Impossible fantasies

“Dungeons & Dragons allows you to live out impossible fantasies, like that of medical professionals who listen to you when you want healing.

In a scene right now where my disabled wizard talks to @elibyronbaldrsn’s dwarf cleric and honestly it’s the most affirming and validating doctor conversation I’ve ever had.”

Tweet (since deleted, or I can't find it except for a screen grab) from Ana Mardoll (@AnaMardoll), August 5, 2018

The Garden of Eden is no more

“‘I am quite literally from another age,’ Attenborough told an audience of business leaders, politicians and other delegates. ‘I was born during the Holocene – the 12,000 [year] period of climatic stability that allowed humans to settle, farm, and create civilisations.’ […]

‘The Holocene has ended. The Garden of Eden is no more.’”

Sir David Attenborough has warned that “the Garden of Eden is no more”, by Graeme Wearden, reporting from Davos; The Guardian, 21 January 2019.

Turn on the C by GE light bulb

Screen grab from How to: Reset C by GE Light Bulbs

[NARRATOR]

Welcome to C by GE’s smart tips.

We’re going to show you how to reset your C by GE bulbs, which will un-pair your bulb from other devices and apps that it’s connected to.

There are 2 factory reset processes which depend on the generation of bulbs and the firmware you’re running on.

Here’s the first process designed for bulbs with this package or for firmware version 2.8 or later.

Start with your bulb off for at least 5 seconds.

Then turn on the bulb for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 second.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

And then turn it on one last time.

The bulb will flash on and off 3 times to show that the reset was successful. If it doesn’t, your bulb may be running on an older version of firmware and we’ll need to try the second factory reset process, which is designed for C by GE bulbs with this package or for firmware version 2.7 or or earlier.

Ready?

OK.

Start with your bulb off for at least 5 seconds.

Then, turn on the bulb for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 2 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 2 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 2 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds.

Turn on for 8 seconds.

Turn off for 2 seconds, and then turn it on one last time.

The bulb will flash on and off 3 times if it has been successfully reset.

For more smart tips about our smart products, go to CbyGE.com.

How to: Reset C by GE Light Bulbs by GE Lighting, 3 January 2019

Make the pie

Dear Carolyn,

My husband's family is really academic, most are in school until their late 20s at least. My husband has a bachelor's degree and I have some college but never finished. His family has always been welcoming and they aren't snobby or anything -- with the exception of Thanksgiving. My in-laws host and make a great meal. My husband's siblings are never asked to contribute because they are in finals and "don't have the time or money" to bring anything. We are always asked to bring a dessert or something.

My husband thinks I'm overreacting and doesn't care, but for some reason this really bugs me. How do I let it go? Or is it worth it to bring it up?

[READER COMMENT] Make the pie. Make it with a loving heart, freely and voluntarily. For all you know, the academics in the family can't cook.

[CAROLYN HAX] This answer is the answer to so many things: Make the pie.

Letter to advice columnist Carolyn Hax, with responses, The Oregonian, 9 November 2018

“The notion that the future of politics might, with the internet, become less rational and more dogmatic was scarcely explored.”

— 25 years of Wired predictions: Why the future never arrives, by Avid Karpf, Wired, 18 September 2018

Less time than voting

“In a few cases, the Voting Village's collection of hacker/researchers discovered that hacking the voting machines took less time than voting.”

Defcon Voting Village report: Bug in one system could “flip Electoral College” by Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica, 27 September 2018

The article continues,

One voting machine could be hacked in two minutes. And another hack, exploiting a flaw in an electronic card used to activate voting terminals, made it possible to reprogram the card wirelessly with a mobile device—allowing the voter to potentially cast as many votes as they like.

Perhaps the most frustrating of the problems documented by the researchers is that flaws, even when reported, don't get fixed. One example is another vulnerability in the ES&S M650 that had been reported more than 10 years ago to the manufacturer—but was still present on systems used for the 2016 election.

The total erosion of meaning itself

The central disappointment of these spaces is not that they are so narcissistic, but rather that they seem to have such a low view of the people who visit them. Observing a work of art or climbing a mountain actually invites us to create meaning in our lives. But in these spaces, the idea of “interacting” with the world is made so slickly transactional that our role is hugely diminished. Stalking through the colorful hallways of New York’s “experiences,” I felt like a shell of a person. It was as if I was witnessing the total erosion of meaning itself. And when I posted a selfie from the Rosé Mansion saying as much, all of my friends liked it.

Critics Notebook: The Existential Void of the Pop-Up ‘Experience’ by Amanda Hess, New York Times, 26 September 2018. The piece is subtitled “I went to as many Instagramable ‘museums’, ‘factories’ and ‘mansions’ as I could. They nearly broke me.”

Mr. Toad in Hell

…“Experience” has emerged as among the defining fads of my generation. […] By classifying these places as experiences, their creators seem to imply that something happens there. But what? Most human experiences don’t have to announce themselves as such. They just do what they do. A film tells a story. A museum facilitates meaning between the viewer and a work of art. Even a basic carnival ride produces pleasing physical sensations. […]

I’m no Disney evangelist, but come on. Disneyland has a ride where you get to experience life as Mr. Toad as he is being sentenced to Hell. To Hell!

Critics Notebook: The Existential Void of the Pop-Up ‘Experience’ by Amanda Hess, New York Times, 26 September 2018. The piece is subtitled “I went to as many Instagramable ‘museums’, ‘factories’ and ‘mansions’ as I could. They nearly broke me.”

Privacy is hard

“Privacy is Hard, Volume 18283833.

Knowing of 5 downloaded, non-vendor specific apps installed on a device is enough to uniquely identify over 90% of individuals in a sample of a million+ people.”

Privacy researcher and Director of Open Privacy Sarah Jamie Lewis (@SarahJamieLewis), 17 September 2018. Jamie Lewis cites Temporal Limits of Privacy in Human Behavior by Sekara et al, 2018

Jamie Lewis continues, “This result is not surprising but it’s a nice illustration of the how even seemingly ‘useless’/‘unimportant’ information like ‘what apps do you have installed’ can impact total privacy.”

To will another future into being

“This is the dilemma faced by any large organization or cause: how to keep its people moving, if not in lock step, then at least generally in the same direction. Strategy promises a blueprint for doing this, but in the end it is more an art than a science, an all-too-human process of guessing what might work. It can be undertaken with great deliberation, in regularly scheduled planning meetings and off-site conferences. Or it can be seized upon in moments of crisis and uncertainty, as a hedge against despair — an act of faith that it may yet be possible to will another future into being.”

Strategy May Be More Useful to Pawns Than to Kings, by Beverly Gage, New York Times, 3 September 2018. Gage is Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University.

“A hedge against despair” lingers in the mind.

No answer

At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims?

A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward. She hadn’t spoken before, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … This is an emergency. We are facing extinction. When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?”

We had no answer.

The Earth is in a death spiral. It will take radical action to save us, by George Monbiot, The Guardian, 14 November 2018

You cannot give instructions to a gigantic inflatable

Screen grab from Inflatable Cobblestones Berlin Part 2 (Vimeo), by Artur (presumably Artúr van Balen), 2012

The video is captioned: On the 25th revolutionary 1st of May demonstration in Berlin-Kreuzberg, protesters were throwing huge inflatable cobblestones, made of silver-reflective foil and tape. The creative intervention was initiated by the art-activist collective “Eclectic Electric Collective” (EEC) and was meant as a celebration of an object which is both a symbol and a material weapon of anti-authoritarian struggle everywhere. It also aimed to bring new strategies of tactical frivolity into the demonstration. http://eclectic-electric-collective.blogspot.de/2012/05/under-pavement-beach-gigantic.html

Our intention was also to subvert the image of the “stone-throwing demonstrator” which the media spectacle around May 1 feeds off so much.
 We are interested in tactical frivolity, in finding new ways of protesting. And we are interested in how the opposition between police and protesters can be subverted. So when we playfully throw an inflatable cube at a police line and they, not knowing what else to do, throw it back, suddenly they are engaged in a game with us and their image as tough riot cops is broken.

There was this funny situation when we threw it towards the police. And there was the spontaneous game when they the police kicked it back, protesters again kicked it to the police, police kicked it back, etc. – and suddenly they realised they were part of a game. So they threw it behind the police line where children found it and began to play with it.

You cannot give instructions to a gigantic inflatable by Joanna Rainer, 31 April 2012. Rainer's article is an interview with Artúr van Balen and Verena Meyer, of the Eclectic Electric Collective, about their work with “inflatable cobblestones” and “tactical frivolity” in mass protests.

My garden is the Third Precinct

“No military force can end terrorism, just as firefighters can’t end fire and cops can’t end crime. But there are ways to build a resilient society. ‘It can’t be on a government contract that says In six months, show us these results,” Skinner said. ‘It has to be I live here. This is my job forever.” He compared his situation to that of Voltaire’s Candide, who, after enduring a litany of absurd horrors in a society plagued by fanaticism and incompetence, concludes that the only truly worthwhile activity is tending his garden. “Except my garden is the Third Precinct,” Skinner said.

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, New Yorker, May 7, 2018, by Ben Taub. The article is a profile of Patrick Skinner, a former CIA operative turned local police officer.

Dab, Stockholm, 15 August 2019, CC-BY.

I found this as-is, in a beautiful art supply store on Kungsgatan. Something about the location of the figures — down low in a busy corridor — and the playful poses gave me the impression that little hands had been at work.

Car hacking just got real

“When I saw we could do it anywhere, over the Internet, I freaked out. I was frightened. It was like, holy fuck, that's a vehicle on a highway in the middle of the country. Car hacking got real, right then.”

Chris Valasek, as quoted in Hackers remotely kill a Jeep on the highway — with me in it, by Andy Greenberg, Wired, 21 July 2019

Valasek and his collaborator Charlie Miller found a way to remotely hack, and take, for all intents and purposes, full remote control of an entire class of automobiles by exploiting a vulnerability in their Internet-connected sound systems. Valasek and Miller’s work shows that hackers could create “a wirelessly controlled automotive botnet encompassing hundreds of thousands of vehicles.”

A time-shifted risk

“People always ask me: where's the harm?

Privacy harms are a time-shifted risk.

The moment you are protesting against your government, a seamless cashless public transport system can turn into a data trove for surveillance crowd control.”

Reporter Mary Hui (@maryhui), 13 June 2019, on witnessing Hong Kong protesters using cash transactions to board the subway instead of using their trackable/traceable metro cards. Also see Hui's CASH IS KING: Why Hong Kong’s protesters were afraid to use their metro cards, Quartz, 13 June 2019

The fandom it asked for

“The solution here isn’t all that difficult. If fans want to hold banners protesting fascism and racism and gun violence, that should be fine… It’s a feature, not a bug, one that comes from accepting that, when you treat your sport like a beacon of community, then some people will start treating it as such.”

Soccer: By Banning Protest Signs, MLS [Major League Soccer, USA] Is Trying To Lobotomize The Fandom It Asked For, by Luis Paez-Pumar, Deadspin, 20 August 2019.

The article also notes,

It’s a depressing commentary on our current national moment that signs stating opposition to gun violence, fascism, and racism are deemed “political”.

A perfect score

“One algorithm was supposed to figure out how to land a virtual airplane with minimal force. But the AI soon discovered that if it crashed the plane, the program would register a force so large that it would overwhelm its own memory and count it as a perfect score. So the AI crashed the plane, over and over again, presumably killing all the virtual people on board.”

The Spooky Genius of Artificial Intelligence, by Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, 28 September 2018. Thompson's article is based on the paper The surprising creativity of digital evolution: a collection of anecdotes from the evolutionary computation and artificial life research communities (14 August 2018) and Can Artificial Intelligence Be Smarter Than a Human Being?, an episode of the Crazy/Genius podcast by Kasia Mychajlowycz and Patricia Yacob.

Wikimania Stockholm

Wikimania conference, Stockholm, 16 August 2019; CC-BY

I was privileged to attend the Wikimania conference in Stockholm last week and give the opening keynote (here). The conference theme was about the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals. Almost all of the sessions were livestreamed (over 200 hours) and most are available on the program page and on YouTube.

There were so many good talks and sessions, including this “spotlight session” titled “Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals” featuring Liv Inger Somby (Sámi University of Applied Sciences), Ryan Merkley (Creative Commons), Karin Holmgren (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), Tyler Radford (OpenStreetMap), Emanuel Karlsten (journalist), Mark Graham (Internet Archive), John Cummings (Wikimedian in Residence for UNESCO), and Annika Söder (Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden).

“Speak your mind, but ride a fast horse.”

— Unknown, via @kattvantar