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Watchdog finds dubious data gathering, illusory solicitations for consent The US Federal Trade Commission on Thursday said many internet service providers are sharing data about their customers, in defiance of expectations, and are failing to give subscribers adequate choices about whether or how their data is shared.…

It’s ‘near-impossible to escape persistent surveillance’ by American ISPs, says FTC — The Register

I half suspected this years ago, when I first learned about things like DnsCrypt. I didn’t quite understand why one would want to encrypt/verify their DNS lookups. I’ve learned since then that some part of man-in-the-middle attacks is using DNS lookups to re-direct to malware websites. The encryption component on the other-hand is meant to prevent anyone from easily seeing the DNS referral/lookups being made from end-to-end. With a software service like dnscrypt-proxy, you are defining a DNS host you trust, but furthermore you are encrypting the lookup, making it marginally more private. Alleviating the need to run your own personal DNS, or maintain a local Hosts file where you keep the mapping of host/ip address yourself. Dnscrypt-proxy IS a local dns service, and relies on a network of volunteer dnscrypt-proxy hosts who do the referrals/lookups and send back the ip address for a given lookup query. Now think about a careless, predatory ISP who only wants to drive their infrastructure into the ground using year 2000 era Cable Modem technology. Rent-seeking at its finest. No investment in infrastructure, no attempt to replace copper with fibre optic. No. Just drive that old investment into the ground and raise the marginal return by any means necessary. Generally this is by having you sign up for triple-play/triple-pay schemes where they make you subscribe to cable TV channels you’ll never watch to get a better monthly subscription rate.

However what happens then when that well dries up? It’s not likely they’re getting people to drop their existing cable modem provider for another one, because most Cable providers are local monopolies. What to do? Well, most cable modems have their configurations burned into them at the factory. Default DNS server on your cable modem? Well that’s provisioned up at the head end, at the ISP using the provisioning directives built-in to the modem. Simple lookup (almost like DHCP), and you find the ISP’s dns server, and then the data collection begins. ISP is watching, monitoring, auditing, surveilling you like you were an enemy of the National Security Agency. Everything is logged, tagged, collated, collected and sold to idiots like Peter Thiel (of Palantir fame) or Robert Mercer (of Cambridge Analytica fame). These mercenary personal data collectors de-anonymize the vast stores of data collected on you and correlate A-L-L of it, to sell to other more shadowy users of your personal data. The circle of surveillance will target you for untold marketing, or worse, attacks against your personal computer on the ISP’s network. However, they don’t care, they just want more and more money.

*Nota Bene: With full credit going to one Mr. Kilgore Trout and his essayist/biographer another Mr. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (from the book Breakfast of Champions)

“Gilgongo!” was about a planet which was unpleasant because there was too much creation going on.

The story began with a big party in honor of a man who had wiped out an entire species of darling little panda bears. He had devoted his life to this. Special plates were made for the party, and the guests got to take them home as souvenirs. There was a picture of a little bear on each one, and the date of the party. Underneath the picture was the word: GILGONGO!

In the language of the planet, that meant “Extinct!” People were glad that the bears were gilgongo, because there were too many species on the planet already, and new ones were coming into being almost every hour. There was no way anybody could prepare for the bewildering diversity of creatures and plants he was likely to encounter. The people were doing their best to cut down on the number of species, so that life could be more predictable. But Nature was too creative for them. All life on the planet was suffocated at last by a living blanket one hundred feet thick. The blanket was composed of passenger pigeons and eagles and Bermuda Erns and whooping cranes.

Reading these words takes me back to age 14 when I first read this bit of adult doggerel at the urging of my Mom. If you can believe it, the book like all great literature tries to meet you where you are. Not a kids book. But understandable by a kid, let me tell you. The crazy goings on, Dwayne Hoover/Wayne Hoobler’s decent into nervous breakdown, Midland, Ohio. There was just so much to read and laugh at, but the big triumphal meetup between Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover, and the sharing of the book, “Now it can be told”,… boy that was art, man. Total art. But some really doozy’s along the way too, like the seeming throw-a-way synopsis of Kilgore Trout’s lifes work. Short stories like Gilgongo! What harkens back, to that time of yore, was a story last night on the PBS News Hour and the most recent announcement of animal species being taken off the endangered list (wait for it! there’s more to this sentence) and placed on the extinction list. Yeah Boy! They lift you up only to take you back down again. A Mollusk and number of birds all gone, all Gilgongo. I always will think of this every time I hear or read about an extinction event.

Instant ramen becomes fizzy drinks, and we’ve tried them all so you don’t have to.   Just the other day, Nissin, the creators of Cup Noodle, the world’s first-ever instant noodle, came out with their craziest 50th birthday announcement yet: they would be releasing Cup Noodle sodas. That’s right, the esteemed makers of the instant Cup…

Cup Noodle Sodas: Culinary innovation or beverage abomination? — SoraNews24 -Japan News-

Lucky for us average citizens, unaware of this novelty, it’s only a promo from Nissin to celebrate their 50th anniversary of the Cup Noodle product itself. Can you believe it? Cup Noodle has been around 50 years now. My, my how time flies by.

Firmware-based system recovers encrypted data in seconds, but manufacturers are proving reluctant A team of researchers claim to have come up with an upgrade that makes SSDs impervious to ransomware attacks – detecting infections and reverting unexpected encryption within a matter of seconds, at the cost of a small increase in latency.…

Boffins unveil SSD-Insider++, promise ransomware detection and recovery right in your storage — The Register

I say, “Give me the latency”, and I’ll take cold comfort in the insurance that any ransomware script kiddy from Russia will have a bad day. Bring it ON!

Shouldn’t the idea of publishing on the web mean generating something that can “echo all around the world”? Once again, my experience shows that if you publish something on an employer’s web site, or a company’s web site, or even in something that just takes away the work of managing web sites, the chances of…

What the Olde Links Say About Domains — CogDogBlog

Alan Levine ladies and gentleman (the Linklover himself), pointing out the fact that if you don’t preserve something yourself on the web, then WHO is going to preserve it? If you hope, wish, the Inter Wayback Machine will be your only hope, that may come true. But that’s no guarantee either, over time. Which reminds me, a funny thing about end notes, even in real book publishing. I started/stopped multiple times reading through Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” after hearing about from her co-author Nell Scovell. That’s a whole other book, story, anecdote. So I thought you know I just read this auto-biography from Nell Scovell and she’s really good, so maybe I should ALSO read the book she helped Sheryl Sandberg wtih. So I did, and dear reader, that book is chock full of Sociological references and academic citations par excellence. Everything is documented, backed-up and fact checked by real Stanford U. folks who made certain her book was a slam dunk in it’s thesis and claims. However, reading through all those end notes it occurs to today, just as I finished it, almost HALF of the citations were themselves effing URLs,… The other half fully MLA/ReWorks style print/journal publications. So even as I write this I think about the link rot to every video, anecdotal recollection and random weblink tossed in for completeness. How long before before someone even as famous as Sheryl Sandberg’s magnum opus begins to tatter and fray in the end notes? It will happen.

When I first started blogging, it was on the old Userland Frontier website created and hosted for “free” by Userland software (a product of super-genius, Dave Winer). The reason why I chose that platform? Same as most people I guess. I read about in the pages and online editions of Byte Magazine, as Jon Udell began plumbing the depths of RSS, and the River of News, long before algorithmic curation of wall-gardens we call Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Twitter. Those were the days, weren’t they? But now we still can do it, just using different tools, and hosted on personal domains. And that’s key, your domain, your stuff, your responsibility. It’s the self-sufficiency and freedom we hear being paid lip-service in pop-culture political circles, and pundit channels on social media. ONLY, it’s actually true, and we benefit directly from the fact we have the agency, autonomy, and means to own our little section of land out there on the Interwebs. Nobody can grief me, swat me, take it away or hold it hostage. As long as I keep paying my domain registrar, it’s mine. It belongs to me. But occupancy isn’t the same as ownership, and that’s where Alan’s admonition about link rot comes in. Whatever you do, invest the time and keep painting, sanding, weeding and re-linking those old resources you treasured. Find them, site-suck them and host them locally if need be.

Feel-good story about a Japanese convenience store becomes one of the most unexpected surprises at the Olympics. If you’ve ever visited Japan, you’ll know just how wonderful its convenience stores are. Unlike a lot of convenience stores overseas, the ones in Japan are warm, clean and inviting, with door chimes to welcome you and a…

Canadian reporter’s love for 7-Eleven steals the show at Tokyo Olympics — SoraNews24 -Japan News-

Amen and amen, to fellow Japan traveler Devin Heroux. He has to try a curry bun (Kare pan). And don’t just limit travels to 7/11 either. Try out ALL the combini. Try out Family Mart (Fami Chiki- that’s their signature chicken cutlet made with dark meat). Also try Sunkust and Lawson’s too. They’re everywhere and just as high quality and interesting as 7/11. But truth be told 7/11 is better in that they have the International currency ATM. You can get Japanese cash at the ATM so much easier than any actual bank in Japan. Most Japanese banks save for one or two of them have agreements with U.S. international ATM networks. But 7/11 does! So I go there once a week when traveling to get my Suica card charged up for all the trips on the JR trains, and other private lines and subways around Tokyo.

Can Mr. Sato collect them all or will he wilt beneath the early summer sun trying? Stuffed with sweet red bean paste and consisting of a soft, doughy exterior, anpan is a timeless classic and a ubiquitous feature in bakeries across Japan. The baked sweet is so popular that convenience store chain Daily Yamazaki has…

Anpan Roundup: Mr. Sato’s odyssey to gather all Daily Yamazaki red bean buns local to Tokyo【Pics】 — SoraNews24 -Japan News-

I love when Mr. Sato does a quest of some sort. I’ve seen him order different food items (some of them were “extreme” large portions from promotions done at various food chains). But Ampan is even cooler still. And it’s all within Metro Tokyo. So it’s conceivable one could hit all the train stations and get to each of the locations. I like that they try to promote local specialties, so there’s more variety than your bog-standard, base level ampan. So here it is a the full tour of all the locations where Mr. Sato sought each version of ampan.

The pros and cons of living in Nakagin Capsule Tower, an architectural marvel in Tokyo

Yes, it still exists. And the author is attempting to stay in the building for one month. Efforts to raze the building are on hold. Similarly the building is not being actively rented out (no doubt due to Covid19), but the writer was able to make contact with the person in charge and find an open room to rent for 1 month. Amenities do not include hot water (I remember the issue about hot water pipe causing BIG problems some time back). It happens that hot water was turned off in 2010 to avoid another issue with pipes breaking. I’ve seen some photos of water-damaged rooms in the building as well. But, happy to see it’s in good enough shape for occupancy. Even with that you still have to use a laundry and the closest one (in Ginza/Shimbashi area) is 16 minutes walk. (sheesh!) Similarly no working refrigerator either (sad emoji). So just be warned 1 month is likely the most anyone would “want” to visit once they score a berth in the building. Just be prepared to eat out, bring in, and dispose of all your combini trash. And also, get used to using the common shower facility (they do at least have that available, so no need to trackdown a convenient sento in that high-priced neighborhood.).

Want to give full credit to O’Reilly Radar and NYTimes.com for the articles they published that got me thinking about threats to the veracity and usefulness of the Internet these days.

SIFT and DeepCheapFakes

Tuesday, May 11, 2021

10:11 AM

I know Mike Caulfield was spotlighted in a NYTimes article addressing ways to defend oneself against the tricks and fakery of Conspiracy Theory promoters

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-attention.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/opinion/fake-news-media-attention.html

SIFT (The Four Moves) has been a clarion call to help arm students against the vagaries and intangible hidden motives of the Internet-at-Large. https://hapgood.us/2019/06/19/sift-the-four-moves/. But can one laterally read “at scale”? I think the argument against that would be, whaddya mean? These are “individual” articles and claims made on individual websites. But even Caulfield understands and has said in past that it is so hard to defend against this because it’s so easy to create the disinformation in the first place. This isn’t just about the attention one can devote to performing the “The Four Moves”, this more like Nuclear Proliferation. We’re not subject to a finite set of people who are creating content in bad faith. No. We are dealing with people who have access to tools, akin to nuclear warheads and the industrial complex (meaning Nuclear Power Industry), that can provide large amounts of precious materials “at scale” to make warheads. This is where the U.S. and U.S.S.R. found themselves in the early 1980s, with 20,000 warheads apiece. If you have the nuclear power plants generating power, it’s easy to process the spent fuel rods into Tritium gas and Plutonium 239, it’s a mere extraction process. Before you know it, you have more raw material than you could ever dream of to create a stockpile of weapons to use. Thankfully we don’t use them, but the danger is real. Even today.

Which brings me to the statement of disinformation, bad-faith actions “at scale” when it comes to navigating sources of so-called information on the Internet. In the NYTimes article the four moves are SIFT

1. Stop.

2. Investigate the source.

3. Find better coverage.

4. Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.

Luckily in the process, there’s always some good faith actors, source of record with copies end-notes with further references (those are harder to fake). But wither Wikipedia? And news organizations of recorder (in an example provided to the NYTimes report, news service Agence France-Presse fact-check site is used). In the article does admit later, that “SIFT is not an antidote to misinformation”. But still there’s a further lurking danger out there. And it isnt’ the depletion of our attention, and what to direct it at. It’s the casual, CheapDeepFake as described in O’Reilly Radar website (of Tim O’Reilly fame). https://www.oreilly.com/radar/deepcheapfakes/ by Mike Loukides

So while Mike Caulfield is arguing it’s our attention span that’s being gamed by these sources of bad faith, disinformation on the Internet, Mike Loukides is pointing out the “at scale” threat, the nuclear proliferation model of disinformation. Meaning, what if one can casually create seemingly legitimate responses, valid comments to public calls for citizen input? The prime example is the recent discovery that FCC requests for public comments on elimination of Net Neutrality was “gamed” most likely using at technology, tool to create disinformation “at scale”. No amount of attention could sift through the use of legitimate people’s names unlawfully for fake public comments on the FCC website. Furthermore, now there are trained AI engines who specialize in human readable text (GPT-3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3. Which can be “wielded” for a low rate per hour from Cloud Services providers like Microsoft’s Azure. This is what Mike Loukides is referencing when he is worried about DeepCheapFakes. The quality of output of a GPT-3 instance is “so high that it is difficult to distinguish from that written by a human”. So while you may do a SIFT Four Move search on Google, read laterally, how will that “scale”, how will your attention smart bomb deal with the overwhelming response of GPT-3 generating effortlessly millions of bits of content, at-scale, DeepFake and in bad faith? One can only hope that like Nuclear Weapons everyone will be afraid to use them, though the consequences may be less dire (end of civilization, end of the planet vs. the end of Civil Discourse). But the problem is still the same. In past books, TV, Film, were all inaccessible to the majority and tended to favor through things like editors, and  peer reviewers. So there was a built-in attention economy favoring good faith actors in those media. But not-so the Internet. Nay, we are faced with new inventions, new weapons of casual destruction, fast, cheap and outta control for whatever ends the bad-faith actor may pursue. The only way to not fall victim, sadly, just as was the case in the movie War Games, is to “never play the game”. Meaning, one should consider the inherent value of the Internet. If this is what is possible, what it has come to. My attention will be re-directed, and analog. But for now I put my money where the source is, I fund things like Wikipedia as it’s a bulwark against the causal DeepCheapFake (for now at least, until GPT-3 compromises that set of peer reviewers and editors). Fingers-crossed.

Road and Track Magazine: If you think we’re anywhere near fully autonomous cars, this video might convince you otherwise.

Thank you Road and Track magazine and website for doing the testing on this long-standing belief in Tesla’s insurmountable technological lead in Autonomous Driving. I’ve marveled at each and every notable reported accident where-in a driver ran the auto-pilot on a Tesla and then watched in horror as the car drove them to their death. That’s happened.

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/tesla-sued-defective-autopilot-wrongful-death-suit-florida/story?id=64706707

In the details of this case, they measured the speed, distance, visibility and actions taken by the car and the driver. It’s painfully obvious the driver was waiting, waiting, waiting for the car to DO something. In fact it didn’t do anything. I drove right into/under the trailer as it crossed BOTH lanes as it was turning onto the road from a traffic cross-over on a two lane highway. The car never slowed, never braked. And neither did the driver until it was far to late. The car went under the trailer, killing the driver on impact.

And there are other Autonomous Vehicle accidents that have led to wrongful death lawsuits. Sometimes, it’s a car hitting a a pedestrian. In Arizona, an Uber vehicle being tested for Autonomous Driving ran over a woman walking a bicycle across a road at night. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/uber-driverless-fatality.html. So there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary that ANYONE has an insurmountable lead on the Autonomous Vehicle of the future. There isn’t even a “present” in this, a now, a benchmark of Autonomous Vehicles. It’s all experiments, semi-undocumented, not-recommended by the manufacturers, but widely documented and discussed and visible to the Internet. And that’s where the typical Elon Musk acolyte, ditto-head who gushes endlessly about how smart Elon Musk is, and how infallible, and how much he KNOWS. Well that bubble was burst long ago with questionable behavior, decisions, and public actions he has made. Tesla exists not so much for the technology, (even now) but from the perseverance of Musk which is legendary. He doesn’t let up, he’s relentless in the face of mounting failures. One could argue Tesla even still doesn’t make a profit, UNLESS one counts the personal wealth of Musk, valuation of the company. Valuation is not sales. Valuation does not a market make. Cars need to sell, supply chains need to exist, fueling stations need to exist, aftermarket parts need to exist, that’s how the automotive industry came into being in the 20th industry. Electric cars are not a new industry, they are a step-wise evolution of an existing one.

GM tried to get Electric Vehicles going back in the late 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1. GM attempted a first pass with the EV1, and decided to pull it from the market. That doesn’t mean EVs in general are a bad idea. But GM couldn’t make it work given all the required parts that “need to exist”. Charging stations/refueling stations need to exist STILL even all these years after the first Tesla S rolled out and was sold to the first paying customer. Since then, more models, different price ranges, different features, improved models have all been developed and released. And each time the coin is pitched into the wishing well, with each car built and sold that this thing will take and hold and Tesla will compete literally with the other global manufacturers. Market Valuation is not monthly sales, or quarterly reports.

And furthermore technology, amiright ;^)

No amount of technology and pursuit of that technologists, “one true thing”, in this case Autonomous Vehicles, is ever going to make the market. Howzabout we just get enough EVs out there the start to move the needle on reducing fossil fuel usage for transportation? Or better yet, EVs plus increase usage of and availability of convenient Public Transport. Maybe the increase of both EVs and Public Transportation would have the actual impact all the acolytes and dittoheads of Elon Musk purport is happening through Tesla Motors. I don’t see it now. And don’t expect to see it from Tesla Motors. And the Road and Track article on Tesla’s “beta” of Autonomous mode puts the lie to the purported “truthiness” that there is an insurmountable technical lead, and that Tesla has it. I can only conclude there is no “there” there, when it comes to insurmountable anything, other than hubris, which Tesla, Musk and all his acolyte dittoheads have in quantity. That’s the only lead they have.