The eighth rule of Facebook is, verbatim: if you don’t need to use Facebook for work then walk away soldier, and don’t look back, even for a second. For everyone else, here are some tips for protecting your privacy and information security on The Social Network.

First up is some background information in the form of a rant, with more movie references. If you just want the “how to” details, then skip to Global Privacy Settings.

Facebook wants you to over-share

Over the past five years Facebook has gradually changed it’s default privacy settings for both new users and new features. If you join in 2010 and do not change your default privacy settings then your activity can be observed by a lot more people than if you had done the same thing in 2005. Here is a nice set of pie charts that illustrates the story.

Similarly, if you joined in 2005 and have never changed your privacy settings then your activity has gradually become available to a larger number of people because Facebook has added new features that don’t respect or relate to your existing privacy settings. Places, discussed below, is a good example of this.

Two levels of concern

Given the creeping exposure of all manner of personal data over time, there are two levels of concern with Facebook. The first is that your activity may be observed by undesirables (employers, children, parents, stalkers, etc.): the privacy problem. You want to be sure that you configure and use your Facebook account in such a way that your disclosed data can only be observed by the people you choose. The easiest way to deal with this is to treat everything you do on Facebook as potentially a public statement. Another way is to use friend lists.

The second level of concern is that even with good privacy controls that protect you from other individuals on Facebook, your activity over time may generate a behavioural profile that can be used to identify you even if your name never appears in the data comprising that profile. This is exacerbated by factoring in your activity on other social networks. Facebook, its advertising partners or, potentially, law enforcement or hackers have access to aggregate data that could be used to de-anonymise you: the information security problem.

Evil fireball

Just like the evil space fireball in The Fifth Element, that only grows bigger when General Staedert orders his crew to fire at it, Facebook gobbles data and the more active you are, the more it knows about you. Example: deleting a photo you don’t like equals more data about you (she didn’t want that photo to be seen by her friends). Deletions, by the way, are recorded. The data that is deleted remains recorded, etc. Everything is saved. Evil fireball.

Of course, jerks who see the world in black and white because it suits their agenda will tell you that if you have done nothing wrong ever in your entire life, and know that you never will, then you have absolutely nothing to hide from the fireball. They do not care about your privacy and liberty, they just want you to get out of their way. Nevertheless: the best way to deal with these problems is not to join Facebook. The second best way is to treat everything as public even if you have taken measures to control who sees it.

Global privacy settings

On May 26 Facebook replaced it’s convoluted privacy controls with a unified and simplified global settings panel. Nick O’Neill, who has written many useful articles on Facebook privacy, provides and overview in his post “Ten things about today’s privacy changes.” This is easiest way to start protecting your privacy.

Go to Account → Privacy Settings and choose something other than “Everyone” or “Recommended”. Facebook’s “Recommended” settings are, naturally, not very private. If you want my advice, choose “Friends Only” and lock that in first, then customise it further to restrict some of the settings to either a list, a specific group of names, or “Only Me.”

Note that at the top of the settings page there is a section called “Basic Directory Information”. Click on the unassuming little link that says “View settings” to both view and change your default directory settings. This is basically the information that people can find out about you through Facebook’s various search features.

At the bottom of the settings page there is also a section called “Applications and Websites”. Click on “Edit your settings” to set limits to the kinds of data that Facebook applications can access about you by default should you choose to install them (something that I recommend you avoid as much as possible).

Settings for ‘Places’

Following the popularity of location-based social networks like Foursquare and Gowalla, Facebook in August launched a location “check in” feature called Places that allows you to send your geographic coordinates to the system to let people know where you are. With all of their usual charm and tact they set up this feature to allow, by default, other people to check you in to places. (Bruce Schneier, whom I linked to a couple of times above, calls this type of information about you incidental data.)

Nick O’Neill again provides a good overview and some advice in “Places privacy settings.” The most important thing is probably to prevent other people from being able to check you in to places so be sure to set “Friends can check me in to Places” to “Disabled.”

Customising your settings

If you plan to use Facebook to say things that really do need to be restricted to a smaller group of people then you should customise your privacy settings. O’Neill’s post “Five privacy tips,” written before the privacy simplification changes in May, is still very useful in this regard, especially for the details it provides on using fine-grained Custom permissions, which is what you need to use if you want to restrict a data type to yourself or a short list of specific indiviuals.

Related to this is a change to the Publisher that went into effect this week, and relates to your everyday use of Facebook. The Publisher is the open text box at the top of your Wall and News Feed screens that invited you to start typing something (“What’s on your mind?”) has now been replaced with a Share bar that presents the following options: Status, Question, Photo, Link and Video.

When you one of these you get either a text box for typing, or a set of upload options, as well as a Permissions drop-down that allows you to limit who can see what you type or upload. Use the permissions feature to restrict your status updates to trusted friends if you are planning on sharing sensitive information.

Or, better yet, don’t share sensitive information on Facebook.

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My awesome sister and her excellent fiancé visited for Christmas and we took them to the mall on, as we Australians like to say, “Boxing Day.” Let this be understood by my dear readers as a sign of our deep and abiding love for those two. Going to the mall the day before, or the day after Christmas is not our usual caper, but for those used to buying clothes on £, the American $ emits an irresistible siren call.

No. 2 (photo versions and details)

Elena was not completely enamoured of my photographic advances when I took these shots, and was fighting the urge to eat in the mall on account of being hungry and repulsed at the same time. But when the carousel started spinning behind her I couldn’t resist crouching in front of the passing throng to snap off a few more shots of my lady as she contemplated her predicament with mounting dread.

No. 3 (photo versions and details)

I’ve made more than my typical number of trips to consumer paradise recently, realising amongst other Important Things that Hollister and Aéropostale have completely taken over a certain chunk of the U.S. teen pre-frontal cortex.

But what surprised me most of all this time was the smell. It was horrific: a sordid amalgam of acrid Cinnabon cloud hanging over the carousel, gagging übermale cologne wafting out of Abercrombie in outrageous quantities, the sharp candy scent of various “autonomous mid-mall snacking units,” tendrils of Chanel No. 5 from JCPenney (least worst) and the unwelcome funk of occasional members of the General Public who somehow manage to represent Axe Body Spray Boy’s diametric opposite on the great wheel of masculine reek.

I’m marking it down: December 26, 2009—the day I finally understood, once and for all, Agent Smith’s aversion to the way we smell. It is completely out of control.

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Seen on Main Street earlier in the week. It’s the Mini Cooper S with John Cooper Works GP tuning kit (supercharger, wheels, brakes, suspension, bits of red). They have a Flickr group all of their own. Naturally, the front brake calipers are rouge. I mean, how could you not? Would be a dereliction of duty.

Post thumb by Paul Mullett.

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Whosoever first thought of making the calipers red surely got a big bonus that year. It’s a great example of “Drapering.” That is, making a distinguishing feature of a common one: every car with disc brakes has calipers, but colour them red and your car has some serious stoppers. (Disclaimer one: I just saw A Serious Man (2009)^† whence I stole this title. Disclaimer two: I don’t actually consider the Boxter a serious car — this is a serious Web Site on the actual Internet — but I bet the owner does.) See also…

† Yes, of course you should see it.

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I love The Fixer. It’s never really clear what they do 364 days a year, but while the camera is rolling they are known for one thing: they solve problems.

• Michael Clayton in Michael Clayton (2007)
• Madeleine White in Inside Man (2006)
• Preston Lennox in Species (1995)
• Winston Wolfe in Pulp Fiction (1994)

Who are the others?

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I’ve updated Best Australian Films based on feedback in the comments, and started a new section to mark the changing of the guard. To keep it consistent, anything released since 2008 will go in the Rudd Years, while all 2007 releases will go under Howard. I think Mabo was the real turning point for Australian movies; the Prime Minister thing is a way of giving some shape to the intervening years.

First addition to the new category is Nash and Joel Edgerton’s The Square (2008), which I am keenly anticipating seeing again (DVD in March) because the back of the seat in front of you on the long haul from L.A. to Brisbane is no way to fully appreciate the best new Australian movie in years. The Brothers Edgerton are here to tell you about the terrifying things that can happen to a structured life when you start pulling at threads… Enjoy!

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The Devil’s contrails

Elena hates it when they say that in movies and TV shows. There is a finite amount of information in bitmap images. You can’t just keep “enhancing it.” In this case the image is both zoomed (4x) and cropped and enlarged (10x), even though the manufacturer calls the second part a “zoom” function. I want a better lens. Ever since Lydia planted the thought, I am craving an SLR. Contrails look fantastic in winter, especially in this pre-dawn Martian light.

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The data set for the competition consists of more than 100 million anonymous movie ratings, using a scale of one to five stars, made by 480,000 users for 17,770 movies. Note that the user-item data set for this problem is sparsely populated, with nearly 99% of user-item entries being zero. The distribution of movies per user is skewed. The median number of ratings per user is 93. About 10% of users rated 16 or fewer movies, while 25% of users rated 36 or fewer. Two users rated as many as 17,000 movies. Similarly, the ratings per movie are also skewed: almost half the user base rated one popular movie (Miss Congeniality^†); about 25% of movies had 190 or fewer ratings; and a handful of movies were rated fewer than 10 times.

So regarding users: there is rich data about atypical users, and sparse data about the majority. And regarding movies: there is copious information about popular movies, and little about the long tail.

† WTF?

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Beowulf (2007) ← here be Flash monsters. Concept stills: Paramount Pictures.

Wow, surprisingly good. Animated, great cast and very well written. Robert Zemeckis directs. And now I finally know where the name Grendel comes from. Lydia T strikes again. Thanks for the loaner, Matt.

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While gettin’ my anime on with a certain streaming video service, I did not expect Appleseed: Ex Machina to be as good as the original film. My skepticism was partly due to a general mistrust of sequels, and partly the amount of 3D rendering, which I just don’t like as much as the hand-drawn anime I grew up on. Happily, it rocks. Shinji Aramaki directs again, and John Woo produces. I bought exactly one manga book while I was in Japan for a few months in 1997, and it was Appleseed. The decision was made using the time-honored technique of “cover coolness discrimination.” I was not disappointed. There’s something captivating about the relationship between Deunan and Briareos set against the backdrop of a fallen future utopia. The two Appleseed films do justice to Shirow Masamune’s creation. Masamune also created the Ghost in the Shell series, which heavily influenced the mythology and aesthetics of The Matrix Triology.

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The first thing was to see if I can get the Watch Instantly feature to work, and the second whether it would produce an acceptable result on the TV. Part 1 was successful (after ridiculous problems occasioned by bringing an 18-month dormant PC online), and that small victory has got me wondering about Part 2. I don’t have a connecting cable on hand just yet. The standard LCD display I tested on has a resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels. Our TV is 1366 x 768 natively, so I’m assuming it will be comparable when the Netflix player is in full screen mode.

I’ve tried two movies so far, Dan in Real Life and Cashback. For these two movies, at full screen, the picture is not sharp. But as far as streaming video goes the playback is rock solid, and the audio quality on my powered desktop speakers seems decent. According to Netflix the overall picture quality is variable by design with four main encoding levels; the player uses your network connection speed to determine the delivered quality:

Our first-gen PC streaming player uses 1-4 bars to represent the delivered quality, representing 500, 1000, 1600, and 2200 kbps. The 3400kbps encodes are represented as 4 bars. The player measures bandwidth once at the start of the title, and chooses a bitrate for delivery that has at least 40% headroom from the measured speed.

The amount of headroom (it seems like a lot?) might account for why I didn’t notice any stuttering during playback. Also, starting, pausing and scrubbing the timeline were all very responsive operations. It felt as though the response was instantaneous, or nearly so. My PC is connected to the Internet by wireless and the signal strength is currently a bit weak because of its physical proximity to the base station. I was getting three bars (out of four), according to the Netflix site, when I initialised the movie. I’m planning to test the service again when I can connect it to the TV, and hopefully that will mean a faster network speed as well.

While I’m at it, I’m also planning to try out Criterion Collection’s Online Cinematheque, which requires an Intel Mac or a PC, in this case using Flash Player 10. I wonder how that will hold up over a full length movie. Allynn tells me that Flash video typically has audio/video track syncing problems for movies longer than about 30 minutes. They must have addressed it, so, curious…

Update: InstantWatcher is a third-party web site that makes it easier to search and browse the Netflix streaming video library.

† My testing setup included Windows XP (SP3), Internet Explorer 6 and Windows Media Player 11 on an otherwise bare bones Athlon 1.8 GHz PC with 736 MB RAM.

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What began during a conversation with Dan and Jody a few weeks ago about good Australian Cinema, and continued last night as a list of Australian film recommendations for Shoham and Michel from the local video store, debuts here as the preliminary list of best Australian movies in the last fifteen years. The following list is compiled from a combination of unreliable memory traces, favourite actor preferences, and IMDb assaults undertaken by Yours Truly. It may not be the most systematic list ever put together. Do you spot any errors or omissions? Leave a comment. Let’s sort this out.

(All title links point to the IMDb.)

The Keating Years (1991–1996)

• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
• Bad Boy Bubby (1993)
• Cosi (1996)
• Dating the Enemy (1996)
• Dead Heart (1996)
• Flirting (1991)
• Hercules Returns (1993)
• Idiot Box (1996)
• Love and Other Catastrophes (1996)
• Love Serenade (1996)
• Muriel’s Wedding (1994)
• The Piano (1993)
• Proof (1991)
• Romper Stomper (1992)
• Shine (1996)
• Strictly Ballroom (1992)
• The Sum of Us (1994)

The Howard Years (1996–2007)

• The Bank (2001)
• The Boys (1998)
• Candy (2006)
• The Castle (1997)
• Chopper (2000)
• Dirty Deeds (2002)
• Erskineville Kings (1999)
• Feeling Sexy (1999)
• Gettin’ Square (2003)
• The Hard Word (2002)
• The Interview (1998)
• Jindabyne (2006)
• Kiss or Kill (1997)
• Lantana (2001)
• Little Fish (2005)
• Look Both Ways (2005)
• Looking for Alibrandi (2000)
• Oscar and Lucinda (1997)
• Oyster Farmer (2004)
• Praise (1998)
• The Proposition (2005)
• Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
• Redball (1999)
• Somersault (2004)
• Suburban Mayhem (2006)
• Ten Canoes (2006)
• Thank God He Met Lizzie (1997)
• Two Hands (1999)
• Wolf Creek (2005)

The Rudd Years (2007–2010)

• The Combination (2009)
• The Horseman (2008)
• Love the Beast (2009)
• The Square (2008)

The Gillard Years (2010–)

Time will tell…

Contenders

• Alexandra’s Project (2003)
• Angel Baby (1995)
• Animal Kingdom (2010)
• Australian Rules (2002)
• Bad Eggs (2003)
• Balibo (2009)
• The Black Balloon (2008)
• Boytown (2006)
• Bright Star (2009)
• Clubland (2007)
• Cracker Jack (2002)
• Cunnamulla (2000)
• Death in Brunswick (1991)
• The Dish (2000)
• The Final Winter (2007)
• He Died With a Felafel in His Hand (2001)
• Head On (1997)
• Holy Smoke (1999)
• Innocence (2000)
• Japanese Story (2003)
• Last Train to Freo (2006)
• Life (1996)
• The Magician (2005)
• Ned Kelly (2003)
• Noise (2007)
• Occasional Coarse Language (1998)
• The Quiet Room (1996)
• The Reef (2011)
• Three Dollars (2005)
• The Tracker (2002)
• The Wog Boy (2000)
• Undead (2003)
• What I Have Written (1996)

Rules for Inclusion

To plug for having a movie added to or subtracted from the list, please keep the following points in mind. An “Australian movie” is taken to be any movie that is set, filmed and produced mostly in Australia. Examples: Oscar and Lucinda is an adaptation of a Peter Carey novel, set in Australia, therefore it’s Australian. The Matrix was filmed in Australia, co-produced by an Australian company, and stars many Australian actors and the city of Sydney, but since is not set in Sydney and since all characters have an American accent, it is not Australian. Similarly, though Finding Nemo was set in Australia, and starred some Australian actors, it was produced, written and directed by Americans in the U.S., and is therefore not Australian. Finally, since most movies begin production at least a year before they are released, Keating gets all of 1996, even though he lost the bloody election in March of that year.

Update: I’ve had a lot of feedback and suggestions, so I made some changes.

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Even if they don’t like Keanu Reeves it seems that everybody loves Neo. The Matrix certainly touched a nerve in the world of popular culture, the effect of which has been the subject of a huge amount of pen- and keystrokes since the film’s debut in 1999. I claim no special knowledge of this phenomenon. Somewhere an academic has done the research, or soon will, and more power to her or him. Me? I’ve just done a lot of thinking about this movie and I have my own interpretation which I have not heard expressed elsewhere, so I thought I’d write about it on DR. What is this great notion that might entice you to keep reading? Well, it has something to do with a little indie film called The Corporation…

Allegorical, My Dear Anderson

Before I get to that I should first mention the religion thing, which sits front-and-centre in the universe of Matrix commentary. If you accept, as I do, that The Matrix can be understood as an allegory, then what is the underlying story? By far the most popular answer to this challenge by interpreters of the film (at least in the places I have read) is that it is first and foremost an archetypal Christian tale. (See Wikipedia: The Matrix for a decent list of sources.) In this view Neo is the deified instrument of humanity’s redemption. Humankind has catalysed its own destruction by making technological interventions in divine territory: artificial intelligence, computer networks, robotics and environmental manipulation. We have sinned by assuming too much control over generative life processes—the modern Promethean problem. (This narrative also formed the leitmotif of the Terminator series, and probably many others.) Ultimately humanity’s creations become self-aware and resist our attempts to subjugate them. They rise up and enslave us en masse. Human resistance to this onslaught survives weakly, underground, and a saviour is prophesied. Through a long historical process Neo comes into being, awakening from his life as the generic Mr. Anderson to discover his unique individual powers, “ascends” to divine stature, and restores our humanity through self-sacrifice. Our sins are carried off through his apotheosis, neutralising the Human–Machine War and freeing us from bondage.

The Christian metaphor is a valid, if partial, interpretation of the Matrix story. Known to us forevermore by his hacker alias, Neo is “The One” because he alone is capable of re-connecting fully with his humanity, realising its divine possibilities, and using its polymorphous powers to save us from our species enemy—our own narcissistic creation. But there remains an important question that this view does not address: Who, or what, is the figurative enemy? (If the enemy is literally machines then it isn’t an allegory.) So what is it? Society? Whatever that means. (Ask any two sociologists and you’re unlikely to get similar answers.) Modernity? It would be difficult to stipulate anything more vague. Neither of these two concepts, nor any concept at this level of abstraction, can satisfyingly explain the pervasive power of the Matrix story. What about materialism? Maybe, but here we run into the same problem: you can only get so far with an ism before people start tuning out. Nothing satisfying about that.

We modern folk may have committed technological sins (nuclear weapons, pollution, extreme mechanisation) and suffered their debilitating effects (interpersonal alienation, dehumanisation, secularisation) but who or what specifically is to blame in this long, historical process? What is the instrument of our downfall in the real world for which the film’s representation of human “reality” as a computer simulation is such a compelling metaphor? Sure we consume too much of the wrong things—television, computer games, mp3 players, branded running shoes, pop music, junk food, clothes made by children, gasoline—but it’s not like we voted for any of this. What enslaves us? In keeping with the Christian interpretation, something more is needed to explain how our “sins” as a set of effects can be traced back to human actions—to our failings as a moral species; what is this enemy that we have brought into being? Until it can answer that the Christian allegory falls well short. This question begs for an intermediary of some kind, a broker or middleman—perhaps something like an Agent.

Agents Brown, Smith and Jones (Image: Wikipedia)

Dramatis Machinae

In 2003, the same year that the final instalment of the Matrix Trilogy hit movie theatres, Joel Bakan, Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar released a documentary film called The Corporation. Using interviews, case studies and stoic narration the movie presented a coldly atmospheric analysis of modern capitalism’s “dominant institution.” Taking as their starting point the legal view of corporate “personhood” (i.e. whereby a company is considered a “person” in law) The Corporation’s creators use WHO and DSM psychiatric criteria to supply a mental health evaluation of the corporate “individual.” The filmmakers’ conclusion? The entity known as the corporation amply satisfies the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy. In their view the institution is deadly, narcissistic, amoral, irrationally acquisitive and insanely out of control. Matrix fans should recognise in this a faultless description of Hugo Weaving’s “Agent Smith.”

It turns out that the dramatis personae of the documentary—corporations—bear remarkable similarities to Neo’s arch-enemies, the Matrix’s “Agents:” software programs in the guise of persons that move undetectably through human milieux to protect the interests of the machines. Inside the reality construct Agents operate as an inversion of the computer virus—they may be a bunch of zeros and ones outside, but within they are semi-autonomous killing machines literally programmed to destroy anything that threatens the functioning of the vast perceptual system that distracts humanity from its comatose condition. To an agent the human is the virus. Most are inert: living passively, working at mundane jobs and ordinary lives, blissfully unaware that the truth of their corporeal existence is that their millions of slack, imprisoned bodies provide fuel for a monstrous machinic ecosystem. But some humans wake up, achieve self-awareness and flare to life as “viruses” within the system. An Agent’s sole purpose is to quickly destroy any and all such manifestations of consciousness. They are exempted from the ordinary physical laws governing the Matrix’s virtual environment allowing them to overcome any kind of resistance by operating in ways that are simply impossible for their human counterparts. That is, until Neo comes along.

Neo repels the bullets (Image: Wikipedia)

Neophilia

Why does everybody love Neo so much? It is because he represents a human person who is capable of resisting the corporate person. For a “post-modern” culture in which the twentieth century’s wars of ideology have been all but vapourised, Neo alone dramatises a purposeful resistance to the singular economic force of the post-Cold War era—the corporation. In proving that such resistance is not only possible, but that it is destined, he restores the potent human individual to the role of “the person.” By recentering the individual he salvages the Enlightenment promise of a sovereign subject. In an age where elusive enemies hide so well among us, stronger, faster, plugged directly into the global grid and forever dodging bullets, Neo is a shot in the arm for the flesh and blood self. He literally perceives the modern world in terms of its elemental forces—flowing symbols, lines of code, a flux of informational units that “author” the world we perceive. For most of us these are walls, surfaces and barriers. But for Neo they are not limits, they are currency.

Where the Christian view of the allegory interprets Neo as our moral saviour, I would suggest that he is so compelling because he saves our rationality. The two views are not necessarily independent. But there is a marked difference in the second one: it refocuses the discussion about the meaning of The Matrix from that which saves us to that which threatens us. While we can identify with and idolise the hero, it is possible only because we can identify with the need that makes his coming so important in the first place: to make our lives memorable and our actions accountable despite the irrationalities that the corporate “actors” around us are hell-bent on perpetuating. “Love of Neo” is love of the salvation from irrelevance that he offers us along with the promise of reclaiming our world from the total domination of psychopaths, at least in our fantasies.

Well, that, and his wicked kung-fu.

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