Category Archives: Viva!
Putin threatens arms race if US dumps nuclear treaty
All fall down…

Russia would also build new medium-range missiles if the US were to do so, says president
Vladimir Putin has threatened that Russia will develop new missiles banned by the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty if the US exits the pact and pursues an arms buildup of its own.
The Russian president’s remarks came one day after the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said Moscow was in “material breach” of the cold war-era treaty and issued a 60-day ultimatum for Russia to correct the alleged violations. Otherwise, he said, the US would quit the 1987 accord, considered a milestone in reducing the threat of a nuclear war in Europe.
Luxembourg to become first country to make all public transport free

Government seeks to prioritise environment and end some of world’s worst traffic congestion
Luxembourg is set to become the first country in the world to make all its public transport free.
Fares on trains, trams and buses will be lifted next summer under the plans of the re-elected coalition government led by Xavier Bettel, who was sworn in for a second term as prime minister on Wednesday.
British Member of Parliament publishes 250 pages of damning internal Facebook documents that had been sealed by a US court
via Sophia, NOT Loren!
Damian Collins chairs the UK Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee; it was he who ordered the Parliamentary Serjeant at Arms to drag a visiting US tech executive named Ted Kramer out of his hotel to surrender his laptop to Parliament so they could see the internal Facebook documents that a US federal judge had ordered sealed.
Kramer is CEO of Six4Three, a creepy US startup whose Facebook app helped you find pictures of your friends in bikinis; when the app was neutered by a change to Facebook’s API, Six4Three sued Facebook and in the course of pre-trial discovery, they were given extensive internal documents from Facebook, which the judge in the case had ordered sealed. Somehow, Collins got wind of the fact that Kramer, his laptop, and the documents were all in London, and — having been spurned by Mark Zuckerberg, who repeatedly refused demands to appear in Parliament — saw his chance.
Now, Collins has dumped a 250 page file, hosted on Parliament’s servers, which includes the documents from Kramer’s laptop and Collins’s summary.
The release comes despite a plea from Facebook to respect the US court order and not publish the documents.
The documents are incredibly damning. They show Facebookers at the highest level — up to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg — conspiring to trick Android users about how much data was being gathered by an update to the Facebook app; to give certain companies “whitelisted” access to user data beyond the access the company had disclosed to its users; to explicitly productize “friends” data (that is, to allow the trick Cambridge Analytica pulled, when getting a user to grant permission to their own data also allowed a company to access their friends’ data); to use the Onavo battery-monitor app to covertly gather data on which other apps users had installed; and anti-competitive targeting of partners’ apps.
Collins tweeted: “I believe there is considerable public interest in releasing these documents. They raise important questions about how Facebook treats users data, their policies for working with app developers, and how they exercise their dominant position in the social media market.”
This isn’t just one smoking gun, it’s hundreds of them. This is Facebook’s worst nightmare.
Summary of key issues from the Six4Three files
1. White Lists
Facebook have clearly entered into whitelisting agreements with certain companies, which meant that after the platform changes in 2014/15 they maintained full access to friends data. It is not clear that there was any user consent for this, nor how Facebook decided which companies should be whitelisted or not.
2. Value of friends data
It is clear that increasing revenues from major app developers was one of the key drivers behind the Platform 3.0 changes at Facebook. The idea of linking access to friends data to the financial value of the developers relationship with Facebook is a recurring feature of the documents.
3. Reciprocity
Data reciprocity between Facebook and app developers was a central feature in the discussions about the launch of Platform 3.0.
4. Android
Facebook knew that the changes to its policies on the Android mobile phone system, which enabled the Facebook app to collect a record of calls and texts sent by the user would be controversial. To mitigate any bad PR, Facebook planned to make it as hard of possible for users to know that this was one of th e underlying features of the upgrade of their app.
5. Onavo
Facebook used Onavo to conduct global surveys of the usage of mobile apps by customers, and apparently without their knowledge. They used this data to assess not just how many people had download ed apps, but how often they used them. This knowledge helped them to decide which companies to acquire, and which to treat as a threat.
6. Targeting competitor Apps
The files show evidence of Facebook taking aggressive positions against apps, with the consequence that denying them access to data led to the failure of that business.
Summary of key issues from the Six4Three files [Damian Collins MP/DCMS Committee]
Nearly 250 Pages of Devastating Internal Facebook Documents Posted Online By UK Parliament [Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox/Motherboard]
Facebook lured charities to its platform, then abandoned them once they got hacked
via Sophia not Loren
Facebook’s walled garden/roach motel strategy made it progressively harder and harder for charities to reach supporters on the web, driving them within Facebook’s confines, where they devoted thousands of hours to making their Facebook presence attractive and pleasing to Facebook’s algorithm.
Facebook rewarded them with a “Donate” button that could be used to raise funds directly within Facebook — which increased donations and also provided one more way for Facebook to lock in its users and surveil their actions.
But as charities started to fall prey to hackers who used phishing and social engineering to repeatedly take over the charities’ accounts and steal the donations destined for them, Facebook was AWOL, refusing to answer increasingly desperate pleas from charities who sometimes found themselves blackmailed by hackers who threatened to delete the charities’ pages altogether unless they diverted their donations to the hackers by way of ransom.
Some charities got shut down by Facebook, when the hackers who took over the accounts did shady things that triggered Facebook’s fraud-detection. Again, nobody was home at Facebook to help these charities get their accounts back.
Wired traces the story of two charities that finally got their accounts secured and undid the damage that the hackers had done — but only by raising such a stink that a Facebook Vice President got the company’s PR department to sort them out.
Remember this the next time someone calls for Facebook to stop harassment or hate speech: this is a company that doesn’t pick up the phone when a hacker steals thousands of dollars from a charity. Once we ask it to start algorithms to decide what is and isn’t acceptable speech, they’ll make billions of mistakes, blocking everything from messages of condolences after a tragic death to urgent political messages on the eve of elections, and it will take months or years to get those decisions reviewed, and in many cases, you’ll never get justice.
After WIRED reached out to Facebook in early October, an employee from the social network’s communications department also contacted Alana to ensure that her account was secure, according to emails. But Alana’s problems weren’t over. Numerous fake Facebook accounts soon began appearing that impersonated people who worked for the shelter, or their friends and family. The harassment was exhausting, and it didn’t stop until Alana transferred $1,500 to the hacker via an anonymous PayPal account—the same amount the fake GoFundMe had raised before it was shut down and the money returned to donors. Since then, Alana says, she and the shelter’s Facebook page have been left alone.
But Alana is still bewildered by how difficult it was to reach a real person at the company. “Facebook needs to have some kind of customer service department,” she says. “PayPal has one, Amazon has one, eBay has one. There is zero reason for them to not have one.”
Facebook says it provides plenty of support.
Facebook Exposes Nonprofits to Donors—and Hackers [Louise Matsakis/Wired]
(Image: Howard Lake, Alessio Jacona, CC-BY-SA)
To Reduce Privacy Risks, the Census Plans to Report Less Accurate Data
Ah, err, umm… the Census is not taken for the benefit of scholars, it is taken to apportion voting, get an idea of where the government should be spending or not spending money… Grin. Guaranteeing people’s confidentiality has become more of a challenge, but some scholars worry that the new system will impede research.
Suspected of Crimes, Netanyahu Is Also Suspected of Fear-Mongering
Critics say the Israeli prime minister, battling for political survival, over-dramatized an anti-tunnel military operation to distract from his predicament.
Republicans Hate Democracy
The Republican-controlled state Legislature in Wisconsin has approved new limits on the power of Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers in a lame-duck session.
Following overnight debate, lawmakers voted Wednesday to restrict Evers from following through on a campaign promise to remove Wisconsin from a multistate lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act. The bill would also limit early voting in Wisconsin and give state lawmakers more power over the state’s economic development agency, which Evers has said he would like to eliminate.
In the wee hours of the morning, the plan narrowly passed the state Senate, later the Assembly and now the bill moves to Gov. Scott Walker’s desk for his signature.
Gov.-elect Evers released a statement Wednesday morning saying Wisconsin values were “pushed aside so a handful of people could desperately usurp and cling to power while hidden away from the very people they represent.”
“Power-hungry politicians rushed through sweeping changes to our laws to expand their own power and override the will of the people of Wisconsin who asked for change on November 6th,” reads the statement.
And the crucial context here is that the public officials being stripped of power represent popular majorities and the legislature does not. It does no good to say “if you don’t like it, vote them out,” because Wisconsin’s undemocratic gerrymander makes this effectively impossible. And the world-historically specious arguments against judicial intervention have been taken out of the mothballs because Republican federal judges are as contemptuous of democracy as the Republican legislators are. And there’s not even any fig leaf of principle here; the argument is literally “Wisconsin voters shouldn’t get the outcomes they voted for because we don’t like them”:
I guess you can give Wisconsin Republicans credit for not pretending that they’re serving some high-minded abstract principle. They just don’t think Democrats have a right to govern, even when the voters elect them. https://t.co/x0tvCPQUkJ
— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) December 5, 2018
We Hate Our Paying Customers
Let’s check on Dan Snyder, shall we? The Washington [Racist Names] have been in first place in their division for most of the year. Their #1 QB, however, broke his leg. Yet the team has been adamant that it will not sign the best QB available for political reasons. Instead, they have started infamous bust Colt McCoy. Only McCoy also broke his leg, meaning that the Snyders finished out a critical division game with…the Sanchize! Let’s do a comparison here:
McCoy 27 GS 6.0 AY/A 29 TD/26 INT
Sanchize 72 GS 5.7 AY/A 86 TD/87 INT
Kaepernick 58 GS 7.3 AY/A 72 TD/30 INT
This is…not close! And as for the most recent semi-excuse offered for NFL teams — “OK, maybe he was blackballed, but now it’s rational not to sign him because he’s rusty” — this has also been conveniently revealed to be complete bullshit. Here is a comprehensive list of games McCoy and Sanchez had started since Kaepernick last played before being handed jobs this year:
McCoy was last a regular starter for the 2011 Cleveland Browns, who went 4-12. Sanchez was last a regular starter 6-10 2012 Jets. So, sorry, this rationalization just collided with the lineman’s ass. And, of course, it’s even worse than that. While the Snyders consider peaceful protests of police violence beyond the pale, here’s what they are perfectly fine with:
The circumstances surrounding Reuben Foster and Colin Kaepernick have basically zero similarities, except that one is employed and the other is not, and the franchise that decided to immediately snap up an accused domestic abuser before the ink was dry on his booking sheet also hired Mark Sanchez — who is basically a walking punchline as a quarterback — while sneering in Kaepernick’s general direction.
Connecting these two cases isn’t a reach. The Washington Redskins decide who is on their roster and who is not. Tuesday, they decided Foster, arrested over the weekend for the second time on a domestic violence charge, was worthy of their employ. Last week — and, honestly, probably a year or more ago — they decided Kaepernick, who has knelt for the national anthem in an effort to bring attention to police brutality and other issues that disproportionately affect African Americans, was not.
Where to start?
As an organization, an NFL team has a chance to set an example of what’s good and right. That could be because you conjure up a behind-the-scenes marketing strategy to win over your fan base, or because you possess an actual moral compass. Either way, your fans and your community would understand they can trust your motives and your moves.
The Redskins don’t do that. Ever. They’re shady at best, vile at worst. Tuesday night, they issued a statement attributed to Doug Williams, the senior vice president of player personnel, outlining why they made the waiver claim that brought Foster into their fold just two days after he was cut by San Francisco because of his latest arrest. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Williams was handed a sheet of paper with “his” words written on them and then told, “We’re saying you said this,” and he either had to accept those conditions or quit.
Speaking of contempt of a more routine variety, we could talk about the Mariners trading Jean Segura for a Gritty doll and a half-dozen Subway cheesesteaks, but we’ll leave that to another post.
Protesters March After UNC Proposes $5.3M Building to House Toppled Confederate Monument
No $ or statues for racism and rebellion!
Yesterday, December 3, massive crowds gathered at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill to oppose the reinstallation of a Confederate monument called “Silent Sam,” after it was toppled by activists in August.
The highly disputed statue fell on the eve of the fall semester as protesters cheered, “Whose campus? Our campus!” Hoisted in 1913 (48 years after the end of the Civil War), the bronze sculpture was funded by the Daughters of the Confederacy to commemorate UNC students who fought as Confederate soldiers. The Raleigh News & Observer reported that UNC spent $390,000 last year on security for the statue.
Moments after Silent Sam fell in August (image by and courtesy of Mike Ogle)
Yesterday afternoon, UNC Chancellor Carol Folt and the Board of Trustees announced their proposal that Silent Sam would be moved from storage to a newly constructed “free-standing building with state-of-the-art security” with an estimated construction cost of $5.3 million, with an additional $800,000 in yearly maintenance.
Community coalitions Take Action Chapel Hill, Defend UNC, and UNC Campus Y organized a protest opposing the decision for the same night, with a Facebook event that received around 2,000 RSVPs.
In the heat of finals season, students showed up en masse for the action beginning at 7, where Jewish leaders lit a menorah for the second night of Hanukkah, according to the Duke Chronicle. UNC students, students from nearby Duke University, university faculty, and local residents were all present.
“UNC prides itself on diversity and inclusion, and having that statue on this campus obviously shows that it doesn’t stand for diversity and inclusion,” Leeza Mason, a UNC senior spoke at the protest, according to the Chronicle. “That statue stands for racism, the Confederacy and basically keeping slavery on this campus.”
Some speeches were interrupted with jeers from members of the crowd in favor of Silent Sam’s reinstallation. Protesters shouted back, “Racist, go home!” and continued their speeches.
The speeches continued for about an hour before they began their march toward the statue’s previous podium. Around 20 police officers, donning riot shields and helmets, stood around the area, and metal barricades created a wide border around the pedestal.
As protesters encroached on the barricade, officers pushed back, at one point grabbing a banner reading “total liberation from domination” from crowd members. The situation de-escalated as protesters walked away from the barricade and marched toward the administrative building.
Graduate student workers and faculty are announcing a grading strike – right at the end of the semester! – until @ChancellorFolt changes her decision to re-erect Silent Sam on UNC campus. pic.twitter.com/gTghgFvMQN
— Sandra Korn (@sandraylk) December 4, 2018
Graduate student workers and faculty denounced the decision by announcing a strike until Chancellor Folt reverses the proposal. In September, 54 of UNC’s Black faculty members, supported by over 400 non-Black faculty members, penned a letter urging the university to permanently remove the monument, saying, “A monument to white supremacy, steeped in a history of violence against Black people, and that continues to attract white supremacists, creates a racially hostile work environment and diminishes the University’s reputation worldwide.”
The post Protesters March After UNC Proposes $5.3M Building to House Toppled Confederate Monument appeared first on Hyperallergic.


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