Tag: technology

The content censors

Instagram shuts down street artist’s account:

There is an interesting free speech controversy in Melbourne and on the Internet. Melbourne street artist, Lushsux, has not only been told by a city council to remove a parody mural of Hillary Clinton but his Instagram account has been shut down. Once again, the concern is that there remains a overt liberal bias in the sanctioning of comments or images on the Internet.

Lushsux had more than 100,000 Instagram followers who enjoy his paintings and images — work that extends almost two decades. He noted that “It’s fine to go on and do a mural on Trump, but when I go and do one on Hillary Clinton, my account is gone.”

Notably, there are plenty of suggestive murals splashed across Melbourne’s street-scape, including murals featuring Republican nominee Donald Trump and a topless Melania Trump emblazoned with the Mrs Clinton’s campaign catchphrase, “I’m With Her.”

You know, I didn’t sweat it when Goodreads banned me and a few others over being Rabid Puppies. And while Milo didn’t deserve to get banned from Twitter, it wasn’t exactly shocking considering the way he’d been actively baiting them. But things are really starting to get very creepy and 1984 fast.

The SJW left controls the social media high ground and they are making no bones about their complete willingness to abuse their position in order to further their political agenda. Keep that in mind once the alternatives begin to present themselves.

Speaking of social media censors, Facebook has suspended Michael Savage:

Facebook has temporarily blocked talk-radio host Michael Savage from posting stories to his page after he put up a link to a story about a Muslim migrant killing a pregnant woman in Germany.

A message from the social media giant on Savage’s page said: “You recently posted something that violates Facebook policies, so you’re temporarily blocked from using this feature.”

The message then refers the user to Facebook’s “Community Standards” and states the block will be active for 21 hours.

Another Democratic hack

It is looking increasingly apparent that national security will not be in good hands with Hillary:

A computer network used by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hacked as part of a broad cyber attack on Democratic political organizations, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The latest attack, which was disclosed to Reuters on Friday, follows two other hacks on the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, and the party’s fundraising committee for candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives.

A Clinton campaign spokesman said in a statement late on Friday that an analytics data program maintained by the DNC and used by the campaign and a number of other entities “was accessed as part of the DNC hack.”

“Our campaign computer system has been under review by outside cyber security experts. To date, they have found no evidence that our internal systems have been compromised,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill.

Later, a campaign official said hackers had access to the analytics program’s server for approximately five days. The analytics data program is one of many systems the campaign accesses to conduct voter analysis, and does not include social security numbers or credit card numbers, the official said.

The U.S. Department of Justice national security division is investigating whether cyber attacks on Democratic political organizations threatened U.S. security, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The involvement of the Justice Department’s national security division is a sign that the Obama administration has concluded that the hacking was sponsored by a state, people with knowledge of the investigation said.

While it is unclear exactly what material the hackers may have gained access to, the third such attack on sensitive Democratic targets disclosed in the last six weeks has caused alarm in the party and beyond, just over three months before the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election.

On the one hand, you would think Hillary would have learned her lesson by now. On the other hand, the sort of person who puts server belonging to the Department of State in her closet and insists on using Gmail as Secretary of State probably isn’t capable of learning that particular lesson.

Anyhow, the US government is in no position to complain about other people electronically spying on its officials, agents, and agencies, as it is the worst offender on the planet.

Hilbot needs a reboot

Now, some have claimed that Hillary Clinton is ill, brain-damaged, prone to seizures, or a Lizard Queen whose human skin suit doesn’t always fit very well. However, I think that what we’re seeing here is a simple bug in Google’s Hilbot-16, easily repaired by a simple reboot. Nothing to worry about, as Google’s finest engineers are on it.

Please continue not noticing all of the information about the Democratic National Committee being released by Wikileaks.

What only exacerbates the creepiness is the way that she immediately tries to laugh it off and change the subject, which means this sort of thing has happened often enough that she’s been trained how to try to minimize people’s reactions to it. This is probably why she hasn’t been giving any interviews or press conferences.

One wonders how they plan to keep her under wraps if she were to win the election. Perhaps they have in mind a system like the one Robert Silverberg imagined for Majipoor, where the Pontifex disappears into the Labyrinth following his elevation from Coronal, never to be seen again.

It doesn’t matter, really. Because Trumpslide.

UPDATE: Snopes tries to play defense, fails.

The fact that Clinton immediately repeated her initial reaction for humorous effect supports the hypothesis that it stemmed from a conscious movement and not an involuntary seizure.

No, it means that the seizures happen often enough that she has a go-to strategy to try to convince people they did not see what they saw.

SJWs: the larger game

A review of SJWAL by TBC Book Review:

Gamergate is a consumer revolt against progressivism, but many, perhaps most Gamergaters are quite progressive. You could say more or less the same thing about Counter-Jihad figures such as Tommy Robinson or Milo. To Vox Day, these are all potential or actual allies.

The fact is, most will heal themselves from progressivism in steps, the two major ones being:

  1. The progressivist revolt against various aspects or consequences of progressivism.
  2. Becoming a reactionary: as an aesthetic revolt against ugliness, out of virile pride, and through metaphysical conversion.

BUILDING AN SJ-PROOF WORLD, ONE STEP AT A TIME

This is, without question, the most remarkable aspect of what Vox Day is doing, and of which SJWAL is just a component.

According to his theory, organizations not designed to resist social justice convergence will eventually undergo convergence, thus becoming incapable of performing their original function and creating market opportunities for competitors or new entrants.

This is the time to be ambitious.

Project Big Fork is proceeding apace, and on schedule, the occasional hiccup notwithstanding. The launch of version 1.0 and the public kickstarter to fund 2.0 is still expected to take place in September. However, we will likely have a new, and equally significant, announcement, in three weeks or so, that concerns another aspect of the socio-technological high ground. About which more anon, but feel free to speculate as you see fit.

We can’t fix or cure SJWs. Only God can do that. And while we can’t trust moderates or liberals in positions of leadership, we can certainly welcome them into our ranks if they are willing to follow our lead.

The challenge is to avoid mistaking the enthusiasm of the convert for the good sense of the individual who was wise enough to not be hoodwinked or misled in the first place. What worked for the Apostle Paul is very unlikely to work very well in any situation where there is no literal Road to Damascus encounter with the living Son of God.

For an example of what not to do, see the Republican Party and the neocons. Or, alternatively, the conservative movement and the conservative media.

How to use Brave at VP

After trying to sort out a different issue, I inadvertently discovered the problem with using Brave to comment here at VP. This is how to correct the problem and allow Brave users to comment here, assuming that you are like me and tend to keep your security levels reasonably high.

  1. Log into Google.
  2. Go to VP.
  3. Click on the orange lion head on the upper right to Open Bravery Panel. It will say Brave site shield settings for voxday.blogspot.com or your national equivalent.
  4. Take the shields down.

This also works with Name/URL for those who don’t wish to utilize a Google account. It is safe because the only scripts here are the local book carousel scripts, the Google scripts, and the Amazon scripts and it will only affect your browser security settings on this site. And you can click to see for yourself exactly what they are and confirm for yourself that they are harmless.

At the present, only one percent of the users here are on Brave. Let’s get that up over 20 percent! Even at this early stage, it really is worth the minor additional effort required.

KNOWN BUG AND TEMPORARY FIX: I was having a problem with both Twitter and Blogger periodically logging me out for no apparent reason. To prevent this, go to Settings, then Security, and under Private Data, turn off Clear All Site Cookies when Brave is closed.

Milo banned from Instagram

The Ralph Retort reports:

I know I said I was done with this story for today, but I also said that I’d be back if more news broke. Well, that just happened. Controversial Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos was just banned from Instagram for reasons that are, as of now, unknown. All I know is that his Instagram was pretty mild when I checked it the other day, so this isn’t making a lot of sense.

Excessive Fabulosity, one can only assume. It’s rather remarkable. At this point, Milo is banned from more places than I am.

Chinese buy Opera

This should shake things up in the browser world, to say the least:

After a $1.2 billion deal fell through, Opera has sold most of itself to a Chinese consortium for $600 million. The buyers, led by search and security firm Qihoo 360, are purchasing Opera’s browser business, its privacy and performance apps, its tech licensing and, most importantly, its name. The Norwegian company will keep its consumer division, including Opera Apps & Games and Opera TV. The consumer arm has 560 workers, but the company hasn’t said what will happen to its other 1,109 employees.

The original deal, announced in February, reportedly failed to gain regulatory approval. While expressing disappointment that it was scrapped, Opera CEO Lars Boilesen says “we believe that the new deal is very good for Opera employees and Opera shareholders.” The acquisition was approved by Opera’s board, and the company now has 18 months to find a new name, according to Techcrunch.

That’s great news for Brendan Eich and Brave, which is already the best browser out there. I still use Pale Moon for a few things, but 85 percent of my work is now done on Brave.

Anyhow, I would not advise using Opera or OperaMail anymore. It’s bad enough to share things with the US government through Google and Microsoft, but this is a whole new can of worms.

Trolls are federal criminals now

This Court of Appeals decision should making policing the blog considerably easier for the moderators:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has handed down a very important decision on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Facebook v. Vachani, which I flagged just last week. For those of us worried about broad readings of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the decision is quite troubling. Its reasoning appears to be very broad. If I’m reading it correctly, it says that if you tell people not to visit your website, and they do it anyway knowing you disapprove, they’re committing a federal crime of accessing your computer without authorization….

As I read the court’s opinion, the main issue is state of mind. Did you know that the computer owner didn’t want you to visit the website? At first, Power didn’t know Facebook’s view. But after the cease-and-desist letter, Power knew Facebook’s position. As a result, it was a federal crime to use Facebook after having received Facebook’s letter telling it to stay away. If I’m reading the opinion correctly, it appears that every contact with the computer that its owner doesn’t want is “without authorization.” The main question becomes mens rea: The visit becomes a federal crime when the visitor knows that the computer owner doesn’t want it.

Got that, everyone? If I tell you to go away, and you continue to visit or comment here, you are committing a federal crime. I’m sure the FBI doesn’t have anything better to do than investigate violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, so I trust you will comply.

The Wikipedian war

High-ranking SJWs at Wikipedia – or in Gamaliel’s case, formerly at Wikipedia – are up to their usual tricks in attempting to disemploy journalists who fail to submit to the SJW Narrative:

Wikipedia bills itself as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” In reality, it’s a bureaucratic mess dominated by a small clique of established editors who exploit their position to bully, smear, and intimidate anyone who challenges their authority.

Their latest target is David Auerbach, a highly regarded technology columnist for Slate and a fellow at the New America Foundation. Auerbach has been in the editors’ crosshairs ever since he wrote a series of damning exposes of Wikipedia’s bureaucratic elite in 2014.

In one of these columns, Auerbach described how the Wikipedian aristocracy maintain their power.

As it turned out, I’d run into a couple of what one Wikipedia administrator terms “The Unblockables,” a class of abrasive editors who can get away with murder because they have enough of a fan club within Wikipedia, so any complaint made against them would be met with hostility and opprobrium.

Longtime editors, wrote Auerbach, “have developed a fortress mentality in which they see new editors as dangerous intruders who will wreck their beautiful encyclopedia.” According to Auerbach, the combination of hostility to new editors, and the precipitous drop in longstanding ones (MIT Tech Review counted only 31,000 active editors in 2013, compared to a peak of 51,000 in 2007) “increases pressure to retain other long-standing editors, even incredibly acerbic ones, reinforcing the fortress mentality.”

Previously, Auerbach’s opponents targeted him on Wikipedia, attempting to smear him in public articles, and  have his own page deleted — both favorite tactics of editors looking to damage someone’s public image. Although those efforts failed, Auerbach’s opponents — who hold senior positions in the Wikimedia Foundation’s DC outreach unit — are now targeting his job.

Robert Fernandez, a member of Wikimedia DC’s Board of Directors and Audit committee, who goes by the pseudonym “Gamaliel” on Wikipedia, was the primary culprit, accusing Auerbach of being “pro-Brexit, pro-GamerGate” and “anti-SJW,” as well as a “libel machine.”

One tweet in particular was amusing:

It’s good to know that I am the Dark Lord haunting SJW nightmares. Which, for some reason, happens to remind me of something. There will be a Brainstorm tomorrow, for Brainstormers and OGs only, at 7 PM Eastern. Keep an eye out for the email this evening and be sure to register, as we’ll be launching Round Two and providing a progress report tomorrow.

Gamaliel unmasked

The Witchfinder General unmasks the anti-GamerGate Wikipedia administrator Gamaliel, who was, until recently, an Arbitration Committee member, Wikimedia DC board member, and the editor-in-chief of Wikipedia’s quasi-newspaper, The Signpost.

Unmasking Gamaliel

Your author has decided to name Gamaliel. Last year I concluded that there was no public interest in unmasking Gamaliel. He was a mere administrator and there is a convention that only in exceptional circumstances is a low ranking person in a large organisation named.

Recent events have caused me to review that decision and I have concluded that it is in the public interest now to name Gamaliel and reveal his occupation and employer—The former Wikipedia Arbitrator and Administrator known as Gamaliel is known as Robert Manuel Fernandez in real life.

1. Gamaliel is no longer junior. He held an international, policy-setting, elected position on the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee.
2. Gamaliel read my article ‘Paedophiles of Wikipedia’ and breached policy by not banning an admitted paedophile.
3. Gamaliel works in an educational institution as an assistant professor and a librarian and is in a position of trust.
4. Gamaliel has made potentially ruinous allegations against users of Wikipedia like The Devil’s Advocate and afforded them no opportunity to respond – indeed this blog treated Gamaliel and Jimmy Wales better and allowed them the opportunity to comment in advance.
5. When I put this article on hold out of pity for Gamaliel, his acolytes claimed contacting his employers was, ‘extortion’ … before doing far worse to David Auerbach.

Gamaliel is Robert Manuel Fernandez, Assistant Professor, Reference / Instructional Librarian at Saint Leo University, Florida.

I don’t know that it’s much of an “unmasking”, actually, but regardless, Fernandez is the poster boy for a considerable amount of what is wrong with Wikipedia. He is also a useful study in SJW entryism, even though Wikipedia itself is an SJW-controlled organization, in light of how he continually wormed his way towards positions of internal influence.

I suspect an inordinate number of Wikipedia administrators are low-level academics at lesser institutions. That’s why they have no shortage of time to spend thought-policing Wikipedia pages for any content that might call the SJW Narrative into question. It also explains why they almost invariably demonstrate terminal midwittery.