flame-throwing robot dogs

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I was skeptical at first, but apparently there are a number of flame-throwing robot dogs that you can buy. Flame throwers have legitimate uses in agriculture, forestry, and ecological restoration, and are very lightly regulated. These seem dangerous, but then again the backpack-mounted alternatives seem very, very dangerous (basically, a backpack full of gasoline or napalm). There are links to a number of questionable videos in the article I have linked to above, but the one I link to below is an actual manufacturer of these things.

Youtube

Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.’ (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451).

trans-boundary organized crime

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This sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it is true: Chinese gangsters with ties to the Chinese government are in league with Mexican gangsters to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, and in at least some cases enslave those smuggled people on farms operating in the United States. Relatedly, Chinese gangsters with ties to the Chinese government are known to be laundering drug money through Canadian banks including TD (i.e. Toronto Dominion) bank.

None of this should be an excuse for racism of course. The gargantuan and inasatiable U.S. demand for drugs is the root driver of these problems, criminalization of said drugs creates the profit incentive, and organized crime exists to exploit opportunities like this while minimizing risks (to itself). Organized crime tends to be ethnicity based because recent immigrant groups have social ties to each other and to people and organizations in their countries of origin. And particularly in the case of human trafficking, it is the immigrants themselves who are typically exploited by criminals belonging to their own ethnic group. The risk of violence to those of us not directly involved would seem to be low, other than people who get caught up in the illegal drug marketplace in one way or another.

Nonetheless, all this needs to be smashed. And it can be smashed by traditional law enforcement, inside our traditional borders. Human trafficking and borderline or outright slavery in particular just have to be smashed without mercy. The Oklahoma story above is particularly disturbing where it sounds like law enforcement knew for quite a while that armed guards were confining and forcing people to work against their will, within the boundaries of the United States.

the apocalypse

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This article by Schlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli prime minister, points out that there are religious fundamentalists among Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike who all think that ushering in a civilization-destroying war is a good idea. And in fact, some of these people are actively hoping that the current conflict in the middle east is the early stage of this war, and even actively working to make it the first stage of such a war. I’m all for freedom to follow one’s religious beliefs and practices, but let’s stop pretending that electing people who hold violent, homicidal, suicidal, and/or genocidal beliefs to public office could ever be a good idea.

those f-ed up spreadsheets

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I’ve seen a lot of fucked up spreadsheets in my time. In fact, you could probably say most spreadsheets contain errors, and this article confirms it. Nonetheless, quality control procedures that apply to other types of software (and spreadsheets are a very useful kind of software because they are very powerful and have an easy learning curve, which is also their downfall) can and should be adapted to spreadsheets. One of the most important ones (which really applies to any program or project) is to begin the quality control process in the planning and concept development phase.

Spreadsheet quality assurance: a literature review

Spreadsheets are very common for information processing to support decision making by both professional developers and non-technical end users. Moreover, business intelligence and artificial intelligence are increasingly popular in the industry nowadays, where spreadsheets have been used as, or integrated into, intelligent or expert systems in various application domains. However, it has been repeatedly reported that faults often exist in operational spreadsheets, which could severely compromise the quality of conclusions and decisions based on the spreadsheets. With a view to systematically examining this problem via survey of existing work, we have conducted a comprehensive literature review on the quality issues and related techniques of spreadsheets over a 35.5-year period (from January 1987 to June 2022) for target journals and a 10.5-year period (from January 2012 to June 2022) for target conferences. Among other findings, two major ones are: (a) Spreadsheet quality is best addressed throughout the whole spreadsheet life cycle, rather than just focusing on a few specific stages of the life cycle. (b) Relatively more studies focus on spreadsheet testing and debugging (related to fault detection and removal) when compared with spreadsheet specification, modeling, and design (related to development). As prevention is better than cure, more research should be performed on the early stages of the spreadsheet life cycle. Enlightened by our comprehensive review, we have identified the major research gaps as well as highlighted key research directions for future work in the area.

the U.S. constitution’s resilience? or rigidity?

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Flexible things can bend without breaking, while strong, rigid things can withstand a lot of force up to a point, then break catastrophically. Is the U.S. Constitution the latter? This Lawfare podcast on the Constitution made some interesting points, and I wish they would post a transcript.

  • The U.S. Constitution is just outdated. Countries around the world looking to write a new constitution used to look to the U.S. Constitution as a model, but this is no longer the case. One U.S. Supreme Court justice in an interview suggested South Africa’s latest constitution as a good modern model.
  • Constitutions around the world are amended on average about every 20 years. Some even lay out regular time tables for review and updating.
  • The U.S. Constitution is the world’s hardest constitution to amend. Newer constitutions tend to make the most important rights hard to amend, but less important details easier to amend, with a few tiers of how large a majority is needed to approve various proposed amendments.
  • The U.S. Constitution mostly lays out negative rights, in other words things the government can’t do to you like take away your gun. Newer constitutions include positive rights, like a right to health care or a clean environment.
  • Interestingly, individual U.S. state constitutions are much more modern in terms of rights, and many are updated regularly.

The Congressional Research Service did a report in 2016 on the constitutional convention process, which is one way the constitution can be amended, theoretically by the states and outside the direct control of Congress. Here are a couple interesting paragraphs:

From the 1960s through the early 1980s, supporters of Article V conventions mounted vigorous unsuccessful campaigns to call conventions to consider then-contentious issues of national policy, including a ban on school busing to achieve racial balance, restrictions on abortions, apportionment of state legislatures, and, most prominently, a requirement that the federal budget be balanced, except in wartime or other extraordinary circumstances. Although they came close to the constitutional requirement, none of these campaigns attained applications from 34 states.

With the failure of these efforts, interest in the Article V Convention alternative declined for more than 20 years, but over the past decade, there has been a gradual resurgence of attention to and support for a convention. Advocacy groups across a broad range of the political spectrum have embraced the convention mechanism as an alternative to perceived policy deadlock at the federal level. Using the Internet and social media to build campaigns and coalitions that once took much longer to assemble, they are pushing for a convention or conventions to consider various amendments, including the well-known balanced budget requirement, restrictions on the authority of the federal government, repeal of the corporate political contributions elements of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and others.

Sure, Citizens United has to go. Rather than the ghosts of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson whispering in the ears of our nine unelected Supreme Leaders to tell us what the First Amendment and all the other amendments mean in 2024, we should come to consensus on new words that say clearly what we want them to say. But even more fundamental would be to amend the constitution to make it easier to amend in the future. Reviewing constitutions around the world for modern best practices sounds like a great idea. Instituting tiers for the level of consensus needed to pass various types of amendments sounds like a great idea. And adding a time table for regular review of the constitution seems like a good idea. For example, maybe Congress would have to vote on amendments proposed by the states at least once per session or once every X years, or else a constitutional convention would automatically be triggered.

vertical proliferation

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I am not the only one who has noticed the U.S. fanning the nuclear proliferation flames. This is Richard Haas, “President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations”.

another type of proliferation now merits attention: vertical proliferation, namely, increases in the quality and/or quantity of the nuclear arsenals of the nine countries that already possess these weapons. The danger is not only that nuclear weapons might be used in a war but also that the possibility of war would increase by emboldening governments – like Iran in the scenario above – to act more aggressively in pursuit of their geopolitical goals in the belief that they may act with impunity…

It all adds up to a dangerous moment. The taboo associated with nuclear weapons has grown weaker with time; few were alive when the US used nuclear weapons twice against Japan to hasten World War II’s end. Indeed, Russian officials have hinted strongly at their readiness to use nuclear weapons in the context of the war in Ukraine…

Three and a half decades after the Cold War’s end, a new world is emerging, one characterized by nuclear arms races, potential new entrants into an ever less exclusive nuclear-weapons club, and a long list of deep disagreements over political arrangements in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. This is not a situation that lends itself to a solution, but at best to effective management. One can only hope the leaders of this era will be up to the challenge.

We are not “pursuing our national interests” if we ignore actions other countries are likely to take in response to our actions. This is just simplistic, childish thinking.

more on the deteriorating nuclear war risk situation

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This article is on a site called Declassified Australia.

The accelerating arms race in hypersonic missiles and anti-hypersonic defensive technology was unleashed upon the world following the US unilateral decision in 2002 under George W. Bush to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the Soviet Union and US. 

The ensuing weapons competition has pushed aside risk-mitigation measures, such as expanding the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty, negotiating new multilateral arms control agreements, undertaking transparency and confidence-building measures, and puts in jeopardy a cornerstone of world peace, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty…

Unlike the USA’s most recent Nuclear Posture Review which asserted its right to a ‘first nuclear strike’ in “extreme circumstances”, China has a ‘no first strike’ nuclear weapon policy.

An objective outside observer, let’s say an alien since how could any resident of Earth be objective on this, might conclude that China is the more rational, less paranoid, and less belligerent party here. Does the leadership of China actually think there is a case where the leadership of the U.S. would launch a first strike? Hopefully not, but a little strategic empathy would seem like a good idea for the U.S. here – other countries are legitimately afraid of the United States. We have invaded sovereign states, interfered with elections, and broken treaties repeatedly, so we should be able to step into someone else’s shoes for a moment and begin to understand why they might not trust us and might fear us. Reducing fear and building trust could be some pretty good concepts to build a risk-reducing foreign policy around.

terrible news on nuclear risk

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The New York Times makes a very scary claim here.

The second big change arises from China’s nuclear ambitions. The country’s nuclear expansion is running at an even faster pace than American intelligence officials anticipated two years ago, driven by President Xi Jinping’s determination to scrap the decades-long strategy of maintaining a “minimum deterrent” to reach or exceed the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s arsenals. China’s nuclear complex is now the fastest growing in the world.

This is awful news. The U.S. and Russia certainly have no moral high ground here. They could have proposed to reduce their arsenals to a minimum credible deterrent in exchange for China not expanding theirs. I am not a person of vast intelligence, but I can see that this would benefit the world. You would have to “trust but verify” with a heavy international inspection regime of course, but there is plenty of Cold War precedence and experience with that.

I don’t trust the New York Times (or rather, the spies on their staff masquerading as professional journalists and thereby undermining all credibility of their actual professional journalists), and the paragraph above is not even the main point of the story. The main point of the story is supposedly the U.S. preparing for the possibility of a coordinated attack by both China and Russia. The way this was leaked to the press has a whiff of propaganda to me, but the possibility of three planet-ending nuclear arsenals rather than two is terrible news for the world’s overall nuclear risk whatever the sneaky intentions of this particular article.

Jeff Masters on U.S. Climate Havens

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Jeff Masters at Yale Climate Connections has an article with a massive list of articles, books and tools on climate risks in various geographic areas of the U.S. You could really spend a lot of time drilling down through all these sources, even to research just one location. He does make the point, however, that moving away from extended family and other social ties can be bad for a person/family’s resilience in general, so you should consider that tradeoff before deciding whether to move.

AI-controlled stop lights

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Boston and other cities have piloted tested AI-controlled stop lights and found that they can reduce “stop and go traffic”. This seems encouraging to me, but not very imaginative and I hope this is not the end of the story. Stop lights are such an old technology, and it seems to me that with modern LED lights and screens we should be able to do much better. Each traffic lane, including lanes dedicated to light and un-motorized vehicles, need their own signals. Let’s get rid of the colored circles and make every single traffic light a series of arrows, so that we can control who is allowed to go forward entirely separately from who is allowed to make a turn from each lane. Pedestrians also need their own signals, and the heavy/highway vehicles, light/unmotorized vehicles, and pedestrians must never, ever have signals that put them in the same space at the same time. I won’t buy the idea that this would be “too expensive” – I happen to be traveling in a middle income country at the moment and I see a lot more arrows and countdown timers on traffic lights compared to what we have in the U.S. (although the jurisdiction I am in is no traffic safety utopia for sure.) If this sounds like it would be too inefficient with today’s system, this is where AI should come in and make it efficient and safe, at each individual intersection and for the system as a whole.

Another level of science fiction would dispense with the lights and screens, and embed them in our vehicle windshields, augmented reality glasses, headphones, etc. Vehicles that are entirely computer controlled, of course, can just get their signals from cellular or wireless networks. We are not there yet at least when it comes to widespread access/adoption of these technologies, but the technologies themselves either exist or are on the horizon.