Tag: technology

Google is doing for health what Facebook did for privacy:

Lawyers, medical professionals and tech experts have reacted with a mixture of horror and fury after it emerged that Google has been secretly acquiring sensitive medical data on millions of people without their knowledge or consent.

Questions were immediately raised around the ethics of the data-gathering operation – code-named Project Nightingale – as well as the security of patient data after the program was first reported on Monday.

Others called for an immediate change to privacy laws after Google and Ascension, the healthcare organization it has partnered with, boasted that the scheme is completely legal….

The data includes names, dates of birth, lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records on ‘tens of millions of patients’, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first exposed the story. Neither doctors nor patients were informed that the data-gathering was taking place or given the chance to opt-out.

This promises to going to go so amazingly and absurdly wrong that it won’t surprise me if there are calls for the US government to declare war on Google and nuke its offices before it’s too late. Remember, good people don’t have to remind themselves “don’t be evil”.

As expected, once Linus Torvald permitted a code of conduct to be installed, the convergence of the Linux Foundation didn’t take long. It’s now against the Linux code of conduct to a) wear a MAGA hat, and b) take a picture in front of Trump Tower.

It’s time to start cracking down hard on SJWs and methodically excising them from your organizations. Zero tolerance is the only viable policy, as there is literally nothing they will not hesitate to ruin for the flimsiest of reasons.

Also, stop joining converged organizations! What is the point? They’re just going to cancel you as soon as they realize you are not part of the hivemind.

Facebook cries about its privacy being violated by a massive dump of its internal documents:

An explosive trove of nearly 4,000 pages of confidential internal Facebook documents has been made public, shedding unprecedented light on the inner workings of the Silicon Valley social-networking giant.

On Wednesday, the investigative reporter Duncan Campbell released a vast swathe of internal emails, reports, and other sensitive documents from the early 2010s that detail Facebook’s internal approach to privacy and how it worked with app developers and handled their access to user data.

The documents were originally compiled as part of a lawsuit that the startup Six4Three brought against Facebook for cutting off its bikini-photo app’s access to the developer platform. The documents were supposed to remain under seal – but they were leaked….

Facebook has fought vigorously against the release of the documents, arguing that they do not paint a balanced picture of its activities. In an emailed statement, a company representative told Business Insider: “These old documents have been taken out of context by someone with an agenda against Facebook, and have been distributed publicly with a total disregard for US law.”

They don’t paint a balanced picture? When has ANY Big Tech company been the least bit concerned with treating anyone fairly or painting a balanced picture of them.

Go cry to St. Efan.

Owen Benjamin explains how technology outruns the Big Lies:

What is the coolest thing you’ve ever done as part of your job at Goddard?

The last time anyone took a photograph from above low Earth orbit that showed an entire hemisphere (one side of a globe) was in 1972 during Apollo 17. NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites were designed to give a check-up of Earth’s health. By 2002, we finally had enough data to make a snap shot of the entire Earth. So we did. The hard part was creating a flat map of the Earth’s surface with four months’ of satellite data. Reto Stockli, now at the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, did much of this work. Then we wrapped the flat map around a ball. My part was integrating the surface, clouds, and oceans to match people’s expectations of how Earth looks from space. That ball became the famous Blue Marble.

I was happy with it but had no idea how widespread it would become. We never thought it would become an icon. I certainly never thought that I would become “Mr. Blue Marble.”

We have since updated the base maps by increasing the resolution and, for 2004, we made a series of monthly maps.

Notice that ALL of the hemisphere photography we think we’ve seen has turned out to be nonexistent. It’s becoming clear that from the evolution fairy tale to the Blue Marble fraud to the dinosaur fraud and the satellite myth, the world is very, very different than we have been told it is. What is the point? To deceive you into serving Satan rather than God.

So much for the idea of powering your home with solar panels:

One valuable lesson has been learned from the California blackouts concerning the greens’ vaunted solar power.

People with solar panels fitted to their homes have long acted under the impression that these granted them some immunity to blackouts.  They now know better.  Those who went to the heavy expense of purchasing and installing solar panels are in the same situation as their neighbors: no light, no heat, no power.

How does this make sense?  If you’ve got a system that generates power all by itself, with no outside aid or assistance necessary, then it’s a sure thing that it’ll continue generating power even after the grid itself is shut down, right?

Ah, but we’re dealing here with corporate policy.  And when that enters the picture, then sense of any kind quickly departs the stage.

It turns out that solar panels do not supply power to the homes they are attached to.  Instead, they transmit power out into the grid itself.  A complex system of credits is employed to reimburse the homeowner.

Forget being reliant upon it; even being connected to a centralized system turns out to be a fatal flaw when the system collapses. But hey, at least they got a tax break for installing them, right?

Illustrating once more that science is dependent upon technology rather than the other way around, a petty Python script bug may force the retraction of more than 100 published scientific studies:

Scientists in Hawaiʻi have uncovered a glitch in a piece of code that could have yielded incorrect results in over 100 published studies that cited the original paper.

The glitch caused results of a common chemistry computation to vary depending on the operating system used, causing discrepancies among Mac, Windows, and Linux systems. The researchers published the revelation and a debugged version of the script, which amounts to roughly 1,000 lines of code, on Tuesday in the journal Organic Letters.

“This simple glitch in the original script calls into question the conclusions of a significant number of papers on a wide range of topics in a way that cannot be easily resolved from published information because the operating system is rarely mentioned,” the new paper reads. “Authors who used these scripts should certainly double-check their results and any relevant conclusions using the modified scripts in the [supplementary information].”

Yuheng Luo, a graduate student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, discovered the glitch this summer when he was verifying the results of research conducted by chemistry professor Philip Williams on cyanobacteria. The aim of the project was to “try to find compounds that are effective against cancer,” Williams said.

To help understand how devastating this sort of thing could be for the profession and practice of science, consider the very frightening possibility that modern science increasingly relies upon the sort of people responsible for enhancing your user experience of Skype and manning Twitter “customer support”.

I’m not the only one who has noticed that the Yemeni drone attacks on Saudi Arabia have significantly changed the geo-strategic situation as well as the prospects for future war:

The devastating attack on Saudi oil facilities by drones and missiles not only transforms the balance of military power in the Middle East, but marks a change in the nature of warfare globally.

On the morning of 14 September, 18 drones and seven cruise missiles – all cheap and unsophisticated compared to modern military aircraft – disabled half of Saudi Arabia’s crude oil production and raised the world price of oil by 20 per cent.

This happened despite the Saudis spending $67.6bn (£54bn) on their defence budget last year, much of it on vastly expensive aircraft and air defence systems, which notably failed to stop the attack. The US defence budget stands at $750bn (£600.2bn), and its intelligence budget at $85bn (£68bn), but the US forces in the Gulf did not know what was happening until it was all over.

Excuses advanced for this failure include the drones flying too low to be detected and unfairly coming from a direction different from the one that might have been expected. Such explanations sound pathetic when set against the proud boasts of the arms manufacturers and military commanders about the effectiveness of their weapons systems.

Debate is ongoing about whether it was the Iranians or the Houthis who carried out the attack, the likely answer being a combination of the two, but perhaps with Iran orchestrating the operation and supplying the equipment. But over-focus on responsibility diverts attention from a much more important development: a middle ranking power like Iran, under sanctions and with limited resources and expertise, acting alone or through allies, has inflicted crippling damage on theoretically much better-armed Saudi Arabia which is supposedly defended by the US, the world’s greatest military super-power.

This is potentially very good news for humanity, in much the same way and for much the same reason that Minutemen defeating British regulars with cheap, readily-available musketry was good news. Historian Carroll Quigley observed that the democratization of weaponry tended to expand human freedom, while the monopolization of it tended to reduce it.

Today, it is the common man who has to fear the SWAT raid or the drone strike ordered by the rich and powerful. Tomorrow, the rich and the powerful will be every bit as vulnerable to the common man who is wronged by their actions.

So much for the Land of the Free propaganda. Only the Chinese and the British are as spied upon as Americans:

CNN HQ-host Atlanta was the US city to make the top ten list, with 15.56 cameras per thousand residents. Cities in China dominated the top 10 ten, with 8/10 spots. Cities in China averaged 39.93 to 168.03 cameras per thousand residents. London, England, was No. 6 on the list with 68.40 cameras per thousand residents.

The five other US cities on the top 50 most surveilled places in the world were all Democratic party bastions, including Chicago No. 13 with 13.06 cameras per thousand residents; Washington, DC, No. 28 with 5.61 cameras per thousand residents; San Francisco No. 38 with 3.07 cameras per thousand residents; San Diego No. 42 with 2.48 cameras per thousand residents, and Boston No. 46 with 2.23 cameras per thousand residents.

Kenneth Johnson, former Chicago Police Department commander of the Englewood district, told the New York Times last year that residents shouldn’t be worried about their privacy because the cameras are in public places. “This isn’t a secret. This isn’t an Orwellian ‘Big Brother.’”

Atlanta Sgt. John Chafee told Route Fifty that surveillance cameras “play a vital role” in keeping the public safe and the city is expected to expand its more than 7,800 cameras in the next several years.

Cameras keep the public safe? Despite the cameras, Atlanta, Chicago, and Washington DC are all in the top twenty cities with the highest murder rates in the USA. They’ll need to produce a better excuse for erecting the American Panopticon.

Jack Baruth addresses the ongoing cultural defenestration of Richard Stallman:

The idea of truly free software given to the world for humanitarian purposes would not exist without Stallman. He was the only person who ever had the thought. Which means it is more radical than calculus, heavier-than-air flight, the theory of relativity, or the atomic bomb. It took someone with Stallman’s particular blend of Promethean IQ and mentally handicapped social skills to push it all the way to reality. You live in Richard Stallman’s world, whether you like it or not. He has had more influence on how we communicate in 2019 than any other single human being currently living. Any sane society would consider him a national treasure of greater importance than Fort Knox, to be cherished and protected accordingly.

Naturally, our society has decided to crucify him. A young woman with an axe to grind has instigated a lynch mob through an astoundingly ill-conceived and illogical bit of emotionally dependent rhetoric:

There are so many things wrong with what Richard Stallman said I hardly know where to begin…

She totally can’t even!

There is nothing I have seen a man in tech do that a woman could not. What’s more, the woman would probably be less egotistical and more team-oriented about it.

This is how you know the author is a mental child. Any of us “could do” many things. I could have written any song, novel, or movie screenplay that has appeared between 1982 and now. Except I didn’t. The Egyptians could have invented the airplane and the laser and the K-cup coffee maker, but they didn’t. Only children deal in potential. Adults deal in reality.

Also, I hate to tell her this, and its embarrassing that I should be the one to lecture an MIT graduate on this, but teams are for normies, for neurotypicals, for trash people who can’t retain multiple levels of variable dereferencing in their heads while coding. Teams do not accomplish, and have never accomplished, anything of genuine intellectual value.

The history of scientific progress is a history of individuals. Yes, you need a “team” to actually assemble the atomic bomb or the Intel Itanium or a commercial software product. You don’t need a team to conceive it and do the mental heavy lifting. The effective IQ of a team is the same as the lowest IQ in the team; the productivity of the team is a minor percentage of the productivity you could get from its smartest member working alone. Every once in a while you will see one brilliant person be inspired by another brilliant person in the near vicinity. This happens once for every hundred million times a “team” crushes the abilities of its members.

Richard Stallman is, by all normal human standards, a complete lunatic. He also happens to be a genuine genius. And more to the point, by every sane human standard, Richard Stallman has done nothing wrong. While I think his postulations concerning possible defenses of Marvin Minsky’s alleged behavior are both a) incorrect and b) irrelevant, there is nothing remotely questionable or surprising about his formulating and expressing them.

Can you even imagine Richard Stallman being courted and corrupted by Jeffrey Epstein? That not only stretches the bounds of credibility, it’s got the potential to be a hilarious comedy sketch.

Epstein: Hey, Richard, do you like to party? I know some nice girls who would like to meet you.

Stallman: I would not be happy at a party. Especially not if it’s raining. You have a big face. Do you have a parrot?

Epstein: Um, no….

Stallman: Go away! Go away now!

But this isn’t a comedy sketch, it is today’s ugly reality.

On September 16, 2019, Richard M. Stallman, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation, resigned as president and from its board of directors.

Facebook is trying to spin federal law and be protected by it too:

Facebook has invoked its free speech right as a publisher, insisting its ability to smear users as extremists is protected – but its legal immunity thus far has rested on a law that protects platforms, not publishers. Which is it?

Facebook has declared it has the right, as a publisher, to exercise its own free speech and bar conservative political performance artist Laura Loomer from its platform. Even calling her a dangerous extremist is allowed under the First Amendment, because it’s merely an opinion, Facebook claims in its motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Loomer.

But Facebook has always defined itself as a tech company providing a platform for users’ speech in the past, a definition that has come to appear increasingly ridiculous in the era of widespread politically-motivated censorship. Now, the not-so-neutral content platform has redefined itself as a publisher, equipped with a whole new set of rights – but bereft of the protections that have kept it safe from legal repercussions in the past.

“Under well-established law, neither Facebook nor any other publisher can be liable for failing to publish someone else’s message,” Facebook’s motion to dismiss Loomer’s defamation suit reads, justifying its decision to ban her from the platform. It also points out that terms like “dangerous” or “promoting hate” cannot be factually verified and are thus constitutionally protected opinions for a publisher – while claiming it never applied either term to Loomer, despite banning her from its platform under its “dangerous individuals” policy.

Defining itself as a publisher opens Facebook up to lawsuits for defamation and other liability for the content users publish, something they were previously immunized against. All the lies, personal attacks, and smears launched by users going forward can now be laid at Facebook’s feet. That’s a Pandora’s box they might not want to open, legal analyst and radio host Lionel told RT.

Whatever they say – platform or publisher – their words will haunt them legally from now on.

Platforms like Twitter, Google, and – until now, apparently – Facebook are protected from the legal consequences of their users’ speech by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Facebook even makes reference to section 230 later in its motion, suggesting that it is trying to have its cake and eat it too.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, the legal departments of the SJW-converged tech companies are paper tigers. They are not at all accustomed to anyone standing up to them, they are riddled with diversity, and they are prone to flailing about dramatically and incoherently rather than articulating an internally consistent legal narrative.

Facebook cannot be both a platform and a publisher. Either it is a content-neutral platform or a publisher responsible for its content. In the Loomer case, it has clearly chosen to be a publisher and can now be held responsible for all the content it publishes.

On a not-completely-unrelated note, Indiegogo has announced new Terms of Use today.