of exploiting attention: trying to learn as much as possible about users to show them the advertising they are more likely to click on. The whole story is told in great details in the book "Surveillance Capitalism", by Soshanna Zuboff.</p>
<p>Whether this "personalised advertisement" really works better than traditional one is up to debate. For Tim Hang, author of "Subtime Attention Crisis" and for Cory Doctorow, author of "How to destroy surveillance capitalism", the real impact on sales is negligible but as marketers think it works, they invest massive money in it, making the whole technology a very lucrative bubble.</p>
<p>But the real impact is undisputed : as long as someone buys it, it is really lucrative to sell the attention and all the information you could from consumers. As a consequence, the practice has been generalised and nearly every website, every app on the Internet is trying to get both. And they are very scientific about the process.</p>
<h2 id="soustitre-3">We forgot how not to spy and steal attention</h2>
<p>It is now considered as "normal practice" to try to get the attention and the data of your users, even if it doesn’t make sense from a business perspective. </p>
<p>Banking apps send notifications to show you their new shiny logo, good old e-commerce website ask their customers for the number of children they have or their income bracket. Even non-commercial personal blogs or some websites dedicated to privacy contain analytics software to track their users. Not tracking your users is harder than not! Every single vendor from which you shop, even a brick-and-mortar one, will bury you with their mailings. </p>
<p>One could assume that buying a new mattress is something you do only every decade and that the prospective market for mattress vendors is those who didn’t buy a mattress in the last five years. So why did anybody think that, right after buying a mattress, I would be interested in receiving news about mattresses every single week of my life?</p>
<p>The two consequences of all this are that our privacy is invaded as much as it is technologically possible and that our attention is scientifically captured as much as it is technologically possible. And, in both aspects, technology is "improving" as all the smartest minds in the world are hired to do just that.</p>
<p>While working at Google, Tristan Harris realised how much what they were building was in order to get the focus and the attention of people. He left Google to create the "Center for Humane Technology" that tries to raise attention about the fact that… our attention is captured by monopolist technologies.</p>
<p>The irony is palpable: Tristan Harris had a very good intuition but can’t imagine doing anything else than either "raising attention" through social networks or building technologies that would notify you that you should be focused. Let’s build yet another layer of complexity above everything else and raise attention so this layer is adopted widely enough to become the foundation of the next complexity paradigm.</p>
<h2 id="soustitre-4">Worshipping Shallow Ideas</h2>
<p>Being distracted all the time prevent us from having any ideas and understanding. We need a catchy slogan. Instead of reading a three-page report, we prefer a 60 slides PowerPoint, containing mostly stock pictures and out-of-context charts. </p>
<p>We have valorised the heroic image of the CEO that comes in a meeting and tell engineers, "I have ten minutes left before my next meeting. Tell me everything in five and I’ll take a billion dollar decisions." </p>
<p>In retrospect, it is obvious that taking good decisions in that context is nothing more than rolling a die. Funnily enough, it has been proved multiple times than every high-profile CEO is not better than a random decision algorithm. But, unlike algorithms, CEOs usually have charisma and assurance. They may take a very wrong decision but they can convince everybody that it’s the right one. Which is exactly the definition of a salesman job.</p>
<p>In "Deep Work", Cal Newport tries to promote the opposite stance, the art of taking the time to think, to ponder. In "The Ideas Industry", Daniel Drezner observes that long, subtle and complex ideas are more and more replaced by simplistic slogans, the epitome being the famous TED conferences. In 18 minutes, people are sold an idea and, if the speaker is a good salesman, feel like they’ve learned something deep and new. The mere fact that you could learn something deeply enough in 18 minutes is an insult to all the academic world. Without surprise, the same academic world is seen by many as boring old people spending their time writing long articles instead of making a catchy slogan to change the world.</p>
<h2 id="soustitre-5">Succumbing to Our Addictions</h2>
<p>Most monopolies were built by removing choices. You could not buy a computer without Microsoft Windows. You could not visit some websites without Internet Explorer. You can’t find a phone without Google in a shop (Google pay many billions dollars every year to be the default search engine on Apple devices). And if you manage to remove Google from your phone, you will lose the ability to run some apps, including most banking apps. Most apps even check at start if Google services are installed on the phone and refuse to start if it’s not the case. If it’s really hard not to use Google, it’s by definition a forced monopoly. Similarly, it is very hard to avoid Amazon when shopping online.</p>
<p>There’s one exception : Facebook. There’s nothing forcing us to go to Facebook or Instagram. There’s nothing forcing us to spend time on it. It’s like we have choice. But it seems we haven’t.</p>
<p>Why is this? Why are we playing one hour of what was supposed to be five minutes of a stupid smartphone game instead of reading a book? Why are we spending every minute awake checking our smartphone and replying to mundane chitchat, even if we are in the middle of the conversation with someone else? Why are we compelled to put our life and the lives of our children at risk just to quickly reply while driving?</p>
<p>Because of the way the human brain is wired. Evolutionary speaking, we are craving for new experiences. Learning new experiences, good or bad, may help your chromosomes to survive more generations than others. We get that famous "dopamine rush", described in great details by Liberman and Long in "The molecule of more".</p>
<p>Each time there’s a notification, each time there’s a red bubble in some part of the screen, the brain acts like it’s a new vital opportunity. We can’t miss it. A study showed that the sole notification sound was enough to distract a driver as much as if he was texting while driving. Yes, even without looking at your phone, you were distracted as much as if you did (which is not an excuse to look at it). </p>
<p>The brain has learned that the phone is a random provider of "new experiences". Even in airplane mode, it was demonstrated that having the phone on your desk or in your bag degrades heavily your attention and your thinking performance. Performance went back to normal only when the phone was put in another room.</p>
<h2 id="soustitre-6">Fighting to Get Our Focus Back</h2>
<p>That’s it, the only way to not have any temptation is not to have the phone at arm reach. The aforementioned French writer Thierry Crouzet told me once that it was very difficult to focus on writing when you know you only have to move the word processor window with the mouse to go to the Internet. On the web, writers’ forums are full of discussions about "distraction-less" devices. Some, including your servitor, are going back to old typewriters, a paradigm described as a true resistance by Richard Polt in the excellent book "The Typewriter Revolution".</p>
<p>One may even wonder if the epidemic of "electro-sensitivity", feeling bad or being sick when exposed to wifi or similar wireless emissions, may simply be a psychological reaction to the overstimulation. It has been observed that the symptoms are real (people are really feeling bad and are not simulating) but that, in double-blind controlled environment, the symptoms are linked to the belief of wireless emissions (if you simulate a blinking wireless router without emitting anything, people feel bad. If you have wireless emission but tell people it’s disabled, they will feel better).</p>
<p>In his landmark book "Digital Minimalism", Cal Newport offers a framework to rethink the way we use digital technologies. The central idea is to balance costs and benefits consciously, highlighting most hidden costs. Facebook might be free in the sense you don’t have to pay for it. But being exposed to advertising, being exposed to angry political rants, feeling compelled to answer, being exposed to picture of people you once knew and who seems to have an extraordinary (even if virtual) life is a very high cost.</p>
<p>Simply do the math. If you have 180 friends on Facebook, which seems to be a low amount those days, if your friends take, on average, 10 days of vacation per year, you will have, on average, five friends on vacation every day. Add to this statistic that some people like to re-post pictures of old vacations and it means that you will be bombarded daily by pictures of sunny beaches and beautiful landscapes while you are waiting under neon light for your next boring meeting in a gray office. By design, Facebook makes you feel miserable. </p>
<p>That’s not to say that Facebook cannot be useful and have benefits. As Cal Newport highlight, you need to adapt your use to maximise the benefits while trying to avoid costs as much as possible. You have to think consciously about what you really want to achieve.</p>
<p>This idea of digital minimalism prompted a revival of the so-called "dumb phones", phones which are not smart and which are able to make phone call and send/receive SMS. Some brands are even starting to innovate in that particular market like Mudita and Lightphone.</p>
<p>Ironically, they are advertising mindfulness and being focused. They are trying to catch your attention to sell you back… your own attention.</p>
<h2 id="soustitre-7">Focus Against Consumerism</h2>
<p>One of the consumerist credo is that the market will fix everything. If there’s a problem, someone will quickly sell a solution. As pointed by Evgeny Morozov in "To Save Everything, Click Here", this is not only wrong thinking. This is actually harmful.</p>
<p>With public money, we are actually actively funding companies and startups thinking they will both create jobs and sell solutions to every problem. It is implied that every solution should be a technological one, should be sellable and should be intuitive. That’s it: you should not think too much about a problem but instead build blindly whatever solution comes to mind using the currently trending technological stack. French Author Antoine Gouritin wrote a funny and interesting book about that whole philosophy he called "Le Startupisme".</p>
<p>The root cause is there: we don’t have any mental framework left other than spying on people and steal their attention. Business schools are teaching how to do catchy PowerPoints while stealing attention from people. Every business is at war with the other to catch your attention and your brain cycles. Even academy is now fighting to get grants based on catchy PowerPoints and raw number of publications. This was the raw observation of David Graeber: even academics have stopped thinking to play the "catch your attention game".</p>
<p>There’s no silver bullet. There will not be any technological solution. If we want to claim back our focus and our brain cycles, we will need to walkaway and normalise disconnected times. To recognise and share the work of those who are not seeking attention at all cost, who don’t have catchy slogans nor spectacular conclusions. We need to start to appreciate harder works which don’t offer us immediate short-term profit.</p>
<p>Our mind, not the technology, is the bottleneck. We need to care about our minds. To dedicate time to think slowly and deeply. </p>
<p>We need to bring back Sapiens in Home Sapiens Sapiens.</p>
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<li><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_through_a_broken_window_from_a_room_in_Sanatorium_du_Basil,_Stoumont,_Belgium_(DSCF3542,DSCF3545).jpg">Picture by Trougnouf</a></li>
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<div class="signature"><p>As a writer and an engineer, I like to explore how technology impacts society. You can subscribe <a href="https://listes.ploum.net/mailman3/postorius/lists/en.listes.ploum.net/">by email</a> or <a href="https://ploum.net/atom_en.xml">by rss</a>. I value privacy and never share your adress.</p>
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</div>Open Source In Short: Geolocating a US Far-Right Fight Night2024-03-15T23:52:02.036000ZMichael Colbornehttps://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2024/03/15/geolocating-a-us-far-right-fight-night/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<p class="has-drop-cap has-small-font-size">When white nationalists met up in a small town in north Texas to take part in yet another fight night event, we set about locating where it took place.</p>
<p>Billed as the third in a series dating back to 2022, the event was hosted by white nationalist group <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/patriot-front">Patriot Front</a>. Last year, Bellingcat <a href="https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/11/16/from-pixels-to-punches-geolocating-a-neo-nazi-and-white-nationalist-combat-event-in-los-angeles/">geolocated</a> an event to a gym space in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. </p>
<p>On March 8, 2024, a Telegram channel associated with US far-right extremist Robert Rundo posted eight photos of the combat sports event (Bellingcat is not naming the outlet to avoid amplification). The outlet promised that a promotional “documentary” film of the event would be “coming soon” and claimed the event took place in north Texas. In addition, the outlet claimed that Rundo’s far-right fashion brand was responsible for organising the event.</p>
<p>Bellingcat only needed the very first photo in the post, and a few minutes of web searching, to geolocate the event to a hall available for rent in Muenster, a town of fewer than 2,000 people in north Texas. </p>
<p>Here’s how we did it:</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><div class="media"><img alt="" class="wp-image-43184" height="805" src="https://www.bellingcat.com/app/uploads/2024/03/image1-1.png" width="982" /></div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>A photo posted alongside the announcement of the fight night on Telegram. The image has been cropped on the sides from the original to obscure branding and avoid amplification.</em></figcaption></figure>
<p>The first hint was the American flag. </p>
<p>In a Telegram chat discussing the event, one person commented on the presence of the large US flag hung in the building. Someone who claimed to have attended the event replied “it was part of the venues [sic] decoration so it couldn’t really be removed.” This led Bellingcat to assume that other public photos of the venue would likely have a large American flag hanging inside.</p>
<p>The second hint — and the one that led Bellingcat right to the venue — was a small detail on the table in the front of the image. </p>
<p>The letters ‘MVFD’ are visible on the table (though upside down), suggesting that the table belongs to a volunteer fire department (i.e., ‘VFD: Volunteer Fire Department’).</p>
<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><div class="media"><img alt="" class="wp-image-43189" height="316" src="https://www.bellingcat.com/app/uploads/2024/03/image6-1.png" width="438" /></div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>A cropped and rotated version of the photo showing the letters ‘MVFD.’</em></figcaption></figure></div>
<p>With this clue, Bellingcat then searched for ‘MVFD Texas’. </p>
<p>We found results for several towns beginning with the letter ‘M’ in north Texas whose fire departments used that abbreviation, and checked available images from these towns to see if anything resembled the venue seen in the photos.</p>
<p>Scrolling results from Muenster, Bellingcat noticed a photo of a similar-looking venue, including a similar ceiling, windows and two doors at one end.</p>
<figure class="is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-1 wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><div class="media"><img alt="" class="wp-image-43188" height="240" src="https://www.bellingcat.com/app/uploads/2024/03/image5-1.png" width="283" /></div></figure>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><div class="media"><img alt="" class="wp-image-43185" height="900" src="https://www.bellingcat.com/app/uploads/2024/03/image2-1200x900.jpg" width="1200" /></div></figure>
<figcaption class="blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption"><em>Google result showing a venue with matching features, and the full-size image from the MVFD’s Facebook page.</em></figcaption></figure>
<p><br />Next, we searched for “hall Muenster Texas” and found more photos of a venue — Fuhrmann Hall at the Heritage Park Events Center, a venue <a href="https://heritageparkmuenstertx.com/our-venue/">available</a> to the public to rent. </p>
<p>We were able to match the the large American flag, the ceiling, the air conditioners and the light fixtures and doors to the images posted in Telegram. </p>
<p>Thus, Bellingcat was able to locate the Patriot Front event to the Fuhrmann Hall located an hour’s drive from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.</p>
<figure class="is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-3 wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped">
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><div class="media"><img alt="" class="wp-image-43193" height="931" src="https://www.bellingcat.com/app/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-15-at-12.51.06-1200x931.png" width="1200" /></div></figure>
<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><div class="media"><img alt="" class="wp-image-43192" height="446" src="https://www.bellingcat.com/app/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-15-at-12.49.26-1-1200x446.png" width="1200" /></div></figure>
<figcaption class="blocks-gallery-caption wp-element-caption"><em><em>Two images of the Fuhrmann Hall, from a user-uploaded photo on Google Maps and an image of the hall posted on Facebook.</em><br /></em></figcaption></figure>
<p><br />Bellingcat contacted the Heritage Park Events Center and asked them whether they were aware that they had rented their facilities to representatives of a far-right network. We had not received a response at time of publication. </p>
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<p><em>Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so </em><a href="https://www.bellingcat.com/donate/"><em>here</em></a><em>. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel </em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/bellingcat"><em>here</em></a><em>. Subscribe to our </em><a href="https://bellingcat.us14.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=c435f53a5568f7951404c8a38&id=4be345b082"><em>Newsletter</em></a><em> and follow us on Twitter </em><a href="https://twitter.com/bellingcat"><em>here</em></a> <em>and Mastodon <a href="https://mstdn.social/@Bellingcat">here</a></em>.</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2024/03/15/geolocating-a-us-far-right-fight-night/" rel="nofollow">Open Source In Short: Geolocating a US Far-Right Fight Night</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.bellingcat.com" rel="nofollow">bellingcat</a>.</p>Spinning The Dead2024-03-15T03:18:54.722000ZErnie Smithhttps://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16616761/deadspin-lineup-publishing-owners-secrecy<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/spinning-the-dead/48292:51795c">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/48292.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet..</b>
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<p><strong>Last night, just before I was about to go to bed, I had a sudden thought</strong>: There <em>has</em> to be a way to determine who <a href="https://lineup-publishing.com">Lineup Publishing</a> is.</p>
<p>The acquirers of <em>Deadspin</em>, the once-beloved-now-beleaguered sports site whose legendary initial run was destroyed the day that the new CEO of the <a href="https://midrange.tedium.co/issues/its-a-creators-market/">equally beleaguered</a> G/O Media felt the site needed to “stick to sports,” may be the biggest mystery in all of media right now. G/O owner Great Hill Partners gave few details about the acquirer, which bought the brand and the archives, <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/go-media-sells-off-deadspin-to-be-entirely-gutted">but not the team</a>.</p>
<p><img height="687" src="https://images.tedium.co/uploads/LineupMedia.png" width="1000" /></p>
<p><em>Very strong “oops, we forgot to build the website” energy.</em></p>
<p>The domain for this company was purchased a mere five days ago. There are literally no details on this firm other than a very basic WordPress landing page. It was such an unlikely situation, and such an obscure company, that <a href="https://www.adweek.com/media/go-media-sells-deadspin/"><em>AdWeek</em></a> initially mistook the purchaser for <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/ernie.tedium.co/post/3knivmumzmu2y">another company with the same name</a>.</p>
<p>And so, this brain thought I had last night took me to some of the weirdest, spammiest corners of the internet, in a general obsession with the idea that <em>there has to be a way to weed this out</em>. Next thing I knew, it was 3AM and I had written a massive thread on Bluesky breaking down random spam blogs and casino marketers. While I do not have an answer as to who <em>Deadspin</em>’s new owners are, I do have some interesting takeaways from this journey that may lead to the answer.</p>
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<p>Here’s what I found:</p>
<p><strong>The detail I found which could give away the game:</strong> The discovery that kind of broke things open for me came down to the domain’s IP. For some reason, the company took the step of locking down the site’s DNS records, but did not put the site behind a security tool like CloudFlare, which would have hidden the site’s IP address. The result was that it was very easy to trace the site’s IP address to the company <a href="https://www.cloudways.com/en/">Cloudways</a>, a Maltese website host that’s owned by DigitalOcean. Cloudways gives each customer <a href="https://support.cloudways.com/en/articles/5134098-does-cloudways-provide-dedicated-ip">its own dedicated IP address</a>, which means that, unlike a smaller WordPress host, Lineup Publishing should be living on a single server, by itself, unless the site owner used a proxy to add a secondary site. And lo and behold, there was one other site on the IP address, and it was … a Finnish casino splog.</p>
<p><img height="504" src="https://images.tedium.co/uploads/GamblingSplog.png" width="600" /></p>
<p><em>This extremely spammy website shares an IP address with Lineup Publishing.</em></p>
<p>Now, nothing against Finnish gamblers, but this is actually a very telling detail. Offshore countries or territories in the Mediterranean, particularly Malta, Cyprus, and Gibraltar, are known as <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3nmx3/how-malta-became-a-global-online-gaming-giant">online gambling havens</a>, and the website had numerous references to Maltese-operated online casinos targeting the Finnish market.</p>
<p>And in my efforts to follow the money, I found the eventual SEO payload for this site hiding in an unlinked page buried on the Finnish casino splog’s domain. And that led to …</p>
<p><strong>The unexpected discovery which might explain Google Groups’ closure:</strong> Buried in the links on this casino splog, I found a bunch of URL redirects that led to, of all things, a Google Groups post on Usenet. The post featured text in Swedish (not Finnish) that promoted a specific casino affiliate site, which was was also hosted on Cloudways. (By the way, Cloudways, despite Digital Ocean’s ownership, has its main office in Malta.)</p>
<p><img height="672" src="https://images.tedium.co/uploads/GoogleGroupsSpam.png" width="1241" /></p>
<p><em>The spammy blog above linked to this Usenet post on Google Groups numerous times.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.pcmag.com/news/end-of-an-era-google-groups-to-drop-usenet-support">Google Groups recently shut down</a> the ability to post new content, and the fairly recent threads I found hinted at why they did. It appeared to be conversations between bots about online casino sites flooding different unrelated Usenet groups. Essentially, Google Groups may have been suffering the effects of generative AI. Even the avatars were Midjourney specials.</p>
<p>With that in mind, no wonder Google decided to close off new posts. Spammers were apparently turning Google Groups into yet another spamming medium. But that’s an aside, really, in light of the real story …</p>
<p><strong>The speculative thread that makes this interesting:</strong> While we won’t know what, exactly, Lineup Publishing has in store for Deadspin now that Jim Spanfeller and Great Hill have agreed to sell it, we do know that this affiliation hiding in its hosting might speak to a broader trend in sports journalism in 2024: The piggybacking of sports brands with online betting.</p>
<p><em>Sports Illustrated</em>, a similarly gutted media empire, is now associated with a betting platform. Barstool Sports was at one point owned by Penn Gaming in an attempt to build a sports-betting brand, only for Penn to sell it back to Dave Portnoy <a href="https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/barstool-portnoy-gambling-licenses-denied-penn-1235691265/">because Dave Portnoy proved too toxic</a>. Penn upgraded its media partner to, of all companies, ESPN.</p>
<p><img height="528" src="https://images.tedium.co/uploads/Bet365LineupPublishing.png" width="1329" /></p>
<p><em>This is a bit connect-the-dots, but the publishing firm is very close to the island headquarters of a major U.S. sports-betting operation.</em></p>
<p>And these betting platforms are actually known to be associated with offshore havens. BetMGM, for example, is part-owned by Entain, a sports-betting company based in Gibraltar. And betting platforms with American presences, like Bet365, have offices in Malta. (Bet365’s offices are about 3 kilometers away from Lineup Publishing’s supposed home base, in fact.)</p>
<p><em>Deadspin</em> did not have this sort of affiliation before its recent sale, but the apparent Maltese ownership would be a great inroad to add such an affiliation. I can’t nail down who would be interested, but the cloak of secrecy its owners have thus far taken raises serious questions for fans of the site, which it should be pointed out, has nearly two decades of archives, including some legendary stories.</p>
<p>Even if there’s a legitimate goal for launching <em>Deadspin</em> as a premium news site, there are still questions to raise. One discovery I made in the midst of all this is that another site with a long digital legacy, <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90979276/the-popular-news-site-salon-is-being-sold-to-a-team-of-french-entrepreneurs-exclusive"><em>Salon</em>, was recently sold to another Maltese company</a> with apparent interests in the online gaming affiliate business—it is currently hiring for an “<a href="https://jobs.lever.co/find/9995c9b0-4798-4b7c-bdb9-75ba8dd9b94f">iGaming account manager</a>,” a fancy way of saying “online casino marketer.” <em>Salon</em> is not going to become a platform for betting, to be clear, and Find.co does appear to be a legitimate business that, to its credit, kept on <em>Salon</em>’s entire team.</p>
<p>But I do think that it offers an interesting window through which to see the <em>Deadspin</em> acquisition—what if <em>Deadspin</em> is there to lend legitimacy to an online betting site or a casino affiliate network? We already have signs that its new owners appear to have a not-so-savory toe dipped into that market. The lack of information creates a vacuum within which we’ll have to see this site.</p>
<p>At a time when not even <em>Deadspin</em>’s own primary vendor, a wire service that is flooding the website with reams of zombie content as we speak, <a href="https://frontofficesports.com/company-behind-stories-populating-zombie-deadspin-frustrated-by-inability-to-reach-owners-of-zombie-deadspin/">can reach the new owners</a> of this once-famous website, one has to wonder: Was its former owner willing to sell it to <em>anyone</em>?</p>
<p>They may claim they have standards. But what we’ve learned in the last day and a half doesn’t seem to suggest it.</p>
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<h5>Thread-Tying Links</h5>
<p><strong>The first step to solving your cloud-storage problem</strong> is admitting you have a problem. The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel, to his credit, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/icloud-storage-full/677682/?gift=bQgJMMVzeo8RHHcE1_KM0ah7uNFC_fI_eIz7UxgkENw">just took that step</a>.</p>
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/StV9lElcvAY" style="width: 720px; height: 480px; display: block; margin: auto;"></iframe>
<p><strong>Over the weekend,</strong> I watched the famed music documentary <em>Dig!</em> for the first time, and it is as good as everyone says it is, mostly because of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, whose cult hit “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StV9lElcvAY">Anemone</a>” is above. Dandy Warhols singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor implied in the film that while his band might become more famous in the moment, BJM would be more important over time. I think that’s starting to play out.</p>
<p><strong>Breaking my no-NYT rule</strong> because of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html">a very important story that they published</a> about car companies selling owners’ data to insurers. The story, by Kashmir Hill, is good enough to change laws.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Thank you for tolerating my random obsession. <a href="https://tedium.co/2024/03/12/deadspin-lineup-publishing-owners-secrecy/">Find this one an interesting read</a>? Share it with a pal!</p>
<p>And I promise, I won’t do a follow-up to this unless it turns out that my speculation is 100% correct.</p>
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<img height="1" src="https://feed.tedium.co/link/15204/16616761.gif" width="1" /><br><br><img src="https://images.tedium.co/uploads/Tedium_031224.gif" />Digital forgeries are hard2024-03-14T19:55:29.340000Zhttps://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/69507.html<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/digital-forgeries-ar/6207806:a4ea41">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/6207806.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Matthew Garrett:</b>
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I'm surprised how half-assed this all sounds.
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Closing arguments in the trial between various people and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Steven_Wright">Craig Wright</a> over whether he's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto">Satoshi Nakamoto</a> are wrapping up today, amongst a bewildering array of presented evidence. But one utterly astonishing aspect of this lawsuit is that expert witnesses for <em>both</em> sides agreed that much of the digital evidence provided by Craig Wright was unreliable in one way or another, generally including indications that it wasn't produced at the point in time it claimed to be. And it's fascinating reading through the subtle (and, in some cases, not so subtle) ways that that's revealed.<br /><br />One of the pieces of evidence entered is screenshots of data from <a href="https://myob.com">Mind Your Own Business</a>, a business management product that's been around for some time. Craig Wright relied on screenshots of various entries from this product to support his claims around having controlled meaningful number of bitcoin before he was publicly linked to being Satoshi. If these were authentic then they'd be strong evidence linking him to the mining of coins before Bitcoin's public availability. Unfortunately the screenshots themselves weren't contemporary - the metadata shows them being created in 2020. This wouldn't fundamentally be a problem (it's entirely reasonable to create new screenshots of old material), as long as it's possible to establish that the material shown in the screenshots was created at that point. Sadly, well.<br /><br />One part of the disclosed information was an email that contained a zip file that contained a raw database in the format used by MYOB. Importing that into the tool allowed an audit record to be extracted - this record showed that the relevant entries had been added to the database in 2020, shortly before the screenshots were created. This was, obviously, not strong evidence that Craig had held Bitcoin in 2009. This evidence was reported, and was responded to with a couple of additional databases that had an audit trail that was consistent with the dates in the records in question. Well, partially. The audit record included session data, showing an administrator logging into the data base in 2011 and then, uh, logging out in 2023, which is rather more consistent with someone changing their system clock to 2011 to create an entry, and switching it back to present day before logging out. In addition, the audit log included fields that didn't exist in versions of the product released before 2016, strongly suggesting that the entries dated 2009-2011 were created in software released after 2016. And even worse, the order of insertions into the database didn't line up with calendar time - an entry dated before another entry may appear in the database afterwards, indicating that it was created later. But even more obvious? The database schema used for these old entries corresponded to a version of the software released in 2023.<br /><br />This is all consistent with the idea that these records were created after the fact and backdated to 2009-2011, and that after this evidence was made available further evidence was created and backdated to obfuscate that. In an unusual turn of events, during the trial Craig Wright introduced further evidence in the form of a chain of emails to his former lawyers that indicated he had provided them with login details to his MYOB instance in 2019 - before the metadata associated with the screenshots. The implication isn't entirely clear, but it suggests that either they had an opportunity to examine this data before the metadata suggests it was created, or that they faked the data? So, well, the obvious thing happened, and his former lawyers were asked whether they received these emails. The chain consisted of three emails, two of which they confirmed they'd received. And they received a third email in the chain, but it was different to the one entered in evidence. And, uh, weirdly, they'd received a copy of the email that was submitted - but they'd received it a few days earlier. In 2024.<br /><br />And again, the forensic evidence is helpful here! It turns out that the email client used associates a timestamp with any attachments, which in this case included an image in the email footer - and the mysterious time travelling email had a timestamp in 2024, not 2019. This was created by the client, so was consistent with the email having been sent in 2024, not being sent in 2019 and somehow getting stuck somewhere before delivery. The date header indicates 2019, as do encoded timestamps in the MIME headers - consistent with the mail being sent by a computer with the clock set to 2019.<br /><br />But there's a very weird difference between the copy of the email that was submitted in evidence and the copy that was located afterwards! The first included a header inserted by gmail that included a 2019 timestamp, while the latter had a 2024 timestamp. Is there a way to determine which of these could be the truth? It turns out there is! The format of that header changed in 2022, and the version in the email is the new version. The version with the 2019 timestamp is anachronistic - the format simply doesn't match the header that gmail would have introduced in 2019, suggesting that an email sent in 2022 or later was modified to include a timestamp of 2019.<br /><br />This is by no means the only indication that Craig Wright's evidence may be misleading (there's the whole argument that the Bitcoin white paper was written in LaTeX when general consensus is that it's written in OpenOffice, given that's what the metadata claims), but it's a lovely example of a more general issue.<br /><br />Our technology chains are complicated. So many moving parts end up influencing the content of the data we generate, and those parts develop over time. It's fantastically difficult to generate an artifact now that precisely corresponds to how it would look in the past, even if we go to the effort of installing an old OS on an old PC and setting the clock appropriately (are you sure you're going to be able to mimic an entirely period appropriate patch level?). Even the version of the font you use in a document may indicate it's anachronistic. I'm pretty good at computers and I no longer have any belief I could fake an old document.<br /><br />(References: <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/4y3gdele4foy15006z8ch/h?rlkey=scs42wew1o3vwfv0nduhc43dm&dl=0">this Dropbox</a>, under "Expert reports", "Patrick Madden". Initial MYOB data is in "Appendix PM7", further analysis is in "Appendix PM42", email analysis is "Sixth Expert Report of Mr Patrick Madden")<br /><br /><img alt="comment count unavailable" height="12" src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mjg59&ditemid=69507" style="vertical-align: middle;" width="30" /> commentsWhat I missed when I went to North Korea2024-03-11T15:15:09.590000ZSophie Schmidthttps://restofworld.org/2024/what-i-missed-when-i-went-to-north-korea/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feeds<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/what-i-missed-when-i/8141207:378e27">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/8141207.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Rest of World - Latest Stories.</b>
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Two days after I visited North Korea with my father Eric — then Google’s executive chairman — in January 2013, I sent a trip report to my friends. The report went...<br><br><img src="https://149346090.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/north-korea-traffic-ladies-1-768x432.jpg" />Researching file formats 28: Virtual Reality Modeling Language2024-03-08T15:38:30.450000Zhttp://ablwr.github.io/blog/2024/03/08/researching-file-formats-28-virtual-reality-modeling-language/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/researching-file-for/7012520:f1549b">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/7012520.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> BITS BLOG ✴ Ashley Blewer.</b>
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<p>This blog post is part of a series on file formats research. See <a href="https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/blog/2023/08/04/researching-file-formats-library-of-congress-sustainability-of-digital-formats/">this introduction post</a> for more information.</p>
<p>I was getting so overwhelmed surfing the old web for this format. It was absolutely thrilling but exhausting too, like when you’re on your 13th day of vacation and you’re so worn out but there’s so much more to see. Nothing is more exciting to me than looking into VIRTUAL WORLDS. I felt like it looked like I was having a total manic episode on Mastodon because I kept finding so many things to post. I wasn’t even caffeinated, it was just pure childlike glee.</p>
<p>Some highlights and links:</p>
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<p>One of the leads on this language/format, Mark Pesce, has <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19990220011221/http://www.hyperreal.org/%7Empesce/">an extremely trippy website</a>.</p>
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<p>Appreciate Netscape’s collection of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19970613235309/http://home.netscape.com/comprod/products/navigator/live3d/cool_worlds.html">Cool Worlds</a>. But if you want just VRML, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19970101040030/http://sdsc.edu/vrml/browsers.html">look no further</a>.</p>
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<p>You’ve gotta check out <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19970605091953/http://vrml.sgi.com/floops/">Floops</a></p>
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<p>“support for extremely large worlds (we’ve tested worlds up to 12MB)” (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19970126034428/http://www.tcp.ca/gsb/VRML/">source</a>)</p>
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<p>“The viewer for this format should be built into your WWW browser. If you can not view it, your WWW browser is probably installed incorrectly” (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19990202111354/http://www-dsed.llnl.gov/documents/tests/txt.html">source</a>)</p>
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<p>love this <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19990417175851/http://www.well.com/user/caferace/vrml.html">404 page from The Well</a></p>
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<p>this <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19970430082132/http://www.ywd.com/cindy/concepts.html">mesh of a baboon face</a></p>
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<p>“P.S. If I lost you at the Web, (World Wide Web or WWW) you might try using Mosaic or Netscape to look at one of these: The Web Project page: (URL is http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html)” (<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19970503005222/http://vrml.wired.com/VRML_FAQ.html">source</a>)</p>
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<p>And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my previous writing on MTV’s Virtual World, <a href="https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/blog/2020/11/16/enter-the-tikkiland-mtv-spring-break-online/">Enter the TikkiLand: MTV Spring Break Online</a></p>AI + Thought Leader Accessibility2024-03-07T19:47:21.048000Zhttps://davidakennedy.com/blog/ai-plus-thought-leader-accessibility/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/ai-thought-leader-ac/3843783:cb2bdf">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/3843783.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> David A. Kennedy.</b>
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<p>Jakob Nielsen published a <a href="https://jakobnielsenphd.substack.com/p/accessibility-generative-ui">controversial piece on accessibility, arguing that accessibility has failed</a>. The solution? Tailored experiences for people, generated by artificial intelligence.</p>
<p>Nielsen misses the mark in many ways in this post, and a number of people have called that out.</p>
<p>Brian DeConinck in <a href="https://www.briandeconinck.com/jakob-nielsens-bad-ideas-about-accessibility/">Jakob Nielsen’s Bad Ideas about Accessibility</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>His argument boils down to: “Accessibility is too hard for designers. Let’s just give it to AI and wash our hands of the whole thing.” It shows a complete lack of faith in the whole idea of design as a way to solve problems, and a lack of faith in UX designers to understand disability and make informed design choices.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Per Axbom in <a href="https://axbom.com/nielsen-generative-ui-failure/">On Nielsen’s ideas about generative UI for resolving accessibility</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The door is wide open to claiming that users will in many cases use voice, text, keyboards and eye-trackers in the future to ask AI assistants to navigate and fetch content for them under their own supervision. Something that could mean volumes for accessibility without requiring any new interfaces at all for existing websites. But a unique, individualised UI for each user, generated without supervision by any designer, is an extreme take with very little foundation in feasibility or desirability.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Matt May in <a href="https://buttondown.email/practicaltips/archive/we-need-to-talk-about-jakob/">We need to talk about Jakob</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s… thoughtless. Hopeless. Soulless. Nielsen built his reputation on sharing his hot takes with a nascent blogosphere in the 1990s and early aughts, and if he hasn’t spent it all by now, I hope this finishes the job. What concerns me, though, is that he’s selling a class of executives hostile to disabled access a convenient fiction that will end up putting accessibility work on the back burner for a future which may never arrive.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There isn’t much I can add that hasn’t already been highlighted in those posts. As I thought more about Nielsen’s post, I kept coming back to three areas:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Privacy risk</strong>: Nielsen doesn’t take into account that the idea would require people to identify as disabled to get that magical, personalized experience. That turns into a privacy risk for people with disabilities.</li>
<li><strong>Artificial intelligence fixes everything</strong>: One of Nielsen’s main points centers on how accessibility creates a substandard user experience. This happens for those who are blind, thanks to “ a linear (one-dimensional) auditory user interface to represent the two-dimensional graphical user interface (GUI) designed for most users.” Won’t many of the personalized experiences created by artificial intelligence come in as substandard? Yes they will.</li>
<li><strong>The awareness and operations aspects of accessibility</strong>: Many of the common accessibility problems come from basic mistakes like missing form labels. That happens because of a lack of awareness around accessibility. You can nail the basics, but you need to know about them and do the work. That’s harder when you have thought leaders telling you not to worry about it at all. Making accessibility happen takes operational expertise, especially at larger organizations. Nielsen doesn’t cover any of that, leaving artificial intelligence to solve process challenges as well.</li>
</ol>
<p>There’s nothing wrong with speculating about how a new technology could improve experiences for people. But coming at it with a clickbait headline, no research, a faulty premise and a deep misunderstanding of the technology in question means you’re not speculating thoughtfully, but thoughtlessly.</p>Resolution honors Black donor as hidden figure in medical science2024-03-05T15:45:18.387000ZCapital News Servicehttps://virginiamercury.com/2024/03/05/resolution-honors-black-donor-as-hidden-figure-in-medical-science/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/resolution-honors-bl/7103092:45d644">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/7103092.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Virginia Mercury.</b>
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<img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" height="790" src="https://virginiamercury.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/VCU_well_CNS-1024x790.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 10px;" width="1024" /><p style="font-size: 12px;">Panels in the Hermes A. Kontos Medical Sciences Building at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond commemorating remains of 53 Africans and African descendents were found during the construction of the building. (Taya Coates/ Capital News Service)</p><p dir="ltr"><strong>By Taya Coates / Capital News Service</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">The first human-to-human heart transplant in the South <a href="https://healthequity.vcu.edu/history-and-health-program/learning-modules/medical-research-and-the-first-heart-transplant-in-the-south-/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">occurred</a> without donor consent from the injured Black man or his family, to help a white businessman live.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Doctors in 1968 determined Bruce Tucker would not survive a severe head injury.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The medical team led by Dr. Richard Lower and Dr. David Hume of the Medical College of Virginia did not consult Tucker’s family before the heart transplant, <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?241+ful+SJ16" rel="noopener" target="_blank">according to </a><a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?241+cab+SC10129SJ0016+UCSJ1#:~:text=SJ%2016%20Unethical%20use%20of,institutions%3B%20acknowledging%20with%20profound%20regret." rel="noopener" target="_blank">Senate Joint Resolution 16. </a>The heart was not the only organ removed without consent.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The state legislature, 56 years later, was called on to address multiple instances of unethical use of Black bodies by medical institutions in Virginia.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax, introduced the <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?241+cab+SC10129SJ0016+UCSJ1#:~:text=SJ%2016%20Unethical%20use%20of,institutions%3B%20acknowledging%20with%20profound%20regret." rel="noopener" target="_blank">resolution</a> to acknowledge such practice with “profound regret.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">The resolution unanimously passed the Senate and House. Boysko filed the <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?231+sum+SJ274" rel="noopener" target="_blank">resolution</a> last year, but the Republican-led House Rules Committee never advanced it.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The resolution “was not given a true hearing in the House of Delegates last year,” Boysko said.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This year looks promising for a different outcome due to a change in leadership, she said.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“The people who are leading today have a different perspective and a commitment to trying to make Virginia an equitable and safe place for everyone,” Boysko said.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Gayle Turner, a family representative of the Tucker family, described her second cousin as a “hidden figure in medical science.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">“He worked at the same place for more than 20 years … and he had filed for civil service in World War II,” Turner said. “He was willing to fight for his country and he loved his country and family.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Tucker’s brother, William Tucker, filed a lawsuit against the surgeons in 1968. The case ended in 1972 with a ruling in favor of the doctors, according to <a href="https://www.organdonationalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Tucker-v.-Lower-1-Va.-Cir.-124-1972.pdf" rel="noopener" target="_blank">court documents</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Phillip Thompson, former Loudoun County NAACP president, was “astounded” by Tucker’s story and brought the issue to Boysko last year, he said to Senate committee members.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The Tucker family expressed appreciation to Boysko and Thompson.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“We are pleased that Virginia is poised to recognize, realize and apologize for past wrongs to assure they never happen again,” the Tucker family stated in an email. “We pray that the full House affirms this resolution.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">“The Organ Thieves: The True Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South” by Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist <a href="https://www.chipjonesbooks.com/about-chip-jones.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Chip Jones</a> is an in-depth look at the events and larger systemic issues that were at play in Tucker’s case.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Without ‘The Organ Thieves’ and without asking for the apology, I’m not sure if VCU would have apologized, because the way they apologized was so shallow and hollow,” Turner said.</p>
<p dir="ltr">VCU released a public apology <a href="https://news.vcu.edu/article/2022/09/resolution-of-the-vcu-bov-and-the-board-of-directors-of-vcu-health-system-authority#:~:text=NOW%2C%20THEREFORE%2C%20BE%20IT%20RESOLVED,his%20heart%2054%20years%20ago." rel="noopener" target="_blank">statement</a> in September 2022 and sent a letter to the Tucker family in September 2023.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The university selected “The Organ Thieves” as its <a href="https://commonbook.vcu.edu/the-2022-common-book/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Common Book</a> in 2022. The book was required reading for all first-year students and was discussed at events open to the community.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Jones discovered the story while working at the <a href="https://www.ramdocs.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Richmond Academy of Medicine</a>, the state’s oldest and largest medical society. He was informed of plans for an event in 2018 to honor the 50th anniversary of the state’s first human heart transplant.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“As a former reporter, my antenna kind of went up,” Jones said.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The most important aspect of his work was the possibility of closure for Tucker’s family, according to Jones.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Bruce was a good man, a good person,” Turner said. “He deserved better.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">The Tucker family hopes the legislation will motivate VCU to lead by example on the nationwide issue of providing justice for the medical misuse of Black bodies.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Construction workers discovered an MCV well that contained the human remains of at least 53 individuals in 1994, according to the <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?241+cab+SC10129SJ0016+UCSJ1#:~:text=SJ%2016%20Unethical%20use%20of,institutions%3B%20acknowledging%20with%20profound%20regret." rel="noopener" target="_blank">resolution</a>. A majority of the discarded remains were African or of African descent.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Shawn Utsey, who holds a doctorate in counseling psychology, is currently serving his <a href="https://psychology.vcu.edu/news/newsroom/psychology-news/shawn-utsey-appointed-acting-chair-of-african-american-studies.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">third term</a> as chair of the Department of African American Studies at VCU.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“The reason that VCU is able to be a leader is because they had an advantage that began in the 1800s,” Utsey said. “That advantage was access to Black bodies.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Medical students and staff in Richmond employed grave robbers to perform dissections in the 1800s, according to the <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?241+ful+SJ16" rel="noopener" target="_blank">measure</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">At least 53 bodies were “callously and disrespectfully” discarded into the well afterward, according to <a href="https://emsw.vcu.edu/about/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">VCU</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">VCU’s Archaeological Research Center sent the remains to the Smithsonian Institution for investigation in 1994. The excavated contents were ultimately placed in storage without funding from VCU.</p>
<p dir="ltr">VCU President Michael Rao <a href="https://emsw.vcu.edu/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">established </a>the East Marshall Street Well Planning Project and Committee in 2013. The project unveiled <a href="https://emsw.vcu.edu/memorialization-and-interment/kontos-building-panels/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">panels</a> to honor the remains at the site of the discovery, as a part of the VCU Office of Health Equity’s History and Health <a href="https://healthequity.vcu.edu/history-and-health-program/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Program</a> in 2021.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Most recent project efforts include <a href="https://news.vcu.edu/article/2022/01/as-19th-century-remains-arrive-at-researchers-aim-to-learn-more-about-who-they-were" rel="noopener" target="_blank">DNA analysis</a> on the remains to locate living relatives, scholarships and memorial installations.</p>
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<p>The post <a href="https://virginiamercury.com/2024/03/05/resolution-honors-black-donor-as-hidden-figure-in-medical-science/">Resolution honors Black donor as hidden figure in medical science</a> appeared first on <a href="https://virginiamercury.com">Virginia Mercury</a>.</p>Open sourcing your games as solo game developer - a game changer2024-02-23T00:27:54.587000ZUnknownhttps://simondalvai.org/blog/open-source-games/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/open-sourcing-your-g/9201593:3281ce">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/9201593.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Simon Dalvai.</b>
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<p>In this post I would like to show <strong>what impact</strong> open sourcing my games had and <strong>why</strong> you should consider open sourcing your game too.</p>
<p>I already presented at <a href="https://simondalvai.org/blog/sfscon-2023-fdroid/">SFSCON 2023</a> what similar effect publishing my games on <a href="https://f-droid.org/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">F-Droid</a> had on my games.</p>
<h2 id="more-visibility">More visibility</h2>
<p>Having games open sourced, gives you a lot of visibility on Github or your favorite git platform.
Your repo might pop up on <strong>online searches</strong> or even Github's <strong>discovery section</strong>.
This brings you quality users and potential contributors.</p>
<p>Besides that, you can add your game to many <strong>awesome lists or websites</strong> that feature Open Source.
Here, a list of the few games I've got listed in:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://f-droid.org" rel="noopener" target="_blank">f-droid.org</a></li>
<li><a href="https://fossdroid.com" rel="noopener" target="_blank">fossdroid.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/godotengine/awesome-godot" rel="noopener" target="_blank">github.com/godotengine/awesome-godot</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/offa/android-foss" rel="noopener" target="_blank">github.com/offa/android-foss</a></li>
</ul>
<p>More visibility means <strong>more downloads</strong>, which bring to a <strong>higher ranking</strong> on game distribution platforms.</p>
<h2 id="quality-feedback">Quality feedback</h2>
<p>Getting feedback from users is quite hard.
Even harder is getting <em>good</em> feedback.
In my experience, this is the <strong>most drastic change</strong> you'll see, when open sourcing your games.</p>
<p>This will change drastically, when you open source your game.
Because more <strong>technical people</strong> will see your games and they cannot only describe the bug or problem much better, but can also give suggestions on how to fix it.
This helps a lot, especially as a solo game developer, where you might not have much time to test all parts of your game, each time you make changes.
I also got a lot of feedback through e-mail, since I open sourced my games.</p>
<h2 id="be-different-be-one-of-a-few">Be different, be one of a few</h2>
<p>Given the scarcity of Open Source games, your game will be <strong>one of a few</strong> thousands instead of millions.
It is true that Open Source has a small audience, but there are still a lot of people out there caring for Open Source.</p>
<p>If you use <strong>donation</strong> platforms, this people will also be more open to support you, since they understand better your situation. </p>
<h2 id="better-portfolio">Better portfolio</h2>
<p>Letting other people see your code could be intimidating.
They might feel their code is not a good enough or feel afraid of critics.
Don't worry, nobody will point fingers at you or comparing your code with the Linux Kernel code.</p>
<p>But whenever you want to impress someone, showing your source code and your ability to use git, it might be really handy.
So landing a new <strong>job</strong> or a project as freelancer, will be easier with an active [your favorite git platform] profile.</p>
<p>This applies to any software related work, not only games.</p>
<h2 id="licenses">Licenses</h2>
<p>I won't get to deep into licenses, since it is a complex subject (and I'm not a lawyer).<br />
But here I want to share my experience and knowledge with you.
It is important to know that <strong>code</strong> and <strong>assets</strong> should have different type of licenses.
The most common software licenses are <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-3.0-or-later.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">GPL</a> or <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">MIT</a> and for assets the mostly used licenses are Creative Commons license as the <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/CC0-1.0.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">CC0-1.0</a>, <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">CC-BY-4.0</a> or <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-SA-4.0.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">CC-BY-4.0</a>.
Here you can find some <strong>tools</strong> to find a license for your assets that fits your needs</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://choosealicense.com/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">choosealicense.com</a></li>
<li><a href="https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org" rel="noopener" target="_blank">chooser-beta.creativecommons.org</a></li>
</ul>
<h3 id="copyleft">Copyleft</h3>
<p>I chose the copyleft <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/AGPL-3.0-or-later.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">AGPL-v3-or-later</a> for my code and <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-SA-4.0.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">CC-BY-SA-4.0</a> for my assets.
This are copyleft licenses, that means that you are free to study, use, modify, share and that all derivates keep the same license.
The AGPL has a special clause about distributing code over network.
So technically if a <strong>cloud gaming</strong> provider wants to distribute my games, he would have to share the code with the users.
This would not be required with the <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/GPL-3.0-or-later.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">GPL-v3-or-later</a> license.
But as said before, I'm not a lawyer and this are my personal thoughts.
Do your research or get a lawyers advice, if needed.</p>
<h3 id="permissive">Permissive</h3>
<p>Some might prefer permissive licenses as <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">MIT</a> and <a href="https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html" rel="noopener" target="_blank">CC-BY-4.0</a>
This licenses give the user the same rights, but only require attribution and don't require sharing the modified code, when distributed.
That means that someone might simply take your game, modify and release it, without having to share the modifications.</p>
<h2 id="contributing-to-open-source-ecosystem">Contributing to Open Source Ecosystem</h2>
<p>The Open Source world is already huge and well known.
But this doesn't really apply to the <strong>gaming industry</strong>, where Open Source games are still quite rare.
In my personal opinion, this would make the gaming scene a better world, where game developers can learn from each other and improve games.
Or simply imagine being able to see the code of your <strong>favorite game</strong>, and being able to <strong>use, study, modify and share</strong> it!</p>
<p>If you believe in Open Source Software, <strong>be the change</strong> the gaming industry needs: make your games Open Source! </p>
<h2 id="can-i-still-sell-my-games">Can I still sell my games?</h2>
<p>After all this, some might have the question if they still can sell their game.
And the answer is <strong>yes!</strong></p>
<p>Being open source doesn't restrict you from monetizing your games.
There are many games and apps that are open source, available for free on F-Droid or other platforms but sold for money on Play Store, App Store or Steam.<br />
The best example that comes to my mind is <a href="https://mindustrygame.github.io/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Mindustry</a> sold on Steam for 9,99$ (~15k reviews) but open source and available for free on all other platforms.</p>Secure by Design RFI Response from Shortridge Sensemaking LLC2024-02-22T13:40:11.523000Zhttps://kellyshortridge.com/blog/posts/rfi-secure-by-design-response/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/secure-by-design-rfi/8123631:ca5765">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/8123631.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Posts on Sensemaking by Shortridge.</b>
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<p>My frequent co-conspirator, <a href="https://rpetrich.com/blog/">Ryan Petrich</a>, and I <a href="https://kellyshortridge.com/papers/CISA-2023-0027-Shortridge-Sensemaking.pdf">submitted a response</a> to the U.S. government’s <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/12/20/2023-27948/request-for-information-on-shifting-the-balance-of-cybersecurity-risk-principles-and-approaches-for">Request for Information</a> on Shifting the Balance of Cybersecurity Risk: Principles and Approaches for Secure by Design Software (CISA-2023-0027).</p>
<p>Secure by Design is a strategy we believe can nurture a future where technology is safe, secure, and resilient. But Secure by Design is a zeitgeisty topic that could be distorted into security theater or captured by crusty vendors to benefit themselves.</p>
<p>Indeed, we fear the whitepaper in question is overly focused on “forcing” organizations to prioritize security equally to business success rather than understanding what principles and practices would lead to the outcomes we need as a global software community. Many of the recommendations incentivize lip service, for software manufacturers to “prove” their commitment to security through words rather than actions.</p>
<p>We believe this is woefully misguided. We believe Secure by Design can align with business priorities like software velocity, developer productivity, and reliability in production. We believe in outcomes rather than outputs. So, our response enumerates principles and practices that software engineering teams can adopt without getting fired for ignoring business goals.</p>
<p>Similar to our prior RFI response on open source security, our commentary is exhaustive since we wanted to not only offer our expertise but enumerate as many potential opportunities for organizations to apply secure by design in practice as we could in light of only finding out about the RFI a week before it was due. In that vein, for those of you looking for, “How should my software engineering team(s) start investing in secure by design?” we suggest you read Section 1.2.1 in our response.</p>
<p>Our response begins with overall commentary on CISA’s whitepaper, both where we agree and, more often, where we disagree – but proposing ample alternatives along the way. After that, we address multiple question areas from the RFI ranging from economic incentives and dynamics; threat modeling; education; and more.</p>
<p>We are publishing our response in the spirit of transparency; you can read it at the following link: <a href="https://kellyshortridge.com/papers/CISA-2023-0027-Shortridge-Sensemaking.pdf">https://kellyshortridge.com/papers/CISA-2023-0027-Shortridge-Sensemaking.pdf</a></p>
<p>In the spirit of shepherding the Secure by Design movement towards the resilient future we envision, we feel privileged to submit our recommendations for CISA to consider as they navigate how to nourish Secure by Design in practice.</p>
<p>Note that we are submitting as Shortridge Sensemaking LLC. The views expressed in our response are not necessarily the views of our employers or any of their affiliates. The information contained herein is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, investment advice (which we would hope is obvious).</p>
<hr />
<p><em>Enjoy this post? You might like <a href="https://www.securitychaoseng.com/">my book</a>, <strong>Security Chaos Engineering: Sustaining Resilience in Software and Systems</strong>, available at <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Security-Chaos-Engineering-Sustaining-Resilience/dp/1098113829">Amazon</a>, <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/security-chaos-engineering-developing-resilience-and-safety-at-speed-and-scale-aaron-rinehart/18793471">Bookshop</a>, and other major retailers online.</em></p>How Big Tech let down Navalny2024-02-22T13:39:59.578000ZEllery Roberts Biddlehttps://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/russia-navalny-big-tech/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/how-big-tech-let-dow/8172041:e1caf9">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/8172041.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Coda Story.</b>
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<p>As if the world needed another reminder of the brutality of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, last Friday we learned of the untimely death of Alexei Navalny. I don’t know if he ever used the term, but Navalny was what Chinese bloggers might have called a true <a href="https://qz.com/15080/why-netizens-are-so-important-for-china">“netizen”</a> — a person who used the internet to live out democratic values and systems that didn’t exist in their country.</p>
<p>Navalny’s work with the Anti-Corruption Foundation reached millions using major platforms like YouTube and LiveJournal. But they built plenty of their own technology too. One of their most famous innovations was “Smart Voting,” a system that could estimate which opposition candidates were most likely to beat out the ruling party in a given election. The strategy wasn’t to support a specific opposition party or candidate — it was simply to unseat members of the ruling party, United Russia. In regional races in 2020, it was credited with causing United Russia to lose its majority in state legislatures in Novosibirsk, Tambov and Tomsk.</p>
<p>The Smart Voting system was pretty simple — just before casting a ballot, any voter could check the website or the app to decide where to throw their support. But on the eve of national parliamentary elections in September 2021, Smart Voting suddenly vanished from the app stores for both Google and Apple. </p>
<p>After a Moscow court banned Navalny’s organization for being “extremist,” Russia’s internet regulator demanded that both Apple and Google remove Smart Voting from their app stores. The companies bowed to the Kremlin and complied. YouTube blocked select Navalny videos in Russia and Google, its parent company, even blocked some public Google Docs that the Navalny team published to promote names of alternative candidates in the election. </p>
<p>We will never know whether or not Navalny's innovative use of technology to stand up to the dictator would have worked. But Silicon Valley's decision to side with Putin was an important part of why Navalny’s plan failed. </p>
<p>Navalny’s team felt so abandoned by the companies at that moment that they compared it to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. At the time, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/16/kabul-airport-chaos-and-panic-as-afghans-and-foreigners-attempt-to-flee-the-capital">photos</a> of U.S. planes taking flight and leaving desperate Afghans behind on the runways of the Kabul airport were dominating global media.</p>
<p>“It felt like we’re people running alongside a plane that’s taking off. And here we are, being left behind,” Ivan Zhdanov told my colleagues investigating the fallout of the Smart Voting story for “<a href="https://www.audible.com/pd/Undercurrents-Tech-Tyrants-and-Us-Podcast/B0BQ1N1ZB8?qid=1671643687&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=RCK54ZP11EJQCDRNXZGC">Undercurrents: Tech, Tyrants and Us</a>,” Coda’s podcast about the role of technology in the rise of global authoritarianism. </p>
<p>“We rely on YouTube, on Google Docs, on all these other tools, to spread ideas of freedom, of democracy. But right now we are in a game that has no rules,” he said at the time.</p>
<p>Why did these Big Tech behemoths, which claimed to support baseline human rights, bow down to the Kremlin? Neither company ever spoke publicly about the decision. The companies <a href="https://twitter.com/ioannZH/status/1438750081402953728">told</a> Navalny’s organization that they were acting on a legal order. But what legitimacy does a legal order have when it’s clearly been written to target the government’s top adversary? </p>
<p>This is the shaky ground on which these companies operate. If they want to keep doing business in a given country, they have to follow or at least pay lip service to the laws of the land. In a case like this one, it meant undermining the interests of regular Russians and democracy itself.</p>
<p>And then, just months later, the tables turned again. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, companies across Silicon Valley put out statements declaring their support for Ukraine and their intentions to go after Russian state propaganda on their platforms. Both Meta and Twitter (now X) were banned in Russia, and companies like <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03/apple-halts-all-device-sales-in-russia-in-response-to-invasion-of-ukraine/">Apple</a> and <a href="https://www.codastory.com/newsletters/russia-tiktok-propaganda/">TikTok</a> began blocking select services within the country. Tacit signs of support for the opposition also popped up. The Smart Voting app even <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/06/navalny-apple-app-russia/">reappeared</a> in the App Store. Whatever rationale had led the company to remove the app suddenly evaporated.</p>
<p>This week, I caught up with Tanya Lokot and Marielle Wijermars, two internet policy scholars who specialize in the region, to ask their reflections on how things have evolved since that time, especially in the wake of Navalny’s death.</p>
<p>“It may be a bit too deterministic to say that his team’s dependence on tech platforms was ‘their downfall,’” they wrote in a joint response, noting that Navalny’s organization had “accounted for the restrictions and possible censorship and built alternative infrastructures to support their work.” They also talked about how building this kind of resilience has become more difficult since the start of the war. </p>
<p>“It is getting harder and harder to find these alternatives, as more and more platforms are exiting Russia and users are relying on VPNs and other circumvention tools,” they wrote. Pressure from sanctions and an overall lack of technology is compounding the issue and isolating Russians further. And they noted that for Navalny’s organization, which now works mainly in exile, there are new challenges around getting information into the country. While the last few years have offered new lessons on the promise and perils of using technology to try to bring about change, Lokot and Wijermars made it clear that these are all mere battles in a much longer war.</p>
<p>Just yesterday, another tech company became the site of the latest battle — X briefly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/world/europe/navalny-wife-yuliya-navalnaya-x-account.html">suspended</a> the account of Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya. The company cited “automated security protocols” as the reason for the error.<br />After years avoiding the spotlight, Navalnaya came out this week with a gut-wrenching <a href="https://en.zona.media/article/2024/02/19/yulia_navalnaya">speech</a> in which she declared her intention to seize the torch and keep fighting “harder, more desperately and more fiercely than before.” But with its tools decimated and its ultimate netizen gone, the fight now may be more brutal and more dangerous than ever.</p>
<p><em>This piece was originally published as the most recent edition of the weekly Authoritarian Tech newsletter.</em></p>
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<p><strong>Russia’s transformation into a full digital dictatorship that ultimately killed its most prominent critic did not happen overnight. <a href="https://www.audible.com/pd/Russias-Leaky-Databases-Podcast/B0BQ1P4QN8?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp%20https://www.audible.com/pd/Russias-Leaky-Databases-Podcast/B0BQ1P4QN8?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp">Listen</a> to this episode of “Undercurrents: Tech, Tyrants and Us” to understand how it unfolded and what role Western technology companies played in strengthening Putin’s regime.</strong></p>
</div>
<p>The post <a href="https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/russia-navalny-big-tech/">How Big Tech let down Navalny</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.codastory.com">Coda Story</a>.</p>bits February 21, 2024 at 10:44PM2024-02-22T13:37:10.819000ZWarren Ellishttps://warrenellis.ltd/marks-2/bits-february-21-2024-at-1044pm/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/bits-february-21-202/7340448:f270ad">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/7340448.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> WARREN ELLIS LTD.</b>
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<blockquote cite="https://www.garbageday.email/p/ai-search-doomsday-cult" class="quoteback">
As Engadget recently asked <a class="link" href="https://flight.beehiiv.net/v2/clicks/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.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.Pks05c1htUoNXy-Z0SYFjsh1Wqyrj_LSxRPIupyPYvY" rel="noopener" target="_blank">in their excellent teardown</a> of Arc’s AI search pivot, “Who makes money when AI reads the internet for us?” But let’s take a step even further here. Why even bother making new websites if no one’s going to see them? At least with the Web3 hype cycle, there were vague platitudes about ownership and financial freedom for content creators. To even entertain the idea of building AI-powered search engines means, in some sense, that you are comfortable with eventually being the reason those creators no longer exist. It is an undeniably apocalyptic project
<footer>Garbage Day <cite><a href="https://www.garbageday.email/p/ai-search-doomsday-cult">https://www.garbageday.email/p/ai-search-doomsday-cult</a></cite></footer>
</blockquote>Fairfax County police to use Spider-Man-like lassos to subdue suspects2024-02-08T13:46:49.338000ZOlivia Diazhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/02/07/bolawraps-fairfax-county-police/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/fairfax-county-polic/9037490:02d191">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/9037490.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Washington Post.</b>
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The county is giving all its patrol officers access to BolaWraps, which shoot Kevlar lassos to wrap up unruly subjects.CFPB’s Proposed Data Rules2024-01-31T20:28:28.061000ZBruce Schneierhttps://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/01/cfpbs-proposed-data-rules.html<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/cfpbs-proposed-data-/938999:f5af95">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/938999.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Schneier on Security.</b>
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<p>In October, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) <a href="https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb-1033-nprm-fr-notice_2023-10.pdf">proposed a set of rules</a> that if implemented would transform how financial institutions handle personal data about their customers. The rules put control of that data back in the hands of ordinary Americans, while at the same time undermining the data broker economy and increasing customer choice and competition. Beyond these economic effects, the rules have important data security benefits.</p>
<p>The CFPB’s rules align with a key security idea: the <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/data-privacy">decoupling principle</a>. By separating which companies see what parts of our data, and in what contexts, we can gain control over data about ourselves (improving privacy) and harden cloud infrastructure against hacks (improving security). Officials at the CFPB have described the new rules as an attempt to accelerate a shift toward “open banking,” and after an initial comment period on the new rules closed late last year, Rohit Chopra, the CFPB’s director, <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-on-the-proposed-personal-financial-data-rights-rule/">has said</a> he would like to see the rule finalized by this fall.</p>
<p>Right now, uncountably many data brokers keep tabs on your buying habits. When you purchase something with a credit card, that transaction is shared with unknown third parties. When you get a car loan or a house mortgage, that information, along with your Social Security number and other sensitive data, is also shared with unknown third parties. You have no choice in the matter. The companies will freely tell you this in their disclaimers about personal information sharing: that you cannot opt-out of data sharing with “affiliate” companies. Since most of us can’t reasonably avoid getting a loan or using a credit card, we’re forced to share our data. Worse still, you don’t have a right to even see your data or vet it for accuracy, let alone limit its spread.</p>
<p>The CFPB’s simple and practical rules would fix this. The rules would ensure people can obtain their own financial data at no cost, control who it’s shared with and choose who they do business with in the financial industry. This would change the economics of consumer finance and the illicit data economy that exists today.</p>
<p>The best way for financial services firms to meet the CFPB’s rules would be to apply the decoupling principle broadly. Data is a <a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic.html">toxic asset</a>, and in the long run they’ll find that it’s better to not be sitting on a mountain of poorly secured financial data. Deleting the data is better for their users and reduces the chance they’ll incur expenses from a ransomware attack or breach settlement. As it stands, the collection and sale of consumer data is too lucrative for companies to say no to participating in <a href="https://cyberscoop.com/radio/data-broker-economy/">the data broker economy</a>, and the CFPB’s rules may help eliminate the incentive for companies to buy and sell these toxic assets. Moreover, in a free market for financial services, users will have the option to choose more responsible companies that also may be less expensive, thanks to savings from improved security.</p>
<p>Credit agencies and data brokers currently make money both from lenders requesting reports and from consumers requesting their data and seeking services that protect against data misuse. The CFPB’s new rules—and the technical changes necessary to comply with them—would eliminate many of those income streams. These companies have many roles, some of which we want and some we don’t, but as consumers we don’t have any choice in whether we participate in the buying and selling of our data. Giving people rights to their financial information would reduce the job of credit agencies to their core function: assessing risk of borrowers.</p>
<p>A free and properly regulated market for financial services also means choice and competition, something the industry is sorely in need of. Equifax, Transunion and Experian make up a longstanding oligopoly for credit reporting. Despite being responsible for one of the <a href="https://cyberscoop.com/equifax-breach-settlement-700-million/">biggest data breaches of all time</a> in 2017, the credit bureau Equifax is still around—illustrating that the oligopolistic nature of this market means that companies face few consequences for misbehavior.</p>
<p>On the banking side, the steady consolidation of the banking sector has resulted in a small number of very large banks holding most deposits and thus most financial data. Behind the scenes, a variety of financial data clearinghouses—companies most of us have never heard of—<a href="https://techpolicy.sanford.duke.edu/blogroll/data-brokers-and-data-breaches/">get breached all the time</a>, losing our personal data to scammers, identity thieves and foreign governments.</p>
<p>The CFPB’s new rules would require institutions that deal with financial data to provide simple but essential functions to consumers that stand to deliver security benefits. This would include the use of application programming interfaces (APIs) for software, eliminating the barrier to interoperability presented by today’s baroque, non-standard and non-programmatic interfaces to access data. Each such interface would allow for interoperability and potential competition. The CFPB notes that some companies have tried to claim that their current systems provide security by being difficult to use. As security experts, we disagree: Such aging financial systems are notoriously insecure and simply rely upon security through obscurity.</p>
<p>Furthermore, greater standardization and openness in financial data with mechanisms for consumer privacy and control means fewer gatekeepers. The CFPB notes that a small number of data aggregators have emerged by virtue of the complexity and opaqueness of today’s systems. These aggregators provide little economic value to the country as a whole; they extract value from us all while hindering competition and dynamism. The few new entrants in this space have realized how valuable it is for them to present standard APIs for these systems while managing the ugly plumbing behind the scenes.</p>
<p>In addition, by eliminating the opacity of the current financial data ecosystem, the CFPB is able to add a new requirement of data traceability and certification: Companies can only use consumers’ data when absolutely necessary for providing a service the consumer wants. This would be another big win for consumer financial data privacy.</p>
<p>It might seem surprising that a set of rules designed to improve competition also improves security and privacy, but it shouldn’t. When companies can make business decisions without worrying about losing customers, security and privacy always suffer. Centralization of data also means centralization of control and economic power and a decline of competition.</p>
<p>If this rule is implemented it will represent an important, overdue step to improve competition, privacy and security. But there’s more that can and needs to be done. In time, we hope to see more regulatory frameworks that give consumers greater control of their data and increased adoption of the technology and architecture of decoupling to secure all of our personal data, wherever it may be.</p>
<p>This essay was written with Barath Raghavan, and was originally published in <a href="https://cyberscoop.com/cfpbs-data-rules-security-privacy-competition/">Cyberscoop</a>.</p>urllib3 2.2.02024-01-30T18:14:51.998000Zhttps://simonwillison.net/2024/Jan/30/urllib3/#atom-everything<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/urllib3-220/790:29f02a">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/790.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Simon Willison's Weblog:</b>
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<p><a href="https://github.com/urllib3/urllib3/releases/tag/2.2.0">urllib3 2.2.0</a></p>
<p>Highlighted feature: "urllib3 now works in the browser" - the core urllib3 library now includes code that can integrate with Pyodide, using the browser's fetch() or XMLHttpRequest APIs to make HTTP requests (to CORS-enabled endpoints).</p>Work hard and take everything really seriously2024-01-29T13:10:31.331000ZTom MacWrighthttps://macwright.com/2024/01/28/work-hard-and-take-everything-seriously.html<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/work-hard-and-take-e/1448719:f52b99">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/1448719.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Tom MacWright.</b>
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<p>Every few months on Twitter, there’s some dustup about work-life
balance and whether it’s a good or bad idea to work hard when you’re
young. Like most of these recurring debates, it has generated two
opposite archetypes:</p>
<p><strong>The anti-capitalist</strong> tells the young worker not to trust HR and not to
buy into the idea of work as family. Your employment contract is the
only thing that binds you to your job, and that can be terminated on
either side. Arrive at 9, leave at 5. Prioritize the family.</p>
<p><strong>The hustlebro</strong> tells you to wake up at 7am and get to work, and
give it your all. Hustle, and earn as much as you can, build those
connections. You can get work-life balance when you’re older, your
early 20s are the time for <em>making that cheddar</em> and staying
up till 1am.</p>
<hr />
<p>In the short form, it’s hard to take a stance and not get grouped
into either extreme. It’s also hard not to feel baited by someone
who’s engagement-farming their social media presence by using
time-tested bait questions.</p>
<p>This last time I responded something like:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>work really hard and take everything very seriously</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But I deleted it. A truism as an answer will lead people
to all kinds of unintended conclusions about me and whatever I’m
saying. I’ll need to use more words.</p>
<h3 id="wisdom-is-acquired-by-experience">Wisdom is acquired by experience</h3>
<p>I think the honest answer is that most people can’t gain perspective
and moderation and maturity by reading someone’s advice online.
The wise 35-year old dads on Twitter can follow their own advice
about work-life boundaries because they’ve suffered the consequences.
There’s no shortcut to perspective:
you have to <a href="https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/07/pinboard_turns_five/">acquire it by experiencing bad things and suffering consequences</a>.</p>
<h3 id="energy-begets-energy">Energy begets energy</h3>
<p>I attribute a lot of my career path to my working really hard
and caring a lot about things. I quickly internalized the
lesson that a 9-5 job wouldn’t teach me enough, and wouldn’t give me
all the intellectual stimulation or rigor that I wanted – so
I worked longer hours, worked on side projects, hunted down my
interests like a puppy chasing a squirrel.</p>
<p>The thing is, when you find a good thing to focus on, a thing to
pour energy into, it can be positive-sum. It can give you energy
in the rest of your life, give you a sense of purpose. The human
body is <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-body-finite-energy/">not like a battery with a finite amount of energy</a>.
There are lots of things you can do, like exercise, learning, and practice,
that can be rewarding and increase your ability. This is obvious,
right?</p>
<p>If you have <em>that thing</em> that drives you, and that thing isn’t work
and can never be work, then sure – get the lightest-duty job
you can. Pour time into that thing. Maybe what you do at work is
your main output, or part of your output, or just what you do
for money.</p>
<h3 id="most-jobs-dont-give-you-time-to-learn">Most jobs don’t give you time to learn</h3>
<p>Many jobs, especially in technology, don’t have real,
intentional, educational components. There is no time set-aside
for learning, no time to practice, and no dedicated instructor.</p>
<p>It’s unlikely that what you learned in college fully prepared
you for the job. It’s possible that you’ll have a wonderful
mentor with lots of time to spare, but probably not.</p>
<p>I’ve worked with people who are smart enough to learn everything
on the job, from 9-5. I’m not one of them. For me, to really
understand something, I need to build it two or three times,
write about it, use it incorrectly, and learn the consequences.
Working hard meant playing around, having fun, but essentially
playing with a lot of things that were not directly part of
what I was paid to do at that time. This, honestly, worked out
extremely well and some of those things led to jobs and
opportunities that I never would have had otherwise. Writing
this blog is one of those things.</p>
<h3 id="working-hard-on-boring-repetitive-stuff-is-bad">Working hard on boring repetitive stuff is bad</h3>
<p>Probably the biggest caveat to this whole post is that working
hard in my experience was never working double-shifts or “hustling”
for money or having multiple jobs. There are a million kinds of work
that you simply don’t learn anything from, after a point. Thankfully,
technology work is usually accretive, as are other sorts of
knowledge-work.</p>
<h3 id="maybe-you-dont-want-to-do-this-but-i-did">Maybe you don’t want to do this, but I did</h3>
<p>Maybe you don’t want to follow that path. That’s fine: not everyone
is compelled by learning or intellectual rabbit-holes or exists
in an industry where it’s pretty easy to self-educate. Or wants
to “max out” their career. And it’s dangerous to generalize from
a single experience. And it’s also dangerous to judge “a career”
based on external appearances, which don’t tell you whether the
person turned out to be happy, or rich. I haven’t maxed out either
of those things, but I have few career regrets: I’ve always
cared most about building useful things and learning and I think
I’ve nearly maxed out those categories.</p>
<p>This is the answer to that question, of what advice could I have
for someone in their early 20s. Well, that’s what I did – I worked
pretty hard and was pretty unrestrained in pursuing interests.
It worked out fine. Now that I’m older, my priorities have shifted
slightly and I spend a little more time on other things, and am
slowly becoming more balanced. But balance isn’t how I got here.
Balance isn’t how a lot of the people I admire got to where they
are now.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m all for moderation, but sometimes it seems<br />
Moderation itself can be a kind of extreme - Andrew Bird</p>
</blockquote>
<h3 id="when-your-priorities-shift-youll-know">When your priorities shift, you’ll know</h3>
<p>In the end, most people gain responsibilities. You’ll have a
baby or a family member to take care of, or a thriving social life
that demands more of your time. Your priorities will snap into place
and you’ll realize that you care about new things. This is great.
This will probably happen. But before you have those new
responsibilities, you don’t have those new responsibilities.
You have time to try and build a ‘rocket ship’ startup or chase
down silly projects or learn a new instrument or run a thousand
miles a year. Do that stuff. You don’t have to prematurely act like
you’re older.</p>
<hr />
<p>So, heed the warnings of those 30-somethings about burnout and
workplace boundaries. And don’t work 24/7 on busywork for a startup
if you’re not learning anything.</p>
<p>You can burn out by going too fast, or your flame can dim because
you don’t let yourself spend silly amounts of time on silly projects
to satisfy your intellectual curiosity. Beware of both outcomes:
cultivate your enthusiasm for the things you want to hang onto.</p>
<p>It isn’t a revolutionary idea that people who are excellent in
their fields often get there by trying really hard. If you can
figure out the difference between busy-work that only benefits
your employer, and the kind of work that makes you as a person
feel like you’re making progress and becoming more skilled,
then you’re ready to learn.</p>Stop using Opera Browser and Opera GX2024-01-26T17:03:06.711000ZThom Holwerdahttps://www.osnews.com/story/138455/stop-using-opera-browser-and-opera-gx/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/stop-using-opera-bro/4580:b15900">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/4580.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> OSnews.</b>
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<p>Hindenburg alleged that when the Opera browser continued losing users (due to competition from Google and Apple), the company shifted gears to building mobile apps that provided predatory short-term loans. The interest rates on those loans ranged from 365-876% per year, and loan terms from 7-29 days. Opera also falsely advertised longer loan terms and lower interest rates in the app descriptions, because the Google Play Store had rules against predatory loan services.</p>
<p>The loan apps specifically targeted customers in Kenya, India, and Nigeria. Hindenburg also confirmed through user reports and a former employee that two of the apps, OKash and OPesa, asked for permission to the phone contacts during the setup process. The service would then start sending threatening messages to the user’s contacts when a borrower was late on their payments. The issue was also <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001310291/how-kenyans-give-up-privacy-for-costly-mobile-loans">covered by local media</a> prior to Hindenburg’s report.</p>
<p>The money from these loan apps amounted to 42.5% of Opera’s revenue by mid-2019. Yes, almost half of Opera’s revenue came from extracting money from people in developing countries with false advertising and direct harassment.</p>
<cite><a href="https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-opera-browser/">↫ Corbin Davenport</a></cite></blockquote>
<p>As if this wasn’t horrible enough, Opera also pushed the usual crypto and NFT scams, and is now chasing that “AI” high by adding spicy autocomplete to its Chromium skin. Much like Brave – good people don’t let friends use Brave – Opera is just a veneer around shady business practices, and you just shouldn’t use this garbage.</p>
<p>Just use Firefox.</p>Portable EPUBs2024-01-26T03:12:05.333000Zhttps://simonwillison.net/2024/Jan/25/portable-epubs/#atom-everything<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/portable-epubs/790:038791">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/790.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Simon Willison's Weblog.</b>
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<p><a href="https://willcrichton.net/notes/portable-epubs/">Portable EPUBs</a></p>
<p>Will Crichton digs into the reasons people still prefer PDF over HTML as a format for sharing digital documents, concluding that the key issues are that HTML documents are not fully self-contained and may not be rendered consistently.</p>
<p>He proposes "Portable EPUBs" as the solution, defining a subset of the existing EPUB standard with some additional restrictions around avoiding loading extra assets over a network, sticking to a smaller (as-yet undefined) subset of HTML and encouraging interactive components to be built using self-contained Web Components.</p>
<p>Will also built his own lightweight EPUB reading system, called Bene - which is used to render this Portable EPUBs article. It provides a "download" link in the top right which produces the .epub file itself.</p>
<p>There's a lot to like here. I'm constantly infuriated at the number of documents out there that are PDFs but really should be web pages (academic papers are a particularly bad example here), so I'm very excited by any initiatives that might help push things in the other direction.</p>As Youngkin takes an axe to the deep state, what could possibly go wrong?2024-01-25T14:35:48.133000ZIvy Mainhttps://www.virginiamercury.com/2024/01/25/as-youngkin-takes-an-axe-to-the-deep-state-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/as-youngkin-takes-an/7103092:1d161f">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/7103092.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Virginia Mercury.</b>
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<img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" height="609" src="https://www.virginiamercury.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/IMG_1295-scaled-e1703107331416-1024x609.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 10px;" width="1024" /><p style="font-size: 12px;">Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin being greeted before presenting his proposed budget recommendations for the 2024-26 biennial on Dec. 20 at the General Assembly Building in Richmond. (Nathaniel Cline/VIrginia Mercury)</p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The letter landed in email inboxes Monday morning like a grenade tucked into a plain manila envelope. In keeping with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s </span><a href="https://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001HI44ojOR2wAHAb8zvvNDKF6f2RnxQfrrFeoHcdRHjMhpQPQWskKD93DTAm5WbhMc_i-z7SjyF_nBz3Y0wrVJjL5QO8gkuXaRT7O05-lKbDrYy975jn6Wy8g-CnWbUXGogAPIKkOPHMo4GuR0F03iRH_CTxOMlnd5WOJ5gJjEFLB8FUnRHVU2B69iMmCtrOO6WQmtltZuKIrtqEd338prvizpdThlAkiAoaJQPa3nLPixpwj798gdxaQUbWTvB6U9GcolDip5UMFAX4yyC1FA6VfFMs2-48yN&c=0jaWWHPFaJ9k-iekZvprN4wQkmmqeehiC3DKkpL0a1rVusL41gjzZw==&ch=fXkAF_-phOdQywKkyTWMfPAEghrnNk0rLxNlTR8uBKgQjDdeQKAWpg==" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Executive Directive Number One</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> requiring agencies to eliminate 25% of government regulations “not mandated by federal or state statute,” the administration planned to take its axe to</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">the building code. <a href="https://www.virginiamercury.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DHCD-regulation-reduction-letter-1-22-24.png" target="_blank"><img alt="" class="aligncenter wp-image-37628 size-large" height="1024" src="https://www.virginiamercury.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DHCD-regulation-reduction-letter-1-22-24-774x1024.png" width="774" /></a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Yes, the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">building code</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. The Board of Housing and Community Development has been told to remove a quarter of the rules that protect homes and businesses against fires, bad weather and shoddy workmanship. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Board only last summer completed its triennial </span><a href="https://www.dhcd.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/Docx/bhcd/book-6-final.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">update</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> of the Virginia building code, so you’d think they would have removed any unnecessary provisions already. But that’s not the point. The point is that the Axe of Freedom must fall wherever regulations gather in big bunches, and the building code is, by definition, a bunch of regulations. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wasting no time, the board plans to </span><a href="https://townhall.virginia.gov/L/ViewMeeting.cfm?MeetingID=39309" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">meet</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> on January 26 to kick off what it is calling “the reduction cycle.” Virginians will have a chance to comment, although in keeping with what I’ve found to be board practice, only the comments the board likes will count. And as the governor appoints the board members, successful opinions will be those that confirm Youngkin’s vision. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">From that perspective, the building code is shot full of nanny state rubbish. It dictates things like safe wiring and roofs that don’t fly off in a storm and plumbing that actually works. The governor no doubt believes we can safely trust these kinds of things to profit-maximizing corporations without state inspectors second-guessing their work. (I assume the requirement for inspections also falls to the Axe. There is nothing more nanny-state than inspections.)</span></p>
<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content"><p><a href="https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/10/19/houses-can-be-built-to-use-much-less-energy-why-arent-they/" target="_blank">Houses can be built to use much less energy. Why aren’t they?</a></p></blockquote>
<p><iframe class="wp-embedded-content" height="282" src="https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/10/19/houses-can-be-built-to-use-much-less-energy-why-arent-they/embed/#?secret=XYtzGu1l8R#?secret=Hd4m3GVtCi" title="“Houses can be built to use much less energy. Why aren’t they?” — Virginia Mercury" width="500"></iframe></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But if the government does away with standards, won’t builders cut corners? Yes, of course they will. That is the whole point, because then they can make more money. And making money is the ultimate conservative value, second only to owning the libs. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As for the people who wind up living in unsafe, flimsy firetraps, I expect the administration thinks it’s about time those snowflakes took personal responsibility for the quality of their homes. If they can’t correct hidden defects before a house erupts in flames or grows black mold or the basement floods, that’s on them. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Housing advocates worry the administration might especially target energy efficiency requirements, though Lord knows the board already </span><a href="https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/10/19/houses-can-be-built-to-use-much-less-energy-why-arent-they/" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">watered those down</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> plenty, and illegally so. But things can always get worse, and Youngkin seems committed to ensuring they do. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">(Indeed, that would make a great tagline for Youngkin’s 25% initiative. “Glenn Youngkin: Making Virginia Government One-Quarter Worse.” Feel free to use it, governor, with my compliments.)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Anyway, excising the energy efficiency section of the housing code could be a retro move to appeal to old folks’ nostalgic yearning for the days when houses were so drafty you could feel a breeze with the windows closed. Maybe you never thought we’d let new homes get built that were like those of my childhood, where the kitchen pipes froze when the temperature plunged unless you put a hot water bottle in the cupboard under the sink and left the faucet dripping. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But here we are. Will the board also remove the bans on lead paint and asbestos insulation?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The building code may be the first place to look for regulations to cut, but reaching his 25% goal will require Youngkin to take the Axe of Freedom to regulations wherever they lurk. And they lurk all over the place. Virginia’s </span><a href="https://law.lis.virginia.gov/admincode/" target="_blank"><span style="font-weight: 400;">administrative code</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> contains 24 titles. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">One colleague suggests simply removing every fourth word from every section of every title, which would have the virtue of wreaking havoc with the entire Deep State bureaucracy at once. And it would keep lawyers busy! Though not everyone would appreciate that feature (and sure enough, my colleague is a lawyer).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Another easy option might be to just remove a quarter of the titles indiscriminately</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Chopping off the last 6 of the 24 would eliminate the following: </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> • P</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">ublic safety (creating an interesting experiment in anarchy) </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> • P</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">ublic utilities and telecommunications (turning the management of these critical functions over to the private sector, but what could go wrong?) </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> • S</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">ecurities and retail franchising (as I have only a dim idea of what those are all about, it’s okay by me, but I expect these things have their defenders) </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> • S</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">ocial services (this could be dicey when combined with the anarchy thing) </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> • T</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">axation (a popular title to jettison, with the added benefit of making the rest of government unworkable) and </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> • T</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">ransportation and motor vehicles (which would either allow everyone to speed to their heart’s content, or mean no one would do road repair; we’d just have to see how that went)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You will object that I’m proposing a totally mindless approach to regulatory reform. On the contrary, I’m just trying to help implement the governor’s regulatory reform agenda using the same level of care and foresight he did. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Let the Axe of Freedom fall!</span></p>
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<p>The post <a href="https://www.virginiamercury.com/2024/01/25/as-youngkin-takes-an-axe-to-the-deep-state-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/" rel="nofollow">As Youngkin takes an axe to the deep state, what could possibly go wrong?</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.virginiamercury.com" rel="nofollow">Virginia Mercury</a>.</p>Zelle Is Using My Name and Voice without My Consent2024-01-19T20:12:04.606000ZBruce Schneierhttps://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/01/zelle-is-using-my-name-and-voice-without-my-consent.html<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/zelle-is-using-my-na/938999:65d41c">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/938999.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Schneier on Security.</b>
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<p>Okay, so this is weird. Zelle has been using my name, and my voice, in audio podcast ads—without my permission. At least, I think it is without my permission. It’s possible that I gave some sort of blanket permission when speaking at an event. It’s not likely, but it is possible.</p>
<p>I wrote to Zelle about it. Or, at least, I wrote to a company called <a href="https://www.earlywarning.com/">Early Warning</a> that owns Zelle about it. They asked me where the ads appeared. This seems odd to me. Podcast distribution networks drop ads in podcasts depending on the listener—like personalized ads on webpages—so the actual podcast doesn’t matter. And shouldn’t they know their own ads? Annoyingly, it seems time to get attorneys involved.</p>
<p>What would help is to have a copy of the actual ad. (Or ads, I’m assuming there’s only one.) So, has anyone else heard me in a Zelle ad? Does anyone happen to have an audio recording? Please email me.</p>
<p>And I will update this post if I learn anything more. Or if there is some actual legal action. (And if this post ever disappears, you’ll know I was required to take it down for some reason.)</p>Corporations Are Not To Be Loved2024-01-17T19:48:17.876000Zhttps://inessential.com/2024/01/17/corporations_are_not_to_be_loved<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/corporations-are-not/20:be6042">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/20.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> inessential.com.</b>
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<p>I started using Apple computers — and writing code for them, starting with BASIC — 43 years ago, before the Macintosh, even, and I’ve made this my career. I’ve had all these decades to really, thoroughly delight in these incredible machines and software, and to give a little back with my own apps.</p>
<p>Apple’s positive effect on my life should not be underestimated. My Mom once (lovingly, teasingly) said to me that my alternate career, had all this never happened, was “criminal genius.” Which might have been fun too, but possibly more stressful than I might have liked. At any rate, Apple has saved me from a life of crime, and I should love Apple for that.</p>
<p>But I need to remember, now and again, that Apple is a corporation, and corporations aren’t people, and they can’t love you back. You wouldn’t love GE or Exxon or Comcast — and you shouldn’t love Apple. It’s not an exception to the rule: there are no exceptions.</p>
<p>Apple doesn’t care about you personally in the least tiny bit, and if you were in their way somehow, they would do whatever their might — effectively infinite compared to your own — enables them to deal with you.</p>
<p>Luckily, Apple has just provided us all with a reminder. Just like the sixth finger in an AI-rendered hand, Apple’s policies for <a href="https://developer.apple.com/support/storekit-external-entitlement-us/">Distributing apps in the U.S. that provide an external purchase link</a> are startlingly graceless and a jarring, but not surprising, reminder that Apple is not a real person and not worthy of your love.</p>White ‘gang’ of correctional officers controls Md. prison, lawsuit says2024-01-17T12:31:42.783000ZJustin Wm. Moyerhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/01/17/maryland-prison-lawsuit-white-gang-correctional-officers/<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/white-gang-of-correc/9037490:209a5a">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/9037490.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Washington Post.</b>
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“This is a job for White officers,” one said he was told. “You have to get your Black ass out of here.”Slashing Data Transfer Costs in AWS by 99%2024-01-16T15:39:39.353000Zhttps://simonwillison.net/2024/Jan/15/slashing-data-transfer-costs-in-aws-by-99/#atom-everything<table style="border: 1px solid #E0E0E0; margin: 0; padding: 0; background-color: #F0F0F0" valign="top" align="left" cellpadding="0" width="100%">
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<b>
rosskarchner
<a href="https://rosskarchner.newsblur.com/story/slashing-data-transf/790:58ccd7">shared this story</a>
from <img src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/icons.newsblur.com/790.png" style="vertical-align: middle;width:16px;height:16px;"> Simon Willison's Weblog:</b>
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this... feels like a bug that will be fixed
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<p><a href="https://www.bitsand.cloud/posts/slashing-data-transfer-costs/">Slashing Data Transfer Costs in AWS by 99%</a></p>
<p>Brilliant trick by Daniel Kleinstein. If you have data in two availability zones in the same AWS region, transferring a TB will cost you $10 in ingress and $10 in egress at the inter-zone rates charged by AWS.</p>
<p>But... transferring data to an S3 bucket in that same region is free (aside from S3 storage costs). And buckets are available with free transfer to all availability zones in their region, which means that TB of data can be transferred between availability zones for mere cents of S3 storage costs provided you delete the data as soon as it's transferred.</p>
<p>Via <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38998516">Hacker News</a></p>