Thursday 26 September 2019
Sunday 1 September 2019
go set a watchman
Via Boing Boing, we‘re exposed to a rather inverted demonstration project that leans heavily into the susceptibility of neural networks to human prejudice and pareidolia to pluck what could pass as evidence from the grainy though not necessarily sensitive to granularity.
Researchers—the sort that also lean heavily on gimmickry and Security Theatre—are training artificial intelligence on progressive facial resolution and recognition to limn in the incriminating details spared in historical footage. As shown nightmarishly on pixelated emoji, the subroutine wants to attribute greebling characteristics that are not honestly present with the potential of a netting an intruder or interloper whose culpability is boosted by being the unfortunate victim of circumstance and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. These applications can potentially turn into digital age witch-trials are rooted in the same mentality that supposes any image could be enhanced indefinitely or that the work of forensics is instantaneous and straightforward, speaking to authorities and actuaries that want a villain without regard to accuracy.
Tuesday 30 July 2019
incognito mode
Absent effective legislation or political will, Polish artist Ewa Nowak is staging her own intervention in the form of disruptive, masking jewelry that defeats facial recognition software (see also). The business of surveillance does not police itself but at least countermeasures can adapt as well and such stands are especially urgent as such automated monitoring is not only used by state-players to track whereabouts, it’s also being aggressively adopted by the marketing industry to enchant and guide our shopping experience.
Saturday 27 July 2019
moral hazard, moral obligation
Like the slap on the wrist that a social media giant received for bulldozing democracy and delivering Trump and Johnson and leaving us hobbled and handicapped absence the public trust and confidence in institutions and process to try to reclaim our government and civil society, a consumer credit-reporting agency was also given a paltry fine for its wrongdoings, compromising the data and confidence (and covering it up) of millions of Americans and people abroad. And though staking one’s claim to the class-action settlement for the amount allocated to each affected person is a bit onerous and insulting and probably the cheap alternative they are salivating over to avoid consequential punishment in the future, should you want these giant financial institutions to aspire to be better custodians of our data in the future, you ought to take the time and file your claim. It’s worth $125 at minimum to you (this is your entitlement for being put at risk for identity theft), more if you can demonstrate hardship encountered above and beyond that—and it’s just regurgitating back to the creditors the personal details on you they already have and then carelessly lost.
Wednesday 24 July 2019
ditto
Via Slashdot, we learn that the software engineer behind Twitter’s re-tweet button has a lot of remorse about his endowment to civilisation, comparing the feature that was originally installed to facilitate news in a natural disaster, which was indeed a force-multiplier in terms of virality, to having “headed a loaded weapon to a four-year-old.” Other social media sites developed their own form of push-button sharing soon afterwards. There are doubts whether the genie can be put back in the bottle.
catagories: ๐ฅธ, ๐ง , networking and blogging
Monday 22 July 2019
8x8
bird of prey: Airbus reveals concept hybrid-powered aircraft design that relies on biomimicry to boost efficiency
malpratise: Johnson’s and Trump’s assault on the NHS through relaxing UK price-controls on medication
we liked the sequel, also sprach zarathustra: re-mapping syllabi from institutions of higher learning
southern exposure: the rotating solaria of Doctor Jean Saidman
groundcrew: support staff of Japan’s Air Self-Defence Force (est’d 1954) celebrated its sixtieth anniversary with precision scooter manoeuvres
dysfluency: virtual assistants have an array of human touches to build trust and rapport
re-freezer: ingenious plan to combat rising oceans by replenishing the ice-sheet artificially
engage: the trailer for Star Trek: Picard (previously)
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐, ๐, ๐ฅธ, ๐งณ, architecture, environment
Friday 12 July 2019
herd immunity
As the Chorus bemoans in Sophocles’ Antigone, “Nothing that is vast enters the life of mortals without a curse,” technology—impelled in part by not only the forces of capitalism and the need to maintain market and industry dominance but also by dint of our own inclination to laziness and decision-fatigue—has been an incredible support and source of solace and progress but likewise delivers a vehicle for remorse and helps us to bite off far more than we can chew. We are not good at self-assessment and postponing gratification. This latest edition of NPR’s TED Radio Hour explores the topic of digital manipulation and what lies behind the screen from several angles and is definitely food-for-thought.
catagories: ๐ฅธ, ๐ง , networking and blogging
Wednesday 3 July 2019
7x7
the farmer and the cowhand can be friends: a racy revival of Oklahoma! as a heuristic tool for exploring identity
eggcorn: celebrating malapropisms (see also) and mixing of idioms
horologium florรฆ: botanist and taxonomist Carl Linnaeus noted the opening and closing times of different species of flowers and proposed that one could reliably tell time by their routine
do not pass go: the downfall of Atlantic City (previously) reflects the psychopathic Schadenfreude of Trump’s evangelic of opportunism
skin deep: facial recognition payment systems will start applying beauty-filters so users don’t feel self-conscious
brick-and-mortar: anchor retailors offer to help US government scrutinise their online arch-rivals
toypography: 1990s play things turned into letters of the alphabet—see also
Monday 1 July 2019
7x7
general strike: Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger calls for a boycott of social media as a Declaration of Digital Independence, via Slashdot
imts: an exploration of mobile telephony (see also) from the 1940s onward
move fast, bank things: a helpful primer on a social media giant’s currency roll-out
a different kind of energy: US presidential contender Marianne Williamson
hang a yield sign in your rear window to prevent cars from passing: driverless vehicles are highly susceptible to spoofing
soffa sans: IKEA releases a new font in response to people testing the limits of their Vallentuna sectional planning tool
one of these things is not like the others: nepotism is not easy on the eyes
Wednesday 26 June 2019
8x8
blood meridian: two animated maps (see also) chart Manifest Destiny from contrasting perspectives
lobby cards: the iconic film posters and title sequences of Saul Bass (previously here and here)
strong to the finich: because of the leafy green’s steroidal qualities, some are calling for it to be banded like other doping agents
scientific method: brilliant vintage middle school text books via Present /&/ Correct
nineteen eighty-four was not meant to be an instruction manual: workers trialled with beacons and bracelets to monitor performance and productivity
best in show: a curated selection of the winners of the National Geographic travel photography competition
lj: going into production in 2021, the Lightyear One represents the industry’s first long-range and untethered electric vehicle, via Design Boom
pomological catalogue: the 1886 US contract for watercolour depictions of all the world’s fruit
catagories: ๐ณ๐ฑ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐, ๐ท, ๐ฅธ, food and drink, labour, sport and games, transportation
Tuesday 18 June 2019
6x6
t-minus: the Apollo 11 mission in real time using historical mission footage, via Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals
scrip: garbage cryptocurrency from a garbage social media company isn’t crypto at all
that yorkshire sound: hand-drawn animated short illustrates an every day, vibrant soundscape
carissimi auditores: after a thirty year run, Finnish broadcasters are ceasing their news in Latin segment, but no fear as the report gives other resources
deaccessioned: a large auction house will no longer be publicly traded as it goes into private hands
แน:“For Want of a Hyphen Venus Rocket is Lost” – programming is unforgiving
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐, ๐ฅธ, ๐งฎ, libraries and museums, networking and blogging
Thursday 23 May 2019
7x7
bit part: a preview of a biopic about Claude Shannon (previously)—the unsung Father of Information Theory
the revolution will not be biennialised: Banksy (previously) makes an appearance at a Venice expo, selling paintings of giant cruise ships moored in the canals
en pointe: the Hong Kong Ballet celebrates its fortieth birthday
๐พ ๐พ ๐พ: Thangrycat is exploiting vulnerabilities in the underpinning architecture of the internet
urban spelunking: when the Jehovah’s Witnesses relocated from Brooklyn Heights to upstate, their vacated properties included a series of underground passageways, via Super Punch
conducive to learning: a collection of striking maps and charts that inspired pupils in the late nineteenth century
walking trot: phones can now determine who is carrying them by knowing their users’ gait and other kinematic factors, via Slashdot
Wednesday 22 May 2019
heritage tourism
In what smacks very much as an unholy alliance that turns over a rock to reveal that there’s already a booming genealogical travel industry, one problematic force of the gig-economy that’s turned gentrification into overdrive and percolated a housing crisis in the popular destination of the moment that’s proving very hard to recover from and another DNA analysis service that’s demonstrated some serious problems with confirmation bias and sampling-size form a partnership to make holiday-suggestions based on one’s ancestry—for those wanting to rediscover their roots.
Family histories can of course be fascinating, enlightening and humbling—to help us all realise that each of us has been uprooted and transplanted in one way or another, but this method and the package it promises does not strike me as the advisable way to dig around in the past. It’s a huge dissonance that we’ve cushioned ourselves to such a great extent to maintain our distance from others and avoid interaction or betraying intent, and yet we will invite strangers into our homes and automobiles and hope they’ll judge us well. What do you think? The two companies pledge that data about one’s DNA and travelogue won’t cross but I can’t see how that can be prevented. We’d all like to be able to extemporaneously share our narratives and autobiographies (especially when they reaffirm our uniqueness) and perhaps have a dramatic reunion with long-lost cousins, but I don’t think that journey is one that ought to be short-circuited though marketing gimmicks and cynical ploys for horizontal monopolies on one’s aspirations.
Tuesday 21 May 2019
kaiten-zushi
Via Boing Boing, we’re served up a rather delightful little movie from the point of view of a camera mounted on the conveyor belt of a sushi restaurant (ๅ่ปขๅฏฟๅธ, literally rotating sushi). Every moment is splendid and captures the joys of dining out with friends, each passing booth telling its own story, some reacting to the camera and other too focused to notice. It’s a sweet one off feat but I wouldn’t want this repeated (the conversations are muffled with a soundtrack) and feel surveilled every time I ate out—especially given my propensity for being clumsy with plates and utensils. We also appreciated how the source website categorised the video under the label sonder.
Here’s a video of a guy putting a camera on a sushi conveyer belt. It’s wonderful. Every table has a little story! pic.twitter.com/6mwKsTHJ0e— Drew Coffman (@DrewCoffman) May 17, 2019
Monday 20 May 2019
alphabet soup or no such agency
Having relocated (see also) from Washington, DC to New York City on this day in 1919, the antecedent to the National Security Agency, a three-person operation called the Cipher Bureau, was ostensibly declared redundant after the conclusion of World War I but continued intelligence activities fronting as a business, the Code Compilation Company, providing encryption services for businesses wanting to protect trade secrets that could negatively impact stock prices and investor confidence.
Under the รฆgis of a group calling themselves the Black Chamber, comprised of recruits from the similarly disbanded Army cryptographic corps, the Company managed to convince Western Union and other telegraph operators to allow them access to the communication networks and focused on intercepting diplomatic cables exchanged through the many consulates concentrated in the city. After the nature of the operations came to the attention of the upper echelons of the government a decade later, the Secretary of State/Secretary of War Henry Lewis Stimson ordered the Company to be shutdown, with the remark, “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” With the outbreak of World War II and the US entry, the talent pool was conscripted again and underwent several re-organisations and fell under the auspices of different military and civilian activities until finally centralised as the Armed Forces Security Agency, with the responsibility for all cryptographic analysis, recognising the precariousness of the geopolitical situation post-war, on 20 May 1949. Due to conflicts between civilian and military intelligence resources and over-compartmentalisation, President Harry S Truman formally established a civilian equivalent three years later through a then classified directive to share intelligence for their joint mission.
Wednesday 15 May 2019
6x6
reaction faces: Tadas Maksimovas creates a twelve-barrelled sling shot to pelt people with likes and hearts
line item: the humble receipt gets a rather brilliant redesign to visualise how your grocery bill adds up
novgorod: Sergei Eisenstein (previously) collaborated with Sergei Prokofiev to produce the score for Alexander Nevsky (1938), which remains the cinematic standard
pink pop: a delightful vintage Shiseido cosmetic commercial from 1968
saving face: San Francisco becomes the first municipality to prohibit the use of facial recognition surveillance technology
happy accidents: much needed pick-me-ups from Bob Ross—previously
Tuesday 14 May 2019
privatsphรคre
Nearly a year after sweeping privacy and data-retention legislation went into effect in the European Union, one dominant force in shaping the architecture of the on-line world is committing to open a privacy and safety engineering hub in Mรผnchen, to demonstrate the company’s pledge to take security, integrity and demography seriously.
It’s one thing to be exposed to the same commercials ad nauseum but quite a different matter to be denied a job interview or insurance coverage or detoured away from a given destination by dint of the same inscrutable predilections. Failure to comply with current regulations could result in fees upwards of four percent of the internet giant’s global revenue. Let’s hope that this venture helps promote German and EU expectations for privacy and foster a better corporate culture that’s not enabled and entitled to monetise our consent.
Friday 10 May 2019
chumbox
Exploring further the “rewards” (see here, here and here) we get for actually finishing an article, Vox correspondent Kaitlyn Tiffany wades through the dregs of advertising—dubbed in the industry as chumboxes.
The goal was to chase down the elusive identity of the “vegetable” that an equally dodgily credentialed gut doctor is begging Americans to throw out now, or one of any number of snowclones in the form of body horror, oversized aloe vera, distressed comfort animals, celebrities behaving badly and far off–the-mark “targeted” ads. It’s impossible to track down definitive answers (and not like the answer would be less than enlightening and not very satisfying ultimately) but rather bounces one from spammy website to another, lower-rent one featuring progressively worse advertising marginalia, chumboxes being bait for bigger fishes that in turn lure bigger fishes, a regular pyramid scheme or rather multilevel marketing opportunity is the preferred term nowadays, comprising an unending garbage food-chain. Much more to explore at the link above.
Wednesday 8 May 2019
7x7
electronium: a classic electronic music sequencer from pioneer Raymond Scott is reinvented with an artificial intelligence software patch
sacred spaces: Thibaud Poirier photographs modern church interiors
the right to be forgotten: internet giant allows users to control if and for how long it retains one’s data
spoorzone: a self-sustaining bus station in Tilburg
b(7)b: a handy guide to the re-categorised information withholds of the latest version of the Mueller Report released to the public
h. p. loveshack: ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
hic sunt dracones: an interactive map of legends from English Heritage—via Maps Mania
catagories: ⚖️, ๐ณ๐ฑ, ๐ถ, ๐, ๐บ️, ๐ฅธ, architecture, myth and monsters
Tuesday 30 April 2019
blind house
We’re directed to an exhibition from artists Paloma Muรฑoz and Walter Martin whose collaboration has produced a disquieting portrait of human habitation with the windows seamlessly edited away.
This subtle erasure has profound affects on perception and prompts a conversation and reflection on the nature of screen time, how windows are made for looking in as well as looking out and how we’re to understand and uphold our private sphere with so much voluntarily given to public inspection—though what we put on display is not always the invitation to repackage it and sell it back to us at a premium. Continue touring the exhibit at the link above.
catagories: ๐ท, ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging