Bits & Bobs for the Week of 18 June 2023
Bits & Bobs for the Week of 18 June 2023
Below is a collection of the interesting things I've been reading over the last week or so
@raylehmann over on the hellsite1 asked his Gen-X followers if they had any memory of the iconic book Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd. The comments on this thread are fascinating, and Lehmann's followers identify a trend - those born at the tail end of Gen X (late-late 70s to 1980) seem to remember having Goodnight Moon read to them growing up; I definitely do. But earlier Gen Xers don't.
GnM was originally published in 1947, but didn't receive wide publication until the mid-1970s and really took off by the early 90s, if this tweet is to be believed:
initial release: 6,000 copies
1953: 1,500
1970: 20,000
by 1990, total > 4 million
Irritating gap in sales figures, but consistent with it becoming popular enough to not be niche in mid 1980s. I wonder if the b. '78-81 ppl are a regionally biased sample? Big cities, perhaps?— James Durbin (@theamazingdrj) June 5, 2023
I asked David (also born in 1980) whether he remembered GnM and he said that he only recalls it because it was read to his brothers, who are considerably younger. This seems to check out with a lot of other thread participants. There's some interesting history on the book here.
Also, Happy Father's Day to my wonderful dad, who probably doesn't read my posts, but since I know my mother does, I thought it was worth giving him a shout-out. And if you are reading my posts Daddy, I hope you enjoy them.
And with that bit of nostalgia porn and well-wishing out of the way, let's get on with the weekly reads.
Long Reads (> 20 minutes)
How a British baroness is shaping America’s tech laws for kids - POLITICO (Mark Scott & Rebecca Kern): This article discusses how British baroness Beeban Kidron has had an outsized impact on the tech sector via strategic legislation in the form of 'Age Appropriate Design Codes'. The first 'Code' was passed in the UK in January 2000, and more recently in California in late 2022. Kidron is also attempting to get copies of the same passed in many states and federally in the US (though good luck with that last one, hon).
These codes of practice-cum-laws impose various design standards and requirements on tech companies, with the goal of forcing tech companies to redesign their products with children in mind. What's most interesting, is that these laws seem to be doing the trick. From Politico:
Almost overnight [after the UK Children's Code was passed], TikTok limited the ability of teenagers to be contacted by strangers via direct message. Facebook pulled back on how advertisers could target underage users with personalized ads based on collecting people’s data. YouTube turned off its “autoplay” function for minors that allowed teenagers to doomscrool through endless, and potentially, harmful content.
That seems well and good, but Kidron also has her sights on passing age-verification laws like the UK's Online Safety Bill, which would have a far more negative impact on privacy rights and freedoms -- of adults and children alike.
A pre-read for the article I'll be posting this week: On the Apple Vision Pro - by Zvi Mowshowitz -- Between this and a few other reads, there's a lot of ground to cover. I'll be digging into the privacy and surveillance aspects, but Zvi touches on them a bit here and his overall take is worth reading.
Medium Reads (5-20 minutes)
It’s strike summer, baby! - by Ryan Broderick - Garbage Day Everyone is talking about the enshitification of the internet - a term coined by Cory Doctrow in a January 21 Pluralistic thread. The Doctrow piece opens with a poignant observation:
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Whether platforms are actually dying is a question I don't have an answer to, but my cynical take is that the big platforms will likely be creaking around for some time, just getting shittier day-by-day. I mean, Twitter is still around. Still, the combination of enshitification, SEO bloat, and the rise of AI-generated content-made-for-robots-not-humans, does have me wondering if, as Alex Pareene pointed out, we are "living through the end of the useful internet."
Broderick touches upon the breakdown of the implicit social contract we agreed to with big tech: in exchange for our "data, attention, and increasingly, actual money" platforms and companies are supposed to give us useful stuff, and make our digital lives easier. What happens when one side of the agreement basically stops trying? It's not like we can sue in some grand internet court of law…
Snowden Ten Years Later - Schneier on Security: Bruce Schneier shares his thoughts on the Snowden revelations ten years on, mostly by re-posting a piece he wrote in September 2013 and offering a 'where are they now' summary at the end. I was most struck by this line:
Everyone knows that death is inevitable; there’s absolutely no surprise about that. Yet it arrives as a surprise, because we spend most of our lives refusing to think about it. The NSA documents were a bit like that. Knowing that it is surely true that the NSA is eavesdropping on the world, and doing it in such a methodical and robust manner, is very different from coming face-to-face with the reality that it is and the details of how it is doing it.
Short Reads (<5 minutes)
After Push Back From EU Members, EU Commission Drops Anti-Encryption Wording From CSA Bill | Techdirt (Tim Cushing): when this crossed my desk, I was honestly shocked. It turns out that sometimes, when the moon is at the right point in the sky, no volcanoes are erupting, and enough people wish it so, politicians actually listen to constituents and experts. Who knew?
For some context: The Regulation on Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is the European Union's attempt to curb the spread of child sexual abuse material. This is a noble goal, and some aspects of the proposed law (commonly referred to as 'Chat Control') are indeed sensible. But draft versions of the regulation included language mandating client-side scanning of user content on all devices, both for images and so-called 'grooming' conversations, including encryption-breaking tech that the politicos swore wouldn't actually break encryption (except that yes, yes it would).
Many experts have spoken out against client-side scanning, and how once it’s mandated somewhere, it would be trivial for governments around the world to go from 'we use this only to get bad child abuse material off the internet' to 'we also use this to target and surveil gay people, our political enemies, kitten-haters, and anyone who mocks dear leader.' Most EU member nations brushed aside the parade of horribles, but a few, like Spain, were not only for client-side scanning, but they also wanted to completely nuke end-to-end encryption as well. Techdirt posits that it was likely that the release of Spain’s opinions, increased press scrutiny, and testimony by experts finally motivated the lawmakers to scrub the anti-encryption wording from the CSA proposal. The changes can be seen starting on page 5 of the updated proposal. As a bonus, lawmakers added explicit language protecting encryption, which is excellent news:
This Regulation shall not prohibit, make impossible, weaken, circumvent or otherwise undermine cybersecurity measures, in particular encryption, including end-to-end encryption, implemented by the relevant information society services or by the users. This Regulation shall not create any obligation to decrypt data.
A 'game changer' weight-loss drug is making people disgusted by their favorite foods -- including coffee and Chick-fil-A (Anna Medaris): Semaglutide, sold under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic, is a weekly injectable drug for treating Type-2 diabetes, and increasingly, an off-label drug for treating weight loss and obesity. Apparently it works really, really well. That said, I doubt I'll be trying it (despite being a bit rounder than my knees appreciate) because side effects basically make you hate eating food. Tastebuds go haywire, cravings die off, and even the dopamine rush you get from enjoying deliciousness craters. A 2020 study found that 70% of patients who took GLP-1 drugs for type 2 diabetes stopped taking them within two years. One reason for the drop may be the lack of interest in food. Sorry, knees.
Robert Bateman kindly linked to my cheeky piece in the Privado Privacy Corner, analyzing the 'Hyrule General Data Protection Act' in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom . I always like it when people do that.
Yes, I still occasionally read Twitter, mostly because @robertmbateman is there