« Posts tagged Facebook

It’s time, time, time that you love…

October 20, 2010 / Benjamin Kenneally posted in Broadcast Domain, Tech / No Comments

You can’t buy an oubliette on Ebay.
I checked. You can buy some related Magic the Gathering cards, books, and CDs, but an actual place of forgetting is tough to come by.
I know you hadn’t heard from me in quite some time. You probably forgot about me, hoping I’d crawled into a convenient nearby hole and died, clutching a whiskey bottle in the sullen dark. That’s not what happened. You see, I’m on the internet, baby.

The internet tends not to forget things. Posts stick around. Pictures you put up might be available for your Great Grandchildren to peruse. Maybe…we’re not entirely sure.
Much has been said of late about how things we put up in our social network need to be examined, as they’ll haunt us for forever. People will be able to search for every comment we’ve ever made, every picture we’ve ever shared, and every “Like” we’ve ever clicked, for forever. I’m wondering which forever that is…the one that Geocities was part of? Or maybe the forever that Friendster is languishing in?
I’m not saying people shouldn’t be circumspect about what they post in their social networks online. I’ve always treated everything I post on the internet to be things said very publicly, and I always assume that people will find these things.
However, I also assume that if employers run across things such as this column, they’ll understand that this isn’t something I would write in the workplace. The vulgarity I employ here isn’t how my memos would appear. If they don’t understand that, that’s their problem, and I would likely prefer not to work for them. They should understand the stratification of our public faces. They are also humans, after all. Wait, are they hiring directors? We’ll assume not…so they’re humans.
What amuses me about the idea that everything will be available for forever is the strange idea of time that we have. The internet, as we now know it, has been around for less than 20 years. In its infancy, people posted whatever they liked to IRC rooms, and Usenet newsgroups willy-nilly. They never thought about the fact that people could find what they said at some later date.

People could go look for those things, right now. There are search tools for those newsgroups and stored IRC conversations. No one does, for two basic reasons.

First, no one really thinks to. The amount of digging required to find that crap is a lot more than a quick Google search. Our online presences tend to be pretty layered, so the major things that show up are how we conduct ourselves the majority of the time in the virtual realm. The things that float to the top are all people look at, unless they want to NOT like you. In that case, you’re screwed whether it’s on the internet or not.
Second, they’ve mostly lost relevance. The internet is not a static place. It changes, rapidly, and we change our habits with it. The search we use now is not the search we’ll use in the future. The Facebook of now is not the social network of fifteen years from now. I’m not saying that Facebook and Google will disappear, but they will change. Search will become contextualized more as we progress, and our social networking tools will update to better reflect who we want to contact and what we want to share with them.

The internet will be a different place. The old ways will be forgotten; dusty buckets of bits in the storage closet of the internet. That kid who called in sick, and posted the pic of himself dressed as a fairy at a party will be in there. So will the woman who forgot she had friended her boss and got fired for her comments about him. All that crap will be in there, mouldering. No one will care.
We’ll have all new scandals taking place, on the new Faceplace or whatever it is, where Jerry accidentally clicked the wrong button and sent pics of him making out with Jessica at the office Festivus party to his wife instead of his drinking buddies.
Watch what you post, folks. But don’t worry too much about forever. We’re too short sighted as humans to look back that far that often. Forever only catches up with us once, at the end. At that point, pics of us on the internet will be the least of our problems.

Review: Facebook’s Privacy Issues

May 18, 2010 / Benjamin Kenneally posted in Broadcast Domain, Reviews / 2 Comments

Many have said that when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade.

Facebook‘s privacy policy and use of your information is worse than lemons. It’s shit.

Good luck selling shit-ade on your local street corner this summer.

Everyone is aware that Facebook’s privacy policy isn’t that great. Most people have no idea just how bad it is, though.

Some of us have read the things. It’s a fucking cesspool, and they’re still dumping crap in there all the time.

The full current privacy policy is available here.

It’s 5830 words long. That’s longer than the United States constitution. While I was counting bullshit, I took the time before beginning this article to count the settings required to lock down your Facebook profile as best as it can be.

You have to change over 50 settings. FIFTY. And not all of them are even all that easy to find.

The New York Times made an infographic showing what you have to change to set things how you like to protect your information.

Look at all those settings. If each of those was a tentacle, and your personal information were a nubile young anime girl, that would be a scene from Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend.

To see what information you’re currently leaking all over the internet, click here. Hopefully it’s not too much, and you don’t care about what it is. Stopping this horrible leakage would normally take entirely too much effort to fix. Thankfully, a nice group took the time to take care of things for you. Click here for their help.

Some of you may not understand why this is such a big issue? After all, you just post some stuff on Facebook from time to time. It’s no big deal. If a few people see it, that’s fine…right?

Anyone can see it, more than likely. Forever. Your kids will be able to look up whatever you posted on Facebook yesterday 30 years from now. Your boss can see it. Your future wife. Your mom. The government.

ANYONE.

It’s only getting worse.

Here’s a neat flash animation showing how Facebook’s privacy issues have evolved over the years.

Facebook changes their privacy policy often, so they can use your information to make money off you. They sell it to advertisers. They’ll probably sell it to anyone.

Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor1 and CEO of Facebook, has said that he has no real regard for people’s privacy.

Below is an IM conversation reported by SAI between Mark Zuckerberg and a friend, from back when he first started Facebook:

“Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don’t know why.

Zuck: They “trust me”

Zuck: Dumb fucks.“

Trustworthy, right? I’d totally give that guy my credit card number. Or tell him who all my friends are.

Everyone got so upset when Google Buzz exposed their contact lists. Google fixed it within a few days of the issue being brought to their attention. Facebook does that with very little issue, even for people who have attempted to turn that “feature” off.

So, we’re using a service run by a conniving asshole who wants to sell every scrap of info you give him so that we can stay in easy contact with each other. There’s no serious alternative available, and we’ll all keep using it while the service continually updates its “privacy settings” to opt us in to whatever scam it likes.

I use it to stay in contact with my family, who I had a falling out with in the past. It keeps them at a comfortable distance, but we still know what’s going on in the lives of each other. Until the value of that outweighs the burden of dealing with Facebook’s privacy issues, you’ll find me there, being bent over Zuckerberg’s fucking barrel.

But I won’t be surprised when we all get Zuckerpunched.

  1. although some still dispute this, he did win the legal case brought against him by the two early partners he had who claim he stole the entire idea from them [↩]

Borderlines

March 16, 2010 / Benjamin Kenneally posted in Broadcast Domain / No Comments

Borders. The places between. At the edges of everywhere, you will find something interesting. Something akin to what is on either side, but somehow like neither thing.

In the physical world, borders are easy to find. They stand between countries, between cities, and between neighborhoods. Military bases, dive bars, wino hangouts, weird clubs…these are all the stuff of the borderlands.

On the internet, borders are harder to see. They tend to be places where cultures blend, since the physical realm is so meaningless here.

In the old days of the internet, the whole thing was a borderland. BBSs were the wild west of the digital world. You never knew what you mind find when you dialed in to one. Even now, borderlands can be found all over the net.

Warren Ellis’ Whitechapel strikes me as a borderland. Free flowing communication between people of all stripes. The only thing in common being a love for creativity. (Some of the posters there don’t even especially like Warren, which always amuses me.)

Amazing things happen on the borderlands. Cultures clash and mesh, idiotic ideas get bandied about (and sometimes brought to life), grand projects get undertaken, and friendships get made. These things happen elsewhere as well, but I always feel like they happen more often in the places between.

Tilted Forum Project is an old borderland. I hung out there often in the past, and still drop by from time to time now. The talk there is fabulous, and the community is great, but it’s gelled a bit as time goes by.

In some ways, Facebook is a borderland. As everyone uses it, there’s a ton going on there. You can bring together portions of your life that didn’t always co-mingle if you’re not careful.

In a similar way, the new My Outer Space might be a borderland. I only recently signed up, and it’s still getting together, so we’ll see what goes on there.

What borderlands do you hang out in? What magic spot where anything can happen do you point your address bar?

If you don’t have one, you should find one. Perhaps Wayne Coyne and the boys can help show you the way:

2009 Flaming Lips & Stardeath and White Dwarfs – Borderline from George Salisbury on Vimeo.

Where are the strong? Who are the trusted?

March 9, 2010 / Benjamin Kenneally posted in Broadcast Domain / No Comments

The internet’s web of trust is a curious thing.

People receive attacks from odd places all the time. We receive emails with suspicious links, malicious messages on Facebook. Even legitimate webpages we surf to may have been compromised through their javascript, and can do all kinds of bad things to your computer.

When we log in to a site, however, we feel secure, because of TLS.

TLS is part of the “s” (for secure) that appears whenever you see “HTTPS:” in your browser’s address bar. It encrypts your data using an awfully good encryption scheme so no one can see your username or password, or your credit card number, when you do things online.

There are two parts to the whole equation, however. The encryption side of TLS is quite good (There was a small compromise found not long ago, but they’re fixing it now, and the part that caused the flaw was deativated in the meantime). The authentication side, however…

When you send data using TLS, it’s not just important to encrypt the data, but to know who you are sending it to. If you encrypt your credit card number, username, and password, and ship it straight to a hacker (who supplied half of the keypair, probably) all the encryption in the world will do you no good.

To get around this flaw, we use PKI. That’s where we trust a third party to verify who you are sending data to by giving them a certificate. It’s like an ID. The PKI company you have all probably heard of is Verisign.

I’m not here to impugn Verisign’s business. They are a quite well known company, and do an okay job.

If you bought a car on the internet for $10,000.00, and a hacker used a certificate from Verisign to get your information, Verisign would be liable (in certain circumstances, of course). They would refund you up to $100!

Yes, a benjamin. That’s their indemnity in the entire situation, according to their contracts. And they are one of the many certificate authorities out there.I’ve never heard of the vast majority of them. But they say I’m perfectly safe, and should give my info to the nice man behind the counter!

Now, I’m a paranoid in training (I’m going to school for network security), and I’m not trying to freak you out. The internet is a great place, and the vast majority of things on it are enriching, informative, and run by folks on the up-and-up.

But next time you hand over your info, just stop and think for a moment. And make sure your browser is in “HTTPS” mode. It’s the least you can do.

Hopefully someday the internet will lead to some harmony amongst us all, and we won’t have to worry about this crap. I’m not holding my breath, though.

Caught a bolt of lightning, cursed the day he let it go…

February 9, 2010 / Benjamin Kenneally posted in Broadcast Domain / No Comments

You can’t unmake an idea.

Humans have tried. Ideas have been forgotten, destroyed by destroying everyone who knows about their existence, and locked away for years, but once you know something, you can’t unknow it. Even if you do away with whomever had the idea in the first place, you know what the idea was to want to get rid of it, and there’s no way around that.

I was speaking with someone a few days ago who stated they’re afraid that digital media will do away with so much face to face human interaction that it will be bad for humanity in general. I’ve actually thought about this in the past, and dismissed the idea.

Human interaction is a generally positive process in which ideas are exchanged. A negative outcome might be reached based on the information exchanged, but the overall interaction itself is one of information building.

For instance, we’ll look at two children on a playground. Tommy tells Billy that his mommy is a ‘fat ho-bag’, which makes Billy cry. Obviously a negative outcome, but Billy still received information he didn’t have before. Receiving information we didn’t have before is a positive process. It always opens up new options for us. In the previous example, Billy might pay a little more attention to what’s going on in his household, decide not to let his life turn out like mommy’s, and go on to be a wicked cool guy. Of course, he might decide to make Tommy eat the mud from under the swingset. If we’re lucky, both might occur.

All the technology we have allows us to interact on levels we didn’t previously interact on. I talk to people on a daily basis, through Facebook and Twitter, that I used to talk to only a few times a year. I’m part of their daily community, and they’re part of mine. We support each other with little messages every day, and let each other know what’s going on.

In the past, this was always done based on geographic boundaries. Your neighbors live close to you, so you can easily interact with them on a daily basis. If you were surrounded by people you didn’t mesh with well, you either moved or got used to being “the weird guy who lives on the corner”.

Now, communities are limited only by the technology present and who we want to interact with. I could be part of a community in Japan, and interact with those people on a daily basis. Video chat such as Skype could allow me to hang out in their living room if we wanted.The hardest part would be the time difference.

However, I believe humans will always choose face to face interaction for things. Even now, if you wish to communicate something important, you do it in person. Our average day to day face to face interactions may be dropping, but I believe it’s because we save those meetings for important things. If we just want to shoot the shit, we send an email, or a text, or a Tweet. As it should be.

Humans have rarely mishandled technology so poorly in the long term that we’ve suffered for it as a race. We’re very good at handling technology poorly in the short term, and causing irreparable harm to portions of our race all at once, but we tend to learn that’s a bad plan. If social media were going to be detrimental to us as a species, I think we’d realize, and stop using it, or at least begin using it in a different way.

Wouldn’t we?

After all, ideas spread far and fast in the Information Age. And you can’t unmake an idea.

The Greatest Band You Never Heard: The Virgo Vertigo

January 20, 2010 / Anthony Smith posted in Harmonic Vicissitude / No Comments

Let’s just make this as plain as we can get around here.

You should be listening to The Virgo Vertigo.

Never mind the fact that you may not have heard of the band before.  Considering the current band formed in November of 2009, that is hardly surprising.  Also, never mind the fact that we here at bkI may know members of the band on a personal basis.  Personal allegiances aside, this is a band that warrants some attention.

First, a little background info.  The Virgo Vertigo is the brainchild of Tory World,  currently taking up residence in Madison, WI.   The project started in Seattle, WA as a hobby for Tory, according to the band’s MySpace page, and as a way to perform charity work.  With the move to Madison, the call to arms was made to fill out the band.   And that call was answered by thebluediamand (a former bandmate of Tory’s) on drums, Lexi Steinweg-Woods on bass, and the Thump (yup, you heard me) on guitar.  Tory handles the rest…which includes guitar, vocals, and programming.

Why programming?  Because The Virgo Vertigo is a band ‘heavily influenced by mid 80′s pop and New Wave. But, the sound also borrows from elements of industrial, hard-rock, new pop, hip-hop, dance, and so on.’  So, yeah, gotta have the programming in there.  It’s an eclectic mix of genres and styles, making a unique balance that appeals on many levels.  The musical potpourri is clearly reflected in the group’s new EP The Prelude, available at such fine music establishments as iTunes,  Digstation, and LaLa.

Just in case you are more of a visual person, don’t fret.  We got you covered.  Check out the music video for Better Learn to Swim, released on December 23, 2009 to the world via YouTube.  There is even two different versions….the short version previously linked, or the long version that you can access right here.   Hell, you can also check out the video for Superhuman, for all you zombie lovers out there.

However, if you are truly a visual person, and you happen to be in Madison around the 22nd of January, then you must head over to The Annex at 9 pm and check out The Virgo Vertigo live.  According to Tory, the live show is a performance art presentation, using LCD screens to present images and video in a documentary fashion.  The visual aids help to tell the songs and to give the overall impression of modern society in a dream state.  Also, if, for some reason, you can’t make this Friday’s show, don’t panic!  The Frequency, also in Madison, will have The Virgo Vertigo on February 20th (that’s a Saturday for all those of you playing at home) at 6 pm.   Set aside time now, for it promises to be an entertaining show.

For things relating to The Virgo Vertigo, feel free to check out the following:

Check out the music video or, if you are like me and prefer your music sans visual stimuli, head on over to the MySpace page and give the tracks there a listen.  If the auditory experience is to your liking, then go pick up the EP online or, better yet, come to The Annex this Friday.  Trust me on this one.  It will be worth it.

2010: The Year We Make Trouble

January 4, 2010 / uhwhat posted in News / No Comments

Woot!  It’s our month-aversery, and I think we’re doing pretty well for ourselves. We have regular readers, a small but growing Twitter and Facebook following, and thirty some-odd posts, so we are averaging on a day. When you consider we normally don’t post on the weekends and had 2 weeks in holidays, I’d say that’s a good job.

This beg’s the question: What’s next?

Well, here is the plan:

Columns

Mondays: Benjamin Kenneally’s Broadcast Domain – a techie’s take on storytelling.

Tuesdays: Pat’s Rants – There is always something pissing him off, and he’s going to tell you why.

Wednesdays: Tony Smith’s Harmonic Vicissitude – Band nerds get revenge with Tony in charge of our music column.

Daily Themes

Mondays: Tech – Good tech, crap tech, useful tech, story tech.

Tuesdays: Film and TV – bkI is taking on Hollywood, baby!!!

Wednesdays: Music – Get your soundtrack on.

Thursday: Wildcard – We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Fridays: Fiction – Original fiction and where to find the best free fiction on the net.

Coming Soon…

More Original Fiction – More fiction from our group of irregulars and some folks you haven’t heard from, yet.

More Reviews – Movies, music, books, you name it, we’ll review it.

Serials – Continuing stories, some written specially for bkI, not to mention the fact that we are unleashing Texas Noir on the world with the serialization of The Brotherhood of the Hand by Pat Humphreys and Chris Helton.

2010 is going to be a good year, boy’s and girls. Be sure to stick around.

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