Vulnerable By Design

Chat control? The Stasi look like amateurs compared to this sh*te

A blue EU-like flag, with a hand-drawn chat icon at the centre. Instead of a circle of stars, it has a circle of yellow-ish eyes gazing at the chat.

18 Jul 2023 ・ 23 min listen

The EU has proposed a bill, known as 'chat control', to scan all digital communications for potential illegal content. Chat control would violate fundamental rights, and turn the EU into a surveillance supra-state. If that doesn't sound ideal, there's still a short window of time to take action ✊

chat control EU surveillance privacy secrecy of correspondence fundamental rights digital communication

How to build a timeline (Twitter's version)

22 May 2023 ・ 23 min listen

Twitter open sourced its tweet recommendation algorithm. Sort of. Is this the beginning of a new era of platform transparency? Chris isn't so sure.

twitter algorithm recommendation open source transparency open washing feed timeline

Disposable Bodies (Reading Health Communism)

Flames against a black backdrop, with overlaid the words 'Disposable Bodies' in narrow serif capital letters with a drop shadow

17 Mar 2023 ・ 54 min listen

Have you heard of this new-ish game, Capitalism? We'll go over the gameplay, to assess whether capitalism might actually be bad for your health. (And discuss the book *Health Communism* by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant.)

capitalism health pure communism relative surplus population reserve army of labour sickness exploitation utopia

ChatGPT and Existential Angst

5 Jan 2023 ・ 37 min listen

We catch up with ChatGPT about the latest recipes, strategic reporting, Python scripts, cost of living, and killing the poor.

chatgpt ai artificial intelligence chatbot cost of living existential dread automation openai dall-e 2 hunger euthanasia Canada John Maynard Keynes work labour survival

What is the Fediverse?

15 Dec 2022 ・ 26 min listen

People are flocking to alternative social media. But how revolutionary is this move? Can it change the future of the Internet?

fediverse mastodon federation decentralization FOSS network protocol

All We Need is Your Face

A monochrome image of a crowd of people in a Berlin street, holding placards and banners. Facial recognition bounding boxes surround a number of the faces, with dots identifying the location of the eyes and mouth.

18 Oct 2022 ・ 23 min listen

Automated facial recognition systems: the bad, the very bad, and what you can do to resist them. A special collaborative episode with Ella Hillström.

face recognition algorithms Clearview AI web scraping personal data GDPR shitty technology adoption curve CV Dazzle biometrics

Normal

A semi-symmetrical hill, colorised in a pink hue.

31 May 2022 ・ 20 min listen

Who or what is normal? Why does normality hold such a grip on people? Might normal actually be dangerous? No outrageous plans this week, as we dive deep into the terrifying zone of normality.

normal norms frequency normativity normalcy bias normal distribution

Cross-cultural privacy

31 Mar 2022 ・ 11 min listen

Do privacy concerns differ across cultures? And if yes, should that have any technology design implications? We cover a recent paper on cross-cultural privacy.

privacy culture individualism collectivism design personal information data

Molotov

1 Mar 2022 ・ 8 min listen

Molotov cocktails! What are they? How do they work? What's up with the funky name? And how come they don't immediately explode in people's hands?

Molotov cocktail Finland tanks The Anarchist Cookbook Soviet Union resistance invasion

The Papers 005: Misinformation, Cycling in Dublin, Apologies

A bicycle lane sign with a semi-transparent salmon-coloured overlay.

15 Feb 2022 ・ 16 min listen

A fast-paced round-up of recent vulnerability research. This week we cover: susceptibility to misinformation, vulnerable cycling in Dublin, and the apology to the Tasmanian Aboriginal People by the Royal Society of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

information cycling vulnerability apologies road safety Royal Society