On March 21, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg wrote:

On March 21, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg wrote:

I want to share an update on the Cambridge Analytica situation -- including the steps we've already taken and our next steps to address this important issue.

We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you. I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it.

Here's a timeline of the events:

In 2007, we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps should be social. Your calendar should be able to show your friends' birthdays, your maps should show where your friends live, and your address book should show their pictures. To do this, we enabled people to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information about them.

In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends' data. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends' data.

In 2014, to prevent abusive apps, we announced that we were changing the entire platform to dramatically limit the data apps could access.  Most importantly, apps like Kogan's could no longer ask for data about a person's friends unless their friends had also authorized the app. We also required developers to get approval from us before they could request any sensitive data from people. These actions would prevent any app like Kogan's from being able to access so much data today.

In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies for developers to share data without people's consent, so we immediately banned Kogan's app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications.

Last week, we learned from The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified. We immediately banned them from using any of our services. Cambridge Analytica claims they have already deleted the data and has agreed to a forensic audit by a firm we hired to confirm this. We're also working with regulators as they investigate what happened.

This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that.

In this case, we already took the most important steps a few years ago in 2014 to prevent bad actors from accessing people's information in this way. But there's more we need to do and I'll outline those steps here:

First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well.

Second, we will restrict developers' data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers' access to your data if you haven't used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in -- to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We'll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we'll have more changes to share in the next few days.

Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you've allowed to access your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you've used and an easy way to revoke those apps' permissions to your data. We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it.

Beyond the steps we had already taken in 2014, I believe these are the next steps we must take to continue to secure our platform.

I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I'm responsible for what happens on our platform. I'm serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn't change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.

I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together. I know it takes longer to fix all these issues than we'd like, but I promise you we'll work through this and build a better service over the long term.

Chapter 1: Racism is alive and well

Well, yes, racism IS alive and well in the world. It has always been and perhaps always will.

Humans like to feel superior. To someone. Anyone. And we show it by treading on them. Many races have shown this propensity since time immemorial. From those marauding sailors emanating from Europe to colonize the world, to the Japanese who enslaved Koreans, to the Mongols who took over the entire Indian subcontinent - it has always been so. The Crusades were an excuse for a racist rampage of murder. The Holocaust was a racist rampage of murder.

I think of "racism" as being a particular form of "schismism", or any form of discrimination against "others". "Racism" comes in many forms, if you think about it. In itself, it is when one race discriminates against another. But, really, it is core human groupist behaviour to discriminate Us against Them, to the sole effect of making Us feel superior. We have always had it. "We can beat them up", is the most common feeling of superiority. "We can beat them up and enslave the strongest of them" was American slavery of Africans. "We can beat them up and kill masses of them" was Nazi racism against Jews. Less obviously "racist" are the Hutus' butchery of Tutsis and vice versa, Shia conflict against Sunni and vice versa. Indians - all of the same color, height and language - are deeply divided on this genetic schism we call "caste" now and piously called Varna before. Yes, even the vaunted Hindu scriptures had built-in-racism into the class system - but maybe more on that in a later post.

I don't want to muddy the waters by talking of "schismism" and annoying half my readers with Royesque invention of words, so I will continue to speak of "racism", because "collectivism" has been usurped as a socialist philosophy and perhaps because "groupwise discrimination" has too many syllables and too many letters to type.

So here is my thesis: that racism is built-into the human psyche. Yes, not yours or mine, but we see it all around us, don't we? We see sexism/misogyny on a daily basis. We see anti-LGBT behavior from cis (straight) folks everywhere. We see antipathy and animosity to people of other religions all the time; why? because Ours is the superior religion. But are any of these superiorities real? Are males really the better gender (I see examples to reverse that thesis everyday :-)? Is gay sexuality, or transgender dressing, really deviant - we see examples in the animal kingdom, so it is very likely natural. Is my religion really superior to yours? They were all invented by humans and should all probably go the way of Greek gods and goddesses - into history textbooks.

We humans enjoy these social discriminations and feelings of superiority. Until, that is, when we become comfortable, educated, well-to-do. Then, we begin to think and we appreciate that people are different. Period. And we enjoy the differences. At the least, we live with the differences. When societies get comfortable, we make laws against discrimination - developed countries have laws against hate crimes. The rest haven't educated themselves enough and keep old anti-gay laws. Some poorer countries actually make it illegal and criminal to be gay. But when our comfort begins to wane, when we feel threatened or under attack, we diminish to protectionist behavior, treating everyone else as lesser than us.

So get used to it. The 21st century will be seething with racism. And races aren't countries. Racists don't wear uniforms. They hide behind Brexit votes, cheer Trump for President, support jihadis who wreak bloody havoc in crowded prayer spaces. Get used to being told to go home where you came from, even if you were born here. Get used to saffron-wearing leaders casting Bharat Mata in the image of a evil-fighting goddess. Get used to not wanting to fly ever again because you missed the Istanbul airport bombing by just a few hours.

Let's wish each other the best of luck and hope we don't meet one of those haters down a dark alley. Rest assured, someone hates your kind.

I think....

... that the phenomenon of Outsourcing, although inevitable, does the world overall harm and slows down universal growth. Although my thesis is not fully enunciated here, the idea is that the outsourcees usually are already reaching beyond their technological abilities to implement the outsourcers' advanced demands. At the same time, enhancements to those technologies are not made any more by the outsourcers - after all, they can be supported by the less-than-SotA outsourcee. As a result, there is less natural evolution and improvements.

The phenomenon of Sanjaya Malakar

As a person of Indian origin, I am obviously agog with excitement about the Sanjaya Malakar situation on American Idol.

For those who might not be following the story, Sanjaya is a 17-year-old Indian-Italian American who is not a terribly good singer but has made it to (to-date) the round of 8 on American Idol. None of the on-stage judges like him very much, with Simon Cowell the most outspoken about his disdain -- and has been reputed to say that he will leave the show if Sanjaya happens to go all the way. But his fans seem to like his style, and they ignore his singing and they vote off much better singers. He deserves to have fans -- he does have a refreshing manner and is not a bad performer.

So what do I think? On one hand, he is the first desi on Idol's stage-segment (well, okay half-desi) so that is certainly historic and quite uplifting in a "we have arrived" kind of way. But I do wish I was more fond of his performances and could whole-heartedly get fanatical about voting for him and sending him even further up the AI ladder.

(See the youtubeclip of You Really Got Me below -- it embodies everything that is Sanjaya: his mediocre singing but excellent stage-presence, his fan-base (the 13-year-old fan is now quite famous) and the reaction of the three judges.)

The Sanjaya phenomenon is quite the lightning-rod for the media. Washington Post's "We watch Idol so that you don't have to" column has gotten tired of making fun of Sanjaya and now just wishes he would lose and be done with it. Comedians are having a field day with Sun-jaa-yaa. Both votefortheworst.com and Howard Stern -- who want to bring AI down -- are encouraging people to vote for him. Kimmel is quite rabid in his rants. Jay Leno brought on the Oakridge Boys to sing "Goodbye to Sanjaya".

And wouldn't you know it? Sanjaya's pretty, older sister Shyamali is getting some youtube and blog coverage as well. She is good looking and shapely -- a shape she does not hide. One blogger wants Sanjaya to keep winning so the camera will continue to show his sister and her ..er.. bouncy assets

So, I ask myself -- is this kind of "Desis have arrived" good for the desi image? I wonder if the desis in Britain felt the same way when Shilpa Shetty won Celebrity Big Brother -- probably because everybody felt sorry for her because she was getting shellacked by those bratty white trash competitors. Wouldn't it have been better for us to have arrived with a bang than as a joke? Like that stupid Bride & Prejudice movie that was coming-out of Bollywood into the Hollywood market and made a mockery of the whole artform.

Tonight we watched Sonu Nigam in concert in Constitution Hall. It was amazing!!

We had great seats in orchestra -- 8th row, the first row after the aisle, middle of the row seats. Lots of legroom and a fantastic view of the stage, smack in Sonu's face. Venky, Rama and her sister accompanied Mona, Meena and I. We didn't get any pictures because they weren't allowing cameras into the theatre. (Some people snuck theirs in, though, and there were enough camera-phones around that I seem to have been the only shmuck to have listened.)

It was an energetic concert with Sonu dancing all over the stage, hair flying everywhere and singing in his, er... Sonu voice. He sang all the songs one could have wished for (except "Good Morning, India" which I kept yelling for at the top of my voice, but he didn't want to sing it). He started the night with Suraj Hua Maddham and ended with Kal Ho Na Ho with all the favourites like Saathiya, Main Hoon Na, even Let's Chill in the middle.

He kept saying how he had almost not come to Washington because there were people who tried to dissuade him. But he said that the audience was so good that he was glad he didn't listen to those who said that he was cutting other people. We didn't get it for a while but then Meena said that Himesh Reshammiya was coming in September and perhaps Vijay Taneja's people were concerned that Sonu's concert would cut into HRs' ticket sales. Well, let me take this opportunity to assure whoever cares to know that Sonu's concert did not have any affect on our going to the Reshammiya concert. We wouldn't dream of going to a Himesh concert. I don't suppose anyone with the kind of musical sense to attend a Sonu concert would be seen dead in the noise of a night of HR music.

He brought two vocalists with him -- Sowmya Raoh is a good singer; no Alka Yagnik, but nice. An older gentleman came after the intermission and sang three Rafi songs. He was good. I will try and find out his name and remember it. [Later: I just discovered that the "older gentleman" whom Sonu introduced only by name is Agam Kumar. Agam Kumar Nigam. Sonu's father. Now I know why Sonu was such a Rafi fan -- his dad's rendering of mohabbat zinda rahti hai was second only to the original.]

We went on a summer vacation to India in 2006. We went to Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Rajasthan -- where we were dreading the summer. Funny thing: in many areas, the weather was cooler than in DC!! But Delhi did take the cake. When we landed in Delhi once, it was 104 degrees at 10 pm!

Rajuda organized a Traveller tour of a few cities in Rajasthan. That's when we saw a peacock out wooing some peahens. Man! If I was a peahen, I'd fall for this guy, wouldn't you? In fact, even the cow that was hanging around looked interested. if you want to see more photos of this trip, check out the albums on picasaweb.

Ok, so I haven't done anything at all in this space since I got this spot in blogdom. I have had nothing to be really opinionated about... Until now.

I find that as we get more and more enmeshed in technology, the technology pisses me off.

1. In restrooms, we give eyes and brains to our urinals. Yes, we longer have to put our hands on surfaces touched by others' unwashed hands, but can it be THAT hard to stop the darn thing from thinking I have left and flushing me as I am still standing there? And what's with the faucets that refuse to come on even when I am waving my hands franctically to catch their pea-brained attention?
2. I was smoking on the pavement outside work the other day when we were startled with petulant shouting from near the corner trashcan. Quite shabbily-dressed, a man was rummaging through the garbage, intermittently flailing in the air while he spoke furiously and unintelligibly. I assumed he was a homeless nut and was about to turn away when the man pounced on something with a cry and victoriously held up a sheaf of paper and a can of something, crying "I got it! I got it!!" He turned and grinningly walked away. In his ear was what looked like a bluetooth device.
   I used to think that the difference between the poor and the rich people on the streets was that when they raved, they either did or didn't have a thingummabob in their ear. Now, even that line is blurring. Geez!

Is Blogging the next big thing? Like email was the last big thing? (Well, the Web sort of crept into the realm sometime in the middle, but does anyone remember when the Web was new?)

This is my first attempt at creating a hosted Blog, so let's see how this goes...