Posts Tagged ‘online life’
What if Generative AI isn’t the ‘benefit’ or ‘existential risk’ to humanity that it’s being painted as? Meredith Whittaker & Camille Francois will make you think
This is a fascinating conversation about the roots, the dangers and hype around AI. Both of these thinkers are so insightful about the issues, and raise issues in context with such clarity.I appreciate them so much. Watch the video from Al Jazeerah English at YouTube or below, and I have linked to a transcript (cough, […]
UNSOCIAL MEDIA – Following the Trolls
From TODAY FM archives — Wilhelmina Shrimpton and Simon Morrow take a deep dive into trolling and cyberbullying. From the high profile to the general public, Kiwis across all walks of life are being targeted, and some are paying the ultimate price. So what drives us to troll, who is behind the fake profiles, and […]
Facebook is a scourge. Convince me otherwise.
Totally worth watching: Robbie Nicol (of White Man Behind A Desk) explains …”After the protests [at Parliament Buildings, Wellington] in February, I tried to write a monologue about Facebook and radicalisation — and it ended up being 17 minutes long lol.” Surely Facebook’s twisted, evil, money-at-all-costs approach – radicalising users by placing a higher value […]
Unlikely online bully, Liam Hehir
Check. Check. One, two, three, four. Is this thing ON? Hello readers, I logged in last night (yeah, it’s been a while) to mark THE END of the landmark legal case, Jordan Williams v Colin Craig, which (gulp) reached The Supreme Court, in which New Zealand’s most-defamed man was suing the politician he set out to destroy, for […]
Monica Lewinsky – a long echo of trauma leading to such wisdom
I heard a 45 minute interview with Monica Lewinsky talking to TED’s Chris Anderson on BBC Radio 4 over the weekend, and have listened to it another two times out walking. I recommend it. Highly. Man, I am so impressed with how this woman has integrated her life experiences and come to an understanding of […]
Cameron Slater is a liar. We already knew that, but it’s actually worse.
The just-released book Whale Oil, by Margie Thomson, tells the ghastly true story of a nasty, protracted online smear campaign. The dirty work was carried out by discredited dirty politics/dirty PR attack website owner Cameron Slater. But don’t misunderstand: Slater (long exposed as a recidivist liar) didn’t himself have any grievance against the target, Matthew […]
Facebook is not the devil
Hey, don’t get me wrong, I have been terribly troubled by Facebook’s ‘surveillance economy’ model: the way it tracks and analyses its users’ social graph and extrapolates a map of their ‘interests’ and demographic information before delivering them (the users) and their privacy up like lambs to the slaughter on the altar of commerce and, […]
Phishing season is open
Wow, this phishing season is really stepping up – three attempts today and it’s only early afternoon. I hadn’t seen this ‘You have remaining funds in your account, [target email address]’ one before, but I got two of them today. Coincidentally, I received them about the same time as I had two calls on my cellphone […]
Teach a man to phish
I’m still not taking these personally. This is clearly fake…(i.e. Not really from Apple. Looking behind the sender, the address is kiwe@ovcsexn.com and the link goes to a domain using a Twitter t.co URL shortener. Very unApple-like.) Again, you’re in for a hard time if you actually click on these things, but hey, it’s a […]
Another day, another phish
As if we need this stuff floating around. Remember: Don’t click! I’m still not taking this personally. – P
Phishing attacks – be careful out there
I got this by email tonight: You can’t be too careful. The ‘Click Here’ link goes off to a php page citing Ottawa, and the sender, far from being Apple, shows up as a local (i.e. xtra.co.nz) email address – probably hacked. Drop me a line if you’re a security researcher and you want a […]
What a photo of Patrick Gower!
Wow. Great shot. Talk about moody. Source: Newshub Features on Twitter. I’ve recently been thinking (again) about how media organizations harvest people-in-the-news’s social media profiles – often without permission and often murky about attribution – Source: “supplied” or “Facebook”. I hope I don’t sound too much like a hypocrite because I do use pix “published” on […]
Silencing critical voices with personal attacks
Watch this video. It’s short, less than 5 min, but it’s very good. The ‘flack’ filter — attempts to attack, invalidate and delegitimize “inconvenient” media narratives (starting about 3′ 30″ in the video) — was clearly on display in the NZ Government and NZ Defence Force spin response to Nicky Hager & Jon Stephenson’s book […]
The harms of government hacking, and some suggested controls (Access Now)
This is another very good, clear explanation of some of the issues around government-sanctioned, usually secret interference with the internet. Well worth watching. In justifications for these ‘interferences‘ (that’s the legal term) with our privacy and other human rights – like freedom of opinion and expression – much is made of the ‘threats’ that we […]
