Mark Zuckerberg Is in Denial →

...I encountered thousands of such fake stories last year on social media — and so did American voters, 44 percent of whom use Facebook to get news.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief, believes that it is “a pretty crazy idea” that “fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of content, influenced the election in any way.” In holding fast to the claim that his company has little effect on how people make up their minds, Mr. Zuckerberg is doing real damage to American democracy — and to the world.
He is also contradicting Facebook’s own research.
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In 2012, Facebook researchers again secretly tweaked the newsfeed for an experiment: Some people were shown slightly more positive posts, while others were shown slightly more negative posts. Those shown more upbeat posts in turn posted significantly more of their own upbeat posts; those shown more downbeat posts responded in kind. Decades of other research concurs that people are influenced by their peers and social networks.
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These are not easy problems to solve, but there is a lot Facebook could do. When the company decided it wanted to reduce spam, it established a policy that limited its spread. If Facebook had the same kind of zeal about fake news, it could minimize its spread, too.
If anything, Facebook has been moving in the wrong direction. It recently fired its (already too few) editors responsible for weeding out fake news from its trending topics section. Unsurprisingly, the section was then flooded with even more spurious articles.
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In addition to doing more to weed out lies and false propaganda, Facebook could tweak its algorithm so that it does less to reinforce users’ existing beliefs, and more to present factual information. This may seem difficult, but perhaps the Silicon Valley billionaires who helped create this problem should take it on before setting out to colonize Mars.

Regulation of the Internet of Things →

Your security on the Internet depends on the security of millions of Internet-enabled devices, designed and sold by companies you've never heard of to consumers who don't care about your security.
The technical reason these devices are insecure is complicated, but there is a market failure at work. The Internet of Things is bringing computerization and connectivity to many tens of millions of devices worldwide. These devices will affect every aspect of our lives, because they're things like cars, home appliances, thermostats, light bulbs, fitness trackers, medical devices, smart streetlights and sidewalk squares. Many of these devices are low-cost, designed and built offshore, then rebranded and resold. The teams building these devices don't have the security expertise we've come to expect from the major computer and smartphone manufacturers, simply because the market won't stand for the additional costs that would require. These devices don't get security updates like our more expensive computers, and many don't even have a way to be patched. And, unlike our computers and phones, they stay around for years and decades.
An additional market failure illustrated by the Dyn attack is that neither the seller nor the buyer of those devices cares about fixing the vulnerability. The owners of those devices don't care. They wanted a webcam —­ or thermostat, or refrigerator ­— with nice features at a good price. Even after they were recruited into this botnet, they still work fine ­— you can't even tell they were used in the attack. The sellers of those devices don't care: They've already moved on to selling newer and better models. There is no market solution because the insecurity primarily affects other people. It's a form of invisible pollution.
And, like pollution, the only solution is to regulate...

Regardless of what you think about regulation vs. market solutions, I believe there is no choice. Governments will get involved in the IoT, because the risks are too great and the stakes are too high. Computers are now able to affect our world in a direct and physical manner.

Security researchers have demonstrated the ability to remotely take control of Internet-enabled cars. They've demonstrated ransomware against home thermostats and exposed vulnerabilities in implanted medical devices. They've hacked voting machines and power plants. In one recent paper, researchers showed how a vulnerability in smart light bulbs could be used to start a chain reaction, resulting in them all being controlled by the attackers ­— that's every one in a city. Security flaws in these things could mean people dying and property being destroyed.

...Our choice isn't between government involvement and no government involvement. Our choice is between smarter government involvement and stupider government involvement. We have to start thinking about this now. Regulations are necessary, important and complex ­— and they're coming. We can't afford to ignore these issues until it's too late.

Rebecca Carroll and Van Jones Talk Race and the Race →

Now you’re describing the racial stalemate that we’ve been in for the Obama years. And so this presumption of unimpeachable white innocence on every question of race is a feature of the Trump voter’s paradigm. The struggle I’m having is to be in two conversations at the same time. Because I am a progressive racial-justice advocate. I understand our paradigm really well, and I wish more people would adopt it. But I also have to live in a country where there are tens of millions of people who are living in a completely different paradigm. I want the 24-year-old Latina, Sanders-supporting, racial-justice activist to understand that there aren’t 30 million or 50 million white Trump voters who hate her. And I want for that 54-year-old white heterosexual red-state voter to understand that because they voted for someone who said such outrageous things, there are now millions of people of color who think that he hates them.

Philippines' Duterte says may follow Russia's withdrawal from 'useless' ICC →

Courts (and social institutions in general) do best when everyone's willing to participate.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday he might follow Russia and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in response to Western criticism of a rash of killings unleashed by his war on drugs.
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"They are useless, those in the international criminal (court). They (Russia) withdrew. I might follow. Why? Only the small ones like us are battered," Duterte said before his departure for Lima to attend an Asia-Pacific summit.
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The court is already reeling from withdrawals by some of the African states that make up a third of its membership, many of whom complain it has unfairly singled out Africans for prosecution.

Watching 81% of My White Brothers and Sisters Vote For Trump Has Broken Something in Me →

(Minor quibble:  the 81% statistic is based on exit polls (so only those who voted, and who were willing to say they were "evangelical"), which tend to be fairly inaccurate. The points about morality, hypocrisy, and the division they cause, still stand.)

Too often we have demanded that men and women of color teach us both about their own history and about white racism. We have long insisted that unwilling faculty members or church members be teachers when we are too lazy to do the historical and theological work of understanding how racism functions in Christendom. We have cried for more conversation in order to facilitate our understandings of each other, even while always demanding that people of color disproportionately carry the load. But I chose this work.
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I lament that, for white evangelicals, my brothers and sisters in Christ (some of whom have joined me in the work of racial justice), the very real lives and experiences of black and brown peoples, Muslims, immigrants, and so many others were apparently not on their radar. People whose highest commandment is to love God and then love your neighbor.
There are real people on the other side of these lies and racism and misogyny. There are Muslims who face physical assault because of an Islamophobia that is being embraced and celebrated in this country. There are women who are raped or sexually assaulted, and who will never seek justice, since sexual assault has been reduced to merely “locker room” antics.
There are children who will endure bullying, and potentially consider suicide, because of the president-elect’s public behavior of bullying and demeaning those with whom he disagrees. There are African Americans living in fear when someone shouts “Kill Obama” during an acceptance speech and the president-elect fails to shut it down–because black folks know we serve as surrogates for racist rage directed against the president.

Seven Observations on the 2016 Election →

The best summary analysis I've seen on how Clinton lost/Trump won the election, as well as likely potential paths the Trump admin may take.

My takeaways:
  1. This did not need to happen and is primarily the result of mind-boggling incompetence by the professionals of the Democratic Party.
  2. Fundamentally—consistent with pretty much everything everyone is saying—the election was lost by taking Rust Belt whites for granted [5]: without question, flip Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania and Clinton would have been president. Everything else—Wikileaks, Comey, emails—was just gravy.
  3. The existing opinion and likely-voter models have been shown to be woefully inadequate, however much individuals making money off these will protest otherwise.
And a couple things we should keep in mind did not happen
  1. The country did not shift radically to the right: Trump did not even get a majority of the votes cast, much less of eligible voters.
  2. Trump is not a Republican in any conventional sense, though clearly the Republicans benefited from the Trump victory more than the Democrats did. Well, probablybenefited more.
  3. There is a whole lot to still play out here.
Seven observations:...

Decision Boundary 2016: Margin of Terror →

If you're interested in understanding how/where the polls went wrong, very good (podcast) discussion between various polling and data science pros, including from the media and from both the RNC's and DNC's data teams.

The Lawfare Podcast: "The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives" Edition →

Good podcast discussing the issues with serving (or not) under Trump. Because of his constant lies, obvious sociopathy, and calls for flagrantly illegal and immoral policies on the future part of US military and intelligence officials, Trump and his campaign staff received "No"s from seemingly everyone they contacted about serving in senior and middle administration. They're now scrambling to fill any and all positions, which could mean the Trump administration is being led by some of the most extremist people with little if any experience.