đ Newsletter #018 - Muse-ings, Many Data Breaches, and... 4
⨠In This Edition â¨
- đ Short-Form Content: Muse-ings, AdFection, way too many leaks, and... 4
- đ Good News!: More publishers are filing AI lawsuits; a Mayor on Mastodon; and excluding AI "authors" from ebook searches.
- đ Toots and Memes and Such: Data literacy & every fxcking website, slop edition.
- đ¯ The Post-Script: The Curious Engineer & Why is Everyone in Tech so Sad?
Cropped, edited, and glitched image. Original images by Bernd Dittrich and Makarios Tang on Unsplash.
đ Short-Form Content
Chatbots ("AI")
- AI use at companies has doubled since 2023 - and yet, 95% of organizations see no measurable return. So basically, if you are a company that is seeing a return - you're a statistical anomaly. As a society, putting all our eggs into this particular basket seems... disingenuous?
- Relatedly, AI company Anthropic announced a >$80 Bn (yes, billion) net loss. Keep this in your back pocket for next time someone tries to tell you these are some of the most successful companies we've ever seen.
- If you are still using Meta products, and you have considered potentially using its "Muse" chatbot, please reconsider: Not only does it expose private conversations, but it also ignores user permissions, which has resulted in - as an example - Apple Messages being ingested by it. As in, like, messages completely outside of the Meta ecosystem that people have asked it to not ingest.
- On that note - yes, leaving the traditional algorithmic media is very hard. That's by design. That said, we don't seem to yet be seeing an end to the string of bad news regarding the privacy and security of these networks, so it is becoming ever more important to explore & support alternatives that are better for us as people, and for us as a society. I would encourage you to give these articles a read: Feeding the Fire: Psychology, Engagement, and Algorithmic Media; đ¸ī¸ Caught in a Multi-Billion Dollar Web: Why Leaving the Legacy Algorithmic Media is So Hard; and Alternatives Pt. II - Social Networking.
- If you are not using the Muse chatbot: First of all, yay & good job! Second of all though, here's some mediocre news for ya: Meta may still be keeping tabs on you, simply via one of your friends or family members using this Meta chatbot. So anyway, now is a good time to set up that Fediverse account and talk to your friends and family about social networks that don't do this to you. đ
- The German federal government has announced a partnership with NVIDIA for AI development. Digital sovereignty, anyone? (Markus Beckedahl's LinkedIn post in German; Tagesschau-Artikel)
- Hey, maybe AI games are not the future!?
- Always remember that "getting left behind" and "there's no alternative" are both, in fact, not true. They are part of a narrative meant to make us all believe we have no agency over our technological future, throw our hands in the air, and give up.
Non-Chatbots
- This isn't predominantly a cybersecurity newsletter, but - we can't really not talk about the two main things that happened on in the Interwebs this week: One, the php vulnerabilities that took down what felt like half the internet; and also, uh, 4, which I'm pretty sure we're adding to the list of Funny Numbers. And also, yes, xkcd called it. đŽ
- Note that the php vulns could also conceivably go in the Chatbots section - part of the reason they were this critical and had to get patched so quickly was that people were fearing that AI had made rapid, at-scale exploitation of these vulns possible.
- Bit of a horrible week in terms of privacy and cybersecurity if you are located in Canada:
- Firstly, major groceries retailer Save On Foods announced that unfortunately a lot of customer data, including names, addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, had been accessed.
- Yes, getting extra deals and $0.40 off on a product is great (especially as everything seems to be getting more expensive...), but: Reminder to check whether you really need that additional loyalty app or card. It's always a good idea to keep your "attack surface" reasonably small, and reduce the risk of your data getting leaked, by only signing up for loyalty apps & cards that you're really going to use.
- And then, arguably even more sensitive: The CrimeStoppers leak. This one is especially egregious, as the platform's whole point is to be an anonymous tip "hotline", and thus, by its nature, may contain highly sensitive information.
- Firstly, major groceries retailer Save On Foods announced that unfortunately a lot of customer data, including names, addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, had been accessed.
- You may have heard that mysteriously, the NoKings Instagram account went offline on an important day for the movement. On that note, I'd like to point you to this excellent Mother Jones article titled Big Tech will not broadcast your dissent.
- Hey, remember the Cambridge Analytica scandal from
checks notesthe 2010s? Meta has been ordered to pay a $25 bn penalty in the state of New Mexico, USA, for misleading citizens. - Canada's CitizenLab has exposed AdFection, where devices can be infected with spyware simply by the user viewing an ad. This is why some folks are considering ad blockers to be an integral, essential piece of tech for toodling around the web these days.
đ Good News!
- Some of Canada's largest publishers, including the Canadian Press, Postmedia, and others, have filed a copyright suit against Anthropic, alleging that the AI company "breached and circumvented the protection measures put in place to prevent copying of their content." Well, but see, how else are you going to make up a $80bn net loss....? đĨē
- Central Saanich, in British Columbia, Canada, just elected Zeb King for mayor. He has been described as potentially the first "Mastodon-forward" mayor in Canada.
- Libby, the ebook platform that is also used by some public libraries, now has a setting where you can exclude AI ""authors"" from your search results.
- Mastodon released v5.0! Yes, yes, it's roumd. I like roumd. (There's many other fantastic changes, such as a refreshed composer window; I'd encourage you to give their blog post a read for details!)
- Built by "one guy in Sweden," Marginalia Search has no ads and no investors, and ranks text-heavy, non commercial pages first.
- The German federal government says it'll explore non-algorithmic networks, such as Mastodon and other European platforms, over the coming months.
đ Toots and Memes and Such
- Every fucking website, slop edition
- One of the many reasons why data literacy is important.
đ¯ The Post-Script
Reading:
- Why is Everyone in Tech so Sad? by Aaron Horwath. On "bullshit jobs," analogue hobbies, late capitalism, dreams of going off the grid, and popping the Workism bubble. In short: Well worth a read.
- Alex Hyett's newsletter, The Curious Engineer. This is also where I learned about Opusfived, which almost made me cry. Alex also has a Fediverse presence!
Also! I am available for researcher, data analyst, tech writer, and/or all-of-the-above-rolled-into-one project work! If you, or someone you know, need(s) help with advocating for a better web, highlighting alternatives, and/or other initiatives that help our society be better on the whole: hello [at] technically-good.ca is but a button-click away. Let's chat!
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