I CAN FEEL IT

I listened to the 404 Media podcast about this yesterday and the author argues that the subject of the article’s ire is intended to be the researchers themselves. Specifically, the bad ethics of testing this integration on non-consenting individuals (even though it was seemingly done with good intent).

Luckily the researchers realized what the fuck they had just made and pivoted the project to being about how to break the integration (ie: opt out of facial recognition systems and freeze your credit score).

If your analog control requires your entire hand, it’s interesting.

If your analog control requires several pointing fingers, it’s interesting.

If your analog control requires your thumbs, it’s shit.

Now get the fuck out of my office!

Public service: the video this YouTube account uploaded before this one is titled “The Tiananmen Square ‘Massacre’ Never Happened”.

Remember folks, check your sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

The panopticon is a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control, originated by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single corrections officer, without the inmates knowing whether or not they are being watched.

Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates’ cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched motivates them to act as though they are all being watched at all times. They are effectively compelled to self-regulation. The architecture consists of a rotunda with an inspection house at its centre. From the centre, the manager or staff are able to watch the inmates. Bentham conceived the basic plan as being equally applicable to hospitals, schools, sanatoriums, and asylums. He devoted most of his efforts to developing a design for a panopticon prison, so the term now usually refers to that.

He’s also still getting tons of regular work outside sci-fi. He’s got a comedy with Paul Reiser coming out later this year that looks pretty funny, too.

https://youtu.be/lVSBJsxWtUo

He doesn’t need to go back to Trek, and I’m glad for that.

Regarding Kate Mulgrew, Prodigy made a lot of sense for her given her talents as a voice actor. (RIP Infinity Train)

I think it technically counts as Spring, but Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction has me enraptured.

But if we’re talking about Summer alone, hands down, Dungeon People.

Asking the person you’re debating to look up your own citations is certainly one way to converse. But ok, let’s go for it.

In Aug 2023, Forbes published an article describing the proposal of “unfettered access” you referred to:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/08/21/draft-tiktok-cfius-agreement/

In June 2024, the Washington Post reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) turned down the proposal and includes some broad reporting as to why:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tiktok-offered-an-extraordinary-deal-the-u-s-government-took-a-pass/ar-BB1nfAcE

The article isn’t very technical, but it mentions some interesting responsibility angles that the US wouldn’t want to back themselves into:

• throwing open some, but not all, doors to server operations and source code creates a mountain of work for the government to inspect, which would be a workload nightmare
• the US government’s deepest concerns seem to be about what data is going out (usage insights on the virtuous side and clipboard/mic/camera monitoring on the ultra shady side) and data coming in (bespoke content intended to influence US residents of China-aligned goals). Usage insights are relatively benign from national security perspective (especially when you can just mandate that people in important roles aren’t permitted to use it). Shady monitoring should be discoverable through app source code monitoring, which you can put the app platforms (Apple, Google, whoever else) on the hook for if they continue to insist on having walled app gardens (and if you trust them at all). The content shaping is harder to put your finger on though, since it’s super easy to abstract logic as far out as you need to avoid detection. “Here, look at these 50M lines of code that run stateside, and yeah, there are some API calls to stuff outside the sandbox. Is that such a big deal?” Spoiler: it is a big deal.
• the US can’t hold Byte Dance accountable so long as it remains in China. Let’s say the US agreed to all this, spent all the effort to uncover some hidden shady activity that they don’t like (after an untold amount of time has passed). What then? They can’t legally go after Byte Dance’s foreign entity. The US can prosecute the US employees, but it’s totally possible to organize in such a way that leaves those domestic employees free from misdeeds, leaving prosecutors unable to enforce misdeeds fairly. It’d be a mess.

The second article explains this somewhat, but I’m admittedly painting some conjecture on top regarding how a malicious actor could behave. I’ve got no evidence that Byte Dance is actually doing any of that.

But going back to the “influence the public” angle, I’m struggling to see how different TikTok is versus NHK America (Japan’s American broadcasts) or RT (American media from the Russian standpoint) aside from being wildly more successful and popular. But I guess that’s all there is to it.

I’d prefer our leaders also be transparent with us regarding their concerns about TikTok. The reductive “because China!!1!” argument is not compelling on its own.

Do you have any citation for that?

Does ByteDance publish TikTok’s transmission protocol to demonstrate transparency?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol

Andyougotablessing andyougotablessing andyougotablessing andyougotablessing…

Including his sexual assault victims?

A white people taco night no less…

This trailer is trash compared to the original one used for film’s initial release in Japan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nW6LLojcUw

Post-it notes. One pack is enough for like a third of the plane.

Periodic office hours are tremendously helpful as well.

Block an hour, once or twice a week, for people to come by an ask you (and your team) about literally anything they want. And open it to everyone at your organization. Have your team stop answering one-off questions and tell people to bring it to office hours.

Team leads and tpms should help with logistics, messaging and hand-slapping.

Mama Fratelli?

The web version of themoviedb.org has been my go-to for a while now. No app though.

I know he retired as studio president a few years ago, but sure hope that Masaaki Yuasa got a well-deserved payout as a part of this deal. Dude is 59 years old, has an epic filmography to his name and (with any luck) is now sitting of a brand new pile of money.

Good for him.

I’m a liberal WA resident, and there’s entirely too much influence here by big tech for me to trust national legislation regarding privacy baselines coming from legilators based within my state.

This is the sort of area where I’d like to see legislation forged from a partnership between a fiercely left-leaning state that supports individual rights (OR? MA?) and a similar libertarian-leaning right-wing state that shares similar beliefs on individual liberties (WY? MT?).