Month: March 2018

“Outraged We Were Deceived” – by The Inevitable

[UPDATE: This originally posted on March 21 2018. As of today (April 10) Zuckerberg is due to testify at a Congressional hearing.  Expect the usual evasions.]

Oh, poor Facebook

The typical reader of this blog probably expected this time would come, but just in case there’s any doubt, the raid on tens of millions of Facebook users’ data by an unscrupulous political propaganda operation (Cambridge Analytica [C.A.]) is merely a sign of the inevitable.

C. Analaytica’s hack used an “it’s only research” loophole to access a huge trove of personal data completely unsuspected by its targets.

Facebook’s official response to date (March 21, 5:22 pm EDT) has been they are “working around the clock to get all the facts and take appropriate action. . . . The entire company is outraged we were deceived.”  See FB responds to #deletefacebook

It is so Zuckerbergian to respond to a giant abuse of his customers with no apology – yet anyway – but rather indignantly to declare their outrage at what was done to them.  Not acknowledging their role as enablers .  Kind of reminds me of how Donald Trump feels misused whenever something goes wrong that is largely his fault.

Continue reading ““Outraged We Were Deceived” – by The Inevitable”

“They don’t understand how it works.” Information Technology and the Queasy Underbelly of Democracy

Politicians low on the tech learning curve

Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, and chief architect of the Trump-assisting “defeat crooked Hillary” campaign, commenting on his testimony before the (U.S.) House Intelligence Committee, said “They’re politicians, they’re not technical. They don’t understand how it works.”

The exploits of Cambridge Analytica in suppressing votes and unleashing torrents of misinformation and flat-out falsities upon the data rivers of social media got (as usual, excellent) coverage by The Guardian in this piece dated March 21, 2018: Cambridge Analytica’s Assault on Decency For more on Nix, the Facebook data breaches, and the “crooked Hillary” campaign.

This echoes a theme emerging from previous U.S. Congressional hearings dealing with social media: politicians are way out of their depth in advanced information technology. As Nix, says, they simply do not understand how it works.

Continue reading ““They don’t understand how it works.” Information Technology and the Queasy Underbelly of Democracy”

THE MOST AMAZING YEAR IN SPACE, EVER (2017), PART 5: Voyager 1 Aces Another Test

Voyager 1: (almost) never say die

As you read this, the first human-made artifact to enter interstellar space is receding from us at a speed of 10.6 miles per second (50 times the speed of sound at sea-level on Earth). It is currently (the morning of March 16, 2018) about 141 times farther from the Sun than the (average) distance of Earth from the Sun. Impeded only by clouds of gas that are tenuous in our region of the galaxy, it should keep up this rate of speed for millennia. That sounds fast, but at astronomical scales it’s barely crawling—17,500 years to cover one light-year. Since it will probably not completely escape the Sun’s gravity until two light-years out, it won’t “really” exit the Solar System for another 35,000 years or so. For the finer points of what constitutes “interstellar space” check out: https://scitechdaily.com/new-data-confirms-voyager-1-interstellar-space/

(You may not be too surprised, if you went to that link, that the determination of Voyager 1’s official interstellar status depended partly on the readings of the “tsunami waves” that have smacked Voyager three times as a result of Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun.  CMEs are those random ejections of solar plasma that pose a serious threat to our increasingly electrified way of life here on Earth, as discussed in my earlier post  https://www.markheinickewrites.com/2017/11/04/uncertainty-part-two-when-comes-the-big-shock/ . )

Continue reading “THE MOST AMAZING YEAR IN SPACE, EVER (2017), PART 5: Voyager 1 Aces Another Test”