August 2019

Aug 2

IMDB Link

We went to The Farewell: ” Billi’s family returns to China under the guise of a fake wedding to stealthily say goodbye to their beloved matriarch — the only person that doesn’t know she only has a few weeks to live. “

We were mostly interested in this because it is set in Changchun; Nicholle’s hometown and my Chinese hometown. The movie itself was nothing special. The acting was great but the story itself didn’t have much to it. Still, it was entertaining and some of the street scenes reminded us of what we miss about Changchun.

Aug 4

Happy hikers!

We finally got venture away from UBC/Downtown and took a bus to Golden Ears Provincial Park. We have been working pretty much non-stop since we got here so we planned some activities for Aug to celebrate being in Canada for two years and our 7th wedding anniversary.

Aug 9-11

We got away to Bowen Island this weekend, staying in an Airbnb for the first time. The island itself is pretty small but we really just wanted to spend some time somewhere else and getting there was pretty simple: bus – ferry. Our host was great and we were only a short walk from Snug Cove where we winded and dined for the weekend, talking about our journey since we got married and since we landed in Vancouver. We’re both starting new things in September and looking forward to the challenges to come.

  • I find that phrase “looking forward” problematic; it implies a kind of impatience or disregard for what might happen in the interim. I really can’t think of a better phrase fo now.

AUGUST: Changes

So, this is the second redesign of my blog. I think I have figured out some things that might help me to be better able to maintain and post more regularly. Going forward, I expect I will post daily; at least some links to things that I am reading, largely as notes for myself though also to direct interested others. I have been making notes for the last few weeks so I’m just going to post those en masse today and endeavor to keep it up going forward

IMDb changes names policy after transgender protest [Guardian]

  • now allows users to remove birth names, revising earlier policy after feedback from LGBTQ+ groups
  • a subsidiary of Amazon
  • the practice of “deadnaming” – revealing birth details without the subject’s consent.
  • “To reveal a transgender person’s birth name without their explicit permission is an invasion of privacy that only serves to undermine the trans person’s true authentic identity, and can put them at risk for discrimination, even violence.”
  • Online databases such as Wikipedia do not publish the birth names of trans people, while Twitter considers deadnaming and misgendering a violation of its Hateful Conduct policy.
  1. Facebook for several years required members to use their “real name” on the site, before altering that policy in 2015. Users are now asked to use “the name they go by in everyday life.”
  2. Many of those who take stage names have done so to cover up their ethnic identities.
  3. Nurse mistakes pregnant transgender man as obese. Then, the man births a stillborn baby

IMDb Will Allow Removal of Birth Names — to a Point [NYT]

Google ‘breaching right to anonymity’ of man cleared of rape (Irish Times)

  • Court told search results using client’s name include links to reports of rape trials
  • while his client is not named in any of the articles, they appear “juxtaposed” with his name in the search results page. He said the results include links to court reports of the man’s 2018 trial and links to two other rape trials unrelated to his client.
  • My client’s cloak of anonymity has been whisked away in the blink of an eye
  • his client is seeking a block on all Google searches of his name, on at least a short-term basis. Counsel said his client’s ability to seek employment is stymied by these search results.

Ed-Tech Utopia Is Over [Education Next]

  • Teach To One / Summit Public Schools
  • [W]e urge you to conduct an independent evaluation of Summit involving students who have given their consent before re-imposing it on thousands of unwilling public school students.”
  • Bloom’s 2 sigma (1984)
    • But what if the strength of tutoring stems not from personalized content but from human connection?
  • Waldorf: “can hamper their ability to fully develop strong bodies, healthy habits of discipline and self-control, fluency with creative and artistic expression and flexible and agile minds.”

There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love – Bryant H. McGill

Second life is plagued by security flaws, ex-employee says [Wired]

AI algorithms need FDA-style drug trials [Wired]

  • adaptive reinforcement learning: Alphabet’s Deepmind [cf. Google Brain] – technique combines deep learning, primarily used for recognizing patterns, with reinforcement learning, geared around learning based on reward signals, such as a score in a game or victory or defeat in a game like chess.
    • For now, genuine machine intelligence has been easier to hype than to build.
    • WIKI: After Google’s acquisition the company established an artificial intelligence ethics board. [29] The ethics board for AI research remains a mystery
    • Royal Free breached UK data law in 1.6m patient deal with Google’s DeepMind
  • But the designers made a simple mistake: They assumed that human tastes are fixed. In reality, algorithms applied to malleable humans can have drastically different and pernicious side effects on a global scale. They modify our tastes to make us ever more predictable, edge us toward extremes, and ultimately erode civility and trust in society. It is time we stop blithely allowing this and create the digital equivalent of drug trials.
  • Intelligent systems at scale need regulation because they are an unprecedented force multiplier for the promotion of the interests of an individual or a group
  • Software, by contrast, is typically subjected only to “unit tests,” to assure new lines of code perform as expected, and “integration tests,” to assure the updates don’t degrade the system’s performance. This is like checking a drug for contaminants without testing the effects of its active ingredients.

B.C. auditor general finds hundreds have unauthorized access to government systems [CBC]

  • “Because all it takes is one poorly managed user account to potentially compromise government systems,”

A new way to help students turn in their best work [GOOGLE]

  • originality reports

The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet, book review: The biography of a law [Znet]

  • the internet pioneers had designed their protocols to conform to the values common to the scientists who were the internet’s earliest users: openness, transparency, collaboration, and free access.
  • Technical proposals were meant to be accepted because they were the best solution, not because they were beneficial for some particular company or research institution. 
  • the 26 words that became Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. S230 exempts online hosts from liability for content posted by third parties

Aug 22

Draining Data Moats: When Consumers Take Control Of Their Own Data [Forbes]

  • The application of blockchain for identity is becoming increasingly apparent. Examples including the Sovrin Network and Evernym use blockchain to facilitate the development of self-sovereign identity (SSI) networks.

Excellent podcast from BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA): “Have you heard of information laundering? It’s a loophole in BC’s freedom of information laws that allows public bodies to create secretive subsidiary companies. Find out more in the latest episode of our podcast, Data Subjects:: https://fipa.bc.ca/new-on-the-podcast-information-laundering/

Aug 23

Finally handed in my MEd graduating paper so I am, technically, finished!! I am really looking forward to having my final mark entered into the system and then getting the paperwork completed for my MEd program to be closed. Then, rest for a week and start a PhD. Perfik.

  • Notes on teaching with Slack: Mattermost is an open-source, self-hostable online chat service. It is designed as an internal chat for organizations and companies, and mostly markets itself as an alternative to Slack.[Wiki]

ENCOURAGEMENT

  • One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own. There are times of great uncertainty in every life. Left alone at such a time, you feel dishevelment and confusion like gravity. When a friend comes with words of encouragement, a light and lightness visit you and you begin to find the stairs and the door out of the dark. The sense of encouragement you feel from the friend is not simply her words or gestures; it is rather her whole presence enfolding you and helping you find the concealed door. The encouraging presence manages to understand you and put herself in your shoes. There is no judgment but words of relief and release. – JOHN O’DONOHUE, Excerpt from the book, ETERNAL ECHOES

Aug 25

Aug 26

  • blockchain is a technology the presents significant complexity with respect to the practical implementation of the right to be forgotten
  • A key feature of data stored on a blockchain is that it is immutable – once verified and entered on the chain, it cannot be altered or deleted.
  • Taken along with existing Privacy Act provisions and a planned ‘right to be forgotten’, CDR will give Australian consumers many of the rights that were granted to European Union citizens with the passage of the general data protection regulation (GDPR) in May 2018.
  • Andrew Luck: what scouts REALLY want to learn about prospects when they come to the combine in Indianapolis—how fitting a locale at the moment—is, Are you too smart and rational to keep playing this game?

Aug 29

Mayor Pete Buttigieg on systemic racism, regulating tech, and the divided Democratic Party [Vox; RECODE DECODE]

  • Interesting podcast episode; hadn’t heard of Buttigieg before – he mentions the need for the right to be forgotten in the US [from 30:05]

Aug 30

“Human Library“: This is a great idea. The tagline, “unjudge someone”, is striking: this seems like something that should be widely available for people to learn about the lived experience of others.

“The Human Library is designed to build a positive framework for conversations that can challenge stereotypes and prejudices through dialogue. The Human Library is a place where real people are on loan to readers. A place where difficult questions are expected, appreciated and answered. The Human Library is a danish idea from 2000 and is now available in more than 80 countries.”

https://humanlibrary.org/meet-our-human-books/

Aug 31

Senators on Protecting Kids’ Privacy: ‘It’s Complicated’ [Wired]

  • There’s growing bipartisan agreement in Washington that the two-decades-old law protecting children online needs updating for the smartphone era. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act was passed in 1998, the same year that Google was founded.

If you haven’t already seen it, you must watch American Factory.