One of the longest-running disputes in video games, over a Donkey Kong record, has finally been settled. CC-licensed photo by Microsiervos on Flickr.
A selection of 9 links for you. What about a medium score? I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Brianna Ghey’s killers and the dark net’s ‘red rooms’ • How To Survive The Internet
Jamie Bartlett:
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the dark net is often a little misunderstood. The same privacy enhancing and censorship resistant design that protects the bad stuff also helps the good guys. The Tor browser has won a lot of awards for helping journalists stay safe and encouraging greater privacy. I use it for my work all the time. There are several whistleblower sites on the dark net, and even the BBC has a presence there, designed for people worried about government monitoring.
Finally, although the dark net generates headlines, there is just as much bad stuff on the normal internet. Drugs and stolen data are easy enough to get through Telegram and other popular messaging apps; self-harm and self-hate content circulates widely on Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest; videos of people dying can be viewed on Twitter with a simple search.
Dark net misbehaviour is still rare – red rooms [showing live streams of torture and even murder, which Ghey’s female killer is claimed to have viewed] rarer still. If I were worried about my kids getting up to no good online, the dark net wouldn’t be my main concern. It would be algorithms pushing self hate on a friendly looking social media platform.
Nevertheless, it’s obvious that people – including young people – will be drawn to the dark net. Spending years there hasn’t made me want to self-harm, watch murder videos, or bully someone anonymously. But I have become accustomed and habituated to horrible and troubling things. I’ve seen how quickly and easily people can get sucked into very dark and destructive places. If I had a propensity towards any of these behaviours, perhaps it would have encouraged me. It certainly plausible that ‘Girl X’ became highly de-sensitised to murder and torture if she saw a lot of it online.
In the end, parents have a duty to understand these kinds of subcultures – both on the dark net and the normal net. If you see your kids on the dark net or using Tor, it doesn’t mean they have done anything wrong. Have an open and honest chat about it.
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Easier said than done, to be honest, but children will at least listen if you’ve made the effort. The calls by Mrs Ghey to suppress social media for the under-16s is a cry of pain, but you can also understand why. Sadly, we’ve seen through history that some children don’t need the internet to become desensitised to the idea of killing another.
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Vision Pro launch: all the news about Apple’s pricey new headset • The Verge
Emma Roth:
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Apple’s Vision Pro is finally here. Tim Cook arrived at Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York City to greet the crowd of customers at the doors who were waiting to try out the headset or buy one for themselves.
The Vision Pro is Apple’s take on a mixed-reality headset, which, according to our review, ”feels like magic when it works and frustrates you completely when it doesn’t.” There are more than 600 apps for the headset that take advantage of its key features, such as video passthrough and spatial audio.
Apple has started letting people demo the $3,499 headset at its stores on a first-come, first-served basis, but it’s also giving customers the chance to reserve time for a demo starting on Monday, February 5th. Along with the launch of the headset, we’re learning more about the apps coming to the Vision Pro — ranging from the dozens of 3D movies Disney is offering on the app to an unofficial YouTube app.
Here’s everything that went down following the launch of the Vision Pro.
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Once you get past the ordinary stuff, you get to the people DRIVING THEIR CARS while wearing these things. Frankly, quite glad that it’s only available in the US for a while.
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The end of the social network • The Economist
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The striking feature of the new social media is that they are no longer very social. Inspired by TikTok, apps like Facebook increasingly serve a diet of clips selected by artificial intelligence according to a user’s viewing behaviour, not their social connections. Meanwhile, people are posting less. The share of Americans who say they enjoy documenting their life online has fallen from 40% to 28% since 2020. Debate is moving to closed platforms, such as WhatsApp and Telegram.
The lights have gone out in the town square. Social media have always been opaque, since every feed is different. But TikTok, a Chinese-owned video phenomenon, is a black box to researchers. Twitter, rebranded as X, has published some of its code but tightened access to data about which tweets are seen. Private messaging groups are often fully encrypted.
Some of the consequences of this are welcome. Political campaigners say they have to tone down their messages to win over private groups. A provocative post that attracts “likes” in the X bear pit may alienate the school parents’ WhatsApp group. Posts on messaging apps are ordered chronologically, not by an engagement-maximising algorithm, reducing the incentive to sensationalise. In particular, closed groups may be better for the mental health of teenagers, who struggled when their private lives were dissected in public.
In the hyperactive half of social media, behaviour-based algorithms will bring you posts from beyond your community. Social networks can still act as “echo chambers” of self-reinforcing material. But a feed that takes content from anywhere at least has the potential to spread the best ideas farthest.
Yet this new world of social-media brings its own problems. Messaging apps are largely unmoderated. For small groups, that is good: platforms should no more police direct messages than phone companies should monitor calls. In dictatorships encrypted chats save lives. But Telegram’s groups of 200,000 are more like unregulated broadcasts than conversations. Politicians in India have used WhatsApp to spread lies that would surely have been removed from an open network like Facebook.
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Wouldn’t be so sure about political lies being removed from Facebook in India, unless they were by the opposition.
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Sunak to drop heat pump targets in fresh retreat from Net Zero • FT
Jim Pickard:
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Rishi Sunak is poised to drop plans to fine boiler makers who fail to meet strict production targets for heat pumps in the UK prime minister’s latest retreat from measures to tackle climate change
Industry bosses have been lobbying Whitehall to delay or scrap the policy, arguing that the quotas are unrealistic given sluggish demand for heat pumps and a shortage of installers.
The new system set to launch in April would force big boiler companies to ensure heat pumps account for 4% of their total boiler unit sales, or be penalised £3,000 for every item by which they fall short.
Companies have claimed that the target was already forcing them to put up prices on their gas boilers by as much as £125 in anticipation of having to pay the fines.
The government has argued that heat pumps already make up around 4% of most businesses’ production total. However, in the second year of the scheme that target would rise to 6%.
In December, Claire Coutinho, energy secretary, accused the companies of “price gouging”, arguing that it was “extremely unlikely” any of them would have to pay fines.
However, Coutinho is now poised to decide on whether to maintain the target, according to a Sunday Times report. She is inclined to drop it in the coming weeks, although details have not yet been finalised, according to government figures.
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Every time there’s a chance to make things worse, this government picks it. Given the possibility of ladders, they always find the snakes.
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Finance worker pays out $25m after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer’ • CNN
Heather Chen and Kathleen Magramo:
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A finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying out $25m to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as the company’s chief financial officer in a video conference call, according to Hong Kong police.
The elaborate scam saw the worker duped into attending a video call with what he thought were several other members of staff, but all of whom were in fact deepfake recreations, Hong Kong police said at a briefing on Friday.
“(In the) multi-person video conference, it turns out that everyone [he saw] was fake,” senior superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching told the city’s public broadcaster RTHK.
Chan said the worker had grown suspicious after he received a message that was purportedly from the company’s UK-based chief financial officer. Initially, the worker suspected it was a phishing email, as it talked of the need for a secret transaction to be carried out.
However, the worker put aside his early doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like colleagues he recognized, Chan said.
Believing everyone else on the call was real, the worker agreed to remit a total of $200m Hong Kong dollars – about $25.6m, the police officer added.
The case is one of several recent episodes in which fraudsters are believed to have used deepfake technology to modify publicly available video and other footage to cheat people out of money.
At the press briefing Friday, Hong Kong police said they had made six arrests in connection with such scams.
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Did the arrested people appear on video? Or were they shown in photographs? True Keyzer Soze stuff.
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Short on cash, El Salvador doubles down on Bitcoin dream • Reuters
Sarah Kinosian and Nelson Renteria:
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El Salvador’s economy is mostly stagnant and posts the slowest economic growth in Central America. Extreme poverty has doubled since 2019 and almost half the population lives with food insecurity.
“It’s unusual for someone to use bitcoin,” said Kevin Valle, 24, a Salvadoran produce vendor in Berlin’s main market. “What I can say is the cost of my tomatoes and onions has doubled, and people are worried about low employment and salaries.”
In 2022 the country’s public debt hit a 30-year record at $25bn. After initial negotiations with the IMF for a billion-dollar deal fell apart earlier in his first term, [president Nayib] Bukele’s government has since gone back to the table, and even hired the IMF’s former Western Hemisphere director last April.
The IMF has recommended El Salvador remove bitcoin’s legal tender status during negotiations over financial support. The Fund did not respond to request for comment.
But the 42-year-old firebrand’s resolve has been stiffened by Bitcoin’s recent rally. The cryptocurrency’s comeback has pushed El Salvador’s alleged investments – no one really knows the size of its holdings – into the black.
‘Nayibtracker.com,’ an unofficial website tracking El Salvador’s bitcoin portfolio based on Bukele’s social media, puts it at $121.6m on an initial $119.8m investment, a 1.5% return.
After a recent announcement by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow U.S.-listed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track bitcoin, Bukele’s vice president told Reuters the government will be doubling down on its crypto law in a second term.
The country’s adoption of the cryptocurrency alongside the dollar is largely not to blame for the overall state of the economy, say some economists, who point to low foreign direct investment and government overspending. But amid questions over state spending habits and a clear liquidity problem, critics note bitcoin has yet to bring significant benefit.
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Still impossible to know whether bitcoin is just a distraction for El Salvador.
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What happens when an amateur cyclist rides the entire Tour de France route • Outside Online
Alex Hutchinson:
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The 2000s-era reality show Pros vs. Joes was a great concept, but it didn’t give recreational endurance athletes much to fantasize about. Getting struck out by Darryl Strawberry or dunked on by Dennis Rodman is one thing, but how about trying to reel in a breakaway by Jonas Vingegaard after cycling hundreds of miles?
That’s not quite what a new paper in the Journal of Applied Physiology offers, but it’s the closest scientific equivalent. Researchers from Spain and the United States, led by David Barranco-Gil, Xabier Muriel, and Pedro Valenzuela, present a head-to-head matchup of the physiological data from two cyclists who completed last year’s Tour de France. One was a 27-year-old all-arounder who competed in the actual race for one of the World Tour teams. The other was a 58-year-old, 212-pound amateur who rode the entire Tour de France route starting a week before the race, as part of a fund-raising event for leukemia.
The results weren’t close. The pro covered 2,116 miles with 170,000 feet of elevation gain in 21 stages in a cumulative total of 87 hours; the Joe covered it in 191 hours, of which 158 were spent actually cycling. But the data is nonetheless interesting for what it tells us about the unexpectedly high limits of sustained endurance in (as the researchers put it) “mortals.” With apologies to Samuel Johnson, a 58-year-old amateur completing the Tour de France is like a dog walking on its hind legs: it’s not that it’s done well, but you’re surprised to see it done at all.
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The 58-year-old had been preparing for 18 months ahead of time, just in case you’re wondering. But the top level professionals, in any sport, are so far beyond our “average” level that you need very careful analyses (as this, and the journal paper, offer) to even get a glimpse of them.
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Deal ends dispute over records of onetime king of Donkey Kong • The New York Times
Victor Mather:
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People not immersed in that world [of arcade video games] first had a chance to hear about Mr. [Billy] Mitchell in the critically acclaimed 2007 documentary “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.” It told the story of Steve Wiebe and his quest to be recognized as the first person to reach a million points in the game, beating a record set by Mr. Mitchell years earlier.
Mr. Mitchell wore the black hat in that film, which portrayed him, The New York Times’s review said, as “a pretentious, manipulative swine.”
He successfully challenged Mr. Wiebe’s high score and set a new one himself, but that achievement remained under a cloud in the film. The tussle over records did not end there, and Mr. Mitchell eventually claimed even higher scores from 2007 to 2010. But Twin Galaxies, which tracks and records video game achievements, invalidated Mr. Mitchell’s scores in 2018 after an investigation.
Under the group’s rules, these records must be set using an original circuit board from a Donkey Kong machine. A Twin Galaxies investigation found that Mr. Mitchell had used an arcade emulator for two of his record-setting scores.
Mr. Mitchell vowed at the time that the fight was not over and filed a defamation suit. That suit was finally settled last week.
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The records are “reinstated” but Twin Galazies say they won’t be put on the main leaderboard, because its database is a “historic artefact” preserved in the state it had in 2014.
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Remaking the app store, European style • Benedict Evans
Evans on Apple’s response to the Digital Markets Act, which applies in the EU (specifically):
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the EU has chosen some classic Boris Johnson ‘cake-ism’ – it is trying to have its cake and eat it. Apple must open up a bunch of holes in the security model without weakening the security model. Easy! (Tech regulation is full of this right now: we must have secure encryption that the police can read!)
The problem is that Apple has taken the EU at its word. Imagine the dialogue:
• You want apps to be able to use a third party payment processor? OK – instead of paying us 30% commission, they can use a third party processor and pay us 27%
• You want us to allow third party app stores while preserving security, privacy and reliability? OK: all those apps must be reviewed according to our rules, and notarised by us. And those stores can’t be in our app store – you asked for side-loading, so the stores will have to be side-loaded
• Apps in those stores aren’t subject to our 30% commission rule? OK – they can pay us 50 euro cents [= 43pence, $0.54] per download instead
• You want us to let people leave our safe, secure ecosystem while keeping them safe and secure? OK, we’ll need some giant scare screens to warn them
• And (of course), this only applies in the EU (which Apple said this week is only 7% of its app store revenue), so you won’t have access to the global user base.Spotify, of course, is furious at all of this, and Mark Zuckerberg said on the Meta earnings call this week that on this basis nothing would really change. On the other hand, in legal terms this is just a proposal. the EU will look at what Apple has done and decide whether it likes it (see Steven Sinofsky, formerly of Microsoft, on the time when the EU decided that Windows should not include video playback). This isn’t over: there will be argument, iteration and eye-catching fines that make no sense.
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Wonder how long it will take to get to the eye-catching fines.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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