Old Man Yells at Cloud - Notes for WordPress meetup talk on sat 20 apr 2019
These notes are at
https://www.webwalker.to/walker/talk/Old_Man_Yells_at_Cloud/
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The Subject of this talk is my thoughts on:
Overcomplication ...
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Usability ...
Accessibility ...
Maintainability ...
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Persistence ...
Security ...
Privacy ...
Ethics ...
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Responsibility ...
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and ...
WordPress → ClassicPress
If -- interesting to you?
ok let's go!
If not --
ok let's talk about something else. or eat food!
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Concepts:
Tech worker
Tech user
Internet
The Web
What is Web?
https://www.webwalker.to/walker/talk/intro-what_is_web-all_talks.html
A website isn't a book or a poster or a TV show,
even though it seems like all of these things.
Web is text and the'<a>' tag.
The web is links.
HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language
HTTP - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
everthing else is fluff and extra.
That doesn't mean not to appreciate all those great "everything elses"!
And not to use them when building Web!
It just means, don't lose sight of what they are for,
and what the real thing is. Use them to enhance text and links,
not to hide them or remove them.
(So Web is 'Internet', right?
nup. Internet is the pipes. Web is one of many things that
goes through the pipes. WhatsApp goes through the Internet pipe.
SFTP. Email. Many more things.)
Making the Web.
We call it "building a website". "writing code".
The Web is made of Code.
The most important piece of code on a web page is the <a> tag.
If your pages don't link to other pages and other websites,
your site is not Web. It's all alone.
How the new art form of coding came to shape our modern world:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/04/how-the-new-art-form-of-coding-came-to-shape-our-modern-world/
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who am i ...
https://www.webwalker.to/walker/
https://www.webwalker.to/walker/talk/intro-what_about_me-all_talks.html
web developer since the web began. do it because i loved
it from the very beginning, and still do.
have been doing and teaching it as a service since 2001,
here in India with Tibetan exile community and friends.
i am getting a bit old, the brain seems to still be
functioning but could be my own fantasy. Haven't worked
in corporate since 2001, may be out of touch with some things.
So it's possible all the below is a lot of hooey,
in which case please don't waste your time humoring me,
get outta here!
what do i do
https://www.webwalker.to/walker/jobs/
Build websites as flatfile and with WordPress
(now with ClassicPress)
Admin about 25 websites currently.
I somehow manage to do it with vim and bash,
and without any grunting, gulping, sassing, or sprinting.
Only a little bit of gassing.
who are you ...
https://www.webwalker.to/walker/talk/intro-what_about_you-all_talks.html
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begin:
i've been interested in these subjects for a long time.
Still, to prepare for this talk i didn't have to look
into any of my past writings or do any search on the web.
I scan Twitter every day, and all i needed to do was
grab relevant tweets, categorize them, and then
free-associate off them for you :D
So. All this stuff is not theoretical. It is Right Now.
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“Happiness is simple.
Everything we do to find it is complicated.”
-- Karen Maezen Miller
It's just the way we are. Maybe it's the way life is --
look at all the extravagant butterflies, peacocks,
long curly wild sheep horns ...
So in tech too, we overcomplicate things.
And then wonder why things mess up or stop working!
how many of you make websites?
Can you sit down and write, i mean write, not click buttons
on some cms or web building tool, not Ecipse or whatever,
just write, a good, visually pleasing, valid-coded small website?
ok how about just one web page, the same?
with all valid html/css, with the correct doctype and
charset and semantic coding and all that good stuff?
if not
wny not?
Do you always need a CMS or a web building tool or javascript libraries
or containers or virtual machines to make a good website?
Yes those and more are all great stuff. But do you need a chainsaw
every time you cut a tree, even the 1-inch diameter ones?
Do you really need your atomic-powered whiz-bang multi-tool
just to drive a nail in the door post?
Do you think about which tools you need for which job?
Why does it matter? Because how you build websites
affects the usefullness of the website -- its
Usability.
Accessibility.
Maintainability.
and its
Persistence.
Security.
Privacy.
Ethics.
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Can people get around your website? Is it easy for them
to find the information they want?
The best feedback i have gotten on my websites isn't
"oh what a beautiful website!" (to that i reply,
-- clocking quickly on 'View Source' and showing them
the code -- "yes isn't it, i love it too!").
Usually i don't really meet the people using the website
i build. But it so happens that i meet the users of
KowThamCenter.org because they come to retreats and
i meet them. And every single person, when they found
out i was the web developer, said to me, unprompted,
"It's so easy to get around the website. It's so easy
to find things!"
And this is how it should be.
Do your forms and web applications take into account
all the varied people who are using your site?
“Today, I simply wanted to renew my passport online.
After numerous attempts and changing my clothes several times,
this example illustrates why I regularly present on Artificial
Intelligence/Machine Learning bias, equality, diversity and inclusion.”
-- Cat Hallam (@CatHallam1)
https://mobile.twitter.com/CatHallam1
Do you know why Cat had so much trouble uploading
an acceptable photo? Because Cat has dark skin.
Most (all?) facial-recognition AI is trained on white faces.
Is that messed up or what?
Content should appear first.
javascripty sites that show design and ads first.
that don't show urls in address bar at all!
This school replaced detention with meditation. The results are stunning.
22 september 2016
https://www.upworthy.com/
I got to this page from a link on Twitter, but after
i got there - no url in address bar! When i click on other articles,
no url to see!
usability; web is broken
Have seen other sites like this also, including one Tibetan one,
sorry i can't remember what is now.
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Not everybody has good vision -- or even any vision.
Not everybody has excellent control of their fingers
or even of their arms.
Can they use your website? Are they able to get all the
great things you have to give?
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Updating the code and content of the website.
Also goes along with Persistence.
“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”
-- Kurt Vonnegut
“I learned PHP from reading and using WordPress source
code. I know people vehemently argue there are "better"
apps/frameworks/systems/whatevers, but I'll argue that nothing else
comes close to enabling someone to *read the source code and learn
the language.”
-- https://t.co/hseAPssO4r
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/morganestes/status/1116154333794586625
Is the HTML and CSS keeping up with modern standards?
I have some old websites i haven't done anything with
in a while. A couple weeks ago i went to update some
content and looked at the code and ... ewwwwwww! :D
Why does it matter? The website still "works".
Because ... Usability, Accessibility, Maintainability, Persistence, Security, Privacy, Ethics!
(HTML and CSS has effect on security? Yes. Yes it does.)
Updating the software.
Checking that the software and plugins are still working
the way you want; that a plugin has not been taken over
by someone else and compromised (viruses, ads (which are viruses) )
Coding Is for Everyone -- as Long as You Speak English
https://www.wired.com/story/coding-is-for-everyoneas-long-as-you-speak-english/
Do you recognize your code 6 months later?
https://dev.to/mortoray/do-you-recognize-your-code-6-months-later-4b7d
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How much of the content of websites since it began is available now?
Compared to how much of the content of paper books, magazines, etc?
Do you see the problem. History is being lost to us,
bit by bit. And without history what do we know?
What is your reponsibility as a Builder of Web to
ensure that the content you enable will be available
in the future?
Content findability:
Google seems to have stopped indexing the entirety of the internet
for Google Search. As a result, certain old websites—those more
than 10 years old—did not show up through Google search.
-- https://lifehacker.com/how-to-find-old-websites-that-google-won-t-show-1833912593/
Nathan H. Rubin on Twitter: "Paywalls are problematic. If I want to
read an article but I’m out of free articles, I can’t read the
NYTimes, the WSJ or the WaPo. But you know which websites don’t
have paywalls? Fox News, Breitbart, and InfoWars."
https://mobile.twitter.com/NathanHRubin/status/1116681958195630082
Content loss:
Why there’s so little left of the early internet
“It took nearly five years into the internet’s life before
anyone made a concerted effort to archive it. Much of our earliest
online activity has disappeared.”
Very informative thread; lots of useful links.
-- http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190401-why-theres-so-little-left-of-the-early-internet
Ian Coldwater on Twitter:
I was looking at a certain Community forum and was like "What
happened in 2015ish that made everyone quit posting here?" And then I
realized that probably Slack happened, and years' worth of community
knowledge is just locked away in an archive somewhere. That seems bad?
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1116861910065057792
Charlotte Anne on Twitter:
@davewiner and Google has punished @NOWCastSA mightily for
encouraging blogs, refusing to put us into the news feed
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/CharlotteAnne/status/1117141809036132352
“Foer asserts that subscription-based reader revenue is the only
viable path for a media outlet seeking to maintain its editorial identity.”
-- https://t.co/jNfar60rXj
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/travelfish/status/1117286601162313728
Better news:
-- https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-urgent-quest-for-slower-better-news
“APIs get retired, webpages change structure so your scraping code
becomes useless -- all grave threats to research reproducibility. I
had to use archive.org in one of the scraping projects, but did
not realize it has "Archive it now" button!”
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/StatStas/status/1102931654362853376
Linkrot:
When you change url of a page on your website,
add a redirect line in your .htaccess file.
But still, many don't.
And websites get rebuilt with a different link structure,
and the developer doesn't make redirects.
So this is content loss also. Because if links to it don't work,
people can't find it, and it is essentially invisible on the Web.
Linkrot is a solved problem | Vertikal.dk
https://vertikal.dk/linkrot-solved-problem
Perma.cc stops link-rot: give it a URL,
get back a link to a permanent, archived copy of that webpage.
http://Perma.cc
Created by @HarvardLIL
https://mobile.twitter.com/permacc
"When I cite a website in my research, I've recently made a point
of archiving it in the Wayback Machine whenever possible and
using the resulting URL in my footnotes. I've long since grown
tired of broken links even in publications only a few years old."
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/DrDreHistorian/status/1102388506205184000
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“Security touches everything. Yes, servers and backend code and
encryption and networks, but also... UI/UX is security. QA is
security. Customer support is security. Security is a holistic
issue. Always has been.”
-- @snipeyhead
https://mobile.twitter.com/snipeyhead/status/999008168192573441
"exchanging files with a usb stick is a normal everyday
task. clicking on things is a normal everyday taks. opening mail
attachments is a normal everyday task. systems that make normal
everyday tasks dangerous are badly designed."
https://mobile.twitter.com/hanno/status/1115512051873529861
And software has bugs. What are bugs?
Where do these "bugs" come from? Is it like how
engine cylinders get worn out after some time?
Or how auto accidents "just happen"?
nope.
Computers can only do what we tell them to do.
People write the code that tells computers what do do.
People write bad code: bugs. people like you and me.
Normal people, who sometimes aren't thinking clearly,
or aren't thinking ahead, aren't thinking of all possible scenarios.
or don't want to bother.
Just people like you and me -- writing code for
precious personal information, for governments,
for hospitals, for airplanes.
Oh yeah, airplanes -- dig into the details of the two
fatal crashes recently of Boeing's 737 Max airplanes.
https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=boeing+plane+crash
It could kinda make you sick to your stomach. It did me.
I don't mean the tragedy of the people, of course
there is that. I mean why it happened, both technically,
and the managerial/sales decisions. And the response
from Boeing. Disgusting. "Bugs"? "Ethics"? Cheezus.
data compromise --
https://twitter.com/zackwhittaker/status/1116858073627234304
Hackers have stolen and posted the personal information on
thousands of U.S. federal agents and law enforcement officers.
ok, so i think i read headlines about database breaches
at least once a week. And that's just what passes by me
in my time-pass twitter reading --
i don't read twitter super carefully or religiously, and
i'm not on any security mails list or things like that.
So sometimes it just makes me laugh -- on the one side
are lots of articles about We're Doing This Great Thing
and You Should Own That Great Thing, and on the other,
**everything is getting breached**! All this very personal
information (they call it "data" so it somehow seems
more abstract, nothing to do with real people) is
floating around in the hands of all kinds of perople
and governments. And these two sides don't seem to
be aware of each other at all. It's nuts.
"bugs" --
https://twitter.com/dvyukov/status/1116688645933735936
"bugs in linux kernel
In fact 11 USB bugs in the first few hours. But we know
>100 are coming. That's all triggerable by anything
plugged into USB."
https://twitter.com/andreyknvl/status/1116670018345930752
"syzbot has started reporting bugs in the Linux kernel
USB drivers that can be triggered by a malicious USB device."
summary - Insights gained from working on more than 750 cybersecurity incidents
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/04/08/insights-cybersecurity-incidents/
6 things you should do to protect yourself from hackers
https://thenextweb.com/podium/2019/04/14/6-things-you-should-do-to-protect-yourself-from-hackers-but-probably-wont/
This is the hugest problem right now on the Web/Internet.
They call it 'data', so it seems somehow abstract,
far away from you and your life. Hard to think about.
Whenever you read 'data' in this context, replace with
the idea that it is *your* personal information,
almost everything about you and your life.
Facebook still tracks you after you deactivate account
-- https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-is-still-tracking-you-after-you-deactivate-your-account/
“We are sending data about you to just about every other company in
the world. We track you with 179(!!) different cookies, of which 29
we don't even know what to call. Here are your options about this:
ALLOW ALL. Sincerely yours, @outline”
image of list of all the cookies.
️ https://t.co/1PLBx6FQed
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/dhh/status/1119195917377245186
Health apps pose 'unprecedented' privacy risks
A study showed 19 health apps shared user data w/companies like
Facebook and Google, which could be passed to organizations like
credit agencies or used to target ads.
-- https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47652611
Will You Be Attending? How Event Apps Collect Your Data - Our Data Our Selves
https://ourdataourselves.tacticaltech.org/posts/24_events_conferences_1/
“Whenever I argue that China's mass surveillance is
unprecedented in modern history, many would say, "but it's just
as bad in the US/UK." But China's mass surveillance system is
fundamentally different in its intention: its stated goal is
social control.”
-- https://t.co/kYDNWId7Kq
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/wang_maya/status/1117607253010370561
And other countries' governments are watching and learning and copying.
“Google is letting law enforcement trawl for suspects by asking
“who was in this area, during this time?”. Google has the
location records of hundreds of millions of people going back
years. Seriously disturbing.”
-- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/13/us/google-location-tracking-police.html/"
thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/dhh/status/1117152830136225798
“When we think of mobile phone metadata & andeolocation, we usually
think of the wireless carriers themselves (pen registers, call
detail records, tower dumps, etc). But Google has much of the same
data, and law enforcement has taken note. Some terrific reporting
by @jenvalentino”
https://t.co/Q0lN2JJLOU
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/mattblaze/status/1117146351039655944
Hackers publish personal data on thousands of police officers and federal agents
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/12/police-data-hack/
Is Anyone Listening to You on Alexa? A Global Team Reviews Audio
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone-listening-to-you-on-alexa-a-global-team-reviews-audio
privacy, surveillance state
Feeling Safe in the Surveillance State
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/china-internet-surveillance.html
@EFF
https://mobile.twitter.com/EFF
Government Fights to Trap EFF’s NSA Spying Case in a Catch-22
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/government-fights-trap-effs-nsa-spying-case-catch-22
San Francisco must be a digital sanctuary for all
https://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/san-francisco-must-be-a-digital-sanctuary-for-all/
Don’t Force Web Platforms to Silence Innocent People
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/dont-force-web-platforms-silence-innocent-people
Platform Liability Doesn’t – And Shouldn’t - Depend on Content Moderation Practices
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/platform-liability-doesnt-and-shouldnt-depend-content-moderation-practices
Is Anyone Listening to You on Alexa? A Global Team Reviews Audio - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/is-anyone-listening-to-you-on-alexa-a-global-team-reviews-audio
"this is, no joke, probably the best infographic i've seen that accurate describes the guts of the digital ad ecosystem https://t.co/B1ss3RGWfC"
https://mobile.twitter.com/swodinsky/status/1116763906716966912
Alexa, Why Are Employees Looking at My Data?
https://www.howtogeek.com/411096/alexa-why-are-employees-looking-at-my-data/
Big Tech Lobbying Gutted a Bill That Would Ban Recording You Without Consent - Motherboard
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywyzm5/big-tech-lobbying-gutted-a-bill-that-would-ban-recording-you-without-consent
7.8 crore Aadhaar records on IT Grids' database; CIDR possibly breached, Aadhaar data stored on AWS servers
https://www.medianama.com/2019/04/223-it-grids-aadhaar-leak/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html
Well, this is interesting. Apparently Amazon and Google came out swinging against this Illinois bill saying a company is not allowed to remotely turn on a microphone without the owner’s permission.
https://t.co/4xs7rsU72A
https://mobile.twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1115991653662195713
A unique ID living on your iPhone allows advertisers to track the ads you click, the videos you play & the apps you install. We’re asking @Apple to change these unique IDs monthly — making it harder for companies to build profiles of you over time.
https://t.co/gacFFbmVXu
https://mobile.twitter.com/mozilla/status/1117778189907046402
Forensic Probe Into Aadhaar Data Controversy in Andhra Pradesh Raises Troubling Questions
https://thewire.in/government/andhra-pradesh-stolen-aadhaar-data
Chinese tech firms are building dystopian tools to profile and track Uighur Muslims. These firms get significant investment from foreign funds, including: Fidelity International, Qualcomm Ventures, Sequoia Capital. None would talk to the NYTimes about it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.htmlhttps://mobile.twitter.com/AASchapiro/status/1117778056033308672
One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html
Here's @sequoia, a fixture of the Silicon Valley investment scene, advertising its investment in Yitu, a Chinese firm that's helping police identity Uighur w/facial recognition technology. China is herding Uighurs into massive concentration camps.
https://www.sequoiacap.com/china/en/companies/yitu-technology/https://mobile.twitter.com/AASchapiro/status/1117780856507125760
Breach at IT Outsourcing Giant Wipro
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/experts-breach-at-it-outsourcing-giant-wipro/
Facebook is not going to Like this: Brit watchdog proposes crackdown on hoovering up kids' info
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/15/ico_social_media_code/
As IT security automation increases, so does the need for highly skilled staff - IT security automation still needs human involvement.
Developments in automation tools for cybersecurity have directly influenced hiring and resource allocation among respondent organizations, two-thirds of which are global organizations with at least 1,000 employees.
According to the report, nearly half of respondents (46 percent) cite an inability to properly staff their IT functions with skilled personnel, ...
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/04/16/it-security-automation-skills/
Two out of three hotels accidentally leak guests' personal data:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-breach-hotels/two-out-of-three-hotels-accidentally-leak-guests-personal-data-symantec-idUSKCN1RM15A
So wtf is this about everything being "also ethics"?
Because every time you do anything in building a web site,
you are at a decision point: How is this going to affect the user?
Is this good or bad? Right or wrong?
“Computers are easy, people are hard.
Don't optimize for one at the expense of the other.”
-- @DynamicWebPaige
Even a little thing like:
"Dark social" is me deleting "utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter&utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow"
before IMing [or adding] a link
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/caseyjohnston/status/560199483582349312
Why? Tracking. Privacy.
Using Google reCaptcha on your site:
“.@Cloudflare stop using google captcha! So many websites are
depending on cloudflare for CDN solutions, you are forcing all your
users' users to train @Google‘s ML algorithms. I don’t want
to select pictures with a car plate to read a fuckin article on web.”
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/umurgdk/status/1116649566416162818also, usability etc
(Plus it gives Google one more way to track your users. Is that nice?)
ok check this out:
“Facebook harvested 1.5 million people’s email contacts
without their consent. It says it 'unintentionally uploaded'
them after asking users for their email passwords.”
https://t.co/HlqCFQ3smx
https://mobile.twitter.com/robaeprice/status/1118668162378035200
Vinny Coyne on Twitter
“'Unintentionally':
- designed the feature
- wrote the code
- checked in the code
- approved the code in code review
- QA’d the code
- deployed the code
- somehow missed the “mistake” for years”
https://t.co/WvUzQ4c9dV
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/vinnycoyne/status/1118809991488704513
“Hang on: How do you
unintentionally add code that asks for an email password,
unintentionally add code that logs on and scans the user's contacts,
unintentionally rolls that up to prod and unintentionally uploads all that data?”
https://t.co/MR430EyoZV
-- https://mobile.twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1118694436265873408
“In new gaffe, Facebook improperly collects email contacts for 1.5 million”
“Remember when Facebook asked for email passwords? The blunder just got worse.”
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/in-new-gaffe-facebook-improperly-collects-email-contacts-for-1-5-million/
Geezus. If it was 1.5 million dollars, would it be called a
"gaffe" and a "blunder"? No, i think it would be called a
*crime*. Is our personal info really worth so much less than
cold cash?
https://lifehacker.com/find-ethical-open-source-alternatives-to-almost-every-a-1833746899
U.S. has spent $6 trillion on wars that killed 500,000 people
since 9/11, a report says https://t.co/76wQL9acw9
https://mobile.twitter.com/contrarianp/status/1117008756850741248
Aral Balkan (@[email protected])
Google is pretty fucking far from okay. It has eyes on
~80% of the web and beyond. Google makes the Stasi look like
amateurs. Google and Facebook are two of the biggest heads of the
same hydra and they share the exact same business model: people
farming. #SurveillanceCapitalism
https://t.co/9c5yruGh1W
https://mobile.twitter.com/aral/status/1116950885207367680also, surveillance capitalism
"News Flash: Apple has banned the Beatles’ “When I’m 64”
to avoid hurting the feelings of the Chinese people.
https://t.co/1DNGqYIWR3"
https://mobile.twitter.com/JimMillward/status/1116496508210298881
Google cancels AI ethics board in response to outcry
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/4/18295933/google-cancels-ai-ethics-board
So -- do you have a responsibility about all this?
Well obviously, you know what i'm gonna say: heck yeah.
As a developer, you and your peers are the only ones
who understand what you are doing. And *you* are the
only one who understands what *your* code is doing.
And a few weeks or months after writing it, you won't
understand your own code either. You know this.
Your team leads, managers, and the Big Monkeys up top
may even have done programming, but they don't know
the ins and outs like you do. And many don't even know
about code at all. Which is great, that's not
their job -- their job is to manage the big picture so
that you can write that code.
But they all are concerned with what sells, and
what the latest fads are, and
that's what they tell you to do.
What's our responsibility in that?
Google's developers pushed back and refused to work
on Google's Dragonfly searching/spying project in China.
“Google Recaptcha was added as an optional feature
for login form & registration form.
It does not meet our standards for accessibility and
privacy and needs to be removed.”
Devs, this is how you fight #SurveillanceCapitalism
https://twitter.com/aral/status/1117052146833350656
etc etc.
https://twitter.com/NPR/status/1116833372431638528
Chinese cybertheft of American companies costs the U.S. economy billions,
but an investigation by NPR and @frontlinepbs found an unlikely obstacle
to government action: the victims themselves.
As China Hacked, U.S. Businesses Turned A Blind Eye
In dozens of interviews with U.S. government and business
representatives, officials involved in commerce with China said
hacking and theft were an open secret for almost two decades,
allowed to quietly continue because U.S. companies had too much
money at stake to make waves.
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/12/711779130/as-china-hacked-u-s-businesses-turned-a-blind-eye?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20190412
Sure Big Bad China and Big Bad Google and Big Bad Facebook
are doing all these Big Bad things. But programmers and developers
are writing the code to do those things. The Big Bad Bosses
can't make those things happen all by themselves.
And these programmers and developers, well sometimes they
don't realize what they are building. That happened with
Dragonfly -- Google had people working on different bits of it.
And once they found out what it was they were building,
they rose up and got that evil thing shut down.
For a while anyway ... :(
So what's your responsibility when you're working on something,
to know what it is for, what's the implications, the possibilities,
of the code you write and all the other tech work you do?
"But i just want to write code. I'm not an activist,
i'm not into politics. That's not my job to have to
keep up on all that stuff."
uh huh. There's a catch-phrase for that.
"I was just doing my job, just following orders."
That didn't wash for the Nazi war criminals, and it
doesn't wash now.
(And don't think i'm being so over-dramatic by comparing
our small work to Nazi war criminals. Go back though this piece
and check out some of the links i have given, and see what
Google and Facebook and others are responsible for.
Those *companies* didn't write the code that do those
awful things. Indivdual human beings, programmers, wrote that code.)
.......................................................
why do i care?
because -- to me the Web still is an amazing,
empowering, beautiful technology. And i like
that kind of thing and i like code.
I love building Web.
But now, my involvement in the professional
web dev world has gone waaay down.
My interest in learning any more
about the technologies has gone waaaay down.
Even sometimes thinking of stopping altogether,
as i do have lots of other interests.
Because
it doesn't look like very many people care,
and
i
don't
build
shit stuff.
i
don't
do
shit
work.
and i really hate seeing what this
technology that i love and have worked
with so long, being turned to use for
greed and oppression.
...
.......................................................
why should you care?
???
.......................................................
What about you and the Web as a user:
There's a lot that could be said here,
but i think that's another talk!
In the meantime, there are many excellent resources
on the Web to help you be a responsible and effective
Web user. And Tibet Action is there for you right here
in McLeod Ganj, with lots of information, and training
and workshops - https://tibetaction.net/
https://webaud.it
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/2189508/iphone-maker-distances-itself-unauthorised-agency
One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/technology/china-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-racial-profiling.html
China Spying on Undersea Internet Cables - Schneier on Security
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/04/china_spying_on.html
https://mobile.twitter.com/lobsangsither
V. Anand on Twitter: "It is Official People. CIDR has indeed been
breached and is stored in the USA using Amazon Web Services. It
is not just AP and Telangana but other states as well. Fully
busted!! Please read the communique from @UIDAI. Is there anything
left? Link: https://t.co/iIUWaBlKJa"
https://mobile.twitter.com/iam_anandv/status/1117484358821122050
Internet of Shit (@internetofshit)
https://mobile.twitter.com/internetofshit
Today I want to talk about submarine telecommunications cables
A thread…
https://t.co/Jbz6VcECnv
https://mobile.twitter.com/thinkdefence/status/1116371447243575298
The Internet has made it impossibly easy to reach across the universe and tell someone to fuck off — but it’s also made it impossibly easy to reach across the universe and tell people you’re rooting for them — do the second one more than the first.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SheaSerrano/status/1116547216083230720
When a group of Amazon shareholders successfully fought to get a vote on the possibility of banning Amazon’s sales of the technology to government agencies, they pointed to a 2018 ACLU study showing Amazon Rekognition falsely matched 28 members of Congress to mugshot photos. The errors disproportionately impacted people of color.
Cops Are Trying to Stop San Francisco From Banning Face Recognition Surveillance
https://gizmodo.com/cops-are-trying-to-stop-san-francisco-from-banning-face-1834062128privacy; personal integrity
[A] 2012 Pew Forum report[ed], that two thirds of Buddhists in America are of Asian heritage. Just four years prior, the Pew Forum had reported the percentage as less than one third — the researchers had neglected to conduct interviews in any languages besides English and Spanish. In 2012, they added seven Asian languages to the survey, and the percentage of Buddhists of Asian heritage doubled.
The Invisible Majority - Lion's Roar
https://www.lionsroar.com/the-invisible-majority/
nuance; diversity; variability
Wired.com, Tricycle.com, others disrupting or blocking reading with signup requirements.
https://mobile.twitter.com/tibcert
https://tibcert.org/
Working with Mindfulness -
https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/working-mindfulness-interview-mirabai-bush/
Spotlight: Jugal Purohit – Air Quality in India
https://indiaaq.blog/2019/04/16/spotlight-jugal-purohit/
_______________________________________________________
ok that's all!
wanna talk about ...
.......................................................
ClassicPress?
https://www.webwalker.to/walker/talk/ClassicPress_is_Coming/
WordPress used to be the beloved CMS, code and principles
you could work with, a joy to build with.
As happens to all of us, age has seen it going off the deep end,
going over to the the Dark Side, both technically and organisationally.
And as happens to all of us, when things go bad the knight in
shining armor comes to the rescue. This time it is called
ClassicPress.
https://www.classicpress.net/
https://forums.classicpress.net/
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/classicpress-1-0-aurora
I am converting all my websites to ClassicPress.
https://mobile.twitter.com/WPForks
https://pixmill.com/a-fork-of-wordpress-with-a-future/
Now That We Have the Full ClassicPress Release – PixMill
https://pixmill.com/now-that-we-have-the-full-classicpress-release/
ClassicPress vs Classic Editor – WordPress Forks
https://wpforks.com/2019/04/04/classicpress-vs-classic-editor/
A Fork of WordPress With A Future. – PixMill
https://pixmill.com/a-fork-of-wordpress-with-a-future/ClassicPress is something that still works the way WordPress promised it would, as long as the majority of users believed it should work that way. WordPress seems to have abandoned their stated mission and philosophy.
ClassicPress seems to have promised to take up and keep those promises.
.......................................................
Thank you.
🎶
Ain't gonna let injustice
turn me around
I'm gonna keep on walkin'
Gonna keep on talkin'
Marchin' up to freedom's land
We ain’t gonna let nobody
turn us around
🎶