Notes
From TechCrunch: Facebook (Meta) is essentially a cybercriminal organisation *My headline
In 2016, Facebook launched a secret project designed to intercept and decrypt the network traffic between people using Snapchat’s app and its servers. The goal was to understand users’ behavior and help Facebook compete with Snapchat, according to newly unsealed court documents. Facebook called this “Project Ghostbusters,” in a clear reference to Snapchat’s ghost-like logo.
These are exactly the same techniques used by cybercriminals to extract data, usurp identity, and ultimately steal things to make money. This is what is called a man-in-the-middle attack.
Even Facebook’s own security engineers were weary about this project:
I can’t think of a good argument for why this is okay. No security person is ever comfortable with this, no matter what consent we get from the general public. The general public just doesn’t know how this stuff works, …
I continue to argue that If you work at Facebook, you should examine your moral compass to ask if you are comfortable with your role in what has only enriched the biggest fratboy prick in the entire world.
Remember: Facebook started out as an app to rate the fuckability of college girls. That set the tone for the next couple of decades of Facebook’s sinking into the morally defunct swamp.
27 March 2024 — French West Indies
Just 24% said they were satisfied with the NHS in 2023, with waiting times and staff shortages the biggest concerns.
That is five percentage points down on last year and a drop from the 2010 high of 70% satisfaction.
The poll - the gold-standard measure of the public’s view of the health service - has been running since 1983.
This is the result of an age-old strategy of making things progressively worse, with one aim —to privatise— and get the architects and their friends rich off the spoils. This is nation-level short selling on an industrial scale and should be illegal or, at the very least, highly regulated.
27 March 2024 — French West Indies
Burning the planet to a cinder is the answer to getting fans to buy your music?
This is such an extraordinarily bad take. Repeat after me: blockchain is not the answer.
26 March 2024 — French West Indies
I spent the weekend replacing an ageing Apple Airport wifi network with some fancy gear from Ubiquiti.
I should have done this ages ago, but I’m glad I waited for this generation of Wi-Fi device. The configuration options are much better than those in my previous kit.
18 March 2024 — French West Indies
So much of the Internet is now a Hobson’s choice, that we’ve lost what its purpose was.
7 March 2024 — French West Indies
Generative AI accountability
Should owners of GenAI machines be made responsible for their outputs?
I’m not sure whether I entirely agree with that statement, but I think a more nuanced interpretation could be considered for regulation or rules of use. Something like: If you can’t precisely describe how the algorithm produces its results in a methodological and repeatable manner, then perhaps you shouldn’t be operating them, and at the very least, you should be held responsible for their output.
These are not like search engines or social media platforms, despite the concerted effort to portray them as in the same category. The implication is that Section 230, therefore, shouldn’t apply.
TLDR: No one knows ‘how’ these systems work.
6 March 2024 — French West Indies
They say RSS died years ago, killed by Google.
Lol.
2 March 2024 — French West Indies
“FineWoven cases are junk, say majority, sharing photos of peeling and scratches.”
From 9to5Mac.
I’d argue that pretty much all of Apple’s recent accessories are junk these days. The quality and longevity have generally nosedived over the last few years.
Present Apple has changed from supplying quality equipment to extracting rents on services because it can no longer grow as it used to. On a finite planet, there’s only a finite number of people to sell stuff to. Shareholders are contributing to the decline of the very thing they believe they’re going to get rich from.
This is not another “Apple is doomed” post, but it is a waypoint in the history and direction the company has chosen.
26 February 2024 — French West Indies