"BRAIN DROPPINGS" (FOR THE WEEKEND OF 29 OCTOBER 2021) : our lead 👉 "Crypto currency and social media and financial dystopia: why technology "regulation" will always be beyond our grasp"

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BRAIN DROPPINGS

FOR THE WEEKEND OF

29 OCTOBER 2021

Selected news from our cyber security, digital/mobile media, eDiscovery/information governance and software development communities

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"Brain Droppings" is produced by Project Counsel Media (PCM), a division of Luminative.Media. PCM covers the areas of cyber security, digital technology, legal technology, media, mobile technology and software development.

About Luminative Media: our intention is to delve deeper into issues, at greater length and with more historical and social context, in order to illuminate pathways of thought that are not possible to pursue through the immediacy of daily media. For more on our vision please click on our logo:

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"BRAIN DROPPINGS" FOR THE WEEKEND OF

29 OCTOBER 2021

This weekend's video feature:

Well, not a video, actually. We found some interesting graphics. Facebook has made a corporate name change. Here is a good visual explainer that highlights why multi-billion dollar companies might be motivated to change their name, along with relevant examples.

Plus :

Events and webinars as suggested by our membership

And "ENDNOTE" ...

... where our boss riffs on one of our selected stories or some tech he has seen. In this weekend's edition Greg takes a deep dive into the Facebook name change and the metaverse, and why it's another nail in the coffin of data privacy.

You'll find all of those at the end of this post

We are a team of journalists, graphic artists and videographers. In answer to your many questions, we have a short blurb at the end of this post that explains how we produce this column and our other newsletters.

Curated and written by:

Catarina Conti

Social Media Manager

and by our Fall / Winter interns:

Ariadne Andrianakis

Natalie Natuzzi

29 October 2021 (Paris, France) - "Brain Droppings" is our converged newsletter, an informative mix of news, events, etc. that touch on the overlapping domains we have covered for 20+ years: cyber security, digital/mobile media, software development and legal technology.

Each of our members in those respective communities receives their own specialized newsletters but given they are such overlapping domains we thought the following selections taken from each newsletter would appeal to all.

NOTE: If you are receiving this through a colleague and you have not subscribed, see the end of this post to learn how.

And none of this would be possible without the support of our corporate sponsors who will be noted throughout the newsletter.

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This weekend's lead story:

Crypto currency and social media and financial dystopia: why technology "regulation" will always be beyond our grasp

Social media experiments with volatile financial chemicals

I read what seemed at first glance another "rah rah rah" crypto currency news report. The article is “NFTs Are Sinking Their Non-Fungible Claws in Even Deeper”. Here’s a snippet I underlined:

"Just as crypto currencies are set to revolutionize the world of economics and finance, NFTs are going to rewrite how we think about digital goods".

This prose comes from the Reddit social media outfit’s job posting. Reddit is not alone. The Zen-manager wizard in charge of Twitter has perceived a similar signal from the future. The short message outfit wants to get into crypto.

Several observations:

Existing oversight and financial controls are not tuned into the powerful interactions of social media, censorship/filtering, and digital currency and its artifacts

Financial experts struggle to explain the Tesla phenomenon and strike me as in the dark about crypto currencies, NFTs, and financial reactions that are likely to be triggered among the young at heart and a taste for gambling

Traditional financial firms spend big bucks to make sure their data streams are up to the demands of high frequency trading. Are these outfits ready for the 24×7 social media crypto currency reactions? My hunch is that the firms will generate words but the understanding thing may be on vacation.

BOTTOM LINE: Reddit and Twitter, two social media giants, are doing some experimenting with volatile financial chemicals. The reactions may be surprising. Meanwhile we are obsessed with Facebook which is yesterday's tech. We simply will not be able to cope with yet another Brave New World.

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Now, a few enlightened selections from our weekly social media and subscription database firehose of news blasts, stories and deep-thinks as selected by our team

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An argument that whistleblowing won’t lead

to effective regulation of Facebook

The core issues here were already known but spurred little action. It’s worth asking whether this current batch of revelations can move the political needle, or whether it has all come too late. The public sphere seems to be helpless to tame Facebook and our lawmakers are similarly useless.

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Ah, Google: everybody is in on it 😎

There is an interesting story about Google’s systems and methods for capturing advertising revenue: “Ad Execs Dismayed, But Not Surprised by Tactics Google Allegedly Used to Control Digital Ad Dollars.” The information about Google was not particularly interesting. The company has been operating in ways which make it difficult for those who just love free services and the Googley glitz to discern what’s shakin’ in the management meetings.

The write up states one point which I found intriguing:

Trade bodies are quiet while industry insiders shrug as if to say “what did you expect.” They’ve long accepted the harsh truths of online advertising in the platform era.

Notice the words “insiders,” “shrug,” “harsh truths,” and “platform.”

I interpreted these two sentences to suggest ad execs know the game is rigged. Why, pray tell? Commissions, the value of being Google certified, and getting the insider scoop on opportunities to help ad execs’ customers sell their products (at least one hopes something besides ad inventory sells).

This article adds little to the Google ad lore, but it says quite a bit about the brokers or facilitators of ad sales.

Commissions, consulting fees, and the lure of search engine optimization runways to for fee Google ads — yep, the ad execs are in the game.

Perhaps the hot topic of ad fraud will be discussed? Perhaps not?

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Cybersecurity, Microsoft and Russia: who does what to whom?

Last year’s infamous Solar Winds attack really boosted Russia’s hacking community. That is one take-away from MarketBeat’s write-up, “Microsoft: Russia Behind 58% of Detected State-Backed Hacks.” Writer Frank Bajak shares some details from Microsoft’s second annual Digital Defense Report:

“Russia accounted for most state-sponsored hacking detected by Microsoft over the past year, with a 58% share, mostly targeting government agencies and think tanks in the United States, followed by Ukraine, Britain and European NATO members, the company said. The devastating effectiveness of the long-undetected SolarWinds hack — it mainly breached information technology businesses including Microsoft — also boosted Russian state-backed hackers’ success rate to 32% in the year ending June 30, compared with 21% in the preceding 12 months. China, meanwhile, accounted for fewer than 1 in 10 of the state-backed hacking attempts Microsoft detected but was successful 44% of the time in breaking into targeted networks, Microsoft said. … Only 4% of all state-backed hacking that Microsoft detected targeted critical infrastructure, the Redmond, Washington-based company said, with Russian agents far less interested in it than Chinese or Iranian cyber-operatives.”

Well, that is something. Ransomware, though, is also up, with the U.S. targeted three times as often as the next nation. Anyone who was affected by the Colonial Pipeline attack may be concerned about our infrastructure despite the lack of state-sponsored interest in sabotaging it. We are told state-backed attackers are mostly interested in intelligence gathering. Bajak cites Microsoft Digital Security Unit’s Cristin Goodwin as he writes:

“Goodwin finds China’s ‘geopolitical goals’ in its recent cyber espionage especially notable, including targeting foreign ministries in Central and South American countries where it is making Belt-and-Road-Initiative infrastructure investments and universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong where resistance to Beijing’s regional ambitions is strong.”

North Korea is another participant covered in the report. That country was in second place as a source of attacks at 23%, though their effectiveness was considerably less impressive - only 6% of their spear-phishing attempts were successful. Bajak closes by reminding us the report can only include attacks Microsoft actually detected. See the write-up or the report itself for more information.

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Apple emulates the Timnit Gebru method

Remember Dr. Timnit Gebru? This individual was the researcher who apparently did not go along with the tension flow related to Google’s approach to AI? The solution was to exit Dr. Gebru and move in a Googley manner forward.

Now the Apple “we care about privacy” outfit appears to have reached a “me too moment” in management tactics.

Two quick examples:

First, the very Silicon Valley Verge published “Apple Just Fired a Leader of the #AppleToo Movement.” I am not sure what the AppleToo thing encompasses, but it obviously sparked the Timnit option. The write up says:

Apple has fired Janneke Parrish, a leader of the #AppleToo movement, amid a broad crackdown on leaks and worker organizing. Parrish, a program manager on Apple Maps, was terminated for deleting files off of her work devices during an internal investigation — an action Apple categorized as “non-compliance,” according to people familiar with the situation.

Okay, deletes are bad. I figured that out when Apple elected to get rid of the backspace key.

Second, Gizmodo, another Silicon Valley information service, revealed “Apple Wanted Her Fired. It Settled on an Absurd Excuse.” The write up reports:

The next email said she’d been fired. Among the reasons Apple provided, she’d “failed to cooperate” with what the company called its “investigatory process.”

Hasta la vista, Ashley Gjøvik. Some observations:

The Timnit method appears to work well when females are involved in certain activities which run contrary to the Apple way. (Note that the Apple way includes flexibility in responding to certain requests from nation states like China.)
The lack of information about the incidents is apparently part of the disappearing method. Transparency? Yeah, not so much.
The one-two disappearing punch is fascinating. Instead of letting the dust settle, do the bang-bang thing.

BOTTOM LINE: Google’s management methods appear to be viral at least in certain management circles.

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Rogue in is vogue! What can happen when specialized software becomes generally available

I read “New York Times Journalist Ben Hubbard Hacked with Pegasus after Reporting on Previous Hacking Attempts.” The main point strikes me that a person or group allegedly used the NSO Group tools to compromise the mobile of a journalist. The article concludes:

"Hubbard was repeatedly subjected to targeted hacking with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. The hacking took place after the very public reporting in 2020 by Hubbard and the Citizen Lab that he had been a target. The case starkly illustrates the dissonance between NSO Group’s stated concerns for human rights and oversight, and the reality: it appears that no effective steps were taken by the company to prevent the repeated targeting of a prominent American journalist’s phone".

The write up makes clear one point I have commented upon in the past; that is, making specialized software and systems available without meaningful controls creates opportunities for problematic activity.

When specialized technology is developed using expertise and sometimes money and staff of nation states, making these tools widely available means a loss of control. As access and knowledge of specialized tool systems and methods diffuses, it becomes easier and easier to use specialized technology for purposes for which the innovations were not intended.

Now bad actors, introductory programming classes in many countries, individuals with agendas different from those of their employer, disgruntled software engineers, and probably a couple of old time programmers with a laptop in an elder care facility can:

Engage in Crime as a Service
Use a bot to poison data sources
Access a target’s mobile device
Conduct surveillance operations
Embed obfuscated code in open source software components.

If the cited article is not accurate, it provides sufficient information to surface and publicize interesting ideas. If the write up is accurate, the control mechanisms in the countries actively developing and licensing specialized software are not effective in preventing misuse. For cloud services, the controls should be easier to apply.

Is every company, every nation, and every technology savvy individual a rogue? Well, certainly capable of becoming one.

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Amazon strikes deal with UK spy agencies to host top-secret material

So the UK spy agencies (GCHQ, MI5 and MI6) have signed a cloud contract with Amazon Web Services. Priti Patel, the UK Home Secretary is under pressure to disclose whether the UK’s most sensitive national security secrets could be at risk after the disclosure was made.

One of our good cybersecurity buddies has been all over this and there are some good comments from the cyber community responding to Andy's post which you can access here.

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Finally, Facebook can say it’s not the most toxic social network

Donald Trump’s plans to launch a platform are good news for Mark Zuckerberg, who’ll be busy prebutting the next damning exposé of his company.

REALITY NOTE: it costs a great deal more money, and requires a great deal more expertise to create a social media platform than this. What follows will no doubt be as embarrassing as those post Brexit television and radio outlets that have popped up in the UK, characterized as they are by technical incompetence and squabbling racists. My guess? An irrelevant side show. It's about the money. As my boss noted:

"Trump's social media group was launched via a SPAC - a special purpose acquisition company. Its shares went from $9.96 to $60.00+ a share - yielding a total market cap of $8 billion. Since Trump owns 50% of the shares he's sitting on a $4 billion paper stake. This is another way for Trump to commercialise his base by selling an idea that will never work. It's like he's listing his own GameStop. He will have cashed out long before the music stops and investors realise it was all a scam. Get out the 🍿."

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Remote-first work is taking over the rich world.

A growing body of research hints at why.

In February 2020 Americans on average spent 5% of their working hours at home. By May, as lockdowns spread, the share had soared to 60% - a trend that was mirrored in other countries. Many people, perhaps believing that working from home really meant shirking from home, assumed that office life would soon return to something like its pre-pandemic norm.

To say it has not turned out that way would be a huge understatement. Most office workers remain steadfastly “remote-first”, spending most of their paid time out of the office.

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U.S. Army continues its development of

AI-powered autonomous weapons

Remember all that chatter from Amazon and Google employees complaining they didn't want want their companies helping the U.S. military build autonomous weapons? So Amazon and Google canceled their U.S. government contracts?

Well, it doesn't seem to have slowed up the U.S. Army much as a new initiative suggests another significant step towards lethal autonomous weapons.

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Location data firm got GPS data from apps -

even when people opted out

The news around location data firm Huq shows that data companies may not even really know if they've received consent to harvest information from ordinary phones.

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5G: Wow. Marketing it is easier than making

the damn technology work!

One of the interesting characteristics of life in the U.S. in 2021 is that marketing is easier than other types of work. Furthermore, once the marketing copy is written and pushed into the channel, it’s time to take a break. Writing about bits and bytes is much easier than making those restless zeros and ones do what the copywriter said would happen.

A good example of this “let’s have lunch” statement tossed out on a Manhattan sidewalk to a person whom one never wants to see again appears in “Fake It Until You Make It: 5G Marketing Outpaces Service Reality". The piece asserts:

"An analysis done by OpenSignal released on Thursday found that their testers connected with T-Mobile 5G just 34.7% of the time, AT&T 16.4% of the time and Verizon just 9.7%. And that’s generally not for the fastest 5G many expect."

And the marketing?

"The numbers are in stark contrast to what the carriers promise about 5G in their advertisements, showing how much they are banking on 5G as a selling point in the hotly-contested market for cellular service."

This “fake it until you make it” method has been slapped on Banjo (now SafeX.ai), Theranos, and Uber, among others. The idea is that fast talking, jargon, and lots of high school confidence works.

Is this an American characteristic? The journalist notes:

"Internationally, the story is similar. South Korea tops the list of best 5G availability at 28.1% of the time, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Hong Kong all above 25%, according to an OpenSignal report from early September".

It’s the Silicon Valley way. It works really well ... sometimes.

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TikTok hits a billion users

I just wanted o document this post from TikTok, “Thanks a Billion!” , which states:

"More than 1 billion people around the world now come to TikTok every month to be entertained as they learn, laugh, or discover something new. We’re honored to be a home for our immensely diverse community of families, small businesses, and creators who transform into our favorite stars."

I noted this statement, too:

"TikTok has become a beloved part of life for people around the world because of the creativity and authenticity of our creators".

How valuable are TikTok users’ data? Answer: really, really, valuable. Ask our content creator/advertising media clients. Its unregulated, non-U.S. owned, and chugging along because billions don’t understand short, often weird videos. Big mistake. It is upending every community we cover - cyber security, digital/mobile media, software development and legal technology.

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The FTC: "It's near-impossible to escape persistent surveillance by American ISPs"

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said many internet service providers are sharing data about their customers, in defiance of expectations, and are failing to give subscribers adequate choices about whether or how their data is shared. The trade watchdog's findings arrived in the form of a report undertaken in 2019 to examine the data and privacy practices of major U.S. broadband providers, including AT&T Mobility, Charter Communications, Google Fiber, T-Mobile US, Verizon Wireless, and Comcast's Xfinity. "These findings underscore deficiencies of the 'notice-and-consent' framework for privacy, especially in markets where users face highly limited choices among service providers," said FTC boss Lina Khan.

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Twitter amplifies conservative politicians because people love to quote-tweet dunk on them

On average, the authors of tweets with higher ratios (i.e., tweets that cause more outrage online) are more conservative than the ideology of authors of tweets with lower ratios. More here.

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Oh, the power of Big Tech!! YouTube is about to pull its apps from Roku, and the fight is going all the way to Congress

The reason why Google is antsy about this is that Roku has managed, quietly, to become a serious player in the streaming business - which has put Google's nose badly out of joint. So Google is using the heft it has in that space, known as YouTube, to get what it wants.

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Facebook continues to collect data about users who have deactivated their accounts.

Despite Facebook’s recent virtue-signaling on privacy, the company does not make it clear to people that when they deactivate their accounts, its vampiric data connections continue to suck new information from advertisers, revealing people’s personal interests, recent purchases and other interactions. And the company has no data retention policy limiting the length of time it keeps deactivated accounts and the photos and other data associated with them frozen in virtual cryogenic stasis.

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ENDNOTE:

musings by Gregory Bufithis,

founder/CEO, Luminative Media

The emperor has new clothes

I watched the Zuck's virtual event yesterday which showcased Facebook’s name change and it's technological bets on the future. The social networking giant took an unmistakable step toward an overhaul, de-emphasizing Facebook’s name and rebranding itself as Meta. The change was accompanied by a new corporate logo designed like an infinity-shaped symbol that was slightly askew. Facebook and its other apps, such as Instagram and WhatsApp, will remain but under the Meta umbrella.

The move punctuates how Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, plans to refocus his Silicon Valley company on what he sees as the next digital frontier, which is the unification of disparate digital worlds into something called the metaverse. At the same time, renaming Facebook may help distance the company from the social networking controversies it is facing, including how it is used to spread hate speech and misinformation.

At the end of the day, of course, there was ridicule by most pundits. After all, a brand is a sum total of decisions and behaviors expressed in words, actions, naming, graphical elements, digital interactions, and many other elements - not just talk. If Meta still looks like Facebook, sounds like Facebook, and runs its business like Facebook, then people are going to see it as Facebook.

But there is a bigger “thing” afoot here. We’ve caught up to what Facebook hath wrought (2012-2020) and Mark Zuckerberg and executive leadership seem to regard that version of Facebook as almost an outdated node of the company. They’ve got a new digital realm to colonize: "The Metaverse!!!" As I noted before: the architecture and nature of these platforms (all of them) is changing, and how they act on us and how we, even reluctantly or unwittingly, absorb some of their characteristics, is making us lose perspective.

The corporate machinations are even more intriguing. It's not often you see big public companies survive a scandal without taking major action, such as booting the CEO. Think Boeing and the 737 Max drama, which prompted the resignation of CEO Dennis Muilenburg in 2019, or the uproar over Uber's corporate culture that precipitated the exit of founding CEO Travis Kalanick in 2017. A lesser option, for companies controlled by the CEO, is a restructuring. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp broke in two in the wake of the phone hacking scandal at the company's U.K. newspapers.

Facebook, confronted with a seemingly never-ending scandal around how it deals with problematic content on its site, is taking a less disruptive approach - a change of name to Meta Platforms Inc. That'll solve everything, right? Well, no. But I'm sure Travis Kalanick is probably wondering right now why he didn't simply change Uber's name to Taxi and refuse to leave. But when Zuckerberg unveiled the new name on he made it clear that the more standard crisis responses, such as his departure or a breakup, weren't options (at least not in the near term).

And in interviews this week Zuckerberg didn't seem to rule out a breakup at some point, though, saying the idea of fully carving off Facebook Reality Labs, the augmented and virtual reality and metaverse development unit, from the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp triumvirate is "not something I've thought about very seriously yet." His argument was that the businesses are all too integrated to take such a step. Well, ok. But a more practical reason is likely that Facebook Reality Labs is a money suck right now. This year alone, it will reduce the company's overall profit by $10 billion. That money is coming from the cash cow of social media apps.

The bigger question is likely to center on Zuckerberg's determination to remain CEO. He could have followed in the footsteps of tech founders like Jeff Bezos, Larry Page and Bill Gates and stepped back - even while retaining his controlling voting stake. That would allow someone with fresh eyes for Facebook's problems to take charge of day-to-day operations. Instead, Zuckerberg has declared, "I really run the company on a day-to-day basis. It's not like I just sit back and try to set a vision. I feel pretty strongly about making sure we continue to innovate and go in a good direction." That's fine. But Zuckerberg needs to know that as a cosmetic change, the new name may only exacerbate Facebook's image problems.

So what about the metaverse? The Zuck discussed it in detail and the event dropped a few products and developments to add flesh to the bones:

• Social VR spaces in Horizon Home, Messenger calls in VR, and business accounts for the Quest.

• Two-dimensional progressive web apps are coming to the Oculus Store, enabling productivity apps like Slack and Dropbox to be used in VR.

• Project Cambria is an expensive, high-resolution, standalone mixed reality headset coming next year.

• Project Nazare is Facebook’s augmented reality glasses prototype. It’s still a few years away.

• Presence Platform is a new set of SDKs for building mixed-reality experiences for the Quest.

• The Oculus brand is going away for hardware, replaced by Meta. But it will stick around for some software and developer tools.

I’ve been struck by the degree to which that single word ... metaverse ... has taken over so much of the conversation in tech. Skeptics in the tech world have a word for these kinds of visionary design presentations - “vaporware”. And I've certainly been attentive to what Casey Newton calls "a feeling around how old and out of touch Facebook has been lately, how strong the Boomer vibes were coming from those reacting to Thursday’s presentation. A surprising number of people seem to think that technological progress ended with the smartphone, and that augmented reality, virtual reality, and connected experiences between platforms will never come to pass".

I won't take that that bet. Not with Apple, Microsoft, Snap, Epic, Roblox, Niantic, and others already at work building it out. Eager to demonstrate that it can innovate, Facebook — er, Meta — has been among the industry leaders in its willingness to build in public. But the company is not building alone.

And the issue ... as always ... is will the metaverse be less freighted with harms than our existing internet? Nothing about mixed reality or interoperability can resolve fundamental questions around the balance between free expression and safety. Harassment and hate speech will come to the metaverse along with everything else. Yeah, someday it might connect us across long distances and give us a heightened sense of belonging. But it could also further bleed the life out of our physical communities, as we spend an ever-higher percentage of our time staring at screens and interacting with virtual worlds.

Which takes me to my concluding point, these virtual worlds. You don’t have to deal with all the "real-world" regulations and gunk and political problems and all those sorts of things, and it’s very attractive because you can just build. I can’t help but notice that all of the big tech trends of the moment are steeped in avoidance of the real world. The metaverse takes us to hypnotically beautiful virtual spaces; crypto frees us from the shackles of fiat currency and financial regulations; billionaires are paving the way to space travel. On some level, all of these projects feel inevitable. But I can’t imagine they won’t have dramatic consequences for our democracy, if only by sapping so much attention away from them.

And as for privacy ... well, just another nail into that coffin. As my regular readers know, I have written how the value (and enforcement) of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was always going to be a tough task. All of the “consent” elements and many of the compliance elements are nebulous, much of the connective tissue between sections having been stripped out during negotiations, aided and abetted by law firms and consultants and vendors hired by Big Tech to do everything possible to cripple it. I was fortunate to watch the process over its four year gestation, living in Brussels and having contacts with EU Commission insiders. To watch the machinations of Big Tech was a Master Class in manipulation.

The fundamental problem was always the collection of data, not its control. Europe introduced the GDPR aimed at curbing abuses of customer data. But the legislation misdiagnosed the problems. It should have tackled the collection of data, not its protection once collected. As I reported several years ago, it was limiting collection that was the intent of the drafters but Big Tech lobbyists and lawyers turned that premise 180 degrees and “control” became the operative word. That has always been Big Tech’s mantra: don’t ask permission. Just do it, and then apologise later if it goes bad. Zuckerberg was the poster boy for that mantra.

And now? Well, take a look at this:

Japanese IT multinational NEC is building a huge submarine cable for Facebook, with a capacity of up to 500Tbps across 24 fiber-pairs. The private cable will connect the US to Europe - but the companies did not disclose which European countries the cable will land in. The new cable provides 200X more Internet capacity than the transatlantic cables of the 2000s. The cable is also the first in the industry to feature 24 fiber-pairs, with cables previously capping out at 16. This makes it the highest capacity cable to date for a long-distance repeatered optical subsea cable system.

Why is this important? Earlier today I had a chat with my "go to guy" for all-things-IT, Alan Woods. It was a long chat so herein the salient points:

Alan noted:

"that one cable is essential for the metaverse to work in Europe, I would imagine, as I reckon most of its core processing capabilities and source code will/must remain in the U.S. So it calls into question the likes of the Schrems 2 decision. And I suggest, in due course, there will be other such massive data transfer exercises going on as this meta lark goes live world wide. And not just the metaverse".

He continued:

"If all you have to do to pull this kind of exercise off is to produce a couple of Standard Contractual Clauses SCC (or whatever) or rephrase accordingly, according to the guidance from the various Data Protection Authorities and the European Data Protection Board PA, then what exactly does this privacy and data protection law actually do? Not much it seems. But you and I knew that".

Alan thinks for various reasons this "meta lark" is a massive gamble but he agrees with me: don’t look at meta as one, big, seamless entity. It is being developed (by Apple, especially) for a host of “non meta” reasons.

The ultimate reality? These platforms have simply grown too big for a relativity small bunch of people to manage. And the regulators? Out of their element, their comfort zone. My central premise has always been this: the regulatory state must be examined through the lens of the reconstruction of the political economy, the ongoing shift from an industrial mode of development to an informational one. Regulatory institutions will continue to struggle in the era of informational capitalism they simply cannot understand. Regulatory processes are befuddled by the regulatory issues and problems created by information markets and networked information and communications technologies.

And the EU’s absence in any element of the digital age’s data architecture is by choice, not necessity. The EU could have carved out a niche for itself. France and Germany still have some of the best mathematicians and engineers in the world. But politics intruded. That needs another post.

And, no. None of this is predetermined and none of this stuff every runs lineal. So get out the 🍿... and have a great weekend.

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A VIDEO OF NOTE

Not a video this weekend. Some graphics.

Facebook is on the brink of a corporate name change. Here is a good visual explainer that highlights why multi-billion dollar companies might be motivated to change their name, along with relevant examples.

It's a series of graphics which you can find by clicking here.

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NOVEMBER 4TH AND 5TH

Logikcull has organized an event called "InHouse" - the conference for legal, ops & IT leaders who focus on what matters, who break down barriers, who achieve better, faster, more predictable outcomes. For leaders who cull the noise. For you.

You can get all the information by clicking on this link:

https://www.logikcull.com/inhouse21

The direct registration link is here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/inhouse-21-tickets-166970642687

Note to our members: we'll be in Lisbon, too. If you'll be there, send us an email

The web summit - the "who's who of international tech" - is returning to Lisbon, Portugal. Be sure to check out our Web Summit lineup and secure your ticket to join us by clicking here.

We are pleased to announce ProLaLa 2022, a new workshop concerned with the intersection of PL (Programming Languages) techniques and the law.

It will be held:

Sunday Jan 16th, 2022

Philadelphia, PA

co-located with POPL 2022

We are particularly concerned with the following topics:

- language design for legal matters;

- static analysis of legal texts;

- program synthesis and repair for legal software components;

- formal modeling of legal semantics;

- non-standard logics in support of legal reasoning;

- program verification for legal expert systems.

If you have explored any of these areas, we encourage you to submit a short abstract. We are hoping to solidify around this workshop what we believe is a nascent community. As such, the workshop will be informal, and we strongly encourage you to submit ongoing or already-published work in the form of a brief 3-page submission for a long talk, or a 1-page submission for a short talk.

For more information click here.

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HOW WE ASSEMBLE "BRAIN DROPPINGS"

AND OUR OTHER NEWSLETTERS

We are a team of journalists, graphic artists and videographers.

Our Chief Technology Officer built an AI program that uses the Factiva database (plus four other media databases) which allows us to monitor 1,000-1,500 primary resource points every month. It can also "feed" each member of our staff just the relevant information she or he needs depending on what we are writing about, and depending on what conference assignments my staff has been assigned.

Factiva aggregates content from both licensed and free resources, and then depending on the what level you want to pay has all types of search and alert functions: it plows through websites, blogs, images, videos, etc. so you have the ability to do a deep dive pretty much into any region of the world or country in the word based on persons, trends, subject matter, etc.

Yes, a tsunami of material but compartmentalized and then distributed to the teams handling the cyber security, digital technology, legal technology, media, mobile technology and software development communities.

We also use an assortment of curation tools. Like many of our media cohorts, we don’t “read” Twitter or Linkedin or any mainstream social media anymore. We use APIs like Cronycle that curate the whole social media firehose so we only receive selected, summarized material that pertains to our research or reading need.

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If you .....

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... then just pop us an email: operations@infotecheurope.com

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