Why the Heck Not? – Weekend Open Thread

by wj

It occurs to me that, since an Open Thread is desıgned to wander around multiple topics, why shouldn’t the post do so as well. So this one is going to start with technology and end up at politics.

This past year, I’ve been working on a project with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Addresses, Names, and Numbers). These are the folks who keep track of things like domain names – so you can’t go out and register obsidianwings.blogs.com, because we already got that. Also of the servers which translate those domain names into actual addresses.

This project is on the Internationalization of Domain Names. We are all accustomed to names which end with .com or .gov or .edu – a legacy of the Internet’s origin as a US government project. ICANN has opened up the possibility of new TLDs (Top Level Domain names) like these, so there are now things like .hotel and .ru. But at the moment, you are limited to the 26 letters used in English. So while you could get .cologne or .koln, you can’t get .köln, which is how the city’s name is properly spelled in German. Likewise, while .jp is available in Japan, you can’t get .日本. This project is intended to expand the repertoire of symbols which are available.

And to figure out which symbols conflict. For example, if one domain name uses the letter a, there probably isn’t a problem with another which is the same except for using ắ (Latin Small Letter A with Breve and Acute) – there’s enough difference that people would notice. But how about i and ı (Latin Small Dotless Letter I), which is used in Turkish? Would you notice? DID you notice, when I slipped it in in the first sentence? Nah, you probably saw what you expected to see. It’s not a trivial problem.

Anyway, this past week I’ve been at an ICANN conference where we have been, among other things, thrashing out some of the issues face-to-face. It’s been in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as scheduled. After Hurricane Maria, there was some discussion about relocating. But we decided to stay, and it’s worked out fine. The lights (and the AC!) are on, the Internet works fine, etc.

But we’re the first major conference here since the hurricane, and the Puerto Ricans have pulled out all the stops to send a message that they are up and running again. To the point that we even had the Governor, Ricky Rosselló, at the Opening Session. He’s a young guy (late 30s and looks mid-20s), and he got off the best line of the morning: “I want to assure you that I am not just some junior staffer from the Office of the Governor. I actually am the Governor!” It got a good laugh.

But it caused me to wonder. Suppose at some point he were to decide to run for President. He’s a “natural born citizen”** of the United States, after all. And since Puerto Rico has no electors, the requirement that electors must vote for at least one of President and Vice President who is not from their own state doesn’t matter. So, why the heck not?

** It occurs to me suddenly to wonder. If we get to the point of having uterine replicators, would those who gestate in a bottle be regarded as “natural born”?

Comments

[wj]

Jones was running unopposed for the nomination. Good work showing your true colors, GOP.

Come on, Snarki. Given how many places the GOP has seats at risk, it's not really surprising that they didn't bother to recruit someone to run for what is a safe blue seat anyway.

They admit it was a mistake. But not, I think, an exceptional one in most circumstances. Just as it would be understandable if the Democrats didn't bother putting up someone for a safe red seat (at least in years when there were more of those). Even though it could result in someone who was a real socialist (as opposed to merely self-labeled as one, like Bernie) getting their nomination unopposed.

[cleek]

it's looking like Lipinski got a big boost from Republicans voting for the more conservative Dem.

[hairshirthedonist]

Seriously? Illinois Nazis?

https://youtu.be/ulCw7RJ5eE8

[Snarki, child of Loki]

wj "they made a mistake" is rather weak tea.

If the local GOP committee couldn't be bothered to work to keep a Nazi or Klan member or a child molester from being their flag bearers, it says A HUGE AMOUNT about their priorities.

Disband the party in that district. Print maps of where the Nazi lives with a "surveyors mark" on the spot.

F'n snowflakes. GOP napalma est.

[Hartmut]

I assume you mean 'napalmanda'. Otherwise the party either is an incendiary itself or it has already been torched or (if we have a verbum deponens here) the torching it used to commit is in the past.
/grammar nazi

[CaseyL]

I like that, Snarki and Hartmut: GOP nalpamanda est.

Honestly? IMO, anyone at this point still supporting and voting for the GOP is presumed to be a traitor to the US.

[Tony P.]

I wonder what Marty (or wj for that matter) has to say about PA Republicans threatening to impeach 4 PA Supreme Court judges.

All millennium, the GOP has been acting like a headstrong doofus who cheats on his pilot's license exam, and thinks that's good enough to fly a plane.

--TP

[russell]

not just a grammar nazi, a LATIN grammar nazi

props!

[russell]

Irony is dead, chapter the four-thousand-three-hundred-and-ninety-ninth.

[JanieM]

Even though it could result in someone who was a real socialist (as opposed to merely self-labeled as one, like Bernie) getting their nomination unopposed.

Electing socialists is the equivalent of electing Nazis?

[Tony P.]

Electing socialists would be much worse. Nazis were friendly to big businesses, at least.

--TP

[bobbyp]

Even though it could result in someone who was a real socialist (as opposed to merely self-labeled as one, like Bernie) getting their nomination unopposed.

So-called "real" socialists (i.e., marxist communists of one of a million or so stripes-worse than 'effing Protestants if you ask me) hate on the Democratic Party with a white hot passion, and most likely would not deign stoop to finagle a nomination to be a Democratic Party candidate.

It would appear nazis are not so discriminating.

[russell]

Electing socialists is the equivalent of electing Nazis?

Right?

[hairshirthedonist]

For the sake of simplicity, “socialist” is taken to be synonymous with “Stalinist.”

...Simplicity!!!!

[wj]

I wonder what Marty (or wj for that matter) has to say about PA Republicans threatening to impeach 4 PA Supreme Court judges.

I view them about the same way I viewed the idiots (in the 1960s) who ranted about "Impeach Earl Warren" because they disliked the Supreme Court decisions outlawing discrimination against blacks. That is, they are a bunch of losers who resent the fact that their illegal shenanigans have been overturned. To which I say: Karma's a bitch.

[wj]

Electing socialists is the equivalent of electing Nazis?

I was trying to say that liberals (at least in my experience) are no more likely to actually embrace a real socialist than conservatives (at least real ones) are to embrace an admitted neo-Nazi. Which is to say, they're not. They might be willing to accept his vote for something that they wanted to pass, but they wouldn't support him or his positions otherwise.

[bobbyp]

For the sake of simplicity, “socialist” is taken to be synonymous with “Stalinist.”

Of which there are at least 20 varieties all claiming to be 'true' Stalinists!

LOL.

[hairshirthedonist]

I was trying to say that liberals (at least in my experience) are no more likely to actually embrace a real socialist than conservatives (at least real ones) are to embrace an admitted neo-Nazi.

Perhaps the degrees to which “Democrat” maps to “liberal” and “Republican” maps to “conservative” (i.e. not totally in either case or equally in the two cases) is part of the reason for the misunderstanding.

[liberal japonicus]

To which I say: Karma's a bitch.

Sign seen in Hue

"I saw that"
Karma

[cleek]

still waiting to learn how the FBI is abusing its powers.

/Double Jeopardy Music

[hairshirthedonist]

Being mean to poor, little Trump.

[russell]

I was trying to say that liberals (at least in my experience) are no more likely to actually embrace a real socialist than conservatives

I'm not sure there are direct analogies between the two parties, or between "liberals" and "conservatives" however construed.

[Nigel]

Most important, all of those people are interested in protecting the power of the FBI, from any one else...

I think rather they are interested in protecting the FBI from becoming the personal tool of a president who has no interest in either the rule of law or the constitution.

[Nigel]

This, on Facebook, I think is entirely fair comment.

(And yes it is about data protection rather than the relative moral positions of Trump vs Obama, which is not even worth discussion.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/zuckerberg-facebook-cambridge-analytica-statement/556187/
Sandy Parakilas, a former employee at Facebook who worked on a team dedicated to policing third-party app developers, told The Guardian that he warned Facebook executives about the problem of data leaking out of the company’s third-party applications, and was told: Do you really want to see what you’ll find? “They felt that it was better not to know,” he said. “I found that utterly shocking and horrifying.”

Equally troubling, Carol Davidsen, who worked on the Obama 2012 campaign, recently tweeted that Facebook knew they were pulling vast amounts of user data out of the system to use in political campaigning and did nothing to stop them. “Facebook was surprised we were able to suck out the whole social graph, but they didn’t stop us once they realized that was what we were doing,” she said. “They came to office in the days following election recruiting and were very candid that they allowed us to do things they wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side.”

The Obama team was not doing exactly the same things as Cambridge Analytica, but this is a shocking revelation about how much data was leaving Facebook, and how little was done to stop it.

In Zuckerberg’s statement about the weekend’s scandal, Facebook lays the blame squarely on a Cambridge psychology professor, Alex Kogan, for building an app that vacuumed up data from unwitting users and stored it outside the system, so that it could be used by Cambridge Analytica. And that is fair: Users could not have imagined that when they took a personality quiz, they would end up in the voter targeting database of a company associated with Steve Bannon.

But that is clearly not the only issue here….

…many of the capabilities that seem to frighten people about Cambridge Analytica do, in fact, exist right within Facebook’s own ad-targeting infrastructure. At what point does Facebook look at those capabilities and decide that something needs to change? It seems like it is far past the time to begin such an investigation.

[sapient]

At what point does Facebook look at those capabilities and decide that something needs to change?

Regulation is what's needed here. Self-regulation has never been very successful.

[russell]

At what point does Facebook look at those capabilities and decide that something needs to change?

when the money stops flowing.

if you hang out on FB, you need to understand that you are the product, not the customer. they derive their revenue from collecting your interactions there and selling them to third parties, who will then analyze them and use them to target messages to you. on FB and elsewhere.

that is the business model.

it makes them, and companies like them, lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of money.

self-regulation in the presence of billions of dollars does not have a good track record.

[russell]

Forbes

for laughs, folks should go to any of the common software developer websites and search for "facebook social graph".

if you have a couple of hours and some very basic coding skills, you too can "scrape the social graph". they don't do friend's data anymore as a matter of policy, but you can still have lots of fun and entertainment.

per the forbes article, twitter offers a more machine-friendly API and has become the preferred resource.

[JanieM]

russell @8:33

Forbes link is faulty.....

[russell]

Forbes?

[cleek]

Forbes!

[Michael Cain]

There's now video of the Uber vehicle striking the pedestrian.

[Slartibartfast]

As it happens, I just yesterday paid a visit to the Site Formerly Known as HOCB (or, variously, TIO) and to my utter surprise it redirected me to some sort of Asian porn site.

I was grateful that I didn't do that on my work computer.

...and then I realized that it has been a while since I visited here, too. Quite a while.

So. Here I am. I've gotten a kid all the way through college, I think, since I last commented. I've got another kid who will be driving unsupervised in the very, very near future and is shopping for colleges.

Maybe I should talk about food pantries or something. Our church is partnered on one that feeds a few thousand people a month, which is at once fairly impressive and not nearly enough to meet demand. But I am still sort of a novice-level grocery-getter, and I do that in place of actually serving the people that need food. It uses up about a half day a week. Still sore from yesterday's run, which included over half a ton of #8 cans of stuff, all of which we got for free.

Hope everyone is as well as they can be.

Slart

[JanieM]

Slarti!

[Countme-a-Demon]

Zuckerberg stated plainly from the time he was in college gearing up Facebook that the human race will get over its quaint notions of privacy once he gives them no choice but to.

Our privacy is an untapped, uncapitalized (oh, well, if you put it like that, then please proceed) market to be monetized like every fucking thing from Walden Pond on down the line.

We are the marks.

So, spotting Groucho trying to get a bead on the hot horse, along comes another bunch of grifting Chicos spying an untapped market that needs monetizing ... voila ... if you'll excuse my entrepreneurial French ... your newly lost privacy, which of course you gave up because the small print was written in disappearing ink .. our friend Chico here who will sell you, for a fee, 37 ways of judging the horses and securing your multi-various privacies.

Here's what we do. You want to see your own data, maybe make a fucking phone call, well, you suspect, we'll need some fingerprints and an eyeball scan. What's the password? What's the backup password?

Remember to write down those passwords on a piece of paper, all 26 of them at least 11 characters long and using one cap, two numbers, an emoji, and a gerund spelled backwards.

Here's a pencil. That'll be $2 to rent the pencil and hurry up because its the only one left.

Better yet, for a monthly subscription fee, we'll automatically change your passwords for you. Yeah. Then we'll sell the new ones to a guy in Bucharest who will alert us to alert you that you need to be alert to buying this here super-subscription that encrypts your passwords on top of every thing else.

Two dollah. We have overhead.

See every grift needs a snappy rhyme to go with: subscription encryption, in this case. Presented to you by a guy dressed like an enchilada but wearing a Sherlock Holmes hat to make him look on the up and up. Mum's the word.

And speaking of mum, don't use your grandmother's maiden name as your password, for God's sake. Think how easily your grandmother gave up her maidenhood. She gave it away to the first guy who asked, so why would you trust her with YOUR privacy?

You know when you put your debit card in the ATM on the side of the bank. It's best to skulk and dart your eyes around while you do it, cause someone has a placed a tiny camera to watch you type in your password and read your debit card number. No, don't look NOW! Jeebus!

For $12 a month, my company will sell you the Debit Card Shield, patent pending, mind you, to protect your identity in all yer transactions.

Never mind the fact that our offshore subsidiary sold the tiny camera to the scofflaws in the first place and is just now developing and marketing a device that can see thru the Debit Card Shield, so the more we think about it, the more YOU look like a steady stream of income for us, and if you don't like it, buy our stock and work both ends of your predicament.

You are the customer and the product. You are the target audience. You buy yourself back from the market which has you coming and going at all times.

This individual human being nonsense is just a thing they tell you.

[Countme-a-Demon]

Or watch this and skip the reading:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqypaqLEfM8

[Countme-a-Demon]

Slarti!

How's the hog-splitting?

[Slartibartfast]

I've learned a thing or two, Count. And I have two freezers full of pork.

We also have bunnies. Cute, fluffy, tasty bunnies.

How's things with you?

[Countme-a-Demon]

"There's now video of the Uber vehicle striking the pedestrian."

Once we replace the human pedestrians with self-walking robots, this sort of thing won't be a worry.

It'll just be one algorithm running over another algorithm, what we'll come to refer to as the "flat algorithm" with a rueful chuckle.

[Countme-a-Demon]

Well, slart, I like pork and the occasional braised rabbit.

Had a scrumptious pig tail topped by fried pig ears the other week at a new Latin restaurant in my town.

But I have people to do the dirty work and prep.

I have aspirations to become more vertically integrated in that respect, but my apartment complex disapproves of livestock holding pens right chere in the apartments.

I've learned nothing since we last communicated here.

Don't be so scarce.

[Slartibartfast]

I actually feel as if I have unlearned a great many things.

Could be one reason for my reticence. I just know nothing anymore. But could also be partially because I am busy doing things that keep me exhausted, physically. And also that I have had the flu on four (4) separate occasions this winter. Two different varieties, repeated once each.

Yeah, it's the winter I skipped my flu vaccination. So, yeah. Dumber and more tired than before, is kind of my tagline these days. And sicker, maybe.

Although I have done some cool things mathematically and algorithmically, none of that would be of much interest here.

[hairshirthedonist]

Although I have done some cool things mathematically and algorithmically, none of that would be of much interest here.
Are you sure?

[Michael Cain]

Although I have done some cool things mathematically and algorithmically, none of that would be of much interest here.

There is a tiny minority of applied mathematicians.

[hairshirthedonist]

Define "tiny." Show your work.

[Nigel]

A shaft of light in the dark...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/how-anthony-ray-hinton-survived-death-row.html?
The thing that I find fascinating and more pleasing is that people genuinely are sorry. They hear what I went through. I thought people wouldn’t care, but people generally do care. I get letters all the time from people that tell me that they care, and that they wish that there’s something they could do. They’re sorry that I went through this. I find that striking because I believe that we live in a world where people only care about themselves, but I have been proven wrong…

[wj]

...and then I realized that it has been a while since I visited here, too. Quite a while.

The wanderer returns! Welcome home, Slarti.

[wj]

Never mind the fact that our offshore subsidiary sold the tiny camera to the scofflaws in the first place and is just now developing and marketing a device that can see thru the Debit Card Shield

Now that's just pathetically poor engineering. Anyone with sense would have incorporated a camera in the Shield design in the first place. Just in case they had a future desire to use it....

[hairshirthedonist]

https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/John-Dowd-lead-Trump-lawyer-in-Russia-probe-12773474.php

[Tony P.]

Cute, fluffy, tasty bunnies.

Good to see you again, Slarti!

--TP

[Girl from the North Country]

Slartibartfast: I don't know you well enough (or really at all) to presume to say welcome back, but I would just mention, FWIW, that your name gets reasonably regular mentions, along with such comments as "if Slarti ever comes back after he gets done with splitting hogs".

[russell]

I actually feel as if I have unlearned a great many things.

The beginning of wisdom. Good on ya.

I feel the need for some of that myself, more and more.

Cool to see you around the old neighborhood!

[sapient]

Almost like old times!

[hairshirthedonist]

Yeah. Now write something incomprehensible already!

[Ugh]

Hey Slarti!

[Girl from the North Country]

New company called Emerdata was set up by Cambridge Analytica last year. One of the directors is Alexander Nix, and Channel 4 News has just reported that Mercer's daughters became directors just after CA were notified that C4News was about to go with Wylie's whistleblowing. There's also an Erik Prince (of Blackwater) connection:

http://uk.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-executives-and-mercer-family-launch-emerdata-2018-3

[hairshirthedonist]

It's like a screwed up mini-illuminati.

[hairshirthedonist]

Make that nano-illuminati. Or pico or femto. Whatever.

[Nigel]

And, of course, as ever, serious props for the fjords, Slart.

[liberal japonicus]

Although I have done some cool things mathematically and algorithmically, none of that would be of much interest here.

try us...

[liberal japonicus]

and welcome back, if you don't have the keys but would like to post a "what I did while the world was going to hell in a handbasket" post, email it to me and I'll get it up.