Toxic Virality

Check out Wired magazine’s deep dive into Facebook’s horrific 2018, “15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook.” Business journalists Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein detail Facebook’s attempts last year to corral its self-induced global dumpster fire fanned by prioritization of growth over all other values–particularly user privacy–according to its founder’s mantra: “move fast and break things” (including democracy it would seem). As in previous years, Facebook repeatedly offered familiar, dubious apologies for its most egregious missteps, scandals and user data breaches–when caught–while news feed algorithms continued to promote its prioritized categories of “politics, crime, or tragedy”, driving unwitting user engagement in amplified outrage cycles.

It’s not all bad news, as the article covers some of Facebook’s attempts to atone for its sins. Facebook finally began combating fake news with serious, large scale resources, appropriate when foreign genocides were fueled by malevolent government propaganda on Facebook. The company created “election war rooms” to fight Russian intervention via Facebook in the US mid-terms and other countries’ elections. Zuckerberg even recently announced a new focus on privacy and end-to-end encryption of messages. Unfortunately, that was shortly before a shooter in New Zealand live-streamed video of his murderous attack on a mosque on Facebook–such terrorists could benefit if Facebook loosens control over video streams and mass postings.

Several summary excerpts from the Wired article:

Facebook continues to pay for its original sin of ignoring privacy and fixating on growth.
Sometimes Facebook makes the world more open and connected; sometimes it makes it more closed and disaffected. Despots and demagogues have proven to be just as adept at using Facebook as democrats and dreamers.

The idea of Facebook is to bring people together, but the business model only works by slicing and dicing users into small groups for the sake of ad targeting.
For years, smart critics have bemoaned the perverse incentives created by Facebook’s annual bonus program, which pays people in large part based on the company hitting growth targets…Everyone is now given bonuses based on how well the company achieves its goals on a metric of social good.
Another deep critique is that Facebook simply sped up the flow of information to a point where society couldn’t handle it. Now the company has started to slow it down. The company’s fake-news fighters focus on information that’s going viral. WhatsApp has been reengineered to limit the number of people with whom any message can be shared.

I left Facebook last year, after the Cambridge Analytica scandal was exposed, before the largest data breach in Facebook history and the narrowed news feed focus on “politics, crime, or tragedy”. While many savvy users also left Facebook last year, the overall Facebook user base continued to grow, albeit more slowly than before. As Facebook wrestles with its fundamental problems of “toxic virality” and disregard for user privacy, it faces a future existential problem in the US: Facebook is for the old (or blissfully unaware), not the young. Most kids are not joining Facebook, sharing instead on YouTube, Instagram (owned by Facebook), Snapchat and text messages. Few Facebook employees proudly tout their company these days. If remaining Facebook users and employees can no longer claim ignorance, they must retreat to faith that Facebook will change, apathy, delusion, or worse.

Strong Passwords

PasswordSecurity.info and HaveIBeenPwned.com can securely check the strength and security of a password you are using or thinking of using. If either site finds your password has been compromised, i.e., already posted by/for hackers in an online data breach, then change it immediately and never use it again! HaveIBeenPwned.com explains why you should never reuse the same password for multiple accounts. PasswordSecurity.info may find that your password has not been exposed in a data breach, but still offer suggestions for strengthening it, such as maximizing character variety (use upper and lower case letters and numbers and special characters) and password length (longer is better). The site estimates the time required for a brute force automated attack to guess your password, but I’m not sure that includes the latest NSA tools, so take it with a grain of salt.

You want your bank and email accounts to be very secure, because if a hacker gets online access to your bank account, he can transfer your money elsewhere, and if he gets into your email account, he can request a password reset for your bank account by pretending he forgot it, receive a password reset link in your (now his) email account, and gain access to your money. Treat your email account as the key to your kingdom.

1Password and LastPass are both great password managers for generating and storing the longest, strongest, most random, unguessable passwords for your accounts. You can also save credit card, medical and other sensitive information in these secure databases, but password management is the critical feature for securing your online assets. I prefer 1Password on my and Varya’s Macs, iPhones and iPads, and love that 1Password is able to use FaceID on my iPad Pro. Check them both out, pick one and use it!

I recently convinced my wife that using simple passwords on multiple accounts puts her at greater risk, as one compromised account could be a door to more accounts, which puts us both at greater risk. Similar to using vaccines, protecting yourself helps protect others. So, please use long, strong, unique passwords and password management software, and if one of the above sites finds that one of your passwords has been compromised, change it immediately!

Cord Cutting

We dumped DirecTV satellite TV several years ago, and have not missed their hundreds of useless, unwatched channels, long term contracts, and overpriced service that frequently cut out during Houston thunderstorms. If you have a fast (> 20 Mbps), reliable broadband connection, consider dumping cable or satellite TV and switching to internet TV, supplemented with broadcast TV. (Yes, broadcast, as in free TV over the airwaves, like the olden millennium, only with far better digital transmission of high-def images and surround sound.) Being a “cord cutter” gives you much more control over exactly what and when you watch, all the better in this golden age of cinema-quality, binge-able TV. Long gone are the days of having to accept the lame programming and rigid schedule of a few broadcast networks. You also may save a little money by replacing your bloated cable or satellite TV contract with a few smaller ($8-40/month) internet app subscriptions…that you can turn on and off each month as you wish (e.g., I pay $25 for Sling TV only during months I want ESPN for particular sporting events).

Brace yourself for the breakup!

When you call a satellite or cable TV company to cancel their service, they usually transfer you to a “retention specialist”, hell bent on retaining you as a customer, perhaps offering you a discounted contract (so, worth doing even if you don’t cancel), keeping you on the phone for however long it takes to change your mind…and thus earn a pay bonus. My DirecTV retention specialist was an impressively persistent but sadly unsuccessful guy named Philip. During our absurdly circular 20 minute conversation, he repeatedly asked, “but why are you giving up TV?!”, as if unaware that TV predated satellites and likely will outlast his company. (I posted my “Ode to Philip” on FB: “we’ve grown apart, Philip…it’s not you, it’s me…you’ll find the right customer someday…”) Be prepared with strength and resolve in your righteous desire to cut their cord.

Hardware & software?

You may need some new equipment and subscriptions for accessing internet TV apps, and a broadcast TV antenna. There are many choices, so I’ll just list what we use and a couple alternatives.

Apple TV: I connect these little black boxes to our internet router with ethernet cables and wifi, and to our TVs with HDMI cables (one box per TV). We use Apple TV to watch internet TV apps (Hulu, Netflix, HBO Go, PBS, Amazon Prime Video, Comedy Central, SlingTV, ESPN, etc.), and to stream video from our iPads and Macs to our TVs.

Roku is an excellent, cheaper alternative (I’ve used a couple), especially for a non-Apple-centric household, with a much better remote control. (Apple makes many great products, but struggles with peripherals such as remotes and mice.)
I have no hands-on experience with Google’s Chromecast or Amazon’s Fire TV, and it has been a while since I last compared them to the more popular Roku & Apple offerings. Ask Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri, and see what they recommend. 🙂
You may ask, “why do I need another box when my TV already has Netflix?!” Though most “smart” TVs come with a few internet apps built in, I still recommend using an external box such as Apple TV or Roku for a few reasons:
- Security: Apple & Roku update their software far more frequently than TV makers such as Samsung & LG. In our world of relentlessly increasing cyber-threats, you want rapid, continuous fixing of inevitable bugs & security holes.
- Selection: There are far more apps and games available on Apple TV and Roku boxes, and you can easily download new apps, whereas TVs often are stuck with the few apps they came with.
- Speed: TV makers use cheaper, slower computer chips than Apple & Roku.
Some recent TVs offer built-in Roku or Chromecast hardware. While that’s better than using the TV maker’s crappy interface for internet TV, and may eliminate one remote control, I still prefer an external Roku or Apple TV box, as I upgrade these little boxes much more often than big, expensive TVs. I’ve had my largest Samsung plasma TVs for 6 years, and they still produce great images. During that time, I’ve gone through a few generations of Apple TVs, incrementally improving HW performance and features, which wouldn’t be possible if it were built into my TV.

HDHomeRun EXTEND: this black box by SiliconDust takes the signals from our window antenna and streams broadcast TV channels on our network for easy viewing on our Apple TVs, iPads and Macs (up to 2 devices simultaneously), useful for watching sports and other live network events anywhere in the house.

I subscribe to SiliconDust’s HDHomeRun DVR service, enabling me to record and time-shift shows like The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that aren’t available in Hulu. (We watch all of the late night talk/comedy shows the next morning with breakfast and coffee, almost never when they’re aired at night.)
HDHomeRun’s main weakness is supporting software: the HDHomeRun app for MacOS isn’t great, and the InstaTV app on Apple TV is worse. Both are functional, and slowly improving, but still noticeably crappier in stability, usability and appearance than the big internet TV apps such as Netflix, Hulu and HBO Go. SiliconDust offers decent hardware, but really should step up their software game!
I chose the EXTEND over the other HDHomeRun models for its hardware h264 transcoder which compresses video in real-time rather than streaming raw mpeg2. If you don’t know or care what that means, or you need more than 2 tuners in one box, check out the CONNECT QUATRO with 4 tuners.
The TiVo BOLT OTA with built-in DVR is a well-reviewed alternative to HDHomeRun for viewing and recording broadcast TV, and even has some streaming apps, making it a very limited alternative to Roku or Apple TV.

Antenna: This is the simplest, oldest and least expensive component of cord-cutting. I use two cheap ($20-40), flat, indoor, un-amplified digital antennas–one connected to my HDHomeRun EXTEND box and the other connected directly to my largest Samsung TV for live events–both stuck in a window facing the huge TV broadcast towers in southwest Houston. My 5-year-old antenna models are AmazonBasics and Mohu Leaf, but there are many good brands these days. If you really want the latest “best” option, WireCutter is my goto source for such reviews and recommendations. However, almost any popular, highly-rated digital antenna should provide good HD reception, assuming you’re close enough to TV towers and can point your antenna at those towers.

Range: Buy an antenna made for the distance from your house to your nearest TV towers. More range typically requires a larger antenna size and price, and sometimes a powered signal amplifier. If you live way out in the sticks or mountains, you may be too far from city TV towers for reliable reception of broadcast TV…but you knew that already.
Placement: Place your indoor antenna on the side of the house facing the nearest TV towers, preferably in a window. Larger, longer-range antennas may be placed in the attic, or even on the roof…old school!

Apps: We subscribe to Hulu ($12/month for no commercials), Netflix ($11/mo) and sometimes Sling TV Orange ($25/mo, mainly for ESPN), a total of $48/mo before tax, much cheaper than my old DirecTV bills. Amazon Prime Video is included with my Amazon Prime membership ($10/mo). We use the free version of Comedy Central (mainly for the Daily Show with Trevor Noah), though you could pay for full access. PBS Video is free, though I donate to PBS anyway, because their high quality shows (Frontline, Nova, American Experience, Austin City Limits, etc.). We rent movies in iTunes, and I load up my iPad with rentals before flights. You may subscribe to HBO Now, but HBO Go is already included with my Comcast cable internet/TV bundle ($60/mo for 60 Mbps, recently downgraded from $90/mo for 250 Mbps).

Why would a cord-cutter still have a cable TV bundle?! Comcast makes their Xfinity internet/TV “double-play” bundle cheaper than internet alone–perhaps to inflate their “TV subscriber” numbers for advertisers despite the growing number of cord-cutters–so I technically have Comcast’s basic TV service with HBO included, though I’ve never used their Xfinity TV box…fun and games with Evil Corp, as Elliot would refer to Comcast.
YouTubeTV is Google’s competitor for Sling TV. [Updated 2018-10-21] I recently tried it for a week, and liked the high-res live sports and on-demand access to broadcast network shows. However, I couldn’t stand all of the forced, low-res, repetitive commercials, and canceled my trial. For $40/mo, I expect ad-free on-demand viewing. Check out YouTubeTV’s offerings, as they may have the best value for your internet channel needs, including your local broadcast channels, but be prepared for inescapable ads.
Month-to-month: long term contracts are obsolete in the new world of a la carte internet TV. You may start and stop any of these app subscriptions in any given month. Going on a long trip or taking a TV-free sabbatical? Kill your subscriptions and restart later as needed. In contrast to the old TV “service” companies, the new i-TV norms are convenience and flexibility.
International travel: Unfortunately, many of the paid subscription apps won’t work when they see you connecting from a foreign IP address. You can try fooling them by routing through a US VPN server, but Netflix and others block VPN connections as well. Freebies and podcasts still work, of course, but be prepared to lose access to premium TV apps overseas. Then again, when touring abroad, what the hell are you doing watching TV anyway?!

Cut that cord and say goodbye to Evil Corp!…unless you are stuck with them for internet access due to an abysmal lack of ISP competition in your area.

Use Four Ones

Want your internet browsing to be faster and more private? Use 1.1.1.1 as your Domain Name Server (DNS).

What’s DNS and why change it?

Devices on the internet have numeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses such as 1.1.1.1. Of course, remembering numeric web addresses would be difficult, so we use more people-friendly, word-based domain names instead. When you enter addresses such as Apple.com and WordPress.com into your web bowser, your designated DNS resolves these domain names into corresponding IP addresses, sort of like an internet directory.

Most people let their Internet Service Provider (ISP)–Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, etc.–set DNS addresses automatically on their computers, phones and tablets. Your ISP is happy to do this for you, because routing you through their own DNS allows them to track where you go on the internet and sell that information to advertisers…part of the digital surveillance economy, similar to Facebook and Google. Since your ISP wants to watch you and often faces little or no competition in US markets, the speed and security of your web browsing typically are not their highest priorities. Fortunately, it is easy to increase your speed and privacy simply by changing your DNS.

What to do?

Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 is a public DNS that makes queries faster and more secure than your ISP’s default DNS, resulting in faster, more private web browsing. Cloudflare provides more details at What is 1.1.1.1?. For instructions, go to 1.1.1.1 and click the Install button (it doesn’t actually install anything) or scroll down the page to find simple text and video instructions for your particular operating system (iOS, Android, MacOS, Windows). If you already know where and how to change your DNS settings, just copy and paste the following highlighted IP addresses (not the parenthetical text) into your DNS address list, replacing the default address(es):

1.1.1.1 (IPv4 primary)
1.0.0.1 (IPv4 secondary)
2606:4700:4700::1111 (IPv6 primary)
2606:4700:4700::1001 (IPv6 secondary)