Monday, August 01, 2022

I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?

  I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?


Facebook Stops Paying Publishers For News

Facebook has paid publishers who participate in the News program. The company signed deals worth tens of millions of dollars with news organizations such as The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, the Journal reported. - The Wall Street Journal

NEW MEDIA RULE: DON’T SAY GAY.

Mainstream journalists have adopted what critics are calling a “don’t say gay” approach to covering the monkeypox outbreak in the United States. The media’s coverage of monkeypox, which officials in New York and California have declared a threat to public health amid rising case numbers, has studiously avoided using the word “gay” when discussing the individuals who are most at risk of contracting the viral disease. 


How costly is trust in the blockchain?

by  Tyler Cowen 

Eric B. Budish has a new paper on this topic:

Satoshi Nakamoto invented a new form of trust. This paper presents a three equation argument that Nakamoto’s new form of trust, while undeniably ingenious, is extremely expensive: the recurring, “flow” payments to the anonymous, decentralized compute power that maintains the trust must be large relative to the one-off, “stock” benefits of attacking the trust. This result also implies that the cost of securing the trust grows linearly with the potential value of attack — e.g., securing against a $1 billion attack is 1000 times more expensive than securing against a $1 million attack. A way out of this flow-stock argument
is if both (i) the compute power used to maintain the trust is non-repurposable, and (ii) a successful attack would cause the economic value of the trust to collapse. However, vulnerability to economic collapse is itself a serious problem, and the model points to specific collapse scenarios. The analysis thus suggests a “pick your poison” economic critique of Bitcoin and its novel form of trust: it is either extremely expensive relative to its economic usefulness or vulnerable to sabotage and collapse.

I enjoyed these sentences:

The intuition for why Nakamoto’s method of creating trust is so expensive, relative to other methods of creating trust, is that Nakamoto’s form of trust is memoryless.  The Bitcoin system is only as secure at a moment in time as the amount of computing power being devoted to maintaining it at that particular moment in time.

Whether or not you agree with the arguments here, or maybe you think proof of stake will render them less relevant, it is nice to see academics (U. Chicago business school) making contributions to crypto debates.

And do you know what is excellent about this paper?  At the end is an appendix “Discussion of Responses to this Paper’s Argument.”  If you can’t write one of those for your own paper, maybe nobody gives a damn!

Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.



Watch what happened when Four Corners tried filming a Chinese business in Solomon Islands


Websites use URLs to track you. Here’s how to stop them Popular Science

Popular Science: “As you might well know, websites can track you in various ways. It’s the reason why a single search for furniture can lead to months and months of online ads for chairs, tables, and shelving units. What you might not know is that third parties can track you using the address or URL of the website you’re visiting: it’s those bits of extra seemingly random numbers and characters attached to otherwise simple addresses ending in .com, for example.  But as with other various types of trackers, there are ways of blocking URL-based ones and protecting your privacy online. As always with digital security, it’s important to know what you’re dealing with, and the steps you can take to guard against any snoopers…”


11 Pick Up Lines For Libertarians To Use If They Ever Meet A Girl.




The New York Times Wirecutter: “You’ve seen the prompt: If you’re using a shared or public computer, use incognito mode. It gives you a sense of security knowing that whatever sites you visit or passwords you type won’t be saved to the device—like skulking around in an invisibility cloak. But of course, nothing you do online is invisible. Private browsing (aka incognito mode) is a great way to prevent your web browser from saving what you do. 
But to call it privacy-focused is a stretch, and while your browser or device doesn’t log your movements in its history and cookies, that doesn’t mean the sites you visit don’t clock your behavior. Despite its name, you’re not really incognito, and you may want to dial back your confidence in what these modes really do…”


 New interview with Peter Thiel



Washington Post: “You might not think of LinkedIn as a privacy risk, especially compared to the social networks that make lots of headlines for being naughty. LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, is where you share your resume with the world — information many members want to be visible, especially if they’re hunting for a job. But using LinkedIn comes with some exposure that may not be so obvious. 
For one: salespeople, crooks or stalkers could try to use the details you reveal on LinkedIn to target you with aggressive pitches, trick you into targeted phishing attacks or otherwise gain your confidence. You could also inadvertently leave breadcrumbs that suggest to your current employer that you’re on the hunt for a new job. 
Also, some of LinkedIn’s default settings make you less anonymous than other social networks. One that often shocks people: If you don’t adjust your visibility settings, other members can know when you’ve been looking at their profiles. LinkedIn has dozens of data, privacy and advertising settings you can control. Where to start? This guide takes you through the most important ones…” [Note – LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft]
LinkedIn privacy settings to change now - Washington Post

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