a thread by yonatan zunger on why a codes of ethics came about in other fields and why we probably need one in CS as well. Context is the cambridge analytica facebook sorta breach

@GodEmperorDune i assume CS in this context is Cyber Space? not Counter Strike (which admittedly was my first though until i remembered what room this is)

@Memor-X computer science

i assume that's the cambridge analytica facebook sorta breach you're talking about?

@Memor-X yes

i dunno if breach is the right word for it

i bet you it was in the EULA "that everyone read" said no one ever

the 3rd party that got the data did it through APIs provided by facebook and followed terms of use

then they turned around and gave/sold the data to someone else, which is against the terms of use

and facebook told them to delete the data some 2 years later, around when a newspaper called them out on it

so it wasn't a breach in the sense of "hackers broke in and stole things" but it was a breach in the sense of "neither facebook nor these people consented to having their data sent to cambridge analytica"

barrack obama join dsa

send tweet

thumbnail pls

legitimately spooked me when I opened the transcript

@GodEmperorDune i think you mean that they didn't consent to cambridge analytica sending it off to a another party

@Memor-X no, Cambridge analytica got it from a a third party who got it from Facebook

which is actually worse imo

> Facebook said in a statement that a Cambridge University psychology professor had lied to the company and violated its policies by passing data to Cambridge Analytica from an app he had developed. It suspended the firm from Facebook.

the professor was paid to make an app to harvest facebook data from users and friends of the app's users. then he sent the harvested data to cambridge analytica

as annoying as it can be at times these APIs are very good at regulating how much and what data you get out of them, bypassing them is just scummy

definitely not selling them my gerrymandering services(TM)

Uh oh, Scavino

@TimStone at first i was thinking this was about Trump Jr. rather than being tricked

@GodEmperorDune The part where he temporarily changed his name to Dr. Spectre is important too

@Unionhawk Love that there's infighting over this like we gotta "play it safe" against the literal Nazi

IN ILLINOIS

jfc there was another bombing?!

seems that way :/

dunno where the feds are

but they sure aren't hunting down literal terrorists actively bombing people

@GodEmperorDune now hold on, "terrorist" has a specific meaning

@Unionhawk making black people scared of packages left at their door seems like it should count

I suppose I should clarify that was my DOJ impression

@Unionhawk i figured it was poes law

@GodEmperorDune Poe's law. At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen.

@Unionhawk yes

lol god dammit

"Letter to the Editor: Teachers using extortion to get what they want ... Remember when ronald reagan fired all the air traffic controllers? ..."

Because america is already such a leader in education

Keyboard Cat dies aged 9

@Unionhawk I can't remember how that ended but... not well?

@Unionhawk (Of the 34 House Democrats who voted against the ACA in 2010, Lipinski is one of just three still in office.) To be fair, I wonder what the overall percentage is of reps since 2018, might not be hugely different.

@Yuuki Yes, he fired 10,000 air traffic controllers which as you can imagine was V Bad lol

@Unionhawk He also warns that ideological purity tests from progressives risk creating “a Tea Party of the left.” Ah so Indivisible then? Yes please.

We sent thousands of voter postcards to likely Democrats on the weekend, yay

@puzzlepiece87 Eh, I dunno. There was a surge of anti-Democratic sentiment right around the passage of the ACA (which funnily enough, all the people who voted out the Democrats love now).

"Voter postcards"?

Do they even have fixed space formatting in posts?!

I'm a slow writer so I only managed 40 but I'm happy to keep my RL activism going.

@ToxicFrog to new MO resident that has voted Democrat at least once in the past "Welcome to Missouri! If you haven't done so, please register to vote and learn about MO's new voter ID law. Your vote really matters!"

@puzzlepiece87 He's anti-choice iirc too which should ideally be a bright line but you know

The front of the postcard has a QR code and website and pretty graphics to be enticing

And then we have addresses for all these people and we send them

Aah

We're trying to get these people going now so they have both registered and proper ID

Trying to mitigate the suppression

@Yuuki "Funnily enough" cries

@puzzlepiece87 My favorite part is the lady that said "I just wish it wasn't called Obamacare, it should've had a proper name". It did have a proper name. It was called the Patient Care and Affordable Care Act. But your representatives got everyone to call it "Obamacare" because they knew you don't like Obama (because he's black).

@Yuuki Amen.

I mean, to be fair, ACA's direct benefits are confusing and weird which is what helped make it an unpopular law

You've got medicaid expansion, essential benefits, and preexisting conditions

@Unionhawk Besides the fact that healthcare is complicated, what about that is confusing and weird?

and then a whole lot of just, market-based-solutions and bribing the insurance industry and asking them to not do bad things

I feel like I could describe all of those in one sentence that an 8 year old could understand.

But vox.com loves it because you can shop around for good plans and cheaper hospitals

"More poor people can see a doctor", "Everyone can see a doctor for these things now", "People can go to the doctor even if they're already sick"

@Unionhawk These parts were definitely more complicated, good examples.

23 million people remain uninsured, which in the united states, means they do not have access to healthcare. And of those who are insured, many have high deductible plans which makes seeking healthcare a financial question anyway

We're still paying more for worse health outcomes

lol Erick Erickson

And we're bribing insurance companies to not do bad things instead of just doing good things ourselves, which is just, backwards

@TimStone he left twitter to his assistant today which lol bye

I'm not saying the ACA is perfect or even objectively good, I'm just finding it funny how people who voted Democrats out of office because of the ACA now love it and the only thing that's changed is that they found out that they could call it the ACA instead of Obamacare.

There's just a narrow slice that it does actually help is the thing, essentially

Who among us could have seen this coming from a leadership willing to rename themselves Tronc?

> Clinton: I "meant no disrespect" with my comments on Trump voters

I mean you kind of did and you aren't necessarily wrong but also just stop please

@TimStone I feel like "Tronc" is what a bunch of old people came up with after looking at a bunch of Silicon Valley start-ups and figuring that what truly appealed to "the millenials" was taking letters out of things until you arrived at a single one or two syllable word.

@TimStone I lost PA and MI because the rustbelt is backwards savages

no offense

When they announced it I just remember thinking "This is going to be stupid" and here we are

Are we sure the company isn't actually called "Trnc"?

Or "trnc" since we're supposed to hate uppercase letters too?

Or are they saving that for their next step?

@Yuuki It's stylized as tronc in the logo even though it's Tronc, Inc., if that counts

@puzzlepiece87 The degree of politics spam people in the US seemingly get is ridiculous. If I got a letter like that I would be a) rather creeped out, b) inclined not to vote for the creepy stalkery people.

I mean we do have very low civic participation

If you ever experience imposter syndrome, remember that Cillizza makes like 6 figures to not understand these things

I'm like 80% sure that's sarcasm.

Wait, archive.org hosts a citizenradio backup? Wut

@Arperum I think you would be less creeped out if you saw the actual postcard.

@Arperum You may be surprised, but it doesn't say "Hey so we saw you moved here and you've voted Democratic in the past so register to vote here so you can continue voting Democratic, hmm?"

@Arperum It's got a very governmental-except-slightly-less boring blue and red picture of MO and a sensible font link to a MO state government site. Then on the back, it's like "Please register to vote."

I mean, the way that we get the information is a little creepy-ish sort of. Like we do the same voting commission/reporting on McCabe's voting in primary but not general thing where we got the public records of voting and then used it to target our recipients

But we as a USA society that throws privacy to the wind are far enough down that path that this all qualifies as normal, imo.

I don't like it and I hope we go more like the EU instead, but for now it is what it is.

@TimStone @Arperum Yes this too, voting rates are quite low and increasing turnout even a small amount helps quite a bit.

I'm fairly sure there's places with higher voter turn out that don't have actual democratic elections

🤔

The thing I've always wondered about Flat Earth is "so what?" Okay, let's just assume the earth is flat and everyone is lying about it. Why would everyone be lying about it?

To sell fear of North Korea, which is on the right hand side of the world and is far away

It's part of the Illuminati's deal with aliens in exchange for their mind control devices imo

@Unionhawk given that it's Uber, I wonder if they cut a few too many corners there. They seem to be less careful than the big competitors like Waymo.

Google alerts has informed me that a deal has been reached in Jersey City, and teachers will incidentally be following the order to return

lol

Also Trump hired a lawyer who spouts a conspiracy that Trump has been framed by the FBI and DOJ, as one is normally, despite not having any charges

@TimStone clearly he is the most innocent president of all time

ooo, no, actually, it sounds like Jersey City has a verbal agreement only and some rank and file are pissed

@TimStone trump wouldn't click on the email if it wasn't about America first

@Yuuki can we get a reality show where flat earthers look for the edge

@GnomeSlice I dunno, being a flat earther is already pretty edgy.

@GodEmperorDune If that letter holds any power in law, that is going to be quite the "oh fuck" in facebook HQ.

@puzzlepiece87 Yea, I'm used to living in a country where you are required by law to go to the voter booth and present yourself (you don't have to actually cast a valid vote, you just have to go there). There are fines on not voting, I'm not sure how enforced they are though. IIRC not very much.

You can allow someone else to vote for you.

also Cynthia Nixon's campaign is started and... her site is buckling under the load lol. Some fire stuff though

@Unionhawk Like Nixon Nixon or just unfortunate coincidence?

@Yuuki unclear actually, idk

@Yuuki No not that Nixon, lol

@Yuuki Wikipedia page doesn't have Richard in it.

She's Miranda from Sex and the City, in case that escaped anyone

I didn't actually know that before looking at wikipedia so that's not confidence inspiring

@TimStone So... probably just as bad as Nixon Nixon then.

She has a history of activism, so idk

then again like, from what I understand a day old ham sandwich would be a better governor than cuomo

Right, I'm not particularly qualified to speak to her merits but that and I don't think she's just a "bored celebrity"

and she's running in large part on "The MTA sucks" so

@Unionhawk Having kept half a foot-long in the refrigerator for two days, a day-old ham sandwich is actually all right, @Uni.

I mean honestly the moldy sandwich from the simpsons might be able to do better than cuomo

@Yuuki idk, soggy white bread

@TimStone Your refrigerator adds moisture?

What sort of sad, dry sandwich is this?

I mean, it depends on the circumstances of how I am carrying the sandwich

@TimStone it's a @Yuuki sandwhich, of course it's sad

I've been awhile since I made my last weird sandwich, huh?

like on the mountain I go wrap without condiments and just dip the whole thing in ranch like a professional who doesn't want to have a soggy sandwich that's been in my pocket for 3 hours

@Yuuki instantly regretting mentioning it

Look what you've done

I'M ALREADY FULL OF REGRET

Ah man, that was a long time ago.

RIP @spugsley @agent46

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA BRAGGED ABOUT USING FAKE NEWS, BRIBES, AND UKRANIAN HOOKERS TO INFLUENCE ELECTIONS

That was more incriminating than I expected from that undercover investigation

@MadScientist o.0

I mean they're bedfellows with Bannon and the Mercers so Unrepentantly Evil is kinda of their whole deal

But yeah, quite direct

I was always skeptical that the psychographic stuff they claim to use works well, it just sounds quite far fetched, and I doubt it is better than some rough conventional targeting.

@MadScientist Sounds like psychohistory

That they're involved in this kind of direct and shady stuff is something I didn't expect, but it does fit and makes quite some sense

they claimed that they can create psychological profiles from essentially Facebook and similar data for voters and determine who to influence. This always felt more like an exaggerated advertisment for their company than a sinister plot

UK authorities seek warrant to search Cambridge Analytica offices

Alsup not only permits lawsuit against fossil fuels to continue, he requires them to submit answers to climate change questions to the judicial record

> a decision that all but assures that new maps beneficial to Democrats will be in place for the 2018 elections.

I mean, and to like, democracy, but

No, a decision that all but assures that democrats won't have a map that is heavily biased against them

There's a difference

It's not going to be beneficial to them except when compared to the shitshow they have now

I was reading NYT's analysis of the new map, and they were saying that it is slightly beneficial to the Democrats

As opposed to the old one, which was very beneficial to the Republicans

Based on the "wasted votes" metric that has been recently used in these cases

I mean, no, but it's fun to pretend

@TimStone Didn't cause them to rethink when Texas GDP growth was 2% and California's was 6 or 8 or whatever, why start now?

@TimStone Didn't cause them to rethink when Oklahoma was getting wracked by fracking earthquakes, why start now?

@TimStone Didn't cause them to rethink when they had to throw poor otherwise would-be Medicaid recipients under the death bus, why start now?

(I'm not bitter, I swear)

Hahah yah jerks

@puzzlepiece87 As an Oklahoman, welcome to the club

@puzzlepiece87 Oh man, remember death panels?

lol

Look I'm not saying they're coming for our blood but they're definitely gonna ef us up

is thiel invested in boston dynamics

He is apparently invested in a different company called Robotex

Then they're not coming for our blood

@Unionhawk idk he did eat that iguana for no apparent reason

I'm waiting for the autonomous peacekeeping robots from Faro Automated Solutions, then we'll know it's all over

Yeah dude the point is to stop it from happening because you're being so obtuse as to allow it to happen

@MadScientist this is kinda sorta done by all campaigns. You figure out which voters are most likely to respond to specific promises by the candidate. Like you send all your "this is what i'm going to do on climate change" to voters that are mostly interested in climate change. what CA seems to have done is take it a step further in 1) building the profiles using stolen data instead of asking users for the data and 2) exacerbating voters bigoted tendencies by sending them more bigotted stuff

(specifically about the psychographic stuff, all the other stuff from the undercover video just goes to show that Cambridge Analytica is not acting in good faith)

@TimStone they are really banking on their gerrymandering being so strong as to withstand the 2018 wave

inb4 dems do something dumb like retake congress and then not impeach so they can fundraise off the outrage instead

@GodEmperorDune It just seems like a really dumb thing to claim since even ardent Trump supporters would be like "Oh yeah he'd totally do it", just thinking it was Alpha instead of foolish

Literally no one thinks he has the self-control to definitely not do it

it really looks like you're close to stress testing democracy and the rule of law

This is America, we go big or go home, so the UK better get prepped

@MadScientist i think we've been doing this for some time now

> “Who amongst’ve us would have predicted that Trump would fire Mueller?” - Orrin Hatch, probably

"you thought you had a bad day? Obscenely rich man mark zuck lost like 4B today"

"and is still obscenely rich"

@Unionhawk i'm not sad for zuck

there is lots of room for zuck in the sea

@GodEmperorDune be happy that he lost money then

@Unionhawk i'm happy that cambridge analytica is getting rekt

@GodEmperorDune both is good

and cautiously optimistic that mueller is getting to the good stuff

bob mueller going to find out kushner has mafia ties because all new york real estate guys do and it's going to own

Or something

@Unionhawk trump's mafia ties are already established from decades of reporting tho

Yeah because he's a new york real estate guy

There's probably not a single one who hasn't done some variety of crimes

Double negative

Bah

In any case ADAPT is doing cool things

I think they've occupied the FDA director's front yard or something

Going on 2 weeks

ADAPT doesn't fuck around

@Unionhawk wtf they're still doing shock therapy?

none of us are free until all of us are ✊

ummm

rumors on twitter of trump dick pics

no

I mean "rumours", the lawyer said it and I assume he wouldn't if it weren't true

@TimStone i couldn't find video or text, just trollish accounts joking about it

@Unionhawk please do not reply to my tweets

think this is also the same guy who's allowed Women to get a license and drive when before it was illegal

@TimStone rekt

@Memor-X is it the same dude that house arrested his opponent?

Yeah, I think the prevailing theory is he's granting freedoms he doesn't care about to cover for power moves elsewhere

But I'm not positive

@GodEmperorDune don't know. i thought saudi arabia's government was a monarchy so your "opponent" is the guy from the branch family who plans to off your main family

@TimStone that sounds probable

I mean he's starving Yemen right now but yass reforms

@Memor-X they have a very complicate heirarchy of "whose gonna be king next" among the relatives

@Unionhawk i guess the yemenis really should've financed the kushner building

this is something that i saw on the news. Uber's self-driving car kills a pedestrian

the more i read about it the more i wonder if the fact this is a self driving car just a moot point, either the pedestrian came out onto the road in a situation that a human driver wouldn't react on time or the human driver wasn't bothering to take notice because this was a self driving car

@Memor-X except a main selling point of self driving cars is that they reduce accidents. Killing a pedestrian while in testing mode is not a good look

especially because this is uber, who doesn't have the best record of a "safety first" mindset