Doc Edward Morbius ⭕​ @dredmorbius@toot.cat

An administrative announcement.
Motherfuckers.

This One Trick Will Revolutionize Your Use of Social Media: Block fuckwits.

On social media, the advantage is that a large userbase and participation. The disadvantage: it's 99.9999% crap.

What's working for me is to filter ruthlessly. If someone is disruptive, ideological, insane, or crazy-making, I'll block them without thought (I used to agonize over that, I don't any more).

High signal is rare, but odds of missing out by blocking idiots are low.

#BlockFuckwits

https://web.archive.org/web/20180303151553/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/drLZV8sm7Tq

"Pseudonyms and anonymity are also an established part of many cultures -- for good reason."

- Alma Whitten, former Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering, Google

On authors who were publishing information technology panopticon concerns in the 1980s, or earlier

A quickie dump.

Paul Baran / RAND

• "On the Engineer's Responsibility in Protecting Privacy"

• "On the Future Computer Era: Modification of the American Character and the Role of the Engineer, or, A Little Caution in the Haste to Number"

• "The Coming Computer Utility -- Laissez-Faire, Licensing, or Regulation?"

• "Remarks on the Question of Privacy Raised by the Automation of Mental Health Records"

• "Some Caveats on the Contribution of Technology to Law Enforcement"

Largely written/published 1967--1969.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html

Willis Ware / RAND

Too numerous to list fully, 1960s --1990s. Highlights:

• "Security and Privacy in Computer Systems" (1967)

• "Computers in Society's Future" (1971)

• "Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens" (1973

• "Privacy and Security Issues in Information Systems" (1976)

• "Information Systems, Security, and Privacy" (1983)

• "The new faces of privacy" (1993)

https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/w/ware_willis_h.html

Misc

Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988) Notably reviewed in the Whole Earth Catalog's Signal: Communication Tools for the Information Age (1988).

https://www.worldcat.org/title/in-the-age-of-the-smart-machine-the-future-of-work-and-power/oclc/60966402 https://archive.org/details/inageofsmartmach00zubo/page/n7/mode/2up

"Danger to Civil Rights?", 80 Microcomputing (1982)

https://archive.org/stream/80_Microcomputing_Issue_26_1982-02_1001001_US#page/n295/mode/2up (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14329877)

"Computer-Based National Information Systems: Technology and Public Policy", NTIS (September 1981)

http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/ota/Ota_5/DATA/1981/8109.PDF

"23 to Study Computer ‘Threat’" (1970)

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/12/archives/23-to-study-computer-threat.html

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Privacy and Information Technology" bibliography is largely 1990--present, but contains some earlier references.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/it-privacy/#Bib

Similarly "Privacy"

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/privacy/

Credit Reporting / Legislation

US Privacy Act of 1974

https://www.justice.gov/opcl/privacy-act-1974

Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 - Queensland Government, Australia

https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/pdf/inforce/current/act-1971-050

Arthur R. Miller, The assault on privacy: computers, data banks, and dossiers

https://archive.org/details/assaultonprivacy00mill/page/n7/mode/2up

"The Computer, the Consumer and Privacy" (1984)

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/04/weekinreview/the-computer-the-consumer-and-privacy.html

Richard Boeth / Newsweek

The specific item I'd had in mind:

Richard Boeth, "Is Privacy Dead", Newsweek, July 27, 1970

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/11/is-privacy-dead.html%EF%BB%BF

Direct PDF: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/712228/1970-newsweek-coverstory-privacy.pdf

Based on an HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24851736

#privacy #surveillance #panopticon #PaulBaran #WillisWare #RAND #ShoshanaZuboff #RichardBoeth #CreditReporting

My present Recaptcha policy:

Request audio.

Respond "Fuck you Google"

Repeat until access granted, or the joy fades.

Bonus: All audio AI parsing tends to "Fuck you Google".

CNN, Fox Business, other news outlets plan coordinated reporting on Facebook leaks on Monday, 25 October

Full story is paywalled, but then again, the real story will hit in 3 days.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/new-facebook-storm-nears-as-cnn-fox-business-and-other-outlets-team-up-on-whistleblower-docs

#Facebook #TheFacebookFiles #FrancesHaugen #Leaks

It's definitely Onyx / BOOX. The device's default launcher does not support widgets.

I've got a fairly ugly workaround for now, see: https://github.com/termux/termux-widget/issues/60

TL;DR: install the Nova Launcher.

That's possible through the Aurora Store, an alternative to Google Play, if you happen to avoid that as I do. Aurora itself is installable from F-Droid.

You can then interact with and add Termux actions from Nova7, as detailed in the issue. You'll probably want to set Onyx's ContentBrowser as the default launcher, so that you can access Onyx's own apps. In particular, NeoReader (the book-reading app, the main reason you likely bought the device) is not launchable from Nova.

Ain't it grand when an OS can't even manage to have a unified launcher for all applications... Sigh.

#Android #Onyx #BOOX #Termux

OK, it's looking as if Onyx is relevant.

The Android version is heavily skinned, and the default launcher ... doesn't do widgets, or have any way to install / configure / display them.

(Widgets are free-standing applets that display directly on the home-screen, like clocks, calendars, stock or news tickers, weather, etc.)

So I'm trying to find an alternative, Widgets-capable, launcher Preferably in F-Droid.

Unlauncher isn't...

Termux:Widget issue (Termux / Android / BOOX)

I’m trying to get Termux:Widget, an app for creating Android launchers for executables under Termux working. There is no joy.

Full description at link. Any assistance appreciated.

Replication by any BOOX users would be useful to know.

https://joindiaspora.com/posts/6e4ad40015a0013aecf9002590d8e506

#termux #TermuxWidget #Android #BOOX #Onyx

A more complete obituary (in English):

"Mihály Csíkszentmihályi- Flow Theory Architect, Hungarian-American Psychologist, Dies Aged 88"

https://hungarytoday.hu/mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-flow-theory-architect-dies/

That also links a TEDx talk by Csikszentmihalyi:

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=fXIeFJCqsPs

#MihalyCsikszentmihalyi #Obituary #psychology #flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has died

Best known, and far more easily spelty by English-speakers, for his work on the pschology of flow states, particularly in his book Flow, he was a Hungarian-American psychologist associated with Caremont Graduate University, the University of Chicago, and Lake Forest College.

I'd had a brief email exchange with him over a concept he'd raised in an essay. Discussion drifted to other Hugarian (and Austrian) notables, ncluding the Polanyis (Karl and Michael). He'd known their neice, Eva Zeisel Polanyi, a ceramicist, and he dropped this small-world gem:

Karl Popper used to go hunting in the summers through the Carpatian Mountains with my grandfather; occasionally they were joined by August von Hayek, who later also got a Nobel in Economics . . . I learned a lot about my grandfather from him . . . And indirectly a lot from Popper, whose Das Logik Der Vorschung (translated into English with the strange title of The Logic of Scientific Discovery) was for years my Bible.

I'd first heard of his Flow concept on a public radio interview I caught whilst on a road-trip through a remote rural high plateau, in the 1990s. Highly memorable and mildly surreal listening to his voice as the countryside flowed past.

Vale, Mihaly.

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28940227

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/sbkaufman/status/1450946151352471553

#MihalyCsikszentmihalyi #obituary #flow #psychology #creativity