computers-R-stupid

Have been getting incoming links from Yahoo! Pipes for several years without really knowing what it was, and now it's leaving us. Another discarded internet dream.
Via dump.fm user Bamboo I learned this about Yahoo! Pipes:

11:41 AM Sat 7/25 -- by bamboo
pipes was this weird early graphical thing where you could connect together different RSS feeds
11:41 AM Sat 7/25 -- by bamboo
and manipulate them
11:41 AM Sat 7/25 -- by bamboo
in kind of a max/msp type environment
11:43 AM Sat 7/25 -- by bamboo
YUI was their javascript library circa 2007
11:45 AM Sat 7/25 -- by bamboo
...you could take RSS feeds from [e.g.] boing boing techdirt and slashdot and then pipe them together filtering for posts mentioning "microsoft" and then dump them into their own rss thing
11:45 AM Sat 7/25 -- by bamboo
posts mentioning "ruby on rails" circa 2007

The DIY aesthetic this represents ("assemble your own news feeds, your way!") was gradually replaced by "apps" and complete reliance on developers to come up with an "app" that fit your newsgathering needs. Also a kind of general laziness of people using Facebook and Twitter for news. Pipes had a nice graphic, though:

Update: Just noticed, scrolling back through old Nasty Nets posts, that Peter Baldes posted about Yahoo! Pipes in early 2007.

1. Lauren Weinstein, Sadly, How Windows 10 Reveals Microsoft's Ethics Armageddon.

By burying significant new data collection practices in the Windows 10 privacy policy that most people never read, by rigging update procedures to push users into switching browsers by default, by not bothering to ask users ahead of time if they were willing to share their Internet bandwidth for Microsoft's commercial use -- in these ways Microsoft failed the obvious ethics tests in a dramatic fashion.

MS seems to be failing at ethics even in some of the more minor areas -- with word that the popular old Solitaire game from Windows 7 and earlier has been replaced on Windows 10 with a version that forces you to sit through video advertisements unless you're willing to pay Microsoft $10 per year to shut them off.

$10 for Solitaire? The final straw.

2. Mic Wright, Windows 10: Here are some privacy issues you should know about. More on the "significant new data collection practices" Weinstein mentions. The W10 privacy policy is so loosely written it essentially gives Microsoft the ability to go snooping around folders and files on your hard drive for any "good faith" reason:

We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to protect our customers or enforce the terms governing the use of the services.

Time to start inquiring about a Linux PC. Perhaps, based on the above, you were planning to hang onto W7 indefinitely. Unfortunately Microsoft doesn't think you are capable of making adult decisions and is sneaking W10 "nagware" onto your desktop, an .exe file disguised as a non-optional security update. A popup appears on your taskbar telling you at regular intervals to "upgrade to Windows 10." I got rid of this (for now) by uninstalling update KB2990214, which "enables you to upgrade from W7 to a later version of Windows." (Other tech websites were recommending uninstalling KB3035583 but that one may be for Windows 8 only -- it wasn't in my "installed updates.")

3. Roy Poses, MD, A $6.6 Million CEO Dreams of a "Doctor-Less" Future.

Big data now seems to be the latest rage in business schools and among the high-tech crowd, never mind the failures of fancy statistical modeling based on big data that helped lead to the global financial collapse of 2008. Similarly, despite at least 30 years of research, multivariate prediction and diagnostic modeling in medicine has never lived up to its expectations. Few models have been demonstrated to be better than mediocre predictors when tested in real-life clinical settings. Finally, there are numerous concerns about privacy and data security when patients' data is being avidly traded back and forth.

We're continuing to discuss Dorothy Howard's Rhizome article advocating Facebook groups. She starts by saying:

These days, Facebook is so widely used that opting out constitutes an act of defiance of the norm.

She quotes some statistics to support this and concludes the best place to be is on the inside, agitating for change:

[A] 2013 Pew Research Center study found that 64% of adults use Facebook, while 30% of Americans use it as their primary news source. Its scale and omnipresence make Facebook Groups an ideal environment for vernacular culture as well as consciousness-raising and political organizing. Embracing Facebook and its corporate aesthetic doesn't have to be read as giving in, or as an accelerationist acceptance or even pursual of corporatization. Rather, in spite of seemingly insurmountable barriers like corporate centralization, solidarity and resistance can be, and are perhaps most likely to be, forged from within the very structures that seem most totalitarian.

Rhizome's Artistic Director, Michael Connor, thinks Facebook rises to the level of a "public utility":

[An] apt analogy for Facebook would be a public utility. Public utilities can be privately owned or publicly owned, they are not necessarily characterized by "mutual ownership" - only by public oversight. And such oversight is only likely to emerge through the organization of users themselves, very possibly with the platform itself as an organizing tool.

I questioned the Pew Numbers:

Howard's main justification for using Facebook is based on demographics ("64% of adults use Facebook, while 30% of Americans use it as their primary news source"). I would like to know more about these Pew numbers. Facebook is notorious for inflating its user data. If the 64% percent is based on polling, what is the universe -- 64% of US adults? 64% of US adults with internet access? What constitutes access? A monthly phone plan? etc.

And the public utility analogy:

Another problem with the public utility analogy is that those entities are government-granted monopolies and are subject to public oversight. If you have a problem with the power company you have a government board that hears your complaints. Pressure comes from without, not within. Whereas Facebook is this weird voluntary addictive thing that takes over people's lives and most of them don't know how they got there (to continue the smoking analogy). We try to offer those people alternatives, we don't encourage them to organize as they continue to buy tobacco.

Howard posted a link to the 2013 Pew study. I responded:

I've looked at Dorothy Howard's Pew polling numbers. There are more recent surveys than the 2013 one, although the results are similar.
On social media use generally: http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2015/01/SurveyQuestions.pdf
On where internet users get news: http://www.journalism.org/files/2015/07/Twitter-and-News-Survey-Topline-FINAL1.pdf
The survey universe is pretty small. 2000 US adults were interviewed; half of those were via cell phone. 75% of those adults self-identify as internet users. The percentage of US adults (adjusted for internet use) who use FB is 71%, which seems high, but of those only 45% visit several times a day. A significant percentage uses sites other than, or in addition to, FB: Twitter (23%); Instagram (26%); Pinterest (28%); LinkedIn (28%), with smaller numbers visiting those sites several times a day.
As for where users get their news, 40% of Twitter users say Twitter is "an important way I get my news" and the same percentage was found for FB users.
This may be a compelling argument to be connected to some form of social media but I don't see why it has to be Facebook, especially given all the negatives ZI is reminding us of [link added -- tm]. Howard's lead statement, "Facebook is so widely used that opting out constitutes an act of defiance of the norm," is essentially an advertisement for Facebook and is thinly supported statistically. Again, I realize we have some heavy Facebook users on the Rhizome staff but I don't think it's fair to couch this as a popular mandate or say that Facebook rises to the level of a "public utility," the way the telephone system was 40 years ago. There are too many other options: you should be emphasizing those.

Rhizome has another pro-Facebook post up, in this case a strange argument by writer Dorothy Howard that gives reasons for not being on Facebook (anti-privacy, commercialization), gives several examples of "alternative publics" outside Facebook, and then concludes with a plug for the author's newly-created Facebook group. Why stay on there if it's so bad? "These days," Howard writes, "Facebook is so widely used that opting out constitutes an act of defiance of the norm."
The article has drawn a few comments. I questioned Howard's demographics but more to the point, isn't defying the norm what artists and radical politicos are supposed to be doing? Howard wants to defy the norm and also receive "likes."