Monthly Archives: July 2023

Ruth Marcus of WaPo writes about Justice Alito’s recent predilection for writing op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, and his allergy to legislation requiring ethics regulation of SCOTUS:

In another era, this would have been Vincent Price’s bit part. Now it’s Matt Damon’s.

The hoary tradition of the alien invasion story gets an update in Attack The Block (2011), and it has the advantage of being both logical and explains the behavior of the aliens. The aliens, of the lunatic ravening sort, land in London and assault, among other citizens, a London street gang, encompassing members ranging in age from their early twenties to … nine. Their stinging rebuttal eventually sets up a sequence of actions that become more and more mysterious as the bodies drop.

But the real fun is in the explanation of why the ravening monsters are, errr, ravening, rather than sneaky like those in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (pick your version). In that explanation lies a good bit of tension and reason, and I appreciated that.

Unfortunately for me, some of the accents, and much of the street slang, was unintelligible to me; I suspect a Londoner would understand that street slang far better than I did. I have a bit of a tin ear when it comes to certain accents. But it doesn’t detract from the building tension as the monsters converge on the gang.

If you’re a Jodie Whittaker fan, this precedes her recent turn as The Doctor in Doctor Who, and you must see this if you’re a completist. But that’s not the only reason to see Attack the Block. If you’re a fan of seeing how the general run of humanity might deal with the alien wanting to slice and dice them, if you like tension and horror, then this might just be for you.

Give it a try.

And, no, that’s not Meatloaf.

The University of Minnesota recently reported that metformin, a diabetes drug I happen to take, which is also a candidate to be classed as a senolytic, reduces the chances of developing long Covid, and also that ivermectin and fluvoxamine do not. But the interesting bit for me?

Metformin’s ability to stop the virus was predicted by a simulator developed by U of M Medical School and College of Science and Engineering Biomedical Engineering faculty. The model has been highly accurate to date, successfully predicting, among others, the failure of hydroxychloroquine and the success of remdesivir before the results of clinical trials testing these therapies were announced. [University of Minnesota/Medical School]

OK, so tell me about the simulator.

The biophysics-based model simulated [COVID-19] on a molecular and cellular level so the trial team could screen potential treatments computationally long before they were given to participants. [University of Minnesota/Biomedical Engineering]

OK, cool. That’ll take a bit of horsepower, I’m sure. But this surprised me:

Meanwhile, other members of the clinical trial team noticed metformin’s potential through their own methods. In April 2020, natural language processing of SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 performed by Christopher Tignanelli, MD, and Rui Zhang, PhD, Director of the University’s Natural Language Processing/Information Extraction Program identified a class of drugs known as mTOR inhibitors — which includes metformin — that had strong potential to stop the viral life cycle.

So what’s going on here? Following the link:

The Natural Language Processing/Information Extraction (NLP/IE) Program is a teamof investigators, postdoctoral researchers, developers, and students working together since 2009 advancing capabilities to process, extract, and encode information from unstructured biomedical and clinical texts, including clinical notes from the electronic health record and biomedical literature. Current active areas of NLP/IE research for our group include redundancy detection in clinical texts; biomedical semantic similarity and relatedness measures; acronym, abbreviation, and symbol disambiguation; semantic role labeling; automated monitoring of adverse drug events; literature-based discovery for drug repurposing; algorithms to extract phenotyping; tools for interoperability and integration of NLP systems; and specialized modules for different types of clinical texts.

In other words, the body of knowledge making up biomedical engineering is so large and dis-coordinated that an expert, a professor, no longer carries the whole mess around in their head. This tool reformulates the mess, digging out useful information and tentative conclusions for use by researchers.

Goodness. And cool.

White fonting:

White fonting is the practice of inserting hidden keywords into the body of an electronic document, in order to influence the actions of a search program reviewing that document. The name white fonting comes from the practice of adding keywords to a webpage, using a white font on a white background, in an effort to hide the additional keywords from sight. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Job applicants are battling AI résumé filters with a hack,” Danielle Abril, WaPo:

“White fonting” in recent years has garnered renewed interest across social media like TikTok with influencers suggesting that it will make a big difference for job hunters. It’s also ruffled the feathers of many recruiters who have publicly denounced it.

The same people who invented duck decoys, I’m sure.

I’ve long held the opinion that humanity has, as it’s popularly known, overpopulated Earth. The interesting question is how the environment would change in response to the modifications in the composition of inputs: Increasing CO₂ leading to a warming atmosphere, ditto methane, deliberate deforestation, nitrogen poisoning of waterways, acquisition of land for farming, etc. WaPo has an article on the unprecedented warming of the oceans, and a bit on how the spikes we’re seeing may be earlier and more intense than expected. From this article I’ve pulled this map:

The above, in combination with the article, is shocking and, really, quite frightening. The heat implied by the above map, as well as the other maps in the article, and the puzzlement for scientists, suggest that we, and the rest of life on Earth, are in for a beating.

This is known as a negative feedback loop, which for us engineers means that a phenomenon’s impact on its environment is such that the environment’s reaction will act to damp out the phenomenon. For most designs, both in reality and in software, a negative feedback loop is far more desirable than a positive feedback loop. The latter implies a mechanism that is out of control and causing damage, and liable to fail in a disastrous way at any moment.

But it’s important not to descend into abstractions too deeply. What does that heat represent? Death. Death for vulnerable humans, vulnerable animals, insects, plants, fish.

You may not believe in climate change, but let me remind you of a basic fact of life: Reality doesn’t give a shit what you believe. Reality isn’t affected by you and your beliefs. Think about what a rational being should do in the face of this simple fact.

It’s really getting late in the game, with many of our football players carried off on gurneys to hospitals and, yes, even to the cemeteries. It’s time to get off our duffs and get to work.

The car carrier Fremantle Highway is afire off the Dutch Coast. The source of the fire?

The Dutch coastguard said on its website on Thursday that the cause of the fire was unknown, but an emergency responder is heard in a recording released by Dutch broadcaster RTL saying, “The fire started in the battery of an electric car”.

EV lithium-ion batteries burn with twice the energy of a normal fire, and maritime officials and insurers say the industry has not kept up with the risks.

An investigation has been launched by the Panama Maritime Authority and the Netherlands is assisting the inquiry, the Dutch Safety Board has said. [gCaptain]

This is not an existential danger to the industry; it’s a problem that needs to be addressed by safety engineers, or by batteries not using easily ignited materials.

NBC News reports:

[Tesla 3 owner Alexandre] Ponsin contacted Tesla and booked a service appointment in California. He later received two text messages, telling him that “remote diagnostics” had determined his battery was fine, and then: “We would like to cancel your visit.”

What Ponsin didn’t know was that Tesla employees had been instructed to thwart any customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service. Last summer, the company quietly created a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible.

The Austin, Texas-based electric carmaker deployed the team because its service centers were inundated with appointments from owners who had expected better performance based on the company’s advertised estimates and the projections displayed by the in-dash range meters of the cars themselves, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Misleading customers? Isn’t that fraud?

My MiniCooper SE may only show a 120 mile range in summer, but at least I feel like I can trust it. Now I wonder what other topics involve Tesla falsehoods.

And then I think about the huge scandal when behemoth car maker VW, an established business with a long history, was caught cheating on emissions tests.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so complacent about BMW-owned Mini.

The garden seemed especially nice today.

Bucolic, even.

Parvenu:

one that has recently or suddenly risen to an unaccustomed position of wealth or power and has not yet gained the prestige, dignity, or manner associated with it [Merriam-Webster]

Compare to parvenue. Noted in “The Tao Of Marty,” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish:

And I have to say I was a little nervous about his new memoir, The Controversialist: Arguments with Everyone, Left Right and Center, as anyone who knows they’ll be written about in someone’s memoir might be, but I soon forgot about that as I started reading. The story is a deeply, fascinatingly American one. A parvenu, Brooklyn-born, Brandeis-educated Jew who became a “Harvard patriot” in his words, Marty bought The New Republic in 1974, and he turned it, for three decades, into essential reading.

Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX), last being suspended by the Texas Senate for suspected corruption, before that leading the SCOTUS-rejected Texas vs. Pennsylvania, and before that being accused of various acts of corruption by his own staff … deep breath … appears to attract the corrupt as well. And Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (R-TX) now faces questions:

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who is presiding over the impeachment trial of suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton, received $3 million in campaign support last month from a top group campaigning against Paxton’s impeachment.

In a campaign-finance report published Tuesday, Patrick — who is not up for reelection until 2026 — reported a $1 million contribution and a $2 million loan from Defend Texas Liberty PAC. The political action committee was by far his biggest benefactor on the report, which covered Patrick’s fundraising from June 19-30. It was the first opportunity state officials had to fundraise since the House impeached Paxton in late May.

Patrick’s Senate has scheduled a trial to begin Sept. 5 to determine whether to permanently remove Paxton from office. Patrick has been acting as presiding officer of the trial — effectively the judge — and the fundraising period partially overlapped with the Senate’s deliberations over the trial rules. The chamber approved the rules June 21. [The Texas Tribune]

Mr. Paxton has been in trouble for a good long time, and, to my sensibilities, that suggests either someone is out to get him, or he’s a bad to the bone politician who has no sense of morality. Let’s assume the latter. He may possess a sense that God is on his side, and it keeps him going, but it’s a bit irrelevant.

The important point is that the Republicans seem to be attracting this sort to their party, and this will tend to drive away independents, even those who distrust the ways of the Democrats.

Now, to the credit of the Texas Republicans in the State Senate, they have suspended him and are looking to impeach him. However, Lt. Governor Patrick didn’t report that $1 million, plus a $2 million loan. Did he not realize who Defend Texas Liberty PAC backed? I’d believe that. Or did he just not care.

Ya gotta wonder if Texas is a swirling pit of corruption, or if they’ll end up ejecting Mr. Paxton.

Someone tell me why I need my computer aligned.

Appalling, mesmerizing.

Massive hail flow at street in Seregno, Italy 🇮🇹 (21.07.2023)

TELEGRAM JOIN 👉 https://t.co/9cTkji5aZq pic.twitter.com/edQSMn8TE4

— Disaster News (@Top_Disaster) July 21, 2023

We’re not the only nation that has, or now had, a problem with inflation:

Annual inflation in Egypt hit 36.8 percent in June, official figures showed on Monday, an all-time high for the country grappling with a punishing economic crisis.

The previous record of 34.2 percent in July 2017 came, as it does now, following a sharp currency devaluation connected to a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund.

The Egyptian pound has lost half its value against the dollar since early last year, shooting prices upward and adding to the burden of families struggling to make ends meet in the import-dependent country. [AL-Monitor]

We got all fussy about, what, 10%?

statista

Not even that.

Monorchism:

Most people with a penis have two testicles in their scrotum — but some only have one. This is known as monorchism.

Monorchism can be the result of several things. Some people are simply born with just one testicle, while others have one removed for medical reasons. [healthline]

Noted in “Putin Admits He Has Lost,” Lib Dem FoP, Daily Kos:

Although tempted, I will not update the very rude WWII British song referencing Herr Hitler’s monorchism …

I had to go look that one up, as I’ve never seen that word before, or heard that particular bit of information concerning Hitler.

Then it needs to collapse. If you can't figure out how to pay your workers a full, living wage and share some profit while grossing billions, paying yourself hundreds of millions, and making wall street analysts happy with your numbers, your industry needs to be fucking rubble. https://t.co/OI5hvPLRwf

— David Simon (@AoDespair) July 16, 2023

“Then it needs to collapse. If you can’t figure out how to pay your workers a full, living wage and share some profit while grossing billions, paying yourself hundreds of millions, and making wall street analysts happy with your numbers, your industry needs to be fucking rubble.” ^[ICTD]

WaPo has an article on the strike here. As a key part of this strike being the replacement of labor with computers, it might be useful to remember there are two more parties to this industry, currently being ignored.

They are the audience, who are the ultimate arbiters of the survival of these companies, and the government, which brings a deus ex machina element to the entire context. So what can they do?

Government can promulgate a law that forces every single production of which the union has a part that says the producers of said productions must disclose prominently the characters generated by computer, rather than provided by an actor.

Prominently.

Then the audience can own the success or failure of the actor’s union, of the question of whether entertainment is a human enterprise, or an enterprise in which AI is used in order to “maximize shareholder value,” a phrase that is rapidly entering Sauron territory.

Put the responsibility where it belongs – on the audience.

^ICTD In Case Twitter Disappears.

… but I fear it’s a conflict of interest.

An IRS plan to test drive a new electronic free-file tax return system next year has got supporters and critics of the idea mobilizing to sway the public and Congress over whether the government should set up a permanent program to help people file their taxes without needing to pay somebody else to figure out what they owe.

On one side, civil society groups this week launched a coalition to promote the move toward a government-run free-file program. On the other, tax preparation firms like Intuit — the parent company of TurboTax — and H&R Block have been pouring millions into trying to stop the idea cold. [AP]

Yes, yes, big greedy corporations are yelling, and that’s a red flag. But the government isn’t a third party, it’s a very interested party, while the big greedy corporations are forced to compete on minimizing your taxes.

There is a compromise, of course, of offering the service for simple tax returns. I wonder if they’ll find it.

Biden’s strategists co-opt their opponents:

I approve this message. pic.twitter.com/f1q5giNM8j

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 18, 2023

It’s quite brilliant. Too bad no one uses Twitter anymore.

Will it be the death of this little guy?

Cryptography researchers have sneaky mindsets, apparently:

Researchers have devised a novel attack that recovers the secret encryption keys stored in smart cards and smartphones by using cameras in iPhones or commercial surveillance systems to video record power LEDs that show when the card reader or smartphone is turned on.

The attacks enable a new way to exploit two previously disclosed side channels, a class of attack that measures physical effects that leak from a device as it performs a cryptographic operation. By carefully monitoring characteristics such as power consumption, sound, electromagnetic emissions, or the amount of time it takes for an operation to occur, attackers can assemble enough information to recover secret keys that underpin the security and confidentiality of a cryptographic algorithm. [Ars Technica]

Goodness gracious.

Sarsen stones:

Sarsen stones are silicified sandstone blocks found in quantity in Southern England on Salisbury Plain and the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire; in Kent; and in smaller quantities in Berkshire, Essex, Oxfordshire, Dorset, and Hampshire. [Wikipedia]

Funny, I’ve heard and read about Stonehenge all of my life, yet I do not recall, nor associate, the word sarsen with Stonehenge. From the same link,

The builders of Stonehenge used these stones for the Heel Stone and sarsen circle uprights. Avebury and many other megalithic monuments in southern England are also built with sarsen stones.

Noted in “Africa’s Merchant Kings,” Jason Urbanus, Archaeology (July/August 2023):

Hundreds of ancient obelisks and stelas are strewn across fields on the outskirts of Aksum, a city in the highlands of northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region. The largest of these monuments, which lies toppled and broken into sections, was carved with doors and windows to mimic a 13-story building, and once stood around 100 feet high. Weighing more than 570 tons, the Great Stela, as it is known, was hewn from a single block of granite-like rock cut from a quarry two and half miles away. At more than three times the height of the biggest of Easter Island’s moai statues and nearly 20 times heavier than the mightiest of Stonehenge’s sarsens, it is among the largest monolithic sculptures ever created and transported.

There’s a photo of the Great Stela, in all of its broken glory, at the link, which is typical of the lovely photography Archaeology has always employed.

Mhairi Aitken apparently sees the pronouncements of the AI warning community as simply hypocritical:

The loudest voices shouting about existential risk are coming from Silicon Valley. This may seem at odds with big tech’s stake in driving innovation and investment in AI, yet these narratives protect its interests by diverting attention away from big tech’s current actions to instead speculate about hypothetical future abilities of AI.

By suggesting AI might develop its own intelligence, the focus shifts to how we might hold the technology accountable in the future, rather than how we can hold big tech accountable today. All of this creates an illusion of inevitability, suggesting we are observing the evolution of AI, rather than a series of conscious and controllable decisions by organisations and people.

It is important to consider not just what is being said, but who is being listened to. We have seen Altman being warmly greeted by regulators across Europe, while the voices of people who are negatively affected by AI are barely heard. This is symptomatic of what academic Kate Crawford has termed AI’s “white guy problem“: claims of existential risk are largely coming from affluent white men in positions of power, those least likely to experience the harms of AI today (but with most responsibility for causing them). [NewScientist]

But it’s important not to mistake congruency for proof. I cannot speak for the businessman community, which is too large to homogenuously characterize, but the computer scientist community can often be almost painfully earnest. Remember prominent member Bill Joy, CTO of the late and lamented Sun Microsystems? He warned of the gray goo of nanobots, and became no longer prominent.

And there’s been no gray goo of humanity-ending nanobots. My point is that the paranoid people spreading the warnings may be entirely honest in their concerns, even if they are silly, as I’ve expressed elsewhere.

But this all is sort of a nit, because Aitken’s larger point is that those negatively affected by the large language model systems being applied (see previous link) will be ignored for so long as their replacement doesn’t – literally – crash and burn. It’ll only be when we have some artifact in ruins, with bodies of humans flung here and there, will we finally return to the question of Should we, and not apply, as the primary metric, the profit metric, but rather the accuracy, or excellence, metric.

I was a bit surprised by this report of a few days ago:

Investigators from the House Ethics Committee have begun reaching out to witnesses as part of a recently revived investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, focused on allegations that he may have engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use or other misconduct.

At least one witness in Florida told CNN they have spoken to investigators about the Republican congressman in recent weeks about alleged lobbying violations, and sources familiar with the Ethics Committee probe say other witnesses also have been contacted. [CNN/Politics]

But here’s the thing. Gaetz, one of the members of the Freedom Caucus, was also the principal ringleader of giving Rep McCarthy (R-CA) hell when he was up for election to the Speaker’s position, McCarthy’s ultimate goal. McCarthy had to go through 15 votes before finally winning, and it was mostly due to Gaetz’s antics.

And now that it’s Speaker McCarthy, he has outsized influence over who the Ethics Committee will investigate and, possibly, recommend for reprimand, censure, even … expel. It’s worth noting that Gaetz may be uniquely vulnerable.

How far will this go? I don’t know. The DOJ, run by Biden selection Merrick Garland, declined to prosecute Gaetz, reportedly because the primary witness, Gaetz friend and former tax collector Joel Greenberg, might have a plausibility problem if he testified for a jury. But here we’re not talking about a jury, we’re talking about a Congressional committee, and a Freedom Caucus member who’s made himself a target of the Speaker.

Of course, maybe the caucus would stand up for him, threatening to disrupt Congress if Gaetz is threatened.

There may be the seeds of a heckuva drama here.

And I can’t imagine why else an investigation would recommence, either.

Bloomin’ happy, really:

That has the potential to be a lot of tomatoes.

This one is actually artificially generated. It’s, at least according to the source article, a geoid, a display of a gravity map of Earth.

Source (according to NS): ESA/HPF/DLR

Matter is not evenly distributed.