So Many Ways To Fake, So Many Fakes To Make

 

No this is not an electronic music DJ, it's a scientist doing science things: Christoph Gruber of e-Conversion Cluster of Excellence Nano Energy Group at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich - Jun 2024 [link]

There's so many different kinds of fakes. Some fakes are just for fun. Some fakes are made with the purpose to trick people. Some are simply so stupid they don't know they're fake. 

We're reaching back here, to October of 2023, because this story has so many levels:

“Real Water” that poisoned dozens contained chemical from rocket fuel

Oct 2023, Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/10/jury-awards-229m-to-victims-of-real-water-tainted-with-rocket-fuel-chemical/

Just here for the Reals:

A jury this week awarded $228.5 million to seven plaintiffs in their case against Nevada-based water company Real Water, which sold alkaline water tainted with hydrazine, a highly toxic chemical found in fuel for rockets and spacecraft (and which caused liver failure in people).

And there's more:

Two other defendants, Hanna Instruments and Milwaukee Instruments, which were alleged to have made faulty water testing meters that contributed to Real Water's toxicity, were also found liable for compensatory damages but not punitive damages.

But I can't help but follow this story, because this why it's so hard to talk about these things, and to explain to people why they're dangerous -- because not only do they not do what they say they do, the stuff they do to create their magical products is itself completely removed from any scientific basis in reality:

According to the DOJ's 2021 complaint and testimony in the trial over the last few weeks, Real Water processed municipal tap water "by carbon filtration, reverse osmosis filtration, ultraviolet light filtration, and ozone filtration." Then potassium chloride is added and the water goes through a proprietary "ionizer" apparatus to apply an electrical current to the water. [The ionizer is later described as "titanium tubes electrified with what looked like jumper cables used to charge a car battery."] This allegedly created positively charged and negatively charged solutions. Real Water employees would discard the positively charged solution and keep the negatively charged solution.

That initial batch of negatively charged solution would then go through the "ionizer" apparatus and be separated again. The resulting negatively charged solution would then be treated with potassium hydroxide (a form of lye), potassium bicarbonate (sometimes used in baking powders), and magnesium chloride (a salt used in nutritional supplements and for de-icing roads); this formed an "E2 concentrate" product, which, when diluted, formed their alkaline water product.

Environmental engineer and expert witness Issam Najm said that in the charged water, nitrogen gas naturally found in air could have reacted with water to form hydrazine (N2H4), or, during the electrolysis, ammonia (NH3) was formed first, before reacting with hydroxide to form hydrazine.

And let's not forget that the companies they paid to test their bogus product were in fact themselves bogus; you can't make this stuff up.

Chinese network behind one of world’s ‘largest online scams’

May 2024, The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/money/article/2024/may/08/chinese-network-behind-one-of-worlds-largest-online-scams

76,000 fake websites created.

That's all.

Finally, because we just can't tell anymore what's real and what's fake; is this article even real?

A fully edible robot could soon end up on our plate, say scientists

Jun 2024, phys.org

https://techxplore.com/news/2024-06-fully-edible-robot-plate-scientists.html

RoboFood - a project which aims to marry robots and food.

Robotic food could reduce electronic waste, help deliver nutrition and medicines to people and animals in need, monitor health, and even pave the way to novel gastronomical experiences.

"Bringing robots and food together is a fascinating challenge" 

For example, gelatin can replace rubber, rice cookies are akin to foam, a chocolate film can protect robots in humid environments, and mixing starch and tannin can mimic commercial glues.

"There is a lot of research on single edible components like actuators, sensors, and batteries" 

In 2023, Italian Institute of Technology researchers realized the first rechargeable edible battery using riboflavin (vitamin B2) and quercetin (found in almonds and capers) in the battery poles, adding activated carbon to facilitate electron transport and nori algae, used to wrap sushi, to prevent short circuits, and packaged with beeswax.

After integrating all components, scientists need to miniaturize them, increase the shelf life of robotic food… and give robots a pleasant taste.

via Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Laboratory of Intelligent Systems: Dario Floreano et al, Towards edible robots and robotic food, Nature Reviews Materials (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41578-024-00688-9

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41578-024-00688-9

So Fake

There's so much going on in the Fake sector that I just can't keep track; here's a few bits:

Author pulls software that used deep learning to virtually undress women
June 2019, Ars Technica

This is it. Deep learning, neural networks, generative adversarial networks, all that. We see now the world in the way it looked when the internet first started showing up in people's homes, but then all of the sudden, a phone could connect to the internet while you're walking down the street.

Deep learning is the robots doing things humans never thought a robot could do, and things we never even thought to ask for. It's absolute magic, and it's about to completely f--- our sh-- up.

Mona Lisa guest on TV? Researchers work out talking heads from photos, art
May 2019, phys.org

We can now extrapolate from photo to video. Is that what Mona Lisa really looked like? Does it really matter? It is astutely pointed out that unlike previous techniques, this one doesn't need 3-D modelling to make the leap.

And how?
"Lengthy meta-learning" that's how.

Facebook removes accounts from Russia, Iran for 'coordinated inauthentic behavior'
Mar 2019, Reuters

Has a nice ring to it. Reminds me of "Low-Credibility Information"

Anyway, the accounts were removed for their behavior and not their content. Let that be a lesson. Not sure if I see this as a good thing because it means that the screening algorithms are sophisticated enough to identify patterns of activity rather than simple vis/text content recognition, or it's a bad thing because it's getting harder and harder to get away with illicit activity on the web. Depends on which side you're on I guess.

Supporters in Trump Facebook adverts were actors
July 2019, BBC News

I think I'm not even mad.That's what stock footage is for, no? I mean, what is authenticity; Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas type stuff.

Melbourne fake Chinese beggars scam busted by police
July 2019, AUNews

Last but not least; it wouldn't be a report on the state of the fake without some of the old masters showing up.

From the same people who brought you the fake zoo with a legit dog purported to be a lion, we now bring you -- fake homeless people!

They are literally shipped from China to Australia to look disheveled and beg for money. I refuse to believe it but in the article they're talking about them clearing a few hundred dollars a day. Fake homeless people. It's one thing when you shave your head and throw on a saffron robe to be a begging Buddhist, but to be a part of an international underground beggar syndicate where you don't shower for weeks and lie prostrate on the ground, that's dedication.

*Actually, the more I look into this, the less funny it becomes. It's way more common than it should be, and devolves into maiming kids to use as bait; few people can resist giving money to a crippled kid on the street.


Post Script
On the Buddhist Beggar Syndicate and the geographic function of susceptibility:

"The men targeted out-of-towners, [Robert Hammond, executive director and co-founder of Friends of the High Line] said, adding that his office staff had a rule of thumb for watching the interactions: --Each second a visitor was willing to talk to one of the robed men was equal to 50 miles away from New York City that the person probably lived.-- New Yorkers would not give the men even a second’s worth of their time, Mr. Hammond added."
-The Fake Monks Are Back, Aggressively Begging
Christopher Mele, New York Times, July 1, 2016

Post Post Script

^Here we have a refined specimen. I can't tell you exactly what makes this jump out at me, but it screams "robot". Maybe it's a semibot, same difference, the purpose is to manipulate; there's something intentional about it. Maybe because people don't really comment on a message board in order to influence others, but to voice their opinion, and the two look pretty different. 

Notes
The spread of low-credibility content by social bots
Chengcheng Shao, Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, Onur Varol, Kai-Cheng Yang, Alessandro Flammini, Filippo Menczer. Nature Communications. Volume 9, Article number: 4787 (2018)

Here we analyze 14 million messages spreading 400 thousand articles on Twitter during ten months in 2016 and 2017.

May I Use the Restroom

It happened in a park in Portland. Some woman follows an "outdoor bathroom" sign into the woods and instead of relieving herself, is surprised to find a creepster waiting for her. Nothing dangerous happens, the guy just stands there staring at her, and she goes back out into civilization to find an indoor bathroom, or a "bathroom" as we call it.

The first thing that comes to mind is - Do we really need a sign indicating an "outdoor bathroom?" Isn't the whole outdoors a big bathroom? Do you need a sign for that?

Next, it's not that hard to make a fake bathroom sign. In fact, I think it's harder to find someone who would read this sign and follow it than it is to make the sign.

That's not to take anything away from our national treasure, the bathroom sign. You think I'm being hyperbolic. A tiny fact that goes mostly unknown - the bathroom sign as we know it was created in the 1970's in Bloomfield NJ by a graphic designer named Roger Cook, of Cook and Shanosky, as part of a competition put forth by the Federal Transportation Administration in response to the rise in global air travel. (See the collection of symbols here at the Cooper Hewitt website.)

The FTA wanted people who don't speak English to be able to navigate the US once they arrived, so they started this competition via the American Institute of Graphic Arts to get a set of navigational signs that would make sense to everyone, sans language.

Cook won the competition and the rest was history. Also part of this was the No Smoking sign. Not sure which one is more popular. Yes, it came from somewhere, and this is where. This is good one the next time you're trying to out-obscure your social media followers.

I bring all this up to point out that there is such thing as a "real" bathroom sign and a fake one. Cook didn't win this competition for the idea of the images alone, although that was important too. There are lots of other things to consider in the value of a a graphic design, such as line thickness, spacing between lines, positive space, negative space, line style, whether they are solid or dashed or fuzzy or clean or edged with right angles or curves, and the list goes on.

We, the general public, don't notice these things. We only notice that something looks good or doesn't, but we can't tell why. Cook knew why, and how, and so his version of the restroom sign is the real version, and all others are fakes. There are no rules about copying this, however, because it was never owned by Cook; he made it for this competition, and when he won, he gave it over to the Feds, so we all own it, and can butcher it and hold no accountability.

Woman lured by 'creepy' fake bathroom signs in public park
Apr 2018, KMOV

Fake Data Police

A fancy tin foil hat is still a tin foil hat.

Study claims vaccines-autism link; scientists find fake data, have rage stroke
Oct 2017, Ars Technica

It's that time of year to get your flu shot. Unless you're these two scientists, in which case you'll probably avoid the flu shot and take some homeopathic neurotoxins instead - because if you don't know you have the flu because you're brain is broken, then do you really have the flu??

On a serious note, however, it is really reaffirming to see that science works, and in particular because of that last step of the scientific method - peer review. I post this because it's a good example of a bad scientific article. It sounds scientific, and it looks scientific, with all those numbers and charts etc. But you can read right here the problems that many scientists have with it, and let it be a lesson on how to be critical when looking at science papers.

Beyond anything else, however, I would still take advice from Michael Shermer's Carl Sagan's Baloney Detector:

How reliable is the source of the claim?
Does the source make similar claims?
Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
Does this fit with the way the world works?
Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

Notes
Subcutaneous injections of aluminum at vaccine adjuvant levels activate innate immune genes in mouse brain that are homologous with biomarkers of autism
Dan Li, Lucija Tomljenovic, Yongling Li, Christopher A.Shaw
Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry
Volume 177, December 2017, Pages 39-54
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinorgbio.2017.08.035