Still Evil After All These Years October 6, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Software platforms, Technology and Culture.Tags: Facebook, Zuckerberg
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I’ve been railing against Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg for a long time, to no avail (and no surprise). But I would like to be on the side of right, which Facebook definitely is not. And I’m not a billionaire, which Mark Zuckerberg definitely is, many times over.
But to quote the movie title, something’s gotta give.
Anyone who has read the expose by the Wall Street Journal, and watched the testimony by Frances Haugen, knows that Facebook continues to be evil. Worse, they used to apologize and say they are making improvements. As of two weeks ago, they are not even bothering with that lie. They are trashing Frances Haugen, and saying they are in the right.
I have never been a member of Facebook, and will never be a member of Facebook. I’ve been told that I have to be, for job, or to obtain information that organizations only post on Facebook. I’m sorry. You are the ones that are morally bankrupt, not me. And if you use Facebook, you are also morally bankrupt. You stand for nothing.
Here is Zuckerberg’s real problem. If you were already by far the richest person in the world, in your 30s, what is the rest of your life for? I obviously am not in that position, but I’ve tried to give it some thought.
I would like to think that I would try to be remembered as a kind and equable person who contributes positively to society. Do you really need another billion dollars? Yet it seems that Zuckerberg is not a particularly deep thinker. He has to know that his espousing of connecting people for peaceful purposes is highly flawed, but he does want that extra billion. He is driven by money, and by what money measures. So Zuckerberg doesn’t know what the rest of his life is about, except for acquiring that next billion dollars. To tell you the truth, I’m not sympathetic. He is not mentally well, and because of the power he wields, he needs to get his act together.
Cybersecurity, Past and Future June 23, 2021
Posted by Peter Varhol in Algorithms, Software platforms.Tags: Clipper, Cybersecurity, PGP
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I just returned from helping drop off my grandnephew at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, where he is taking a weeklong camp in cybersecurity. Before dropping him off, I asked him if he knew what SQL injection and buffer overruns were. He didn’t, but he’s only twelve, and I hope he does before returning at the end of the week.
This got me thinking about cybersecurity in general, and what seems to have become a backwater in encryption in particular. I’m going to start with the Clipper chip, a hardware integrated circuit promoted by the US government, that provided for a secret encryption algorithm with a backdoor for the government to access encrypted communications. This chip, announced in 1993, was found to have at least one security flaw, and because the US government did not or could not mandate its use, disappeared entirely later in the decade.
There was a particularly tense period in computing where it looked possible that the government would be able to impose Clipper on computer manufacturers (as well as phone manufacturers), which would have allowed the US government a back door into every single one of our systems.
I can’t count the number of problems, nor the extent of arrogance, with this approach. First was the security flaw, which had nothing to do with the algorithm, which is secret, and everything to do with how it transmits the keys, which is simplistic enough to be hacked fairly easily. Plus, while the government said it would never read anyone else’s mail or files without serious reason and a court order, no one believed them. Despite the obvious use in helping to fight crime, it is ripe for government overreach and abuse.
At about the same time (1991), computer scientist and software engineer Phil Zimmerman introduced an algorithm called Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), which arguably provided a far superior encryption approach that Clipper. Rather than attempt to profit from it, Zimmerman released it and the source code as open source, meaning that anyone could download, modify, and use it. He let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.
The amusing thing (not for Zimmerman) was that at the time encryption technology was considered a munition by the US government. Yes, that’s right; a weapon (it still is, although now at a higher level of encryption than PGP). As a result, Zimmerman was hounded by the FBI, the Customs agency, and the NSA for making a controlled weapon available outside of the US. Zimmerman was never arrested, but he was harassed mercilessly by the authorities, before that case was finally dropped.
Today, I’m not sure where encryption is in the general population. The problem was that these approaches, known as private key/public key encryption, required users to go through multiple steps in order to decode their own documents, and to send email to others. Using it in a phone is potentially easier, and that may be where it has found a home. No one wants to go through those extra steps. Clipper has been completely dead for over 20 years.
Our major issues with cybersecurity today involve hacking through more traditional attack techniques (SQL injection and buffer overruns are still popular), rather than trying to read files. The truth be told, whatever is encrypted today is unlikely to be read by anyone soon. The random algorithms simply take too long to crack. And individuals aren’t going to go through the extra steps in order to encrypt and decrypt files. While personal encryption may be an important technology, it is also an intellectual backwater.
Back to my grandnephew. It is too early to tell whether cybersecurity will attract his attention span, but he could do worse.
Facebook and Zuckerberg Offend Yet Again February 3, 2020
Posted by Peter Varhol in Software platforms, Technology and Culture.Tags: Facebook
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I admit that I criticize Mark Zuckerberg on a pretty regular basis. My primary defense is that he deserves it. In attempting to (yet again) redefine the scope and mission of Facebook and associated properties (Instagram, et. al.), he has said that he will use his own guiding principles. These guiding principles are:
- Free expression. In other words, Facebook users will be able to say whatever they want, within the scope of applicable law, without interference from Facebook. Get ready for a Facebook that doesn’t even bother to give lip service to truth.
- Privacy. Ah, not private from Facebook, who wants to monetize your most intimate details, but private from outside requests for transparency, including from law enforcement agencies.
So here’s the problem. Zuckerberg is welcome to express his personal principles, and I might even be in agreement with some of them (though I doubt it). The problem is that principles don’t get you very far when you’re trying to define workable solutions in the real life for millions of diverse users and other stakeholders. Real life, with multiple concerns and stakeholders, doesn’t easily lend itself to clean and obvious answers. His pious spouting of so-called principles is really a weak justification for exploiting the billions of Facebook and Instagram users to the max.
Tellingly, as I am writing this, writer Stephen King has bailed from Facebook with the same thoughts, that there is far too much obviously false information on the site, and that he has grave doubts about their desire and ability to offer privacy.
All this brings me to conclude that Zuckerberg has just one guiding principle in life – to make as much money as possible.
Face it, Facebook is a rogue company, led by a sociopath who cares only about himself. Yet so many people let it control so much of their lives.
About Tweeting December 6, 2019
Posted by Peter Varhol in Software platforms, Technology and Culture.Tags: conversation, Elon Musk, Face to face, Speech, Twitter
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I’ve done a presentation generically entitled “Talking to People: The Forgotten Software Tool.” The time I gave it at DevOps Days Berlin 2016 was probably the closest I’ve ever come to getting a standing ovation. The thesis of the talk, based in part on MIT’s Sherry Turkle’s book Reclaiming Conversation is that we as a society are increasingly preferring digital means of communications to physical ones. For generations raised with smartphones, tablets, and (legacy) computers, face to face communications can be a struggle.
I am not a digital native in broadcasting my thoughts and activities to the rest of the world. I have held jobs where tweeting, for example, was a job requirement in order to help build the company brand or get more page views. I did so, even willingly, but my efforts were not nearly as voluminous as some of my colleagues.
I have to remember to tweet, or blog. While I tend to be an introverted person throughout my life, decades ago I reluctantly recognized the need to reach out to others. At the time, all of that was face to face, because digital connections didn’t exist.
Now there are so many ways to communicate without looking at someone. I’ve had a number of video calls lately using Zoom, often with people who are using dual monitors. They have the video showing on the large screen to one side, and look at that screen, and seemingly away from me. It was funny, once I realized what was happening.
By itself, that’s not a bad thing, and in fact those with dual screens may not even realize they’re not really looking at you. But it does damage the trust you try to build up by looking someone in the eye, and reading their nonverbal communications, is degraded even further with many digital forms of communications.
And tweeting is one of them. And because we don’t know many (if at all) of the people who are reading our tweets, and don’t have to look them in the eye, we don’t feel obliged to be respectful (like many of Elon Musk’s more bizarre tweets). That’s true even for those of us whose tweets are almost entirely professional.
Speech is not free. We pay for it with everything we say. Our reputations, the trust other people have in us, our ability to communicate effectively, and even to the point of lawsuits, are dependent upon not using Twitter as an attack platform.
Okay, here’s my solution. Twitter needs to be banned from normal discourse. In fact, Twitter is without normal discourse. It should be entirely a professional platform. I realize that this isn’t going to happen, but Twitter is too dangerous to our means of communication to simply dismiss.
The Path to Autonomous Automobiles Will Be Longer Than We Think July 14, 2019
Posted by Peter Varhol in Algorithms, Machine Learning, Software platforms, Technology and Culture.Tags: autonomous cars, digital mapping, google
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I continue to be amused by people who believe that fully autonomous automobiles are right around the corner. “They’re already in use in many cities!” they exclaim (no, they’re not). In a post earlier this year, I’ve listed four reasons why we will be unlikely to see fully autonomous vehicles in my lifetime; at the very top of the list is mapping technology, maps, and geospatial information.
That makes the story of hundreds of cars trying to get to Denver International Airport being misdirected by Google Maps all that much more amusing. Due to an accident on the main highway to DIA, Google Maps suggested an alternative, which eventually became a muddy mess that trapped over 100 cars in the middle of the prairie.
Of course, Google disavowed any responsibility, claiming that it makes no promises with regard to road conditions, and that users should check road conditions ahead of time. Except that it did say that this dirt road would take about 20 minutes less than the main road. Go figure. While not a promise, it does sound like a factual statement on, well, road conditions. And, to be fair, they did check road conditions ahead of time – with Google!
While this is funny (at least reading about it), it points starkly to the limitations of digital maps for use with car navigation. Autonomous cars require maps with exacting detail, within feet or even inches. Yet if Google as one of the best examples of mapping cannot get an entire route right, then there is no hope for fully autonomous cars to use these same maps sans driver.
But, I hear you say, how often does this happen? It happens often. I’ve often taken a Lyft to a particular street address in Arlington, Massachusetts, a close-in suburb of Boston. The Lyft (and, I would guess, Uber) maps have it as a through street, but in ground truth it is bisected by the Minuteman Bikeway and blocked to vehicular traffic. Yet every single Lyft tries to take me down one end of that street in vain. Autonomous cars need much better navigation than this, especially in and around major cities.
And Google can’t have it both ways, supplying us with traffic conditions yet disavowing any responsibility in doing so. Of course, that approach is part and parcel to any major tech company, so we shouldn’t be surprised. But we should be very wary in the geospatial information they provide.
Should We Let Computers Control Aircraft? March 23, 2019
Posted by Peter Varhol in Algorithms, Software platforms.Tags: fly-by-wire
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Up until the early 1990s, pilots controlled airliners directly, using hydraulic systems. A hydraulic system contains a heavy fluid (hydraulic oil) in tubes whose pressure is used to physically push control surfaces in the desired direction. In other words, the pilots directly manipulated the aircraft control surfaces.
There is some comfort in direct control, in that we are certain that our commands translate directly to control surface motion. There have only been a few instances where aircraft have complete lost hydraulics. The best-known one is United Flight 232, in 1989, where an exploding engine on the DC-10 punctured lines in all three hydraulic systems. The airliner crash landed in Sioux City, Iowa, with the loss of about a third of the passengers and crew, yet was considered to be a successful operation.
A second was a DHL A300 cargo plane hit by a missile after takeoff from Baghdad Airport in 2003. It managed to return to the airport without loss of life (there was only a crew of three on board), although it ended up off the runway.
In 1984, Airbus launched the A320, the first fly-by-wire airliner. This craft used wires between the flight controls used by the pilot and the control surfaces, with computers sitting in the middle. The computers accept a control request from the pilot, interpret it in light of all other flight data available, and decide if and how to carry out the request (note the term “request”). There were a few incidents with early A320s, but it was generally successful.
Today, all airliners are fly-by-wire. Cockpit controls request changes in control surfaces, and the computer decides if it is safe to carry them out. The computers also make continuous adjustments to the control surfaces, enabling smooth flight without pilot intervention. In practice, pilots (captain or first officer) only fly manually for perhaps a few minutes of every flight. Even when they fly manually, they are using the fly-by-wire system, albeit with less computer intervention. Oh, and if the computer determines that a request cannot be executed safely, it won’t.
Fly-by-wire is inarguably safer than direct-fly hydraulic systems in controlling an aircraft. Pilots make mistakes, and a few of those mistakes can have serious consequences. But fewer mistakes can be made if the computer is in charge. Another but: Anyone who says that no mistakes can be made by the computer is on drugs.
Fly-by-wire systems are controlled by complex software, and software has an inherent problem – it isn’t and can’t be perfect. And while aircraft software is developed under strict safety protocols, that doesn’t prevent bugs. In the 737 MAX MCAS software, Boeing seems to have forgotten that, and made the system difficult to override. And it didn’t document the changes to pilot manuals. And that, apparently, is why we are here. I am not even clear that the MCAS software is buggy; instead, it seems like it performed as designed, but the design was crappy.
The real solution is that yes, the computer has to fly the airplane under most circumstances. The aircrew in that case are flight managers, not pilots in the traditional sense. But if there is an unusual situation (bad storm, computer or sensor failure, structural failure, or more), the pilots must be trained to take over and fly the plane safely. That is where both airliner manufacturers and airlines are falling down right now.
Aircrews are forgetting, or not learning, how to fly planes. And not learning situational awareness, when they are able to comprehend when something is going wrong, and need to intervene. It’s not their fault; aircraft and flying has changed enormously in the last two decades, and there is a generation of younger pilots who may not be able to recognize a deteriorating situation, or what to do about it.
Will Self-Driving Cars Ever Be Truly So? January 7, 2019
Posted by Peter Varhol in Architectures, Machine Learning, Software platforms, Technology and Culture.Tags: AI, Internet, mapping, self-driving cars
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The quick answer is we will not be in self-driving cars during my lifetime. Nor your lifetime. Nor any combination. Despite pronouncements by so-called pundits, entrepreneurs, reporters, and GM, there is no chance of a self-driving car being so under all conditions, let alone everyone in a self-driving car, with all that that implies.
The fact of the matter is that the Waymo CEO has come out and said that he doesn’t imagine a scenario where self-driving cars will operate under all conditions without occasional human intervention. Ever. “Driverless vehicles will always have constraints,” he says. Most of his competitors now agree.
So what do we have today? We have some high-profile demonstrations under ideal conditions, some high-profile announcements that say we are all going to be in self-driving cars within a few years. And one completely preventable death. That’s about it. I will guess that we are about 70 percent of the way there, but that last 30 percent is going to be a real slog.
What are the problems?
- Mapping. Today, self-driving cars operate only on routes that have been mapped in detail. I’ll give you an example. I was out running in my neighborhood one morning, and was stopped by someone looking for a specific street. I realized that there was a barricaded fire road from my neighborhood leading to that street. His GPS showed it as a through street, which was wrong (he preferred to believe his GPS rather than me). If GPS and mapping cannot get every single street right, self-driving cars won’t work. Period.
- Weather. Rain or snow interrupts GPS signals. As does certain terrain. It’s unlikely that we will ever have reliable GPS, Internet, and sensor data under extreme weather condition. Which in most of the country happens several months a year.
- Internet. A highway of self-driving cars must necessarily communicate with each other. This map (paywall) pretty much explains it all. There are large swaths of America, especially in rural areas, that lack reliable Internet connection.
- AI. Self-driving cars look toward AI to identify objects in the road. This technology has the most potential to improve over time. Except in bad weather. And poorly mapped streets.
So right now we have impressive demonstrations that have no basis in reality. I won’t discount the progress that has been made. But we should be under no illusions that self-driving cars are right around the corner.
The good news is that we will likely see specific application in practice in a shorter period of time. Long-haul trucking is one area that has great potential for the shorter term. It will involve re-architecting our trucking system to create terminals around the Interstate highway system, but that seems doable, and would be a nice application of this technology.
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