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Friday!!! Time for the weekly roundup. On the podcast this week, we talk about how so many companies have sneakily opted users into data collection and processing (LinkedIn, Udemy, and PayPal, to name a few). In the subscribers-only section, the story of how a woman was essentially trapped in a driverless Waymo while a couple of guys harassed her. And in a special episode of the podcast for supporters, we go long on the business, subscriber numbers, what people value, how to get our articles in front of people, and what we're looking to do next year. Find that one in your inbox if you’re a paid subscriber, or click here and scroll to the bottom to watch it on YouTube.
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Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch it on YouTube. CATCHING VIBESBop Spotter is a project by technologist Riley Walz in which he has hidden an Android phone in a box on a pole, rigged it to be solar powered, and has set it to record audio and periodically sends it to Shazam’s API to determine which songs people are playing in public. “This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it's not about catching criminals,” the Bop Spotter website says. “It's about catching vibes. A constant feed of what’s popping off in real-time.” Jason talked to Walz about the project and how hard it was to find a good pole to strap the device to.  Screenshots via Twitter/X LITERALLY TIPPED A FEDORAA woman was stuck in a self-driving Waymo vehicle that was stopped by two men who harassed her, asked for her number, and prevented the car from moving forward by standing in its way. In a video, Amina—who was trying to get to a hair appointment in San Francisco—recorded a man standing in front of the autonomous Waymo vehicle while she sat in the passenger seat. She yelled at him to move out of the way so the car could continue, but he and another man kept blocking the car’s path, preventing it from going anywhere. I talked to her about what it was like being inside the car, and what the self-driving ride hailing company did in response. “CAT LIVES MATTER”A cache of internal emails obtained by 404 Media using a public records request show the chaos caused by the unfounded racist conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants are “eating the pets” of residents in Springfield, Ohio. The emails show city officials scrambling to deal with bomb threats, hateful and threatening emails and phone calls, a media bonanza, and confused residents in the immediate aftermath of the presidential debate, in which Donald Trump said “in Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” NAKED FRAUDMultiple AI ‘nudify’ sites are actually designed to infect users with powerful credential stealing malware, according to new findings from a cybersecurity company which has analyzed the sites. Joseph wrote about how the researchers also believe the sites are run by Fin7, a notorious Russian cybercrime group that has previously even set up fake penetration testing services to trick people into hacking real victims on their behalf.  Screenshots by 404 Media I’M STAYING INSIDE A pair of students at Harvard built what tech companies refused to release publicly due to the overwhelming risks and danger involved: smart glasses with facial recognition technology that automatically looks up someone’s face and identifies them. The students’ customized glasses also pull other information about their subject from around the web, including their home address, phone number, and family members. “We would show people photos of them from kindergarten, and they had never even seen the photo before,” one of the creators said. “Most people were surprised by how much data they have online.” MORE BLOGS!!!Replying to Hidden ‘BopSpotter’ Microphone Is Constantly Surveilling San Francisco for Good Music, axemtitanium writes, In principle, it wouldn't be too difficult to triangulate the location by blasting an uncommon song at different intersections in the Mission. The website doesn't appear to be on a (long) delay so you'd know if you're in the right vicinity pretty quickly.
Someone seems to have done exactly that, actually! And replying to Men Harassed A Woman In A Driverless Waymo, Trapping Her In Traffic, Adrian wrote, On the podcast discussion, what Jason and Sam had to say about silent communication with drivers really resonates with me. As a cyclist and pedestrian in a big city I rely heavily on this. I would feel really uneasy around driverless cars, probably waiting for them to pass by, prioritizing their existence in a city that wasn't originally built for cars. That's what these companies would love, but the last thing a compact city needs is to prioritize the needs of cars. With respect to this woman's situation, Jason had a good point about a human having situational awareness and the ability to reason. I think one challenge of these driverless cars is the inability to evolve its ethics in difficult situation. A person gets to decide where they stand, morally, and what laws, cultural constructs, and power structures they prioritize (no u-turns, don't cross a double yellow line, etc.). Where a human's ethics can change from moment to moment, I feel like the ethics of technology exist in the code that's written. While programmers can continue to reason their way around problems (like how do I ignore a cone on the hood), the system is limited to the logic it is given. The ethics exist by the decisions made by coders. Laws, rules, and agreements among humans are all constructs, and when they are codified by the code, the technology lacks the ability to make its own ethical decisions based on the situation, like in this one where these two men have made an ethical decision for themselves (like it's okay to harass this woman).
And replying to Adrian, Stratosphere said, I agree with you as well, along with being very skeptical of driverless vehicles. Even though both parts have flaws on their own, including food transportations like UberEats, humans are more capable of driving than driverless. To add more on what I thought about in this situation here, I'm predicting if things like this continues to happen some way shape or form Waymo may get a civil lawsuit just like two weeks ago of the Starship situation. Even worse, I'm possibly shutting down. It's tough to think of a solution to have a greater balance by having more walkable/cyclist places like San Francisco including New York to make us walkers feel safe than the standard living of America still prioritizes cars over walking propaganda. It may be a dead end that'll get much worse that is on my mind by this, unfortunately.
Paying supporters get commenting privileges! Check out all the other perks of being a supporter, here. BEHIND THE BLOGThis is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss FOIAing after those racist pet-eating claims, the art and science of paywalling, and gambling with journalism. JASON: Earlier this week, I published an article about emails that city officials in Springfield, Ohio received in the days immediately before and immediately after the presidential debate containing the word “Haitian.” We haven’t been writing about the election that much because there are hundreds of other journalists covering it and millions of other people playing political pundit on social media all day every day. It’s just not an area of coverage where we can regularly differentiate ourselves from what you can find elsewhere, and even though elections are very important (at every level of government), our time is usually better spent covering topics that have less attention and fewer journalists focusing on them. That said, when we do have the chance to differentiate ourselves or when something happening in politics intersects with one of our beats or areas of expertise, we’re going to join the fray. In this case, I am not an expert in immigration, but I have gotten pretty good at filing public records requests, and I have gotten particularly good at filing them at the local level. Read the rest of Jason's Behind the Blog, as well as Sam, Joseph, and Emanuel's, by becoming a paid subscriber.
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