#Software localization experts | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aimasup · 6 months

Text

just found some Valiant AU development sketches and notes in my old OLD sketchbook

I really thought it would be a webtoon

long post warning! And I mean long looooooooong post. If you get to the bottom and go "I'm not reading allat" I do not blame you

more under the cut:

^^^ OC

General notes:

This Valiant AU was meant to be a solarpunk superhero slice of life that slowly reveals a heavier plot, mostly focusing on character interactions and personal growth

White Hat Incorporated is a struggling, newbie business and clients are rare

The episodes can range from domestic shenanigans like fixing a leaking pipe or getting dinner, to running their business by defeating the villain of the week

The villains and heroes stay in their roles from canon. The only ones with major changes are our main 4 guys

All major information about White Hat would be discovered from the point of view of Lumencia and Zug as they realize that not only is PEACE corrupt, but that their boss is neither human nor demon nor alien

Now onto the characters themselves:

Dr. Zug Gleis

Like his name suggests, he likes trains. His train is also a drill that was an attempt to burrow out of government's arrest

Which he then modified into a laboratory, each train cart being a unique kind of laboratory for surveillance, medicine, etc. He sleeps very uncomfortably in cramped spaces and likes it that way

V.I.R.U.S is now a software he created and repurposed into his bratty computer assistant, now Cambot. She's also the one recording all their commercials and making his coffee. Basically Zug doesn't get along with ANY of his children

He doesn't like to leave his laboratories, so he set up a network of tunnels through White Hat's mansion that send and receive messages, inventions, food, etc. There's one little chute for these in most parts of the place

His arc was focusing on his inability to accept help from others because he sees any kind gesture as a possible way to control him. Even worse if the kind person genuinely means it, because he also sees accepting kindness as a handicap, a debt

His villainy was an easy way to make money and show the world his capability without any assistance from any hero or villain organization

Really, he just wants to be able to do whatever he wants, but his need to be the best or else he's the worst is tiring for him. Anger issues don't help

This stemmed from a past of constantly being bullied and compared to his brother, Goldheart

After dropping out of hero college, Zug became his own supervillain's known as The Mad Condoctor, whose theme was, you guessed it, trains. He stole trains, modified scrap metal, targeted stations and trade centers, held hostages, prepared puzzles for heroes to solve, etc

The Mad Condoctor was notorious for being uncooperative and a backstabber. He operated at night and was an expert in secret missions, spyware and tech-based combat and the likes

By the first season finale he would have genuinely cared for his coworkers but still didn't value his own life, so he let himself be taken in by PEACE. The crew have to go retrieve their idiot and many things about White Hat Incorporated are revealed to the public after they clash with their local PEACE headquarters

He finds authority annoying and hates seeing people kiss up. Mostly shameless in his actions and doesn't much care for other people's opinions. Can be honest to the point of hurting

So he is a terrible liar. It's like he's allergic to it or something. Prefers to lie by omission

Will only call White Hat 'sir' and 'jefecito' sarcastically or to get a point across. Unfortunately hopelessly devoted to him at the end of the series whoops

Lumencia

A superwoman with horse-like powers that decided to choose unicorns as her motif because that's way cooler. She has kicks and punches that convert her diet into energy, which is great because she loves eating

Changed it up so that Lumencia is the resident prankster and WH tells puns, not the other way around

She has a room with a slanted ceiling which she can climb out the window of to lie and chill on the roof. She's also converted that space, where flat roof meets slanted roof, into an outdoor cinema/gym, decorated with christmas lights. The mansion is a three-way clash of decorative styles from afar

She doesn't have a license to be a hero, but she helps out wherever she can anyway, stopping purse snatchers and helping lost children find their parents and such

In fact, she is actually one of the most beloved people in the little town they live near, with many residents familiar with her buffoonery but affirming her as a reliable source of help

She's also relatively well-known online, as she posts videos of her playing the guitar and well-intentioned but nonsensical 'Lumencia Tips', filled with terrible puns and comic-like ballpoint pen doodles

Her arc would have focused on letting herself acknowledge her strengths that aren't related to fighting

Shes very buddy-buddy with petty criminals and shop owners alike, able to strike up a conversation and make pals no matter who they are. Once she deems you chill, you can chill, yknow? This isn't on purpose.

Even though she has gross taste in food and is messier than Zug, her handwriting is very pretty and neat. She also is very good at graffiti and sticks to an aesthetic, with glitter and y2k stickers and denim-clad wizards on skateboards, all the works

She has a very straightforward view on heroics and is not big on plans, preferring to punch her way out of situations or annoy her enemies to tears. In fact, her main goal is to become an official part of one of the many PEACE-brand hero leagues.

There's other hero corporations too but PEACE is the number one in America

So one day she just showed up on White Hat's doorstep and never left because it would 'look good on her resume'.

Previously, she bounced from place to place, relying on connections and the occasional tip from her halfway-illegal heroism efforts to get by. She also doesn't remember where her powers are from, only that her parents worked at PEACE and where killed by 'villains' when she was a little girl

Her favourite place is the funfair because that's the last nice memory she had

By season two she would have started another arc where she learns that she was an experiment and her parents were killed by their own higher ups in PEACE to silence them, and she has to come to terms with why she even wants to be a hero as well as stand her ground when her optimism is challenged.

Lumencia's music is like whatever Equestria Girls and Electric Mayhem have going on. I think the genre is power pop? Either way it sounds like those elaborate 80s radical van murals look

Is an effortless liar in the sense that she says the most batshit things with utmost confidence and treats consequences like an afterthought.

Only calls White Hat 'White Hat' and not 'boss' when she feels the situation calls for it. Also unfortunately hopelessly devoted to him by the end of the series

624

An extra set of hands that cleans the place and helps out with their little business. Does not like being interuppted when listening to music

Goes from 'fucking hate these guys' to 'they give me food therefore they are mine' in the span of the entire series

Quite lazy, plays the winning side. Which is usually the heroes here

Dunno if I'd call his arc an arc. All I know is there's an episode where his spoilt teenager-ismd hits their peak and Zug and Lumencia have to reach an understanding with him by respecting his boundaries and helping him feel secure

And after that episode, 624 stopped being a total catalyst for disaster plotwise

White Hat

He is one of the comic reliefs and manages White Hat Incorporated, often making really stupid decisions because profit is not on his mind

The final voice I settled on for him was fucking Australian Markiplier

His "growth" would be the characters and readers seeing him to actually be a caring, experienced-in-heroics-but-not-business individual who gives really sound advice and becomes a source of comfort for his close friends

But is still a MEGA-PRICK. Every time he gets beat up it's for a valid reason

In canon, villainy triumphs because Black Hat is there. In the Valiant AU, the story is in the heroes' favour because White Hat is in his place.

I wanted him to be (mostly) opposite to Black Hat in many ways! BH's office is huge, minimalistic, corporate and cold, while WH's office is small, maximalistic, filled with sentimental items and like a warm cabin.

BH basks in hellfire and while WH does use fire, he prefers the ocean. BH enjoys golf, WH enjoys dancing. BH takes himself seriously, WH very much doesn't. BH detests everything, WH has an appreciation for everything. And etc...

They're still horrible creepy eldritch monstrosities, the fish theme for WH is just because he likes ocean shit and fish are scary

BH has made himself known globally and universally, he has statues and monuments and paintings

WH has nothing; White Hat is five years old. This is his first time being White Hat

But he's been around since the beginning of time, taking many forms and names, learning the wonders of the universe and giving all of his time to help however he could

He believed this to be natural, he's the one of a kind who doesn't need rest or food. He can't die or get really hurt, and would later learn he couldn't bear to love either

Some of the things he was included many plants and animals before the humans, then farmers and warriors, witches and politicians, an entertainer vigilante, a writer, a parent, a fur-clad warrior in the snow, guiding forces of nature, and a female pirate.

I wanted him to cycle through the entire alignment chart in terms of morality as he exhausted everything he could do to make a difference

After World War 2 on earth, his psyche gave out and he collapsed into a long, long nap; a shadow pooling in a lake, his favourite

Finally woke up and decided to take his own form not based on any species or star or tree, chose his own outfit and everything

And made his debut as White Hat, forged documents to start a small business for heroes support

He doesn't have an arc, but if he did, he would be in the midst of learning to let himself get attached again and be properly selfish. Maybe identity issues.

But he doesn't have an arc

And so really only serves to help out Zug and Lumencia. He's comfortable with no one knowing these things about him ever, because what would they even do if they did?

Wouldn't change anything, they wouldn't understand the full scope even, so he's at peace with himself right now, grateful that he's alive for once

He uses manipulation to direct conversations away from himself and get people to spill their feelings, or burrow into their trauma without using magic

if he wants he can let loose to trigger some kind of indescribable primal instinct within a person, that cripples them with terror and despair and love for the sublime face of something divine, bigger than the observable universe. He doesn't like doing this.

He's a fan of ice and shadow manipulation, he thinks the colours go well with his coat

Most animals hate him and he cries about it

He also cries when he tries to download an app on a laptop

He is a competent medical doctor, babysitter, and waiter. In fact, he seems to have infinite patience and calm when he isn't whining over dessert like a toddler

The human skeleton hanging in his office is real

Hopelessly attached to Lumencia, Zug and 624 by the end of the series but they don't need to know that

This AU will forever make me warm and fuzzy inside I love them so much, I had so many locations planned, started Pinterest boards and shit

Instead I think I'll take some of these things and apply them to my OCs instead! HUGE thanks to everyone who enjoyed this version of this AU while it lasted! Maybe it'll come back one day, maybe not. Likely not

#my post #my art #art from last year #villainous valiant!au #villainous heroic!au #villainous #villainous hbo max #villainous cn #miss heed #white hat #dr zug gleis #lumencia #624 #long post #not tagging all these characters

169 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 11 months

Text

In defense of bureaucratic competence

Sure, sometimes it really does make sense to do your own research. There's times when you really do need to take personal responsibility for the way things are going. But there's limits. We live in a highly technical world, in which hundreds of esoteric, potentially lethal factors impinge on your life every day.

You can't "do your own research" to figure out whether all that stuff is safe and sound. Sure, you might be able to figure out whether a contractor's assurances about a new steel joist for your ceiling are credible, but after you do that, are you also going to independently audit the software in your car's antilock brakes?

How about the nutritional claims on your food and the sanitary conditions in the industrial kitchen it came out of? If those turn out to be inadequate, are you going to be able to validate the medical advice you get in the ER when you show up at 3AM with cholera? While you're trying to figure out the #HIPAAWaiver they stuck in your hand on the way in?

40 years ago, Ronald Reagan declared war on "the administrative state," and "government bureaucrats" have been the favored bogeyman of the American right ever since. Even if Steve Bannon hasn't managed to get you to froth about the "Deep State," there's a good chance that you've griped about red tape from time to time.

Not without reason, mind you. The fact that the government can make good rules doesn't mean it will. When we redid our kitchen this year, the city inspector added a bunch of arbitrary electrical outlets to the contractor's plans in places where neither we, nor any future owner, will every need them.

But the answer to bad regulation isn't no regulation. During the same kitchen reno, our contractor discovered that at some earlier time, someone had installed our kitchen windows without the accompanying vapor-barriers. In the decades since, the entire structure of our kitchen walls had rotted out. Not only was the entire front of our house one good earthquake away from collapsing – there were two half rotted verticals supporting the whole thing – but replacing the rotted walls added more than $10k to the project.

In other words, the problem isn't too much regulation, it's the wrong regulation. I want our city inspectors to make sure that contractors install vapor barriers, but to not demand superfluous electrical outlets.

Which raises the question: where do regulations come from? How do we get them right?

Regulation is, first and foremost, a truth-seeking exercise. There will never be one obvious answer to any sufficiently technical question. "Should this window have a vapor barrier?" is actually a complex question, needing to account for different window designs, different kinds of barriers, etc.

To make a regulation, regulators ask experts to weigh in. At the federal level, expert agencies like the DoT or the FCC or HHS will hold a "Notice of Inquiry," which is a way to say, "Hey, should we do something about this? If so, what should we do?"

Anyone can weigh in on these: independent technical experts, academics, large companies, lobbyists, industry associations, members of the public, hobbyist groups, and swivel-eyed loons. This produces a record from which the regulator crafts a draft regulation, which is published in something called a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking."

The NPRM process looks a lot like the NOI process: the regulator publishes the rule, the public weighs in for a couple of rounds of comments, and the regulator then makes the rule (this is the federal process; state regulation and local ordinances vary, but they follow a similar template of collecting info, making a proposal, collecting feedback and finalizing the proposal).

These truth-seeking exercises need good input. Even very competent regulators won't know everything, and even the strongest theoretical foundation needs some evidence from the field. It's one thing to say, "Here's how your antilock braking software should work," but you also need to hear from mechanics who service cars, manufacturers, infosec specialists and drivers.

These people will disagree with each other, for good reasons and for bad ones. Some will be sincere but wrong. Some will want to make sure that their products or services are required – or that their competitors' products and services are prohibited.

It's the regulator's job to sort through these claims. But they don't have to go it alone: in an ideal world, the wrong people will be corrected by other parties in the docket, who will back up their claims with evidence.

So when the FCC proposes a Net Neutrality rule, the monopoly telcos and cable operators will pile in and insist that this is technically impossible, that there is no way to operate a functional ISP if the network management can't discriminate against traffic that is less profitable to the carrier. Now, this unity of perspective might reflect a bedrock truth ("Net Neutrality can't work") or a monopolists' convenient lie ("Net Neutrality is less profitable for us").

In a competitive market, there'd be lots of counterclaims with evidence from rivals: "Of course Net Neutrality is feasible, and here are our server logs to prove it!" But in a monopolized markets, those counterclaims come from micro-scale ISPs, or academics, or activists, or subscribers. These counterclaims are easy to dismiss ("what do you know about supporting 100 million users?"). That's doubly true when the regulator is motivated to give the monopolists what they want – either because they are hoping for a job in the industry after they quit government service, or because they came out of industry and plan to go back to it.

To make things worse, when an industry is heavily concentrated, it's easy for members of the ruling cartel – and their backers in government – to claim that the only people who truly understand the industry are its top insiders. Seen in that light, putting an industry veteran in charge of the industry's regulator isn't corrupt – it's sensible.

All of this leads to regulatory capture – when a regulator starts defending an industry from the public interest, instead of defending the public from the industry. The term "regulatory capture" has a checkered history. It comes out of a bizarre, far-right Chicago School ideology called "Public Choice Theory," whose goal is to eliminate regulation, not fix it.

In Public Choice Theory, the biggest companies in an industry have the strongest interest in capturing the regulator, and they will work harder – and have more resources – than anyone else, be they members of the public, workers, or smaller rivals. This inevitably leads to capture, where the state becomes an arm of the dominant companies, wielded by them to prevent competition:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is regulatory nihilism. It supposes that the only reason you weren't killed by your dinner, or your antilock brakes, or your collapsing roof, is that you just got lucky – and not because we have actual, good, sound regulations that use evidence to protect us from the endless lethal risks we face. These nihilists suppose that making good regulation is either a myth – like ancient Egyptian sorcery – or a lost art – like the secret to embalming Pharaohs.

But it's clearly possible to make good regulations – especially if you don't allow companies to form monopolies or cartels. What's more, failing to make public regulations isn't the same as getting rid of regulation. In the absence of public regulation, we get private regulation, run by companies themselves.

Think of Amazon. For decades, the DoJ and FTC sat idly by while Amazon assembled and fortified its monopoly. Today, Amazon is the de facto e-commerce regulator. The company charges its independent sellers 45-51% in junk fees to sell on the platform, including $31b/year in "advertising" to determine who gets top billing in your searches. Vendors raise their Amazon prices in order to stay profitable in the face of these massive fees, and if they don't raise their prices at every other store and site, Amazon downranks them to oblivion, putting them out of business.

This is the crux of the FTC's case against Amazon: that they are picking winners and setting prices across the entire economy, including at every other retailer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The same is true for Google/Facebook, who decide which news and views you encounter; for Apple/Google, who decide which apps you can use, and so on. The choice is never "government regulation" or "no regulation" – it's always "government regulation" or "corporate regulation." You either live by rules made in public by democratically accountable bureaucrats, or rules made in private by shareholder-accountable executives.

You just can't solve this by "voting with your wallet." Think about the problem of robocalls. Nobody likes these spam calls, and worse, they're a vector for all kinds of fraud. Robocalls are mostly a problem with federation. The phone system is a network-of-networks, and your carrier is interconnected with carriers all over the world, sometimes through intermediaries that make it hard to know which network a call originates on.

Some of these carriers are spam-friendly. They make money by selling access to spammers and scammers. Others don't like spam, but they have lax or inadequate security measures to prevent robocalls. Others will simply be targets of opportunity: so large and well-resourced that they are irresistible to bad actors, who continuously probe their defenses and exploit overlooked flaws, which are quickly patched.

To stem the robocall tide, your phone company will have to block calls from bad actors, put sloppy or lazy carriers on notice to shape up or face blocks, and also tell the difference between good companies and bad ones.

There's no way you can figure this out on your own. How can you know whether your carrier is doing a good job at this? And even if your carrier wants to do this, only the largest, most powerful companies can manage it. Rogue carriers won't give a damn if some tiny micro-phone-company threatens them with a block if they don't shape up.

This is something that a large, powerful government agency is best suited to addressing. And thankfully, we have such an agency. Two years ago, the FCC demanded that phone companies submit plans for "robocall mitigation." Now, it's taking action:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/telcos-filed-blank-robocall-plans-with-fcc-and-got-away-with-it-for-2-years/

Specifically, the FCC has identified carriers – in the US and abroad – with deficient plans. Some of these plans are very deficient. National Cloud Communications of Texas sent the FCC a Windows Printer Test Page. Evernex (Pakistan) sent the FCC its "taxpayer profile inquiry" from a Pakistani state website. Viettel (Vietnam) sent in a slide presentation entitled "Making Smart Cities Vision a Reality." Canada's Humbolt VoIP sent an "indiscernible object." DomainerSuite submitted a blank sheet of paper scrawled with the word "NOTHING."

The FCC has now notified these carriers – and others with less egregious but still deficient submissions – that they have 14 days to fix this or they'll be cut off from the US telephone network.

This is a problem you don't fix with your wallet, but with your ballot. Effective, public-interest-motivated FCC regulators are a political choice. Trump appointed the cartoonishly evil Ajit Pai to run the FCC, and he oversaw a program of neglect and malice. Pai – a former Verizon lawyer – dismantled Net Neutrality after receiving millions of obviously fraudulent comments from stolen identities, lying about it, and then obstructing the NY Attorney General's investigation into the matter:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/31/and-drown-it/#starve-the-beast

The Biden administration has a much better FCC – though not as good as it could be, thanks to Biden hanging Gigi Sohn out to dry in the face of a homophobic smear campaign that ultimately led one of the best qualified nominees for FCC commissioner to walk away from the process:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/#unrequited-love

Notwithstanding the tragic loss of Sohn's leadership in this vital agency, Biden's FCC – and its action on robocalls – illustrates the value of elections won with ballots, not wallets.

Self-regulation without state regulation inevitably devolves into farce. We're a quarter of a century into the commercial internet and the US still doesn't have a modern federal privacy law. The closest we've come is a disclosure rule, where companies can make up any policy they want, provided they describe it to you.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to cheat on this regulation. It's so simple, even a Meta lawyer can figure it out – which is why the Meta Quest VR headset has a privacy policy isn't merely awful, but long.

It will take you five hours to read the whole document and discover how badly you're being screwed. Go ahead, "do your own research":

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/annual-creep-o-meter/

The answer to bad regulation is good regulation, and the answer to incompetent regulators is competent ones. As Michael Lewis's Fifth Risk (published after Trump filled the administrative agencies with bootlickers, sociopaths and crooks) documented, these jobs demand competence:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/11/27/the-fifth-risk-michael-lewis-explains-how-the-deep-state-is-just-nerds-versus-grifters/

For example, Lewis describes how a Washington State nuclear waste facility created as part of the Manhattan Project endangers the Columbia River, the source of 8 million Americans' drinking water. The nuclear waste cleanup is projected to take 100 years and cost 100 billion dollars. With stakes that high, we need competent bureaucrats overseeing the job.

The hacky conservative jokes comparing every government agency to the DMV are not descriptive so much as prescriptive. By slashing funding, imposing miserable working conditions, and demonizing the people who show up for work anyway, neoliberals have chased away many good people, and hamstrung those who stayed.

One of the most inspiring parts of the Biden administration is the large number of extremely competent, extremely principled agency personnel he appointed, and the speed and competence they've brought to their roles, to the great benefit of the American public:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

But leaders can only do so much – they also need staff. 40 years of attacks on US state capacity has left the administrative state in tatters, stretched paper-thin. In an excellent article, Noah Smith describes how a starveling American bureaucracy costs the American public a fortune:

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-needs-a-bigger-better-bureaucracy

Even stripped of people and expertise, the US government still needs to get stuff done, so it outsources to nonprofits and consultancies. These are the source of much of the expense and delay in public projects. Take NYC's Second Avenue subway, a notoriously overbudget and late subway extension – "the most expensive mile of subway ever built." Consultants amounted to 20% of its costs, double what France or Italy would have spent. The MTA used to employ 1,600 project managers. Now it has 124 of them, overseeing $20b worth of projects. They hand that money to consultants, and even if they have the expertise to oversee the consultants' spending, they are stretched too thin to do a good job of it:

https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html

When a public agency lacks competence, it ends up costing the public more. States with highly expert Departments of Transport order better projects, which need fewer changes, which adds up to massive costs savings and superior roads:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4522676

Other gaps in US regulation are plugged by nonprofits and citizen groups. Environmental rules like NEPA rely on the public to identify and object to environmental risks in public projects, from solar plants to new apartment complexes. NEPA and its state equivalents empower private actors to sue developers to block projects, even if they satisfy all environmental regulations, leading to years of expensive delay.

The answer to this isn't to dismantle environmental regulations – it's to create a robust expert bureaucracy that can enforce them instead of relying on NIMBYs. This is called "ministerial approval" – when skilled government workers oversee environmental compliance. Predictably, NIMBYs hate ministerial approval.

Which is not to say that there aren't problems with trusting public enforcers to ensure that big companies are following the law. Regulatory capture is real, and the more concentrated an industry is, the greater the risk of capture. We are living in a moment of shocking market concentration, thanks to 40 years of under-regulation:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Remember that five-hour privacy policy for a Meta VR headset? One answer to these eye-glazing garbage novellas presented as "privacy policies" is to simply ban certain privacy-invading activities. That way, you can skip the policy, knowing that clicking "I agree" won't expose you to undue risk.

This is the approach that Bennett Cyphers and I argue for in our EFF white-paper, "Privacy Without Monopoly":

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

After all, even the companies that claim to be good for privacy aren't actually very good for privacy. Apple blocked Facebook from spying on iPhone owners, then sneakily turned on their own mass surveillance system, and lied about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

But as the European experiment with the GDPR has shown, public administrators can't be trusted to have the final word on privacy, because of regulatory capture. Big Tech companies like Google, Apple and Facebook pretend to be headquartered in corporate crime havens like Ireland and Luxembourg, where the regulators decline to enforce the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

It's only because of the GPDR has a private right of action – the right of individuals to sue to enforce their rights – that we're finally seeing the beginning of the end of commercial surveillance in Europe:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/americans-deserve-more-current-american-data-privacy-protection-act

It's true that NIMBYs can abuse private rights of action, bringing bad faith cases to slow or halt good projects. But just as the answer to bad regulations is good ones, so too is the answer to bad private rights of action good ones. SLAPP laws have shown us how to balance vexatious litigation with the public interest:

https://www.rcfp.org/resources/anti-slapp-laws/

We must get over our reflexive cynicism towards public administration. In my book The Internet Con, I lay out a set of public policy proposals for dismantling Big Tech and putting users back in charge of their digital lives:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

The most common objection I've heard since publishing the book is, "Sure, Big Tech has enshittified everything great about the internet, but how can we trust the government to fix it?"

We've been conditioned to think that lawmakers are too old, too calcified and too corrupt, to grasp the technical nuances required to regulate the internet. But just because Congress isn't made up of computer scientists, it doesn't mean that they can't pass good laws relating to computers. Congress isn't full of microbiologists, but we still manage to have safe drinking water (most of the time).

You can't just "do the research" or "vote with your wallet" to fix the internet. Bad laws – like the DMCA, which bans most kinds of reverse engineering – can land you in prison just for reconfiguring your own devices to serve you, rather than the shareholders of the companies that made them. You can't fix that yourself – you need a responsive, good, expert, capable government to fix it.

We can have that kind of government. It'll take some doing, because these questions are intrinsically hard to get right even without monopolies trying to capture their regulators. Even a president as flawed as Biden can be pushed into nominating good administrative personnel and taking decisive, progressive action:

https://doctorow.medium.com/joe-biden-is-headed-to-a-uaw-picket-line-in-detroit-f80bd0b372ab?sk=f3abdfd3f26d2f615ad9d2f1839bcc07

Biden may not be doing enough to suit your taste. I'm certainly furious with aspects of his presidency. The point isn't to lionize Biden – it's to point out that even very flawed leaders can be pushed into producing benefit for the American people. Think of how much more we can get if we don't give up on politics but instead demand even better leaders.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, coming out on November 14. It's about a generation of people who've grown up under good government – a historically unprecedented presidency that has passed the laws and made the policies we'll need to save our species and planet from the climate emergency:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

The action opens after the pendulum has swung back, with a new far-right presidency and an insurgency led by white nationalist militias and their offshore backers – seagoing anarcho-capitalist billionaires.

In the book, these forces figure out how to turn good regulations against the people they were meant to help. They file hundreds of simultaneous environmental challenges to refugee housing projects across the country, blocking the infill building that is providing homes for the people whose homes have been burned up in wildfires, washed away in floods, or rendered uninhabitable by drought.

I don't want to spoil the book here, but it shows how the protagonists pursue a multipronged defense, mixing direct action, civil disobedience, mass protest, court challenges and political pressure to fight back. What they don't do is give up on state capacity. When the state is corrupted by wreckers, they claw back control, rather than giving up on the idea of a competent and benevolent public system.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

381 notes · View notes

reasonsforhope · 8 months

Text

Determined to use her skills to fight inequality, South African computer scientist Raesetje Sefala set to work to build algorithms flagging poverty hotspots - developing datasets she hopes will help target aid, new housing, or clinics.

From crop analysis to medical diagnostics, artificial intelligence (AI) is already used in essential tasks worldwide, but Sefala and a growing number of fellow African developers are pioneering it to tackle their continent's particular challenges.

Local knowledge is vital for designing AI-driven solutions that work, Sefala said.

"If you don't have people with diverse experiences doing the research, it's easy to interpret the data in ways that will marginalise others," the 26-year old said from her home in Johannesburg.

Africa is the world's youngest and fastest-growing continent, and tech experts say young, home-grown AI developers have a vital role to play in designing applications to address local problems.

"For Africa to get out of poverty, it will take innovation and this can be revolutionary, because it's Africans doing things for Africa on their own," said Cina Lawson, Togo's minister of digital economy and transformation.

"We need to use cutting-edge solutions to our problems, because you don't solve problems in 2022 using methods of 20 years ago," Lawson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a video interview from the West African country.

Digital rights groups warn about AI's use in surveillance and the risk of discrimination, but Sefala said it can also be used to "serve the people behind the data points". ...

'Delivering Health'

As COVID-19 spread around the world in early 2020, government officials in Togo realized urgent action was needed to support informal workers who account for about 80% of the country's workforce, Lawson said.

"If you decide that everybody stays home, it means that this particular person isn't going to eat that day, it's as simple as that," she said.

In 10 days, the government built a mobile payment platform - called Novissi - to distribute cash to the vulnerable.

The government paired up with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) think tank and the University of California, Berkeley, to build a poverty map of Togo using satellite imagery.

Using algorithms with the support of GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that uses AI to distribute cash transfers, the recipients earning less than $1.25 per day and living in the poorest districts were identified for a direct cash transfer.

"We texted them saying if you need financial help, please register," Lawson said, adding that beneficiaries' consent and data privacy had been prioritized.

The entire program reached 920,000 beneficiaries in need.

"Machine learning has the advantage of reaching so many people in a very short time and delivering help when people need it most," said Caroline Teti, a Kenya-based GiveDirectly director.

'Zero Representation'

Aiming to boost discussion about AI in Africa, computer scientists Benjamin Rosman and Ulrich Paquet co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba - a week-long gathering that started in South Africa - together with other colleagues in 2017.

"You used to get to the top AI conferences and there was zero representation from Africa, both in terms of papers and people, so we're all about finding cost effective ways to build a community," Paquet said in a video call.

In 2019, 27 smaller Indabas - called IndabaX - were rolled out across the continent, with some events hosting as many as 300 participants.

One of these offshoots was IndabaX Uganda, where founder Bruno Ssekiwere said participants shared information on using AI for social issues such as improving agriculture and treating malaria.

Another outcome from the South African Indaba was Masakhane - an organization that uses open-source, machine learning to translate African languages not typically found in online programs such as Google Translate.

On their site, the founders speak about the South African philosophy of "Ubuntu" - a term generally meaning "humanity" - as part of their organization's values.

"This philosophy calls for collaboration and participation and community," reads their site, a philosophy that Ssekiwere, Paquet, and Rosman said has now become the driving value for AI research in Africa.

Inclusion

Now that Sefala has built a dataset of South Africa's suburbs and townships, she plans to collaborate with domain experts and communities to refine it, deepen inequality research and improve the algorithms.

"Making datasets easily available opens the door for new mechanisms and techniques for policy-making around desegregation, housing, and access to economic opportunity," she said.

African AI leaders say building more complete datasets will also help tackle biases baked into algorithms.

"Imagine rolling out Novissi in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast ... then the algorithm will be trained with understanding poverty in West Africa," Lawson said.

"If there are ever ways to fight bias in tech, it's by increasing diverse datasets ... we need to contribute more," she said.

But contributing more will require increased funding for African projects and wider access to computer science education and technology in general, Sefala said.

Despite such obstacles, Lawson said "technology will be Africa's savior".

"Let's use what is cutting edge and apply it straight away or as a continent we will never get out of poverty," she said. "It's really as simple as that."

-via Good Good Good, February 16, 2022

#older news but still relevant and ongoing #africa #south africa #togo #uganda #covid #ai #artificial intelligence #pro ai #at least in some specific cases lol #the thing is that AI has TREMENDOUS potential to help humanity #particularly in medical tech and climate modeling #which is already starting to be realized #but companies keep pouring a ton of time and money into stealing from artists and shit instead #inequality #technology #good news #hope

202 notes · View notes

topitservices · 3 months

Text

How Using VPN Can Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy in 2024

In the fast-evolving world of digital marketing, staying ahead of the curve is crucial. One tool that has emerged as a game-changer in recent years is the Virtual Private Network (VPN). Using a VPN can significantly enhance your digital marketing services, providing numerous benefits that range from enhanced security to improved access to global markets. In this comprehensive guide, we explore how integrating VPN into your digital marketing arsenal can elevate your campaigns and deliver superior results in 2024.

1. Enhanced Security and Privacy

Protecting Sensitive Data

In an era where data breaches and cyber threats are rampant, protecting your sensitive information is paramount. A VPN encrypts your internet connection, making it virtually impossible for hackers to intercept your data. This is particularly important for digital marketers who handle sensitive client information, financial data, and proprietary strategies.

Anonymity in Market Research

Conducting market research often involves browsing competitor websites, analyzing trends, and gathering insights. With a VPN, you can ensure your online activities remain anonymous, preventing competitors from tracking your IP address and gaining insight into your strategies.

2. Access to Global Markets

Bypassing Geo-Restrictions

One of the significant advantages of using a VPN is the ability to bypass geo-restrictions. Many websites and online services restrict access based on geographic locations. By using a VPN, you can access content from anywhere in the world with or without SEO expert, enabling you to conduct more comprehensive market research and reach a broader audience.

Localized Marketing Campaigns

A VPN allows you to connect to servers in different countries, providing a unique opportunity to view your content as it appears in various regions. This is invaluable for creating localized marketing campaigns that resonate with specific target audiences. By understanding how your content is perceived in different markets, you can tailor your strategies to better meet the needs of diverse customer segments.

3. Improved SEO and Content Strategy

Enhanced Keyword Research

Keyword research is a cornerstone of effective digital marketing. Using a VPN, you can access search engines from different locations, giving you a more accurate picture of keyword performance in various regions. This enables you to optimize your content with keywords that are relevant to your target audiences worldwide.

Avoiding Search Engine Bias

Search engine optimization company often tailor results based on your location. This can skew your perception of search engine rankings and hinder your SEO efforts. A VPN helps you avoid this bias by allowing you to view search engine results from different regions, providing a more holistic view of your SEO performance and helping you identify opportunities for improvement.

4. Competitor Analysis and Strategy

Gaining Unrestricted Access

Competitor analysis is a critical component of any successful digital marketing strategy. However, many competitor websites restrict access based on location or IP address. By using a VPN, you can bypass these restrictions and gain unrestricted access to competitor websites, enabling you to gather valuable insights and develop more effective strategies.

Monitoring Competitor Ads

Understanding how your competitors are advertising is crucial for staying competitive. A VPN allows you to view ads that are being targeted to specific regions, providing you with a clearer understanding of competitor strategies. This information can be used to refine your own ad campaigns and ensure you remain ahead of the competition.

5. Enhanced Social Media Marketing

Access to Geo-Restricted Social Media Content

Social media platforms often restrict content based on geographic locations. By using a VPN, you can access geo-restricted content, enabling you to stay informed about global trends and engage with audiences from different regions. This can significantly enhance your social media marketing efforts, allowing you to create more relevant and engaging content.

Localized Social Media Strategies

A VPN enables you to view social media platforms as they appear in different regions, providing valuable insights into local trends and preferences. This information can be used to develop localized social media marketing services that resonate with specific audiences, driving higher engagement and improving overall campaign performance.

6. Cost Savings on Digital Tools and Services

Accessing Region-Specific Discounts

Many digital tools and services offer region-specific pricing, with significant discounts available in certain countries. By using a VPN, you can take advantage of these discounts, reducing your overall marketing expenses. This can be particularly beneficial for small businesses and startups looking to maximize their marketing budget.

Avoiding Price Discrimination

Some online services engage in price discrimination, charging different prices based on the user’s location. A VPN helps you avoid this by masking your IP address, ensuring you receive fair pricing regardless of your geographic location. This can lead to substantial cost savings on essential marketing tools and services.

7. Better Remote Work Capabilities

Secure Remote Access

In the age of remote work, ensuring secure access to company resources is crucial. A VPN provides a secure connection for remote employees, allowing them to access company data and tools without compromising security. This is especially important for digital marketing teams that often collaborate on sensitive projects and need to share information securely.

Improved Collaboration Across Borders

A VPN facilitates seamless collaboration between team members located in different parts of the world. By providing secure and reliable access to company resources, a VPN ensures that your digital marketing team can work efficiently, regardless of their physical location. This can lead to improved productivity and more effective campaign execution.

Conclusion

Integrating a VPN into your digital marketing strategy in 2024 can provide numerous benefits, from enhanced security and privacy to improved access to global markets and cost savings. By leveraging the power of a VPN, you can gain a competitive edge, optimize your marketing efforts, and achieve superior results.

#seo services #seo business #search engine marketing #seo packages #seo techniques #digital marketing #ecommerce #software engineering #digital marketing services #web development #seo expert in delhi #seo expert #seo company #seo marketing #local seo #seo agency

1 note · View note

antiporn-activist · 5 months

Text

We knew this was coming, and it's here...

Teen Girls Confront an Epidemic of Deepfake Nudes in Schools

Using artificial intelligence, middle and high school students have fabricated explicit images of female classmates and shared the doctored pictures.

April 8, 2024

After boys at Francesca Mani’s high school fabricated and shared explicit images of girls last year, she and her mother, Dorota, began urging schools and legislators to enact tough safeguards.Shuran Huang

Westfield Public Schools held a regular board meeting in late March at the local high school, a red brick complex in Westfield, N.J., with a scoreboard outside proudly welcoming visitors to the “Home of the Blue Devils” sports teams.

But it was not business as usual for Dorota Mani.

In October, some 10th-grade girls at Westfield High School — including Ms. Mani’s 14-year-old daughter, Francesca — alerted administrators that boys in their class had used artificial intelligence software to fabricate sexually explicit images of them and were circulating the faked pictures. Five months later, the Manis and other families say, the district has done little to publicly address the doctored images or update school policies to hinder exploitative A.I. use.

“It seems as though the Westfield High School administration and the district are engaging in a master class of making this incident vanish into thin air,” Ms. Mani, the founder of a local preschool, admonished board members during the meeting.

In a statement, the school district said it had opened an “immediate investigation” upon learning about the incident, had immediately notified and consulted with the police, and had provided group counseling to the sophomore class.

Tenth-grade girls at Westfield High School in New Jersey learned last fall that male classmates had fabricated sexually explicit images of them and shared them.Peter K. Afriyie/Associated Press

“All school districts are grappling with the challenges and impact of artificial intelligence and other technology available to students at any time and anywhere,” Raymond González, the superintendent of Westfield Public Schools, said in the statement.

Blindsided last year by the sudden popularity of A.I.-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, schools across the United States scurried to contain the text-generating bots in an effort to forestall student cheating. Now a more alarming A.I. image-generating phenomenon is shaking schools.

Boys in several states have used widely available “nudification” apps to pervert real, identifiable photos of their clothed female classmates, shown attending events like school proms, into graphic, convincing-looking images of the girls with exposed A.I.-generated breasts and genitalia. In some cases, boys shared the faked images in the school lunchroom, on the school bus or through group chats on platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, according to school and police reports.

Such digitally altered images — known as “deepfakes” or “deepnudes” — can have devastating consequences. Child sexual exploitation experts say the use of nonconsensual, A.I.-generated images to harass, humiliate and bully young women can harm their mental health, reputations and physical safety as well as pose risks to their college and career prospects. Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned that it is illegal to distribute computer-generated child sexual abuse material, including realistic-looking A.I.-generated images of identifiable minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

Yet the student use of exploitative A.I. apps in schools is so new that some districts seem less prepared to address it than others. That can make safeguards precarious for students.

“This phenomenon has come on very suddenly and may be catching a lot of school districts unprepared and unsure what to do,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who writes about legal issues related to computer-generated child sexual abuse imagery.

At Issaquah High School near Seattle last fall, a police detective investigating complaints from parents about explicit A.I.-generated images of their 14- and 15-year-old daughters asked an assistant principal why the school had not reported the incident to the police, according to a report from the Issaquah Police Department. The school official then asked “what was she supposed to report,” the police document said, prompting the detective to inform her that schools are required by law to report sexual abuse, including possible child sexual abuse material. The school subsequently reported the incident to Child Protective Services, the police report said. (The New York Times obtained the police report through a public-records request.)

In a statement, the Issaquah School District said it had talked with students, families and the police as part of its investigation into the deepfakes. The district also “shared our empathy,” the statement said, and provided support to students who were affected.

The statement added that the district had reported the “fake, artificial-intelligence-generated images to Child Protective Services out of an abundance of caution,” noting that “per our legal team, we are not required to report fake images to the police.”

At Beverly Vista Middle School in Beverly Hills, Calif., administrators contacted the police in February after learning that five boys had created and shared A.I.-generated explicit images of female classmates. Two weeks later, the school board approved the expulsion of five students, according to district documents. (The district said California’s education code prohibited it from confirming whether the expelled students were the students who had manufactured the images.)

Michael Bregy, superintendent of the Beverly Hills Unified School District, said he and other school leaders wanted to set a national precedent that schools must not permit pupils to create and circulate sexually explicit images of their peers.

“That’s extreme bullying when it comes to schools,” Dr. Bregy said, noting that the explicit images were “disturbing and violative” to girls and their families. “It’s something we will absolutely not tolerate here.”

Schools in the small, affluent communities of Beverly Hills and Westfield were among the first to publicly acknowledge deepfake incidents. The details of the cases — described in district communications with parents, school board meetings, legislative hearings and court filings — illustrate the variability of school responses.

The Westfield incident began last summer when a male high school student asked to friend a 15-year-old female classmate on Instagram who had a private account, according to a lawsuit against the boy and his parents brought by the young woman and her family. (The Manis said they are not involved with the lawsuit.)

After she accepted the request, the male student copied photos of her and several other female schoolmates from their social media accounts, court documents say. Then he used an A.I. app to fabricate sexually explicit, “fully identifiable” images of the girls and shared them with schoolmates via a Snapchat group, court documents say.

Westfield High began to investigate in late October. While administrators quietly took some boys aside to question them, Francesca Mani said, they called her and other 10th-grade girls who had been subjected to the deepfakes to the school office by announcing their names over the school intercom.

That week, Mary Asfendis, the principal of Westfield High, sent an email to parents alerting them to “a situation that resulted in widespread misinformation.” The email went on to describe the deepfakes as a “very serious incident.” It also said that, despite student concern about possible image-sharing, the school believed that “any created images have been deleted and are not being circulated.”

Dorota Mani said Westfield administrators had told her that the district suspended the male student accused of fabricating the images for one or two days.

Soon after, she and her daughter began publicly speaking out about the incident, urging school districts, state lawmakers and Congress to enact laws and policies specifically prohibiting explicit deepfakes.

“We have to start updating our school policy,” Francesca Mani, now 15, said in a recent interview. “Because if the school had A.I. policies, then students like me would have been protected.”

Parents including Dorota Mani also lodged harassment complaints with Westfield High last fall over the explicit images. During the March meeting, however, Ms. Mani told school board members that the high school had yet to provide parents with an official report on the incident.

Westfield Public Schools said it could not comment on any disciplinary actions for reasons of student confidentiality. In a statement, Dr. González, the superintendent, said the district was strengthening its efforts “by educating our students and establishing clear guidelines to ensure that these new technologies are used responsibly.”

Beverly Hills schools have taken a stauncher public stance.

When administrators learned in February that eighth-grade boys at Beverly Vista Middle School had created explicit images of 12- and 13-year-old female classmates, they quickly sent a message — subject line: “Appalling Misuse of Artificial Intelligence” — to all district parents, staff, and middle and high school students. The message urged community members to share information with the school to help ensure that students’ “disturbing and inappropriate” use of A.I. “stops immediately.”

It also warned that the district was prepared to institute severe punishment. “Any student found to be creating, disseminating, or in possession of AI-generated images of this nature will face disciplinary actions,” including a recommendation for expulsion, the message said.

Dr. Bregy, the superintendent, said schools and lawmakers needed to act quickly because the abuse of A.I. was making students feel unsafe in schools.

“You hear a lot about physical safety in schools,” he said. “But what you’re not hearing about is this invasion of students’ personal, emotional safety.”

Natasha Singer writes about technology, business and society. She is currently reporting on the far-reaching ways that tech companies and their tools are reshaping public schools, higher education and job opportunities. More about Natasha Singer

A version of this article appears in print on April 11, 2024, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Fake A.I. Nudes Create Crisis in Schools. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

#be very nice to teenage girls #they are living in hell

64 notes · View notes

shuttershocky · 1 year

Note

not even publishers want to touch unity anymore now

Of course they don't, it makes budgeting even more unpredictable than usual.

Now im beating a dead horse here but game development is absurdly expensive. On top of giving your staff a salary (who are comprised of talented software engineers and other experts who could be making 10x the money anywhere else and are already willing to get fucked on pay because they're nerds), you gotta pay Steam/Epic/whatever their 30% cut, you gotta pay your partners (everyone from marketing to localization that makes a game actually sell), you gotta pay licensing fees that game engines like Unity ALREADY have and are making way more expensive, and now you have this shit where what you have to pay is dependent on install count which depending on your game, can vary wildly from the actual revenue youre making.

All this in the only medium that combines the woes of software engineering with that of creative media, meaning even the blandest most risk-averse mass market appeal AAA game is still risking more than what any corporate executive deems safe

174 notes · View notes

angelisgonnastartchangingurls · 6 months

Text

richard, on a monday

richard was becoming annie's favorite patient. he didn't like that word though. "client," he said. "i consider this an investment, you know? it's all part of the mindset."

richard was wealthy, a self-made businessman, CEO of a decent-sized local software firm. annie had heard of him before because he was often popping up in mental health circles -- he was a strong advocate for it. annie had read a few of his linkedin posts before he'd sought her out.

richard's backstory was that his wife had died of breast cancer pretty young, and he'd gone to therapy and became a convert. the dead wife stuff was long past him now, but he made a point to continue his therapy, and, he told annie, keep it visible on his calendar, visible to all employees, to encourage them to seek therapy as well.

when he'd come to her, annie had briefly assumed richard just saw lots of younger female therapists, but in fact, his longtime therapist, a man, had retired. annie couldn't find any red flags.

and she really loved talking to him. he was a good talker, very self-analytical and sometimes even too self-critical. but also funny, and observant, and curious. she learned a lot from his observations. it made sense to annie that he was successful in business. after their first session, he'd added her on linkedin, which annie was charmed by. she looked at some recent photos he'd posted from paris with a beautiful woman about her age, maybe a little younger, who seemed to be his daughter.

she learned in his second session that it was in fact his daughter, who was an artist and who lived in paris in a flat he paid for.

"that must be amazing for her," she said.

"and me," he said. "it's a wonderful thing to be able to do that for your daughter."

"what is her medium?"

"mostly photography," he said. "i'll bring you in some of her work."

he did just that next week, bringing in a folder of black and white film photographs in a file folder. annie looked them over. they seemed nice to her eyes -- maybe a little basic. landscapes, architecture, portraits. there was one she liked best -- a nude self portrait. she was quite pleased that richard would have such a thing, that his daughter would show it to him, and that he'd choose to show it to her. in the photo, she's holding the camera at stomach level, photographing herself in a dusty, full-length mirror in what looks like an old-school dressing room. she has a cigarette in one hand, her hair is messy, and she has a nice, thick, dark bush.

"your daughter looks very authentically french," annie observed.

"it's true," richard said. "she speaks french more than english, it's even drifting into her speech in english when she calls me. it's the place for her."

"she's very beautiful," annie said. "i mean, the work is beautiful too, but she's stunning."

"you remind me a bit of her, honestly." richard said. annie hadn't clocked much of a resemblance, really. they were both slim, tall, dark-haired women, but very different faces. "in personality, I mean," he said. "warm but professional -- clearly experts in your field. you have a more academic way of talking, of course."

"i do?" annie said, surprised.

" yes," he said. "well-read, erudite. i promise i haven't been analyzing you, it's just something i notice."

"you can analyze me," annie said, just a little flirty.

the picture of his daughter naked was on top of the folder on the table between them.

"it speaks well of you that she'd show you a photo like this," annie said.

"well, she's very french in that she's very open about her body," he said. "that's kind of new, just the last year and a half or so. i remember going over there to see her like three months in and you know, she was making dinner for us in vintage silk panties and a sweater, and just being sort of overwhelmed, you know, my daughter is now an adult, and also she suddenly reminds me of her mother."

"her body reminds you of her?"

"well, yeah," he said. he gestured at the photo. "i mean, same breasts. same hips."

"how did that make you feel, seeing it?"

"well, i guess it was kind of beautiful, you know, her mother's legacy."

"did you tell your daughter that?"

"yes."

"what was her reaction?"

he laughed. "she took her clothes off."

"really?" annie said. "like right then and there?"

"she was only in the lace panties and the sweater, and they were both thin enough that -- i mean, i could see the bush already, you know? but she took them off."

"what were her intentions there?"

"i'm not sure exactly," he said. "i think it was sort of... i think she was really grateful for the life i had given her, and sad that her mother was gone, and sort of wildly embracing stepping into that role."

"what did she do exactly to step into that role?" annie said.

he laughed. "nothing happened," he said. "but she climbed into my lap and straddled me and hugged me.

"that's sweet," annie said. "and a little fraught."

"absolutely," he said. "it was definitely vaguely sexual."

"daughters who have fathers they admire..." annie mused. "yeah i mean, there's no escaping it. it can be sexual."

"do you admire your father?"

"very much so," annie said. and then laughed.

"so you speak from experience?"

"experience of those feelings? absolutely."

"not the experience of getting naked for your father."

"well, my father sees me naked," annie said. she could feel her skin heating up from talking about her own naked body in front of richard. "but if he told me I reminded him of my mom I think maybe I'd be a little offended."

"you don't have a great relationship with her."

"not at all," she said.

"why do you think that is?"

"honestly? when i developed and became a woman, she kind of froze me out. i'm very open and communicative with my father and brother and almost never speak to my mom."

"that's too bad," he said. "for her, i mean. it's on her to make that effort."

"you and your daughter talk often?"

"we email on the days we can't facetime."

"dads love facetime," annie said.

"we like seeing your faces," he said.

for some reason, annie told him the story about her dad and the ipad. they were over their time for the day but she liked talking to him.

"that's cute," he said. "honestly my daughter has answered my calls naked more times than i can count."

"i like that," annie said. "i like that trust and honesty. even if for her there's a slight freudian slant."

he chuckled. "yeah, i like it too."

"has she ever seen you?" annie asked.

"you know, when in france," he said. "she has a pretty open flat, the shower is not in the bathroom, there's really not much of an enclosure for it, just glass."

"VERY european," annie said. she told him the story about alice and her father on the nude beach -- not referring to alice as a patient, just a friend. she embraced this minor ethical lapse as central to her style.

"funny, you know, i was just wondering like, am i the only dad in the world with pictures of his adult daughter naked on his phone?"

annie laughed. "you're not! and do you mean her photography or other stuff?"

"she also sends me selfies," he said. "you know just casual photos of herself around the flat. she's often not wearing much, or just nothing."

"that's unusual," annie said. "but not bad, i don't think. kind of nice. very intimate."

"i like the intimacy of it, too," he said. "and you're like that with your father?"

"totally," annie said. "i feel very safe and open with him, i tell him absolutely everything."

"i feel like my daughter is pretty honest. i think she tells me everything."

"does she tell you about doing drugs?"

"yes."

"and about people she's sleeping with? i don't necessarily mean sexual details but is she not obfuscating the fact that she's fucking them?"

he laughed. "yeah, she tells me."

"then she's telling you everything."

"that's nice to know. it's kind of like having a little spy camera inside my daughter's brain, talking to a woman like you."

"if my dad wanted a camera in my brain i wouldn't object to it," she said.

annie thought about that when she got home, lightly reconsidering. she was very horny and very stoned and was rather enjoying the way robbie's eyes followed her as she walked around the apartment in nothing but a thin pair of white panties. at one point, she followed him into the bathroom and playfully held his cock again while he pissed.

"you're very frisky tonight," he observed.

"i had a good session with Mr. CEO today," annie said. "i have a big crush on him."

"you want to go jerk off about it?" robbie asked. "i could cum."

they went to the bedroom, and annie put porn on the TV. she slipped off her panties and hopped onto the bed and watched robbie pull off his jeans. his cock popped out, already hard. he laid down and started stroking himself, looking over at annie, rubbing her clit. neither one of them was looking at the TV. "you're so hard," annie cooed at one point. he just chuckled and kept stroking. with her free hand, annie toyed with her right nipple. she gathered spit from her mouth and rubbed it across her nipple. "you have such great fucking tits," robbie said.

"you wanna cum on them?" annie invited.

"seriously?" he said.

"i'm so horny don't make me ask for things twice," annie said.

robbie moved to his knees, his cock inches from annie's face.

"god it's so big," annie said. he shot his cum on her. she felt it hit with a warm splatter and immediately started to cum. "oh my GOD" she said. he unloaded several ropes. when he was done, annie looked at the drop of cum still at the tip of his cock, sat up, and sucked once at the head of his cock, feeling the cum on her tongue. robbie laughed. "wow," he said.

"i told you i get even hornier when i cum," annie said.

"you came too?"

"the second your cum hit my skin," she said. "i would literally do anything you asked me right now."

he laughed. "good," he said. he got up and left her on the bed. "you look good like that," he said. he got his phone from his pants and took a picture of annie on her bed with his cum all over her breasts. she smiled for him.

30 notes · View notes

mariacallous · 11 months

Text

For more than three weeks, Gaza has faced an almost total internet blackout. The cables, cell towers, and infrastructure needed to keep people online have been damaged or destroyed as Israel launched thousands of missiles in response to Hamas attacking Israel and taking hundreds of hostages on October 7. Then, this evening, amid reports of heavy bombing in Gaza, some of the last remaining connectivity disappeared.

In the days after October 7, people living in Gaza have been unable to communicate with family or friends, leaving them unsure whether loved ones are alive. Finding reliable news about events has become harder. Rescue workers have not been able to connect to mobile networks, hampering recovery efforts. And information flowing out of Gaza, showing the conditions on the ground, has been stymied.

As the Israel Defense Forces said it was expanding its ground operations in Gaza this evening, internet connectivity fell further. Paltel, the main Palestinian communications company, has been able to keep some of its services online during Israel’s military response to Hamas’ attack. However, at around 7:30 pm local time today, internet monitoring firm NetBlocks confirmed a “collapse” in connectivity in the Gaza Strip, mostly impacting remaining Paltel services.

“We regret to announce a complete interruption of all communications and internet services within the Gaza Strip,” Paltel posted in a post on its Facebook page. The company claimed that bombing had “caused the destruction of all remaining international routes.” An identical post was made on the Facebook page of Jawwal, the region’s biggest mobile provider, which is owned by Paltel. Separately, Palestinian Red Crescent, a humanitarian organization, said on X (formerly Twitter) that it had lost contact with its operation room in Gaza and is “deeply concerned” about its ability to keep caring for people, with landline, cell, and internet connections being inaccessible.

“This is a terrifying development,” Marwa Fatafta, a policy manager focusing on the Middle East and North Africa at the digital rights group Access Now, tells WIRED. “Taking Gaza completely off the grid while launching an unprecedented bombardment campaign only means something atrocious is about to happen.”

A WIRED review of internet analysis data, social media posts, and Palestinian internet and telecom company statements shows how connectivity in the Gaza Strip drastically plummeted after October 7 and how some buildings linked to internet firms have been damaged in attacks. Photos and videos show sites that house various internet and telecom firms have been damaged, while reports from official organizations, including the United Nations, describe the impact of people being offline.

Damaged Lines

Around the world, the internet and telecoms networks that typically give web users access to international video calls, online banking, and endless social media are a complicated, sprawling mix of hardware and software. Networks of networks, combining data centers, servers, switches, and reams of cables, communicate with each other and send data globally. Local internet access is provided by a mix of companies with no clear public documentation of their infrastructure, making it difficult to monitor the overall status of the system as a whole. In Gaza, experts say, internet connectivity is heavily reliant on Israeli infrastructure to connect to the outside world.

Amid Israel’s intense bombing of Gaza, physical systems powering the internet have been destroyed. On October 10, the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which oversees emergency responses, said air strikes “targeted several telecommunication installations” and had destroyed two of the three main lines of communications going into Gaza.

Prior to tonight’s blackout, internet connectivity remained but was “extremely slow and limited,” Access Now’s Fatafta says. People she has spoken to from Gaza say it could take a day to upload and send a few photos. “They have to send like 20 messages in order for one to go through,” Fatafta says. “They are desperately—especially for Gazans that live outside—trying to get through to their families.”

“Every time I try to call someone from family or friends, I try to call between seven to 10 times,” says Ramadan Al-Agha, a digital marketer who lives in Khan Yunis, a city in the south of the Gaza Strip. “The call may be cut off two or three times,” he told WIRED in a WhatsApp message before the latest outages. “We cannot access news quickly and clearly.” People in the region have simultaneously faced electricity blackouts, dwindling supplies of fuel used to power generators, and a lack of clean water, food, and medical supplies. “It is a humanitarian disaster,” Al-Agha says.

Connectivity in Gaza started to drop not long after Israel responded to the October 7 Hamas attack. Rene Wilhelm, a senior R&D engineer at the nonprofit internet infrastructure organization Ripe Network Coordination Center, says based on an analysis of internet routing data it collects that 11 Palestinian networks, which may operate both in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, began to experience disruption after October 7. Eight of the networks were no longer visible to the global internet as of October 23, Wilhelm says. Ahead of this evening’s blackout, there was around 15 percent of normal connectivity, according to data from Georgia Tech’s Internet Outage Detection and Analysis project. That dropped to around 7 percent as reports of the blackout circulated.

One office belonging to Paltel in the Al Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City has been destroyed in the attacks, photos and videos show. Floors have been destroyed and windows blown away in the multistory building, and piles of rubble surround the entrances. (It is unclear what equipment the building housed or how many floors Paltel occupied.) Another internet provider, AlfaNet, is listed as being based in the Al-Watan Tower. The company posted to its Facebook page on October 8 that the tower had been destroyed and its services have stopped, with other online posts also saying the tower has been destroyed.

Multiple Palestinian internet and telecoms firms have said their services have been disrupted during the war, mostly posting to social media. Internet provider Fusion initially said its engineers were trying to repair its infrastructure, although it has since said this is not continuing. “The network was destroyed, and the cables and poles were badly damaged by the bombing,” it wrote on Facebook. JetNet said there had been a “sudden disruption” to access points. SpeedClick posted that the situation was out of its control. And HiNet posted that it has “no more to offer to ensure” people could stay online following “the attacks and destruction our internet servers have suffered.”

Across Paltel’s network on October 19, according to an update shared by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 83 percent of fixed line users had been disconnected, with 53 percent of sites providing fixed line connections also being offline. Half of the company’s fiber optic internet lines in Gaza weren’t operational, the update says. The connectivity disappeared this evening, according to Paltel’s Facebook post, which says there has been a “complete interruption” of all its services. Paltel, AlfaNet, Fusion, and SpeedClick could not be reached or did not respond to requests for comment.

Lost Connections

In recent years, governments and authoritarian regimes have frequently turned to shutting down the internet for millions of people in attempts to suppress protests and curtail free speech. Targeting the communications networks is common during conflicts. During Russia's war in Ukraine, its forces have decimated communications networks, tried to take over the internet, and set up new mobile companies to control information flows. When Hamas first attacked Israel on October 7, it used drones to bomb communications equipment at surveillance posts along the borders of the Gaza Strip.

Monika Gehner, the head of corporate communications at the International Telecommunication Union, says the body is always “alarmed” by damage inflicted on any telecommunications infrastructure during conflicts. The ITU, the United Nations’ primary internet governance body, believes “efficient telecommunication services” are crucial to peace and international cooperation, and its secretary-general has called for respecting infrastructure in the Middle East, Gehner says.

Officials in Israel have consistently claimed they are targeting Hamas militants within Gaza, not civilians, while responding to the Hamas attacks, which killed more than 1,400 people in Israel. The Hamas-run Health Ministry within Gaza has said more than 7,000 people have been killed there and released a list of names. A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces did not respond to WIRED’s questions about internet disruptions within Gaza.

Hanna Kreitem, a senior adviser for internet technology and development in the Middle East and North Africa at the Internet Society, an open internet advocacy nonprofit, says Palestinian firms have a “big reliance” on Israeli internet firms. “Palestinians are not controlling any of the ICT infrastructure,” says Mona Shtaya, a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. Mobile networks in the Gaza Strip rely on 2G technologies. Al-Agha, the digital marketer, shared a screenshot showing mobile internet speeds of 7.18 kilobytes per second; average mobile speeds in the US in 2022 were 24 megabits per second, according to mobile analytics firm Statista.

“The internet is vital in times of war in crises,” says Fatafta, the Access Now policy manager, who adds that there can be “terrible consequences” linked to connectivity blackouts. The UN’s OCHA said rescue workers have had a harder time “carrying out their mission” partly due to the “limited or no connection to mobile networks.” Al-Agha says he has lost some clients due to the disruptions. The lack of connectivity can obscure events that are happening on the ground, Fatafta says. News crews have told WIRED they have footage from the ground but are “losing the story because of the internet.”

Kreitem says that a lack of electricity and access to the equipment will have made an impact on top of any physical damage to communications networks. “We don't know how many of the people that actually operate these networks are still alive,” Kreitem says. “The network operators are part of the world there, there's no place for them to run. They are as affected as any other person.”

90 notes · View notes