Inside Facebook's automated abuse algorithm

Facebook should confess / remind / admit that it is next to impossible to become "censor of the internet" and push back some. Stand up for themselves. Having said that however, I am not a fan of their requirement people use their real names: This seems to lead to cases of impersonation: Consider the case of Hanif who's responses from the system said that she was the imposter, because the imposter profile had 4,000 friends and a bulk of pictures - she was unable to have it taken down!

Facebook's abuse algorithm assists it's staff by recognising and filtering duplicate abuse reports in order to more efficiently flag violations such as nudity and pornography, the representative explained. If Facebook receives 1,000 reports on the same thing, the algorithm will streamline the process so humans aren't taking action on all 1,000.

Manually reviewed abuse responses from Facebook should contain a line such as: "Your case has been reviewed by a human. We use form responses due to the high volume of cases we review and use automated systems to assist in our processing of your case. If you wish to speak with a real human, this costs $0.59/minute etc". Provided an option for a paid voice line. This would be an incredibly effective method to enable real peoples request to cut through the spam, since spammers don't like to paid for things.

Stop using your real name

They should cease suggesting people use their real names. I don't, but I was somehow able to change it back in 2015. Probably because I changed mine in the sweet spot between January - when a guy called Phuc Dat Bich had just won the right to use his real name appeared - and November - when it was revealed to be a hoax!

In January 2015, a 23-year-old Australian bank employee claiming to be named Phuc Dat Bich posted a photo of his passport identification page to Facebook, protesting that the company had unfairly shut down his account for being "false and misleading".

Phuc Dat Bich

"Is it because I'm Asian? Is it?" he asked. The BBC reported that in Vietnamese the name is pronounced similarly to "Phoo Da Bi". After his reinstatement, Bich posted a thank you note to supportive Facebook fans, stating he was "glad and honoured to be able to make people happy by simply making them laugh at something that appears outrageous and ridiculous". In 25 November 2015 "Phuc Dat" published a further message admitting it was a hoax. The video this BBC page is amusing.

In August 2012, Facebook estimated that more than 83 million Facebook accounts are fake accounts. As a result of this revelation, the share price of Facebook dropped below $20.

In 2008, a woman in Japan named Hiroko Yoda had her Facebook account suspended over her surname somehow being confused with Master Yoda from Star Wars fame. In USA, a native with last name "Kills The Enemy" ran into trouble: Robin Kills The Enemy is a resident of the Sioux Rosebud reservation in South Dakota had been using "KillsTheEnemy"as a last name up until she contacted Facebook to try and change it to the regular spelling with spaces.

In 2015, a Gaelic-speaking retired policeman won the right to use his Gaelic name on Facebook, even though it was not his legal name. Some Scottish Gaelic surnames, such as NicIllAnndrais, contain more than two capital letters and are still disallowed by Facebook (according to Wikipedia):

The Facebook real-name policy controversy refers to the controversy over social networking site Facebook's "real-name system" dictating how people register their accounts and configure their user profiles. The controversy stems from a policy that those who have been adversely affected describe as penalising users who are in fact using their real names which Facebook has nevertheless deemed to be "fake", while simultaneously allowing anyone to create fake yet plausible-sounding names, as well as obviously implausible-sounding names comprising word combinations that Facebook's software fails to recognise as unlikely to be real because their alleged nonstandard spelling or confusion with fictional characters. Facebook furthermore prohibits users from accurately representing names which according to the site have "too many words", and prohibits initialising first names, preventing users who do so in real life from formatting their own names as they see fit.

Food for thought. Maybe I should add a Facebook comments feature to my blog. Or then again, maybe not.

Fake News

Facebook terms show the use of algorithm to adjust "post distribution", I believe this is called EdgeRank, and it's formula to show if someones post will appear on your screen is roughly: FriendAffinity * MediaItemURLPopularity / TimeSincePosted. 

Reducing the spread of false news on Facebook is a responsibility that we take seriously. We also recognise that this is a challenging and sensitive issue. We want to help people stay informed without stifling productive public discourse. There is also a fine line between false news and satire or opinion. For these reasons, we don't remove false news from Facebook, but instead significantly reduce its distribution by showing it lower in the News Feed.

Violence

They do a good job here. The titles of the section are shown below the only I quote was the first one:

• Credible violence - We aim to prevent potential real-world harm that may be related to content on Facebook. We understand that people commonly express disdain or disagreement by threatening or calling for violence in facetious and non-serious ways. That's why we try to consider the language, context and details in order to distinguish casual statements from content that constitutes a credible threat to public or personal safety. In determining whether a threat is credible, we may also consider additional information such as a targeted person's public visibility and vulnerability. We remove content, disable accounts and work with law enforcement when we believe that there is a genuine risk of physical harm or direct threats to public safety.
• Dangerous individuals and organisations
• Terrorist activity
• Organised hate
• Mass or serial murder
• Human trafficking
• Organised violence or criminal activity
• Promoting or publicising crime
• Coordinating harm (org crime)
• Regulated goods

List running apps by process name only in macOS

After years of searching, I finally just wrote my own expression to show all running processes with just the names that I can feed to killall say to exit.

The command:

ps axc | sed "s/.*:..... /\"/" | sed s/$/\"/

The output:

"launchd"
"syslogd"
"UserEventAgent"
"uninstalld"
"kextd"
"fseventsd"
"mediaremoted"
"appleeventsd"
"systemstats"
"configd"
"powerd"
"openvpn-service"
"TeamViewer_Service"
"logd"
"keybagd"
"warmd"
"mds"
"iconservicesd"
"iconservicesagent"
"diskarbitrationd"
"backupd-helper"

"coreduetd":

Prediction on Artificial Intelligence

Introducing AminoSee DNA Visualisation

Press release for my newly released genomics software visualisation project "AminoSee". Send this PDF to your local scientist!

The goal: Visually represent an entire genome graphically... in one shot!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday 24 December 2018
Section: International / Science / Infotech
Suggested Headline 1: NZ Musician Invents DNA Viewer
Suggested Headline 2: Free DNA Software For Christmas

A kiwi drummer has today gifted the public an open-source license to his innovative new computer software that is able to render an image from a digital file of any DNA or RNA data file.

Tom Atkinson, the drummer for Dam Native, Breaks Co-op, SJD, The Triptonites and many other groups turned out the software - which he has called the AminoSeeNoEvil DNA Viewer - in a sudden burst of creativity over the past 6 weeks after it came to him in a sudden realisation late one evening.

“My fingers just kept going at the keyboard like crazy. I just really wanted to see it in the end. Without anyone to help or slow me down, and realising the significance of the idea, I went all in. Glad I got it done before the end of the year, now it’s time to get this to some scientists” -Tom.

It creates full colour images and was designed to enable inter-species comparisons between humans and primates; to understand the role of the regulatory “non-coding” junk DNA; as a thought experiment and exercise in processing enormous datasets; but most of all just purely out of curiosity and to inspire youth to get into science.

An experimental 3D mode enables visitors to http://aminosee.funk.nz/ to interactively fly through the DNA using the keyboard and mouse for a closer look! This even works on modern mobiles, but a desktop computer running macOS, Windows, or Linux is suggested. You can currently browse though his renderings of a handful of organisms such a human, primates, Octopus, Eucalyptus, Cannabis, Alligator, and the Brown Kiwi, with more coming soon.

It is available now on popular github.com collaboration site, released under the same software license as the Linux free operating system, sometimes called a “copy-left” license, a play on the word “copyright”. This allows anyone to make copies, provide download mirrors, and even charge a fee to install or include in a bigger package with the requirement that the enhancements are provided back to the community also in source code format.

This allows commercial grade enhancements that will yield improvements to the free product, while benefiting all. For example, this is what enables IBM to sell for profit it’s Redhat Linux system, with the improvements to the underlying kernel given back to the wider community for all to use.

The software is now being sent to universities and genomics researchers worldwide, hoping to gain some feedback and suggestions on the final colours for each amino acid.

Strapline: “I can see it now - I can AminoSee it!”

Official site:
http://aminosee.funk.nz/ (Demo site with 3D viewer demo, and 2D reports)
Author: Tom Atkinson <tom@funk.co.nz>
https://www.funk.co.nz/aminosee/output/chrY_Pan_Clint_PR.png (reference image)
https://www.funk.co.nz/pdf/AminoSee_PressRelease_25Dec2018.pdf (press release PDF with images)

Caenorhabditis elegans DNA Visualised using AminoSee

The first complex multi-celled organism in the world to have it's entire genome sequenced. I've created a visualisation algorithm to convert DNA into PNG! I'm working on a program called AminoSee that is (eventually) going to be able to project the image below into a 3D model one day at the following URL: funk.co.nz/aminosee

The colours are based on which Amino Acid is being coded. Start / stop codons delimit the 6 pixel rhythm you can discern. This is done to boost the colour when zoomed out using an effect I call "the zooming of an interference pattern". It's like how a laser can be used to see microscopically. The source code to generate these is available free with the GPLv2 "copyleft", which means any modifications you make have to be made available to the community also free.

The image is half blank its a bug yeah I know.

Based on the DNA file:

Caenorhabditis_elegans.WBcel235.dna_sm.toplevel.fa

Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living, transparent nematode, about 1 mm in length, that lives in temperate soil environments.
Class: Chromadorea
Scientific name: Caenorhabditis elegans
Phylum: Nematoda
Rank: Species
Higher classification: Caenorhabditis

Patentable Top Secret Information

UFO's are normally kept Top Secret as is the tradition. But like getting an oil stain from a white shirt is next to impossible, getting the useful science information out to the public is next to impossible when there is official denial at the highest levels.

In what way would the release of alien technology damage our national interests?

I am arguing that the it is the designation of top secret placed on advanced energy technology that is the true risk to our national security. What does national security mean anyway? If information marked NZEO (NZ eyes only) could lead to a New Zealand-issued technology patent, we could lead the world and become a wealthy nation, but if not then the people with security clearance and Top Secret access have unfair advantage in business; but much likely outcome is that they don't tell anyone and take it to the grave. Often we see confessionals from the deathbed.

If the information comes from other countries - sure I can understand the need for it to remain secret. However... what if "the information" has not / is not / will not be provided to us by the five eyes network we've been on since 1955?

You can't keep a secret that you have not been told right?

In New Zealand, our official reasons for keeping certain pieces of information as the highest level known - "Top Secret" - are:

• Compromise of information would damage national interests in an exceptionally grave manner
• Directly threaten the internal stability of NZ or friendly countries
• Lead directly to widespread loss of life
• Cause exceptionally grave damage to the operational effectiveness or security of New Zealand or friendly forces or the effectiveness of extremely valuable
  security or intelligence operations
• Cause extremely grave damage to relations with other governments
• Cause severe long-term damage to significant national infrastructure

Designation can be visualised in the following flowchart:

Furthermore, what if NZSIS uncovers leaked information from governments not in the five eyes, that has then made it into the public domain? That idea was spawned by reading this BusinessInsider article regarding Chinese involvement with the politics of Australia and NZ.

Does it either:

a) officially deny the info, make up stories to discredit it and the authors? or...

b) officially confirm the info, opening the path for true scientific discovery!

ET science can not begin until sovereign governments admit the existence of life on other planets. Only then can it be taken seriously, and only when the fear of talking by our community is removed can the learning begin.

As it happens, this has already occurred. Afghanistan became the first country to officially recognise the existence as can be seen in this leaked Afghan government cable; and Former Canadian Defense Minister show in the video below.

I'm going to push for the establishment of a Ministry of Extra Terrestrial Affairs, with a built-in "truth and reconciliation" amnesty system to allow whistleblowers and consultants to come forward without fear of prosecution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg6VTzacb9I&feature=youtu.be