Alexander Chalkidis

Category: Society

  • Do no evil: ranking tech giants

    Do no evil: ranking tech giants

    Meta for sure is the most evil large technology company of our times.  It is at heart the extension of an extremely immature mediocre hacker.  Time and time again proven unreliable or just straight lying to everyone’s face.  Even if we accept that it has grown so much that it is now difficult for Facebook to act as bad as it used to, we know it will try.  How?  It’s the little things every day.  The lack of resources in policing content.  The experiments are still running on users all the time.  The lack of transparency.  Heck you can’t even export your data normally, they keep trying to hide deactivation menus or make not accepting cookies harder than they should.

    Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want to connect people.  He just wants to connect your wallet to his bank account.  Plain and simple.  Facebook and Instagram are the crack cocaine of our digital world and he is always looking for ways to make them even more lethal to our psychological well being and social cohesion.  There is simply no upside to any of Meta’s products.  And even if there was some social aspect to them it is submerged in constant changes and lies of the platform.  One minute they are promoting facebook pages, get everyone to invest in those, the next they have relegated them and nobody sees them in the newsfeed.  Then it was video, the future of everything, go build studios in your companies….oh no, he ended that too without warning.  Nobody should take anything Meta says seriously anymore.

    Microsoft is of course evil but in a more traditional way.  This is old fashioned monopolistic behavior.  They build their products in all the ways they can to lock customers in.  Not as bad as Meta because after all this is the software that runs a lot of the planet’s infrastructure and day to day business.  But they do their best.  Complicated pricing structures that get you started and then hold you by the balls.  Lobbying to governments with shady deals that turn into long term locks.  They open up when they lose, like with mobile phones, just enough to try and keep a finger in every pie.  Just so they can weasel their way into your company’s backbone and get you paying a monthly fee for something or other.  And somehow that monthly fee grows over time.  They always find a way.  Microsoft is evil on a state level of lobbying and backroom dealing.  But at least they also get stuff done for the planet and occasionally actually improve their products.

    Google is much harder to consider evil because of the extremely unique business model.  Billions of people around the world have never ever paid Google a cent yet they use Google products all the time.  Google Maps, YouTube, Search, Docs, Android and other incredible and unique tools that are completely free.  Unlike what conspiracy theorists try to tell you, free means free.  In ten seconds you can get a Google account, 15GB for free and do absolutely amazing things on your phone, tablet or computer.  Google is what I call a benevolent dictator.  Sure, they could destroy the planet at any time.  They could ruin all of us.  They probably know what will happen a few years in the future better than anyone.  But they don’t.

    Chat GPT is an excellent illustration of this.  The “T” in GPT of course being a Google invention that the company gifted to the world.  Google could have released something similar a long time ago.  They didn’t.  The kind dictator knew it was too soon for humanity to handle it.  

    Apple shouldn’t even be on this list because it isn’t a tech company.  A giant yes, tech no.  Apple doesn’t innovate technologically.  It is a lifestyle company.  More importantly it is a staple of the American economy.  Much like the dollar.  Apple sells mainly in North America and doesn’t even bother to accommodate the rest of the planet in product design or support.  They make products with last year’s tech copied from everyone or from companies it buys out.  It makes “good enough” gadgets with the design language it has found works for it.  It’s financial success has nothing to do with any groundbreaking technology. Banks don’t run on Macs and neither does anything else of any consequence on the planet.


    So stop lumping “tech giants” in articles and opinions.  They are nothing like each other.  Sure there are product categories where they conflict.  But it is completely irrelevant.  The business models and the way they look at the world is so different that they should hardly ever be in the same sentence.  Some of us, the people that really try to think about technology, society and business care about these differences after all. Show some respect.

  • One tennis player just made fools of all of us

    One tennis player just made fools of all of us

    Did Novak Djokovic really contract COVID? A simple antibody blood test would tell us. But it won’t happen. Because we failed on a global scale to curtail forgeries and tricks that render pandemic controls meaningless.

    How easy is it to get fake proof that you have COVID? In most countries it is the same cost as any other COVID test. The person or lab doing the test is willing to write “positive” as the result. After all nobody can retrospectively prove otherwise, it may have been a false positive.

    How easy is it to get fake COVID vaccination proof? Harder but also not impossible. After a long battle with Greek authorities, my partner just walked into a pharmacy in Berlin at the airport and got her American (genuine) vaccination paper converted to an official European certificate. 10 euro and 2 minutes in total. Could she have done it with fake papers? Hell yeah!

    The tennis player just made public what we have all suspected from the first days of the pandemic. There is no way to force people to do anything unless you live in a dictatorship or an incredibly cohesive society. The country I lived in during the pandemic is a prime example of massive hypocrisy. Through a variety of measures the Greek government crippled the economy, destroyed most small and medium size businesses and managed to also kill an amazing number of people. Here is a small comparison during the time AFTER we all received vaccinations.

    That’s right. Greece had more deaths compared to its population than similar countries. Or even countries we made fun of as inept. Since all European countries received the same number of vaccines, this was a clear test of governments and Greece obviously has one of the most useless in this respect.

    An excellent example is the SMS lockdown measure. For a long time Greeks had to (theoretically) send an SMS before leaving their house. There were categories of reasons to leave the house and (theoretically) after receiving an SMS reply you had to show this to any policeman that stopped you during the curfew. In practice everyone went pretty much wherever they wanted. That is to say us law abiding people sent SMS and followed the lockdown rules but anyone not wanting to follow the rules, pretty freely roamed the land. Some people got fake excuse papers, others didn’t bother knowing that there was no way the police could stop and check everyone. Many of us law abiding citizens also bent the rules when “necessary” to be honest. Essentially let’s admit it, there was no actual rule being enforced.

    This is pretty much what was happening globally. At every airport I visited during the pandemic the measures are laughable. In every line I waited to show my papers or flash some “proof” on my phone I couldn’t help but feel certain that a good percentage of the people in front of me have forged theirs. It is too easy to do and too difficult, if not impossible for the thousands of unqualified people suddenly thrust into being pandemic police to actually perform a proper check.

    I only once got denied entry and that was incorrectly! A junior gate agent from Turkish Airlines incorrectly denied me entry to the airplane because she didn’t realize that the antigen test I showed her was in local United States time. I don’t blame her. She was alone, trying to figure out the complex rules for each country and receiving conflicting information from her superiors who are also trying to make sense of ever changing rules and regulations from every embassy in the world.

    And therein lies the problem. A globalised world with insufficiently globalized information. Europeans managed to coordinate their vaccinations certificates eventually but it is by no means a safe, complete or conclusive system. Because we are dealing with medical data, anyone can throw a spanner in the works by claiming it is personal and sacred. Google and Apple built something amazing at the start of the pandemic but nobody wants to trust them. Politicians can’t deal with uncertainty but that is what science should always thrive towards.

    Novak Djokovic raised a middle finger to all the people in the world who have been trying to keep a lid on the pandemic. He also raised the rally cry for antivaxxers and antisocial elements who can now scream “the king has no clothes”.

    Unfortunately they are right.

  • Greatest of All Time: the fun game for everyone

    Greatest of All Time: the fun game for everyone

    Moving the goalposts is an excellent phrase. Religions have got away with it for centuries. And in sport, when discussing who is the greatest player of all time is how the rest of us indulge. So taking basketball as an example, and the common “LeBron James vs Michael Jordan” debate, here are a few goalposts for you to use next time you play with someone:

    1. “Basketball was different back then”. True. Also irrelevant. Unless you are trying to prove a point regarding some particular statistic, in which case it is so self evident that it is pointless. 0-0
    2. “Jordan/LeBron had a better supporting cast”. LeBron changed many teams and built up different teams. Some use that against him with the “superteam” argument, most admit that the 2016 Cavaliers championship was one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports. In any case you have to give LeBron points for flexibility if nothing else. 0-1
    3. “Republicans buy sneakers too”. It doesnt matter whether Jordan actually said that or not, the fact is that he never had the audacity to take on politically divisive issues like LeBron. Nowhere close. Even if you despise him as an athlete you have to bow in respect for what he dares outside the court. 0-2
    4. It has also been well argued that the way that Michael Jordan was used as a token African-American athlete was in fact a form of white-washing that he was happy to go along with. LeBron on the other hand is always on the cutting edge of race relations, not letting anything slip by in terms of popular culture. 0-3
    5. “Even Michael Jordan, with his gambling habit and ultra-competitive, combustible personality, could only live up to the image when certain of his traits were ignored.” (Bleacher report article) In this age of social media it is pretty clear that Jordan wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. Too many dead bodies in the closet at a time when the NBA was happy to be more like Disneyland. 0-4 (Jordan was super lucky to get away with all he did)
    6. Philanthropy is an excellent example of their differences. LeBron from his early days was constantly making large and meaningful contributions to society, cullminating with his truly groundbreaking educational system which is being copied around the world. Jordan only recently started some minor give aways. 0- 5

    5-0 to LeBron and you can only really counter possibly in point No2 regarding the supporting cast. Which is partly why I haven’t even included backetball statistic type arguments. Some sneaky sportscasters simply wait for any LeBron average to come down below Jordan’s to make a big fuss. That is not how it works. At the equivelant number of games LeBron is still ahead in a number of meaningful statistics and/or it is too close to call.

    What is clear is that LeBron is a better rounded player, succesful in a number of roles with more rebounds, more assists and more of well everything that Jordan never bothered doing. Saying that Jordan was GOAT because he is higher up in one or another stat is like saying that Senna was the greatest F1 driver because he did really well in the rain.

    Many LeBron haters try to downplay his statistics by saying he simply stuck at the game longer. Which is an easy (and important) 6-0 in this scoring system. LeBron is central to the NBA and world basketball for more years in an active and energetic way. More than anyone else. Even as the NBA actively tries to build up more superstars in these past years as a central marketing strategy, LeBron manages to remain not only relevant, but a key part of every re-invention the league thinks of. Michael Jordan was crucial to the NBA at a particular point in time, helping it reach new audiences. LeBron has been doing exactly the same thing , spanning multiple eras. And for longer.

    And that is the easiest definition of a G.O.A.T. anyway you look at it.

  • How many people have cheated their way to the vaccine?

    How many people have cheated their way to the vaccine?

    The answer to this question is much more complicated than it seems. In fact despite its dreadful toll in human lives and economies, the pandemic is a wonderful opportunity to see societies, governments and well, all organized systems in our world, tested.

    Capitalism or globalization or whatever you want to call it was already in trouble before all of this. Demonized and blamed for all sorts of problems. But if it was all about money, rich people all over the world would just buy a vaccine, wouldn’t they? We all have a sneaking suspicion many of them have, but then what about…

    … the rule of law? Because sure, you could get your hands on a couple of doses but then how would you do the paperwork? I am pretty sure that in Greece thousands of people have been vaccinated much earlier than they had the right to. They jumped the line by using political connections even though they are 40 or 50 years old. This should be impossible because of…

    …transparency and digital accountability. It is after all a most valuable item, every dose of vaccine should be on a computer system and accounted for. But it isn’t. Nobody wants the bad press that would accompany news that 1000 doses expired unused due to a mistake and in very few countries do governments allow their citizens access to such data.

    Social cohesion has been tested in these conditions. You can bad mouth Sweden all you like about the way they handled the pandemic, but you have to admire them in this respect. Depending where you live you have a very different approach to what you consider “normal” in terms of somebody jumping the line to get vaccinated before you. In Greece we consider it almost normal but…

    …group country behavior was spectacular. The European Union flexed its muscles to protect its members. It seemed a wonderful move which would protect smaller countries. It backfired. Other, small countries in the region did better. But like with masks and PPE, the gloves came off when it mattered, global cooperation went out the window when it mattered. So efforts like the…

    …green passport are in great danger of proving to be a joke. If I live in a country where I can get vaccinated just because I know a politician or a journalist, of course they can also produce any fake document or assurance with any dates they like afterwards. It will only work within countries, for their own use, like they did in Israel.

    So I don’t know exactly how many Greeks cheated their way into getting the COVID-19 vaccination before me. I am pretty sure it is several thousand. But I am even more sure we will never find out. If you live in a country which inspires more certainty you are lucky.

    Hopefully this pandemic will teach us all the value of institutions we can trust.

  • Big Tech saves lives – 911 calls need to change

    Big Tech saves lives – 911 calls need to change

    If and when you are psychologically up to it, listen to some 911 calls. It is not just good indirect experience in case you are ever in a desperate situation but also heart warming to know that so many ordinary people can turn into super heroes when the need arises.

    It is also absolutely infuriating.

    As a person that always looks for the optimal solution to problems, I often find myself wanting to scream at either the caller or the operator. 911 (or 112 if you are in Europe, or other numbers in other countries) is an amazing feat of collaboration and government actually managing to do something useful which generally works well. The history of getting different carriers to maintain an emergency service is fascinating.

    But it is far from enough.

    In the recent pandemic we initially all discussed contact tracing. Apple and Google silently yet amazingly, produced a way to use our smart phones. They got little credit for it mainly because they are so afraid of the privacy backlash. But maybe emergency calls is a way for us all to reap the benefits of this work in the long term.

    Have you ever dialed in an emergency? Here’s what happens. Regardless of whether or not you have paid your bill, or even if you are near a cell tower of the company you buy service from, your route gets patched through to a central service. (In the U.S. it is a bit more complicated due to different State laws and histories with telcos.) Your phone sends your location to the person picking up your call to save everyone time.

    So why just location? Your phone battery levels might be useful for emergency services to know. But what would be really great would be access to your cameras. Oh, you are worried they might abuse it? Well listen to the lady that drowned in her car because 911 didn’t believe it was filling up with water. In fact why stop at your cameras, based on location in case of emergency, 911 should be able to ask bystanders’ smartphone cameras to switch on. You get an emergency notification and accept if you want. It would help in a lot of situations. All available data from smart phone sensors of the person calling 911 as well as people nearby could save a lot of lives and energy.

    One of the biggest problems with 911 calls is pranksters. Again, there are tech solutions. Because if the call also send a log of recent activity, emergency services could much more quickly and reliably assess if you are serious or a ten year old playing a bad joke. It could be with your approval, a message on your phone saying “we need to access your internet history and app usage to make sure your emergency call is valid”. If my kid was in danger or my car is half fallen down a cliff I am pretty sure I won’t mind them seeing whatever else I did today to prove I am serious.

    In the early days of the internet, I had suggested public use of banners on websites for announcements that are important to society. It would a kind of online ad tax to help find missing children or spread awareness for important topics which don’t get enough funding for communication. Maybe 911 calls can start something which brings back the concept of public dogoodery in a new way again.

  • Enemy at the gates: content marketing vs natural language (vs litigation)

    Enemy at the gates: content marketing vs natural language (vs litigation)

    I couldn’t help it. The English in the post was so bad I had to state the case. Sure, it only had one “like” and probably almost nobody had seen it, but all the same, it cried out “auto-translate”. The sentence structure was not blatantly incorrect, just…off. Sure, there were several actual mistakes, but they were the sort of thing that you would find in a Google search.

    But in a different context.

    This particular post was promoting a content marketing seminar or something like that. Some self-professed expert selling expertise. It was full of hashtags and the actual words were possibly spurted out by some paid service of other experts. The Facebook page had several thousand “likes” but the actual post just one which is fairly typical of this level of wannabees. But it is indicative of a larger problem.

    While we discuss politics and how, when, if and what the platforms should censor or not in public dialogue, this is what is happening in the background. If they make their algorithms so they favor tags, well, tags is what users will give them. Even Apple has started using tags on their YouTube channel. They won’t get high in search ranking without them. Plain and simple.

    So the post with terrible English attracted the attention of the owner of the page. He initially said it was correct, then said it might have been a typo. He then set his lawyer on me with threats to delete it. In a way this behaviour is entirely consistent with all the other things he has copied and pasted in order to present himself as an expert. That is how it works. A pecking order of ignorance. In the fast-changing world of social media, you can be an expert as long as you find customers with less knowledge or desire to keep up with the latest trends. Threatening to sue is standard operating procedure and we are all the poorer for it.

    For what is the value of social media if I can’t freely post on my wall and discuss with my friends without fear of litigation? Should we all end up using it simply as content marketing, ever promoting something and seeing it simply as yet another channel? Social networks should actively protect our right to write freely and without fear or the content will simply become pointless. Even public figures should have the right to discuss freely on social media with their friends.

    As well as all other problems, the actual language will end up being computer code compatible with whatever indexing mechanisms they use. Humans like to communicate. Stop policing it and enjoy.

    Oh well, at least he corrected his post the next day. ; )

    FOR THE RECORD: Ι flagged the comment where I was threatened with litigation to Linkedin but have not received an answer.

  • The Queen’s Gambit isn’t just bad. It is proof that Netflix has made us stupid.

    The Queen’s Gambit isn’t just bad. It is proof that Netflix has made us stupid.

    You will be extremely hard-pressed to find a negative review of “The Queen’s Gambit”, a Netflix series about a chess prodigy. So let me do my best.

    We are living in a cinema-free pandemic period with limited choices. Important major international releases are frozen, production of new ones restricted seriously. Netflix can sit at a table with the producers of the new 007 and ask for it at a ridiculously low price because it is going stale and they don’t have many options. So let me start another way around. How did I hear about the Queen’s Gambit?

    It was on Netflix’s reccomendations. We all know that it is a bad reccomendation engine but what other options do we have? Check it out on IMDB? That is getting worse every day as Amazon hasn’t spent time improving it in ages. First reviews? Always gloating for any old crap. So we take the bait, the Netflix promo on Netflix makes it look better than others, you see the first episode and then, well, the rest, because you are on the binge machine that is Netflix. Worse still, friends and family are also stuck in the same rut so we are not even cross checking. The Emperor has no clothes but, meh, let’s wait till the parade is over before saying it. And when you have invested eight hours on the parade of the mini series you are highly unlikely to admit it was wasted on mediocrity.

    I will go further than that. The Queen’s Gambit is downright insulting and dangerous. Take for example the topic of substance abuse. The way it is presented we are left with the impression that it is a) easy to control b) useful for chess playing and c) with no long term consequences. Or maybe let’s see how the series portrays a woman entering a male-dominated realm: a) everything is polite b) nothing particularly nasty happens to her and c) grandmasters lose to her and immediately offer to help train her for her next challenge. This level of lying is insulting to millions of women of that era and even today. Women’s rights organizations should be an uproar.

    In fact all the topics touched by this series are done in such a superficial way that it is problematic. Take the scene where she visits a hippy house to enjoy marijuana for example. It is the cleanest and least messy den ever shown on television to represent a hippy household. My daughter didn’t even understand the point of the scene as our heroine hoovered and tidied the place after a one night stand , also confusingly presented. This isn’t political correctness, it isn’t the opposite. It is just terrible movie-making that fails to really touch the audience in any meaningful way.

    The Queen’s Gambit is an insult to so many great chess movies, so many true chess stories, to the heroes that battled hate in the Cold War. It isn’t just bad TV, it has a negative impact. People won’t start playing chess because of it, they will start pretending to play chess for a while maybe.

    So my movie review would be like this: “If you are really bored with the pandemic in lockdown and have no access to anything else other than Netflix, if you want to mindlessly waste 8 hours of your life without learning anything of consequence, don’t miss it!”

    The serious social and technological problem remains: how will we fix recommendation engines? If we introduce a social aspect to them, can we as a society, ensure we hold ourselves up to any level of intelligent critique? Or do we just want to have fun? Well the Queen’s Gambit is not even fun.

  • Major scientific breakthrough on the virus from Greece

    Major scientific breakthrough on the virus from Greece

    Did you know that contact with silver kills the coronavirus? In fact, according to most Greek priests, it kills all strands of the virus, even the new ones, even the ones we don’t know much about yet. Because the spoons used in communion are silver. 1+1=101

    In case you haven’t visited a Greek church, Holy communion here is not like the rest of the world. We don’t do a wafer, biscuit or whatever else would make sense. No, Orthodox Christians in Greece share a spoon and drink from the same cup! And if you think that is ludicrous, wait until you hear the excuses they give for this. They range from “Christ kills all evil contained in communion” to “it is the alcohol in communion that saves us.” Fifty, a hundred or more people, gather on Sundays and basically exchange saliva based on the belief that this is an on-demand miracle, much like the spontaneous combustion every year in Jerusalem that gives us the fire to light our Easter candles.

    For Greeks this is normal. The Greek Orthodox Church pretty much controls the Justice system and government. Greek schools teach more of what the church demands than most other topics. They own enormous parts of the country, prime real estate in central locations and of course an entire peninsula which in direct contrast to every single rational argument remains only for men. The President of Greece, now a woman, can not visit a part of the country because …well, because the church says so.

    It is, of course, the right of every human to believe whatever they like. But in terms of public health, such irresponsible behavior that flies directly in the face of all available scientific knowledge is truly and monumentally criminal. The only miracle in this whole ridiculous farse is that the World Health Organization hasn’t intervened.

    The image is from a preposterous article explaining away various cases

    (Image link https://www.vimaorthodoxias.gr/peri-zois/i-theia-koinonia-se-eidikes-periptoseis/ )

  • I think Greta should cut her hair

    I think Greta should cut her hair

    No, I am not one of those that make fun of the girl. I admire her and fully support the effort. From a communications point of view, Greta Thunberg greatly helped both bring forward important issues and the idiots that oppose global warming initiatives with no valid scientific or logical counter-arguments. In fact, I have an idea to cut emissions immediately, drastically and effectively.

    Shave your head.

    In fact don’t shave it, use a machine, less waste. If the entire planet shaved their heads the benefits would be enormous. I challenge some universities to calculate them in detail. We start of course with shampoos and conditioners and all those other hair washing products, their plastic containers, moving them across the globe, disposing of them. Then there is the water wasted in hours of washing hair, the energy to heat that water. Chemicals, gels, dyes, poisoning us and the planet. Electricity wasted drying hair, straightening or whatever else you do to hair. Time and energy wasted going to hair salons and all other trips related to hair. If we run the entire chain backward and eliminate hair care, I am pretty sure we can shave off 1 degree Celsius from the planet just by shaving our heads.

    Starting with Greta.

    My head. (I am setting a good example for the rest of you)
  • Public Letter to Mr Joan Cheese of the Montipaithonz

    Public Letter to Mr Joan Cheese of the Montipaithonz

    That is not a spelling mistake in the title. That is very likely how the Greek Prime Minister might refer to you. Much like when you were eight years old at Peter’s Preparatory School, Weston-super-Mare, at your first public appearance you will wonder how he might have known that your family surname had once been Cheese. But no, it is simply that he is a total and absolute idiot. And it isn’t even funny.

    Your public appearance this year in Greece cannot be a coincidence. Please don’t die before September. We need you. When this government first appeared, it was Monty Python sketches that saved our sanity. As they demanded we leave the European Union we watched “what have the Romans ever done for us?” Again and again. Pretending it couldn’t be real, that they couldn’t be serious. You often say that slapping people with fish was so funny because it was silly. But that would involve a person of intellect actually knowing it is silly. Our government can’t tell the difference. We are living in a hotel run by Manuel and prime minister who doesn’t even ask “¿Qué?” as he is heavily sedated by drugs in order not to have public breakdowns.

    It cannot be a coincidence that you announced you are leaving Britain forever just at the time that most sane Greeks with an IQ above 3 also gave up on their country. It has become a natural filter of sorts. Anyone that can leave, leaves. What remains is a nation of Archie Leaches seduced by Wanda our magic prime minister, caught with our knickers down and suspenders, hapless and hopeless. You stole a three inch submarine and we live in a country where only one crooked politician went briefly to jail for commissioning a crooked real submarine and pocketing a few million for his troubles.

    Before your first TV appearance, at that studio at Shepherd’s Bush you write that you wanted to have a heart attack. Here in Greece we often wish for such a swift death “to have a nice quick heart attack and be done with it all”. But we didn’t. And you didn’t.

    I am not even sure that it would help at all if you organized a Secret Policeman’s Ball or put all your wits in the service of helping Greeks understand the utter stupidity of our political situation. When you first attended group therapy with Robin Skynner and his wife Prue you said it that “it made most film and TV drama seem pale, artificial and unconvincing by comparison.” Well welcome to Greece John, you are about to push it up a notch!