You know the US tech giants have way too much power, unencumbered by their own government and their own countryâs laws, when they think they can strong-arm another nation. From Reuter:
Alphabet Incâs Google said on Friday it would block its search engine in Australia if the government proceeds with a new code that would force it and Facebook Inc to pay media companies for the right to use their content.
Fine, then piss off. If Australia wants to enact laws that you canât operate with, because youâre used to getting your own way and donât like sharing the US$40,000 million youâve made each year off the backs of othersâ hard work, then just go. Iâve always said people would find alternatives to Google services in less than 24 hours, and while I appreciate its index is larger and it handles search terms well, the spying and the monopolistic tactics are not a worthwhile trade-off.
I know Google supporters are saying that the Australian policy favours the Murdoch Press, and I agree that the bar that the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) has set for what qualifies as a media business (revenues of over A$150,000 per annum) is too high. So it isnât perfect.
The fact Google has made a deal in France suggests it is possible, when the giant doesnât whine so damned much.
Plus, Google and Facebook have been dangerous to democracy, and should have done more for years to address these issues. Theyâve allowed a power imbalance for the sake of their own profits, so paying for newsâeffectively a licensing payment that the rest of us would have to fork outâat least puts a value on it, given how it benefits the two sites. No search? Fine, letâs have more ethical actors reap the rewards of fairer, âunbubbledâ searches, because at least there would be a societal benefit from it, and since they arenât cashing in on the mediaâs work, Iâm happy for them to get a free licence to republish. Right now I donât believe the likes of Duck Duck Go are dominant enough (far from it) to raise the attention of Australian regulators.
Facebookâs reaction has been similar: they would block Australians from sharing links to news. Again, not a bad idea; maybe people will stop using a platform used to incite hate and violence to get their bubbled news items. Facebook, please go ahead and carry out your threat. If it cuts down on people using your siteâor, indeed, returns them to using it for the original purpose most of us signed up for, which was to keep in touch with friendsâthen we all win. (Not that Iâd be back for anything but the limited set of activities I do today. Zuckâs rich enough.)
A statement provided to me and other members of the media from the Open Markets Instituteâs executive director Barry Lynn reads:
Today Google and Facebook proved in dramatic fashion that they pose existential threats to the worldâs democracies. The two corporations are exploiting their monopoly control over essential communications to extort, bully, and cow a free people. In doing so, Google and Facebook are acting similarly to China, which in recent months has used trade embargoes to punish Australians for standing up for democratic values and open fact-based debate. These autocratic actions show why Americans across the political spectrum must work together to break the power that Google, Facebook, and Amazon wield over our news and communications, and over our political debate. They show why citizens of all democracies must work together to build a communications infrastructure safe for all democracies in the 21st Century.
As I begin this blog post, Autocade has just crossed the 22 million page-view barrier, at 22,000,040. I had estimated we would get there on Sunday, and as itâs just ticked over here in New Zealand, I was right.
We have 4,379 models in the database, with the Bestune B70, in its third generation, the most recent model added. Iâm grateful itâs a regular carânot yet another crossover, which has been the usual story of 2020 whenever I added new models to the site.
As crossovers and SUVs were once regarded as niche models, historical ones werenât put up in any great haste, so I canât always escape them just by putting up models from the past. However, there are countless sports and supercars to go up, so maybe Iâll need to add them in amongst the SUVs to maintain my sanity and happiness. These high-riding two-box vehicles are incredibly boring subjects stylistically.
Itâs a stroke of luck, then, to have the B70: Bestuneâs sole saloon offering now in amongst an entire range of crossovers. The saloons are the niche vehicles of 2020â1. Itâs a stylish motor, too: Cadillac looks for a middle-class price. Admittedly, such close inspirations havenât deserted China altogether, but this is, in my mind, no worse than Ford pretending its 1975 US Granada was a Mercedes-Benz for the masses. Itâs not going to get GMâs lawyers upset. And unlike the Granada, the B70 is actually a fairly advanced car, with refinement now on par with a lot of joint-venture models coming out of China.
You know the drill to track Autocadeâs growth:
March 2008: launch
April 2011: 1,000,000 (three years for first million)
March 2012: 2,000,000 (11 months for second million)
May 2013: 3,000,000 (14 months for third million)
January 2014: 4,000,000 (eight months for fourth million)
September 2014: 5,000,000 (eight months for fifth million)
May 2015: 6,000,000 (eight months for sixth million)
October 2015: 7,000,000 (five months for seventh million)
March 2016: 8,000,000 (five months for eighth million)
August 2016: 9,000,000 (five months for ninth million)
February 2017: 10,000,000 (six months for 10th million)
June 2017: 11,000,000 (four months for 11th million)
January 2018: 12,000,000 (seven months for 12th million)
May 2018: 13,000,000 (four months for 13th million)
September 2018: 14,000,000 (four months for 14th million)
February 2019: 15,000,000 (five months for 15th million)
June 2019: 16,000,000 (four months for 16th million)
October 2019: 17,000,000 (four months for 17th million)
December 2019: 18,000,000 (just under three months for 18th million)
April 2020: 19,000,000 (just over three months for 19th million)
July 2020: 20,000,000 (just over three-and-a-half months for 20th million)
October 2020: 21,000,000 (three months for 21st million)
January 2021: 22,000,000 (three months for 22nd million)
Not a huge change in the rate, then: for the past year we can expect roughly a million page views every three months. The database has increased by 96 model entries, versus 40 when I last posted about the million milestones.
In other publishing news, Jody Miller has managed to get an interview with Rachel Hunter. Her story is on Lucire today, and Iâm expecting a more in-depth one will appear in print later in 2021. Itâs taken us 23 years (not that we were actively pursuing): itâs just one of those things where it took that long for our paths to cross. Both Rachel and Lucire are Kiwi names that are arguably more noticed abroad than in our countries of birth, and I suppose itâs like two compatriots who travel to different countries. You donât always bump into one another.
I end this blog post with Autocadeâs views at 22,000,302.
One thing about not posting to NewTumbl is I’ve nowhere convenient to put quotations I’ve found. Maybe they have to go here as well. Back when I started this blog in 2006â15 years ago, since it was in JanuaryâI did make some very short posts, so it’s not out of keeping. (I realize the timestamp is in GMT, but it’s coming up to midday on January 1, 2021 here.)
Here’s one from Robert Reich, and I think for the most part US readers will agree, regardless of their political stripes.
In 2008, Wall Street nearly destroyed the economy. The Street got bailed out while millions of Americans lost their jobs, savings, and homes. Yet not no major Wall Street executive ever went to jail.
In more recent years, top executives of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, along with the Sackler family, knew the dangers of OxyContin but did nothing. Executives at Wells Fargo Bank pushed bank employees to defraud customers. Executives at Boeing hid the results of tests showing its 737 Max Jetliner was unsafe. Police chiefs across America looked the other way as police under their command repeatedly killed innocent Black Americans.
Yet here, too, those responsible have got away with it.
I did offer these quotations with little or no commentary at NewTumbl and Tumblr.
What came up with the above was a Twitter exchange with a netizen in the US, and how some places still touted three- to four-day shipping times when I argued that it was obviousâespecially if you had been looking at the COVID positivity rates that their government officials relied onâthat these were BS. And that Amazon (revenue exceeding US$100 milliard in the fourth quarter of 2020) and Apple (profit at c. US$100 milliard for the 12 months ending September 30) might just be rich enough to hire an employee to do the calculations and correlate them with delaysâwe are not talking particularly complicated maths here, and we have had a lot of 2020 data to go on. But they would rather save a few bob and lie to consumers: it’s a choice they have made.
The conclusion I sadly had to draw was that businesses there can lie with impunity, because they’ve observed that there are no real consequences. The famous examples are all too clear from Reich’s quotation, where the people get a raw dealâeven losing their lives.
I was led by this Tweet to have a peek at the Draft EUâUK Trade Cooperation Agreement and can confirm that on p. 931 (not p. 921), under âProtocols and Standards to be used for encryption mechanism: s/MIME and related packagesâ, there is this:
The text:
The underlying certificate used by the s/MIME mechanism has to be in compliance with X.509 standard. In order to ensure common standards and procedures with other PrĂŒm applications, the processing rules for s/MIME encryption operations or to be applied under various Commercial Product of the Shelves (COTS) environments, are as follows:
â the sequence of the operations is: first encryption and then signing,
â the encryption algorithm AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with 256 bit key length and RSA with 1024 bit key length shall be applied for symmetric and asymmetric encryption respectively,
â the hash algorithm SHA-1 shall be applied.
s/MIME functionality is built into the vast majority of modern e-mail software packages including Outlook, Mozilla Mail as well as Netscape Communicator 4.x and inter-operates among all major email software packages.
Two things have always puzzled me about the UKâs approach to getting some sort of a deal with the EU.
There are two Davids, Davis and Frost, no relation to the TV producer and TV host. As far as I can tell, despite knowing that the transition period would end on January 1, 2021, failed to do anything toward advancing a deal with the EU, so that the British people know there are new rules, but not what they are. The British taxpayer would be right to question just what their pounds have been doing.
If I may use an analogy: thereâs an exam and the set date was given but no one has done any swotting. Messrs Davis and Frost havenât even done the coursework and sat in the lectures and tutorials blankly.
The person who has done the least is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the British prime minister, who stumbled in to the exam room at the last minute without knowing the subject.
But never mind, sneaked into the room with his clobber is an earlier graduateâs paper! Surely he can plagiarize some of the answers out of that should the same questions arise!
I donât know much about SHA-1 hash algorithms but the original Tweeter informs us that this had been âdeprecated in 2011â as insecure. However, I can cast my mind back to when âNetscape Communicator 4.xâ was my browser of choice, and that was 1998â2001. (I stuck with Netscape 4·7 for a long time, as 6 was too buggy, and in 2001 a friend gave me a copy of Internet Explorer 5, which I then used in Windows. This pre-dates this blog, hence Netscape is not even a tag here.)
This is a comedyâtragedy from the land of Shakespeare, and I wonder if it means that the British government is expecting things to get so bad that they will have to wind up using computer software from 20 years ago.
Or they just couldnât be arsed over the last four years (yes, count âem!) to do any real work, and hoped that no one would read the 1,259 pp. to find the mistakes.
To conclude, another bad analogy: itâs not really oven-ready despite all this time baking. However, it appears the ingredients aren’t as fresh as we were led to believe. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating.
Either something is interfering with Mediawiki or Iâve reached the limit with the software after 4,300-odd entries on Autocade. Which is highly unlikely as the same software runs Wikipedia.
For the first time ever I noticed this in the footer:
This is how a page with no views looks. Once it nets a few views, a count appears (â1 viewâ). Except for the first time in 12 years, this page, which has been viewed multiple timesâincluding by me as I reloaded it to see if I could get the count startedâwill not show a count.
This is only happening, as far as I can tell, on the newest page, though the counts on other pages have stayed static despite reloads (including leaving the page and returning).
The statisticsâ page on Autocade doesnât always update when I reload pages, either, which makes me wonder if the count to the next million is going to be accurate.
Anyone else come across this error?
Itâs funny that software that has run for 12 years one way decides not to do so any more, without any change in the back end.
I have noticed, however, that Disqus is doing some odd things, with the âAlso on Autocadeâ box showing âView sourceâ links that the general public is not permitted to see. Which means itâs following me. Is that altering how the pages behave? Itâs the first time that thatâs happened, too.
And something is making sure the ads donât show up, and itâs not me, since I never use an ad blocker, and Privacy Badger is turned off on my own sites. The browser has updated, but I’ve checked and the in-built ad blocker is switched off.
Postscript: Alex, who maintains three spaces on NewTumbl, can still see my “missing” five posts. In addition, NewTumbl has responded and it’s believed there was a bug. More on that here.
This is interesting: talking to Bii on Twitter, who is also a NewTumbl user, I discovered that he canât see my last five posts on NewTumbl.
I sent him a permalink (using the recommended NewTumbl method) to my last post there, but he gets a 404.
In fact, the newest post he can see is my sixth-to-last. And itâs interesting to me that of the last five, three were critical of NewTumblâs moderation system.
This reminds me of Google Plus, which used to hide my posts that were regularly critical of Google.
Bii would kindly prefer to give NewTumbl the benefit of the doubt though my thoughts jumped immediately to censorship. The last five posts are all public.
Top: The way my NewTumbl blog is supposed to look, in its top left-hand corner. Above: What Bii sees, with the last five posts hidden. Coincidentally three of them are critical of NewTumbl.
Like I say, my blog posts here have a pretty good audience, and the first one on NewTumbl comes up very high when one searches for that site. You do not want to be playing these games.
To think, I was so supportive of that place.
For the sake of completeness, then, here are the three critical posts, which have been excerpted before.
November 27, 2020 Do the mods here know their own rules?
Had a couple of modelling shots marked M by the moderators here and I cannot understand why. I had them marked O.
Thereâs no nudity (M) but they contain sexy or sultry imagery (O). Do the mods here know their own rules?
See for yourself: this was the latest. As this is a US site, maybe I should use The Handmaidâs Tale for guidance? I hear itâs a big hit over there. This is after a post with the word w*nk (literally written like that, with an asterisk) got marked as M.
November 29, 2020 See you at my blog gallery
That was pretty simple. Iâve put the New Image Gallery plug-in from A WP Life on to my main blog. And since that blog gets an average of 700 views per post (and the viral ones getting six figures), Iâm betting that whatever I put there will get more eyeballs than here. For those interested, itâs at jackyan.com/blog/2020/11/november-2020-miscellaneous-images/. [Postscript: the galleries can be found at jackyan.com/blog/category/gallery/.] New entries will be added on a monthly basis. Itâs not as cool as NewTumbl but Iâm going to be interested to see if itâs as enjoyable as what Iâve been doing here.
I wanted in all sincerity to see NewTumbl grow but as @alex99a-three and others have seen, some moderating decisions have been questionable. I know first-hand that Wikipedia is a place where true expertise, that of professionals, is not welcomeâfounder Larry Sanger has said as much, which is why he left. The late Aaron Swartz echoed those comments. And here, if professionals are being overruled by people who are not at the same level, then Iâm not sure what the point is. I feel Wikipedia has no point, and my own dissatisfaction with it led me to create Autocade, and thereâs a sense that, in its very real wish to make sure it could keep up with its growth, NewTumbl is heading down the same path.
I donât begrudge this siteâs founders for adopting the approach they did in post moderation. In fact, I think it was very clever and itâs a great way for NewTumbl to punch above its weight. However, in practice the absence of an appealsâ system doesnât work for me any more. I totally get that they havenât the resources. So maybe I will return when they do.
As @constantpriaprism pointed out, Dean is not really present these days, either, so one big drawcard to NewTumblâits transparencyâis now also missing.
And itâs those of us in the F and O spacesâpeople that NewTumbl said they wanted to encourageâwho seem to be bearing the brunt of puritanical moderating. Iâm guessing we are being sidelined by people who donât have the context (e.g. Alex has posted some really innocent stuff) or knowledge outside their countries. Both Alex and I (if I may be so bold as to guess his intent) have been marking as F or O things that were safe for us on prime-time TV when we were younger. I use the same standard with imagery and language.
To confirm this lack of knowledge, I read one comment which absolutely highlighted that one moderator had no idea what they were doing, advancing what I felt was a particularly weak argument. In that case, a newspaper front page was taken down and marked as M. You have to ask yourself: if a word appears (censored) on a newspaper front page, then itâs probably not M; and if a word is used on prime-time television without bleeping, then itâs also probably not M. There are other words which may be adult in nature but are commonly used that even Mary Whitehouse would be fine with, but you just know that with the lack of knowledge that some display here, youâre going to have it taken off the site and marked out of range.
Iâve done my share of rating posts here and I like to think Iâve taken an even-handed, free-speech approach based on decades of experience and life in different countries.
If this is to be an adult siteâand I know the majority of posts lean that wayâthen good luck to it. I will be back as @vergangene-automarken has some excellent stuff, as do the regulars whom I follow, but for now I really want to see what itâs like doing the same thing in my own space. See you there.
Buzzfeedâs article, on departing Facebook staff who write âbadge postsâ, wasnât a surprise; what was a greater surprise was just how long it took for such news to surface.
Badge posts are traditional farewell notes at Facebook, and not everyone has had rosy things to say. One wrote, âWith so many internal forces propping up the production of hateful and violent content, the task of stopping hate and violence on Facebook starts to feel even more sisyphean than it already is ⊠It also makes it embarrassing to work hereâ (original emphasis). Buzzfeed noted, âMore stunning, they estimated using the companyâs own figures that, even with artificial intelligence and third-party moderators, the company was âdeleting less than 5% of all of the hate speech posted to Facebook,ââ a claim that Facebook disputes, despite its points having already been addressed in the badge post:
Thanks for the response. The data scientist's analysis took this difference between views and content into account and argued that their methodology was still sound. I've typed out the full part of their badge post detailing this for you and our readers. Any thoughts? pic.twitter.com/VvgxBYi8fC
The rest is worth reading here.
Meanwhile, this Twitter thread from Cory Doctorow, sums up a lot of my feelings and has supporting links, and it is where I found the above. Highlights:
The ones that joined to fix Facebook from the inside have overwhelming evidence that Facebook doesn't actually want to fix its problems, particularly disinformation.
Reality has a leftist bias, so any crackdown on disinformation will disproportionately affect conservatives.
When that happens, Ted Cruz gets angry at Zuck and drags him into the Senate. Plus, Zuck really enjoys the company of far right assholes, and his version of "listening to both sides" boils down to "I meet with Stormfront AND the RNC."https://t.co/7M4UWd0V95
I realize US conservatives feel they are hard done by with Facebook, but I know plenty of liberals who feel the same, and who’ve had posts censored. Even if Silicon Valley leans left, Facebook’s management doesn’t, so I’d go so far as to say right-wing views get more airtime there than left-wing (actually, also right-wing by anyone else’s standards) ones. On Facebook itself, during the few times I visit, I actually see very few conservatives who have complained of having their posts deleted or censored.
That isn’t a reason to shut it down or to break it up, but misinformation, regardless of whom it supports is. Inciting genocide is. Allowing posts to remain that influence someone to commit murder is. Facebook has proved over 15 years-plus that it has no desire to do the right thing, in which case it may well be time for others to step in to do it for them.
The below is excerpted from an email sent to the Race Relations’ Commissioner, Meng Foon, sent yesterday, in light of this Tweet (and the thread that follows):
Me and my friend just wrote a letter to NCEA about the inclusion of a Lionel Terry poem in the History exam 💅😘
The New Zealand Qualifications’ Authority responded to Cadence:
Okkk so the response to our email…basically they said Terry was a 'little-known white supremacist' and that 'information was included to put his poem in context'. This info literally just said he murdered Joe Kum Yung, and that 'He was known for his views on race.'
I find it totally bizarre and inexplicable in the wake of the March 15 mosque terror attacks that someone would have thought it appropriate to include a poem by Terry in such a context, which in my view affords a murderer, racist, and white supremacist undeserved sympathy, and treats the murder of Joe Kum Yung as a side note.
I dare say the equivalent would be quoting from the manifesto of the Christchurch terrorist.
I would have no issue if Terry had been discussed in the context of the xenophobia (even the sinophobia) and racism of the era, with students asked to analyse that critically.
Looking at the Level 2 history exam paper in full, I question whether the poem’s inclusion is even that relevant to the question, more so when compared to the other sources given by the examiner.
Cadence Chung, the student who brought this to the attention of a number of people on Twitter, said she received a response from NZQA suggesting that sufficient context had been given. This I feel dismisses the seriousness of the hate crime perpetrated on Joe Kum Yung and, by extension, on our community, and is yet another example of the ongoing racism that surfaces from time to time.
One is used to it coming from certain quarters but from an official government body?
It does not reflect where New Zealanders stand today and NZQA should both explain and apologize for its inclusion.
Indeed, right now, an analysis of why NZQA felt its actions appropriate in 2020 would make a suitable question in a future exam.
If only I had read Tina Ngata’s Tweet on the subject first, as it is far more to the point:
It was the 1st *recorded* race based murder in NZ (bc govt doesn't count colonizers killing MÄori as race based).
Not "little known" to our NZ Chinese community & not to those who study NZ racism.
Try NOT to erase whole ethnic communuties when defending yourself against racism. https://t.co/zakPRKkcLR
One hundred and fifteen years on since the racially motivated murder of Joe Kum Yung, we still have people who give this little regard to our various communities. My tale about being denied service at a Wellington supermarket in 1993 on racial grounds doesn’t seem that far-fetched, to be frank.