Author Archives: Hue White

Anders Sandberg gets it.  That is, that there are ethical questions arising from the attempt to create an artificial intelligence.  He writes in NewScientist (12 September 2015, paywall):

It is the third problem that really interests me. Would emulations feel pain? Do we have to care for them like we do for animals or humans involved in medical research?

Exactly.  If you achieve your goal – creating an artificial intelligence – then is it ethical to deactivate the program, turn off the hardware at the end of the day?  Does the fact that we created that intelligence – depending on how you define create, as it’s very much a team enterprise – also give us the right to inflict pain upon and end the existence of the artificial intelligence?

The answer may technically be YES, but it would be a measurement of our maturity and intelligence to realize causing anguish to a living, thinking being – one that may feel and think on our level – is a moral hazard.  Anders agrees:

My suggestion is that it is better to be safe than sorry: assume that any emulated system could have the same mental properties as the organism or biological system it is based on, and treat it accordingly. If your simulation just produces neural noise, you have a good reason to assume there is nothing in there to care about. But if you make an emulated mouse that behaves like a real one, you should treat it like you would treat a lab mouse.

And then he continues onward to even more interesting questions, which may be unique:

What about euthanasia? Living organisms die permanently, and death means the loss of their only chance at being alive. But an emulated brain could be restored from a backup: Lab Rat 1.0 would awake in the same way no matter how many copies had been tested in the past. The only thing lost when restoring it would be the memories of the previous experiment. There may still be pleasures and pains that count. In some ethical views, running a million supremely happy rat simulations in the background might be a “moral offset” for doing something painful to one.

Maybe.   But the awareness of the imminence of extinction of this copy of the AI, if it causes anguish, is this a problem?

SpaceWeather.com notes the experiment conducted by some students with corn and cosmic rays:

SPACE CORN FAILS TO APPETIZE: Regular readers of Spaceweather.com know that we have been flying simple life forms to the edge of space onboard helium balloons to test their response to space weather. Some fare better than others. Yeast, for instance, is incredibly tough. The microbes easily survive temperatures as low as -60 C and cosmic ray dose rates 100x Earth-normal. Corn, on the other hand, appears to be more fragile. In the spring of 2015, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched seed packets of corn and other vegetables to the stratosphere during geomagnetic storms. Bruce Binion bought some of these seeds as a gift for his father, a veteran farmer, who planted them alongside regular corn as an experiment. Here are the results:

“I must say this experience has been quite fascinating,” reports Binion. “Compared to regular corn, the ‘space corn’ stalks were quite short, tasseled out quite early, and the ears were stunted. As can be seen in the picture, above, Dad has a normal, good-eating ear from the same garden area shown for reference beside a couple of ears grown from your space seeds.”

In summary, cosmic rays do not seem to agree with corn. Sorry, astronauts!

Back in April we covered the guy who was convinced Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker would win by never admitting to be wrong.  Today, before a single primary has been run, Walker dropped out.  His exit message is intriguing, as reported by Talking Points Memo:

Walker said he was reminded at church that the Bible “is full of stories about people who are called to be leaders in unusual ways.”

“Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive, conservative message can rise to the top of the field,” Walker said. “With this in mind, I will suspend my campaign immediately.”

He went on to directly take on Trump, who has dominated the rest of the field in the polls since getting into the race this summer.

“I encourage other Republican presidential candidates to consider doing the same so the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current frontrunner,” Walker added.

It sounds like he may have been ordered to stop campaigning and just take out the frontrunner, doesn’t it?  He’s young enough that he could run again next cycle, or the next, or the one after that.  His support in the polls has dropped from top tier to miniscule as many polls have noted.  Here’s one from HuffPo with commentary from Sam Wang at the Princeton Electoral Consortium:

Considering Fiorina’s problems with accuracy and her dismal performance as Hewlett-Packard’s CEO, it seems likely that her rise will also be transient. If 2012 is a guide, she will last one or two months then fade, just as Cain, Gingrich, Santorum, and Bachmann did – and now, maybe Donald Trump.

Walker’s fallen below 2% and Jeb! is stuck around 8%. Assuming those trends persist, the highest-finishing serious candidate is Marco Rubio. As I have said before (link to The New Republic), Rubio is a relatively likely consensus candidate. In the past, the GOP has usually settled on a strong general-election candidate. Rubio polls relatively well against likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. If the past is a guide, then at some point party donors/actors and primary voters may fall into line.

Uff-da – Rubio?  The guy who thinks we’re in existential danger, the like of which has never been seen before?

Well, it’s hard to knock the guy with his money on Walker – this entire season has been enormously erratic, not to mention entertaining for those of us with a taste for moral abominations, which resembles most of the GOP field.  Given Minnesota’s close-up view of Walker, I suppose I’m not surprised at his implosion; the next question is where will he land?  Will he run again for Governor after his current term, or would they boot him out?  Is there a secure position awaiting him somewhere?

I remember how the late Minnesota Senator Rod Grams awaited such a position after being booted out after one term as Senator – and nothing ever arose, despite the dominance of the Republicans in that period.

Rick Santorum, desperate for anyone to even admit he exists, comes out with the latest dubious proposal.  From BuzzFeed:

“It’s like, if all the tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” Santorum told Glenn Beck on Thursday. “Every problem that the State Department has, the answer is diplomacy. Why? Because if it’s not diplomacy, they don’t have a job.” …

“I have said that,” Santorum replied. “I said that when I ran four years ago — the first thing I’d do is abolish the State Department and start all over.”

Uh huh.  And, Rick, you think they’re autonomous and just make bad treaties without oversight?

This is why we have executive positions, baby!  Like the one you’d have us believe you’re running for!  The Secretary of State comes to you with, hey, this is what we can do, and, like, you say, no way, not good enough, let’s bomb them instead!

This is the crap that happens when, faced with picking from orders from above and reality, you pick the former and then apply logic.  Logic without good assumptions, i.e., factual understanding, is just another form of garbage. Just harder to recognize as such.

The only thing money is good for is the good you can do for others with it.

• Marlene Smith (no doubt echoing many others)

A new dinosaur has been discovered (three years ago) and analyzed, and it’s unusual in that most of the skeleton was recovered.  From the discoverer, Triebold Paleontology:

A recent fossil discovery just completed in the Triebold Paleontology Laboratory is a new undescribed species of ceratopsian from the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous. This relatively small, horn-faced herbivore’s skull measures just over a meter in length and approximately 80% of the skeleton was recovered. Portions of the skeleton of this exciting specimen bear traces of skin impressions.

Here’s a Triebold blog post on the specimen.

Atlas Obscura gives a description of the living creature:

Imagine, basically, a baby rhino, except a lizard with horns, and you’re about there.

(Photo courtesy Triebold Paleontology)

Why are the skeletons always posted with the mouth open?  It motivates a certain auditory delusion in my head, which I sort of wonder would be realistic.

And, for those of us outraged by comparisons of mammals with lizards, we can all blame CNN.

Now the onus is on Iran to begin implementing the deal, as noted by AL Monitor:

The next JCPOA benchmark is “adoption day,” Oct.18, when Iran must begin to make changes in its nuclear infrastructure in compliance with the JCPOA, working with the International Atomic Energy Agency. US officials this week summarized what needs to happen before sanctions are lifted, including “taking out thousands of centrifuges and putting them into IAEA-monitored storage [at the Natanz enrichment facility) … taking out a very large amount of infrastructure, specifically some of the pipework and electrical infrastructure that allows for the enrichment process to work; …

& etc – an impressive list.  They finish with,

Only when Iran takes these and other steps, including a report from the IAEA on the past military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program, does the process shift to the next benchmark, “implementation day,” when certain sanctions are lifted. Implementation day is expected to take place in spring 2016, but could be longer, or even never. It all depends on Iran.

The Tehran Times reports,

It is thought unlikely that international sanctions will be lifted before next year. The timing depends on when Iran meets its commitments and the IAEA confirms Iran has resolved all outstanding issues with the agency.

And The Iran Project suggests the deal isn’t quite done yet:

Speaking with reporters on Saturday [presumably September 19 – Hue], the Supreme Leader’s top aide, Ali Akbar Velayati, was cautious about the confirmation of the deal by Iranian officials: “I should say that the nuclear negotiations have not ended yet since the legal authorities should still make a decision about it, and it is still soon to make any comments before the legal authorities declare their decision.”

Velayati noted the ongoing review by Parliament: “This will continue until we come up with definite results and we hope that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s interests and expediencies will be met in this trend.”

Actually, not bad at all.  From NewScientist (12 September 2015, paywall) comes Deborah MacKenzie’s report:

Even without a worker shortage, migrants needn’t be a burden. On 4 September the World Bank, the UN’s International Labour Organization and the OECD club of rich countries issued a report concluding that “in most countries migrants pay more in taxes and social contributions than they receive.”

In a study last year, researchers at University College London found both European and non-European immigrants to the UK more than pay their way. Non-Europeans living in the UK since 1995 brought £35 billion worth of education with them. Those who arrived between 2000 and 2011 were less likely than native Brits to be on state benefits, and no more likely to live in social housing. Unlike natives, they contributed a net £5 billion in taxes during that period.

That is partly because most migrants are young and need relatively little in the way of benefits. Their economic impact approaches that of natives as they age and assimilate. But the positive effect can be substantial: Carlos Vargas-Silva of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford reported this year that letting in 260,000 immigrants a year could halve the UK’s public debt 50 years from now.

As much as I’m delighted to see research such as this, a pop-sci magazine like NewScientist does leave one wondering if the researchers explored such questions as whether or not average age of each wave of refugees increases as the the conflict continues, and what is the marginal impact of that last refugee?  Are the members of the last wave as productive and positive in their eventual contributions to society as the first wave?  In other words, the context is changing as more and more refugees accumulate in country X – does this change the economic output of the refugees?

Granted, most resentment is simply xenophobia cloaked in economic concerns, and some governments do not permit that to influence policy.  For example, Germany vs UK:

One EU country seems unfazed: Germany says it can take 800,000 asylum seekers this year. It counts on immigrants to replenish its ageing workforce and the EU’s emergency asylum rules say resettled refugees can legally work. Germany had 200,000 more deaths than births in 2012, more than compensated by 391,000 immigrants. In contrast, UK prime minister David Cameron bowed to public pressure and this week said the country would take just 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020.

It’ll be interesting to see who has the greater regrets in 50 years.

Think invasive exotics are responsible for the extinction of local species?  Think again, reports Fred Pearce in NewScientist (5 September 2015, paywall):

The UK government’s Non-native Species Secretariat (NNSS) declares that invasive species have “contributed to 40 per cent of the animal extinctions that have occurred in the last 400 years“. Its source is the Global Biodiversity Outlook 2 report, published in 2006 by the secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

They, in turn, say the stat came from a 2005 paper by Cornell ecologist David Pimentel, who was in turn drawing on a 1998 paper by David Wilcove, now at Princeton University.

As is clear from the paper’s title, “Quantifying threats to imperiled species in the US”, Wilcove was not talking about actual extinctions but an extinction threat, and in the context of the US (in fact, his data largely related to Hawaii). Wilcove told me his paper was being misused. Although informed of this, the NNSS has kept the claim on its website. …

Uh oh.  Eventually we reach this juicy detail:

The report cites a 2005 paper in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, by Miguel Clavero and Emili Garcia-Berthou of the University of Girona, Spain. But that turns out to be just four paragraphs long.

It reports, but gives no details of, an analysis of a quarter of the 680 extinct species in an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) database. The authors told me they had not kept the details of their analysis, nor notes on which species they had included.

Ya gotta be kidding me.  They sound as bad as … myself.  And that’s bad.  The reason for this dubious paper?

This work was a riposte to a rather longer paper by Jessica Gurevitch and Dianna Padilla of Stony Brook University in New York, who looked at the same IUCN database and concluded that just 2 per cent of all extinctions had alien species listed as a cause.

Especially for a rebuttal, failing to keep your notes, or the details of the analysis, is inexcusable – thus, Fred’s turn of phrase, “Chinese Whispers”.  And it turns out many citations and conclusions come to rest on this report.  While no one’s denying there must be concerns about invasive species – whether we’re talking the zebra mussels in Minnesota’s lakes or the rather more exotic pythons in the Everglades of Florida – understanding the true numbers is key to the proper allocation of resources towards the problem, as the magnitude of the problem is unquestionably the key.  In fact, here’s a chilling example of a failure to defend against an invasive species properly:

(Image courtesy Imgur)

Before anyone gets too misty eyed over VW, it turns out they’re just another heartless corporate titan.  TreeHugger.com reports on a forced recall ordered by the Obama White House:

… to recall around half-a-million vehicles, accusing them of using “software intentionally designed to circumvent environmental standards for reducing smog.” …

The deception wasn’t just an accident or a software bug. The cars were actually designed to detect when they are undergoing emission testing and provide false readings:

The Environmental Protection Agency issued the company a notice of violation and accused the company of breaking the law by installing software known as a “defeat device” in 4-cylinder Volkswagen and Audi vehicles from model years 2009-15. The device is programmed to detect when the car is undergoing official emissions testing, and to only turn on full emissions control systems during that testing. Those controls are turned off during normal driving situations, when the vehicles pollute far more heavily than reported by the manufacturer, the E.P.A. said. (source)

The illegal software concealed true nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, a contributor to smog linked to health issues like asthma.

As I wander about in left field, we can be sure this will be the result of some bad employees, and I don’t doubt it – most such scandals are the results of some bad manager, they rarely go right to the top (an exception would be the Siemens scandal of a few years ago – I think this Economist article is covering the right scandal).  But, hey, when it comes to donating money to political organizations – then they’re all good corporate citizens.  There’s an apparent contradiction going on here.

A reader comments on InfluenceMap:

Since they gave Nestle a C+, they apparently don’t mind that Nestle is raping California water supplies.

http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2015/07/23/review-nestle-water-permit-neglected-decades/30562241/

From The Desert Sun:

High in the San Bernardino Mountains, on a steep slope covered with brush and ferns, a bunker-like stone structure protrudes from the mountainside. Behind its locked metal doors, water is collected from wells and flows into a pipe to fill bottles of Arrowhead 100% Mountain Spring Water.

The U.S. Forest Service has long been allowing Nestle to pipe water out of the national forest from a collection of wells using a permit that lists an expiration date of 1988. The company has been paying the San Bernardino National Forest an annual permit fee of $524, and the water has continued to flow, even as the drought has prompted questions about the potential impacts on a stream and wildlife in the national forest.

Further in the article I note that the Forest Service denied a number of permit applications from Nestle; they claim their failure to re-examine the original permit was a problem of resources and oversight, nothing deliberate.

Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is using his position to attack private prisons, as noted by Salon:

Bernie Sanders just made good on an early campaign promise and introduced a bill in the Senate to outlaw what he called the “morally repugnant” practice of incarcerating Americans in private prisons and called for the reduction in the nation’s prison population.

On Thursday, the Vermont independent introduced The Justice Is Not for Sale Act which bars the federal government from contracting with private companies. Sanders’ bill was introduced as a part of a package of legislation sponsored by Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona, Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Bobby L. Rush of Illinois, aimed at making important criminal justice reforms including increased oversight on the predatory banking and telephone services for inmates.

A good move to confine private sector activities to the private sector.

(h/t Eric Nelson @ The Daily Kos)

I’m going with Sanders vs Carson.

Both candidates hold the quality of novelty in terms of nation-wide.  This is important in a nation that is steeped in the importance of novelty.

Sanders: Bernie brings qualities of sincerity, passion, and what I’ll call visionary pragmatism to the race.  The idea of a one payer health system may seem radical, even socialist, yet he can point at many socialist health systems as costing less while yielding better results; the libertarian argument, with which I have a certain sympathy, that the context differs in that we have to support drug development while other nations simply leach off the United States, will have little impact since the libertarians, by and large, have chosen to throw their lot in with the GOP rather than the Democrats.  The progressive wing (which differentiates from the socialist wing, who may be ambivalent about Sanders) will like him not only for his progressive policies, but also, perhaps against their own will, for his feistiness, i.e., for example, his gun policies.

This is no knock on Hillary – exceedingly bright, hard-working by all reports, major credentials.  She’d probably make a fine President.  But she’s too familiar, even when her husband steps up and hits a home run of a speech, as he does from time to time.

Carson: Regardless of the wishes of the GOP leadership (as we’ve seen with the Trump takeover of the race), Carson has perhaps the best shot at winning the GOP nomination.  In this case, it’s due to the reactivity of the GOP’s membership to various charges: he’s black, he’s exceedingly well-educated and has a fantastic standing in the community as an eminent retired surgeon, and yet he’s apparently religious to a fault.  Trump, to give him his due, has his business successes (and failures, although they are hardly mentioned), he has a charisma to him, and the willingness to trumpet lies and half-lies that appeal to the biases of the base; Fiorina may appear to be made of steel, but as the national press has pointed out, her grip on the issues is more than a little faulty, and her most important project, leading H-P, was a disaster.  Carson has non-political credentials, which appears to be important to the GOP base, and will bring a new, yet familiar viewpoint to the office; I could easily see a replay of the important Bush II campaign moment when some voter, during an interview, declared she felt Bush had been picked by God to be President.  (Evidently God hated us during that campaign.  Or hated Bush.)  Carson’s breezy confidence is deeply appealing, and his credentials validate many of the biases of the base.

And, yeah, this is a knock on the GOP candidates and base.  There’s a difference between the trumpeted “deep, talented field” of the GOP, and it’s true nature: a bunch of power-hungry politicians who are either as goofy as the GOP base and/or leadership, or are willing to lie through their teeth for power.

(photo courtesy Wikipedia)

Volkswagen must have been listening to the same muse, according to Plaid Zebra:

Re-launching the hippy-bus seems too good to be true—is it possible that [VW board member] Neusser is just getting our hopes up? Unfortunately the new electric model of the hippy-classic is still a concept car, and releasing it to the masses depends largely on manufacturing cost. As Outsideonline points out, the company has a track record of teasing hippy-bus diehards with promises of re-initiating the VW factory lines with updated versions of the classic vehicle, including the 2001 Retro Microbus and 2011 Bulli. Still, it’s worth noting that neither of these versions hold a candle to the original design. If Volkswagen does revive the old bus from the dead, we can only keep our fingers crossed that it maintains the original aesthetic, rather than slapping the VW logo on a Yaris and trying to make it cool, like the aforementioned 2011 concept.

Wait.  What original aesthetic?  Heh.  Of course, if you already have a hippy-bus, you can make it EV all on your own:

The EV West Air Cooled Volkswagen Type 2 Starter Kit is perfect for those looking for a professional fit and finish on the drive components, but are willing to build and install their own battery system. This easy bolt in AC motor and controller system was designed to have a minimal vintage look so it blends in well with your air cooled classic.

This dude will tell you how.

As previously noted, laboratory chimps have been classified as an endangered species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, as reported by Nature:

The new rule will bar most invasive research on chimpanzees. Exceptions will be granted for work that would “benefit the species in the wild” or aid the chimpanzee’s propagation or survival, including work to improve chimp habitat and the management of wild populations.

Now Deborah MacKenzie at NewScientist (5 September 2015, paywall) reports that the new rule, in combination with laboratory fears of bad publicity, may hurt … wild chimps:

AN ANIMAL welfare victory in the US may prove to be a conservation catastrophe in Africa. Tests of a promising oral Ebola vaccine that could protect wild apes may be abandoned this month when a ban on the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research comes into force.

An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus has swept across west Africa over the past 17 months, killing more than 11,000 people. Humans are not the only great apes at risk. The virus has killed chimps elsewhere in Africa, and, according to estimates by Peter Walsh at the University of Cambridge, the virus has wiped out a third of the world’s gorillas, leaving the western lowland gorilla critically endangered.

The animals require different vaccines than humans, and more testing as access to chimps is always limited.  She reports that testing on the wild populations is possible – but very, very difficult.  Up until now, captive chimps have been used, but the era of relatively free testing is coming to an end:

Research that benefits chimps will still be permitted. Walsh’s vaccine research meets that criteria, but there is unlikely to be anywhere to carry it out. None of the labs currently housing chimps for research has applied for a permit. Walsh thinks they fear that the negative publicity will jeopardise other, more extensive work with monkeys.

And so the exceedingly difficult problem of politics may doom the wild chimp population.  Do we chase this problem or that problem?  Which will revolt the public more?”  Rather than, “Which is more important?”

It would be interesting to put the onus on the conservation campaigners.  “Which project do you think is most important, and why?”  The ruckus would be both entertaining and instructive.  MacKenzie finishes with:

… Walsh thinks it will require captive chimps. “Disease is now a major threat to the survival of our closest relatives,” says Walsh. “It is immoral not to intervene if possible.” It is ironic that liberating chimps from labs could make that harder.

Caesar and Cleopatra, starring Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh, was a fascinating movie in that it didn’t depend so much on plot as on the acting of the two leads.  Vivien succeeded admirably at irritating the living crap out of me most of the time; her personal matron / servant / assassin, Ftatateeta (say that fast 5 times), as portrayed by Dame Flora Robson, was creepy as all get out; and the supporting cast, including an exceedingly tall Stewart Granger (later of Scaramouche fame), were excellent.

But the standout was Rains.  His Caesar gets all the best lines, and he speaks them with a wisdom and amusement that is most engaging.  Whoever wrote his lines gave him insights (if insights they are) that were most surprising and had me nodding in surprise; perhaps they were false, yet they engaged the thought processes, as did his delivery of them.

It’s worth a watch, if you can stand Vivien’s Cleopatra.  Whether she’s good or bad is a matter of personal taste, I suspect; but if you don’t like Caesar, well, you’re just not Roman enough.

The editorial issued by two newspapers in response to the news that Cindy Gamrat had filed to regain her seat following her expulsion from the Michigan legislature for misuse of office following her affair with Todd Courser.

(h/t ScottyUrb @ The Daily Kos)

Continuing my train of thought on categorizing human culture, it’s easy to observe unease when the practices of one sector penetrate the proper operating area of another sector.  For example, bribery in the public sector, which is the act of buying political influence, is the intrusion of private sector practices into the public sector.  In the United States it’s particularly frowned upon, if possibly widespread; in other nations the distinction may not be quite so strongly expressed.  In the health sector, there’s certainly a general unease as the demands of private-sector efficiency in the pursuit of profit conflicts with the doctor-patient relationship.

Out of Saudi Arabia comes a report from AL Monitor on an intrusion into the religious sector:

The Saudi leadership boasts about its efforts to welcome the pilgrims and expand the area where they can perform their annual ritual, the quality of the health services it offers and, most important, the safety and security of pilgrims.

However, the moment a Muslim decides to make the pilgrimage, he is at the mercy of the commercialization of this religious duty. From visa fees imposed by the Saudi government to transportation and accommodation charges, pilgrims are a source of income to both the Saudi government and service providers. The Saudi government prefers to call pilgrims “guests of God,” but these guests pay a high price. It takes some Muslims a lifetime to save for this important journey; many may never have enough resources to make it. Others can be banned for political reasons.

A Saudi micro-economy has flourished around the annual pilgrimage, but that is often overlooked when the Saudi leadership boasts about its services to pilgrims. From small hotel owners to global chains owned by entrepreneur princes such as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, revenues from the pilgrimage have always been an important source of income.

No doubt some folk would see charging the pilgrims whatever the traffic will bear as only just and right; but the purpose of the religious sector, whatever it may be, is not that of the private sector, and so the unease justifiably exists.  We see this in the United States as well, and have for a long time, from the televangelists of 30 years ago culminating in the “prosperity churches” resulting in controversy and unrest in the faith community.

This unease does suggest the inappropriateness of permitting the practices of one sector to intrude into another.  The enrichment of preachers, often followed by the incompetent financial management of the gains comes right to mind.  The use of competition in the health sector has been rejected by most of the First World because of its tendency to waste resources and erode important relationships.

But I think it would be a mistake to confuse practices with purposes.  For example, the religious (or philosophical, if you prefer) sector has as one purpose the inculcation of an ethical system in the populace, and there is little doubt that this is efficacious for the community as a whole.

I think it’s worth experimenting with considering the natural practices and purposes of each sector and how they can be insulated from each other.  Insulation is probably worth a book, at the least, since perfect cultural insulation is both impossible and possibly inimical.  Each sector has a role; they all support each other; some intrusion is necessary.  However, firewalling may be possible.  An example might be a single payer health system, to insulate the doctors and patients from the practices of the private sector; yet, keep in mind that some of the greatest health sector advances would be impossible without the services of the private sector.  Conundrums do appear using this approach; does it mean the approach is invalid?  A topic to be explored.

This shows Pluto as a barren, lonely place.

Thanks to NASA and SpaceWeather.com.

Nicholas Weaver at Lawfare describes his little side project to listen in on unencrypted Internet traffic:

The Intelligence Community has a concept, NOBUS, or “Nobody but Us”, to describe unique capabilities they possess which our adversaries can’t employ against us. I may defend the effectiveness of bulk surveillance and attack, but these tools are anything but NOBUS.

About a year and a half ago, mostly for my own entertainment, I started a small hobby project. I previously argued in a talk that the primary NSA Digital Network Intelligence flow was conceptually straightforward, a blend of Network Intrusion Detection (NIDS), big-data analytics, packet injection, and malcode. Yet this was at the time an academic pontification, without a system to back it up; there was some doubt in the audience.

So I got out my credit card, bought a small computer, a network tap, and some zip-ties, and got to work. The goal was “bulk-surveillance in miniature”, a system implementing the primary NSA capabilities on 100 Mbps networks, including easily searchable bulk recording, user identification, cookie tracking, packet-injection attacks, and a web interface.

“NOBUS” blinks red lights at me as the sort of thing an ingrown community might come up with; to me, you always assume the other guys are right on your heels.  But what do I know?  So Nicholas gives us the technical details of putting together a simple listening package, and ends with Bruce Schneier‘s wisdom on the subject of a secure Internet:

We need to act like every open wireless network or hotel in the Washington area is potentially compromised.  And with the low cost of such installation, it doesn’t even need to remain the realm of foreign intelligence services.  How much money could criminals make with such systems?

At this point, it doesn’t matter if the NSA disappeared tomorrow.  The precedents are now well established. After all, if the US can target NATO allies with bulk surveillance and attack-by-name, who can’t do the same to us?  And I personally believe the US has more to lose than we have to gain.

The only robust defense against Internet surveillance is universal encryption, as cleartext traffic represents not just an information leakage but an exploitation vector.  Because what is the opposite of NOBUS?  How about a homework assignment.

Treehugger continues to follow questions of opposition to adjusting for climate change.  First, Margaret Badore reports on the work of InfluenceMap:

The UK-based non-profit InfluenceMap gave Koch Industries and Duke Energy failing marks, as did Philips 66 and the Asian energy company Reliance Industries. Using data aggregation, analysis and original research, InfluenceMap grades major global corporations on their influence on climate change policies, in an effort to understand how corporate influence is holding back climate progress.

Google, Unilever and Cisco Systems came out ahead in InfluenceMap’s ratings, however no company earned a grade above a “B.” Chevron and BP both earned “E-” grades. Comcast and 21st Century Fox earned “E-” grades as well, making them the lowest ranking media companies. You can see the full list here.

Some companies are understandably irritable over the matter.  There’s roughly 100 companies on the corporate list currently, mostly gargantuan-sized organizations which therefore possess a great deal of influence.  Google is currently at the top of the heap, rated a B.  InfluenceMap has a separate list for trade organizations (roughly 30), which they label “Influencers“.  They do even less well than do the corporations, with the best rated a C-; ALEC, the provider of ready-made legislation to state legislators and previously mentioned here, where Google resigned from the organization, and here, sits at the plumb bottom of the list.  I wonder how many incumbents and contenders would twitch if you asked them to promise not to use ALEC.

At the other end of the spectrum, Sami Grover reports that utilities and power grid operators see the future as being green.

While utilities used to fret about the challenges of too much intermittent, distributed power, Kahn talks to Ted Craver, CEO of Edison International Inc—parent of Southern California Edison—who expects most of his new power to come from rooftop solar on his customers’ homes and buildings. The era of the big, centralized powerplant—says Craver—is probably in decline. Due to a combination of cheaper renewables, better storage options and more sophisticated software being used to balance demand with supply, Craver sees the future of his industry looking more like eHarmony or eBay than the traditional utilities we have come to know and, well…know.

Nicholas Weaver @ LawFare gives us the story of three security backdoors:

Telephone systems also have a backdoor thanks to CALEA (the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act).  Although CALEA doesn’t mandate any particular technology, it mandates that switches support wiretapping, so any phone switch sold in the US must include the ability to efficiently tap a large number of calls.  And since the US represents such a major market, this means virtually every phone switch sold worldwide contains “lawful intercept” functionality.  Yet this capability doesn’t just find use in law enforcement.

In the “Athens Affair” beginning in 2004, some unknown entity compromised Vodafone Greece.  This team of skilled attackers surreptitiously enabled the lawful intercept functionality on Vodafone’s switches and then used their backdoor access to wiretap the cellphones of prominent Greek politicians and NGOs, including both the Minister of Defense and the Prime Minister.

We need to assume that, if someone can perform such an attack against Vodafone, others can (or already have) used the same strategy against Verizon or AT&T.  So in the CALEA backdoor we have introduced a weakness into our telephone systems which attackers can exploit with significant national security implications[.]

That’s just one of the backdoors.

I’ll note, as a software engineer, that many systems have sections of code that – like junk DNA (it’s a loose analogy, actually, but I like the phrase) – are no longer used nor useful, and no longer updated.  They are conceivably vulnerabilities, if someone understands how to manipulate them.  Why do they exist?  Commercial pressures.  While some software engineers conceive of programming as an artistic form, and many more have that temperament, it’s gotta be a rare company that’ll pay to have someone go through code just to clean it up.  An artist who conceives of the system as a whole and finds the unused material aesthetically repulsive would do this; an engineer who, perhaps, doesn’t have quite the vision, and certainly not the motivation, will move on to the next project.

I surmise that working on such a backdoor – minus any associated ethical problems – would be a fascinating exercise in positive feedback.  Nicholas notes:

We have a difficult enough time building secure systems without backdoors, and the presence of a backdoor must necessarily weaken the security of the system still further.  With the dreadful history of backdoors, its little wonder most security professionals believe building backdoors right is practically impossible.

The two chimps that started this thread (tone down the snark, please), Hercules and Leo of Stony Brook University, have been denied personhood.  The Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) has responded:

The Nonhuman Rights Project has filed a Notice of Appeal to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, First Judicial Department, from a decision and order in “Hercules and Leo” case on August 5, 2015, denying a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

The chimps themselves are now entering retirement, reports The Statesman:

Newsday reported on Friday that Susan Larson, an anatomical sciences professor at Stony Brook, said that Hercules and Leo will retire from Stony Brook research and leave the university by September. However, Steven Wise, a lawyer who is the president and founder of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said his group will go forward with an appeal and will file action against the university if the chimps are not released to a sanctuary.

This caught my eye as I glanced through the legal material:

 In any event, the petitioner [NRP] denies that it seeks human rights for the chimpanzees.  Rather, it contends that the law can and should employ the legal fiction that chimpanzees are legal persons solely for the purpose of endowing them with the right of habeas corpus, as the law accepts in other contexts the “legal fiction” that nonhuman entities, such as corporations, may be deemed legal persons, with the rights incident thereto.

Trying to get their foot in the door.  I suppose this explains why my proposal that Apple be given the next open Supreme Court opening has not been taken seriously.