* 23 entries including: Joe Biden (series); new car batteries (series); generative AI arrives (series); EU AI bill; Joe Biden drops out | Kamala Harris steps up | Russia flagging in Ukraine; Yak-52 at war | automated warships | Dragonfire laser; HERITAGE-class cutter for USCG; Biden V Trump | long war in Ukraine? | new Yamaha | big hailstorm; VDES; French elections | fake Joe Biden crisis | new infotech at work; Dragon Firefighter | Airloom wind power | AI checks Wikipedia; content moderation OK with SCOTUS; Dump Biden hysteria | presidential immunity | Prime Minister Starmer; nova star | forest fires increasing | viruses on viruses; EU digital identity wallet; Assange a free man | SCOTUS back & forth | Biden's bad night.
* NEW CAR BATTERIES (4): The goal of many researchers working on solid-state batteries is a "lithium-air" design -- which features a lithium-metal anode, and a cathode based on lithium binding to oxygen obtained from the air, then released again when the battery recharges. Partly because external air is the key cathode element and is not part of the battery, lithium-air can in principle store much more energy per kilogram. However, the phrase "in principle" is significant, Linda Nazar saying that skeptics call it "fairy-tale chemistry".
The fairy tale may be coming true. Materials scientist Larry Curtiss at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, and his colleagues made headlines in 2023 by unveiling a solid-state, experimental lithium-air battery that they had tested over 1,000 cycles in the lab. The experimental prototype cell achieved about 685 Wh/kg and should be able to reach 1,200 Wh/kg -- four times what's achievable with lithium-ion now and on a par with the energy density of petrol in cars.
Even the research team was surprised they got it to work. Previous lithium-air battery projects, typically using liquid electrolytes, made lithium superoxide (LiO2) or lithium peroxide (Li2O2) at the cathode, which store one or two electrons per oxygen molecule. The Argonne cell instead makes lithium oxide (Li2O), which can hold four -- translating to higher energy density. The surprising part was how stable the cell was. There is some skepticism of these claims, with other battery researchers saying the work needs to be replicated, and there are concerns of how well the technology scales up even if it can be replicated. In any case, it's nowhere near ready for commercialization. Curtiss is optimistic, seeing the lithium-air battery as useful for electric vertical take-off aircraft.
* All these new battery schemes are interesting, but underlying them are concerns over the ability to find a battery chemistry that will be cheap and sustainable over the long run. Gerbrand Ceder says: "The biggest challenges are resource-related." He estimates that the projected 14 TWh needed for EVs by 2050 will require 14 million tonnes of total metal. For comparison, at present global mining of lithium is about 130,000 tonnes per year, while cobalt is nearly 200,000 tonnes and nickel 3.3 million tonnes. Those quantities are for all uses, including non-EV batteries and -- for nickel -- stainless steel. The quantity required makes it important to pick metals that are not scarce or expensive and do not cause excessive environmental damage when they are mined.
There's considerable work on batteries don't use nickel, cobalt or other expensive metals. QuantumScape, for example, says its batteries have this advantage, as do lithium-air concepts; LiS, if it can be made to work; and the already commercial LFP cathodes, although LFP might strain phosphorus resources if that technology grows a lot. Ceder is investigating alternative cathodes known as "disordered rocksalts (DRX)". These rely on the idea that lithium ions can just meander through a crystalline cathode instead of taking an ordered path through layers, and so the cathode can be made with almost any transition metals. Ceder's team prefers manganese and titanium. He expects the first batteries with DRX cathodes to be cheaper than current lithium-ion cells and to achieve comparable energy densities.
However, these cells still use lithium, with a bottlenecked supply that leads to wild price swings. In 2022:23, for example, battery-grade lithium carbonate prices briefly spiked at six times higher than usual. Researchers have tinkered with replacing lithium with other charge carriers, including magnesium, calcium, aluminum, and zinc, but work on sodium is the most advanced. Sodium sits directly beneath lithium in the periodic table, making its atoms heavier and bigger, but with similar chemical properties. That means research in lithium-based cells can translate to sodium-based cells. The potential payoff is huge, since sodium is about 1,000 times more plentiful in Earth's crust than is lithium. Ceder says: "Sodium is just unbelievably abundant." He believes sodium batteries could end up costing around $50 USD per kilowatt-hour. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* EU AI LAW: As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("What The EU's Tough AI Law Means For Research And ChatGPT" by Elizabeth Gibney, 16 February 2024), the European Union has been a leader in efforts to regulate digital technology. The EU is now establishing the world's first comprehensive set of laws to regulate artificial intelligence (AI). The EU AI Act focuses on the riskiest AI models, being designed to ensure that AI systems are safe and respect fundamental rights and EU values. The new law was passed by the European Parliament in March, and is expected to go into effect in 2026.
EU nations' governments approved the legislation on 2 February, and the law now needs final sign-off from the European Parliament, one of the EU's three legislative branches; this is expected to happen in April. If the text remains unchanged, as policy watchers expect, the law will enter into force in 2026.
Large language model (LLM) AI systems are being continuously refined, and are seeing widening application -- including use in scams and information warfare. China already uses a patchwork of laws to guide commercial use of AI, and US regulation is under way. In October 2023, President Joe Biden signed the nation's first AI executive order, requiring Federal agencies to take action to manage the risks of AI.
The law bans AI systems that present "unacceptable risk", for example those that use biometric data to infer sensitive characteristics, such as people's sexual orientation. High-risk applications, such as using AI in hiring and law enforcement, must meet certain requirements -- for example, developers must show that their models are safe, transparent and explainable to users, and that they adhere to privacy regulations, and do not discriminate. For lower-risk AI tools, developers will still have to tell users when they are interacting with AI-generated content. The law applies to models operating in the EU, and any firm that violates the rules risks a fine of up to 7% of its annual global profits.
Some don't think the laws go far enough, Kilian Vieth-Ditlmann -- a political scientist at AlgorithmWatch, a Berlin-based non-profit organization that studies the effects of automation on society -- says they leave "gaping" exemptions for military and national-security purposes, as well as loopholes for AI use in law enforcement and migration,
Researchers working on advanced AI systems have little to fear from the AI Act. Late in consideration of the act, a clause was added to exempt AI models developed purely for research, development, or prototyping. Joanna Bryson -- who studies AI and its regulation at the Hertie School in Berlin -- says: "They really don't want to cut off innovation, so I'd be astounded if this is going to be a problem."
Dirk Hovy -- a computer scientist at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy -- does believe that the act will influence developers: "Putting a framework up to guide its use and development makes absolute sense. ... I think it will filter down and foster good practice."
The act establishes two tiers for big LLMs:
For the EU, the second tier covers any model that uses more than 1025 FLOPs (the number of computer operations) in training. Training a model with that amount of computing power costs between $50 million USD and $100 million USD, That covers GPT-4, OpenAI's current model, and might include future iterations of Meta's open-source rival, LLaMA. Open-source models in this tier are subject to regulation, although research-only models are exempt. However, some researchers say that categorizing the LLMs by size is like defining as dangerous all chemistry that uses a certain number of person-hours.
In any case, the act incentivizes making AI information available, replicable and transparent, which is almost like "reading off the manifesto of the open-source movement", says Hovy. EU regulators see open source as key to ensuring competitiveness with the USA and China in AI.
The European Commission will create an AI Office to oversee general-purpose models, advised by independent experts. The office will develop ways to evaluate the capabilities of these models and monitor related risks. There are concerns that the office will not have the capability to do a credible job, but that remains to be seen.
COMMENT ON ARTICLEDAYLOG SUN 21 JUL 24: Today the big bombshell, as everyone knows, was that Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in his place. Intensive efforts were put in motion to make sure the Democratic Party was lined up behind Harris.
There was anger among Dems at the way the mainstream media and a splinter faction of Dems forced JB to stand down; JB was not senile, and if he had a health crisis Kamala could take over. However, if JB had a health crisis later in the campaign -- it was a clear possiblity -- that might well derail it. It seemed best to JB not to wait for that to happen. In the end, it was the right call to ask him to drop out, though the way it was done still rankles.
There's a lot of impatience among Dems right now with the leadership, but they're just trying to make sure the troops are behind them before they move out. Will JB also resign the presidency and make Harris POTUS 47? So far, no sign, but it's a possibility. Harris as the incumbent would get a campaign boost, but she may not want the step up, preferring to make it on her own. Given that her opponent, Trump, is decaying by the day, she may not need a step up.
Trump is certain to ramp up the bigoted dog whistles against Harris, but that will only make him sink faster. It was quickly pointed out that MAGA's attacks on "Senile Joe" are now rebounding on "Decrepit Donald".
"KamalaMANIA" is running hot right now. Of course, who her VP pick is going to be is a matter of intense speculation. The answer is: nobody knows just yet.
* Judge Aileen Cannon made a huge splash by dismissing the secret-documents case against Trump, on the basis that special counsels -- in this specific case Jack Smith -- are unconstitutional. Smith has appealed.
Cannon's judgement was preposterous -- but Hunter Biden, Joe's son, is appealing his conviction on firearms charges on the same basis, saying the special counsel who prosecuted him had no constitutional justification and that the trial should be voided.
OK, the chances of that working would seem to be NIL, but that depends on the definition of "work". Could it be that Hunter Biden wants to get the case up to SCOTUS as quickly as possible, to then be dismissed? That would neatly short-circuit Judge Cannon. We'll see.
DAYLOG MON 22 JUL 24: I was curious as to whether Joe Biden was going to resign the presidency and let Kamala take over. I know a good case can be made for it, but I also was sure a good case could be made against it.
Another Spouter tipped me off: If Kamala became POTUS 47 right away, she'd have to get a vice-president, with the VP confirmed by Congress. The trick is that the GOP in Congress would refuse to confirm the VP -- which would mean Speaker Mike Johnson would then (refuse to) certify the vote. That would be preposterous, but would they do really do that? Of course they would. No matter how low I set my estimate of the GOP, I can't go low enough.
Along the same lines ... it appears the rise of Kamala has completely bamboozled Trump and his clown parade, with Trump struggling and failing to refocus his feeble thinking. In one incident that's hard to believe, Trump said he wanted to sue Biden for fraud, saying that he, Trump, had spent all kinds of money on the campaign to fight Biden, and then Biden had pulled the rug out from underneath him, wasting all the money that was spent. The crazy is strong in this one.
In any case, all Democrats are falling in line behind Kamala. The faction that backstabbed Joe Biden are singing his praises. They need to realize: A lot of people are mad at you for siding with the trolls. We must forgive but we won't forget. Don't push your luck.
* Sun came up blood-red over NE Colorado this morning. Were there fires in the state? Could be out of state too. I checked, and found out British Columbia & Alberta are up in flames. Bad news; the weather won't help for quite a while.
DAYLOG TUE 23 JUL 24: Republicans in the House of Representatives are now introducing pointless articles of impeachment against Kamala Harris. It appears they have nothing better to do with their time. Well ... I guess they don't.
For the moment, with JB dropping out of the presidential race, the mainstream media seems to be a bit tongue-tied. Over the past few weeks, I've cut a number of major outlets loose; today, I cut MSNBC and THE SUN from my links. Their shameful treatment of Joe Biden was too much to take, I no longer regard them as credible. The MSM seems to be in a doom spiral; MAGA has never liked them, and now they've antagonized the Dems as well.
Oh, and another thing: now that JB is leaving office, what happens to Hunter Biden and his legal persecution? JB said he wouldn't pardon him but left the door open to commutation. Then again, with JB leaving office, is there much reason to persecute him any more?
* New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, though steadfastly "middle of the road", is also a no-nonsense operator. When seven MPs of his Labour Party publicly defied him on articulated policy, they were summarily suspended for six months, to sit as Independents for the interim.
Starmer has such an overwhelming parliamentary majority that he can afford to make an example of a handful of renegades. The message seems to be that discussion is fine, but Labour MPs need to stay with the program.
DAYLOG WED 24 JUL 24: MAGA in Congress are calling for Joe Biden to resign from the presidency immediately -- one plausible reason for doing so being, as mentioned here on Monday, that they would hold up selection of vice-president, with Speaker Johnson then refusing to certify the vote.
I got to thinking what would happen if JB were forced to step down after the election. Kamala would become POTUS, but then what about the vice-president? Sensibly assuming Trump loses, she would have a VP-elect. Would he just then be sworn into office? That would make sense; why would Congress need to qualify a VP who had already been elected by the popular vote? However, given that the situation would be unprecedented, it's hard to say what might happen.
Actually, on further examination, the supposed "plot" falls apart. The House Speaker will be voted in on 3 January 2025, and it seems unlikely that Mike Johnson will be Speaker on 4 January. Certifying the vote then takes place on 6 January. The MAGA in Congress are, of course, clueless enough to think they can pull a fast one -- these are the people who tried to impeach Joe Biden, after all -- but they're not smart enough to actually do it.
BTW, when used "he" for the VP, that was deliberate: Kamala is only after white males, to balance the ticket. One particularly attractive candidate is Arizona Senator Mark Kelly -- ex-Navy, ex-astronaut, from a swing state. Of course, we shall see.
Tonight, Joe Biden gave a brief address to the nation, saying it was time to "pass the torch", and saying he intended to focus on defeating Putin in his remaining time in office. Not incidentally, Bibi Netanyahu spoke to Congress today; JB neatly upstaged him.
DAYLOG THU 25 JUL 24: Trump is pushing back on his conviction in NY courts on hush-money charges, attempting to use the SCOTUS decision granting immunity for "official acts" to get the decision overturned. That would seem a nonstarter on the face of it, since the charges in the case were based on things that happened before Trump became president. However, Trump's lawyers say that official presidential statements factored into the trial, invalidating it.
The office of Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was prosecuting the case, has now issued a statement repudiating those claims. First of all, as noted the case against Trump has nothing to do with official acts. Second, there's a footnote to the SCOTUS decision that provides a "public records exception" for introducing evidence from official acts. Finally, the evidence from official sources was "only a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary proof" the jury saw before convicting Trump.
It is very doubtful Trump's legal challenge will go anywhere. Trump's sentencing is currently scheduled for 18 September. What happens is a toss-up, but Trump could be in jail on election day. We'll see.
* "KamalaMANIA" continues at full steam, with the GOP in clear disarray. I had to think, however, that when I see Kamala, I don't personally resonate with her. With the follow-on thought: So what?
Kamala can and will defeat Trump; he was roadkill before Kamala took the lead. Once in the White House, we have the adults in the room, who will fix the damage Trump did and get the USA back on track. That's all that's important. In the meantime, I'm working on my Kamala bio.
Incidentally, Kamala said she felt like she was the "underdog" in the contest. I thought: UnderDog V RoadKill? Sounds like a comix match-up.
DAYLOG FRI 25 JUL 24: A 32-year-old Las Vegas man named Spencer Gear is now in Federal custody after phoning death threats to 11 individuals, including NY Judge Juan Merchan and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, associated with Trump's "hush money" trial.
It is very unusual for arrests to be made in such cases. Typically, the Feds simply knock on the door of people making such threats and have a chat, telling them to straighten up and fly right. If they don't, they get in big trouble. It appears Gear was WAY out of line.
Recently, the Lincoln's Project Rick Wilson appeared in a video, almost shaking with fury. He'd got a death threat, which was not new to him, but the caller also threatened his daughter and her family. Phone threats are a foolish crime; an arrest is likely to follow. Who knows? It might be the same guy.
* Ukrainian press reports that Brigadier General Oleksandr Pivnenko, head of Ukraine's National Guard, says that Russian forces are being depleted in combat at an unsustainable rate, and they will be exhausted before the beginning of October.
It should be added that F-16s are likely to be in service in the near future. The biggest problem for the AFU at present is big Russian glide bombs, dropped from out of range of air defenses. F-16s with long-range AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles should put a stop to that.
It is suspected that the F-16s being handed to Ukraine are being updated to modern "F-16V" standard, with the latest radar and defensive countermeasures. They would not be half as useful if they weren't. The F-16V would provide support for the latest munitions.
Ukrainian air defenses against the missiles bombarding Ukraine's cities are heavily dependent on the Patriot missile system, but there aren't enough Patriot batteries and missiles to do the job. The F-16V with AIM-120 AMRAAM would help but Ukraine might also obtain early production of the new "AIM-260" missile, which appears to have an anti-missile capability, or even the "AIM-174" -- an air-launched version of the very-long-range SM-6 / RIM-174 missile, useful for both air intercept and ground attack.
Incidentally, the Ukrainian National Guard is an internal security organization, under control of the Interior Ministry -- along with the Border Guards, which includes the Sea (Coast) Guard. In wartime, both are under AFU control and perform combat operations.
AND SO ON: One David Frum -- a Center-Conservative, one of that dying breed, who had been a staffer in George W. Bush's White House, and a Never Trumper -- wrote a flattering essay in THE ATLANTIC on Joe Biden's retirement from the presidential race, worth repeating here:
QUOTE:
Two political myths inspired the dreams and haunted the nightmares of the Founders of the American republic. Both these foundational myths were learned from the history and literature of the ancient Romans.
Cincinnatus was the name of a man who, the story went, accepted supreme power in the state to meet a temporary emergency and then relinquished that power to return to his farm when the emergency passed. George Washington modeled his public image on the legend of Cincinnatus, and so he was depicted in contemporary art and literature -- "the Cincinnatus of the West," as Lord Byron praised him in a famous poem of the day.
Against the bright legacy of Cincinnatus, the Founders contrasted the sinister character of Catiline: a man of depraved sexual appetites who reached almost the pinnacle of power and then exploited populist passions to overthrow the constitution, gain wealth, and pay his desperately pressing debts. Alexander Hamilton invoked Catiline to inveigh against his detested political adversary, Aaron Burr:
"He is bankrupt beyond redemption except by the plunder of his country. His public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandisement ... If he can, he will certainly disturb our institutions to secure to himself permanent power and with it wealth ... He is truly the Cataline of America."
President Joe Biden's speech last night adapted the story of Cincinnatus: "Nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy," he said. "That includes personal ambition." By presenting the next election as a stark choice between, on the one side, "honesty, decency, respect, freedom, justice, and democracy" and, on the other side, the opposites of those things, Biden cast his chief political adversary in the ancient role of Catiline.
... The last act of the drama decides how the whole show will be remembered. Biden gave 50 years of his life to public service. It was a career of highs and lows, victories and defeats -- all of it now backlit by the glow of its magnificent end.
Donald Trump's career has not ended quite yet -- though it, too, is backlit. Any hope or promise it might once have carried vanished long ago. His final chapter seems at hand. It won't be good -- and after the contrast with Biden's finale last night, it will look worse than ever.
END_QUOTE
A thought: Will Joe Biden go home to retirement after inauguration day? Maybe if he feels up to it, he could become US ambassador to Ukraine. That would send a powerful message to Ukraine, and serve as a rebuke to the critics who dismissed him as old and useless.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* JOE BIDEN (36): The Clarence Thomas hearings dragged on for two more days, with testimony focused on defense of Thomas. Comments were to the effect of: Thomas did not behave in such a way. -- Anita Hill was the sort of person who, when pushed, was inclined to push back. There were questions as to why Hill retained contacts with Thomas even after she had left the EEOC.
On the other side of the coin, Thomas's evasive testimony had suggested his word was not to be taken at face value -- and there were also the facts that Hill had been contacted by the Senate over her accusations, not the other way around, and was reluctant to testify. Thomas called the hearings a public "lynching", but it was Hill who found the rope tied around her neck. The Judiciary Committee did find witnesses who backed up her lurid stories about Thomas, most prominently one Angela Wright, who had worked for Thomas at the EEOC.
At the time of the hearings, Wright was working as a journalist, and wrote a column backing up Hill's claims. Even before it was published, she got a call from Congressional staff, asking her about her experiences with Thomas. She asked her bosses if she should talk, and they gave her the green light. Wright talked to the Judiciary Committee, and they asked her to come to Congress to testify. As she said in a 2020 interview, she didn't want to do that, telling them: "I think you have my statement, that's good enough."
She did have a follow-up conference call where she was questioned by both sides, and again figured that was sufficient. The next thing she knew, she was hit with a subpoena. She ended up traveling to Washington DC, and spent several days in a holding pattern, being told she would be called, but never being called. She made it clear she'd already said what she wanted to say, but would say it again if given the green light. However, Wright was already being vilified and was getting angry about it, wanting to call out the lies that were being spread about her.
It was unlikely that would have accomplished anything more than to inflame the situation, and she was finally told she could go home. Joe would later say in an interview that Wright didn't want to be called, but it was more like she said it was up to the Judiciary Committee whether she was called or not. Obviously, the committee wasn't of one mind on the issue. Wright said in a 2020 interview with PBS:
QUOTE:
I think that Biden had no idea what to do with this particular situation. He was the chairman of the committee, but here was a situation involving a very accomplished African American attorney and professor of law and an equally accomplished African American male Republican who's nominated for the highest court in the land. And I think he felt that he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't, quite honestly. He didn't know whose side to come down on.
... I think he was just, number one, afraid because he didn't know who I was and what I would say, and, two, I think he just wanted it over. It was a very uncomfortable position for him to be in. He was sitting there to judge a man, a Black man, who literally just accused almost every white man on that panel of racism, because at the point when Clarence Thomas decided to link the hearing and questions about this sexual prowess to a high-tech lynching ...
[Biden] didn't help at all. He allowed members of that committee to grill Professor Hill in a way that was, I thought, inappropriate and humiliating, although she handled herself beautifully. She was very graceful under the kinds of questions they asked her. I mean, some of the things they repeatedly asked her to repeat, like some of the sexual comments he made about some of the porn stars that he watched, some of it just seemed absolutely voyeuristic, and I think at any given moment, Senator Biden could have said, "We don't need to go down that line," or he could have asked them to redirect the question. He could have done something to provide her with some support, some comfort. But that didn't happen.
END_QUOTE
That was unrealistic; the hearings having descended into a mudfight, it is hard to believe much could have been done to sanitize them. In any case, the Senate confirmed Thomas's nomination on 15 October 1991, on a close vote of 52:48, with 11 Democratic senators voting YEA. Thomas wouldn't have got the votes without the Democrats; given his vaporous testimony, it's hard to understand why any Democrats would have voted for him. After all, the Senate had refused to give Robert Bork a PASS, with the Reagan Administration then nominating the highly acceptable Antony Kennedy in Bork's place.
The Senate confirmed Thomas's nomination on 15 October 1991, on a close vote of 52:48, with 11 Democratic senators voting YEA. Thomas wouldn't have won the vote without the Democrats; given his vaporous testimony, it's hard to understand why any Democrats wanted to vote for him. After all, the Senate had refused to give Robert Bork a PASS, with the Reagan Administration then nominating the highly acceptable Antony Kennedy in Bork's place.
The hint is that the sexual-harassment accusations influenced the vote in Thomas's favor: Thomas won the vote not in spite of Hill's complaints, but because of them. Sexual harassment charges are difficult to prove, since their only basis is usually "she said / he said." The accuser, who has the burden of proof, is at a disadvantage, all the more so if the audience is not inclined to be sympathetic.
It wasn't. During the hearings, Senator Barbara Mikulski -- a Maryland Democrat, the only woman in the Senate at the time -- declared that "what disturbs me as much as the allegations themselves is that the Senate appears not to take the charge of sexual harassment seriously." The Senate clearly did not. Of course, Thomas's skin color was also a factor in the Senate vote; Democrats were more likely to give him the benefit of doubt. Thomas knew that, and had played the "race card" to maximum effect.
In any case, the fiasco was over, leaving little but accusation and finger-pointing in its wake. Joe didn't mention it in his 2007 memoir, for the obvious reason that nothing particularly good had come out of it, or could have come out of it. He had tried to perform an awkward balancing act and got everyone mad at him. Joe was sniped at from both sides. Anita Hill never forgave him.
Joe also got wind of reports that Thomas liked to rent pornographic videos, but didn't follow them up. He had no good reason to: if Hill's claims weren't being taken very seriously, Thomas's alleged taste for porn would have been taken even less seriously. As far as Joe was concerned, the sexual-harassment issue was a red herring: the fundamental problem with Clarence Thomas was that he simply wasn't qualified to be a SCOTUS justice, and the personal accusations against Thomas had derailed Joe's control over the hearings. It was staggering that any Democratic senator voted for him. Thomas would, in the end, have a career of little positive distinction in his time as a SCOTUS justice. [FURTHER INSTALLMENTS TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED]
START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed in an article from TWZ.com ("Yak-52 Kill Marks Hint At Success In Ukraine's Drone War" by Thomas Newdick, 25 June 2024), the Russian onslaught against Ukraine has been in good part driven by streams of kamikaze drones, most notably the Iranian Shahed design. They're slow and noisy, not so hard to shoot down, but their sheer numbers help overwhelm defenses.
Ukraine is taking an imaginative approach towards dealing with Russian k-drones. During World War II, the Soviet Yakovlev OKB (design bureau) generated a series of increasingly powerful piston fighters, culminating in the "Yak-9". In the postwar period, the Yak OKB focused on jet aircraft, but also built a series of stunters and two-seat trainers, descendants of the Yak fighters -- most significantly the "Yak-52", a tandem-seat trainer with a radial piston engine and retractable tricycle landing gear that first flew in 1976. It's not fast, with a maximum speed of 285 KPH (175 MPH), but it handles well and is agile. Roughly 1,800 were built.
Now at least one Ukrainian Yak-52 is sporting a number of kill markings of Russian drones. Nobody's releasing details, but the story is that the back-seater carries a shotgun, possibly automatic, and blasts away at the drone. That would be tricky to do, particularly at night. Some Yak-52s were kitted up for weapons training, carrying two underwing rocket pods, and it's plausible that Yak-52s could be fitted up with two underwing machine-gun pods. Some kind of targeting system, with an infrared sight or such, could be fitted into the cockpit -- but nobody's talking.
* As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("Australia To Bet Big On Heavily Armed, Optionally Crewed Warships" by Joseph Trevithick, 20 February 2024), Australia now plans to acquire a new class of six optionally-crewed ships for the country's Navy as part of a collaborative effort with the US Navy.
These six "Large Optionally Crewed Surface Vessels (LOSV)" will each have 32 vertical launch system cells, capable of firing various types of missiles. Comments suggest they will feature a Aegis-type radar / combat system. They are intended to provide additional distributed magazine depth at a lower cost to reinforce the capabilities of the country's larger surface combat vessels. The LOSVs are part of a greater plan to improve and roughly double the size of the Royal Australian Navy's (RAN) major surface combatant fleets by the 2040s, with the plan also envisioning the acquisition of up to 11 new general-purpose frigates. The plan has also featured some cutbacks to naval assets currently in service or being acquired.
The US Navy is in the midst of a program to develop and acquire a class of "Large Uncrewed Surface Vessels (LUSV)" with comparable capabilities, including between 16 and 32 vertical launch system cells. There's no mention of collaboration with the US for development of the LOSVs, but the two programs are, by all appearances, very similar and may have connections. According to a report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) published in late 2023:
QUOTE:
The [US] Navy envisions LUSVs as being 200 feet to 300 feet [60 to 90 meters] in length and having full load displacements of 1,000 tons to 2,000 tons [900 to 1,200 tonnes], which would make them the size of a corvette (IE, a ship larger than a patrol craft and smaller than a frigate).
The Navy wants LUSVs to be low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships with ample capacity for carrying various modular payloads -- particularly anti-surface warfare (ASuW) and strike payloads, meaning principally anti-ship and land-attack missiles.
... Although referred to as unmanned vehicles, LUSVs might be more accurately described as optionally or lightly manned ships, because they might sometimes have a few onboard crew members, particularly in the nearer term as the Navy works out LUSV enabling technologies and operational concepts.
END_QUOTE
The USN has issued preliminary contracts to a number of builders for the LUSV design, one builder being Austal USA, the American branch of Austal of Australia -- further suggesting connections between the programs.
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Britain's Dragonfire Laser Weapon Engages First Aerial Targets" by David Szondy, 21 January 2024), Britain is now testing its "Dragonfire Laser Directed Energy Weapon (LDEW)" on the Ministry of Defense's Hebrides Range. Not many details have been released about Dragonfire -- but it is known it's a solid-state laser weapon in the 50-kW range, based on doped glass fiber bundles running into a British-designed beam-combining system.
It is mounted in a turret, along with an electro-optic imager and a secondary laser for targeting and beam focusing. Range hasn't been discussed, but it can hit a coin from a kilometer away, and the cost per shot is about 10 GBP -- or $13 USD.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW CAR BATTERIES (3): Since improving battery electrodes is a challenge, there's also a push to improve electrolytes. The greatest interest is in replacing liquid electrolytes with solid electrolytes. The idea of solid-state batteries is to use a ceramic or solid polymer as the electrolyte, which hosts the passage of lithium ions but restrains dendrite formation. That makes it easier to use an all-lithium anode, and also reduces the fire hazard by getting rid of the flammable liquid electrolyte.
Linda Nazar says the cell architecture of solid-state batteries is simpler than that of liquid-based cells. In addition solid batteries, in principle, work better both at low temperatures -- because a liquid electrolyte gets more viscous at low temperatures, slowing ion transfer -- and at high temperatures -- since the electrode reactions with liquid electrolytes suffer at high temperatures.
Of course, if solid electrolytes were easy, we'd already have them. A particular problem is manufacturing a smooth, flawless interface between the layers. Another issue is that ion transfer through a solid electrolyte tends to be slower than through a liquid one. Finally, manufacturing solid-state batteries is trickier than building batteries with liquid electrolytes, and so they are likely to be more expensive, at least until bulk manufacturing processes are fully established.
Some battery companies are already moving forward with solid state. Colorado-based Solid Power in Louisville -- partnered with car makers BMW and Ford -- for example, has begun pilot-scale production of a solid-state cell with a silicon-based anode that they say achieves 390 Wh/kg, while California-based QuantumScape -- which has signed deals with manufacturers including Volkswagen -- has a solid-state battery that achieves the advantages of a lithium anode with an even lower-weight, anode-less design.
Those working on solid-state batteries are not entirely forthcoming about the details of their technology. There is a certain amount of skepticism about their claims, Gerbrand Ceder saying that the claims of higher energy densities for solid-state batteries are "unproven today at any sort of commercial scale."
Nobody has actually introduced an EV powered by solid-state batteries yet. Toyota's original target date for commercializing them, supposedly in the early 2020s has now slipped to the late 2020s, for example. Nazar doesn't think they're all that far off, however: "I believe that in 2025, we're probably going to see some market intrusion of some of these cells." Ambitious Chinese companies are driving forward on solid-state batteries -- the companies including the world's largest battery manufacturer, Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), headquartered in Ningde.
In the meantime, solid-state battery tech is improving steadily. Chemist Jennifer Rupp at the Technical University of Munich in Germany has founded a company, QKera, also in Munich, that manufactures ceramic electrolytes at half the usual 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit.
Meanwhile, plenty of researchers are pursuing ways to improve solid state. Chemist Jennifer Rupp at the Technical University of Munich in Germany has founded a company, QKera, also in Munich, that manufactures ceramic electrolytes at half the usual temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,830 degrees Fahrenheit) -- which not only reduces energy use and emissions in manufacturing, but makes for a better battery.
Another promising improvement, according to Nazar, is a new class of "oxyhalide" electrolytes for solid-state batteries -- oxyhalides being compounds containing oxygen and a halide, such as chlorine or fluorine. Some of these are 'gooey' and so more flexible, which should ease manufacturing and make them less vulnerable to cracking. Some have very high conductivity, letting lithium ions zip through as if through a liquid instead of a solid, improving battery efficiency. Brian Cunningham says firms are working on a solid-state version of LiS. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* HERITAGE-CLASS CUTTER: As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("Get To Know The Coast Guard's New Heritage Class Cutter" by Oliver Parken, 3 November 2023), the US Coast Guard (USCG) doesn't get much attention. The USGC operates small vessels and a range of multi-purpose warships known as "cutters", which have had a wide range of configurations over their history. The first of the latest generation of USCG cutters, the ARGUS, was launched in October 2023, as the lead in the new HERITAGE class -- which will replace the Coast Guard's current fleet of elderly medium-endurance cutters.
The first four HERITAGE-class "Medium Endurance Offshore Patrol Cutters (OPC)" -- including the ARGUS, as well as the CHASE, INGHAM, and RUSH -- are being produced by the Eastern Shipbuilding Group in Florida. Austal USA, a subsidiary of Austal of Australia, will build up to 11 more OPCs in Mobile, Alabama, the first of which has been named USCG PICKERING. The Coast Guard plans to procure 25 HERITAGE-class OPCs to replace the service's fleet of geriatric medium-endurance cutters, including 13 FAMOUS-class and 13 RELIANCE-class ships. Three RELIANCE-class vessels, including USCG COURAGEOUS, DURABLE, and DECISIVE, have already been decommissioned.
The HERITAGE-class OPCs are expected to have a full displacement of some 4,500 tonnes (4,950 tons) -- they were originally conceived as having a displacement of 3,500 to 3,700 tonnes (3,850 to 4,070 tons). They have a length of 110 meters (360 feet), a beam of 16 meters (54 feet), and a draft of 5.2 meters (17 feet). They will be bigger than the medium-endurance cutters they are replacing, but smaller than the LEGEND-class National Security Cutters. RELIANCE-class and FAMOUS-class cutters are 64 and 82 meters (210 and 270 feet) long respectively, while the LEGEND-class vessels are 127 meters (418 feet) long.
They are propelled by two diesel engines with 7,760 kW (9,760 HP) each, and have four 940-kW diesel generators to provide power. Speed is 45 KPH (28 MPH / 24 KT), endurance is 60 days, and range is 18,900 kilometers (11,700 miles / 10,200 NMI).
Crew complement will be 126 officers and men. Each HERITAGE-class cutter is armed with a Bofors Mark 110 57 millimeter rapid-fire gun in a turret on the bow, and a Mark 38 MOD 3 25-millimeter autocannon over the helicopter hangar aft. They will also have two 12.7-millimeter machine guns on each side, on flexible mounts. They also have modern technology not found on the older cutters:
The rear helicopter deck and hangar will support MH-60 Jayhawk and MH-65 Dolphin helicopter deployments, as well as drones. The cutters can also carry rigid-hull inflatable boats (RHIB), with dual two-point davit systems for deployment and recovery. Helicopters and RHIBs are often used for boarding, search, and seizure operations.
Once operational, the multi-mission ships will be used in support of regulating new Arctic shipping routes and natural resources, due to receding ice accelerated by climate change. They will also be used for search and rescue, the protection of living marine resources, drug-migrant trafficking interdiction, disaster response efforts, and for providing general security. Due to their communications and networking abilities, as well as other combat systems, they will also be able to work more closely with US Navy assets as well. The program has suffered delays, but continues on track.
COMMENT ON ARTICLEDAYLOG MON 15 JUL 24: Fallout, such as it is, from the assassination attempt on Trump continues. The shooter, Thomas Crooks, was a quiet kid and nobody knew much about him. It is known he was a registered Republican and was a gun enthusiast. The FBI did get his phone.
The attack doesn't seem to have done anything to help Trump. After all, nobody who wasn't going to vote for Trump before the shooting is going to now. Joe Biden, in contrast, has used the event to take charge of the crisis and appear presidential. It's a good time for the Dems to push a gun-safety bill, but no sign of action just yet.
PALMER REPORT says that, in the meantime, Trump has gone to ground and is not appearing in public, though he issues deranged Truth Social postings. Myself, I suspect the assassination attempt unnerved him, when he was barely functional to begin with.
* Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has stated that Ukraine has the right to hit targets in Russia ... though he didn't precisely say they could do it with Allied-supplied weapons. It does sound like that was the implication, however.
The trick is that it is unlikely Ukraine was ever really refused permission to use such weapons on Russia. There just weren't enough weapons to spare to do it -- but rather than publicly admit weakness, the cover story was: We have the weapons but we won't use them.
Once Ukraine actually got the weapons, permission to use them, probably with some conditions, was granted. That means powerful new weapons have arrived and are going to be used. Taking public declarations at face value in a war is unwise.
DAYLOG WED 17 JUL 24: Joe Biden delivered the keynote address to the NAACP convention in Las Vegas yesterday, getting a chant of: "FOUR MORE YEARS!" He was in good form, saying that the tone of American politics was getting too hot and should cool off.
Biden expressed relief that Trump wasn't seriously hurt -- though I might personally add that the best reason to want Trump alive is to make sure he stands trial, so that no other trashclown ever tries to game the presidency again.
Referring to Trump's condescending "black jobs" crack, Biden said: "Folks, I know what ... a Black job is -- it's the Vice President of the United States ... Kamala Harris! I know what a 'Black job' is. The first Black president ... Barack Obama!" [ROARING CHEERS]
Trump has selected troglodyte Senator JD Vance as his running mate, it seems on the basis that he was the most obsequious of the choices; he certainly won't bring in any votes. VP Kamala Harris challenged Vance to a debate, but he turned her down. He's not in her league.
* The media continues to be hallucinatory. One Owen Jones, a British Leftist, wrote in THE GUARDIAN of the supposed collapse of American democracy in apocalyptic terms, envisioning an imminent takeover by Donald Trump and installation of a fascist dictatorship.
Jones doesn't live here and doesn't realize that public enthusiasm for Trump has evaporated. The collapse of Britain's Tories in the 4th of July general election didn't give him a hint. Poor comparison with the US GOP? Only in that the GOP is much worse off.
Defeatism is currently strong in the media, and the Redlined Left plays along with it. When I think of the British Left, I always remember the Leftist peasants in MONTY PYTHON & THE HOLY GRAIL, railing at King Arthur: "He's oppressing me! Look at him oppressing me!"
DAYLOG THU 18 JUL 24: I keep thinking the #DumpBiden frenzy will pass, but it's hard to say when. The hysteria is full blast today, with headlines -- even from Ukraine -- saying the Dems are desperately bad shape, that Trump is certain to win, yada yada ...
On what cubical Bizarro World? Now we have trollbots descending on Spout to spread chaos and confusion. Hopefully we'll get rid of them soon enough, but they are a pain. Industry has this concept of "FUD", meaning "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt". Sleazy companies spread FUD about the competition. Those suffering from FUD are, as another Spouter put it, mainlining "despairoin" -- despair heroin. Reality is: Trump will lose & go to jail.
DAYLOG FRI 19 JUL 24: Joe Biden is in isolation for COVID right now. He's not very ill; he's thoroughly vaccinated & also taking Paxlovid. I once asked my own doctor about Paxlovid, to be told it buys a vaccinated person little, but JB is old and his immune system is weakened. In the meantime, Trump accepted the GOP nomination for president at the national convention with a dull, lethargic, rambling speech.
The GOP platform outlined at the convention was all lies and trashcan fascism. Only crazies will vote for Trump, and they're only about 20% of the population. At the street level, support for JB remains strong. A Spouter said she was talking to a friend at Walmart who said she would vote for Joe if he were a head in a jar, like Nixon in FUTURAMA. Three strangers chimed in & said they would vote for him if he were a WALKING DEAD zombie.
* On another Trump Wars front, Judge Aileen Cannon, supposedly in charge of the Trump classified documents case, threw the case out on the basis that special counsels, in that case Jack Smith, were unconstitutional.
Special counsels, of course, are an awkward but necessary contraption, and they've been seen as proper for a long time. The sneaky part of the judgement is that an ordinary prosecutor could be seen as partisan, and so reject on that basis. "Heads I win tails you lose."
Jack Smith has appealed to Cannon's superior court, and the superior court is seen as likely to overturn Cannon's judgement. Hopefully, the superior court will re-assign the case; after all, Cannon has made it clear she doesn't want it.
Will the decision end up going to the Supreme Court? One puzzle is that Jack Smith is also prosecuting Trump's Federal election fraud crimes in Judge Chutkan's court, and that would also be at risk under Cannon's judgement. Nobody seems to be making an issue of that, however.
* I got my Yamaha PSR EW310 76-key keyboard last night. I was only after a replacement for my gone-south Yamaha YP235, but on tinkering with the EW310, I find it's a definite step up.
Only problem is that it has a revised set of voices, and now I'm casting around to find the best voices for the various tunes I play. I have a plug-in sustain pedal I got for the YP235 that I never used; I plugged it in and am seeing what I can do with it. I was a bit confused about the pedal's use, thinking I needed to enable SUSTAIN from the keyboard command menu -- but that left sustain on all the time. It turned out I just need to plug it in, then the keyboard sustains if I step on the pedal.
AND SO ON: I'm finding it harder to find blog materials these days; the mainstream media is telling so many outright lies these days that I don't trust them any more.
It's Saturday evening, and I did just have some excitement: a thunderous hailstorm that I feared would crack some of the windows on my house. It didn't, I've seen worse. Fortunately, I keep my car in the garage. Cars caught out in the hail can end up looking like a gang of gnomes worked them over with little ball-peen hammers.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* JOE BIDEN (35): Joe Biden was about ready to wrap up the hearings on Clarence Thomas -- but then Joe got an internal call about a woman with a complaint about Clarence Thomas, concerning sexual harassment.
Even before the beginning of the hearings, an aide to Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, working on a tip from a Thomas critic, had called Anita Hill, a young black law professor at the University of Oklahoma, to ask her about a tale that Thomas had sexually harassed her. Thomas had worked at the Department of Education (ED) before going to the EEOC; Hill had been his aide there, and then followed him to the EEOC. Rumor had it she hadn't liked his style. She wasn't there when the call came in, but she returned it. That would prove a big mistake.
In discussions with the aide, Hill would not confirm or deny the rumors, and waffled about cooperating with the Judiciary Committee on the issue. The aide talked to Metzenbaum, who spoke to Judiciary Committee staff, who then called Joe. Joe called Hill, who proved very reluctant to go public, but did not flatly cut off further discussion. Joe did not want to ignore Hill, but he clearly recognized that he was walking into a political minefield that could disrupt his control of the Thomas hearings.
Joe thought it over and decided to send the FBI to talk to Hill; she spoke with the FBI agents on 23 September. She was still torn on the matter, but finally decided to write a four-page document describing her experiences with Thomas. That was as far as she was willing to go at the moment, and Joe was reluctant to make much of a fuss about the issue if she didn't want it. He could have subpoenaed her, but legal coercion didn't seem warranted. The FBI talked to Thomas on 25 September.
The Judiciary Committee and much of the Senate was in a state of agitation over the matter by then. When Arlen Specter talked to Thomas about it, Thomas replied: "No sir, with God as my witness ... it just didn't happen. I didn't do that. ... Black men are always accused of that ... " On 27 September, the day when the Judiciary Committee was to vote on the Thomas nomination, Joe passed copies of Hill's document to Democrat members to make sure they were fully informed. A vote for a favorable recommendation went 7:7, mostly on party lines, with Joe of course voting NO. The committee then voted 13:1 to send the nomination without a recommendation.
Joe addressed the Senate, saying that Thomas's positions -- to the extent they could be perceived -- on the right to privacy and other issues made him "too risky" to be elevated to SCOTUS. Joe did say that there was "no question with respect to the nominee's character." What else could he have said? He was in no position to say bad things about Thomas personally, though that meant refusing to back up Hill.
The White House was in a hurry to have Thomas confirmed lest things get even more out of control, but the Senate was not going to be hurried. Then, on 6 October, the story leaked to the media, with Joe under pressure to re-open the hearings. He did so, postponing the final Senate vote. It was only the third time in the history of the Senate that such a thing had been done, and the last time it had been done was in 1925.
Anita Hill testified to the Judiciary Committee on 11 October, saying that while she was at the ED with Thomas:
QUOTE:
He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes ... On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess ... and made embarrassing references to a porn star by the name of "Long Dong Silver".
END_QUOTE
She was asked why she followed Thomas to the EEOC, with Hill replying that she liked the job itself, and felt that Thomas had given up the lewd behavior. She was wrong:
QUOTE:
Thomas was drinking a Coke in his office, he got up from the table at which we were working, went over to his desk to get the Coke, looked at the can and asked: "Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?"
END_QUOTE
Later that day, Thomas publicly shot back:
END_QUOTE:
This is a case in which this sleaze, this dirt, was searched for by staffers of members of this committee, was then leaked to the media, and this committee and this body validated it and displayed it at prime time over our entire nation.
... This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I'm concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the US Senate, rather than hung from a tree.
END_QUOTE
[TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space flights in June included:
Providing more detail for significant launches:
[05 JUN 24] USA CC / ATLAS 5 / CFT (CST-100 STARLINER) -- An Atlas 5 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1806 UTC (local time + 4) to put Boeing's CST-100 Starliner capsule on its first "Crewed Flight Test (CFT)" sending NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams to the International Space Station (ISS). It docked with the ISS two days after launch.
Spacecraft Commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore was making his third spaceflight, as was Sunita "Suni" Williams. The Crew Space Transport 100 (CST-100) capsule flying this mission was named "Calypso", after Jacques Cousteau's oceanography vessel, RV CALYPSO. The vehicle consists of a capsule and a service module. The capsule measures 4.5 meters (15 feet) in diameter, which is slightly larger than an Apollo capsule but smaller than the Orion capsule which NASA is using as part of the Artemis program. The capsule can carry a maximum of seven people into orbit. While this flight only had a crew of two, the plan is to launch operational missions with a crew of four, with an optional fifth seat. Starliner is capable of staying in orbit, according to Boeing, for seven months.
Combined with the service module, Starliner stands 5 meters (16.5 feet) tall. The service module, which remains attached to the capsule until just prior to re-entry, contains four launch abort engines designed by Aerojet Rocketdyne. The service module is also equipped with 28 reaction control system (RCS) engines for on-orbit maneuvering. These are in addition to 20 "orbital maneuvering and attitude control (OMAC)" engines used to maneuver and separate the capsule. The solar panels for Starliner are also located on the aft side of the service module. The capsule is additionally equipped with 12 RCS thrusters of its own.
When it comes time for re-entry, the base heat shield, made of Boeing Lightweight Ablator, takes on the heat of re-entry. The heat shield is a honeycomb-like structure that is hand-filled with the ablator. In areas that receive less heat, the capsule is covered with a mix of thermal blankets and heat shield tiles, both of which have Space Shuttle heritage. Once through the thicker part of the atmosphere, the heat shields are jettisoned, the parachutes deploy, and the airbags inflate to cushion the desert landing.
This was the 100th flight of the Atlas 5, and the first crewed flight on the booster. It flew in the "N22" configuration, with the RD-180 engine, no payload fairing, two strap-on solid rocket boosters, and two second-stage RL-10A-4-2 engines.
[22 JUN 24] CN XC / LONG MARCH 2C / SVOM, CATCH 1 -- A Chinese Long March 2C booster was launched from Xichang at 0700 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Space Variable Objects monitor (SVOM)" and "Chasing All Transients Constellation Hunters (CATCH) 1" small astronomy satellites into orbit.
SVOM was an X-ray telescope satellite developed by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and the French Space Agency (CNES). It had a launch mass of 950 kilograms (2,090 pounds), and carried a set of high-energy telescopes to spot gamma-ray bursters, with an optical telescope for context. It was backed up by a set of ground telescopes in China and France. CATCH 1 was a microsatellite, being a demonstrator for a following series of satellites to perform various astronomical missions. Not many details were announced.
[25 JUN 24] USA CC / FALCON HEAVY / GOES U (GOES 19) -- A Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2126 UTC (local time + 4) to put the "Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) U" weather / environment satellite into orbit. It was the 19th in the series of GOES satellites, being renamed "GOES 19" after being checked out in orbit, and the fourth in the improved "GOES-R" series of satellites, the first of the four having been launched in 2016. The GOES-R series provided three times more channels, four times better resolution, and scans five times faster than their predecessors.
GOES U carried a new solar observation instrument called the "Compact Coronograph 1 (CCOR)", which images the sun's to observe coronal mass ejections (CME). The two side boosters of the Falcon Heavy soft-landed in Florida, while the core stage was expended.
[06 JUN 24] USA SXSB / STARSHIP / TEST FLIGHT 4 -- A SpaceX Starship heavily-lift booster performed its fourth all-up test flight, lifting off from the SpaceX Starbase near Brownsville TX at 1250 UTC (local time - 5). It lost two engines on ascent, but that didn't affect the flight. It successfully performed its re-entry maneuver, but was not recovered.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW CAR BATTERIES (2): All batteries feature two electrodes -- an "anode" and a "cathode" -- separated by an electrolyte. Positive ions migrate from anode to cathode via the electrolyte, with electrons flowing in the reverse direction through an external circuit. Batteries are recharged by forcing an electrical current back through the electrodes.
Lithium batteries are the current standard for EVs. Lithium is the third-lightest element in the periodic table and has a reactive outer electron, making its ions great energy carriers. The lithium ions travel between an anode usually made from graphite and a cathode made from a metal oxide, both of which host lithium ions between atomic layers. The electrolyte is typically an organic liquid.
Lithium-ion batteries have improved greatly since commercial introduction in 1991: cell energy densities have nearly tripled, while prices have dropped by an order of magnitude. They are continuing to improve, with some advocates they are likely to be dominant for a long time to come. Most of the improvement in lithium-ion batteries so far has come from changes to the material of the cathode, resulting in multiple commercial cell types:
There's room for more tweaks to the cathode. In NCM batteries, researchers have been paring back more-expensive cobalt in favor of nickel, which also provides a higher energy density. That effort has led to commercial NCM811 battery cathodes with 80% nickel, and researchers are now working on NCM955, with 90% nickel.
As for improvements to the anode, one common option is to swap graphite for silicon, a material that can store ten times more lithium atoms per weight. The problem is that silicon expands and contracts by around 300% during charge-discharge cycles, putting troublesome structural strain on the battery and limiting its lifetime.
Even better than a silicon anode is a lithium anode. Chemical engineer Brian Cunningham -- at the DOE's Vehicle Technologies Office in Arlington, Virginia -- says: "You don't have any wasted material." It's lightweight and charges fast, but it has a practical problem: the ion deposition on the anode can form tendrils or "dendrites" that will short out the battery.
Lithium-based batteries with improved electrodes can, in principle, achieve huge energy densities -- but again, it's hard to optimize everything at once, and such advanced batteries often have trade-offs in terms of cell lifetimes or safety. In 2023, a group of Chinese researchers reported they had developed a cell with a lithium-metal anode -- along with a type of lithium-rich cathode -- that reached more than 700 Wh/kg in the lab. The group's start-up firm, WeLion New Energy in Beijing, wants to commercialize this and other advanced battery technologies.
Another ambitious idea offering high energy densities is the lithium sulfur (LiS) battery, with a lithium-metal anode and a sulfur cathode. The problem is sulfur reacts with lithium to make soluble products that can deposit on the anode and "poison" the battery. UC Berkeley's Ceder says that LiS "has been tried for 30 years and it still has major challenges." [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* VDES ON THE PAD: On learning that a few recent satellites launched into orbit have a VDES system, I wondered: "What is VDES?" A quick scouting on the Net revealed it was a VHF-radio datalink for maritime service, which only piqued my interest further. Further investigation led to an introductory article from YACHTINGMAGAZINE.com ("All-In-One Comms: The VHF Data Exchange System" by David Schmidt, 23 May 2023).
Radio technology was used for maritime communications from early on, with the technology refined to the "Talk Between Ships (TBS)" scheme used on Allied vessels during World War II, based on the Very High Frequency channels. It evolved into the "Marine VHF Radio" standard in the postwar period.
The roots of VDES go back to 1989, when the supertanker EXXON VALDEZ ran aground in Alaska's Prince Williams Sound, leading to an ecological disaster. The US Congress then passed the "Oil Pollution Act" in 1990, which tasked the US Coast Guard with developing a "vessel-tracking system (VTS)" for tankers operating in Alaska. The resulting system was based on VHF communications, linked to shore-based monitoring stations.
VTS led in turn to the "Automatic Identification System (AIS)", a ship-tracking tool. A "Class A" AIS transmitter broadcasts information -- including the vessel's name, position, course, speed, navigational status, and unique 9-digit "Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI)" code -- on two dedicated maritime VHF channels every two to 10 seconds, depending on vessel speed, while also listening for incoming AIS transmissions.
In 2000, the International Maritime Organization began mandating that most sea-bound ships carry Class A AIS transmitters for collision-avoidance purposes. In 2006, an "AIS Class B" spec was released for users not mandated to carry AIS; Class B was generally similar to Class A, but only broadcast once every 30 seconds. The AIS spec has been further refined since then. Although AIS has limited range, many small satellites have been launched with AIS systems to give an increasing degree of global coverage.
AIS is limited in function and bandwidth, and it is being overloaded by greater use. The "VHF Data Exchange System (VDES)" is a superset of AIS, with considerably extended functionality. It will go into service in the 2025:2035 timeframe, replacing AIS.
VDES is composed of four key components: AIS, "VDE Satellite", "VDE Terrestrial", and "Application-Specific Messaging (ASM)" channels. It will handle 12 channels, including two for satellite-based long-range AIS; two for sending and receiving AIS-based messages; six for receiving terrestrial or satellite-based data; and six for transmitting satellite data. AIS, in the new order, will be used for ship-to-ship collision-avoidance communications, with other AIS functions moved to the other channels. VDES will also add new capabilities, such as navigational chart corrections, marine safety notifications, and real-time weather information -- with VDES supporting dynamic "mesh networking" between ships at sea to supplement shore and space communications.
Supporting two-way communications is one of the major features of VDES and will be particularly important as autonomous navigation systems and autonomous vessels arrive. VDES information is expected to also help human operators optimize marine traffic patterns, which should help lower ship emissions and fuel-consumption rates.
COMMENT ON ARTICLEDAYLOG MON 08 JUL 24: There had been worries about French elections, an initial run-off vote having demonstrated surprising strength of Marine Le Pen's Rightist National Rally Party. This weekend the final vote was held, and National Rally lost, with only 143 seats.
The big winner was the Leftist New Popular Front Party, with 182 seats, topping President Emmanuel Macron's Centrist Ensemble Alliance Party, with 168 seats. No party got an absolute majority, so government will be by coalition. Le Pen felt that the National Rally Party had done well, but there was general relief they hadn't done better. How well a Center-Left coalition will work remains to be seen -- but following Britain's eviction of the Tories, the French elections were still gratifying.
* The demands for Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race are continuing, but Biden issued a ringing declaration today that he was still in the race. CNN talked to delegates to the Democratic Convention in August and found no enthusiasm for dumping Joe Biden. CNN also suggested that JB's fate was in the hands of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries -- and only hours after the article was released, HJ said that Biden should stay in the race. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says the same.
The NEW YORK TIMES is still beating the drum for JB to step down. Over on the Threads social-media system, Threaders have been hammering the NYT account; it appears they ganged up and mass-reported the NYT for breaking the rules, and the moderation system automatically suspended the account for a time. Way to go, Threaders!
DAYLOG TUE 09 JUL 25: I was thinking after Joe Biden issued his blunt declaration that he was going to stay in the presidential race, the media's barking would subside. Jeffries, Schumer, notably the Congressional Black Caucus, even AOC told him to stay.
However, the barking has continued. The NEW YORK TIMES made a fuss about repeated visits of a Parkinson's disease researcher to the White House -- ignoring the fact that he was there working on a White House project to deal with Parkinson's, and in fact had been going there on that mission during the Obama Administration. The NYT seems to have ignored the correction.
538, in its statistical analysis, says that JB has been gaining on Trump slightly since the debate. The debate was a blip that didn't move the needle; everyone who likes Joe Biden knows he's old and has accepted it. TIME reports that Members of Congress are now falling in solidly behind JB. Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, not noted for compromise, said: "I don't live in a delusional world. The President is going to be our nominee and we will have his back."
DAYLOG WED 10 JUL 25: Joe Biden hosted a NATO meeting in Washington DC today, with the president giving a vigorous and emphatic speech, pumping up NATO and dumping on Vladimir Putin. He got enthusiastic applause from the audience -- though the event was glitched when JB introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "President Putin". JB caught himself immediately, saying: "President Putin? I'm so focused on beating Putin." Zelenskyy shot back: "I'm better!" -- with JB saying: "You're a hell of a lot better!"
[On being asked about the gaffe on the 13th, Zelenskyy said: "It's a mistake. I think the US gave a lot of support for Ukrainians. We can forget some mistakes." It was interesting that Zelenskyy wisely praised the American people for the support, not JB, understanding that JB is the chief agent of the American people.]
Anyway, prominent Democrats are emphatically defending Biden -- Bernie Sanders in particular -- and any discussion in Congress is over. Nancy Pelosi, talking with a CBS NEWS journalist, said the media was "making up stories" that had no relationship with reality.
Prominent House Member Ted Lieu was in good form today, telling the Congressional #DumpBiden crowd, such as it is, to get a life: "For the good of the country, Donald Trump should drop out of the race." For the moment, the celebs are continuing the offensive, with George Clooney and Rob Reiner taking their cheap shots. That might last a week.
Donald Trump has challenged Joe Biden to another debate. While JB would instinctively jump at the challenge, on consideration it's not a good idea. Under the best circumstances it would buy JB very little, and under the worst it would be disastrous.
DAYLOG THU 11 JUL 25: I keep thinking the #DumpBiden campaign in the media has peaked, but it hasn't. Today the NEW YORK TIMES ran an editorial pointing out the threat posed by Donald Trump. I was suspicious and read through it.
It said: "tRuMp iZ d@nGerUs s0 #DumpBiden!" "Yappari!" -- Japanese for: "I knew it!" There's a boycott campaign on Spoutible, encouraging people to dump their subscriptions to the NYT & other offenders, & not to click through to their online postings.
In reply to George Clooney's call for JB to step down, in comments on CNN comedian D.L. Hughley cut the #DumpBiden gang down to size. Young black men turned off by Biden? Hughley says they're turned off by cowardly, hand-wringing Dems. Hughley also nailed the related "Kamala factor" -- the reality that many people saying #DumpBiden also mean #NeverKamala.
Hughley did not, however, mention the reality that the #DumpBiden gang never, cannot, refuses to give a credible alternative to JB. It's like they're saying that we can't walk the tightrope, so we should just jump off -- as if there would magically be a net underneath.
As obnoxious as this all is, it doesn't matter. Some Dems are terrified of Trump, more are infuriated at him, & Joe Biden has all their votes. One Spouter said that he'd vote for Joe if they had to re-enact WEEKEND AT BERNIE's with him on election day. That's the reality of Joe Biden's voters.
* As old information technology fades, new infotech comes on line. I was listening to George Benson's classic tune ON BROADWAY and got to wondering if Benson was still around. I asked my phone: "Hey Google, is George Benson still alive?"
"George Benson died on March 9, 2019." Later I thought of Nancy Pelosi standing up for Joe Biden, and remembered Pelosi is older than he is. "Hey Google, how old is Nancy Pelosi?" "84". I knew Joe was 81, but I got confirmation to be sure: "81". Google Assistant works well for factoids, not so well for complicated questions.
Along another track, I asked MS Copilot to explain Bayesian Analysis to me, and got back a concise but cryptic explanation. I asked again and added: "Explain it like I'm 12." It did, very neatly. I was most astonished.
DAYLOG 12 JUL FRI: Joe Biden sat through an interview yesterday and did well enough, the only glitch being that at one point he confused Kamala Harris with Trump. The #DumpBiden gang made a lot of noise about it, but Biden has always made gaffes on occasion -- so what?
Stephen Colbert mocked Joe Biden on the air, with the comment section on his YouTube page then overflowing with protests at varying levels of civility. Again, all JB's voters know what they're getting and have accepted it. Professor Allan Lichtman of the American University in Washington DC, who studies the presidency, has a 13-point list of factors need to win an election. Incumbency is a big factor. If JB has to drop out before election day, he resigns the presidency, Kamala becomes the incumbent -- and also inherits the campaign chest, as well as delegate votes. Elevating Kamala won't be a problem, but it won't be done unless necessary. In any case, it's up to JB and Kamala, their decision, nobody else's.
Some news organizations not so invested in #DumpBiden are coming around, with articles from the BBC and AP saying Biden's support hasn't flagged. They need to elevate Prof Lichtman and make him a star of this campaign. We'll see if things turn around next week.
DAYLOG 13 JUL SAT: Kristen Welker of NBC was playing the #DumpBiden card yesterday -- and then called President Biden "President Trump". Hoisted by her own petard!
Also yesterday, Joe Biden went to a rally in Detroit, to a highly charged-up crowd that was chanting: "DON'T YOU QUIT!" -- and: "FOUR MORE YEARS!" It seems the enthusiasm really charged him up, because he absolutely did not come across as a doddering old man. The TIMES of London did a very neat edit on the speech:
QUOTE:
There's a lot of speculation lately. What's Joe Biden gonna do? Is he gonna stay in the race? He's gonna drop out? Here's my answer: I AM RUNNING AND WE'RE GONNA WIN! [CHEERS]
I'm the nominee of the Democratic Party, the only Democrat or Republican has beaten Donald Trump ever. I'm gonna beat him again. I know him: Donald Trump is a LOSER!
Most importantly, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Trump is a THREAT to this nation. [WILD CHEERS -- chant of LOCK HIM UP!]
You may have noticed that since the debate, the press and their good guys and women up there, they've been hammering me. I make a lot of mistakes. [LOUD BOOS] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's okay. They've been hammering me because I sometimes confuse names. I say that's Charlie instead of Bill, but guess what? Donald Trump has gotten a free pass.
But people would rather talk about how I mix up names. I guess they don't remember Trump called Nikki Haley Nancy Pelosi. [APPLAUSE] NO MORE! Donald, no more free passes! ... Folks, Donald Trump is a CONVICTED CRIMINAL! [CHEERS]
END_QUOTE
One of the crowd behind him had a sign: MOTOWN IS JOETOWN! JB has a rally in Austin on Monday, the push is to give him an even better reception.
* In late-breaking news, a shooter opened up on a Trump rally in Pennsylvania, with the shooter and one person killed, another badly wounded. Trump was lightly injured, it appears by flying glass. Nothing much else is known right now, but many people are thinking it was a "false flag" operation. I don't believe that myself, but with Trump people inevitably think: Well, it could be true.
Later: the shooter turned out to be one Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20 years old, who was firing from a rooftop with a rifle. Few clues as to the motive yet, but it is known he was a registered Republican. We'll get more details soon enough. What effect will this have on the campaign? Almost none. In a few weeks, it will be forgotten. Being inured to mass shootings, it seems, isn't 100% bad.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* JOE BIDEN (34): In the summer of 1991, 82-year-old Justice Thurgood Marshall announced that he intended to retire. Marshall was the first black person to become a Supreme Court justice, and to no surprise the Bush I Administration nominated another black person to succeed him. The name, however, was an unpleasant surprise to the Left: Federal Appellate Court Judge Clarence Thomas.
In 1982, Ronald Reagan had appointed Thomas as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where he proved to have deeply mixed feelings about affirmative action. His legal qualifications for the Supreme Court were much flimsier than Bork's, and he had only been a Federal judge for a year; he was about as conservative pick as was available. Biden and other Democrats who had confirmed his appointment to the appellate court in 1990 did so reluctantly, warning the Bush I Administration that there would be trouble if Thomas were nominated to the Supreme Court.
Thomas adhered to the doctrine of originalism as held by Judge Bork, and also believed in "natural law" -- an ambiguous concept that, to the extent it could be nailed down, asserted there was a higher meaning of law beyond its expression in statutes. The difficulty with that idea was that all we have in our hands is the statutes; they do represent underlying principles, but not necessarily in any straightforward, easily articulated, or unarguable way. The conservative read on those principles was, of course, firmly conservative.
The ten days of hearings began on 10 September 1991. Joe took on Thomas on his supposed natural law philosophy, suggesting it was a wedge to overturn progressive legislation. Thomas replied that his musings on natural law were casual in nature, and had no particular bearing on his work. When the discussion turned towards ROE V WADE, Thomas sidestepped the issue: "I do not think that at this time I could ... comment on that particular case."
Joe replied later that he didn't want Thomas "to comment specifically" on ROE V WADE; as with the Bork hearings, Joe was much more interested in probing Thomas's legal philosophy. Joe said to Thomas later in the hearings:
QUOTE:
You'll be pleased to know I don't want to know anything about abortion. I don't want to know how you think about abortion. I don't want to know whether you have ever thought about abortion. I don't want to know if you ever even discussed it. ... I mean that sincerely, because I don't want that red herring ... to distract from what I am just trying to find out here, which is how you think about things.
END_QUOTE
Joe's probing of Thomas's legal philosophy sometimes seemed stratospheric -- as if Joe were showing off his legal acumen and not all that concerned with making himself clear -- but his bottom line was straightforward: did Thomas regard "marital and family privacy" as a "fundamental issue"? Thomas would not give a straight answer. His evasiveness was entirely calculated, being a strategy devised with advisement from the Reagan White House.
Patrick Leahy -- a prominent Democratic senator from Vermont, another member of the Judiciary Committee -- was more interested in pinning Thomas down to what he thought of ROE V WADE. When queried on the matter by Leahy, Thomas replied:
QUOTE:
Because I was a married student and I worked, I did not spend a lot of time around the law school doing what the other students enjoyed so much, and that is debating current cases ... My schedule was that I went to classes and generally went to work and went home.
END_QUOTE
Leahy did not like that answer, firing back:
QUOTE:
Judge Thomas, I was a married law student who also worked, but also found time, at least between classes, [to] discuss some of the law, and I'm sure you can't be suggesting that there wasn't any discussion at any time of ROE V WADE -- ?
END_QUOTE
Thomas insisted: "Senator, I cannot remember personally engaging in those discussions." Leahy didn't give up, pressing Thomas for his opinion of ROE V WADE, to keep getting evasions, ending with: "I have not made, Senator, a decision one way or the other on this important question." [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: A collaboration of researchers from Ousaka and Touhoku Universities in Japan have now unveiled the "Dragon Firefighter", a flying robot designed to fight fires. It is a flying fire hose 4 meters (13 feet) long, wielded by a four-wheel cart connected to a conventional fire hose. The flying hose has a head and a midbody unit, both with water jets to keep the hose aloft. The head of the "Dragon Firefighter" carries optical and thermal imagers, with a wireless link to a tablet or other controller, with the thermal imager allowing water jets to be focused where they'll do the most good. It's a proof of concept, not really ready for service just yet. It will be open-source, allowing anyone to make it.
* As discussed in an article from BENZIGA.com ("Why Bill Gates Is Betting Big On Wind Power Startup Airloom" by Aran Richardson, 17 November 2023), in the search for efficiency, wind turbines keep getting bigger and bigger. A startup named AirLoom Energy INC, backed by billionaire Bill Gates, has a different idea. Instead of a giant pinwheel, the AirLoom is a horizontal oval track, mounted on poles, with small airfoils mounted vertically on the track. The wind causes the track to rotate, turning generators in the linkages to the poles.
The track can also be mounted vertically, and can be set up offshore. According to the company, the AirLoom generator has multiple advantages:
Airloom is operating a 50-kilowatt test device in Wyoming, and is after funding for a 1-megawatt prototype. If all goes well, commercial introduction should be a few years down the road.
* One of the problems with the new generative artificial intelligence (GAI) chatbots is that they can give articulate answers, but with no comprehension of the reliability of the sources the answers are based on. As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("AI Tidies Up Wikipedia's References -- And Boosts Reliability" by Chris Stokel-Walker, 19 October 2023), AI chatbots suffer from this problem as well, returning bogus answers if they reference bogus sources. Fabio Petroni at London-based company Samaya AI and his colleagues have now developed a neural-network-based system named SIDE, which determines if Wikipedia references support the claims they're associated with, and suggests better alternatives for those that don't.
SIDE learns to recognize good references by being trained on qualified and featured Wikipedia articles. It is then able to identify claims within pages that have poor-quality references through its verification system. It can also scan the Internet for reputable sources, and rank options to replace bad citations.
To test the system, Petroni and his colleagues used SIDE to suggest references for featured Wikipedia articles that it had not seen before. In nearly 50% of cases, SIDE's top choice for a reference was already cited in the article. For the others, it found alternative references. When SIDE's results were shown to a group of Wikipedia users, 21% preferred the citations found by the AI, 10% preferred the existing citations and 39% did not have a preference. These results suggest not so many Wikipedia users were impressed by SIDE, but it was a useful proof-of-concept for better tools in the future.
ED: Over the longer run, AIs will be developed to crawl the internet and grade the reliability of sources. Untrustworthy sources will be flagged as such, with search engines ranking them last, or not even shown as per user request, while critique systems will be able to inspect online articles for factual errors and weak sourcing.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW CAR BATTERIES (1): As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("The New Car Batteries That Could Power The Electric Vehicle Revolution" by Nicola Jones, 7 February 2024), electric vehicles have a battery problem: battery packs are expensive, bulky, have limited range, and take a long time to recharge.
That is slowly changing, with challengers to currently dominant lithium-ion batteries emerging. In 2023, Japanese car maker Toyota announced an intent to release a car in 2027:28 that could travel 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) and recharge in just 10 minutes, using a battery type that swaps liquid components for solids. Chinese manufacturers have announced budget cars for 2024 featuring batteries based not on the lithium that powers today's best electric vehicles (EVs), but on cheap sodium -- three orders of magnitude more common in the Earth's crust. A US laboratory has come up with a cell with enough capacity to power airplanes. The new battery technologies are diverse: some very cheap, others providing much more power. Gerbrand Ceder -- a materials scientist at the University of California, Berkeley -- says: "We're going to see the market diversify."
The push for new battery technology is being driven in large because the market is skyrocketing. More than a dozen countries have declared that all new cars must be electric by 2035 or earlier. The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that the number of EVs on the road around the world will rise from 16.5 million in 2021 to nearly 350 million by 2030, and that demand for energy from EV batteries will reach 14 terawatt hours (TWh) by 2050 -- 90 times more than in 2020.
Car batteries have a tough job. They need to:
Linda Nazar -- a battery researcher at the University of Waterloo, Canada -- says: "It's very hard to optimize all these things at once."
That means exploring a wide range of options, with different targets in mind. The US Department of Energy's (DOE) "Battery500" program, launched in 2017, is after a cell energy density of 500 watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg), 65% more than today's best batteries. The PROPEL-1K program, launched in 2022 by the US Advanced Research Projects Agency / Energy, is ambitiously targeting a longer-term goal of 1,000 Wh/kg. As for cost, the DOE's Vehicle Technologies Office wants to hit $60 USD per kilowatt-hour by 2030, about half today's prices, which it estimates that the price of electric cars will break even with the cost of those powered by gas guzzling combustion engines.
It's hard to track progress, announcements of developments sometimes lacking in comprehensive detail, while lab demonstrators are not generally ready for production. Even when batteries go into production, proprietary claims can be impossible to check until batteries have been tested for years outside of the lab. However, as Nazar points out, it's clear that decades of work on such things as solid-state and sodium batteries are finally yielding results -- and there are plenty of new battery technologies in the wings for further investigation. [TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* CONTENT MODERATION OK WITH SCOTUS: The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has been handing down a series of decisions as of late, some of which have been controversial. A decision that the White House could ask social media firms to moderate specific content was one of the bright spots -- and it has been followed by another good decision, saying the states don't have the right to control social media.
As discussed in an article from THEVERGE.com ("Supreme Court Protects The Future Of Content Moderation" by Lauren Feiner, 1 July 2024), SCOTUS has now judged on a pair of cases, MOODY V NETCHOICE and NETCHOICE V. PAXTON, with the court explicitly extending First Amendment protections to how social media platforms organize, curate, and moderate their feeds.
At issue were two similar laws in Florida and Texas that attempted to control how social media companies could moderate content on their sites. The laws grew out of claims from conservative politicians in both states who believed major tech companies for were "censoring" conservative viewpoints. Tech industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association sued to block the laws. The appeals courts in the two states came to different conclusions on the issue, so it went up to SCOTUS.
The Supreme Court vacated both of the appeals court decisions, ruling that the appeals courts hadn't properly considered the propriety of the laws under the First Amendment, and sent the cases back down to the lower courts to reconsider. The vote was 9:0. Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the majority decision that social-media firms had a right to moderate as they saw fit:
QUOTE:
When the platforms use their Standards and Guidelines to decide which third-party content those feeds will display, or how the display will be ordered and organized, they are making expressive choices. And because that is true, they receive First Amendment protection.
END_QUOTE
SCOTUS was particularly critical of the evaluation by the notoriously reactionary Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of Texas' social media law, HB20, which claims to protect online speech from discrimination on the basis of viewpoint. Justice Kagan wrote:
QUOTE:
Contrary to what the Fifth Circuit thought, the current record indicates that the Texas law does regulate speech ... that is, to prevent Facebook (or YouTube) from using its content-moderation standards to remove, alter, organize, prioritize, or disclaim posts in its News Feed (or homepage). The law then prevents exactly the kind of editorial judgments this Court has previously held to receive First Amendment protection.
END_QUOTE
Kagan added that the Texas law "is unlikely to withstand First Amendment scrutiny" in that specific application. The majority was particularly eager to correct the Fifth Circuit's First Amendment analysis that led it to uphold Texas' law:
QUOTE:
The Fifth Circuit was wrong in concluding that Texas's restrictions on the platforms' selection, ordering, and labeling of third-party posts do not interfere with expression. And the court was wrong to treat as valid Texas's interest in changing the content of the platforms' feeds.
END_QUOTE
The court was similarly critical of the Texas legislature's reasoning for passing the law:
QUOTE:
The record reflects that Texas officials passed it because they thought those feeds skewed against politically conservative voices. But this Court has many times held, in many contexts, that it is no job for government to decide what counts as the right balance of private expression -- to "un-bias" what it thinks biased, rather than to leave such judgments to speakers and their audiences. That principle works for social-media platforms as it does for others.
... However imperfect the private marketplace of ideas, here was a worse proposal -- the government itself deciding when speech was imbalanced, and then coercing speakers to provide more of some views or less of others.
END_QUOTE
There were qualifying opinions from Justices Alito and Barrett, focused most specifically on the use of AI content-moderation systems. In reality, an AI, at least one that was adequately trained, would be more impartial than a human moderator. However, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
COMMENT ON ARTICLEDAYLOG MON 01 JUL 24: All the hubbub last week over Joe Biden's bad debate night seems to be fading out. THE NEW YORK TIMES is getting a hail of flak over telling Joe to step down -- after all, the NYT never suggested Trump should get out of town by sundown.
No Democratic politicians thought Joe should resign. When Hakeem Jeffries was asked that question, he simply said: "No." Some of the hystericals are still carrying on, even raising the question of who should be selected as Joe's replacement.
That isn't even a question, people. If Joe steps down, then Kamala automatically steps up, end of story. The hystericals will say she's not a winner, but they could not propose anyone whose chances were better or -- under the circumstances -- nearly as good.
* Today, the Supreme Court issued a judgement on Trump's "presidential immunity" claim. It was deceptively simple judgement, saying that a president was liable for unofficial acts, but had absolute immunity for official acts.
The case was then passed back to the lower courts. There was a lot of caterwauling over the idea of a president having "absolute immunity" -- but what did that mean? SCOTUS did not define "official acts", leaving the lower courts to figure that out for themselves.
Consider, for example, Trump taking boxes of secret documents to Mar-A-Lago. He can say he did so as an official act, and that could well fly -- but what about refusing to return them after he got out of office? He seems to be in trouble there.
The judgement is unlikely to amount to much. The cases against Trump may be delayed, but they won't be given up. It is also likely to be a long time before any president gets into legal hot water again, so there's time to figure things out.
DAYLOG TUE 02 JUL 24: UKRAINSKA PRAVDA reports that Enel SPA of Italy has provided almost 6,000 solar panels to help provide power to Ukrainian hospitals. Ukraine's power grid has been under relentless Orc attack and is badly damaged, with at least half the country's power-generation capacity lost.
The current government plan envisions energy generation primarily by nuclear power, with at least one plant under construction -- but is that realistic? That nuclear plant is a target. Might a case be made for widespread solar panels and mid-size wind turbines?
* At the first of the month, I buy a batch of goods from Amazon. This month I realized I needed new socks, and bought a bag of sports socks -- lightweight socks wear out too fast. I got the socks, and to my surprise they had a grid of little plastic pads formed into the soles. I'd never seen that before; checking with MS Copilot, I found out it's not a new idea, but is now just catching on. They feel a bit funny. I'll see if they last better.
DAYLOG WED 03 JUL 24: The SCOTUS judgement on presidential immunity has made waves, with the court's declaration that a president has complete immunity for "official acts" being widely and excitedly seen as granting a POTUS total immunity.
That's arguable, but only because SCOTUS didn't provide much definition to distinguish "official" from "unofficial" acts. Trump calls up Zelenskyy and tells him to cook up a case against Joe Biden; is that an official act? I would think not, but I don't count.
Joe Biden publicly denounced the SCOTUS decision as enabling dictatorship -- which seemed oblivious to the ambiguity of the judgement, and puzzling for a person with a JD degree. On 2nd thought, the ambiguity of the decision left SCOTUS wide-open for denunciation. They handed Joe Biden that card, and he used it to cut them down a peg. In practical terms, it pressures SCOTUS into clarifying their position to show that it's not all that menacing. After they do that, the decision may end up being a nothing burger.
* Speaking of nothing burgers, I was thinking the hysteria over Joe Biden's bad debate night had dissipated, but it's still running around with its hair on fire. The mainstream media is still making a fuss, with the Left media in a full-blown tantrum.
To no surprise, those who track Kremlin bots and other trolls say they're promoting the "Biden Must Give Up" message at full steam. Biden has publicly replied that he won't give up; Democratic leaders are backing him up, and voters don't seem to be worrying about it.
DAYLOG THU 04 JUL 24: The voting is over in the UK, and Labour stands triumphant. In terms of seats in Commons, Labour got a margin of over 60% of all other parties, and more than a 3x dominance of the Tories. Sir Keir must be feeling insufferably pleased with himself.
Here across the Pond, there was some "doomsplaining" that the ascendance of the Right in recent French elections was an ominous sign for the USA. I think the signals coming from the UK are much more pertinent.
And to segue from there ... the MSM hysteria over Joe Biden's bad debate night is ongoing, with outrage over JB saying he was going to get more sleep and didn't want events to be scheduled after 8 PM. Most of the Dem voters said: Sounds good to us.
On the other side of that coin, Bill Palmer wonders: Where is Trump? It would seem he would be capitalizing on his "surprisingly not a complete disaster" debate performance, but he seems to be lying low. To the extent he's not, he's back to his old demented self.
* Ukrainian forces have been suffering terribly from big Russian glide bombs, which have become the Orc weapon of choice in the battles this year. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says anti-air defenses are improving and putting Russian launch aircraft at risk.
How the arrival of F-16s into the battle will affect matters remains to be seen. There have been leaks of tests of a very-long-range "AIM-174" air-to-air missile -- which is just the RIM-174 / SM-6 surface-to-air missile without a booster stage. F-16s with AIM-174s could put Russian combat aircraft at great risk. Incidentally, the Russians claim to have destroyed a number of Ukrainian combat aircraft with long-range missile attacks; the Ukrainians say the damage was not so great. 50:50 the Orcs were hitting decoys. [Two days later, it was revealed they were.]
DAYLOG FRI 04 JUL 24: Keir Starmer is now Prime Minister Starmer -- Britain doesn't have a "lame duck" period like the USA, when the old government loses it packs its bags. Starmer hasn't moved into #10 Downing Street yet, though recent PMs have been inclined to prefer the somewhat larger flat above #11. In any case, I was thinking that Starmer must be happy, which was confirmed by a picture of him with his wife Victoria, Sir Keir looking positively giddy with excitement. That's surprising for a person like Starmer, who has a cultivated reputation for dull plod. Incidentally, "Vic" Starmer is Jewish, and they have two teenaged kids.
Long-surviving Rightist pest Nigel Farage was jubilant early on when exit polls suggested that his Reform (Brexit) Party would get 13 seats. Gosh, about 2% of the seats in Commons! He was still jubilant when they really only got 4. Wotta tosser.
One of the interesting stats about the election was that turnout was 60%, the lowest since 2001. Given the overwhelming Labour win and staggering Tory loss, it would seem that Tory voters mostly stayed home. Makes sense: they don't believe anyone's propaganda any more.
Not incidentally, one outgoing Tory MP named Marcus Fysh announced he's dropping out of the party, saying: "It's dead." He talked about joining up with a new Center-Right party of some sort, but that's a nonstarter: the Center has shifted Left, and now Labour is the middle-of-the-road party.
* The Instagram Threads Twitter-like service has acquired a large number of users, so I decided to get back into my Threads account to promote my ebooks. I'd forgotten why I quit: it really stinks, technically crude with lots of trolling. I'm learning to hold my nose. I block a lot.
AND SO ON: The media continues to push the narrative of the death of Joe Biden's presidential campaign. Spout's Chris Bouzy ran a poll asking if Spouters wanted Joe Biden to drop out; the YES vote was about 3%. Given the solid Blue complexion of Spout, that's a valid poll: there is no serious movement among the Dems to sideline Joe Biden.
* In reference to Keir Starmer becoming British prime minister, one Anne Applebaum sized him up in an article from ATLANTIC.com, titled: "Antipopulism Prevails in Britain". Starmer has led Labour to a huge victory, first by neutralizing -- some say ruthlessly -- Labour's Redlined Left, under Jeremy Corbyn, and then politically boxing in the mindless, populist Tories.
His prime focus is to talk about ordinary people's problems. "Populism," Starmer says, thrives on "a disaffection for politics. A lack of belief that politics can be a force for good has meant that people have turned away in some cases from progressive causes." He added, it seems as a rebuke to Labour ideologues like Corbyn: "We need to understand why that is, to reconnect with working people. The big change we've made is to restore the Labour Party to a party of service to working people. I believe we'd drifted too far from that."
Only days after French voters flocked to both far-Right and far-Left extremes, the British have elected an unflashy, unpretentious, hypercautious Labour Party led by a gray-haired prime minister whose manifesto talks about economic growth, energy, crime, education, and making the National Health Service "fit for the future." The party won without generating huge enthusiasm, with low turnout -- though it clearly appears turnout was well lower for the Tories than Labour.
In reality, Starmer's campaign was not designed to create enthusiasm. Starmer sometimes campaigned as if he had never used the term public relations, and for most of his life, he probably didn't. His father was a toolmaker in a provincial factory; Starmer himself didn't run for Parliament until the age of 52. Before entering politics, he was a lawyer who rose to run Britain's Crown Prosecution Service.
Understated comes to Starmer naturally. Critics might also add opaque. But, again, this is also a strategy. Throughout the campaign, Labour sought to portray itself as a party of men and women who take nothing for granted and will toil ceaselessly on your behalf. The message isn't exciting, but it isn't meant to be. And maybe this is what anti-populism has to look like: There is no ideology, the middle-of-the-roadness is the point. [ED: Again, the middle of the road has shifted Left.]
Starmer wants a Britain assertively back on the world stage. Under the Tories, xenophobia was always just under the surface, sometimes emerging in full view; Corbyn was skeptical of NATO, the transatlantic alliance, and the importance of the military. Starmer, in contrast, leans into them, placing all three things in the top rank of concerns. Starmer has been to Ukraine and have met its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and will attend a NATO summit next week. He regards Vladimir Putin as an enemy of democracy.
Policy towards the EU is trickier. That he wants to enhance Britain's relationship with mainland Europe is without doubt, but he thinks rejoining the EU is a bridge too far. The difficulty is that anything less is a half-measure; it may be the case that Starmer will consider rejoining the EU only if, say, the LibDems make a popular case for it.
In any case, Starmer wants Britain to be seen as a serious and honest player on the global stage. That includes an assault on kleptocracy and international corruption -- which is closer to home than it sounds, since oligarchs from Russia and elsewhere have taken advantage of the easy and discreet rules for owning property in London, and similarly enjoy access to London's formidable financial-services sector.
Even with understatement, Starmer's Labour has mountains to move, they can't be moved quickly, and voters are fickle. Starmer has to be careful. Tom Baldwin, the author of a best-selling Starmer biography, says that to understand the new prime minister, you have to imagine a man standing in a field. "He takes one step forward and stops. A step to the left, and he stops. One step back, two steps to the right, and he stops again. What he's doing looks weird. It's inelegant; it's confusing. But he's crossing a minefield. And this is the best way to get to the other side."
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* JOE BIDEN (33): George H.W. Bush won the 1988 election by a landslide. Ronald Reagan went off into retirement with a heroic status among conservatives, the "Reagan Revolution" having given them the political upper hand. Reagan was a person with many excellent personal qualities, one being that he was flexible and willing to compromise. In an about-face from his anti-Soviet rhetoric, he had reached out to the Soviets as they worked to reform their system, and also made significant strides in arms control.
Nonetheless, Reagan had accelerated a shift to the Right that would last for a generation, driven by politicians who were far less conscientious than he was. His determination to cut budgets led to a grand era of budget deficits, with the deficits then used as a weapon to hobble governance. Republicans had been set on a trajectory that would, decades later, not end well for them. It could be said that Reagan had a first-class temperament -- and a third-class intellect.
As president, George H.W. Bush generally continued Reagan's policies, tempered by the reality that the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. Joe Biden's efforts in the shadow of the Bush I Administration were generally low-key, including work on drug-control legislation, and a successful effort to derail a push towards a congressional amendment banning flag desecration. Given the difficulty of passing a constitutional amendment, it was not so hard to derail it.
In the summer of 1990, Justice William Brennan retired, with the Bush I Administration nominating David Souter of the First Circuit Court of Appeals to replace him. Brennan was a Democrat, Souter was a Republican -- and was regarded as a "stealth justice", with no substantial paper trail to nail down exactly where he stood on critical issues. That in itself was enough to make the Left wing of the Democrats suspicious, but there was little of the contention seen in the Bork hearings in the Souter hearings. The Judiciary Committee gave him a PASS, voting 13:1; when the Senate voted on 2 October 1990, Souter was approved by a vote of 90:9. Joe voted YEA, Ted Kennedy voted NAY. On the bench, much to the irritation of hard-liners from the Bush I Administration, Souter would prove comfortably moderate: the "stealth" worked both ways.
In the meantime, the Bush I Administration found itself in a major world crisis. It began on 2 August 1990, when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded and annexed Kuwait. Bush announced: "This will not stand!" -- and engaged in diplomacy to get the Iraqis to withdraw, while simultaneously building up forces and setting up an international coalition to take action if diplomacy failed.
Diplomacy failed, with an air campaign starting on 17 January 1991. Coalition aircraft pounding the Iraqis, who proved unable to fight back effectively. A ground offensive into Kuwait began on 24 February, with the Iraqis evicted three days later. Saddam Hussein then accepted a humiliating cease-fire that included a set of controls and restrictions. Bush did not continue the offensive into Iraq; he had no mandate to do so, and there were serious doubts that it made military sense.
The Gulf War was a resounding triumph for Bush, who obtained enthusiastic public support. Criticisms were, as a result, very much muted. Joe and others had raised concerns over Bush acting without Congressional approval, suggesting that the 1973 War Powers Act -- passed by Congress to limit President Nixon's authority to go to war -- required such approval. Bush said that it wasn't necessary, but he went ahead and managed to get it anyway before beginning combat operations. The fussing over authorization was shelved when the shooting began, but fussing over the War Powers act would persist in later US military interventions.
* During the ramp-up to the Gulf War, Joe was preoccupied with his re-election campaign. His Republican opponent for the Senate seat was M. Jane Brady, who had been a state deputy attorney general, being seen as a tough-minded prosecutor. Brady promised she wouldn't run a "negative campaign" -- but apparently she had drastic notions of what a "negative campaign" was, because she hit him hard, even resurrecting the flimsy "plagiarism" attacks.
Most of Joe's campaign officials wanted to retaliate in kind, but Valerie wouldn't hear of it. Presented with a low-flying radio ad that had been put together, she refused to run it: "It did not reflect my brother -- not the way he thought or spoke, not the way he campaigned."
One of the officials decided to complain to Joe, calling him at zero-dark-thirty to say there was a problem with Valerie. Joe was understandably alarmed, no doubt recalling ghastly news he had received years before: "Oh God! What's happened to Val?!" The official said she was okay, but she didn't want an ad to be run, and asked Joe to listen to it. He replied: "I don't need to hear it. If my sister said NO, then it's a NO." He hung up and went back to sleep.
Come election day, Joe crushed Brady, 62% to 36%. On Return Day, they rode the carriage around the square together, with Brady struck by the obvious affection of the crowd for Joe. She said later: "This is why I lost. People have bonded with this man. The intensity is so strong." [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NEWS: As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Bright New North Star Will Soon Burst Into View" by Michael Irving, 19 March 2024), people who know where to look in the northern skies of Earth will be able to spot, with the naked eye, a "star" that they hadn't seen before.
Located in the Northern Crown constellation, T Coronae Borealis (T CrB) is usually not a very interesting sight, having an apparent magnitude of about +10, right at the limit of what can be seen with a pair of binoculars. However, roughly every 80 years, it brightens dramatically, to an apparent magnitude of +2, allowing it to be seen with the naked eye even in big cities with lights that obscure the sky. The outburst last occurred in 1946, and before that 1866. Astronomers are predicting it will flare up again between March and September 2024 -- about two years ahead of schedule. It will only be visible to the naked eye for a few days, and then can be seen with binoculars for about a week.
Such "nova" explosions occur in binary star systems with a white dwarf star and a red giant star in a close orbit. The red giant loses mass to the white dwarf, with the hydrogen collecting until a fusion reaction begins. The fusion dies out in a few weeks, and the cycle begins again.
* As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("You're Not Imagining It: Extreme Wildfires Are Now More Common" by Jeff Tollefson, 24 June 2024), the number of people who deny climate change is ever decreasing in the face of dramatic evidence that the world is getting hotter -- one indication being the apparent increase in calamitous wildfires, with fires often occurring outside of their traditional season.
Now a study has shown that wildfires are indeed getting worse. Analysis of satellite observation archives shows that the exponential growth of extreme fires across vast portions of Canada, the western United States, and Russia has driven the doubling of big fires over the past two decades. Lead author Calum Cunningham -- an ecologist at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia -- says: "It's the extreme events that we care about the most, and those are the ones that are increasing quite significantly. Surprisingly, this has never been shown at a global scale."
Researchers have already documented an increase in wildfire activity across the western forests of the United States, but they have had a harder time identifying a clear global trend, since fires have not been becoming more common everywhere; there has, for example, been a steady reduction in fire activity in African grasslands and savannahs.
In the current study, Cunningham and his colleagues inspected global satellite data for fire activity. They used infrared records to measure the energy intensity of nearly 31 million daily fire events over two decades, focusing on the most extreme ones, numbering about 2,900 events. They found there was a 2.2-fold increase in the frequency of extreme events globally in 2003:23, and a 2.3-fold boost in the average intensity of the top 20 most intense fires each year.
The forests most affected by extreme fires were those in locales such as western North America with coniferous trees, including spruce and pine. These forests demonstrated an 11.1-fold increase in the number of fires over the study period. Boreal forests at high latitudes in countries such as Canada, the USA, and Russia were also significantly affected, showing a 7.3-fold increase in fires.
Although the study doesn't directly connect the fire trend to global warming, the connection is obvious, Cunningham saying: "There's almost certainly a significant signal of climate change."
The researchers also identified extreme fires occurring in several other locales around the world -- notably in Australia, which experienced unprecedented wildfires in 2019 and 2020, and the Mediterranean. Although they didn't see clear trends in these regions, Cunningham suggests they will arise in time.
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Scientists Spot Viruses Attaching To Other Viruses For First Time" by Michael Irving, 06 October 2023), viruses can barely be called "living", since they are "obligate parasites", unable to replicate without infecting a host cell. They are not known to infect each other -- though there are some "satellite" viruses that can't infect a cell unless another related "helper" virus infects it as well, with the satellite virus then hijacking the hijack.
However, researchers have now spotted satellite viruses consistently latching onto their helpers. The finding came out of a routine undergraduate project where bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, are isolated and sent to a lab for genetic sequencing. In one sample, the DNA of an expected virus, named "MindFlayer", was found, but the analysis reported contamination by unknown DNA. Repeat experiments gave the same results.
The researchers then inspected the samples with a transmission electron microscope (TEM). They were surprised to find that the MindFlayer phage had a small satellite virus (dubbed "MiniFlayer") attached to its "neck" section. It wasn't a freak, either. 80% of the phages observed, or 40 out of 50, had an attached satellite phage. Even among those that didn't have one at the time, some still bore "tendrils" that indicated they'd been bound by them in the past.
Having discovered the pairing, the team then inspected the genomes of the satellite and helper viruses, as well as the host. They found that unlike all other known satellite viruses, MiniFlayer was missing a gene that helped it integrate into the host's DNA -- or in other words, it had to stay close to its helper, MindFlayer, in order to replicate inside a host cell. Ivan Erill, senior author of the study, says: "Attaching now made total sense, because otherwise, how are you going to guarantee that you are going to enter into the cell at the same time?"
Further research is being performed to validate the observations, and to see if the same behavior is found in other viruses.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GEN-AI ARRIVES (21): David Bau and his colleagues have developed schemes to scan and edit AI neural networks, including a technique they call "causal tracing". The idea is to give a model a prompt such as: "Michael Jordan plays the sport of ... " -- and let it answer: "basketball" -- then give it another prompt, such as: "Blah blah blah plays the sport of ...", and watch it say something else. They then take some of the pathways of internal activations resulting from the first prompt and carefully restore them until the model says "basketball" in reply to the second prompt. This maps the response to the pathways of action in the neural net, in much the same way neural pathways in the brain can be linked to particular thinking.
The team developed a method to edit the model's knowledge by tweaking specific parameters, along with a method to edit in bulk what the model knows. The researchers believe their approach allows ridding an LLM of incorrect or outdated facts without retraining the whole model. Their edits were specific -- not otherwise affecting the LLM -- but not too specific -- they affected the answer even when the question was rephrased. Bau says:
QUOTE:
The nice thing about artificial neural networks is that we can do experiments that neuroscientists would only dream of. We can look at every single neuron, we can run networks millions of times, we can do all sorts of crazy measurements and interventions and abuse these things. And we don't have to get a consent form.
END_QUOTE
Bau adds that neuroscientists have been intrigued by the research, thinking it can provide insights into biological brains.
Although many LLM-scanning techniques, including Zou's and Bau's, take a top-down approach, attributing concepts or facts to underlying neural representations, others use a bottom-up approach: looking at neurons and asking what they represent.
A 2023 paper by a team at Anthropic got attention because of its fine-grained methods for understanding LLMs at the single-neuron level. The researchers looked at a toy AI with a single "transformer" layer -- a large LLM has dozens. When they looked at a sublayer containing 512 neurons, they found that each neuron was "polysemantic" -- meaning it responding to a variety of inputs. By mapping when each neuron was activated, they determined that the behavior of those 512 neurons could be described by a collection of 4,096 "virtual" neurons that only responded to a single concept. In effect, embedded in the 512 multitasking neurons were thousands of virtual neurons, each handling one type of task. Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, says: "It's like we can open it up and pour all the gears on the floor."
Examining a toy model, however, is a bit like studying fruit flies to understand humans. It's insightful, but Andy Zou says, the approach only goes so far, and is less suited to explaining the more-sophisticated aspects of AI behavior.
* Companies working with LLMs are unsurprisingly concerned with providing explanations of how their models work; nobody likes a product that generates unpleasant surprises. Regulators are getting into the act as well. The European Union's AI Act, for example, requires explainability for "high-risk AI systems" -- such as those deployed for remote biometric identification; law enforcement; or access to education, employment or public services.
Of course, many LLMs are not "high-risk systems", but David Bau thinks that all of them need of them need to take explainability seriously. He is exasperated at the way some AI companies, such as OpenAI, keep their models secret. OpenAI says they maintain secrecy for safety reasons, to keep the Black Hats from exploiting the models.
In fact, companies including OpenAI and Anthropic are prominent contributors to the field of XAI. In 2023, for example, OpenAI released a study that used GPT-4, one of its most recent AI models, to try to explain the responses of an earlier model, GPT-2, at the neuron level. However, there's much more work to do, and Bau thinks companies such as OpenAI need to push effort more assertively: "Somebody needs to be responsible for either doing the science, or enabling the science, so that it's not just a big ball of lack of responsibility." [END OF SERIES]
START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* EU DIGITAL IDENTITY WALLET: Robust digital identity schemes have appeared in a number of countries. Now, as discussed in an article from TECHCRUNCH.com ("The EU Digital Identity Wallet" by Natasha Lomas, 23 June 24), e-ID is poised to take a big step up, with the introduction of the European Union's "Digital Identity Wallet (DIW)".
While national e-ID systems are not new -- Estonia is a notable pioneer in digital identity, Ukraine has become dependent on its DIIA e-ID system, and India has its comprehensive Aadhar system -- they don't work well across borders. From 2021, EU lawmakers have been pushing to develop a single ID system that covers the entire European Union. Following recent adoption of a key legal framework, EU countries are expected to issue the first DIWs by the end of 2026.
Europeans will be able to download a wallet app to their smartphone or other device, and use it to store and selectively share credentials when they need to verify their identity or prove their age. The wallet will work both for ID checks online and in the material world. It's also intended as a digital repository for official documents, such as a driver's license, medical prescriptions, educational qualifications, passports, and so on. Legally binding e-signing functionality will also be supported, while online services will be obliged to accept the Pan-EU credential.
There's a bigger picture involved in the EU DIW effort. The EU has an extensive and growing body of digital regulation, and a pan-EU e-ID system goes a long way towards enabling it. For example, aspects of the online governance regime established by the Digital Services Act (DSA) could be easier to implement once the EU can point to having a "universal, secure and trustworthy" digital ID system -- the DIW -- in place. Think privacy-preserving access to adult content websites for people who could use the digital ID to verify they're over 18, for example, or perform bank transactions securely and conveniently. More broadly, the DIW would help get online trolls and scammers under control.
Another big EU digital policy push is focused on remove barriers to the sharing and reuse of data, including across internal borders, by setting up infrastructure and rules for "Common European Data Spaces". A universal EU e-ID that promises citizens privacy and autonomy could enable greater and more efficient info-sharing -- while leaving users with control of what data they share and who they share it with. For example, it could give citizens a means to share their verified age but not their identity, allowing a wallet app user to sign into an age-restricted service anonymously. Other use cases for the wallet that the EU has discussed include an apartment-rental scenario where a citizen could share verified data about their rental history with a potential landlord without having to confirm their identity, until they actually sign the contract.
The EU Digital Identity Wallet proposal was adopted by the European Commission in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, when apps that could display a person's COVID-19 vaccination status were a high public priority. One issue that came up at that time was that tech giants such as Apple and Google set their own rules on how COVID-19 exposure notification data could be exchanged. With the EU DIW, everyone has to obey the same rules.
Of course, introduction of the EU DIW will only be successful if the technology actually provides security and privacy, while being reliable and easy to use. The EU has introduced the "Digital Identity Regulation", which entered into force in May 2024, to ensure development of a secure technical architecture, common standards, and specifications.
A common EU Toolbox has been established, and the EC has also published an architecture reference on GitHub. Code is open sourced, and the EU is driving an ecosystem infrastructure to be based on common standards to drive trust and adoption. The EU is also engaged with industry and public sector stakeholders on large-scale pilots to test the proposed technical specifications.
Further regulations will establish critical technical details. The EU expects the DIW to be fully established among the almost half-billion citizens of the EU by 2030 -- which considering the magnitude of the task, is not that far away.
COMMENT ON ARTICLEMON 24 JUN 24: I saw a Spouter promoting the impeachment of SCOTUS Justices Alito and Thomas. I replied that was unlikely to work, since no GOP would vote for impeachment, & that an 18-year term limit would do the job. He shot back that wouldn't take effect for 18 years.
Huh? I scouted around and found the "Supreme Court Term Limits & Regular Appointments Act of 2021", unsuccessfully pushed by Dem rep Rho Khanna of CA. Along with the 18-year term limit, the White House could nominate a new SCOTUS justice in the 1st & 3rd years of a presidential term.
Over the shorter term, that might result in more than 9 sitting justices, but only the 9 with the shortest time of service would be able to vote. If one of the 9 dropped out for whatever reason, the voting rights of one of the senior justices would be restored for the interim. A senior justice could, of course, transfer to a lower court or retire.
Incidentally, the bill also said that a new justice would be automatically confirmed if Congress did not act on the nomination in 120 days -- no more stonewalling! Anyway, it would take about three years to tip the SCOTUS balance back from 6:3 Right to 4:5 Left.
The Spouter was unimpressed, still insisting that impeachment was the only way to go. When I pointed out again there weren't the votes to impeach, he said that impeachment would embarrass Alito and Thomas so much they'd voluntarily resign. I don't think so. It was like arguing with a creationist: I shot holes in his arguments, he just came up with ever more ridiculous arguments. I ended up blocking him.
* Ukraine has been making effective use of its sea drones against the Russian Black Sea Fleet. I was wondering all along why they didn't use them to lay sea mines, but now it's been announced they've been doing it for a long time, with some successes against Orc ships.
It seems they laid 180-kilogram (400-pound) bottom mines, obtained from the Allies. Some of the "sea babies" have been fitted with R-73 heat-seeking missiles as well, I suspect to deal with Russian harbor protection helicopters.
* To my surprise, the long-running action of the US government against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange appears to be over. He pleaded guilty and got a 5-year sentence, the same as time served in the UK. He accepts justice and goes home to Australia. Problem solved?
TUE 25 JUN 24: Yes indeed, the saga of USGOV V JULIAN_ASSANGE is over, with Assange a free man and going home. His defenders are not quite satisfied, still insisting that the legal pursuit of Assange was unjustified, and that he should be pardoned.
The reply to that is: Don't push your luck. We haven't forgotten how Assange did everything he could, with Russian help, to get Trump elected in 2016. Assange bit the bullet and took a GUILTY plea, no backtracking now. The matter will be filed and forgotten.
* Ukrainian operational security is very good and we don't hear much about frontline combat, but it doesn't seem to be going well for the Orcs right now -- with reports of depleted Russian units, suffering from AFU attacks while lacking food and water, disintegrating.
Chechen troops were brought in to block unauthorized retreats. The AFU then focused firepower on the Chechens, smashing them with HIMARS strikes into Russian territory. That is an interesting detail, since the HIMARS GMLRS missiles are GPS-guided and the Orcs are jamming GPS. It seems the jamming isn't working any more, so something's changed, we just don't know what. Anyway, it seems a miracle that the Orc army hasn't collapsed yet. It could do so at any time.
WED 26 JUN 24: SCOTUS has been dribbling out decisions over the past few weeks. Today, they announced a decision that I've been concerned with, slapping down attempts to stop the White House from monitoring social media.
The slapdown was expected: nobody with sense would object to the White House clamping down on malicious disinformation spread by Kremlin trolls, antivaxers, & conspiracy frauds. Kremlin trolling, after all, is organized & weaponized disinformation by a hostile foreign power.
The court's rejection of the claims was based on "lack of standing", which made a lot of sense: the only people who could claim injury from the suppression of Kremlin trolls are Kremlin trolls. Who can honestly defend the rights of trolls?
Justices Thomas, Alito, & Gorsuch dissented. Why am I not surprised? Thomas and Alito could be expected to insist on MAGA's right to troll, while Gorsuch is a libertarian and has a grand view of "free speech" that is blind to the reality of relentless Kremlin propaganda campaigns.
Anyway, I think the decision may be a Big Deal: the executive has an incentive to drop its accounts on corrosive Xitter and go "someplace else". This opens the door.
* According to an article from RAWSTORY.com, over the past 4 years traffic to "Right Troll Media (RTM)" websites like BREITBART, DAILY WIRE, and DAILY CALLER has collapsed. The range of fall runs from about 50% to over 90%.
This appears to be in part because Facebook changed its algorithms and isn't boosting RTM websites any more. It may also because Xitter has been so overrun by trolls that legitimate users are giving up on it, and so the Xitter connection to the RTM sites is going dead. However, it may more be the case that the RTM has got boring and is going out of style. The GOP is in decline; I've worried about the persistence of the RTM, but it's clearly in decline as well.
THU 27 JUN 24: There was a very interesting video, in which a Ukrainian MiG-29 dumped two French AASM / Hammer 250-kilogram (550-pound) smart glide bombs with a "toss bombing" attack. The MiG-29 came in low, went into a steep climb in afterburner, then released the two bombs during the climb, with the fighter turning around and falling back to low altitude to exit. The rocket-boosted bombs arced towards their distant target. I figured the AFU-AF would use toss bombing, but it was fun to see it. Still not much information on AFU-AF use of US SDB and JDAM glide bombs.
* NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has declared the obvious, that Russia is not winning in Ukraine, saying: "We don't have any ... indications or reasons to believe that Russia has the capabilities, the strength to make big breakthroughs."
This hints at my own idea that Putin is "going for broke", trying to overwhelm Ukraine while he still can, knowing that his window of opportunity, such as it was, is slowly going shut. Over the longer run, he's going to get weaker while Ukraine gets stronger. Putin can spread destruction, but he can't win. In the worst case, Ukraine could fight a guerilla war against the occupation for a generation. Impossible to say how long the war will last, but it is unlikely to be for a generation.
Incidentally, Stoltenberg will be replaced by ex-Dutch PM Mark Rutte on 1 October -- Rutte being politically slick, if not beloved by all. I'm a bit of a Rutte fan, so I'm good with it.
FRI 28 JUN 24: I was expecting great things from the Trump-Biden debate last night, but I was very disappointed to find that Joe Biden, apparently ailing, put on a feeble performance.
On getting over the disappointment, I decided that the debate didn't move the needle between Biden and Trump, neither of them losing nor gaining voters. In the choice between Biden and Trump, there are really no undecided voters. Only fakes say they are.
Trump also made many statements that can and will be used against him. As said on Spout: Joe Biden on his worst night is still better than Trump on his best. The failed debate is not, in itself, a big deal. If Biden's health is visibly failing, it will be a big deal. However, he spoke to a crowd in Raleigh NC today, and was in good, assertive form. I would assume he's running short work hours and spending most of his time in bed, with VP Harris running the show, and his chief lieutenants reporting with voicemails.
* The Supreme Court is on a tear, overturning the CHEVRON V NRDC decision of 1984, which stated that the courts defer to the judgements of a regulatory agency, not have the competence to challenge them. The judiciary now is assuming the right of challenge.
This is really asking for trouble. CHEVRON was established during the Reagan Administration, with environmental groups challenging the regulations of the Reagan EPA, and being told they couldn't do that. Overturning CHEVRON cuts both ways. The SCOTUS decision is unworkable.
The Right comes across these days as a very strange combination of authoritarianism and anti-government anarchism. However, it's not really contradictory at all: they're only against progressive government, and talk anarchism as a cover.
AND SO ON: There is not much indication that Joe Biden's weak debate performance seriously hurt him. In fact, it appears that he has even got some sympathy out of it, Democrats recognizing that he was ailing and couldn't skip the debate. Everyone knows what it's like to have to work when sick. The debate was nothing more than a bump in the road for Joe Biden; in the meantime, Trump stumbles on towards the precipice.
However, the "talking heads" went into a frenzy, with the NEW YORK TIMES editorial proclaiming: "To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave The Race". Andy Borowitz, master of snark, summed up the general annoyance with the NYT via an alternate headline: "Biden Calls On NEW YORK TIMES To Drop Out Of Journalism". The PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, not to be outdone, shot back with: "To Serve His Country, Donald Trump Should Leave The Race" -- and listed Trump's many insults to the USA, commenting:
QUOTE:
The debate served as a reminder of what another four years of Trump would look like. More lies, grievance, narcissism, and hate. Supporters say they like Trump because he says whatever he thinks. But he mainly spews raw sewage.
END_QUOTE
The editors concluded: "Biden on his worst day remains lightyears better than Trump on his best." Hey, I beat them to that line! There was also widespread disgust with the way some of the hystericals promoted white male Democratic politicians as Biden replacements, and didn't even mention Kamala Harris. Why was that? Did it rhyme with SLACK EMAIL? Anyway, Mika Brzezinski of the MORNING JOE show nailed it:
QUOTE:
I was staying up late listening to everybody freak out ... And I literally was just shaking my head, going: "These people need to get diapers." It was one bad night, and it's not the end of the world. Joe Biden has come back from WAY worse. The pattern of his life is that he comes back from the worst.
I mean, if that's what you all think -- that he should drop out -- you have not been listening and you have not been watching his life. I'm not walking away. Of all of his media allies and friends, I'm not even close to doing that. Not even close.
END_QUOTE
In response to a snap posted on Spout of Biden and Harris riding together in a limousine, I replied: "Ride with Biden or get out of the way."
* In Ukraine War news, President Volodymr Zelenskyy has now sacked a senior general, Lieutenant General Yuriy Sodol, after complaints from field commanders that he had ordered half-baked offensive actions that caused many and unnecessary casualties.
Ukraine's internal politics are necessarily opaque, but it appears that Sodol was a victim of Zelenskyy's increasing disgust with older officers, earlier manifested in the sacking of senior commander Valeriy Zaluzhnyy. Zelenskyy believes that younger and more innovative officers -- General Kyrylo Budanov, the devious boss of military intelligence, appears to be the template -- who can conduct a high-tech war that will do the most harm to the Russians and the least harm to Ukrainian forces. Zelenskyy is demanding a lot from the young people of Ukraine, and he has to show that their sacrifices will not be in vain.
How will that change in strategy play out on the battlefield? I suspect it will become more apparent by 1 September.
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