Link Roundup June 2016

Against Students

So much violence is justified and repeated by how those who refuse to participate in violence are judged. We need to make a translation. The idea that being over-sensitive is what stops us from addressing difficult issues can be translated as: We can’t be racist because you are too sensitive to racism.

If You Talk to Bots, You’re Talking to Their Bosses

This is the next stage of corporate personhood. If the user-experience layer of a company’s processes can be completely automated, neither its owners nor employees need to present themselves to people. They give the automation an abstract personality and make it a being-in-itself.

Machine Bias: There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks.

Brennan said it is difficult to construct a score that doesn’t include items that can be correlated with race — such as poverty, joblessness and social marginalization. “If those are omitted from your risk assessment, accuracy goes down,” he said.

We Were Sued by a Billionaire Political Donor. We Won. Here's What Happened.

Since then, Mother Jones and our insurance company have had to spend at least $2.5 million defending ourselves. That's money we can't get back, since Idaho doesn't have an anti-SLAPP statute that might open the door for recovering attorney's fees in a case like this. We also paid for the defense of Zuckerman, whom VanderSloot sued halfway through the case for talking to Rachel Maddow about his experience. (VanderSloot did not sue MSNBC or its deep-pocketed parent company, Comcast. Make of that what you will.

What Burger King’s Proud Whopper tells us about marketing to LGBT consumers

“In the past, most brands have been outreaching to the LGBT community through the LGBT media and it was almost a safe way of doing it because the only people seeing it were LGBT people,” said David Paisley, senior research director at Community Marketing and Insights, a market research firm focused exclusively on the LGBT community.

Internet of Things That Lie: the future of regulation is demonology

Rinese's piece is excellent, but misses out one critical factor: the prohibition on reverse-engineering of devices. Any device with even a little DRM is covered by the US DMCA and its foreign equivalents, like Europe's EUCD. These laws punish anyone who jailbreaks a DRM-locked device (cars, insulin pumps, phones, TVs, HVAC systems and thermostats), making it a felony to expose their wrongdoing.

Blockchain Company's Smart Contracts Were Dumb

Any vulnerabilities in the DAO's code were not flaws in the code; they were flaws in the descriptions -- which were purely for entertainment purposes.

Praise the Machine! Punish the Human!: The Contradictory History of Accountability in Automated Aviation

With advances in GPS and other avionics technology, tracking the flight path of a plane has become more reliable. Yet, as electrical components have replaced mechanical components, it has become more difficult to prove when and how malfunctions occur. With physical evidence a case against a manufacturer is likely successful. When there is a lack of evidence or conflicting expert testimony, it becomes extremely difficult to prove negligence on the part of the autopilot manufacturer.

Ethics for Cyborgs: On Real Harassment in an “Unreal” Place

Contrary to conventional wisdom, I argue that anonymity’s role has been overemphasised at the expense of accountability in these cases. While anonymity is certainly part of what can lead to a lack of accountability in gaming spaces, it is not as exhaustive an explanation as is often popularly suggested (Penny Arcade, 2004; Fost, 2007). I contend there is a system of norms that rewards or minimises symbolically violent behaviour in gaming culture

Why We Write: On Game Critique, Influence, and Reach

Were Thompson and company “forced” to make that change? Or did they consider the critiques issued to the previous game and decide how to address them? One of the hidden flaws of the “critics try to force developers to do things” line of argument is that it ignores that developers are people who can make up their own minds. So long as there isn’t threat of ban or boycott, they can internalize the critiques they think make sense and discard the rest, just like any reader can.

Where the Brexit Stakes Are Highest

A driving force for the U.K.’s campaign to leave the EU is concerns over immigration. Citizens of any of the EU states are currently free to travel to both the U.K. and Ireland as fellow members, and the U.K. and Ireland have a Common Travel Area of free movement that dates back to independence—interruptions during the Troubles notwithstanding. But if the United Kingdom withdraws from the EU’s free movement area while Ireland does not, that free travel might have to be curtailed. Otherwise, any member of an EU state could simply cross into the U.K. from Ireland. "I support patrols, active patrols. We need to have the army asserting our sovereignty,” David McNarry, the Northern Ireland chair of the anti-EU U.K. Independence Party told the Daily Express newspaper last month. “It's a hell of a job to ask anybody to do but if you leave it then it's wide open for migration, for the clever traffickers, for the criminals.”

Sheryl Sandberg on the Myth of the Catty Woman

The biggest enemy of women, we’re warned, is a powerful woman.

The worst thing I read this year, and what it taught me… or Can we design sociotechnical systems that don’t suck

Many hard problems require you to step back and consider whether you’re solving the right problem. If your solution only mitigates the symptoms of a deeper problem, you may be calcifying that problem and making it harder to change.