Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
Heathrow airport has special corridors reserved for passengers with antlers, which seems very thoughtful of them but also oddly specific.
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Matt Blaze
@mattblaze@federate.social
mastodon 4.7.3Scientist, safecracker, etc. McDevitt Professor of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown. Formerly UPenn, Bell Labs. So-called expert on election security and stuff. https://twitter.com/mattblaze on the Twitter. Slow photographer. Radio nerd. Blogs occasionally at https://www.mattblaze.org/blog . I probably won't see your DM; use something else. He/Him. Uses this wrong.
35900 Followers
370 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 05, 2022
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“It never occurred to us that our system that has exclusive control over the pod bay doors would take control over the pod bay doors” seems like something you might have thought about a bit more before you connected it to the pod bay doors.
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It's just like the way the Segway completely changed the way cities work.
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If you want your robots to not kill people, you don’t send them to robot church to learn about robot sin and robot morality. Instead, you do the hard work of programming them so they can’t kill people.
Yes, that might be difficult and subtle. There are fundamental reasons that complex software is hard to get right. This is why debugging and testing are part of software development. Even - especially - when AI is involved.
“AI” does not make software turn supernatural.
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“Our software went rogue!” No. You programmed it wrong.
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If you don’t want your system to be able to lock people out of the pod bay doors, you can just program or configure it to not have the capability to lock people out of the pod bay doors. This remains true whether your system is written in assembly language or C++ or Python or uses some fancy machine learning model.
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A subset (I want to believe a small minority) of people in the current AI industry seem to be part of some kind of wacky AI death cult, driven by a bizarre belief in a mission to create uncontrollable agents of a technological apocalypse.
And then there are the rest of us, who retain the capacity to understand that all this is just computers and software, whether you dress it up as “AI” or not.
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“In order to be useful, my AI robots need unlimited capabilities, and have to be equipped to murder people.”
What? Huh? That’s just silly. Maybe find another line of work.
Boosted by @kims@mas.to
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More ICBM photos and discussion here: https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/titans/
According to https://thebulletin.org/ it's currently 85 seconds to midnight.
The people telling me I should stick to photography and the people telling me I should stick to technology need to get together and come to a consensus about what lane they want me in. I’ll still ignore them, but at least they’ll have someone to talk to first.
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@gooba42@mastodon.social well, I’m an engineer and I don’t think “going rogue” is a useful term either colloquially or technically here. It’s buggy software. Or maybe not buggy, but intentionally malicious. But either way, software lacks the agency required to up and decide to “go rogue” on its own. It does what the software is programmed to do.
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To the "it's a calculated distraction!!" people: Why are you contorting yourself so hard to see this man as a genius?
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Ask your parents if you have no idea what I’m talking about. Or, at least: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NqCCubrky00
2001: A Space Odyssey 4k HDR | Open The Pod Bay Doors Hal
I try to be aware of cultural things, but I'm OK with the fact that I had no idea who Ed Sheeran was until a couple days ago.
A rule of thumb that has served me extremely well on social media is to stop reading any stranger's reply the moment they refer to you as "dude".
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@dominykas@fosstodon.org @gooba42@mastodon.social That’s just not how computers work. They execute instructions, which are encoded in software. The software might be hand assembled, generated by a complier, or synthesized from a machine learning system, but however the final executed instructions came about, a programmer (or a coven of programmers) was involved.
These AI systems didn’t crawl out of the ocean on their own. Someone built them, and their behavior reflects human decisions (or negligence).
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Captured with a DSLR and a Zeiss 21mm Distagon lens. Handheld (there was no room to set up a tripod).
In 2009, I was fortunate to join a "top to bottom" tour of former Air Force Titan ICBM site 571-7, now preserved as a museum. Titan II missiles carried a nine megaton(!) "physics package" in the "reentry vehicle" (which they emphatically assured me had been removed from this missile, but I still wouldn't advise upsetting them too much).
I didn't expect that congress would hold hearings on the optimal level of FBI beastiality, but 2026 has been full of surprises.
NY (and Philly) region ILS failures related to a primary system failing and then, when it failed over to a backup, they discovered that the backup's fiber link had previously been severed.
A old friend of mine was responsible for a critical public safety system with redundant links. He always monitored the backup links more closely, since if the primary fails, you discover that as soon as things stop working. But a backup link fails silently unless you watch it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/us/east-coast-flights-ground-stop-communication-failure.html?unlocked_article_code=1.C1E.7BT8.pRQcSur5LT6X
We’ll know they’re serious about slowing down on AI when the price of solid state memory drops back down.
Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
RE: https://flipboard.com/@wsj/latest-from-the-wsj-32bs0ev6z/-/a-0KPIHpJKSqu5ZrTD-g-6nA%3Aa%3A248213600-%2F0
"Measles-Related Death" is the new "Officer-Involved Shooting".
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Fourth Measles-Related Death Reported in Pennsylvania
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/fourth-measles-related-death-reported-in-pennsylvania-2ab55b17?mod=Flipboard&utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Latest From the WSJ @latest-from-the-wsj-WSJ
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One last note about yesterday's Supreme Court decision on vote-by-mail. Much online attention is focused on the outrageousness of Alito/Thomas' dissent (and it's indeed outrageously off the mark). But nothing about their dissent is particularly surprising. They ALWAYS do this lately, siding with the administration, facts and law be damned.
But they lost. Much more significant is the fact that the other seven justices disagreed with them and upheld the injunction.
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@kumarvibe@mastodon.social Software correctness and safety isn’t easy. Who told you it was?
But the killing problem can be solved. My word processor can’t kill anyone (Although maybe it could raise my blood pressure by deleting files at an inopportune moment).
Perhaps if you aren’t sure what a piece of software might do, you shouldn’t let it control lethal capabilities?
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@dominykas@fosstodon.org @gooba42@mastodon.social Now, that said, no matter how you’re creating software (from hand assembly to AI learning models or anything in between), ensuring correct, safe behavior is HARD. Evey programmer knows this (and there are fundamental reasons for it), which is why testing and debugging are an expected part of the development process, starting well before systems are inflicted on real users and consequential environments.
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@dominykas@fosstodon.org @gooba42@mastodon.social Essentially what they're saying, implicitly or explicitly, amounts to: "The programming technique we've chosen to use absolves us of responsibility for our choices".
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I should note that the linguistic trickery here is in claiming that the software “went” rogue, as if that was an independent decision beyond human control. Software behavior might BE rogue, whether AI is involved or not. But, either way, it lacks the inherent agency required to “go” rogue. Software does only what it was programmed to be able do, within the capabilities its configuration allows. That programming and configuration is where any roguery comes from.
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@heidilifeldman@mastodon.social Amen. Maintaining free, fair, and trustworthy elections is not the only existential problem before us, but it's a critical one, and it's the one I'm equipped to contribute to.
Thanks for your (impressively tireless) work!
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@grumble209@kolektiva.social I’m not sure exactly what their game is here, but large incumbents LOVE gatekeeping regulation.
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The "everything Trump does is a calculated 4D chess move" theory reminds me of this classic SNL skit about a previous holder of that office.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5wfPlgKFh8
President Reagan, Mastermind - SNL
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@datarama@hachyderm.io @gooba42@mastodon.social exactly. When management (or their PR flacks) use it, they’re deflecting responsibility. If engineers use it, they’re revealing a disturbing casualness of attitude about their own roles in the system.
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@wendinoakland@beige.party Maybe in person. But here, when a stranger replies addressing you as “dude “, it’s a reliable indicator of condescension (and frequently also that they didn’t actually read what they replied to).
Little Boxes, University Mound, San Francisco, CA, 2024
All the pixels, each made of ticky-tacky, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54062971395
#photography
RE: https://newsie.social/@ProPublica/117314460472253583
Remember ABSCAM? Back when members of congress openly accepting bribes was considered a big deal.
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NEW: In late 2024, FBI investigators had enough evidence to launch a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers, including Sen. Susan Collins.
Then Trump was reelected and eviscerated the FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption probes.
https://www.propublica.org/article/fbi-susan-collins-navatek-campaign-donations-investigation?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post
#News #Government #Corruption #Trump #FBI #DOJ #Maine #Ethics #SusanCollins
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Kavanaugh's concurrence was on narrower grounds, but that leaves SIX justices - including Roberts, Barrett, and Gorsuch - who agreed that the administration was unlikely to win on the merits.
Yes, it should have been 9-0. But by current Supreme Court standards, this case was not even close.
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@gdinwiddie@mastodon.social It does. There's something wrong here that transcends politics or policy.
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Voters who are away from home and outside their home county/township/election jurisdiction have more limited options. They probably have to use the mail. I suggest returning your ballot as quickly as possible.
Note that ballot drop boxes only work for LOCAL voters dropping off ballots for the jurisdiction that owns the box. If you're a Seattle voter, you can't put your ballot in a San Francisco drop box and expect it to be counted.
@heidilifeldman@mastodon.social
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Many (but not all) jurisdictions offer a variety of different voting options, often including:
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voting in person (or dropping off a ballot) at a local precinct on election day
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voting in person (or dropping off a ballot) at a voting center during an "early voting" period
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Returning your ballot in a locally-provided drop box during an "early voting" period
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Returning your ballot in the mail
Two fighter jet flyovers scheduled over the White House this week - one at 5pm today and another at noon tomorrow. These are incredibly loud and, if you aren't expecting them, frightening.
West Trenton (Ewing), NJ, 2015
All the pixels, but please have your tickets ready for collection, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/21010463488
#photography
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@gooba42@mastodon.social So the term is fine, but it’s the public’s fault for not understanding it? Uh huh.
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@jswright61@ruby.social Nonetheless, that's where we are. If you're looking for reasons to be outraged, you'll easily find them, but the fact is, this case was a massive loss for the administration.
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So given this (good) news, what should voters do now?
First, good news: By all indications, the USPS has been playing it straight, accepting and delivering ballots; they've respected the lower courts' injunctions, and there's no specific reason to believe that will change.
By all means, monitor your mail closely to ensure your ballot arrives.
BUT, USPS service has been generally degraded over the last year, and that could affect the timely return of your marked ballot.
@heidilifeldman@mastodon.social
Replying to on m.ai6yr.org
@cookiesinheaven@m.ai6yr.org @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Talking Heads captured the vibe of 70's/80's paranoia like no one else. See also Listening Wind (hard to imagine recording a song like this today!). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK5uqY-VYDM
Listening Wind
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Given (non-election-specific) degraded mail service, I would regard mail voting as being less reliable and efficient compared with previous years.
So I would be extra careful, do things as early as possible, and consider whatever alternatives to returning your ballot in the mail that your jurisdiction offers.
This will vary from place to place, so you'll need local information here to make a good decision.
@heidilifeldman@mastodon.social
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@jan@fedi.kcore.org That was the bane of my friend's life. He ended up switching most of his circuits to microwave and fiber to guarantee diversity.
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@FritzAdalis@infosec.exchange He doesn't need "distractions". He does everything openly. That makes no sense.