2023s
“Move fast and break things”. - Silicon Valley’s mantra. I call bullshit.
It’s been the mantra for some time now in the valley. Everyone benefits by moving fast and breaking a couple of things because we move faster at a quicker pace. But is that true?
My take: It’s bullshit and always has been.
On inspection, this mantra should actually be:
Break things and move fast.
Silicon Valley and all the poor copycats dotted around the planet are causing untold harm on a social level, let alone on an economic one.
Don’t believe me or think that I’m being alarmist?
Have a read of this article from Jon Haidt.
Conclusion: Social Media Is a Major Cause of Mental Illness in Girls, Not Just a Tiny Correlate
On the financial side.
FTX, SVB. I could go on.
As for “move fast”, that really means “run away” and blame others or deny responsibility.
13 March 2023 — French West Indies
Facebook tests deliberately drain phone batteries
As reported by 9to5 Mac from an article in the New York Post —I’ll leave you to make up your own mind about that— Facebook seems to have been conducting A/B testing that can drain the battery on your smartphone.
They raise important points about safety and transparency, as well as moral issues confirming that Facebook continues to show that it is morally corrupt (link).
But there’s another aspect.
This might seem picky and a little silly, but this is deliberate damage to a device. Accidental damage, we can all pass off; it happens. A drop or an app that goes haywire through some random bug. No real problem.
But deliberately draining the battery, which has a finite lifespan of around 500 charges to 80% of the battery capacity, is intentionally damaging the battery, ensuring the affected users will have to either replace their phones or their phone batteries before it can be reasonably expected.
The tests might be limited and, therefore, not affect too many people, so this is a small-scale panic. Still, Facebook should be absolutely upfront about this and offer compensation for those affected.
What they should have done, as responsible citizens (which they are not currently), is contact users requesting authorisation to be included in the test, guaranteeing batteries would be replaced free of charge.
What a shitty company, through and through.
2 February 2023 — French West Indies
The End of Writing
From ia.net.
Soon, you won’t need to write much anymore. Artificial Intelligence will do it for you. With all the free time we will have, we could try to rethink how we learn, work, and how we communicate.
An excellent blog post from the developer of a fantastic writing application. One that requires good old sweat and tears. None of this prompted 12-year-old-level gibberish produced by Open AI’s latest baby.
30 January 2023 — French West Indies
The enshittification of air travel
Ever since the horrendous attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, the airlines and various states’ security organisations trusted with guaranteeing security have gone into overdrive to enshittify air travel.
From condescending orders barked at you by barely-trained staff with no interest in making their job easier on themselves to the already frustratingly-long queues to get past that hurdle of show and tell. A burden that was already astonishingly tedious, usually as a direct result of a passenger not understanding that metal detectors detect … wait for it … metal!
A Swiss hacker reports that he/she/they discovered a file containing all the names and other information on the US Government’s “No Fly List”. A list that, like the first rule of fight club, no one talks about.
If that wasn’t bad enough, consider that on that list, there are children as young as four years old, according to those that have seen the list.
But here we reach a new low.
The name of the “database” of names?
NoFly.csv
Yep, you got that right. A fucking comma-separated file.
Words cannot describe the level at which this is unacceptable, regardless of circumstances.
… but wait. It does get worse.
I’ll let you read on through the Techdirt article for more analysis.
24 January 2023 — French West Indies
Apple AirTag tracks a big detour of luggage
In an article on Apple Insider, a couple of Air Canada passengers followed their luggage after it was lost for several days.
To their surprise, the luggage took quite a detour, proving all the communications from Air Canada were either wilfully incorrect or ineptly incorrect. Either way, it shows how frail baggage systems can be. As one might imagine, those systems are not 100% robotised and computer-controlled. They rely on several steps operated entirely by humans.
And what can humans be, if not stupid? Corrupt. Just look hereand here.
I write about this personally, having had a similar incident while travelling with Air Canada. Flying out of the French West Indies to get to Toronto, we have to fly to Montreal, then hop over to Toronto. Arriving at Montreal, given that it is the entry point, we must collect the bag and then go through customs and immigration. Unfortunately, my bag wasn’t there, and I was told to go to Toronto anyway, as they’d find my bag and deliver it to me at my hotel. So off I went after filling in the requisite lost luggage forms.
To cut a long story short, I got my bag with, as far as I can tell, everything in it, but given that I flew in on Sunday night and my bag was delivered on Wednesday evening, I had to purchase some new clothes to tie me over, not knowing if or when the bag would arrive.
I have a theory about what happened, as the bag went to Paris before winding its way across the Atlantic several days later. Drugs.
I’m pretty convinced that there are baggage handlers or others in the chain of operations that select bags and then divert them to other airports for them to be recovered and sent to the actual destination days later, thus providing a decent cover for the transport of drugs and arms to and fro.
It’s pretty easy to open a suitcase or a bag, even with a lock, thanks to security legislation after the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Every lock has a back door —a TSA-compatible key. Finding one for each lock type is trivial. And it grants unimpeded access to every piece of luggage passing through the basement of an airport. A basement that offers plenty of opportunity to conduct this kind of illicit business.
Technology offers us a view into the depths when we use it for good. Who knows, It might make it harder for illicit activity to proliferate.
I, for one, am investigating picking up a couple of AirTags for when I next travel, checking in luggage. I try to fly light, ensuring I only have cabin luggage, but that is not always feasible.
20 January 2023 — French West Indies
Revenue haemorrhage at Twitter.
From The Information:
A senior Twitter manager told employees that the company’s daily revenue on Tuesday was 40% lower than the same day a year ago, underscoring the crisis facing its core ads business, according to a person with direct knowledge.
In a staff meeting on Tuesday, Siddharth Rao, an engineering manager overseeing the engineers working on Twitter’s ad business, also told employees in a presentation that more than 500 of Twitter’s top advertisers have paused spending on Twitter since Elon Musk took over in October.
I fear for the poor engineers that —outside of their control— are suffering and will suffer job losses due to Elmo’s stupidity and revolting attitude.
I only hope that it affects Elmo’s pocket even more.
18 January 2023 — French West Indies
The Before. A curated playlist of samples and originals
I’ve been having a lot of fun curating a playlist of songs and the corresponding tracks they sampled from. Well, that’s not entirely fair. Some of the tracks are inspirations or plain remakes.
Much of it is hip-hop, unsurprising for any fans of the genre. Hip-hop pretty much defined sampling, getting the biggest artists and labels into trouble back then. Things have changed, and declarations and authorisations are required to be granted before a track is released. There is a perverse net negative result to that for the artists, but that can wait for another day.
I’ve been a hip-hop fan since I first heard some early tracks in 1980/1981 when I got deep in the weeds of hip-hop for more than 15 years. To this day, it has a special place in my heart.
So when a friend recently told me about a playlist on Spotify (I’m not a subscriber), I asked him to export the tracklist so I could manually recreate it using Apple Music.
That playlist was featured in a New York Times article, giving me inspiration for my own take on the idea.
My list is currently a work in progress with 49 songs and lasts 4:19 hours, although that is likely to grow. It features several types of music, from Rap, Jazz, Reggae and Ska. The goal is to have one or more original tracks directly before the track that uses its samples from the previous track(s).
It’s called, The Before. I described it as:
Many popular tracks stand on the shoulders of previous songs. This playlist gives you the originals before they were sampled, covered, or otherwise copied.
If you want the playlist, let me know.
16 January 2023 — French West Indies
Microsoft’s new AI can simulate anyone’s voice with 3 seconds of audio
Via Ars Technica:
On Thursday, Microsoft researchers announced a new text-to-speech AI model called VALL-E that can closely simulate a person's voice when given a three-second audio sample. Once it learns a specific voice, VALL-E can synthesize audio of that person saying anything—and do it in a way that attempts to preserve the speaker's emotional tone.
The possibilities for this technology are pretty endless. Good and bad.
As we move forward deploying and using these products, I don’t think we place enough emphasis and what the bad could be. I’m reminded of that quote from Jurassic Park
Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
I’m convinced there’s plenty of good to come from this and similar technologies like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, but I’m equally convinced that the bad stuff might be so bad that its effects on society could be disastrous.
This is why I believe regulation should be one of the first priorities for the world’s governments surrounding the use of these tools.
Regulation is coming, but too little and too late. Governments need to work to internet assumptions, not 20th Century ones as they currently do.
14 January 2023 — French West Indies
AI is coming for the Lawyers too
The term “low-hanging fruit” tends to invoke a particular disdain from me, given that it has been overused throughout the tech bro sphere.
Still, I can’t see a more fitting term in this case. From Gizmodo:
An AI-based legal advisor is set to play the role of a lawyer in an actual court case for the first time. Via an earpiece, the artificial intelligence will coach a courtroom defendant on what to say to get out of the associated fines and consequences of a speeding charge, AI-company (sic) DoNotPay has claimed in a report initially from New Scientist and confirmed by Gizmodo.
From the website of DoNotPay:
DoNotPay utilizes artificial intelligence to help consumers fight against large corporations and solve their problems like beating parking tickets, appealing bank fees, and suing robocallers.
DoNotPay’s goal is to level the playing field and make legal information and self-help accessible to everyone.
Low-level lawyers and legal advisors should probably start looking to move up the stack in the coming years.
This is a theme of AI, and much like the automation of assembly lines, AI is coming for the low-hanging fruit.
11 January 2023 — French West Indies
A turning point for Social Media?
I’m wondering if this is a turning point for Social Media. There’s a confluence of factors that are starting to bite. And it doesn’t look like it will ease up anytime soon.
Firstly, regulation and accountability. Governments and Civil Society are interested in making platforms more accountable for the outputs of the various algorithms used by the latter. It’s no longer enough to wave their hands and say, “look over there” people want real analysis and accountability.
For example, look at this lawsuit as reported by Ars Technica.
"Research tells us that excessive and problematic use of social media is harmful to the mental, behavioural, and emotional health of youth and is associated with increased rates of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, eating disorders, and suicide."
Secondly, the ownership and centralisation of Social Media have come to the fore through the abject stupidity of how Elmo handled the Twitter takeover and subsequent (mis)management.
It was firing many people that provided, albeit limited, accountability and balance had nearly disastrous consequences, echoing much of the popular delusion that sparked the January 6 storming of the Capitol. There is much scrutiny around what role Social Media played in this.
This has provoked a mass exodus of technology journalists, enthusiasts, experts and academics to invest more time and effort in Mastodon. It remains to be seen if it reaches critical mass to ensure its survival in this new form. For the record, Mastodon will continue regardless, but it may return to being a modern-day equivalent of the BBS of yore.
Thirdly, the polarised populations are now becoming poorer through global economic mismanagement and exploitation by populism that has ripened the world for autocrats and extremists to seize their opportunity to amass decisive power. See above.
Recent reports suggest Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election and likely others, but the analysis is too little too late. It does, however, suggest deeper scrutiny is on the horizon. I would guess that newer tools will make this quicker and simpler to use, to the point where near real-time analysis of the effects of Social Media is possible. Those best placed for this are the Social Media companies themselves. Not in any “police the police” sense. More being compelled and scrutinised by an independent body. Facebook’s Oversight Board is a start but pathetically reductive and free from real scrutiny.
But most importantly, and possibly one of the only easy-to-implement chances we have to correct this path, cutting off the oxygen to these platforms. Ad money. Unregulated and uncontrolled advertising poisons everything.
Advertisers are starting to wake up to this and are wincing at the things they and their products are being associated with algorithmically and uncontrollably. And they’re not happy.
Source: https://www.ft.com/content/126219c4-5ac0-4c8b-996c-307c24a4cd61 (Paywalled)
I think we can look forward to greater scrutiny and a wholesale effort to reign in these platforms.
10 January 2023 — French West Indies
A brief history of maps
From archdaily:
When in what was called Junior School at the time, ages 7 to 10, our teacher took us to a small village and got us started on a project to map the surroundings.
We drew the roads (there were two, a crossroads), the stream, buildings, and plenty of distinguishing features (trees, postbox, etc.) and added any relevant information we could think of.
We visited several times, adding more and more data to the documents we were collecting and drawing by hand. We even did a topology study using basic tools, but it was enough for us to get a rough 3D model of the village built as the final conclusion to the project.
I’ll never forget that experience. During the project and again at the end, my teacher told me I would make a good Cartographer. I didn’t know what that word meant at the time, so I looked it up in the dictionary. The definition in my crappy dictionary was “Map Maker”.
I didn’t turn out to be a “map maker”. However, I have continued to enjoy maps, and these articles are catnip. Enjoy.
7 January 2023 — French West Indies
The more social, social network
There’s a number which is called Dunbar’s Number. It’s around 150 or so.
It’s a significant number in that it seems to indicate that, as humans, we are incapable of having a meaningful discussion and keeping personal links with other humans if we have to do that for a group larger than this number.
Think about how many friends you have, no not Instagram acquaintances, real friends? Now think about how many of them you can keep in touch with in a meaningful way. It’s probably much less than Robin Dunbar’s suggestion.
I’ve started to see discussions about having a much more sociable social network, prompted by not just Elmo’s destruction of Twitter but the abject fatigue surrounding the use of social media that sucks you dry and intentionally disconnects you emotionally from a human being on another smartphone. Connecting more people was supposed to bring us together. Instead, it has succeeded in doing the exact opposite. For example, suggestions discuss limiting follows and followers to around 300 people or so and making them mutually agreed upon.
I don’t know the solution, and I don’t think it is Mastodon in its current guise. Still, I think it is a good starting point for people, organisations, institutions and even governments to see how they can build more community rather than more division.
Community centres and youth clubs were everywhere before. They weren’t perfect, nor do I expect Social Media to be. But I think there’s an opportunity to build something more localised and connected simultaneously. And that is what I think the value of something like Mastodon may inspire.
5 January 2023 — French West Indies
Key Bitcoin developer calls on FBI to recover $3.6M in digital coin
Via Ars Technica:
The irony!
Oh, wait. We need a centralised system to police the blockchain thieves now!
Seriously, why do they think the banks and regulators exist? Is it some kind of conspiracy against the world?
Grow up FFS.
4 January 2023 — French West Indies
Exodus, movement of Jah people
The mass exodus to Mastodon continues.
Over 9 million accounts were created, with 113,393 new users last week (see bot):
4 January 2023 — French West Indies
The Dark Risk of Large Language Models
From Wired:
Unless you’ve been hiding, in a coma, or purposefully ignoring Social Media, you will have seen the explosion of the use of GPT-3 through a website called ChatGPT.
The above is a transcription of what transpired when the model was used for interactions of a health-related matter.
Quite extreme and clearly nothing a human would do —sociopaths notwithstanding.
Please read the article to get the context. It’s not that long and is quite informative about some of the risks of Large Language Models (LLMs).
3 January 2023 — French West Indies
“what the fuck happened to my FTX account”
Poor guy woke up from a 5-month coma after a car accident to find that FTX had shit the bed.
Anecdotal and to be taken with a pinch of salt.
2 January 2023 — French West Indies
What Can We Learn from Barnes & Noble's Surprising Turnaround?
From The Honest Broker:
So many businesses and industries could learn a lot from this. Every time you go into a big chain store, you feel that everything that put it in that position has been sucked out.
I remember loving going to Dixons in the UK when it first got some notoriety. It died several years ago from Rigor Mortis, and being the most absolutely shitty experience in the UK.
I also love this line in the article:
I now have a rule of thumb: “There is no substitute for good decisions at the top—and no remedy for stupid ones.”
2 January 2023 — French West Indies