Archive for 2023
July 13, 2023
PRIVACY: Tax preparers that shared private data with Meta, Google could be fined billions.
For its investigation, congressional staff interviewed representatives at tax-filing sites, as well as at Meta and Google. These interviews uncovered what their report said was “a troubling pattern and practice of data sharing by tax prep companies, a complete lack of corporate responsibility and accountability on the part of tax prep companies and Big Tech firms, and a potentially illegal use of sensitive taxpayer information.”
“Under the law, ‘a tax return preparer may not disclose or use a taxpayer’s tax return information prior to obtaining a written consent from the taxpayer,'” lawmakers’ letter said.
The only exception allows for data sharing with “auxiliary service providers” working “in connection with the preparation of a tax return.” However, lawmakers said that “Meta and Google likely do not meet the definition of ‘auxiliary service providers,'” partly because “the data sharing with Meta was for advertising purposes — not ‘in connection with the preparation of a tax return.'”
Plus:
A Meta spokesperson told Ars that Meta stands by a statement provided to Ars last year, saying that “advertisers should not send sensitive information about people through our business tools. Doing so is against our policies and we educate advertisers on properly setting up business tools to prevent this from occurring. Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it is able to detect.”
Translation: “Trust us,” says the company built on hoovering up every bit of personal data by whatever means are available.
ROBIN HANSON ON STATUS LEADERSHIP. “Having a romantic partner is useful in many ways. You won’t be as lonely, you can ask them for advice, you can do activities together, and you can share transport and even a household with them. But if you look carefully, you will notice that many people don’t choose such partners mainly for their promise in such roles. They instead seek high status partners, who make them look good by association. Partners who are hot, funny, rich, powerful, etc. Similarly, our usual econ model of leaders also focuses on the many concrete things leaders can do for us.”
FALLOUT: Russia’s economy dealt a crushing blow as its current-account surplus collapses by 93%.
The nation posted a current-account surplus of $5.4 billion for the April-June quarter, which marks a 93% plunge from a record $76.7 billion in the same period of 2022, Russia’s central bank data show. That’s also the smallest excess since the third quarter of 2020.
It shows the heavy blow that Western economic sanctions – imposed on Moscow in response to its war on Ukraine – have dealt to the country’s economy, by squeezing its energy exports.
The worsening trade dynamics are also reflected in the plunging fortunes of the ruble. The Russian currency tumbled to a 15-month low of around 94.48 per dollar earlier in July, hit hard by the country’s weakening terms of trade.
Russia has enough resources to get by with a lot less trade, but the damage to the ruble and hard currency reserves make it more expensive to buy sanctioned goods on the black market.
STAY AWAKE: KitchenAid KCM1209OB Coffee Maker. #CommissionEarned
PRAETORIAN GUARD: Secret Service to brief House committee on cocaine found at White House. “The briefing will take place behind closed doors in a SCIF — a sensitive compartmented information facility used to handled classified information.”
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Journalists Stop By Shelter To Inform Trafficked Children They Are A QAnon Conspiracy.
SKYNET IS NOT AMUSED: Ice Cube Goes Scorched Earth on Artificial Intelligence. “I think it’s the worst s**t ever. I think it’s gonna put a lot of people out of business and out of work. Everything is gonna be more vanilla. It’s not gonna be more creative. It’s actually gonna go the other way.”
I’ve played around quite a bit with ChatGPT and other generative AI writers, and the results always, always sound like an earnest, well-informed 10th-grader who also happens to be deeply uninteresting.
GOOD, NOW WE HAVE THEIR NAMES: Nearly 400 Penn State faculty protest white professor’s lawsuit against race-based grading.
That’ll be handy for the race-discrimination lawsuits. I mean, if you’re a white kid who gets a bad grade from them and wants to sue, they’ve already admitted their support for illegal racial practices.
WORLD’S SHORTEST BOOK: Tempting to say Issues & Insights gave it short shrift, but that wouldn’t be fair to them or the “book.”
OH: Seattle public schools will offer ‘gender affirming care’ to students as young as 11 years old at no cost – as critics say it’s a ‘whole new level of awful for schools to be involved.’ “While puberty blockers are still barred for prepubescents, kids as young as 10 will still have access to cross-sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone, according to Country Doctor’s website outlining their policies.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Another Lie-Filled Day for the FBI’s Christopher Wray. “So…the Director of the FBI is unaware if he had anyone working during the event that the Democrats have turned into a high holy day? The sad thing about 21st century America is that half of the country is dumb enough to believe him.”
PRIME DEALS: Chemical Guys Car Wash Products. #CommissionEarned
AGING: 96-Year-Old Federal Judge Has Been Asked to Step Down. She Won’t. Should She Be Forced Out?
Should Newman quit? Her colleagues think she should. Newman never married and has no children. There is no family member to persuade her to step down. But should she? Newman was a brilliant woman. A brilliant scientist. A brilliant lawyer. A brilliant judge. Should she step down?
Her answer has been consistent. No, and hell no. In an hour-long interview with a Bloomberg reporter, Newman showed confidence and “full command” and answered complicated questions. No “minder” was in the room to help her either physically or with answering questions. She never said, “I don’t remember.” But Chief Judge Kimberly Moore clearly wants her out. And it has become personal. Newman sees her age as a lazy attack by Moore for her frequent dissents. In the span of 18 months, she wrote 23 concurring or dissenting opinions.
In the Bloomberg article, there is an embedded recording of Newman speaking to the reporter. Newman’s voice sounds “old,” but she is clearly in command and never sounds tired or confused. I’ve been around 96 year olds. An hour is a long time to keep them engaged, and Newman had no problem doing that. I’ve never liked bullies. And Newman seems to be a unicorn – a completely capable judge who happens to be 96 years old.
Remarkable.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Compare the way the Establishment is treating her, versus the way it’s covering for the Dotard-in-Chief, and you may well conclude that it’s the establishment that should be retired.
DON SURBER: Sarah Sanders for the Win.
“FOLLOW THE SCIENCE” — EXCEPT WHEN IT’S EMBARRASSING OR INCONVENIENT. Scientists Agreed To Downplay Chinese Lab Leak Theory For Fear Of ‘S*** Show’, Messages Indicate.
YOU’RE MORE LIKELY TO SEE THIS STUFF REPORTED IN THE FOREIGN PRESS: WATCH | Biden commits another gaffe, calls Zelensky ‘Vladimir’ at NATO Summit.
VIDEO ON IMPLOSION EXPLODES ONLINE: Detailed video showing how Titan sub imploded and killed five men on board becomes YouTube sensation and is watched by 5M people in just 11 days.
SHOULD I CALL THE NEW YORK TIMES DISHONEST, OR IS THAT REDUNDANT: Here’s how the Times explains opposition to a newly appointed journalism dean at Texas A&M:
McElroy, who once worked as an editor at The New York Times, said she was notified by the university’s interim dean of liberal arts, José Luis Bermúdez, of political pushback over her appointment.
“I said, ‘What’s wrong?'” Dr. McElroy recalled in an interview. “He said, ‘You’re a Black woman who was at The New York Times and, to these folks, that’s like working for Pravda.'” Dr. McElroy left The Times in 2011….
Matthew Poling, the president of [an alumni group opposed to her appointment], said that members did not approve of Dr. McElroy’s work promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Diversity, equity and inclusion efforts had been a small part of her journalism and academic career, she said.
You would never get a sense from the article why McElroy was so controversial. I couldn’t believe that it was solely about the fact that she supports DEI, given that basically all academic bureaucrats are required to be on board.
So I googled for about two minutes, and got an answer from this article she wrote. She favors race-based hiring in journalism, calls “objectivity” a “flawed” goal for journalists, calls journalism a “white patriarchal institution.” (In fairness, she adds, “I wholeheartedly believe in journalism’s mission to seek truth and tell it fairly and dimensionally.”)
Also, it turns out that her protestation that “diversity, equity and inclusion efforts had been a small part of her journalism and academic career” is misleading. Her dissertation, as she describes it, was “about black columnists at ‘mainstream’ newspapers,” in which she “challenged Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach’s thoughts about “diverse” journalists included their seminal book “The Elements of Journalism.” So her signature academic project may not have been about DEI “efforts,” but it was about DEI.
Proponents of the autonomy of academic institutions in the name of academic freedom from political interference can still object that her appointment should have been left solely to university officials to consider, without political interference. But even if one strongly takes that position, it doesn’t excuse the Times’ reporter from her obligation to (objectively and?) accurately report on why her appointment was controversial, rather than implying that it was just racism and extremism.