Silversea Water Cooler: Welcome! Part Four

Good morning Coolers, 17F but lovely sunshine in Camillus!

Mysty, you prompted the first smile of the day with your funny. I would like to share it with my Facebook friends...can you supply the link? Off to the gym and some errands afterwards. Looking forward to the next two weeks...daughter's B'Day celebration...old friends reunion...grandkids' band concerts...

Hope you all have a wonderful start of the week!!

Cam....https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ac/10/fe/ac10fefa04b67d4d7d7535a17f367852.jpg Enjoy all the wonderful activities over the next 2 weeks!

Mother Nature had a hissy fit in Darwin, Australia on March 17, 2018. Here is a link to video of her wrath (a category 2 cyclone) .....

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/videos/gallery/wow-trees-roll-down-street-like-bowling-balls-as-cyclone-hits-australia/sharevideo/5753397426001/most_popular

Good Afternoon All .... and thanks for the funnies M!

It’s a brisk day here, the snow is starting to melt away and we’re planning our first visit down to seaside over Easter. I made a stirfry today.

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There has been much in the press over the large day or two about the enquiries into the conduct of Cambridge Analytica and it’s dealings with Facebook but I fear that it has missed the additional much bigger issue and that is how Facebook then used it’s advertising auction algorithms that swung the advantage severely one way. It is the combined effect of those complex algorithms and the targeted efforts made possible by Cambridge Analytica that is deeply disturbing.

Your stir fry looks yummy J! Further to your post from a few days ago there was an interesting article on the subject on the CBC website.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/cambridge-analytica-facebook-review-data-users-1.4581847

From the article:

"In an interview with The National's Adrienne Arsenault, Christopher Wylie said he was tasked with "psychological profiling" while working at Cambridge Analytica and was able to pull data from users through apps that required the use of Facebook.

"They would fill out psychological surveys and then that app would then go and pull all of of their Facebook data," said the 28-year-old from B.C.

"It allowed us to profile upwards of 50 million Americans over a span of a couple of months and understand not only their personality traits but how they think... and what exactly we need to do in order to pick at certain mental or emotional vulnerabilities so that those people would behave in a particular way that was conducive to [Trump campaign chief executive] Steve Bannon's objective."

Wylie also said the company's practices were unethical and needed to be called out.

"I think that the algorithms that they have built... using that private data they acquired without consent, is problematic.""

M,

I fear that because the wider issue is so difficult to unravel and undestand - I have read through some of the deep stuff many times to try and make sense of it - then this will miss the wider attention it deserves from our American cousins. There is the issue you highlight which is all about how you gather data that accuratley profiles and then "exploits" people's "rationality vulnerabilities" - but also overlaid to this is the complex way that Facebook calculates how much to charge to gain access to them - in this case - the Trump and Clinton campaign for their targetted campaign. I'll over-simplify.

When Facebook sell space they essentially auction it. But it isn't a straightforward auction where the highest bidder wins. They apply a factor to each bid. They calculate the factor based on the value of the bidders to Facebook using a very complex real-time algorythm. In other words the more traffic they think you will bring to Facebook the less you pay when you advertise to bring it.

That algorythm effectively decided that if they display a Trump advert rather than a Clinton advert then more people would read the Trump one than the Clinton one. And so they "discounted" the Trump bid by a moveable factor. This factor peaked it is claimed at around 100,000. So that means that on that particular day - if Clinton bid $100,000 for a spot then Trump would win with a bid of $1001 because the Trump bid was deemed to be worth more to Facebook. You can see what that would do for a Facebook budget which was already fairly unequal.

When you then understand that the Trump campaign boasted using Cambridge Analytica intelligence harvested from Facebook that on any given day they were able to customise 100,000 different versions of the same base message to over 50million citizens in order to be perfect it for each Facebook recepient then the combined effect of the intelligence and the use made of it on a now heavily discounted advertising market meant that one side could never win that war however good they were.

If you then overaly that in a situation where the outcome was decided by around 80k people in 3 swing states then that means that if 40k people instead of voting how they did instead voted the "other way", then you can see how the harvesting of 50 million people's profiles and the targetting of the message using discounted Facebook means that a reasonable conclusion might be that ......................:confused:

That to the best of my understanding is what happened.

ps .... this is a follow on from your point ... then imagine how one side benefited if they paid up to a ten thousandth of the price of each personalised contact than their opposition ....

American sues British company in leak row

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/american-professor-sues-british-company-in-leak-row-b97bmlr8p?shareToken=31c31ce8cebe89cac332e20455be8e93

Thanks J! I see now why you were talking about complexities that go well beyond the original issue that generated media coverage. The term "king-makers" comes to mind and the ethics of the whole situation becomes more than questionable. It is terrifying!

Very interesting J! That suit will be something to follow. Thanks for the link!

Very interesting J! That suit will be something to follow. Thanks for the link!

Hi M,

If you are sufficiently bored you might find the following interesting. :)

This is an article written by the guy who wrote the Facebook auction algorithm.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-trump-conquered-facebookwithout-russian-ads/

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-donald-trump-won-the-war-of-the-facebook-ads-bfs78xz68

Thanks again J! This whole concept is very unsettling! I may have to change my mind about being part of the FB community!

Hi,

I don’t use any of them. To be honest I think that the later generation have yet to work out how harmful it is potentially. For example when our generation employed people you checked references. Now if I were employing I would increasingly be tracking net footprints and it wouldn’t suprise me if future background checks would produce the exact detailed character profile AGM was writing about. Sexual preferences, political views and biases, leisure interests, holidays, parties, clubs, friends, erc etc. These footprints tell you so much.

But so far as the politics was concerned AGM has been warning about this for some time (an article from May 2017 is below ..... ) but it is only now that the combined potency of the Cambridge Analytics disclosures that now emerge when considered alongside the Facebook auction algorithms that really should make us question whether this trajectory is where we wish to see our democracy heading.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/02/facebook-executive-advertising-data-comment

This sounds increasingly like mind control J. Disturbing in the extreme! And critical thinking becomes the victim. Too much work to look for a more balanced representation and thus much easier to just swallow what is presented. I despair! Thanks for all the links!

I stopped using Facebook years ago when I started to realize how much personal information is out there. It suddenly struck me one day when some strange man from what looked like Africa (in his profile picture) asked to friend me. Why would a complete stranger from another part of the world want to friend me? My mother always used to say to us, “don’t tell strangers your business.” I thought I shut down my account that day.

Now actually permanently deleting my Facebook account has been a monumental task. Well over a year after thinking I had deleted my account I got an email from Facebook saying I tried to log on and would I like my password, or some such message. I hadn’t, but Facebook sends me status updates from people I no longer know via email a few times a week. I looked into what it takes to permanently delete a Facebook account and it’s nuts! Still haven’t gotten around to it.

I also disposed of faeces book .....

If memory serves me correctly there was an option deep in the settings that allowed you to delete / deactivate the account but .... if for any reason you opened up the prog within 3 months then the deactivation would cease and you would have to start all over again. I have never ever checked my account status but equally I have never heard from them either.

I don’t use twitter either ....

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I suspect that there is always the reassurance of ignorance of unintended and as yet unknown consequences that leads people to be to free and easy with their personal information.

The point is that you can easily triangulate people in a very short time.

M,

David Chang's new place ....

https://www.eater.com/2018/3/19/17139146/majordomo-review-david-chang-momofuku

J...I would give my right arm to dine there! OK....maybe not my right arm, I use that one a lot. But my left arm for sure! It sounds absolutely magical. It's like an episode of Ugly Delicious that you could actually taste. Awesome! Thanks for the link!

I went to a Masterclass he ran at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival several years ago. He was a lot of fun and the food he cooked was delicious. He had just opened his restaurant in Sydney, and Melbourne people wanted an explanation on why there and not Melbourne!

It turned out the he felt Sydney was more like California.

Greetings Coolers! Spring is due to arrive at 12:15 pm today. I plan to meet her at the door, invite her in and while we sip a lovely tea I will give her a sound dressing down. While she has arrived on time, her appearance does not bring any above freezing temperatures for the foreseeable future. Her job performance will be graded accordingly.

Jill...what a wonderful experience! He seems to be a real charmer!

Today's funny....

Have a great day all!

Hello To All.........spring has half sprung today with a little bit of sunshine.....my gardener starts again tomorrow so a good sign!

At last I’m back in the master suite and delighted to be so....just so much sorting to do and trying to be ruthless!

I’m not a huge fan of social media but am on FB infrequently....if only to see what the kids are up to..😉

No go with twitter.....birds tweet, that’s enough.

Hope Spins is recovering well.....and JP enjoying his trip....just eight weeks until the Spirit and I’m ready already.......

Healthy type late luncheon today, rare beef with an iceberg wedge, tomato and Parmesan....

Happy Day 😊

Greetings Coolers! Spring is due to arrive at 12:15 pm today. I plan to meet her at the door, invite her in and while we sip a lovely tea I will give her a sound dressing down. While she has arrived on time, her appearance does not bring any above freezing temperatures for the foreseeable future. Her job performance will be graded accordingly.

 

Jill...what a wonderful experience! He seems to be a real charmer!

 

Today's funny....

 

 

Have a great day all!

I think you are being kind with inviting Spring to tea. If I had a chance, I'd have a couple of things to say to her and they're not kind.....some 4 letter words come to mind, the first being SNOW. (yes, I'm shouting!!).

Next Nor'easter on tap for us. Depending on whose forecast you read/see, we could get nothing (oh, please God!) or we could be ground zero with 16"+.....

Close friend in the hospital unexpededly....not a good day in the Hudson Valley.......sorry, I'm bi---hing!

Today, in addition to being the first day of spring, is also the International Day of Happiness.

http://www.dayofhappiness.net/#join

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Today, in addition to being the first day of spring, is also the International Day of Happiness.

 

http://www.dayofhappiness.net/#join

 

 

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Aw geez.....there's always one in a crowd......(giggle!)

Enjoying our time down under immensely! Highlights have been so far: A full day in the Barossa Valley, with lots of wine to taste. Bumbunga Lake, a pink salt lake that you can walk on. And the incredible coastal scenery here at Southern Ocean Lodge.

Full day planned for today. Happy Spring all, and hope the latest storm is kind to everyone.

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JP, any sparkling Shiraz yet? Ideal time to taste it at SOL. If you don’t like it you haven’t wasted your money on a bottle.

Nice wine to try there too.

Jill

Greetings Coolers! Slightly warmer today. Hope the Nor'easter does not slam the folks along the Atlantic coast!

Another school shooting for our neighbours to the south. Here, our Liberal Government is moving toward tighter gun controls.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43475403

From that article:

"Crime rates in Canada have been on a long decline but gun-related homicides and gun violence have increased.

The party campaigned in 2015 on a promise to make it harder to procure and use handguns and assault weapons.

Gun violence in Canada is much lower than in the United States, but higher than in Europe and other many Western countries.

Firearm offences have also been on the rise in Canada in recent years. "

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberals-firearms-bill-c71-1.4584074

Have a great day all!