A Neighborly Blog

Category: Technology

  • Signal: Overview of Security Issues

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    Alan Buddug
    in

    Recently, the Trump administration blundered idiotically yet again by adding a journalist to a Signal conversation about a military strike against the Houthis. As a result, there’s a lot of confusing or faulty information in the mainstream media regarding Signal. To be fair, these are complex issues, so here is a summary of Signal’s various…

  • Meredith Whittaker on AI

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    Alan Buddug
    in

    This video from 2019 features Meredith Whittaker who is now the president of the Signal Foundation talking about AI, which is one of her areas of expertise. She spent about a year as an advisor on AI to the Federal Trade Commission, and has a background with AI at Google.

  • Are we doomed?

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    Alan Buddug
    in,

    There’s an article in the New Yorker from June 10 entitled “Are We Doomed? Here’s how to think about it“. It’s really cute when academics tell people how to think because academics are — let’s say — a little odd. Of the highest relevance in this context is their absolute conviction that academics can solve…

  • Grimes and Techno Fascism

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    Alan Buddug
    in,

    Back in 2012, when Grimes’s first big hit Oblivion was released, people thought it was a subtle critique of two aspects of toxic masculinity; one being the way men make the world inherently dangerous for women, and the other being the way men will point this out as a method of controlling women. When she…

  • Ralph Yarl: How does a person get up after being shot in the head?

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    Alan Buddug
    in

    We are all very happy about the news that Ralph Yarl, the young man in Kansas City who was shot by a homeowner for the “crime” of being on the wrong front porch while being Black, has been released from the hospital, quite possibly with no permanent damage to his body. You might be wondering…

  • The Assault Rifle

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    Alan Buddug
    in,

    There’s this ongoing political conversation wherein liberals say, “We must ban assault rifles,” and then conservatives respond with an overly pedantic definition of “assault rifle” in order to mock the liberals, who rightly see the conservative response as a steaming pile of horseshit. But maybe we should all be clear on what an assault rifle…

  • Colorado Nightclub Shooting: Advice for Moving Forward

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    Alan Buddug
    in,

    I’ve been following the story of the Club Q nightclub shooting in Colorado Springs, and it is absolutely heartbreaking. I’m very appreciative of how the mainstream press and the LGBTQ+ community are handling it. I’m especially glad to hear that some of the patrons stopped the killer; the bravery of those individuals saved lives by…

  • Chips

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    Alan Buddug
    in,

    One of the biggest ongoing consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic is the shortage of computer chips. However, the shortage is more about the fact that market capitalism is extremely money-efficient, but not at all resilient. Resilience is expensive so you cannot be both money-efficient and resilient. However, because computer chips are so important to the…

  • The Luddites Were Right

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    Alan Buddug
    in

    In today’s English, a Luddite is someone who hates technology, especially whatever the the current version is. History treats them as a foolish cult that destroyed industrial machinery because they thought it was a tool of the devil or something. In truth, though, the Luddites were not just reasonable, but correct. Advances in technology quite…