Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for January 29, 2020
SpaceX stock offerings incentivize employees; More about the automated dog training system; An argument that the risk from the Three Mile Island accident was exaggerated, and led to overreactions from regulators and society; An argument that surveillance is comprised of identification, correlation, and discrimination, and people who focus on facial recognition are missing the bigger picture. ; and a Steem essay describing the Tachyon Protocol for improved Internet privacy and performance
Straight from my RSS feed | Whatever gets my attention |
Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.
First posted on my Steem blog: SteemIt, SteemPeak*, StemGeeks.
- SpaceX investors say the rocket company uses a 'very smart' internal stock market to keep workers happy in spite of long hours and 'mediocre' salaries - Citing two anonymous investors and a number of employees, the article says that SpaceX fits the stereotype of a start-up employer, with brutally long hours and mediocre pay, but it uses stock incentives to keep its employees motivated. One employee is quoted as saying, "My salary is mediocre, but I'm pretty confident I will leave this company with a small fortune.". In order to accomplish this, the company has established an internal market where employees get matched up with accredited investors in order to make recurring stock purchases at a 10% discount. Higher level employees also have the opportunity to buy stock options. The article says some employees anticipate tremendous gains in stock prices and are holding for retirement, but others are selling their shares immediately. Payroll deductions for discounted stock purchases are limited to 15% of pay.
- New AI dog trainer uses computer vision and a treat launcher - This article has more information about the automated dog-training system that was included in Curating the Internet: Science and technology digest for January 26, 2020. The device was created by start-up firm, Companion Labs, and it's initial goal is to help dogs deal with separation anxiety when they're being boarded. The company says, however, that it can also train dogs to professional levels in five repetitive tasks: sit, stay, down, come, and stand. It is comprised of images sensors, wireless connectivity, a Google Edge TPU AI processor, a speaker, lights, and a proprietary "treat launcher". It can use the image sensors to identify and reinforce desirable behaviors without commands, or the audio function can also be enabled in order to train the dogs on the commands. The capability is currently under trial in San Francisco, and the company will be releasing a peer reviewed study. They'll be selling it in $499 or $249 monthly service packages where the fee depends on the number of dogs that are being trained simultaneously.
If you missed the video, here it is again:
- Three Mile Island and the Exaggerated Risk of Nuclear Power - This article argues that the main harmful impact of the Nuclear Reactor accident at Three Mile Island was a psychological impact on society. In 1979, one of the site's reactors experienced a malfunction and released a small amount of gas. The event was frightening for people in the area, but radioactive particles were captured by air filters, so it caused no physical harm. Another reactor at the site was still in operation until it was shut down last year. The article says, however that the public perception of risk, derailed the nuclear industry for decades after the incident, with regulatory overreaction and more than 100 plant cancellations in the five years after the accident. The article goes on to claim that after highly publicized incidents like that, it is common for overreactions to occur as a result of precautionary thinking and the recallability trap. Incidentally, this has been the subject of many dinner table conversations in my family because my father-in-law was one of the respondents from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after the reactor malfunction. For a first-hand perspective on the incident, my son did a Steem 20 questions interview with him in 20 Questions for an NRC Nuclear Engineer who Responded to the Three Mile Island Crisis -h/t Daniel Lemire (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @cmp2020.)
- We’re Banning Facial Recognition. We’re Missing the Point. - Bruce Schneier argues that bans on facial recognition are well-intentioned, but off target. In particular, he says that facial recognition is just a small part of the surveillance society that's being created, and that focusing on just that distracts from the larger problem and creates a false sense of security. The article goes on to argue that ubiquitous surveillance is becoming the norm, facilitated by government in authoritarian countries like China and by corporations in more free societies like the United States. At a higher layer, Schneier argues that modern surveillance can be seen through a lens of 3 components: identification, correlation, and discrimination. Facial recognition falls in the identification category, but it's not alone. People can also be identified by gait, voice, finger prints, iris patterns, or by things like MAC addresses, browser fingerprints, and cookies on the computer. Even simple things like credit card numbers and license plates can be used. Once people are identified, the article notes that there is a huge and wholly unregulated data broker industry that's ready and waiting to do the correlation. And the whole purpose of all this, Schneier argues, is so that companies and governments can treat people differently. Businesses often call it personalization, but Schneier calls it discrimination. To address this environment, Schneier argues that regulators need to move past the means of identification, and create regulation that grapples with all three aspects of mass surveillance: identification, correlation, and discrimination. In an addendum, Schneier adds that it makes short-term sense for advocates to focus on facial recognition because, "It's something that's easy to explain, viscerally creepy, and obviously actionable", but that for the long-term, a broader perspective is needed. -h/t Bruce Schneier
- STEEM Tachyon Protocol, A Decentralized Internet Protocol Created to Improve the Outdated and Risky TCP/IP - In this post, @bernardos describes some of the problems that exist with the transmission control protocol (TCP). These problems have arisen because the protocol was designed for wired networks in the 1970s, but it was impossible for designers to anticipate all the different ways that it would eventually be used. In particular, problems include sub-optimal throughput under certain situations such as slow-startup, three-way handshakes, and the assumption that packet loss is due to router congestion on a wired network, instead of a transient obstacle on a wireless network. Another problem, pertaining to privacy, is that the IP address can be used as both an address and an identifier. To address these problems, @bernardos introduces us to the Tachyon Protocol. This is a decentralized protocol that makes use of the User Datagram Protocol, blockchain, encryption, onion routing, and multiple paths to provide a faster and more secure mechanism for data communications. More about the protocol can be found on the Tachyon web site. In addition to creating the protocol, Tachyon is also a decentralized VPN provider. (A 10% beneficiary setting has been applied to this post for @bernardos.)
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Schneier is as always spot on in identifying and delineating surveillance issues, but his assumption of the necessity of institutional controls renders his discussion of potential remedies of null utility. Regardless of the motivations of individuals delegating their personal authority to such institutions and the rhetoric that involves, the inhumanity of institutions lends to psychopaths, similarly inhumane, existential power to control them, and thus society comprised of good individual people seeking to effect their felicity and prosperity.
The technologies enabling surveillance, correlation, and discrimination aren't potentially limitable by any conceivable institutional mechanisms. Instead freedom and society will be necessarily enabled by adopting those exact mechanisms and applying them to the very parties, institutional and otherwise, that seek to profit from them by preying on free people(s). As mesh networks, cryptocurrencies, and the variety of decentralized means of production of goods and services continue to develop and disperse across society, it will be increasingly impossible to centralized authority to parasitize and profit from them. As the parasitic extraction of wealth by centralized institutions decreases, the sovereign possession and creation of wealth will increasingly inure to and remain the power of the individuals themselves, who produce it at their sole option.
It is absolutely and utterly counterproductive to even consider institutional mechanisms that have become existential threats to the felicity of ourselves and our posterity as potential ways to manage and reduce such threats. Einstein pointed out that the thinking that produced challenges is incapable of surmounting them, and Schneier seems not to have grasped that paradigm in the context of institutional predation on society and individual sovereignty.
Thanks!
I agree that Schneier's framework is spot-on and also that I'm more interested in his technology perspectives than his regulatory ones. It frustrates me that, with his push for technology in the public interest, he seems to be increasingly focusing on the latter.
It's amazing to me that many people still don't get this:
when the tendency for power to attract the power-hungry has been known since Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, where he included a chapter called something like Why the worst get on top and even since Madison's now-cliched "If men were angels" quote from the Federalist Papers.
Still, many smart people continue in the belief that society can get better decisions through unaccountable bureaucrats and single elections 2 or 4 or 6 years apart than from multitudes of instantaneous decisions, reactions, and adjustments, all taking place in real-time.
I also agree with your point that decentralization and counter-surveillance of the institutions represent better solutions than government bureaucrats.