This Connected World

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

(Who watches the watchers?)

In about 2002 or 2003, Don Rumsfeld and Tom Ridge were pimping Total Information Awareness as part of their anti-terrorism theatrics - and we jumped up and down on their heads for it, as any decent patriotic American should have done.

So the fuckers went private with it and did it anyway.

Fuckers.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Ask Help Desk: Cell carriers can use your web history for ads

Here is how you can opt out of their advertising programs that run on your personal data

When you signed up for your mobile plan, your carrier may have signed you up for an extra program that uses data including your Internet history to target you with ads.

I visited my own Verizon account settings and found that yep, I was enrolled in what the company calls “Custom Experience.” Not only do I have no memory of saying yes, I had no idea wireless carriers were in the business of peeking in on my activities and using that information to market to me. And my blissful ignorance works in favor of the company.

At Help Desk, we read privacy policies so you can save time. This week, Ron, a curious reader from Houston, inspired us to dive deeper into mobile carriers. I read the privacy policies from the three major wireless carriers, and my eyeballs are only bleeding a little. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have some less than great privacy practices hiding in plain sight.

Depending on the carrier, it can draw on your browsing history, location data, call logs and even app use to learn things about you and nudge you to spend more money on products from themselves or third-party companies. The good news is that you can opt out whenever you want, and we are going to show you how.

Are there other privacy policies you want us to check?

Send them our way at yourhelpdesk@washpost.com.

What data do they want?

AT&T has a “Relevant Advertising” program in which customers are automatically opted in, and the company draws on information including your browsing history and videos you have watched to help show you targeted ads. If you sign up for “Enhanced Relevant Advertising,” your device location and call history are also fair game.

Verizon has a program that works similarly. Customers appear to be automatically opted into its “Custom Experience,” which means the company can use your browsing history and data from your apps to help target ads. The company says it “makes efforts” not to target you based on any adult sites you visit, health conditions and sexual orientation. Thanks, Verizon. If you said yes to “Custom Experience Plus” at any point, the company can also use your location data and call logs.

In comparison, T-Mobile seems relatively tame when it comes to this information. It says it does not use any browsing, precise location or call history data for its ad program, but it can use your “mobile app usage” and data on video viewing, according to its website.

What if I never opt out?

According to the companies, staying enrolled in these programs will improve your experience by showing you more relevant ads. If targeted ads spark joy and you are fine with your cell carrier using your information to make money, you can stop reading now and pour yourself a lemonade.

But these programs may let not just cell carriers but also their third-party partners benefit from your personal data. T-Mobile states clearly in its privacy policy that it can share inferences based on your data with third parties. AT&T also leaves room in its policy to share your information, but a spokesman told me the company is not doing it, though theoretically it can start any time.

Verizon says that if you choose to stay in “Custom Experience,” the company uses data including your Internet history to put you into interest categories like “sports lover.” A spokeswoman said the program does not involve any third-party targeted advertising, but she declined to tell me whether Verizon shares inferences with outside companies.

As always, it can be hard to know for sure where your information ends up. T-Mobile appears to be the only carrier of the three with a public list of its third-party partners.

Can I change my mind?

You can opt out of these ad programs any time. AT&T customers can opt out by signing into att.com, navigating to the “Consent Dashboard” and scrolling to the section called “Control How We Use Your Data.” Opt out of “Relevant Advertising” and check that you are not signed up for “Enhanced Relevant Advertising.”

Verizon customers can opt out of the “Custom Experience” program by going to their privacy settings in the My Verizon app. While you are there, you should also check that you have not said yes to “Custom Experience Plus.”

T-Mobile says customers can opt out by opening the app, going to “Advertising and Analytics” then “Use My Data To Make Ads More Relevant To Me.” Turn the toggle off so that it turns gray. On the website, go to “My Account” then “Profile.” Click “Privacy and Notifications” then “Advertising and Analytics,” then “Use My Data To Make Ads More Relevant To Me.” Turn the toggle off.

Two of my Washington Post colleagues tried to opt out on T-Mobile accounts, and both got an error message saying it “looks like we got our wires crossed.” When they tried via the website, it froze or showed an error message. A T-Mobile spokeswoman said the company had not heard of any problems but was working to address the issue. Keep in mind that opting out does not necessarily stop carriers from collecting your data or marketing their own products to you.

Should I be worried?

I would recommend opting out of all these ad programs. It is tough to determine exactly what personal information these companies are sharing with whom, and it is shady for the companies to opt you in by default.

It will be tempting for any company with as much data access as a cell carrier to make some money off your information. What matters is that customers are given clear descriptions of how our data is monetized and that companies stop opting us in by default.

hat tip = WT

On Losing The Bugs

I'm a gadget freak. I especially love tech that marries two or more disparate things to synthesize something new.

What I don't particularly like is when the nerds (god love 'em) start thinking we can actually come up with some new technology in literally a few decades that can replace what Mother Earth has given us over literally millions of millennia.

So while I'm not willing to dismiss all of this as wishful thinking - I actually wish the nerds every success - I won't stop thinking we'd best be addressing the problems of over-population and fouling the nest more directly - and very rapidly.

Wired:

What Will Replace Insects When They're Gone?

The collapse of the insect population could unravel ecosystems. Scientists wonder if robots and drones could stop the gap.

WHAT, THOUGH, IF we don’t act quickly enough? If the fall of insects’ tiny empires causes whole ecosystems to unravel, toppling previously solid certainties about the way our world functions, what then?

It’s easy to foresee how diminishing supplies of certain foods and crashing wildlife populations will heap cascading suffering on the poor and vulnerable, given the lopsided nature of societies, and perhaps even stoke embers of resentment and nationalism as foundational resources become scarcer. It’s also reasonable to anticipate that we will reflexively grasp for a technological fix to the mess we’ve created.

Expectation is already being ladled upon projects, still in their infancy, to create genetically modified pollinators resistant to disease and chemicals or to fashion machines topped with tiny cannons that fire pollen at plants and therefore address some of the causes of the climate collapse. Other scientists have turned their ingenuity to replicating the form and function of winged insects—​researchers at Harvard University have devised diminutive robots that can swim before exploding out of the water into flight, using soft artificial muscles to harmlessly bounce off walls and other obstacles. Counterparts in the Netherlands have taken inspiration from the humble fruit fly, re-​creating the motion of their rapid wing beats in a robot with wings made of mylar, the material used in space blankets. The Delft University of Technology’s DelFly can hover, flip 360 degrees around pitch and roll axes, and accelerate to the speed of a human sprint within a few seconds.

Matej Karásek, a researcher working on the project, says he’s long been fascinated by the agility and spatial awareness of insects, even before he started working on the DelFly. “Whenever I walk outdoors and I see an insect I think ‘how are they able to do this?’ ” he says. Karásek’s robots aren’t an exact substitute for a fly or bee—​for one thing they have a 33-​centimeter (13-​inch) wingspan, making them 55 times the size of a fruit fly—​and the conundrum of carrying large pollen payloads without losing maneuverability means they aren’t quite ready to hum alongside the real thing. But there is confidence that day will arrive, drawn from the certainty many of us have that technology will eventually solve all of society’s intractable ills.

Perhaps the answer will be an army of larger hexacopter-​like drones, such as the fleet operated by US company Dropcopter, which autonomously pollinated an orchard of apples in New York for the first time in 2018. Or maybe the answer is a sophisticated robotic arm, which, using cameras, wheels, and artificial intelligence, can locate and hand-​pollinate plants without getting tired or bored like human workers. The US Department of Agriculture is funding one such effort, which, according to one of its leading experts, Manoj Karkee of Washington State University, promises to be a “genuine replacement for the natural pollination process” and is even “expected to be as effective or even more effective than natural pollinators like bees.”

Entomologists are instinctively disdainful of any suggestion that pollinating insects could somehow be matched by technology, even on a basic logistical level. Biologist Dave Goulson points out that bees are rather adept at pollinating flowers, given they’ve been honing their skills for around 120 million years, and that, besides, there are around 80 million honeybee hives in the world, each stuffed with tens of thousands of bees feeding and breeding for free. “What would the cost be of replacing them with robots?” Goulson asks. “It is remarkable hubris to think that we can improve on that.” To be fair to those devoted to appropriating the characteristics of insects for our use, there is widespread awe at the evolutionary brilliance of flies and bees and scant joy at the crisis that has brought us to the point where the meanderings of academic curiosity are being seized upon as possible salvation from our degenerate ways. When we consider technological solutions, we should perhaps spend less time judging the supply and more time judging the reasons why there’s demand in the first place.

Still, a less abusive association with insects will have to include some new ideas. If we are to intensively farm smaller areas in order to surrender space to the wilds, the advance of vertical farming, with year-​round crops stacked in warehouses and shipping containers using LED lighting and hydroponics instead of soils and pesticides will potentially work well teamed with robotic pollinators if the original insect version demurs from the task.

Western societies may also have to grapple with the counterintuitive concept of eating insects as a way of saving them. The vast tracts of land we’ve turned into biodiversity deserts are in many cases not even directly feeding people—​a third of all viable cropland is used to produce feed for livestock, which themselves take up a quarter of the planet’s ice-​free habitat. Mealworms and crickets, both excellent sources of protein that can multiply to enormous numbers in tight spaces, are a less destructive alternative to traditional Western diets and would help ease agricultural-​driven pressures that blight insects, such as climate change, chemical use, and land degradation. “There are far fewer environmental problems when you eat insects. They are also delicious,” says Arnold van Huis, a Dutch entomologist who has dined on 20 species of insects, his favorites being roasted termites and locusts, deep-fried and served with chili.

One day, perhaps robot bees could help prop up our food supply, and a revolution in the way we eat could help slow the accelerating ruination of the world’s glorious archive of life. But our measures of success in averting the insect crisis should be set a little higher than that. After all, we aren’t going to witness the last insect blink out, as we will with the final northern white rhinoceros or Bengal tiger. Whatever further cruelties we inflict, there will always be insects somewhere, crawling on a windowsill plant box in Chicago, nibbling at the edge of a rice paddy in Vietnam, scurrying away from flames licking at gum trees in Australia.

The tragedy will be how impoverished we will become, environmentally, spiritually, morally. Bumblebees, it has been discovered, can be taught to play football, will give up sleep to care for their hive’s young, and can remember good and bad experiences, hinting at a form of consciousness. The violin beetle is remarkably shaped, as the name suggests, like a violin, and side-​on is almost invisibly flat. The monarch butterfly is beautiful and can taste nectar through its feet. We won’t lose every single thing, but that is of scant consolation when such marvels are being ripped away. “The future is a very simplified global biota,” says entomologist David Wagner. “We will have bugs, but we will lose the big gaudy things. Our children will have a diminished world. That’s what we are giving them.”

A penurious existence, one where the marrow of life has been sucked from the bones of our surroundings, of a becalmed countryside save for the machines eking food from the remaining soils, may be one of the better scenarios facing us if the crashing of insects’ tiny empires isn’t heeded. The latest research shows that the loss of bees is already starting to limit the supply of key food crops, such as apples, blueberries, and cherries. Insect-​eating birds are now declining not only in the featureless fields of France but even in remote parts of the Amazon rainforest. Many insect populations around the world are falling by 1 to 2 percent a year, Wagner and colleagues confirmed recently, a trend he describes as “frightening.” It can, and almost certainly will, get worse. This catastrophe will plunge to some sort of nadir, although we do not appear to be close to that point yet. We’re still on the downward slope, to somewhere.

Tech Stuff

Just Have A Think - New tech

And also too - China may be hoarding lithium in order to drive up the price so its Sodium-ion technology can be more competitive when they release it. (just a guess)

Today's Nerd Stuff

May the fake lord bless you and keep you, you glorious nerds.

There's always a pretty good argument to be made against spending so much money on things like space exploration when there are so many pressing needs here on the ground. But these projects can actually make us focus our attention more on cooperative endeavors, and make us a little less intent on blowing each other up.

They can also make us more cognizant of our shared humanity, and the need to support crazy ideas like education as a way of lifting people out of the cycle of ignorance poverty and crime, because if we want civilization to continue, we need more folks concentrating on building things up instead of burning them down.

Making this amazing science-y thing work necessitates the development of new materials and new techniques, and that means that some of the engineering itself has to be invented &/or discovered as they go.

We won't know right away how the world will benefit from all of this, but we're bound to see some really astounding new things for everyday use in the not-too-distant future - assuming of course, we don't let our politics fuck it all up for us.

🤞🏻

Ed Note: Just the part about figuring out Lagrange Point 2 - I had no idea such things even exist. "Like little parking spots in space". Thank you, nerds.

The James Webb Telescope:

Today's Tech Thing

Remote robotic surgery. I think I can be both exultant and a little scared about this.

We Should Try It

One of the things we have to understand is that we generally don't have big problems with the actual quantities of the stuff we need - we're just not all that good at distribution.

And I guess more accurately, we're a little too good at identifying - and sometimes creating - choke points, and then battling for control of those choke points.

Anyway, building pipelines to carry water from the oceans to people inland seems like something we should be studying. Not that it's automatically a good idea to fuck with the nature of things, but if we're going to have a chance at sustaining ourselves in the long term, we'd best be gettin' with the program - even if it turns out not to be a good thing (there's always the problem of "waste & by-product"), at least we'll have a decent shot at making an informed decision.

Reporting on proof of concept, and field testing the real gizmo at Wired:

What’s inside this giant ‘solar dome’ coming to Saudi Arabia
Middle East water plants pose a threat to sea life. But this desalination plant hopes to harness some serious brine power to deliver H20 more sustainably.

Malcolm Aw’s quest to create fresh water using the power of the sun started out with two salad bowls.

It was the early 1980s, and the entrepreneur was sitting on his balcony on a bright, sunny London day. Pondering the power of the rays beaming down from our star 150 million kilometers above his head, Aw conducted an experiment that wouldn’t be out of place in a high-school science class.

He placed some saltwater in a salad dish, with another, larger bowl on top. After a while, somewhat unsurprisingly, some of the salt water evaporated and condensed, gathering in a tray below.

It wasn’t exactly a eureka moment. But it did set Aw’s mind racing as to how such a basic principle could be used on a grand scale. And, almost 40 years after that improvised experiment, he is trying to make this a reality in the Middle East.

It’s no secret that the world’s looming water crisis affects this region more than most. According to the World Resources Institute, 12 of the 17 countries facing “extremely high” water stress are in the Middle East and North Africa.

The lack of natural water resources in the Arabian Gulf, especially, has led to some expensive, and highly polluting measures. The Gulf has the dubious honor of being the world’s “leader” in desalinated water, producing 40 percent of the world’s total supply, according to a study in early 2020. Saudi Arabia—home to the world’s largest water desalination facility at Al-Jubail, and which is expected to invest $80 billion in similar projects over the next 10 years—is responsible for about a fifth of the world’s total output.

Desalination plants spew out a combined 76 million tons of CO2 per year, with emissions expected to grow to around 218 million tons by 2040 if no action is taken, according to Abu Dhabi sustainability initiative Masdar. Yet they also pose a specific danger to marine life, thanks to the salty water that gets pumped back into the sea, warns Leticia Reis de Carvalho, coordinator of the UN Environment Programme’s Water Management Branch.

Waste brine from desalination can limit the growth of marine organisms, increase seawater temperature, and lower the levels of dissolved oxygen, causing further harm to aquatic life, Carvalho says.

“Hot and highly saline brine associated with desalination facilities, a range of pollutants, high energy use, and associated repercussions including carbon emissions, represent… increasing environmental threats,” she adds.

It is a problem Malcolm Aw thinks he can solve. After his balcony experiment, Aw became consumed in other projects. But the entrepreneur returned to the idea in 2000, forming a company called Water L’eau—a pun on the English and French words for “water”—and which later became the somewhat less playfully named Solar Water, a UK-based company looking to deliver “carbon neutral” desalination.

Developing the salad-bowl desalination concept was “not rocket science,” says Aw—but still took many years. It was accelerated by an association with the UK’s Cranfield University, where a proof of concept was developed over the course of six months in collaboration with researchers and students.

The bowl will be much bigger this time. Imagine a sphere formed by a dome extending 25 meters into the air, which covers a cauldron extending a further 25 meters into the ground. Solar Water envisages seawater being transported inland via aqueducts topped with glass that, under sunlight, would warm the water. This would then feed into the cauldron, where it would be superheated thanks to energy feeding down from the “solar dome.” The glass-and steel dome would itself be heated using concentrating solar power (CSP), with more than 100 solar reflectors around the structure directing the sun’s energy onto the frame. After the salt water evaporates, it condenses as freshwater as it is piped to reservoirs.

Although similar technology has been used to generate electricity—typically by generating heat to create steam, driving a turbine—this is one of the first to use it directly for desalination. Yet Aw downplays the sophistication of the tech involved. “Basically what we have is a huge kettle,” he says. “You can’t get more simple than that: We have a big kettle boiling water, and producing 30,000 cubic meters per hour.” There is a little more to it than that. The mirrors surrounding the dome have to be adjusted to maximize efficiency. “It’s like a sunflower—it’s got to follow the sun,” says Aw. “Even though it’s a very simple thing, there has to be precision.”

The problem of leftover salt remains. Aw says Solar Water’s system allows for the byproduct to be drained away to tanks, which can then be sold on to, for example, battery producers.

Some have expressed reservations about the feasibility of the design, as well as some of the projected production costs. One estimate was 34 US cents per cubic meter of water produced—significantly lower than desalination plants using reverse osmosis methods. The solar dome is yet to be tested on an industrial scale.

But that is going to change. Neom, Saudi Arabia’s ambitious $500 billion country-within-a-country currently under development, said in January it had signed an agreement with Solar Water to pilot the first ever solar dome. The initial plan is for a 25-meter desalination sphere, followed by three more of between 50 and 80 meters, says Aw. Work on the first plant was expected to be completed by the end of this year, although the announcement was made before the full extent of the coronavirus pandemic was known.

Solar Water also says it has signed a contract with a Jordanian mining company, and hopes to have several plants under construction by the end of the year.

The water produced could be used as drinking water—although further treatment would be required—but Aw sees a major use as being in desert farming and irrigation.

“We can build miles of canals into the middle of the desert, and turn the desert green,” he says. “We can reverse climate change. The only thing we need is water… We can make the desert blossom.”

Aw believes solar technology could replace traditional desalination plants—but that would not, of course, happen overnight.

“We got out of the Stone Age, but not because we ran out of stones. So we can get out of fossil fuel age by going straight on to solar power,” he says. “There are 18,000 desalination plants across the world. If we can replace all of them in due course, can you imagine how healthy the ocean would become? Because at the moment, what they are doing is horrible.”

Supplemental Reading - at Britannica: What's in sea water?

Today's Reddit

Iron Man is real

Who's Listening?

Everybody.

Paranoia's a real thing, and sometimes for real reasons. Cuz hey - I may be paranoid, but that don't mean nobody's out to get me.

WaPo: (pay wall)

The Take-Aways:

Military-grade spyware leased by the Israeli firm NSO Group to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and the two women closest to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners led by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories.

Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, a human rights group, had access to a list of more than 50,000 numbers and shared it with the news organizations, which did further research and analysis. Amnesty’s Security Lab did forensic examination of the phones.

1. Phones identified from a sprawling list: Thirty-seven targeted smartphones appeared on a list of more than 50,000 numbers that are concentrated in countries known to engage in surveillance of their citizens and also known to have been clients of NSO Group, a worldwide leader in the growing and largely unregulated private spyware industry, the investigation found. The list does not identify who put the numbers on it, or why, and it is unknown how many of the phones were targeted or surveilled. But forensic analysis of the 37 phones shows that many display a tight correlation between time stamps associated with a number on the list and the initiation of surveillance attempts, in some cases as brief as a few seconds.
2. Politicians, journalists, activists found on list: The numbers on the list are unattributed, but reporters were able to identify more than 1,000 people spanning more than 50 countries through research and interviews on four continents: several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials — including cabinet ministers, diplomats and military and security officers, as well as several heads of state and prime ministers. The purpose of the list could not be conclusively determined.
3. Company says it polices its clients for abuses: The targeting of the 37 smartphones would appear to conflict with the stated purpose of NSO’s licensing of the Pegasus spyware, which the company says is intended only for use in surveilling terrorists and major criminals. The evidence extracted from these smartphones, revealed here for the first time, calls into question pledges by the Israeli company to police its clients for human rights abuses. NSO Chief Executive Shalev Hulio said Sunday that he was “very concerned” by The Post’s reports. “We are checking every allegation, and if some of the allegations are true, we will take stern action, and we will terminate contracts like we did in the past.” He added, “If anybody did any kind of surveillance on journalists, even if it’s not by Pegasus, it’s disturbing.”
4. Apple iPhone shown to be vulnerable: The discovery on a list of phone numbers of 37 smartphones that had been either penetrated or attacked with Pegasus spyware fuels the debate over whether Apple has done enough to ensure the security of its devices, popular the world over for their reputation for resisting hacking attempts. Thirty-four of the 37 were iPhones.
5. New details of hacking carry worldwide implications: Among the 37 phones confirmed to have been targeted, 10 were in India and another five in Hungary, most linked to journalists, activists or businesspeople. The finding will add to concerns about extralegal government surveillance conducted with private spyware in both countries. Hundreds more numbers from India and Hungary appear on the broader global list. Each country says it acts legally in carrying out any surveillance activity.

Rachel - starting at about 37:10

Slouching Towards Oblivion

1. SkyNet Apocalypse
2. Gray Goo
3. Engineered Pandemic
4. Cloudless Desert
5. CO₂ Poisoning

The Sci-Show

(try to pretend you don't notice they fucked up the numbering)

The "good news" is that we could do all kinds of great stuff, and make some really smart decisions, and not just avoid the worst of the bad consequences, but actually do ourselves big huge favors in terms of living better, more peaceful, more fulfilling lives.

Yeah no - we're fucked. We all know it.

The Sky Is Falling - Again

Or more accurately - there's some more space shit about to fall out of the sky.

WaPo: (pay wall)

The largest section of the rocket that launched the main module of China’s first permanent space station into orbit is expected to plunge back to Earth as early as Saturday at an unknown location.

Usually, discarded core, or first-stage, rockets reenter soon after liftoff, normally over water, and don’t go into orbit like this one did.

China’s space agency has yet to say whether the core stage of the huge Long March 5B rocket is being controlled or will make an out-of-control descent. Last May, another Chinese rocket fell uncontrolled into the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa.

Basic details about the rocket stage and its trajectory are unknown because the Chinese government has yet to comment publicly on the reentry. Phone calls to the China National Space Administration weren’t answered on Wednesday, a holiday.

However, the newspaper Global Times, published by the Chinese Communist Party, said the stage’s “thin-skinned” aluminum-alloy exterior will easily burn up in the atmosphere, posing an extremely remote risk to people.

The U.S. Defense Department expects the rocket stage to fall to Earth on Saturday.

Where it will hit “cannot be pinpointed until within hours of its reentry,” the Pentagon said in a statement Tuesday.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki at a Wednesday briefing said the U.S. Space Command was “aware of and tracking the location” of the Chinese rocket.

The nonprofit Aerospace Corp. expects the debris to hit the Pacific near the Equator after passing over eastern U.S. cities. Its orbit covers a swath of the planet from New Zealand to Newfoundland.

The Long March 5B rocket carried the main module of Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, into orbit on April 29. China plans 10 more launches to carry additional parts of the space station into orbit.

The roughly 30-meter (100-foot) -long stage would be among the biggest space debris to fall to Earth.

The 18-ton rocket that fell last May was the heaviest debris to fall uncontrolled since the former Soviet space station Salyut 7 in 1991.

China’s first space station, Tiangong-1, crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2016 after Beijing confirmed it had lost control. In 2019, the space agency controlled the demolition of its second station, Tiangong-2, in the atmosphere.

In March, debris from a Falcon 9 rocket launched by U.S. aeronautics company SpaceX fell to Earth in Washington and on the Oregon coast.

"Zeh rocket goes up - who cares vhere it comes down?" -- Werner Von Braun

I remember in the 70s when Sky Lab's orbit had decayed enough, and was set to crash - they couldn't tell us where exactly it was supposed to land either. And there was quite the stir because there could be pieces the size of refrigerators crashing through your outhouse roof any day now!

Like most everything else humans have ever done, we take very little care for the adverse effects and unintended consequences of our colossally stupendous technological awesomeness.

I love the nerdiness of it all. I celebrate the achievements because it's all fucking amazing, but I'm getting more than a little tired of this whole foul-the-nest thing we got goin' on around here.

Love A Nerd

Nerds rule.

Of course, I have no idea if this is really a thing, but I don't care. It's too cool.

Backyard Fun

What have you been doing with your quarantine time?

Today's Tech

Another step closer to the TriCorder.

He, Robot

There's always that moment in the sci-fi stories when people worry that the machines have become sensate and self-aware - and of course that's the dramatic conflict.

And also too of course, it's "just a story". 

Sure hope we're not talking 'bout memory that's institutional or machine-genetic or some weird sci-fi thing that can make it real.

Rise Of The Machines

Under the general heading: Oddly - And A Bit Disturbingly - Satisfying.

How Stuff Works

Just stir the shit. Get people lathered up and tell them their problems are all because of "those other people".

Overheard Online

Twitter was down today so I spent some time chatting with my wife - she seems nice.

Some Order Here Please

"We're building a dystopia just to make people click on ads." --Zeynep Tufecki, UNC Chapel Hill

Globally, more than $490 Billion was spent on advertising in 2016 ($135 Billion spent by the top 200 US Brands alone).

These are smart, coldly-calculating people - they don't spend that kinda dough on shit that doesn't work.

Which makes this one even more important:

My Ayn Rand radar picked up on "...we can't abdicate our responsibilities..." - that's one of Rand's basic tenets even though her bit isn't only about responsibility - it's about reason and logic too, which makes those things are very closely related.

Anyway, I always love it when somebody uses one of the Daddy State Libertarians' favorite memes against them, and their insistence on ignoring and denying the bad shit that grows directly out of a short-sighted "philosophy" of "I'm gonna get mine and all y'all can just fuck off".

This is an old concern of course, and it goes with every big technological advancement.

What makes this instance particularly dangerous is that we don't have the kind of leadership that gets us to stop and think about what we're doing and where we're going with it.

Unfortunately, the people running this joint are in the thrall of some weird critical mass that (at best) carries us all forward into the 18th century, but this time with uncontrollable computer power and nuclear weapons.

Today's Today

December 9th is Grace Hopper's birthday. She would've been 109 today.

I never knew her, but along with probably millions of people just like me, I owe Admiral Hopper an awful lot.

Because of her work developing Compilers, computers became very human-friendly, which greatly helped to open the floodgates for computer technology to evolve with unbelievable speed.

If I have to work in machine language, I couldn't program my way off of a flatbed truck. Grace Hopper made it possible for me to master a certain level of Application Programming that led me to some pretty great things in a very satisfying career.

One of my favorite things is the story of her presence at the birth of the term "bug" as it applies to computers. 

Wikipedia:

While she was working on a Mark II Computer at a US Navy research lab in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1947, her associates discovered a moth that was stuck in a relay; the moth impeded the operation of the relay. While neither Hopper nor her crew mentioned the phrase "debugging" in their logs, the case was held as an instance of literal "debugging." For many years, the term bug had been in use in engineering.[35][36] The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.[37]
Like I said - I owe that lady a lot.

Facebook

It's the money, stupid.

Ari Melber's take:

Money is power, and for some folks, power is everything.