Technology posts

Longtime readers may notice there is no more comments field on EL.com. Been thinking about removing this for a while, since it was a bit clunky-looking and most people know how to contact me anyway. If you don‘t, check out the bio page or the Twitter feed.  

The deathknell came from a spammer, stephane3constant, who, on Jan. 11, placed 14 comments on 14 posts that were all basically ads. Each of these had to be removed individually, which is a pain, particularly when you add in remembering exactly how to do it. That always takes me a while. So I finally said, “Enough. Tim, let’s just remove it.” Now gone. 

Have to admit: I feel sorry for anyone who felt placing spam on my site would help them in any way. 

A poem for our age:

Here I sit
Unsubscribing
Tried to quit
They keep arriving 

Orbitz is one of my latest attempts. When I did, I got this response:

That was August 8. They keep arriving. 

“Facebook has filed thousands of patent applications since it went public in 2012. One of them describes using forward-facing cameras to analyze your expressions and detect whether you‘re bored or surprised by what you see on your feed. Another contemplates using your phone’s microphone to determine which TV show you‘re watching. Others imagine systems to guess whether you’re getting married soon, predict your socioeconomic status and track how much you‘re sleeping.

”A review of hundreds of Facebook’s patent applications reveals that the company has considered tracking almost every aspect of its users' lives: where you are, who you spend time with, whether you‘re in a romantic relationship, which brands and politicians you’re talking about. The company has even attempted to patent a method for predicting when your friends will die.“

— the lede to Sahil Chinoy's piece, “What 7 Creepy Patents Reveal About Facebook,” in today‘s New York Times.

What are the 7 Creepy Patents? They involve:

1. Predicting whether you’re in a romantic relationship (Don't we already tell them this?)
   
2. Using your posts and messages to infer personality traits—and thus ads
3. Using posts, IMs, and credit card transactions to predict major life events
4. Gving your camera a unique signature to further figure out your relationships (who else uploads your photos, etc.)
5. Using phone mic to guess TV-watching habits. And more?
6. Using phone to track weekly routine
7. Using phone to track relationships

Yeah, they're not making me feel safer. Then again, who is? 

IMDb needs to fix its algorithms. Seriously. There's tons of them that just make you do a double-take. I came across this one this morning:

“Who's Robert Redford again?”

“You know. He was the producer of ‘The Company You Keep,’ starring Shia LeBeouf.”

“Oh, right.”

I know. Not exactly high on the list of things the world needs to fix. Even so.

As you probably know, on each of its pages for any movie/TV person (star, cameraman, casting, set decoration, best boy, doesn't matter), IMDb.com lists four movies he/she is “known for.” Robert Redford, for example, is known for, in this order, “The Sting,” “Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid,” “All the President's Men,” and “Out of Africa.” Seems about right. For Audrey Hepburn, it's “Breakfast at Tiffany‘s,” “My Fair Lady,” “Roman Holiday” and “Sabrina.” Again: Yep. 

But there are a few bugs in the system. Here’s Steven Spielberg:

Right. Not “Jaws,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “E.T.” or “Jurassic Park.” Not “Lincoln.” 

I get the first two. But “Catch Me If You Can” and “A.I.”? Really? 

Then you notice the role they‘ve assigned to him for each of these movies: producer. And it all begins to make sense. 

According to IMDb, its algorithm assigns a “weight” to every credit in someone’s CV. These include, among others:

• “The job performed on the title (a credit as director will have more weight than a credit as production assistant).”
• “The frequency of credits for a particular job in the context of the person's filmography (writing credits may have more weight for someone who is more frequently credited as a writer than as a producer)”

It's this second that's the problem with Spielberg. He currently has 162 credits as a producer. He has 56 as a director. Apparently this means that IMDb, the most popular repository of movie information we have, sees Spielberg, the most popular movie director of all time, as primarily a producer. And since Spielberg didn't become a producer until the late ‘70s and early ’80s, that eliminates movies such as “Jaws” and “Raiders” from “Known For” contention. (Oddly, he was a producer for “E.T.” so I'm not sure why “Catch Me” and “A.I.” trump that.) 

The same is true on IMDb with other great directors who produce. In this universe, Martin Scorsese is “known for” being: 1) producer of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” 2) director of “Goodfellas,” 3) producer of “Shutter Island” and 4) director of “The Departed.” “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull”? Whatevs.

Actors who produce? Tom Hanks is primarily known for ... “The Da Vinci Code.” Drew Barrymore is primarily known for ... “Donnie Darko.”

Algorithms are tough, and IMDb's gets a lot right. But there are still a few bugs in the system.