2×43: Shouting and shaming - a podcast by Bad Voltage

Stuart Langridge, Jono Bacon, and special guest Alan Pope standing in for Jeremy present Bad Voltage, in which Tiger Tokens are a more viable currency than you think, AI gets things wrong again, and:


[00:02:20] A popular open source dependency in use by many packages, with two million weekly downloads, was “compromised” in maybe a new and interesting way. The maintainer handed over the package to another developer… who then published an update which stole cryptocurrency wallets. The problem was identified and handled pretty quickly, but this has ignited a great deal of conversation and controversy about the role and responsibilities of open source project maintainers, npm, and the like. We get into it.
[00:15:40] Jaywalking is a crime in China, and they have cameras to detect it and then publish the pictures publicly to shame the jaywalker. Dong Mingzhu, head of a major Chinese company, got shamed… because the cameras took a picture of a picture of her on the side of a bus and thought it was her. Is this just lulz, or a(nother)cautionary tale about the increasing role of flawed AI in decision making?
[00:25:40] Google employees ask their bosses to cancel Project Dragonfly, the big G’s planned search engine for China which obeys the Chinese government’s requirements on blocking certain search terms around human rights and banned religions. Amnesty International have weighed in, and there will be protests. This all speaks to a larger discussion about the power of collective bargaining, and a culture which gives (or doesn’t) employees the ability to speak up about high-level decisions they disagree with.
[00:39:25] The Android hacking community are alight with speculation after a Huawei developer adds a commit to Google’s Fuchsia kernel to enable their Kirin 970 board. The Internet Extrapolation Engine is in overdrive, speculating this means the so-called “Android replacement” is being tested on the “Honor Play” series of Huawei devices. Is this a thing? And a detour into the nature of Android replacements; why do Samsung have Tizen and bada?
[00:49:00] Twitter: some are specifically recommending that you screenshot, not quote-tweet, controversial tweets that you disagree with because Twitter sees a quote-tweet as an implicit “this is worth sharing” vote and adds credit to that controversial message. Some thoughts on whether this is a good idea, and how small decisions can lead to behavioural bad choices, along with more dodgy AI decisions as Twitter spend some time banning people who tweet about killing Sean Bean in Hitman 2. We’re interested in feedback on how to solve this problem without taking your ball and going home by opting out of social media entirely; let us know on the forum or Slack. Can social media be used as a force for good without also enabling this sort of thing?


Come chat with us and the community in our Slack channel via https://badvoltage-slack.herokuapp.com/!





https://community.badvoltage.org/t/2×43-shouting-and-shaming/11927

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