[Plura-list] Trump wants to dismantle the OTF; Algonuts; Trump's covid "test-tubes" are contaminated miniature soda bottles

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Trump wants to dismantle the OTF: Replacing open, auditable tech
freedom tools with closed, untrustable ones.

* Algonuts: A bottomless, mutated machine learning Peanuts strip.

* Trump's covid "test-tubes" are contaminated miniature soda bottles:
The Art of the Deal.

* Avia, c'est mort: France kills a catastrophic "anti-terror" censorship
law.

* Austerity in disrepute: Vast majority of Americans favor continued or
expanded unemployment benefits.

* Microsoft criticizes Apple's monopolism: They're the experts, after all.

* This day in history: 2019

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing
projects, current reading

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👳🏿‍♂️ Trump wants to dismantle the OTF

For years, Congress allocated funds to the United States Agency for
Global Media for the Open Technology Fund, a nonprofit that makes grants
to internet freedom tools like Tor and Wireguard, as well as research
projects, conferences and initiatives.

https://www.opentech.fund/results/supported-projects/

I've been a (not hugely active) volunteer member of the advisory board
for years, which means that periodically I hear from people who want to
know - given the US's long history of overseas spook fuckery - why they
shouldn't assume this is a CIA front.

I have a great answer for them! You can tell this isn't a nefarious
scheme to backdoor the tools that marginalized and oppressed people
around the world (and in the USA) rely on because all that code is free
and open. You can audit it for backdoors. Others can too. They have.

NARRATOR: ONE DAY, ALL THAT CHANGED

The Trump admin wants to nuke the OTF and give all its money to a bunch
of grifty, closed-source privacy and firewall-circumvention tools. These
tools are NOT auditable, and the companied that make them stand to make
BANK from the move.

I have no idea whether these companies are CIA fronts, but I tell you
what, if i was a Uyghur in Xinjiang or a dissident in Tehran, I would
NOT trust my life to these tools. No goddamned way.

Even if these companies *aren't* fronts for spooks, they *could* be in
the future. Because if the companies that made these tools - companies
that had been dealt a huge favor by the US government - were suborned
for surveillance later, it would be very hard to catch them.

OTF's ironclad rule of funding open, free code isn't just a way to allay
suspicions about the tools' true purpose - it's also a preventative
against corruption, because the projects OTF funds *can't* insert spy
code without being caught right away.

Based on this administration's track record, I'm about 70-30 that this
is just a bro deal that lets some cronies suck up millions in corporate
welfare while hanging out tools used by vulnerable people around the
world to dry.

But even if that's the case, I'm *also* 70-30 that spook agencies will
get a twofer out of it, by suborning the beneficiaries of those bro deals.

Here's the petition. Remember, Congress allocated this money for the
OTF, not as pork for a bunch of connected insiders.

https://saveinternetfreedom.tech/

This money built the tools that Black Lives Matter protesters use, to
say nothing of the Hong Kong protests and many other movements around
the world.

It will be a genuine, deep, widespread tragedy if this move isn't stopped.

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👳🏿‍♂️ Algonuts

One of my all-time favorite techno-artists is Shardcore, whose
experiments in machine learning never fail to delight.

Case in point: Algonuts, his latest project.

http://www.shardcore.org/shardpress2019/2020/06/17/algonuts/

Shardcore scraped 18,000 Peanuts scripts (63,800 panels!) and fed them
to styleGAN2 to produce a model that generates an uncanny, shifting set
of Peanuts panels.

StyleGAN2 is a "generative adversarial network," a tool that uses two
competing machine-learning models to produce amazing outcomes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/ai-created-art-invades-chelsea-gallery-scene/584134/

In a GAN, one model (the generator) makes things in accord with its
training data; the other (the discerner) scores the generator's
creations based on its training data, either saying "Ooh, that's a good
one" or "Nah, try again."

In the way that a predator carves the prey and the prey shapes the
predator, the discerner and the generator train one another, ascending a
gradient towards uncanny accuracy.

In this case, weirdly plausible Peanuts cartoons from a parallel universe.

Shardcore: "In some ways, the model represents the disembodied essence
of the Peanuts aesthetic, but do I have Charles Shulz soul? For many
obvious reasons, I do not – this model knows nothing of the motivations,
desires and intentions behind Charles Shulz and his works. "

"Does this model represent a threat to this intellectual property? In
practical terms, no, not unless I aim to pass off the works as Shulz
originals. But even then, at what point does a novel image ‘inspired’ by
a body of work constitute a copyright violation?"

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👳🏿‍♂️ Trump's covid "test-tubes" are contaminated miniature soda bottles

The Trump admin has awarded 2.6B in coronavirus contracts to first-time
bidders, many of them unqualified grifters who played Trump and his
administration for suckers and got away clean.

Exhibit A: Fillakit LLC, who got $7.3m to provide sterile test-tubes.
Instead, they shipped FEMA soda-bottle "preforms" - these are miniature
soda-bottles that you fit into a pressure blower that inflates them up
2l bottles.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-trump-administration-paid-millions-for-test-tubes-and-got-unusable-mini-soda-bottles

Not only are these miniature soda-bottles and not test-tubes, they are
also in NO WAY sterile. Here's how they were packed:

"Fillakit employees, some not wearing masks, gathered the miniature soda
bottles with snow shovels and dumped them into plastic bins before
squirting saline into them, all in the open air."

Writing for Propublica, J David McSwane and Ryan Gabrielson paint a
picture of a semi-competent conman who made a fortune while helping to
destroy America's capacity to fight the pandemic of the century,
abetting mass murder and economic collapse.

It's not surprising Fillakit had never earned a federal contract prior
to coronavirus. The company was formed "just six days" before it won its
contract.

Its founder? Paul Wexler, "an ex-telemarketer repeatedly accused of
fraudulent practices over the past two decades."

But, you know, maybe tiny, contaminated soda bottles have some medical
value?

"They’re the most unusable tubes I’ve ever seen. They’re going to sit in
a warehouse and no one can use them. We won’t be able to do our full
plan." - "top public health official," unnamed state.

"Wexler, Fillakit’s owner, has a background in law and real estate, not
medical supplies. In 2012, the Federal Trade Commission accused Wexler
and his telemarketing firm of illegal robocalling, making unauthorized
charges to consumers’ bank accounts and falsely claiming to be a
nonprofit org. Wexler’s firm allegedly misrepresented itself as a credit
counseling service for several years, charging customers for work it did
not do, according to court records."

"Wexler denied a request to tour the warehouse. Asked about the lack of
sterile conditions and the use of soda preforms, Wexler screamed,
'What’s your problem, man?'"

(He seems nice.)

To recap: a telemarketing grifter with a background in real estate sold
Trump $7.3m worth of fake, contaminated test-tubes that undermined
multiple states' covid testing capacity.

Ladeez and gennulmun, I give you: *the art of the deal*!

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👳🏿‍♂️ Avia, c'est mort

Last month, France adopted the Avia bill, a law that gave online
platforms one hour to remove terrorist speech. This law was not a good law.

Start with whether France's authorities use such powers wisely.

They do not.

A year ago, the French Internet Referral Unit sent notice to the
Internet Archive demanding the removal of more than 15,000,000 documents
for violating anti-terrorism rules. These documents included the
Archive's repository of Grateful Dead music.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190410/14580641973/eu-tells-internet-archive-that-much-site-is-terrorist-content.shtml

Thankfully, France's highest court has struck down these provisions of
Avia, partly in response to an amicus brief filed by EFF.

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/victory-french-high-court-rules-most-hate-speech-bill-would-undermine-free-expression

"We applaud the court for recognizing that citizens’ rights of free
speech and expression are paramount in a democratic society, and the
bill’s deadlines for removal were so inflexible and extreme that those
rights would be violated under France’s constitution." -Christoph Schmon.

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👳🏿‍♂️ Austerity in disrepute

A new poll from Morning Consult and Politico finds that >75% of
Americans favor maintaining or expanding the extended unemployment
payments from the pandemic stimulus bills.

https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2020/06/17071351/200671_crosstabs_POLITICO_RVs_v1_AUTO.pdf

But GOP politicians intend to terminate the payments, and they've been
clear about why: poor people won't risk death or permanent disability
in order to serve cocktails or give manicures unless the alternative is
homelessness and starvation.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/08/volcano-gods/#reopening

This is a monumentally unpopular position, with only 13% support
nationwide (even limiting the poll to registered Republicans yields a
mere 21% support).

https://morningconsult.com/2020/06/17/federal-jobless-benefits-polling/

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👳🏿‍♂️ Microsoft criticizes Apple's monopolism

Microsoft knows a monopoly when it sees one!

The company has made a veiled accusation of antitrust  violations
against Apple for the way it operates its App Stores (the company spoke
out against app stores in general).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-18/microsoft-says-antitrust-regulators-need-to-review-app-stores

Micros~1's president Brad Smith spoke on the issue in a Politico
videoconference, citing the "rules," "the prices," and "the tolls."

Smith's remarks come as EU antimonopoly regulators launched an
investigation into Apple's store.

https://www.politico.com/618bsmlivestream

While the issues - pricing, terms, etc - are the easiest to point at and
study, they are effects, not causes, of anticompetitive action.

The root cause is lock-in. Apple's mobile devices are designed so that
owners of these devices can only buy their apps from Apple.

Section 1201 of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Article 6 of
the EU Copyright Directive both hold criminal and civil sanctions for
rivals that offer to install competing stores in Apple's devices (and
other devices that use DRM to enforce app store monopolies).

Apple has vigorously defended this radical interpretation of copyright
law, insisting that copyright is somehow served when a copyright owner -
a software developer who made an app - is prohibited by law from selling
their work to Apple customers without Apple's blessing.

Apple's store policies have been unilaterally altered at several
junctions in Apple's history, often to the detriment of Apple's software
vendors. These vendors weren't able to respond by selling their apps in
a rival's store.

This is an absolutely unequivocal anticompetitive environment. It
literally forbids competition. You don't get more anticompetitive than that.

But Microsoft is still playing with fire. After a period of
battle-scarred forbearance following from the DoJ's failed antitrust
action against the company, it has returned to its monopolistic ways
with real gusto.

Much of the company's "growth" has been acquisitions - Microsoft isn't a
"making things" company, it's a "buying things" company.

It's true that US regulators have all but abandoned this element of
antitrust law, but it's still there, waiting.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/technical-excellence-and-scale

If Microsoft thinks it can wake America's antitrust guardians from their
40-year slumber merely to attack Apple's App Stores, they're in for a
rude shock. If App Stores wake them, they will not return to their
hibernation. They'll keep going.

To be fair to Microsoft, they're not alone in thinking that antitrust
may be for thee, not me. Cable monopolists have lobbied hard for
antitrust enforcement against the tech companies that wanted Net
Neutrality and other tech-friendly, telecoms-unfriendly policies.

They, too, are sadly mistaken. If antitrust takes on tech as an
appetizer, there are plenty of other concentrated industries, from cable
to cosmetics, banking to eyewear, oil to chickens, for them to enjoy for
dinner.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190603/11293142321/if-big-tech-is-huge-antitrust-problem-why-are-we-ignoring-telecom.shtml

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👳🏿‍♂️ This day in history

#1yrago UK government quietly cancels "age verification" system that
would have compiled a database of every Briton's sexual fantasies
https://boingboing.net/2019/06/19/own-goal-averted.html

#1yrago Multilingual "red cards" to help immigrants assert their rights
during ICE shakedowns https://www.ilrc.org/red-cards

#1yrago KPMG is in the middle of an unbelievably dirty cheating scandal
that keeps on getting uglier
https://boingboing.net/2019/06/19/quis-custodiet-ipsos-kpmg.html

#1yrago To help the news business, subject Big Tech to antitrust -- but
don't forget Big News's antitrust problem
https://promarket.org/2019/06/14/the-decline-of-american-journalism-is-an-antitrust-problem/

#1yrago Ajit Pai promised that killing Net Neutrality would spur
investment and improve service: a year later, service and investment
have declined
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/net-neutrality-fcc-184307416.html

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👳🏿‍♂️ Colophon

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/),
Slashdot (https://slashdot.org/).

Currently writing:

* My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and
reconciliation. Yesterday's progress: 533 words (29183 total).

* A short story, "Making Hay," for MIT Tech Review. Yesterday's
progress: 335 words (1934 total)

Currently reading: Adventures of a Dwergish Girl, Daniel Pinkwater

Latest podcast: Part 6 of "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town"
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/06/14/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-06/

Upcoming appearances:

* In Conversation with Hank Green, Jul 10,
https://www.magersandquinn.com/product_info?isbn_id=26578312&products;_id=163359157

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book
about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
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provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link
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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla* -Joey "Accordion Guy"
DeVilla


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