Wanna Be Happy? Use the Internet
May 13, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
The glory days of the Internet have faded. Social media, AI-generated baloney, and brain numbing TikTok-esque short videos — Outstanding ways to be happy. What about endless online scams, phishing, and smishing, deep fake voices to grandma from grandchildren needing money — Yes, guaranteed uplifts to sagging spirits.
The idea of a payoff in a coffee shop is silly. Who would compromise academic standards for a latte and a pile of cash. Absolutely no one involved in academic pursuits. Good enough, MSFT Copilot. Good enough.
When I read two of the “real” news stories about how the Internet manufactures happiness, I asked myself, “Exactly what’s with this study?” The PR push to say happy things about online reminded me of the OII or Oxford Internet Institute and some of its other cheerleading. And what is the OII? It is an outfit which receives some university support, funds from private industry, and foundation cash; for example, the Shirley Institute.
In my opinion, it is often difficult to figure out if the “research” is wonky due to its methodology, the desire to keep some sources of funding writing checks, or a nifty way to influence policies in the UK and elsewhere. The magic of the “Oxford” brand gives the outfit some cachet for those who want to collect conference name tags to bedeck their office coat hangers.
The OII is back in the content marketing game. I read the BBC’s “Internet Access Linked to Higher Wellbeing, Study Finds” and the Guardian’s “Internet Use Is Associated with Greater Wellbeing, Global Study Finds.” Both articles are generated from the same PR-type verbiage. But the weirdness of the assertion is undermined by this statement from the BBC’s rewrite of the OII’s PR:
The study was not able to prove cause and effect, but the team found measures of life satisfaction were 8.5% higher for those who had internet access. Nor did the study look at the length of time people spent using the internet or what they used it for, while some factors that could explain associations may not have be considered.
The Oxford brand and the big numbers about a massive sample size cannot hide one awkward fact: There is little evidence that happiness drips from Internet use. Convenience? Yep. Entertainment? Yep. Crime? Yep. Self-harm, drug use or experimentation, meme amplification. Yep, yep, yep.
Several questions arise:
- Why is the message “online is good” suddenly big news? If anything, the idea runs counter to the significant efforts to contain access to potentially harmful online content in the UK and elsewhere. Gee, I wonder if the companies facing some type of sanctions are helping out the good old OII?
- What’s up with Oxford University itself? Doesn’t it have more substantive research to publicize? Perhaps Oxford should emulate the “Naked Scientist” podcast or lobby to get Melvin Bragg to report about more factual matters? Does Oxford have an identity crisis?
- And the BBC and the Guardian! Have the editors lost the plot? Don’t these professionals have first hand knowledge about the impact of online on children and young adults? Don’t they try to talk to their kids or grandkids at the dinner table when the youthful progeny of “real” news people are using their mobile phones?
I like facts which push back against received assumptions. But online is helping out those who use it needs a bit more precision, clearer thinking, and less tenuous cause-and-effect hoo-hah in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, May 13, 2024
Apple and a Recycled Carnival Act: Woo Woo New New!
May 13, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
A long time ago, for a project related to a new product which was cratering, one person on my team suggested I read a book by James B. Twitchell. Carnival Culture: The Trashing of Taste in America provided a broad context, but the information in the analysis of taste was not going to save the enterprise software I was supposed to analyze. In general, I suggest that investment outfits with an interest in online information give me a call before writing checks to the tale-spinning entrepreneurs.
A small creative spark getting smashed in an industrial press. I like the eyes. The future of humans in Apple’s understanding of the American datasphere. Wow, look at those eyes. I can hear the squeals of pain, can’t you?
Dr. Twitchell did a good job, in my opinion, of making clear that some cultural actions are larger than a single promotion. Popular movies and people like P.T. Barnum (the circus guy) explain facets of America. These two examples are not just entertaining; they are making clear what revs the engines of the US of A.
I read “Hating Apple Goes Mainstream” and realized that Apple is doing the marketing for which it is famous. The roll out of the iPad had a high resolution, big money advertisement. If you are around young children, squishy plastic toys are often in small fingers. Squeeze the toy and the eyes bulge. In the image above, a child’s toy is smashed in what seems to me be the business end of a industrial press manufactured by MSE Technology Ltd in Turkey.
Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Glad you had time to do this art. I know you are busy on security or is it AI or is AI security or security AI? I get so confused.
The Apple iPad has been a bit of an odd duck. It is a good substitute for crappy Kindle-type readers. We have a couple, but they don’t get much use. Everything is a pain for me because the super duper Apple technology does not detect my fingers. I bought the gizmos so people could review the PowerPoint slides for one of my lectures at a conference. I also experimented with the iPad as a teleprompter. After a couple of tests, getting content on the device, controlling it, and fiddling so the darned thing knew I was poking the screen to cause an action — I put the devices on the shelf.
Forget the specific product, let’s look at the cited write ups comments about the Apple “carnival culture” advertisement. The write up states:
Apple has lost its presumption of good faith over the last five years with an ever-larger group of people, and now we’ve reached a tipping point. A year ago, I’m sure this awful ad would have gotten push back, but I’m also sure we’d heard more “it’s not that big of a deal” and “what Apple really meant to say was…” from the stalwart Apple apologists the company has been able to count on for decades. But it’s awfully quiet on the fan-boy front.
I think this means the attempt to sell sent weird messages about a company people once loved. What’s going on, in my opinion, is that Apple is explaining what technology is going to do to people who once used software to create words, images, and data exhaust will be secondary to cosmetics of technology.
In short, people and their tools will be replaced by a gizmo or gizmos that are similar to bright lights and circus posters. What do these artifacts tell us. My take on the Apple iPad M4 super duper creative juicer is, at this time:
- So what? I have an M2 Air, and it does what I hoped the two touch insensitive iPads would do.
- Why create a form factor that is likely to get crushed when I toss my laptop bad on a security screening belt? Apple’s products are, in my view, designed to be landfill residents.
- Apple knows in its subconscious corporate culture heat sink that smart software, smart services, and dumb users are the future. The wonky expensive high-resolution shouts, “We know you are going to be out of job. You will be like the yellow squishy toy.”
The message Apple is sending is that innovation has moved from utility to entertainment to the carnival sideshow. Put on your clown noses, people. Buy Apple.
Stephen E Arnold, May 13, 2024
Open Source and Open Doors. Bad Actors, Come On In
May 13, 2024
Open source code is awesome, because it allows developers to create projects without paying proprietary fees and it inspires innovation. Open source code, however, has problems especially when bad actors know how to exploit it. OpenSSF shares how a recent open source back door left many people vulnerable: “Open Source Security (OpenSSF) And OpenJS Foundations Issue Alert For Social Engineer Takeovers Of Open Source Projects.”
The OpenJS Foundation hosts billions of JavaScript websites. The foundation recently discovered a social engineering takeover attempt dubbed XZ Utilz backdoor, similar to another hack in the past. The OpenJS Foundation and the Open Source Security Foundation are alerting developers about the threat.
The OpenJS received a series of suspicious emails from various GitHub emails that advised project administrators to update their JavaScript. The update description was vague and wanted the administrators to allow the bad actors access to projects. The scam emails are part of the endless bag of tricks black hat hackers use to manipulate administrators, so they can access source code.
The foundations are warning administrators about the scams and sharing tips about how to recognize scams. Bad actors exploit open source developers:
“These social engineering attacks are exploiting the sense of duty that maintainers have with their project and community in order to manipulate them. Pay attention to how interactions make you feel. Interactions that create self-doubt, feelings of inadequacy, of not doing enough for the project, etc. might be part of a social engineering attack.
Social engineering attacks like the ones we have witnessed with XZ/liblzma were successfully averted by the OpenJS community. These types of attacks are difficult to detect or protect against programmatically as they prey on a violation of trust through social engineering. In the short term, clearly and transparently sharing suspicious activity like those we mentioned above will help other communities stay vigilant. Ensuring our maintainers are well supported is the primary deterrent we have against these social engineering attacks.”
These scams aren’t surprising. There needs to be more organizations like OpenJS and Open Source Security, because their intentions are to protect the common good. They’re on the side of the little person compared to politicians and corporations.
Whitney Grace, May 13, 2024
Will Google Behave Like Telegram?
May 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I posted a short item on LinkedIn about Telegram’s blocking of Ukraine’s information piped into Russia via Telegram. I pointed out that Pavel Durov, the founder of VK and Telegram, told Tucker Carlson that he was into “free speech.” A few weeks after the interview, Telegram blocked the data from Ukraine for Russia’s Telegram users. One reason given, as I recall, was that Apple was unhappy. Telegram rolled over and complied with a request that seems to benefit Russia more than Apple. But that’s just my opinion. The incident, which one of my team verified with a Ukrainian interacting with senior professionals in Ukraine, the block. Not surprisingly, Ukraine’s use of Telegram is under advisement. I think that means, “Find another method of sending encrypted messages and use that.” Compromised communications can translate to “Rest in Peace” in real time.
A Hong Kong rock band plays a cover of the popular hit Glory to Hong Kong. The bats in the sky are similar to those consumed in Shanghai during a bat festival. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. What are you working on today? Security or AI?
I read “Hong Kong Puts Google in Hot Seat With Ban on Protest Song.” That news story states:
The Court of Appeal on Wednesday approved the government’s application for an injunction order to prevent anyone from playing Glory to Hong Kong with seditious intent. While the city has a new security law to punish that crime, the judgment shifted responsibility onto the platforms, adding a new danger that just hosting the track could expose companies to legal risks. In granting the injunction, judges said prosecuting individual offenders wasn’t enough to tackle the “acute criminal problems.”
What’s Google got to do with it that toe tapper Glory to Hong Kong?
The write up says:
The injunction “places Google, media platforms and other social media companies in a difficult position: Essentially pitting values such as free speech in direct conflict with legal obligations,” said Ryan Neelam, program director at the Lowy Institute and former Australian diplomat to Hong Kong and Macau. “It will further the broader chilling effect if foreign tech majors do comply.”
The question is, “Roll over as Telegram allegedly has, or fight Hong Kong and by extension everyone’s favorite streaming video influencer, China?” What will Google do? Scrub Glory to Hong Kong, number one with a bullet on someone’s hit parade I assume.
My guess is that Google will go to court, appeal, and then take appropriate action to preserve whatever revenue is at stake. I do know The Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show will not use Glory to Hong Kong as its theme for its 2024 review.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2024
More on Intelligence and Social Media: Birds Versus Humans
May 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I have zero clue if the two stories about which I will write a short essay are accurate. I don’t care because the two news items are in delicious tension. Do you feel the frisson? The first story is “Parrots in Captivity Seem to Enjoy Video-Chatting with Their Friends on Messenger.” The core of the story strikes me as:
A new (very small) study led by researchers at the University of Glasgow and Northeastern University compared parrots’ responses when given the option to video chat with other birds via Meta’s Messenger versus watching pre-recorded videos. And it seems they’ve got a preference for real-time conversations.
Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Is your security a type of deep fake?
Let me make this somewhat over-burdened sentence more direct. Birds like to talk to other birds, live, and in real time. The bird is not keen on the type of video humans gobble up.
Now the second story. It has the click–licious headline “Gen Z Mostly Doesn’t Care If Influencers Are Actual Humans, New Study Shows.” The main idea of this “real” news story is, in my opinion:
The report [from a Sprout Social report] notes that 46 percent of Gen Z respondents, specifically, said they would be more interested in a brand that worked with an influencer generated with AI.
The idea is that humans are okay with fake video which aims to influence them through fake humans.
My atrophied dinobaby brain interprets the information in each cited article this way: Birds prefer to interact with real birds. Humans are okay with fake humans. I will have to recalibrate my understanding of the bird brain.
Let’s assume both write ups are chock full of statistically-valid data. The assorted data processes conformed to the requirements of Statistics 101. The researchers suggest humans are okay with fake data. Birds, specifically parrots, prefer the real doo-dah.
Observations:
- Humans may not be able to differentiate real from fake. When presented with fakes, humans may prefer the bogus.
- I may need to reassess the meaning of the phrase “bird brain.”
- Researchers demonstrate the results of years of study in these findings.
Net net: The chills I referenced in the first paragraph of this essay I now recognize as fear.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2024
Google Search Is Broken
May 10, 2024
ChatGPT and other generative AI engines have screwed up search engines, including the all-powerful Google. The Blaze article, “Why Google Search Is Broken” explains why Internet search is broke, and the causes. The Internet is full of information and the best way to get noticed in search results is using SEO. A black hat technique (it will probably be considered old school in the near future) to manipulate search results is to litter a post with keywords aka “keyword stuffing.”
ChatGPT users realized that it’s a fantastic tool for SEO, because they tell the AI algorithm to draft a post with a specific keyword and it generates a decent one. Google’s search algorithm then reads that post and pushes it to the top of search results. ChatGPT was designed to read and learn language the same way as Google: skin the Internet, scoop up information from Web sites, and then use it to teach the algorithm. This threatens Google’s search profit margins and Alphabet Inc. doesn’t like that:
“By and large, people don’t want to read AI-generated content, no matter how accurate it is. But the trouble for Google is that it can’t reliably detect and filter AI-generated content. I’ve used several AI detection apps, and they are 50% accurate at best. Google’s brain trust can probably do a much better job, but even then, it’s computationally expensive, and even the mighty Google can’t analyze every single page on the web, so the company must find workarounds.
This past fall, Google rolled out its Helpful Content Update, in which Google started to strongly emphasize sites based on user-generated content in search results, such as forums. The site that received the most notable boost in search rankings was Reddit. Meanwhile, many independent bloggers saw their traffic crash, whether or not they used AI.”
Google wants to save money by offloading AI detection/monitoring to forum moderators that usually aren’t paid. Unfortunately SEO experts figured out Google’s new trick and are now spamming user-content driven Websites. Google recently signed a deal with Reddit to acquire its user data to train its AI project, Gemini.
Google hates AI generated SEO and people who game its search algorithms. Google doesn’t have the resources to detect all the SEO experts, but went they are found Google extracts vengeance with deindexing and making better tools. Google released a new update to its spam policies to remove low-quality, unoriginal content made to abuse its search algorithm. The overall goal is to remove AI-generated sites from search results.
If you read between the lines, Google doesn’t want to lose more revenue and is calling out bad actors.
Whitney Grace, May 10, 2024
Microsoft and Its Customers: Out of Phase, Orthogonal, and Confused
May 9, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I am writing this post using something called Open LiveWriter. I switched when Microsoft updated our Windows machines and killed printing, a mouse linked via a KVM, and the 2012 version of its blog word processing software. I use a number of software products, and I keep old programs in order to compare them to modern options available to a user. The operative point is that a Windows update rendered the 2012 version of LiveWriter lost in the wonderland of Windows’ Byzantine code.
A young leader of an important project does not want to hear too much from her followers. In fact, she wishes they would shut up and get with the program. Thank, MSFT Copilot. How’s the Job One of security coming today?
There are reports, which I am not sure I believe, that Windows 11 is a modern version of Windows Vista. The idea is that users are switching to Windows 10. Well, maybe. But the point is that users are not happy with Microsoft’s alleged changes to Windows; for instance:
- Notifications (advertising) in the Windows 11 start menu
- Alleged telemetry which provides a stream of user action and activity data to Microsoft for analysis (maybe marketing purposes?)
- Gratuitous interface changes which range from moving control items from a control panel to a settings panel to fiddling with task manager
- Wonky updates like the printer issue, driver wonkiness, and smart help which usually returns nothing of much help.
I read “This Third-Party App Blocks Integrated Windows 11 Advertising.” You can read the original article to track down this customization tool. My hunch is that its functions will be intentionally blocked by some bonus centric Softie or a change to the basic Windows 11 control panel will cause the software to perform like LiveWriter 2012.
I want to focus on a comment to the cited article written by seeprime:
Microsoft has seriously degraded File Explorer over the years. They should stop prolonging the Gates culture of rewarding software development, of new and shiny things, at the expense of fixing what’s not working optimally.
Now that security, not AI and not Windows 11, are the top priority at Microsoft, will the company remediate the grouses users have about the product? My answer is, “No.” Here’s why:
- Fixing, as seeprime, suggests is less important that coming up with some that seems “new.” The approach is dangerous because the “new” thing may be developed by someone uninformed about the hidden dependencies within what is code as convoluted as Google’s search plumbing. “New” just breaks the old or the change is something that seems “new” to an intern or an older Softie who just does not care. Good enough is the high bar to clear.
- Details are not Microsoft’s core competency. Indeed, unlike Google, Microsoft has many revenue streams, and the attention goes to cooking up new big-money services like a version of Copilot which is not exposed to the Internet for its government customers. The cloud, not Windows, is the future.
- Microsoft whether it knows it or not is on the path to virtualize desktop and mobile software. The idea means that Microsoft does not have to put up with developers who make changes Microsoft does not want to work. Putting Windows in the cloud might give Microsoft the total control it desires.
- Windows is a security challenge. The thinking may be: “Let’s put Windows in the cloud and lock down security, updates, domain look ups, etc. I would suggest that creating one giant target might introduce some new challenges to the Softie vision.
Speculation aside, Microsoft may be at a point when users become increasingly unhappy. The mobile model, virtualization, and smart interfaces might create tasty options for users in the near future. Microsoft cannot make up its mind about AI. It has the OpenAI deal; it has the Mistral deal; it has its own internal development; and it has Inflection and probably others I don’t know about.
Microsoft cannot make up its mind. Now Microsoft is doing an about face and saying, “Security is Job One.” But there’s the need to make the Azure Cloud grow. Okay, okay, which is it? The answer, I think, is, “We want to do it all. We want everything.”
This might be difficult. Users might just pile up and remain out of phase, orthogonal, and confused. Perhaps I could add angry? Just like LiveWriter: Tossed into the bit trash can.
Stephen E Arnold, May 9. 2024
AI May Help Real Journalists Explain Being Smart. May, Not Will
May 9, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I found the link between social media and stupid people interesting. I am not sure I embrace the causal chain as presented in “As IQ Scores Decline in the US, Experts Blame the Rise of Tech — How Stupid Is Your State?” The “real” news story has a snappy headline, but social media and IQ? Let’s take a look. The write up states:
Here’s the first sentence of the write up. Note the novel coinage, dumbening. I assume the use of dumb as a gerund open the door to such statements as “I dumb” or “We dumbed together at Harvard’s lecture about ethics” or “My boss dumbed again, like he did last summer.”
Do all Americans go through a process of dumbening?
A tour group has a low IQ when it comes to understanding ancient rock painting. Should we blame technology and social media? Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Earning extra money because you do great security?
The write up explains that IQ scores are going down after a “rise” which began in 1905. What causes this decline? Is it broken homes? Lousy teachers? A lack of consequences for inattentiveness? Skipping school? Crappy pre-schools? Bus rides? School starting too early or too late? Dropping courses in art, music, and PE? Chemical-infused food? Television? Not learning cursive?
The answer is, “Technology.” More specifically, the culprit is social media. The article quotes a professor, who opines:
The professor [Hetty Roessingh, professor emerita of education at the University of Calgary] said that time spent with devices like phones and iPads means less time for more effective methods of increasing one’s intelligence level.
Several observations:
- Wow.
- Technology is an umbrella term. Social media is an umbrella term. What exactly is causing people to be dumb?
- What about an IQ test being mismatched to those who take it? My IQ was pretty low when I lived in Campinas, Brazil. It was tough to answer questions I could not read until I learned Portuguese.
Net net: Dumbening. You got it.
Stephen E Arnold, May 9, 2024
Researchers Reveal Vulnerabilities Across Pinyin Keyboard Apps
May 9, 2024
Conventional keyboards were designed for languages based on the Roman alphabet. Fortunately, apps exist to adapt them to script-based languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Unfortunately, such tools can pave the way for bad actors to capture sensitive information. Researchers at the Citizen Lab have found vulnerabilities in many pinyin keyboard apps, which romanize Chinese languages. Gee, how could those have gotten there? The post, “The Not-So-Silent Type,” presents their results. Writers Jeffrey Knockel, Mona Wang, and Zoë Reichert summarize the key findings:
- “We analyzed the security of cloud-based pinyin keyboard apps from nine vendors — Baidu, Honor, Huawei, iFlytek, OPPO, Samsung, Tencent, Vivo, and Xiaomi — and examined their transmission of users’ keystrokes for vulnerabilities.
- Our analysis revealed critical vulnerabilities in keyboard apps from eight out of the nine vendors in which we could exploit that vulnerability to completely reveal the contents of users’ keystrokes in transit. Most of the vulnerable apps can be exploited by an entirely passive network eavesdropper.
- Combining the vulnerabilities discovered in this and our previous report analyzing Sogou’s keyboard apps, we estimate that up to one billion users are affected by these vulnerabilities. Given the scope of these vulnerabilities, the sensitivity of what users type on their devices, the ease with which these vulnerabilities may have been discovered, and that the Five Eyes have previously exploited similar vulnerabilities in Chinese apps for surveillance, it is possible that such users’ keystrokes may have also been under mass surveillance.
- We reported these vulnerabilities to all nine vendors. Most vendors responded, took the issue seriously, and fixed the reported vulnerabilities, although some keyboard apps remain vulnerable.”
See the article for all the details. It describes the study’s methodology, gives specific findings for each of those app vendors, and discusses the ramifications of the findings. Some readers may want to skip to the very detailed Summary of Recommendations. It offers suggestions to fellow researchers, international standards bodies, developers, app store operators, device manufacturers, and, finally, keyboard users.
The interdisciplinary Citizen Lab is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. Its researchers study the intersection of information and communication technologies, human rights, and global security.
Cynthia Murrell, May 9, 2024
Which Came First? Cliffs Notes or Info Short Cuts
May 8, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
The first online index I learned about was the Stanford Research Institute’s Online System. I think I was a sophomore in college working on a project for Dr. William Gillis. He wanted me to figure out how to index poems for a grant he had. The SRI system opened my eyes to what online indexes could do.
Later I learned that SRI was taking ideas from people like Valerius Maximus (30 CE) and letting a big, expensive, mostly hot group of machines do what a scribe would do in a room filled with rolled up papyri. My hunch is that other workers in similar “documents” figures out that some type of labeling and grouping system made sense. Sure, anyone could grab a roll, untie the string keeping it together, and check out its contents. “Hey,” someone said, “Put a label on it and make a list of the labels. Alphabetize the list while you are at it.”
An old-fashioned teacher struggles to get students to produce acceptable work. She cannot write TL;DR. The parents will find their scrolling adepts above such criticism. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. How’s the security work coming?
I thought about the common sense approach to keeping track of and finding information when I read “The Defensive Arrogance of TL;DR.” The essay or probably more accurately the polemic calls attention to the précis, abstract, or summary often included with a long online essay. The inclusion of what is now dubbed TL;DR is presented as meaning, “I did not read this long document. I think it is about this subject.”
On one hand, I agree with this statement:
We’re at a rolling boil, and there’s a lot of pressure to turn our work and the work we consume to steam. The steam analogy is worthwhile: a thirsty person can’t subsist on steam. And while there’s a lot of it, you’re unlikely to collect enough as a creator to produce much value.
The idea is that content is often hot air. The essay includes a chart called “The Rise of Dopamine Culture, created by Ted Gioia. Notice that the world of Valerius Maximus is not in the chart. The graphic begins with “slow traditional culture” and zips forward to the razz-ma-tazz datasphere in which we try to survive.
I would suggest that the march from bits of grass, animal skins, clay tablets, and pieces of tree bark to such examples of “slow traditional culture” like film and TV, albums, and newspapers ignores the following:
- Indexing and summarizing remained unchanged for centuries until the SRI demonstration
- In the last 61 years, manual access to content has been pushed aside by machine-centric methods
- Human inputs are less useful
As a result, the TL;DR tells us a number of important things:
- The person using the tag and the “bullets” referenced in the essay reveal that the perceived quality of the document is low or poor. I think of this TL;DR as a reverse Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. We have a user assigned “Seal of Disapproval.” That’s useful.
- The tag makes it possible to either NOT out the content with a TL;DR tag or group documents by the author so tagged for review. It is possible an error has been made or the document is an aberration which provides useful information about the author.
- The person using the tag TL;DR creates a set of content which can be either processed by smart software or a human to learn about the tagger. An index term is a useful data point when creating a profile.
I think the speed with which electronic content has ripped through culture has caused a number of jarring effects. I won’t go into them in this brief post. Part of the “information problem” is that the old-fashioned processes of finding, reading, and writing about something took a long time. Now Amazon presents machine-generated books whipped up in a day or two, maybe less.
TL;DR may have more utility in today’s digital environment.
Stephen E Arnold, May 8, 2024
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