It's another week, so another roundup
This post is migrated from the old Wordpress blog. Some things may be broken.
Three weeks running and still doing a Weekly Roundup! Is it remotely newsletter worthy as a format or in substance? Would anyone actually subscribe to this? Is the content even martingally monetisable? I’m especially dubious on that last one. I know newsletters are all the rage, but I remember subscribing to more of them than I ever read. As people migrate from Substack to Ghost and other newsletter and subscriber oriented models for good reasons, I wonder how many people will follow, or use it as a natural “unsubscribe” opportunity. When I started thinking about migrating to where I typed content onto the internet, I briefly considered substack — before it’s current controversy, which is really far from it’s only one — but decided sticking with a FOSS or hosted FOSS platform just made more sense. Also, if peiple are subscribing, I’d fee like I had to step up my game.
Anyhow, on with the tour.
Most people didn’t “leave” Twitter
There was some interesting data research on how many people who were outraged by Elon Musk’s handling of Twtter actually did something substantial about it regarding their own social media usage. The answer was kind of a mixed “no, not really.” In this post, I use a web AI toy to talk to the PDF that contains the study in lieu of reading the whole thing.
This Risky.Biz podcast on the maturing InfoSec industry
I’m trying to listen to more podcasts this year, I realise people have been doing so for ages, but I’m never big on subscribing to things because I end up with a backlog and feel like I’m more behind on everything. Same with email newsletters. They keep landing faster than I’ll get to reading them all. It’s like more versions of the book shelf in my sitting room that mocks me with the stack of books I still haven’t gotten around to reading yet. But Risky.Biz is worth the exception and to make time for.
Other bits and pieces on the web I found asborbing or maybe just mildely amusing and worth mentioning, with brief, possibly amusing justifications…
Secret Plan Against Germany — Correctiv.org is putting out some good investigative content. In this one, it describes a secret meetup between members of Germany’s increasingly popular rightwing party the AfD with others from other fringe parties further to the right to essentially “war game” a plan to forcably deport millions of German citizens and residents over their race or ethnicity. It’s a good piece in showing how fascism isn’t quite as dead in the country as many Germans may wish it was and also illustrates that while the Germany has really worked hard to marginalise this kind of racism at home, it has no problem encouraging and supporting ethno-nationalism abroad, such as in it’s recent intervention against Palestinians in Gaza on behalf of Israel at the International Court of Justice.
The Death Generator — I could easily see this web toy creating a lot of featured image content on the ol’e blog. It’s one of those meme format generators but using the screenshots and fonts of some of your favourite old video game death screens. It also seems to include some other pop-up notification screens as well that aren’t entirely “game over.” Create stupid memes or be deconstructive with nostalgia, your choice.
Researchers confirm what we already knew: Google results really are getting worse — It’s not you, it’s true. Google is getting worse at it search results. And we can blame black hat SEO in large part, as well as just a flood of generative AI nonsense content designed to appear as high quality to an algorithm. German boffins confirmed a decline in search engine results, particularly on Google, due to an influx of low-quality content from SEO farms and affiliate link sites. Google could fix this, but it’s probably deeply tied into its monetisation so don’t expect that to happen soon. I noticed one parton on Mastodon comment “I’ve resorted to bookmarking pages again.” How early 2000s!!
Surveillance-by-Design in Proposed Amendments to the U.K. Investigatory Powers Act — “The U.K. government is considering making significant changes to its primary government surveillance authority, the Investigatory Powers Act.” SA number of changes are not good at all and will mess with privacy and security rights for the public, but like most technical policy issues the implications are not well understood by either the media or often the policymakers themselves. In this Lawfare article, legal braniacs Richard Salgado and Jim Baker criticize proposed amendments to the U.K. Investigatory Powers Act, arguing how it will negatively impact UK citizens.
The Algorithms Too Few People Are Talking About — And here’s another Lawfare article, in which Amos Toh suggests that the “keys to effective AI regulation are hiding in plain sight,” but policymakers are looking in the wrong places. Example: “This preoccupation with generative AI is overshadowing other forms of algorithmic decision-making that are already deeply embedded in society and the lessons they offer on regulating emerging technology. Some of the algorithms that attract the least attention are capable of inflicting the most harm—for example, algorithms that are woven into the fabric of government services and dictate whether people can afford food, housing, and health care.”
Sometimes the social problem does have an engineering solution — I just liked it, so sharing it. We often let ethical/moral dillemma problems mislead us into forced binary thinking. The real world is not a thought exscersise though. Ending this week’s wrap with this one.
