Linked List: March 23, 2021

Tuesday, 23 March 2021

20 Macs for 2020 Bonus Episodes 

Speaking of yours truly and Jason Snell reminiscing, all three of the standalone episodes with me are now in the 20 Macs for 2020 podcast feed. Also all three of Jason’s episodes with John Siracusa.

(It occurred to me this month, when it was discontinued, that that iMac Pro is a big-time throwback to the classic days of Mac hardware. A lot of the older Macs worth remembering were one-offs. There was only one G4 Cube, only one SE/30. They weren’t product lines, they were unique models, which would sometimes remain on sale for years. The iMac Pro was like that.)

The Talk Show: ‘Russian Nesting Doll Code’ 

Special guest Jason Snell joins the show to reminisce over 20 years of Mac OS X. I mean OS X. Sorry, MacOS. Also: HomePod, AppleTV, and Intel’s awkward new ad campaign.

Sponsored by:

  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.
  • Mack Weldon: Reinventing men’s basics with smart design, premium fabrics, and simple shopping. Get 20% off your first order with code talkshow.
  • Flatfile: Spend less time formatting spreadsheet data, and more time using it.
  • Hello Fresh: America’s #1 meal kit. Use this link for 12 free meals, including free shipping.
The Case Against Year-Round Daylight Saving Time: We Tried It Before 

Aaron Blake, reporting for The Washington Post last week:

The year was 1973, and the United States was experiencing an energy crisis. Among the proposals put forward by President Richard M. Nixon in a November address was making daylight saving time permanent for the next two winters. Despite scant evidence of daylight saving time’s past benefit on the energy supply (dating back to DST’s various introductions since World War I), Americans really liked the idea. Polling in November and December 1973 showed strong and in some cases overwhelming support — 57 percent in a Gallup poll, 74 percent in a Louis Harris and Associates poll, and 73 percent in a poll from the Roper Organization.

The policy was quickly implemented in early January 1974. But it just as quickly fell out of favor.

In a Roper poll conducted in February and March, just 30 percent remained in favor of year-round daylight saving time, while a majority favored switching times again. Louis Harris polling in March showed just 19 percent of people said it had been a good idea, while about twice as many — 43 percent — said it was a bad one.

What happened to change people’s minds? Dark mornings were unpopular. I’m still in favor of trying year-round DST, but it only seems fair to link to the other side of the argument, and it’s pretty interesting that public opinion changed so dramatically when we tried it a generation ago.

See also: Josh Barro, writing at Business Insider: “Daylight-Saving Time Is Good, So Stop Complaining”.

Facebook’s Playbook for Responding to Polarization Accusations 

Ryan Mac and Craig Silverman, reporting for BuzzFeed News on an internal Facebook presentation that came just after the aforelinked Karen Hao blockbuster story on Facebook’s AI:

When shown the internal document by BuzzFeed News, one former Facebook employee who studied polarization at the company said, “This memo is corporate gaslighting disguised as a research brief.” They left the company last year and asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

See also: This thread from Gideon Lichfield, who was one of Karen Hao’s editors for the MIT Technology Review story, on Facebook PR’s response.

Facebook’s Misinformation Addiction 

One more on Facebook, this one a staggeringly well-reported piece by Karen Hao for MIT Technology Review, profiling Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, a director of AI at Facebook:

By the time thousands of rioters stormed the US Capitol in January, organized in part on Facebook and fueled by the lies about a stolen election that had fanned out across the platform, it was clear from my conversations that the Responsible AI team had failed to make headway against misinformation and hate speech because it had never made those problems its main focus. More important, I realized, if it tried to, it would be set up for failure.

The reason is simple. Everything the company does and chooses not to do flows from a single motivation: Zuckerberg’s relentless desire for growth. Quiñonero’s AI expertise supercharged that growth. His team got pigeonholed into targeting AI bias, as I learned in my reporting, because preventing such bias helps the company avoid proposed regulation that might, if passed, hamper that growth. Facebook leadership has also repeatedly weakened or halted many initiatives meant to clean up misinformation on the platform because doing so would undermine that growth.

Later:

Since then, other employees have corroborated these findings. A former Facebook AI researcher who joined in 2018 says he and his team conducted “study after study” confirming the same basic idea: models that maximize engagement increase polarization. They could easily track how strongly users agreed or disagreed on different issues, what content they liked to engage with, and how their stances changed as a result. Regardless of the issue, the models learned to feed users increasingly extreme viewpoints. “Over time they measurably become more polarized,” he says.

It’s about priorities: even if Facebook truly wants to tamp down on misinformation and polarizing content (and I believe they do) it doesn’t matter as long as that desire is a lower priority for the company than increasing engagement (and I’m quite certain it is). Whether Facebook’s priorities are the company’s or Zuckerberg’s is probably indistinguishable. Such is the power of the founder/CEO. Apple/Jobs, Microsoft/Gates, Amazon/Bezos — all in the same boat.

I know that “Facebook is a shitty company doing harm to the world” stories are getting old, but this one is truly worth setting aside to read with your full attention.