RIFLE RANGE BOY

The Great Hack (Documentary; 2019) Netflix They say there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything comes with strings attached. When something as luring as a freebie on the internet in exchange for some seemingly unimportant information and filling up questionnaires of sweet nothings, it is not just public service. There was a devious plan to collect little data about users. Sure, these were useful in devising digital businesses like Uber and Food Panda and developing algorithms into human behaviour. Unfortunately, this familiar and predicable human behaviour is the very thing that think-thank groups used to influence people's actions. Cambridge Analytica (CA) and its parent company SCL (Strategic Communication Laboratories) are specially mentioned in this documentary to have been mining data from people with the help social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp.  CA and SCL employed psychologists help to improve advertising and influence public opinion. They furt...

Irumbu Thirai (இரும்புத்திரை, Iron Curtain, Tamil; 2018) Every now and then, one can get a fresh new idea popping up in Tamil movies and this is one. As usual, most often the filmmakers, in their best wisdom, would decide that the storyline should be so frivolous that the whole film will end up making not much for an impact, especially to those outside the purview of Kollywood fans.  This film acts more like a PSA (public service announcement) highlighting the general public the dangers of freely divulging personal particular and private data to social media and to people of authority.  The gist of the story is how loans supposedly released for purchases end up with third parties via interception at a digital level. In the greater scheme of things, these wastages are mere paper losses. To the poor debtors, it is a question of life or death; of loss of livelihood. As far the bank is concerned, the transaction is done and the borrower has to pay, no matter what....