[Plura-list] Cross-Media Sci-Fi with Amber Benson and John Rogers; Storage Wars; Embedded machine learning

Tue Nov 17 09:49:07 EST 2020

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I'm giving a keynote ("Monopolies, not mind-control") at the Data
Natives conference tomorrow:

https://datanatives.io/conference/schedule/

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Today's links

* Cross-Media Sci-Fi with Amber Benson and John Rogers: The Attack
Surface Lectures continue.

* Storage Wars: The eviction epidemic comes to New York's self-storage
lockers.

* Embedded machine learning: Offline, low-powered and ubiquitous.

* This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

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

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🦐 Cross-Media Sci-Fi with Amber Benson and John Rogers

Today in the Attack Surface Lectures - the 8 panels I ran with Tor Books
and 8 indie bookstores to coincide with the release of the third Little
Brother book in Oct: John Rogers and Amber Benson on Cross-Media SF,
hosted by Brookline Booksmith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZRIlK3cFEE.

If you'd prefer to watch without commercial surveillance, there's a
mirror of this video on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/asl-crossmedia

and here's an MP3 of just the audio:

https://archive.org/download/asl-crossmedia/Cross-Medium%20SF%20with%20Amber%20Benson%20and%20John%20Rogers.mp3

I'm releasing an episode every day; yesterday's was Politics and Protest
with Ron Deibert and Eva Galperin:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/16/pill-mills/#asl

You can also get the audio every day through my podcast feed (search for
"Cory Doctorow Podcast" or use the RSS):

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

Here's a master post with all the episodes as they're added:

https://craphound.com/news/2020/11/16/attack-surface-lectures-master-post/

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🦐 Storage Wars

Here's what K-shaped recovery looks like: New Yorkers, out of money and
options, move into smaller quarters with their families, putting their
treasures into storage, only to discover they can't afford the storage
fees - and now they're facing a wave of storage evictions.

The evictions are driven by a second wave of storage-rentals, as middle
class people lose their homes or evacuate NYC and go shopping for
storage space; self-storage owners want their nonpaying customers out so
they can grab some of this business.

https://www.thecity.nyc/2020/11/15/21566335/nyc-self-storage-auctions-evictions-deal-demand-rent

The storage eviction process has some formal requirements that make it
hard for the company owners to just throw people's stuff out or auction
it off, so they're offering deals to their tenants-in-arrears, like
waiving some back rent in exchange for immediate departure.

Though the law puts limits on throwing away or auctioning off lockers,
there's little regulation otherwise: locker companies are free to hike
rents, levy late-payment surchages, etc, almost without limit.

In its coverage, The City gets at the human cost of this: widows who
want to retrieve their wedding photos before their locker contents are
auctioned off for pennies are told they have to come up with $940 in
fees and penalties first.

Today, these lockers are full of the worldly goods of people in
shelters, people in housing precarity. Tomorrow, they'll house the
possessions of the formerly affluent, who are sliding down the same slope.

If you are or know someone facing a locker eviction, try Legal Aid’s
Access to Benefits Helpline (888-663-6880), or visit your borough's
Human Resources Administration to apply for an emergency storage grant.

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🦐 Embedded machine learning

One of the machine learning researchers I follow closely is Pete Warden,
who writes extensively about the hardware side of ML, something we hear
very little about beyond vague accounts of the power-consumption and
carbon footprints of cloud-based GPUs.

Last month, Warden presented a talk predicting that there would be "
tens or hundreds of billions of [embedded ML] devices over the next few
years."

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yV0rLchNUvlLeVdNCOUvStxCSBlwbzx6rvaiiOgnpYE/edit

In a followup, Warden explains: the rise of Tinyml (a machine learning
framework for low-powered, embedded processors) and the trends in
hardware point to a near-future scenario where a $0.50 CPU replicates
today's high-power, networked based speech recognition systems.

All powered by a coin battery that lasts a year. That brings standalone
voice interfaces to all kinds of appliances (he also predicts "sensor
applications for logistics, agriculture, and health" based on
low-powered, standalone embedded processors.

https://petewarden.com/2020/11/14/why-do-i-think-there-will-be-hundreds-of-billions-of-tinyml-devices-within-a-few-years/

The infrastructure for these systems is coming from multiple quarters.
Take Mcunet, which "designs compact neural networks that deliver
unprecedented speed and accuracy for deep learning on IoT devices,
despite limited memory and CPU."

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.10319.pdf

At the heart of Mcunet is Tinynas, which allows developers to tailor the
size of their neural nets to the capabilities of small, low-powered
processors, pruning away instructions for rarely invoked processes.

https://news.mit.edu/2020/iot-deep-learning-1113

Early results are promising. Previous ML image classifiers of this scale
capped out at 54% accuracy; with Mcunet, an MIT team brought that up to
70.7% - in a field where 1% accuracy bumps are considered impressive.

All of this is in service to a better version of machine learning, one
where the classifier lives on your device and doesn't transmit
observations to a vendor: surveillance-free decision-support.

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🦐 This day in history

#15yrsago Schneier: Why didn’t anti-virus apps defend us against Sony’s
rootkit?
https://web.archive.org/web/20051124121434/https://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,69601,00.html

#15yrsago Sony still advising public to install rootkits
https://web.archive.org/web/20051124053020/http://cp.sonybmg.com/xcp/english/howtouse.html

#15yrsago 5000 music cylinders digitized and posted
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/

#10yrsago Understanding COICA, America’s horrific proposed
net-censorship bill https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/11/case-against-coica

#10yrsago Is Batman’s evidence admissible in court?
http://lawandthemultiverse.com/2015/11/16/batman-constitution-how-gotham-da-convict-criminals/

#5yrsago The Internet will always suck
https://locusmag.com/2015/11/cory-doctorow-the-internet-will-always-suck/

#5yrsago Hello From the Magic Tavern: hilarious, addictive improv
podcast
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/11/16/hello-from-the-magic-tavern-hilarious-addictive-improv-podcast/

#5yrsago 500 phrases from scientific publications that are correlated
with bullshit
https://mchankins.wordpress.com/2013/04/21/still-not-significant-2/

#5yrsago There is no record of US mass surveillance ever preventing a
large terror attack
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/u-s-mass-surveillance-has-no-record-of-thwarting-large-terror-attacks-regardless-of-snowden-leaks/

#5yrsago How Hamilton, ON’s violent “accountability” councilor
intimidated a journalist out of City Hall
https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/reporter-who-fought-city-hall/

#5yrsago The final Pratchett: The Shepherd’s Crown
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/11/17/the-final-pratchett-the-shepherds-crown/

#1yrago Supercut of British voters insulting Boris Johnson on the
campaign trail https://twitter.com/TheIDSmiths/status/1194954125772853248

#1yrago China is still harvesting organs from prisoners and covering it
up
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/11/16/china-covers-up-killing-of-prisoners-to-harvest-organs-for-transplant-new-report/?sh=39af21382ec7

#1yrago Extinction Rebellion floats a drowned house down the Thames
https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2019/11/10/act-now-our-house-is-flooding/

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🦐 Colophon

Today's top sources: The Wolf in the Living Room
(https://wolfliving.tumblr.com/).

Currently writing: My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel
about truth and reconciliation. Yesterday's progress: 535 words (84752
total).

Currently reading: The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson

Latest podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 23)
https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/11/16/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-23/

Upcoming appearances:

* Shaping the Digital Future Summit/Kaspersky, Nov 17,
https://transparency.kaspersky.com/home

* Misinformation and Disinformation in Science Fiction and Fantasy/LITA,
Nov 17, details TBD

* Keynote, Data Natives, Nov 18, https://datanatives.io/tickets/

* Keynote, Cybersummit 2020, Nov 26 https://www.cybera.ca/cyber-summit-2020/

* Keynote, Cologne Futures, Nov 27, details TBD

* Beaverbrook Lecture: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, Nov 30,
https://www.mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/channels/event/2020-beaverbrook-annual-lecture-part-ii-cory-doctorow-325538

* Teach-In Against Surveillance, Dec 1,
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/teach-in-against-surveillance-tickets-128926228821

* Keynote, NISO Plus, Feb 22-25,
https://niso.plus/cory-doctorow-to-keynote-at-niso-plus-2021/

Recent appearances:

* Fully Charged: The future of energy over the next 300 years
https://fullycharged.show/podcasts/podcast-84-the-future-of-energy-over-the-next-300-years-cory-doctorow/

* Allen School Distinguished Lecture "Early Onset Oppenheimers"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep78A-jtcrE

* Author Stories Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxSPZn8EGTE

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

* "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

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. 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.

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

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