Notes
WSJ: Meta to Let Users Opt Out of Some Targeted Ads, but Only in Europe
From the Wall Street Journal.
Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to let European users of Facebook and Instagram opt out of certain highly personalized ads as part of plans to limit the impact of a European Union privacy order, according to people familiar with the planning.
What this proves, beyond doubt, is that Meta will only respect your privacy when it is legislated to do so.
Note also the “opt-out” rather than the “opt-in” that is desired.
Why else wouldn’t they roll this out to the entire world?
It seems to me that Meta is on the wrong side of worldwide public opinion. At some point, this will present a serious enough risk for the company —either through data mishandling (selling some data to unscrupulous brokers) or being the target of a massive breach (it is only a matter of time) —for them to act on it fundamentally.
From what we know, most “digital marketing” is smoke and mirrors, providing no real value to advertisers over and above Media/TV/Radio and billboards. The value chain has been hijacked to introduce these gatekeepers that squeeze profits from both sides, making most small businesses poorer.
From the European Commission’s Study on the impact of recent developments in digital advertising on privacy, publishers and advertisers:
The most widely used products in digital advertising rely on large amounts of personal data and profiling of individuals. However, there is limited evidence to suggest that the efficiency and efficacy gains to advertisers and publishers outweigh the societal impact of these products. There is a lack of independent analysis to assess the benefits of using personal data and profiling in advertising. The few studies that do exist fail to take into account important considerations such as the impact of fraud and buyer expectations.
I thoroughly recommend the report.
30 March 2023 — French West Indies
Platformer: Microsoft just laid off one of its responsible AI teams
What was I saying about that Silicon Valley mantra again?
From Platformer:
Some members of the team pushed back. “I'm going to be bold enough to ask you to please reconsider this decision,” one employee said on the call. “While I understand there are business issues at play … what this team has always been deeply concerned about is how we impact society and the negative impacts that we've had. And they are significant.”
Montgomery declined. “Can I reconsider? I don't think I will,” he said. “Cause unfortunately the pressures remain the same. You don't have the view that I have, and probably you can be thankful for that. There's a lot of stuff being ground up into the sausage.”
Commercial pressures trump societal damage limitation, it seems.
Who the fuck do these people think they are?
14 March 2023 — French West Indies
First, drive people apart. Then sell them tech to bring them together. But only on our terms. And monetised.
While I’m on the topic of bullshit and the onanistic nature of Silicon Valley, it seems the “metaverse” is dying on its arse.
Fucking good riddance to it, too.
It’s a solution looking for a problem. That is nothing new, and most people have instinctively felt that from when it first burst onto the news cycle. Some of us were sceptical (stating it politely), and others saw the grit opportunity it afforded.
But what is new is that it is a solution to a problem created by the same tech companies that have worked hard to break society and monetise human interaction by being the gatekeepers and mediators.
They have driven human interaction to a transaction that (shitty and racist) advertising can piggyback—in turn, driving a wedge in human interaction, leaving at least one generation inadequate or incapable of having normal relationships with themselves and, therefore, with others.
13 March 2023 — French West Indies
“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
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 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
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
Simple pleasures
I’m sitting here listening to music at a volume I deem perfect, with a freshly brewed espresso.
The house is empty, apart from me. And it is sheer bliss.
I don’t get a chance to do this very often, and when I can, I’m not always in the mood, but today is perfect. I hear things I don’t usually hear in the music because I am engaged in the experience.
What a lovely way to end the year.
Take time to find the thing that you love, and enjoy it.
31 December 2022 — French West Indies