Month: December 2017

The Big Vitamin D Mistake

Source: The Big Vitamin D Mistake, Papadimitriou DT. J Prev Med Public Health. 2017.

J Prev Med Public Health. 2017 Jul;50(4):278-281. doi: 10.3961/jpmph.16.111. Epub 2017 May 10.

A statistical error in the estimation of the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for vitamin D was recently discovered … The largest meta-analysis ever conducted of studies published between 1966 and 2013 showed that 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels <75 nmol/L may be too low for safety and associated with higher all-cause mortality, demolishing the previously presumed U-shape curve of mortality associated with vitamin D levels. Since all-disease mortality is reduced to 1.0 with serum vitamin D levels ≥100 nmol/L, we call public health authorities to consider designating as the RDA at least three-fourths of the levels proposed by the Endocrine Society Expert Committee as safe upper tolerable daily intake doses.

The Pollyannish Assumption — Stratechery

Source: The Pollyannish Assumption — Stratechery, by Ben Thompson

Moderating user-generated content is hard: it is easier, though, with a realistic understanding that the Internet reflects humanity — it is capable of both good and evil.

One of the seminal Stratechery posts is called Friction, and while I’ve linked it many times this line is particularly apt:

Friction makes everything harder, both the good we can do, but also the unimaginably terrible. In our zeal to reduce friction and our eagerness to celebrate the good, we ought not lose sight of the potential bad.

This is exactly the root of the problem: I don’t believe these platforms so much drive this abhorrent content as they make it easier than ever before for humans to express themselves, and the reality of what we are is both more amazing and more awful than most anyone ever appreciated.

The point of user reports is to leverage the scale of the Internet to police its own unfathomable scale … That approach, though, clearly isn’t enough: it is rooted in the pollyannish view of the Internet I described above — the idea that everything is mostly good but for some bad apples. A more realistic view — that humanity is capable of both great beauty and tremendous evil, and that the Internet makes it easier to express both — demands a more proactive approach. … alas, being proactive is a sure recipe for false positives.

focus on being neutral … actively seek out and remove content that is widely considered objectionable, … take a strict hands-off policy to everything that isn’t … far more transparency than currently exists … make explicitly clear what sort of content they are actively policing, and what they are not

Warrant Protections against Police Searches of Our Data – Schneier on Security

Source: Warrant Protections against Police Searches of Our Data – Schneier on Security

The cell phones we carry with us constantly are the most perfect surveillance device ever invented, and our laws haven’t caught up to that reality.

Traditionally, information that was most precious to us was physically close to us. It was on our bodies, in our homes and offices, in our cars. Because of that, the courts gave that information extra protections. Information that we stored far away from us, or gave to other people, afforded fewer protections. … The Internet has turned that thinking upside-down. … all our data is literally stored on computers belonging to other people. It’s our e-mail, text messages, photos, Google docs, and more all in the cloud. We store it there not because it’s unimportant, but precisely because it is important.
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The issue here is not whether the police should be allowed to use that data to help solve crimes. Of course they should. The issue is whether that information should be protected by the warrant process that requires the police to have probable cause to investigate you and get approval by a court.

The Trouble with Politicians Sharing Passwords

Source: The Trouble with Politicians Sharing Passwords

the premise of justifying a bad practice purely on the basis of it being common is extremely worrying. It’s normalising a behaviour that we should be actively working towards turning around.

What’s the Problem Credential Sharing is Solving?
Let’s start here because it’s important to acknowledge that there’s a reason Nadine (and others) are deliberately sharing their passwords with other people. … sourcing help from staffers … delegation … collaboration … there are indeed technology solutions available to solve this problem

One of the constant themes that came back to me via Twitter was “plausible deniability” … The assertion here is that someone in her position could potentially say “something bad happened under my account but because multiple people use it, maybe it was someone else”. The thing is, this is precisely the antithesis of identity and accountability and if this is actually a desirable state, then frankly there’s much bigger problems at hand.

there are plenty of people who unwittingly put an organisation at risk due to having rights to things they simply don’t need … We call the antidote for this the principle of least privilege … social engineering is especially concerning in an environment where the sharing of credentials is the norm. When you condition people to treating secrets as no longer being secret but rather something you share with someone else that can establish sufficient trust, you open up a Pandora’s box of possible problems because creating a veneer of authenticity in order to gain trust is precisely what phishers are so good at!

The great irony of the debates justifying credential sharing is that they were sparked by someone attempting to claim innocence with those supporting him saying “well, it could have been someone else using his credentials”! This is precisely why this is problem! Fortunately, this whole thing was sparked by something as benign as looking at porn and before anyone jumps up and down and says that’s actually a serious violation, when you consider the sorts of activities we task those in parliament with, you can see how behaviour under someone’s identity we can’t attribute back to them could be far, far more serious.

The Two Clashing Meanings of ‘Free Speech’ | The Atlantic

Source: The Two Clashing Meanings of ‘Free Speech’ | The Atlantic, by Teresa M. Bejan

there is a more fundamental conflict between two, very different concepts of free speech at stake. The conflict between what the ancient Greeks called isegoria, on the one hand, and parrhesia, on the other, is as old as democracy itself. Today, both terms are often translated as “freedom of speech,” but their meanings were and are importantly distinct. In ancient Athens, isegoria described the equal right of citizens to participate in public debate in the democratic assembly; parrhesia, the license to say what one pleased, how and when one pleased, and to whom.
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isegoria was fundamentally about equality, not freedom. … Its competitor, parrhesia, was more expansive. … The practitioner of parrhesia (or parrhesiastes) was, quite literally, a “say-it-all.”
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If isegoria was fundamentally about equality, then, parrhesia was about liberty in the sense of license—not a right, but rather an unstable privilege enjoyed at the pleasure of the powerful.

the genius of the First Amendment lies in bringing isegoria and parrhesia together, by securing the equal right and liberty of citizens not simply to “exercise their reason” but to speak their minds. It does so because the alternative is to allow the powers-that-happen-to-be to grant that liberty as a license to some individuals while denying it to others.

When the rights of all become the privilege of a few, neither liberty nor equality can last.