When social media stops being social: How Twitter and Facebook have rendered Americans uncivil, insecure & addicted

Almanac: Trollope on gossip

“But who ever yet was offered a secret and declined it?”
~Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage

How to avoid change for change’s sake How do you build responsiveness to ongoing developments into a work program?

When social media stops being social: How Twitter and Facebook have rendered Americans uncivil, insecure & addicted RT

Siri and the philosophy of Blogging MEdia Dragons -"I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions."

Ransomware Gang's Victim Cracks Their Server and Releases All Their Decryption Keys"A user got his revenge on the ransomware gang who encrypted his files by hacking their server and releasing the decryption keys for all victims," writes ZDNet.

ccnafr shared their report:One of the gang's victims was Tobias Frömel, a German software developer. Frömel was one of the victims who paid the ransom demand so he could regain access to his files. However, after paying the ransom, Frömel also analyzed the ransomware, gained insight into how Muhstik operated, and then retrieved the crooks' database from their server. "I know it was not legal from me," the researcher wrote in a text file he published online on Pastebin earlier Monday, containing 2,858 decryption keys. "I'm not the bad guy here," Frömel added.

Besides releasing the decryption keys, the German developer also published a decrypter that all Muhstik victims can use to unlock their files. The decrypter is available on MEGA[VirusTotal scan], and usage instructions are avaiable on the Bleeping Computer forum. 

In the meantime, Frömel has been busy notifying Muhstik victims on Twitter about the decrypter's availability, advising users against paying the ransom.


He Was Canada’s ‘Clark Kent.’ Then Police Say He Went Rogue.
The trail that led investigators to one of Canada’s elite cybercrime experts, a quiet analyst in the national police, began with an email.
Secrets for sale, it said, to a man who sold phones to cartels.
Investigators traced the email to Cameron Ortis, a veteran of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, according to an American law-enforcement official. Last month, Canadian prosecutors accused Mr. Ortis of passing on or offering secrets in 2015, and then gathering information in 2018, with the intent to do it again.

Stunned authorities find dozens of encrypted computers in alleged spy's home


How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories. 

 

A Crisis of Cognition

In journalism, we think our job is to “get the story.” We teach the skill of “knowing what a story is.” We call ourselves “storytellers.” We believe that through stories — or as we also like to say when feeling uppish, “narrative”— we attract and hold attention, impart facts in engaging fashion, and explain the world.

My greatest heresy to date — besides questioning paywalls as panacea — is to doubt the primacy of the story as journalistic form and to warn of the risk of valuing drama, character, and control over chaotic reality. Now I’ll dive deeper into my heretical hole and ask: What if the story as a form, by its nature, is often wrong? What if we cannot explain nearly as much as we think we can? What if our basis for understanding our world and the motives and behaviors of people in it is illusory? What would that mean for journalism and its role in society? I believe we need to fundamentally and radically reconsider our conceptions of journalism and I start doing that at the end of this post.

News Publishers Go To War With the Internet?—?and We All Lose

Evidence, please

[Disclosure: I raised money for my school from Facebook to aggregate signals of quality in news. I also have attended events convened by Google. I am independent of and receive no compensation personally from any technology company.]

Too many momentous decisions about the future of the internet and its regulation — as well as coverage in media — are being made on the basis of assumptions, fears, theories, myths, mere metaphors, isolated incidents, and hidden self-interest, not evidence. The discussion about the internet  and the future should begin with questions and research and end with demonstrable facts, not with presumption or with what I fear most in media: moral panic. I will beg journalists to take on academics’ discipline of evidence over anecdote.

But first, let me praise an example of the kind of analysis we need. Axel Bruns, a professor at Queensland University of Technology, just presented an excellent paper at the International Association for Media and Communication Research conference in Madrid, sticking a pin in the idea of the filter bubble. He argues

that echo chambers and filter bubbles principally constitute an unfounded moral panic that presents a convenient technological scapegoat (search and social platforms and their affordances and algorithms) for a much more critical problem: growing social and political polarisation. But this is a problem that has fundamentally social and societal causes, and therefore cannot be solved by technological means alone. [My emphasis]

Amen.

Mayor accused of failing to fullfil road maintenance promises is dragged through the streets by angry voters
Jorge Luis Escandón Hernández was elected mayor of Las Margaritas, Chiapas after he promised to repair city's rural roads, in a chaotic campaign that included accusations of a "brawl" with his opponent's supporters. Local police have arrested 11 l...

Jorge Luis Escandón Hernández was elected mayor of Las Margaritas, Chiapas after he promised to repair city's rural roads, in a chaotic campaign that included accusations of a "brawl" with his opponent's supporters.

Local police have arrested 11 locals, identified by the BBC as farmers angry that he had not made good on his roadworks promises, for kidnapping Escandón from his office, tying him to the back of a pickup truck, and publicly dragging him through the streets of the Santa Rita district. Escandón did not sustain serious injuries, but has indicated his intention to seek criminal charges for abduction and attempted murder.

The public spectacle was ended when "dozens" of police officers managed to stop the truck and arrest the accused, after "scuffles" that resulted in multiple injuries.

The dragging marks the escalation of hostilities by farmers angry about the failed road maintenance promise -- four months ago, Escandón's office was vandalized over the issue.

Mayors and local politicians in Mexico are often targeted by drug gangs when they refuse to cooperate with their criminal schemes but it is less common for them to be attacked over their campaign promises.

Mexico mayor tied to car and dragged along by angry locals [BBC]