When Charity Isn’t

Quartz recently reported that “Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the [I]nternet”. Specifically, in southeast Asia and Africa, there are more self-identified “Facebook users” than there are “Internet users.” Most of the Internet basically just said “Ha! Ha! Look at those stupid people!”, but that misses what’s really going — and explained in the Quartz article.

In the developing world, most people don’t have computers, they have phones, and those phones aren’t even smartphones, they’re feature phones. When they browse Facebook, they aren’t using an app, or even m.facebook.com, they’re using what’s called “mbasic“. Additionally, the bandwidths are limited — say 2G — and the data rates are relatively expensive. In a very real sense, trying to surf the modern web is nigh-unusable. So Facebook experience is in certain sense not the Internet. The trouble comes in from the fact, that’s how Facebook wants it.

FB is a walled garden. It always has been. It’s a walled-garden with a billion users on a 7 billion person planet. There’s just not that much growth in the wired world available beyond population growth… unless you increase the number of potential users. And that’s where Internet.org comes in. Internet.org is a corporate partnership between Facebook and various feature phone manufactures that is “dedicated to making affordable internet access available to the two-thirds of the world not yet connected.” It sounds like a charity. It talks about the good works it does. But in reality, it’s just a ploy to increase the number of Facebook users. One of Internet.org’s main tactics is “zero-rating“. Zero-rating is a network-biased approach where telcoms or ISPs don’t charge customers for packets exchanged between them and the zero-rated site, thereby biasing user behavior.

There’s nothing altruistic with Internet.org, it’s all about increasing advertising revenue. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, that’s how the company makes money, and hell it pays my bills. And yeah, Facebook is primarily user generated content, and yes it is possible to do your own things on it, but the thing that bothers me about Internet.org is the whole mission from God rhetoric about it. “Is Internet connectivity a human right?” Well maybe, maybe not, but spouting this while promoting a walled garden is bullshit.

Invest in Pitchfork Futures

The Gaurdian:

With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,” he said.

This fear that the unwashed masses will soon rise up and overthrow their betters is a reoccurring theme with the ultra rich. It never happens though. Why? As Marco Rubio famously said, “We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots. We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and people who will make it. And that’s who we need to remain.” As long as that lie keeps getting believed, the 1% will remain safe on their piles of money.

FBI Snatch Attack

From the Silk Road trial:

As soon as Ulbricht was distracted, another agent grabbed the open computer and gave it to Kiernan, who is an FBI computer specialist. Kiernan spent the next three hours doing “triage” on the machine. Without allowing it to go idle, and thus become encrypted, he took photographs, went through the browser history, and ultimately handed it off to another agent who imaged the hard drive.

So the FBI grabbed the laptop, shoved a mouse jiggler into the USB port and began to photograph the screens while simultaneously arresting Ulbricht. Good. Clever. Maybe b cause I was a a wannabe script kiddie (I never did anything) reading alt.2600 and alt.cypherpunks back in the day, but I read this and immediately thought about ways to make a deadman switch to foil the snatch attack.

Tutankhamun Mask “Fixed”

Sometime last year, the beard on King Tut’s famous mask came off broken off and then was quickly repaired using “a quick drying, irreversible material”. Apparently, some sort of epoxy.

Jackie Rodriguez, a tourist who witnessed the repair work on the beard in late August, provided a photo to The Associated Press showing a museum employee holding it in place as the glue sets. “The whole job did look slapstick,” she said. “It was disconcerting given the procedure occurred in front of a large crowd and seemingly without the proper tools.”

Update Sat Jan 24 11:58:55 PST 2015: German restorer, Christian Eckmann, said in a press conference today, that the mask can properly be restored.

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In Its Dock, Dread Roomba Waits Dreaming

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It amuses me to no end that my son is afraid of the Roomba. He has always been afraid of it. Watching it. Jumping onto the couch and watching it. Following it from room to room, while staying a safe distance away. Standing on my feet when it gets too close. It is this fear that inspired me to put a face on it.

One time while playing, he knocked it from its dock, causing it backup and repeated try to redock.

Roomba wakes up!
You’ve disturbed it from its slumber.
Yeah!
Now it must wander… feeding. Feeding a hunger that can never be sated.
Yeah!

At the same time though, I try to explain to him that everything is fine. It can’t eat him. It’s dumb and can’t see so it bumps into things. That you can turn it on and off by pressing the button on top. You can send it away and make it go back home by pressing another button on the top. He knows this, and he’s proud when he presses the button and makes it return to the dock, but at the same time, he won’t do it on his own. He needs encouragement.

Previously

There Can be Only One

According to KBS, when Kim Jong-un was anointed heir apparent, his father, like his father before him, issued the following order:

All party organs and public security authorities should make a list of residents named Kim Jong-un … and train them to voluntarily change their names. Authorities should make sure that there is no one making unnecessary complaints or spreading gossip … regarding this project.

via The Guardian

Filmfest: Klan Revenge

Brotherhood of Death (1976)



Three black special forces soldiers (including return from Vietnam to their small Alabaman town, where the klan rapes one friend and kills another. They respond with Interestingly, the white sheriff is above board, but the deputies are the klansmen. Ends with a shot of a pro-klan billboard.

The Black Klansman (1966)



After the klan burns his daughter to death in a church burning, a light-skinned black man buys a wig, joins the klan under the guise of wanting to form a chapter in Los Angeles, dates the grand wizard’s daughter, and then kills him. Bonus points for miscegenation. This one ends with a JFK quote about racial equality.