Radical Software

Course evaluations for New School classes are now live.

Unfortunately, student course evaluations have been shown to be heavily biased, most notably against women and people of color [1, 2]. I ask you to please keep this in mind when completing your course evaluations for all your courses this semester and in the future. Nevertheless, they remain a crucial component in how faculty are evaluated and how all of us at this university collectively labor toward improving our learning community, so I ask you to please give them your time and serious attention.

You should be able to find your evaluations through Canvas, or by going to my.newschool.edu, clicking on “Academics”, and clicking the big red button that says “Complete your course evaluations.” I believe clicking here should take you there directly.

Remember that your responses are completely anonymous, and that I will only be able to see the results after grades are submitted.

One of the items I've asked you to prepare to discuss next week is "Hackers," the 1995 film directed by Iain Softley starring Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Jesse Bradford, Matthew Lillard, and Lorraine Bracco.

In spite of some corny elements, the film has some really interesting mid-90s era digital, code, and hacker aesthetics. And while it definitely has a "Hello, fellow kids" vibe at times, in other ways I think it is really well-researched and has smart vocabulary and depictions. In any case, I'm sure it will give us all a lot to think about and discuss regarding the shifting image of the hacker in society over the last several decades.

The film is linked from the schedule page, and you can watch it any time you'd like. But I thought it'd be convenient and maybe a little fun to organize a shared viewing experience. So:

I'll be streaming the film over Zoom on Sunday, Oct 10, at 7pm. Zoom link

This is open to all, so feel free to share the Zoom link and invite friends, roommates, or anyone to join us.

In case you didn't see the news, today Apple announced a patch for a "zero-day" vulnerability that exists in all versions of Mac OS software: desktop and mobile. This was announced in the New York Times, Gizmodo, and elsewhere.

"Zero-day" in this case refers to an old term from bulletin-board (BBS) culture in which "zero-day" software was that which one could obtain before its official release, i.e. by hacking into the software vendor's system. Often when security flaws such as these are known, a patch already exists for the affected systems. In that case, systems are vulnerable only when they have not installed the most up-to-date software patches. But in cases such as these, the problem is made known before any known solution exists, so in another sense of the term, the software vendor has "zero days" to fix the problem.

Well today Apple announced a fix. They have allegedly been working on the problem since it was widely announced on Tuesday. And the vulnerability seems to have been present in systems at least since March. This was a particularly nasty type vulnerability known as "zero-click", because the user does not have to do anything at all to be infected — no need to install infected software or even to click on a phishing link. Chances are your device has not been exploited due to this issue. But it would be unwise at this point not to apply the security patches from Apple as soon as possible. The New York Times piece has instructions for how to update. But the process is simple: on iOS (phone, watch, tablet) click Settings, then General, then Software Update, and follow the instructions there. On MacOS (desktop), click on the Apple menu (top-left corner) then click "About This Mac", then click "Software Update" and follow the instructions. On desktop, take care to only install the patches and not the macOS Big Sur upgrade — unless you're ready to install Big Sur, which might be time-consuming and may cause problems. Again: you only need to install the security patches, not Big Sur.

If anyone wants to learn more about this example, the company that created it, NSO Group, would be a fascinating case to share for your "Profile in Radical Software" presentation. Let me know if you're interested.

In more light-hearded news, a student shared this video with me this week: "Every programmer coding for the FIRST time", by YouTube user Mansoor Codes.

They wrote that this is what setting up their Twitter bot for the first time felt like. Wow, I'm glad that this was such a powerful experience for some of you! This kind of reminds of a documentary called "Clouds", which is all about coding and creativity. It is similarly melodramatic in some ways.

Technically, Mansoor's "Hello, World" program differs from the original C language version because he omits the comma and the newline character ("\n"). I'll forgive him the absent newline because the Python print() command, unlike C, includes the newline for you automatically. But the comma is a grievous omission. Kidding. (Thanks, Eli, for sharing!)

Next week on Wednesday, September 15 at 4pm, New School professor Shannon Mattern will be leading a panel of four people offering commentary on her new book, A City is Not a Computer which focuses on technology, urbanism, and "smart cities." Speaking will be Everest Pipkin, Ever Bussey, Jasmine McNealy, and Trevor Owens. What a group!

The event is being co-hosted by the Code as a Liberal Art program and the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

You can register to attend here: event.newschool.edu/acityisnotacomputer

And if you're look for some social media, here is a tweet from Shannon with some details, and an Instagram post from the Code program.

A rather perverse story in the news recently about a platform that allows people to create chatbots to communicate with deceased loved ones. This piece came out July 2021 but just showed up in my Apple News feed, probably because I had been doing chatbot-related Google searches in preparation for our class. The fact that this piece centers around one business makes me inclined to think it was likely placed by the company's PR team. The company in question was created around technology developed by Jason Rohrer, a computer programmer known for experimental games like Passage and Between. Much has been written about the fact that so many virtual assistants are given female personas (Siri, Alex, Cortana), which makes it interesting that this piece centers around a man creating a female chatbot. I wonder how a chatbot of the woman in question would have been different if it hadn't been created with text from her romantic partner but instead with text from a friend, family member, or professional colleague.

You can read more here: The Jessica Simulation: Love and loss in the age of A.I., by Jason Fagone, S.F. Chronicle.

Due to the severe flooding last night in New York City, and ongoing public transportation problems today, we will be conducting class today via Zoom. Please click here to join our class Zoom meeting at 12pm. Stay safe everyone!