Console #15: Spying Tools and Risk Sharing
12/29/2019
A Relic of Bitcoin Past
In case you needed a pick-me-up this week, here’s someone showing you how to purchase pizza from Domino’s with Bitcoin in 2011.
A Damn Linux Tablet
It’s always good to see Linux in new places.
YouTube Accidentally Suspends Crypto Channels
YouTube accidentally suspended a bunch of cryptocurrency-related channels this week.
Of course, the crypto community was up in arms and as paranoid as ever, claiming that Google is trying to censor the “next wave of the internet”. In reality, there are likely many spam/scam cryptocurrency channels on YouTube (I deal with these every day in the Facebook groups that I manage) and some data science team was tasked with detecting and removing these channels due to complaints from customers. This data science team likely didn’t do enough due diligence on their machine learning model before going live and inadvertently suspended a bunch of credible crypto channels. The fact that Google also suspended Metamask’s Android client from the Play Store at the same time was likely an unfortunate coincidence that appeared to bolster the conspiracy claims.
UAE Spying App
It’s sad, but I’m not sure what constitutes a “spying” app anymore. I suppose it’s what the surveillance is being used for. If it’s used to show you products that you’re looking for then it’s moral, but if it’s assigning a risk score to students then it isn’t? And what about the case of the summer camp facial recognition software? There is also the question of a government taking part in the surveillance versus a business, sort of like free speech.
However, even if you decide a current use case is moral, it’s easy for the surveillance data to be misused in the future without your knowledge. While you may be OK with your child’s data* being used to send you emails when they’re photographed at summer camp, who’s to say that photo of your child’s face won’t be used to deny them a mortgage in the future?
*which is another question, what makes a parent the owner of a child’s privacy?
Gmail Address Hack
Speaking of surveillance, I found this little hack on Reddit this week and thought it fit in with this week’s newsletter.
Trump’s Risk Sharing Proposal
Nassim has been pushing this idea since Skin In The Game. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see Taleb’s philosophy proliferating into politics.
Tesla Can Identify Stop Lights, Garbage Cans, and Stop Signs
Uhm…what? Could it not do that before? lol…
But in all seriousness, this is an achievement if Tesla was confident enough with their predictions to roll this out to production. It also accentuates how much work is left to do for autonomous driving to become ubiquitous.
U.S. IPOs Down 3% While S&P Up 29%
This week’s newsletter not your cup of tea? Check out some of the more popular weeks below!
Console #13: The Next Phase of the Internet
GitHub Acquires Semmle, Vitalik’s Time Machine, and Condolences to the Facebook Engineer
The $1 Billion Bitcoin Whale, A $243,000 Deepfake, Pre-Mature Optimization, and The Yandhi Leak
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