The 85th Block: Unsafe, unsecured
A groping problem is not growing pains
This week…
A selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
The metaverse has a groping problem already ($)
Tanya Basu for MIT TR:
Sexual assault and harassment in virtual worlds is not new, nor is it realistic to expect a world in which these issues will completely disappear. So long as there are people who will hide behind their computer screens to evade moral responsibility, they will continue to occur.
The real problem, perhaps, has to do with the perception that when you play a game or participate in a virtual world, there’s what Aaron Stanton describes as a “contract between developer and player.” “As a player, I’m agreeing to being able to do what I want in the developer’s world according to their rules,” he says. “But as soon as that contract is broken and I’m not feeling comfortable anymore, the obligation of the company is to return the player to wherever they want to be and back to being comfortable.”
The question is: Whose responsibility is it to make sure users are comfortable? Meta, for example, says it gives users access to tools to keep themselves safe, effectively shifting the onus onto them.
The Log4j security flaw could impact the entire internet. Here’s what you should know
Jennifer Korn for CNN:
Log4j gives software developers a way to build a record of activity to be used for a variety of purposes, such as troubleshooting, auditing and data tracking. Because it is both open-source and free, the library essentially touches every part of the internet.
Attackers appear to have had more than a week’s head start on exploiting the software flaw before it was publicly disclosed, according to cybersecurity firm Cloudflare. Now, with such a high number of hacking attempts happening each day, some worry the worst is to yet come.
A member of Alibaba’s cloud security discovered the vulnerability, but Log4j started as a volunteer project and still runs mainly for free. And volunteers work around the clock to address the issue. “The internet runs on free open-source software,” Patrick Howell O’Neill reminds us on MIT TR ($). “Who pays to fix it?”
Apple tracking devices being used in thefts of high-end cars
Phil Tsekouras for CTV:
As a result, police have offered up a number of tips to keep your vehicle safe, including: If you own an iPhone, you may receive a notification that an AirTag is nearby. If possible, park your vehicle in a locked garage as most vehicles are stolen from a driveway. Use a steering wheel lock, which will also work as a visual deterrent. Install a lock on your car’s data port. Police said the simple device can be purchased online and blocks access to the vehicle’s computer port.
And for Android users, I suppose we’ll just be blissfully ignorant. Even more absurd? Apple has no way of identifying AirTag owners because of their privacy policies. Here’s a thread by someone with first-hand experience; although I don’t think the idea was to steal the car:
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading why rocket science and brain surgery are unnecessarily placed on a pedestal, according to findings published in the festive edition of the BMJ.
I’m watching the Women’s Volleyball Club World Championship.
Chart of the week
From Pew Research Center survey on how Americans tweet about the news:
There is a beautiful, slightly geek history of the hashtag. Of course, the symbol has been around for a long time, but the way it is used now started as a “programmer culture”. IRC used the hash symbol as a label to group similar topics or groups and make search filters more effective. Twitter mainstreamed this way of using the hash symbol when the platform made the hash symbol a tag—a clickable function that takes users to other tweets from other users who are using the same hashtag. This function was adopted by other social media platforms (and the reality show The Circle, where it is unnecessarily overused). Now its use has declined and is seen mainly as #backgroundclutter partly because it has been #unnecessarily #overused as a #spammy #blockoftext that #noonereads but the #algorithm.
Apple tag now updated with some safety features, and Metaverse too (four feet safe zone) smh took them a while.