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HPSHELTON

Programming, Privacy, Politics, Photography

Jan 7, 2021

Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine →

I've been thinking for years about what it would take to make the social web magical in all the right ways — less extreme, less toxic, more true — and I realized only recently that I've been thinking far too narrowly about the problem. I've long wanted Mark Zuckerberg to admit that Facebook is a media company, to take responsibility for the informational environment he created in the same way that the editor of a magazine would. (I pressed him on this once and he laughed.) In recent years, as Facebook's mistakes have compounded and its reputation has tanked, it has become clear that negligence is only part of the problem. No one, not even Mark Zuckerberg, can control the product he made. I've come to realize that Facebook is not a media company. It's a Doomsday Machine.

Jan 6, 2021

A Year of No Thanks →

[The verse] does not say, as Schweitzer misquoted, and as many people seem to think, "For all things, give thanks." Gratitude is not about giving thanks for anything that is evil or unjust. Never for violence, lying, oppression, and suffering. Not for illness, hunger, or abuse. Do not be grateful for these things.

The verse says, "Give thanks in all circumstances." That little Greek word, "en" means in, with, within, and throughout. It locates us, in the here and now. In the past, in the future. In happiness, in despair. In all things. In all times. In all situations.

We shouldn't be grateful for COVID, for the political chaos, for the broken climate, for economic suffering. But we can be grateful through these times, while we are struggling in them.

Jan 4, 2021

An unusual snack for cows, a powerful fix for climate →

Scientists have discovered that feeding seaweed to cows significantly reduces the amount of methane they produce and burp into the atmosphere, while also helping them produce more milk and grow bigger on less feed. When grown in the ocean, seaweed helps to filter the water, making the idea of farming seaweed to feed to cows a win-win for the environment and farmers.

To be filed under "strange but true".

Jan 3, 2021

Unified or divided government? It won't matter as much as you think for Biden and the Democrats →

Unless both Senate runoff elections in Georgia go Democrats' way, President-elect Joe Biden will face divided government from the start of his presidency. Many observers foresee years of unremitting legislative deadlock, with Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) leading his party in obstruction, just as he did under President Obama. The emerging conventional wisdom is that the only chance for policymaking is to get a handful of GOP moderates, such as Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mitt Romney (R-UT), to work with Democrats on small-ticket items.

Our new book, The Limits of Party, finds that this Beltway wisdom misses the mark. Divided government is not as devastating for a party's legislative accomplishments as is usually thought. In today's polarized Congress, legislation generally passes by large, bipartisan majorities — or not at all. Regardless of unified or divided control, Congress enacts very few laws on party-line votes.

Dec 27, 2020

Understanding ProRAW →

A journey into cameras, RAW, and a look at what makes ProRAW so special - and how it could change how everyone shoots and edits on iPhone.

Some really good technical details in this post.

Dec 14, 2020

Premiere security firm FireEye says it was breached by nation-state hackers →

Dec 13, 2020

Russian government hackers are behind a broad espionage campaign that has compromised U.S. agencies, including Treasury and Commerce →

Well that doesn't look too good.

Dec 13, 2020

A Broken Piece of Internet Backbone Might Finally Get Fixed →

Over the last two years, though, RPKI has gained some real momentum, and is now in use by ISPs like AT&T, Telia, NTT, and Cogent. On Monday, the European network service provider RETN announced that it has implemented RPKI. And in November, Google completed RPKI registration for more than 99 percent of its routes.

Update: Microsoft also announced last week it's signed all of its BGP routes.

Dec 11, 2020

Mass Extraction: The Widespread Power of U.S. Law Enforcement to Search Mobile Phones →

This report documents the widespread adoption of [mobile device forensic tools] by law enforcement in the United States. Based on 110 public records requests to state and local law enforcement agencies across the country, our research documents more than 2,000 agencies that have purchased these tools, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. We found that state and local law enforcement agencies have performed hundreds of thousands of cellphone extractions since 2015, often without a warrant. To our knowledge, this is the first time that such records have been widely disclosed.

Every American is at risk of having their phone forensically searched by law enforcement.

Some very common-sense policy recommendations about how to balance law-enforcement and 4th Amendment concerns at the end.

Dec 4, 2020

Oisín Moran | How I Made a Self-Quoting Tweet →

[For] anyone at Twitter who was depending on the network of tweets being a Directed Acyclic Graph, I'm so terribly sorry.

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H. Parker Shelton

I'm just an ordinary thirty-something who's had some extraordinary opportunities. I graduated from Johns Hopkins University, work for Microsoft in Silicon Valley, code websites and applications, take the occasional photograph, and keep a constant eye on current events, politics, and technology. This blog is the best of what catches that eye.

 
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