Year: 2017

Still a Few Bugs in the System

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Some neuroscientists decided to see if the latest neuroscience tools could handle a simpler case than the human brain.

They chose a 40+ year old CPU, and they failed abysmally:

In 2014, the US announced a new effort to understand the brain. Soon, we would map every single connection within the brain, track the activity of individual neurons, and start to piece together some of the fundamental units of biological cognition. The program was named BRAIN (for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), and it posited that we were on the verge of these breakthroughs because both imaging and analysis hardware were finally powerful enough to produce the necessary data, and we had the software and processing power to make sense of it.

But this week, PLoS Computational Biology published a cautionary note that suggests we may be getting ahead of ourselves. Part experiment, part polemic, a computer scientist got together with a biologist to apply the latest neurobiology approaches to a system we understand far more completely than the brain: a processor booting up the games Donkey Kong and Space Invaders. The results were about as awkward as you might expect, and they helped the researchers make their larger point: we may not understand the brain well enough to understand the brain.

On the surface, this may sound a bit ludicrous. But it gets at something fundamental to the nature of science. Science works on the basis of having models that can be used to make predictions. You can test those models and use the results to refine them. And you have to understand a system on at least some level to build those models in the first place.

 ………

That’s where Donkey Kong comes in.

Games on early Atari systems were powered by the 6502 processor, also found in the Apple I and Commodore 64. The two authors of the new paper (Eric Jonas and Konrad Paul Kording) decided to take this relatively simple processor and apply current neuroscience techniques to it, tracking its activity while loading these games. The 6502 is a good example because we can understand everything about the processor and use that to see how well the results match up. And, as they put it, “most scientists have at least behavioral-level experience with these classical video game systems.”

So they built upon the work of the Visual 6502 project, which got ahold of a batch of 6502s, decapped them, and imaged the circuitry within. This allowed the project to build an exact software simulator with which they could use to test neuroscience techniques. But it also enabled the researchers to perform a test of the field of “connectomics,” which tries to understand the brain by mapping all the connections of the cells within it.

To an extent, the fact that their simulator worked is a validation of the approach. But, at the same time, the chip is incredibly simple: there is only one type of transistor, as opposed to the countless number of specialized cells in the brain. And the algorithms used to analyze the connections only got the team so far; lots of human intervention was required as well. “Even with the whole-brain connectome,” Jonas and Kording conclude, “extracting hierarchical organization and understanding the nature of the underlying computation is incredibly difficult.”

Remember, in a microprocessor, a transistor is a transistor is a transistor, in the brain, neurons and ganglia vary from cell to cell.

This is a valid test of the software, the 6502 is arguably the most thoroughly understood CPU in existence, and Donkey Kong is arguably one of the best understood pieces of software in existence.

And they still could not do it on a  processor that can access only 64K of RAM.

We are much further from mapping the brain in any detail than is implied in the mainstream media reports.

You Gotta Be F%$#Ing Kidding………

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Musical Accompaniment by John Carpenter and Ennio Morricone here

One of my favorite films is John Carpenter’s magnum opus, The Thing, released in 1982.

It is closer to the original work (John Campbell’s Who Goes There) than did the 1951 Howard Hawks film.

If you haven’t seen it, see it. It is an investigation of isolation, paranoia, with allusions to AIDS and sexual ambiguity.

The movie has many classic moments, and in one, when confronted with a human head sprouting legs and walking off, and Palmer notices, and says, “You gotta be f%$#in’ kidding.”

It is an expression of horror and disgust that I have not seen equaled ………

Until today ………

By me ………

Because today ………

On Capitol Hill ………

………

At the confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, announced that she opposes banning guns in schools because ……… Grizzly Bears:

Senator Chris Murphy who represented the district with Newtown, asked Department of Education Betsy DeVos whether she would oppose guns in public schools.

 As she did with most questions, she waffled.

 Murphy asked, “Do you think guns have any place in or around schools?”

 DeVos fell back on her usual deflection that it is for states to decide, which set Murphy off.

 Incredulously, he asked, “You can’t say definitively today that guns shouldn’t be in schools?”

 With disingenuous wide-eyed misunderstanding, DeVos replied, “I will refer back to (Wyoming) Senator (Mike) Enzi and the school he was talking about in Wyoming. I think probably there, I would imagine that there is probably a gun in the schools to protect from potential grizzlies.”

 Murphy ended his questioning by telling her he looked forward to her visiting his state to discuss guns in schools with a disgusted tone. I was seriously surprised that he didn’t throw all of his papers on the floor while walking out.

I will say it again, “You Gotta be F%$#ing Kidding ………”

Murphy is the Senator from Connecticut, the former home of Newtown Elementry and the Newtown Massacre.

I am sure that Ms. DeVos’ reception in the Nutmeg state would be ……… enthusiastic.

I’m Cynical, so My Question is, “What’s Obama’s Vig?”

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I gotta figure that the news that Barack Obama has commuted Chelsea Manning sentence is more about Barack Obama than it is about Chelsea Manning:

President Obama on Tuesday commuted all but four months of the remaining prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army intelligence analyst convicted of a 2010 leak that revealed American military and diplomatic activities across the world, disrupted Mr. Obama’s administration and brought global prominence to WikiLeaks, the recipient of those disclosures.

The decision by Mr. Obama rescued Ms. Manning, who twice tried to kill herself last year, from an uncertain future as a transgender woman incarcerated at the men’s military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. She has been jailed for nearly seven years, and her 35-year sentence was by far the longest punishment ever imposed in the United States for a leak conviction.

At the same time that Mr. Obama commuted the sentence of Ms. Manning, a low-ranking enlisted soldier at the time of her leaks, he also pardoned Gen. James E. Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who pleaded guilty to lying about his conversations with reporters to F.B.I. agents investigating a leak of classified information about cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear program.

The two acts of clemency were a remarkable final step for a president whose administration carried out an unprecedented criminal crackdown on leaks of government secrets. Depending on how they are counted, the Obama administration has prosecuted either nine or 10 such cases, more than were charged under all previous presidencies combined.

My guess is that this has something to do  Obama’s quest for legacy.

He does not want Manning’s suicide to be in his historical footnotes, and for the speaking circuit, he needs to get along with former military speakers, and he could not pardon Cartwright without commuting Manning.

It is completely out of character for Obama though.

There Is Something about This That Is an Inexorable Draw to Current and Former Denizens of the Pacific Northwest

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The Rare Earth Elements

I am referring to the hijacker (incorrectly) known as D.B. Cooper.

For some reason, anyone who has spent any time living in Oregon or Washington (I dunno about Idaho), it’s like catnip

So when I came across a report of new evidence in the only unsolved airline hijacking in the continental United States, (updated incorrect link) I gotta comment:

A group of amateur scientists claim they may have narrowed the suspect pool in a case that has stymied the experts for decades.

The infamous case of D.B. Cooper and the nation’s only unsolved skyjacking has left investigators befuddled since a parachuted Cooper leapt from a Boeing 727 headed to Seattle from Portland on Nov. 24, 1971.

But a team of “Citizen Sleuths” say that evidence they’ve uncovered could mean that Dan Cooper, the name used when the culprit bought his one-way ticket with cash, was in fact an employee of some sort of aerospace engineering firm.

The crucial pieces of newly uncovered evidence: thousands of microscopic particles on a $3 clip-on necktie from JC Penney.

“All of these particles are too small to be seen with the naked eye, but modern science can now track them to their source,” the group wrote on their website. “These particles through their shape and composition can tell a story.”

If you are one of the few who are unfamiliar with the saga of D.B. Cooper, here’s the short version:

On that fateful day in 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper purchased a one-way ticket from Portland to Seattle on Northwest Orient Airlines. He hijacked the plane, demanded $200,000 in ransom money, and having received it during a stopover in Seattle, jumped from the aircraft wearing nothing but a business suit and a parachute somewhere over the forests of southwest Washington.

………

“Each of those particles comes from something and somewhere and can tell a story if the proper instruments like electron microscopes are used,” the group wrote.

The particles in question — Cerium, Strontium sulfide and pure titanium — are of note because because of how rare they are, lead investigator Tom Kaye told King 5 News in Seattle.

“These are what they call rare earth elements. They’re used in very narrow fields, for very specific things,” he said.

As an aside, neither Strontium nor Titanium are rare earth elements.  (Click on image above for larger image)

Of particular interest was the pure titanium. The mineral was widely used in aircraft manufacturing in the early 1970s, but titanium used in airplanes was almost always mixed with other metals, which ruled out Boeing, the region’s largest aerospace manufacturer.

So, I already pointed out one scientific error, the listing of Strontium and Titanium as rare earth elements.

Here are scientific and business facts about the substances in question:

  • Strontium sulfide could NOT be present now, because it would have reacted with wqater in the air over the past 40 odd years to form Strontium Hydroxide and Hydrogen Sulfide (SrS + 2 H2O → Sr(OH)2 + H2S) or with both the water and CO2 to form Strontium Carbonate (SrS + H2O + CO2 → SrCO3 + H2S).
    • Strontium Sulfide has no applications, it is an intermediate stage in refining.
    • The primary used of Strontium are  in CRTs (Picture tubes and the like to keep the watcher from being irradiated) and as a coloring agent in fireworks as SrCO3 (red sparks).
    • The article might have made an error, instead we are referring to Strontium Sulfate (SRSO4)
  • Metallic Titanium (as sponge or powder) is used in fireworks, as is TiO2, and produces white sparks.
    • Pure Titanium is almost NEVER used in structures.  An alloy, most commonly Ti-6Al-4V (6% Al, 4% V) is, and but this may be another error.
    • Titanium has been used extensively in medical implants since the 1960s.
    • Titanium began to hit bicycle frames in the 1970s. (With unimpressive results until the early 1990s)
  • Cerium has the following applications:
    • “Flints” used in lighters and fire starters (Ferrocerium and Mischmetal).
    • Fine polishing of glass.
    • Phosphors in fluorescent lights and CRTs (in the latter application, they keep the screen from darkening over tiem).
    • Catalytic converters in automobiles.
    • The nitrate is used in ointments for treating severe burns. 
    • Medical implants like artificial hips.

The person wearing a clip-on tie was someone who, in a pinch, had to work machines, because if a clip on gets caught in a machine, it comes off, and a real tie pulls you in. This would imply that they are not that senior.  (It was the first and only instruction on fashion that I got in E-School)

Though a number of sources are saying Boeing, Kaye specifically eschews this link, because pure Titanium is not used in airframes.

His conclusion, that, “The tie was likely in a plant that manufactured cathode ray tubes,” is one that I would agree with.  (Note that many of the news reports misquote him and point the finger at Boeing)

In fact, the Strontium and Cerium would tend to indicate this sort of application.

I am unaware of any normal application for Titanium in CRT manufacturer, but perhaps for a high end application, say something made by Tektronix, which is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, which located just outside of Portland, where flight 305 originated.

I don’t think that Cooper survived the jump, so I would look at people who vanished, or abruptly quit at Tektronix or its local suppliers, at around that time.

      Good News from the Borg*

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      Lucasfilm has announced that there will not be a CGI version of Princess/General Leia in any future Star Wars films:

      In the wake of actor and writer Carrie Fisher’s tragic passing in December, reports about the current Star Wars trilogy have been full of questions and guesses. What exactly should we expect from the popular character of Princess Leia in the remaining two episodes, and how will the film’s producers deal with her original actor not being able to complete Leia’s plot arc?

      Lucasfilm took the unusual step of confirming one major detail about the series’ future on Friday, announcing that the company does not intend to recreate the actor’s persona using digital means.

      Telling fans that “we don’t normally respond to fan or press speculation,” Lucasfilm published a statement at the StarWars.com blog confirming that the Disney-owned company “has no plans to digitally recreate Carrie Fisher’s performance as Princess or General Leia Organa.”

      The statement, which also paid tribute to the actor (“[we] will always strive to honor everything [Fisher] gave to Star Wars”), doesn’t specify which projects Lucasfilm’s producers may be referring to. Multiple outlets have reported that Fisher had completed her work acting in the upcoming, untitled eighth episode, and many of those outlets published follow-up reports claiming that the character of Leia Organa had been set to play a major role in Episode IX. Without going into specifics, Lucasfilm’s statement clearly isn’t a retroactive one in terms of claiming that the company would never produce a CGI version of Fisher.

      Of course, this is NOT a categoral statement, and this IS Disney, and the mouse has been seduced by the Dark Side and delights in violating the Prime Directive,† at least since the Eisner days, but it appears that for the immediate future at least, we won’t see a CGI Carrie Fisher.

      Still, we need to keep a close eye on Disney, and J.J. Abrams, and if anyone on the inside gets wind of this, they need to go public, and go all, “Danger, Will Robinson!”, on Disney.‡

      *Yes, I know that I am mixing Star Wars and Star Trek, likely pissing off both groups. This is intentional. I have no life, and I live to screw with all of you.
      †I did say that I was going to f$#@ with all of you, didn’t I?
      ‡Seriously, I said that I would be f%$#ing with all of you. How much more do I have to do before I become an object of scorn and derision? Seriously, isn’t this enough to win me the medals of damnation? Must I put half a dozen children on a spit, and toast them at the flame that comes out of my mouth?€
      €Apologies to Christopher Fry, playwright of The Lady’s Not for Burning, but whenever I have the opportunity to use that speech, I will.

      This is Obvious in any Cursory Reading of Dilbert Cartoons

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      It turns out that the whole open office setup, ditching offices for cubicles, or worse open desks, is damaging to worker productivity:

      Four years ago, Chris Nagele did what many other technology executives have done before — he moved his team into an open concept office.

      His staff had been exclusively working from home, but he wanted everyone to be together, to bond and collaborate more easily. It quickly became clear, though, that Nagele had made a huge mistake. Everyone was distracted, productivity suffered and the nine employees were unhappy, not to mention Nagele himself.

      I need to make a note here: American management sees employee misery as an independent good.

      It is believed that if your employees are happy, the consultants believe that you are leaving money on the table.

      ………

      Numerous companies have embraced the open office — about 70% of US offices are open concept — and by most accounts, very few have moved back into traditional spaces with offices and doors. But research that we’re 15% less productive, we have immense trouble concentrating and we’re twice as likely to get sick in open working spaces, has contributed to a growing backlash against open offices.

      Since moving, Nagele himself has heard from others in technology who say they long for the closed office lifestyle. “Many people agree — they can’t stand the open office,” he says. “They never get anything done and have to do more work at home.”

      ………

      What’s more, certain open spaces can negatively impact our memory. This is especially true for hotdesking, an extreme version of open plan working where people sit wherever they want in the work place, moving their equipment around with them.

      This does not surprise me.  It has always been my experience.

      Of course, it’s cheaper in the short run, and as I noted above, it makes workers miserable, so it is like catnip to so called business experts.

      We Used to Make Things That Worked in This Country

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      Now, after a development timeline that stretches back into the last century, the US Navy still cannot get it’s Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System (EMALS) to work:

      The US Navy is having difficulties with its latest aircraft carrier’s Electromagnetic Aircraft Launching System (EMALS) – the same system which the UK mooted fitting to its new Queen Elizabeth-class carriers.

       The US Department of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOTE) revealed yesterday, in its end-of-year report [PDF] for financial year 2016, that the EMALS fitted to the new nuclear-powered carrier USS Gerald R. Ford put “excessive airframe stress” on aircraft being launched.

       This stress “will preclude the Navy from conducting normal operations of the F/A-18A-F and EA-18G from CVN 78”, according to DOTES, which said the problem had first been noticed in 2014.

       In addition, EMALS could not “readily” be electrically isolated for maintenance, which DOTE warned “will preclude some types of EMALS and AAG (Advanced Arresting Gear) maintenance during flight operations”, decreasing their operational availability.

      Ignoring the obvious 1970s era joke, “Gerald Ford stumbles again,” this is a complete cock up.

      The selling point of EMALS was two fold, that it could be tailored to reduce stress on airframes, and that it would be more reliable than its predecessor.

      It appears not to be delivering these features, and it is behind schedule and over budget.

      This sh%$ really has to stop.

      Linkage

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      Wicked bad day at the office:

      It Really Is the Gift That Keeps on Giving

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      The F-35, of course.

      In this case, it is the C model, intended to operate on carriers.

      First they had to relocate the arrestor hook because it did not work, and now pilots are experiencing violent oscillations during catapult launch🙁paid subscription required)

      Fleet pilots say the violent vertical oscillations seen during carrier launches of the U.S. Navy’s F-35 variant are a safety concern, even as the Pentagon races to fix the problem.

       One of the most critical and dangerous phases of flight for Navy pilots is the launch, when an aircraft is shot from the carrier by a steam-driven catapult. For the F-35C carrier variant, pilots discovered a complex problem during recent at-sea testing: excessive vertical oscillations, or a bouncing effect, during takeoff.

       Pilots who conducted training onboard the carrier USS George Washington during the latest set of ship trials said these oscillations were “a safety concern,” the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) wrote in its most recent annual report.

       “Excessive vertical oscillations during catapult launches make the F-35C operationally unsuitable for carrier operations, according to fleet pilots,” DOT&E wrote.

       Pilots reported the oscillations were so severe that they could not read flight-critical data, DOT&E said. The oscillations caused most pilots to lock their harness during launch, which made emergency switches hard to reach. The pilots deemed this situation “unacceptable and unsafe,” DOT&E wrote.

       The Navy has informed the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) that it considers this problem a “must fix” deficiency.

       ………

       [Program Chief L. General Christopher] Bogdan downplayed the problem, saying the oscillations only occur at very light gross takeoff weights.

      The first thing to note is that Gen. Bogdan is Air Force, and either has no clue as to carrier ops, or is pimping the F-35 furiously without regard to the truth. (Or both)

      Light weight takeoff are routine.  They are used for things like pilot qualification and freshers and ferrying aircraft to and from land bases when the ship returns to port.

      The second thing is that they have been doing catapult launches of the F-35 for about ½ a decade now, and they have only now just spotted this.

      At this point, I expect the software to start shutting down with the plane issuing the verbal notification “Baba Booey.”

      Our Glorious Defense Procurement System

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      Yes, the most expensive defense procurement program in history, the F-35, is still not ready for prime time, with its maintenance software still unable to support aircraft operations:

      Key software for the troubled F-35 fighter jet has been repeatedly delayed, causing problems for the British armed forces as they wait for Americans to iron out the bugs.

      The F-35’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) is the heart of the support offering bundled with the F-35 by its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.

      The latest version of ALIS – version 2.0.2 – has been delayed by at least six months and counting, according to the US Department of Defense’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), and units are instead stuck with version 2.0.1.3.

      “It has yet to successfully complete testing and likely will not be fielded until early 2017,” according to the F-35 section of DOT&E’s annual report [PDF, 62 pages] to the US Congress. Version 2.0.2 will allow military personnel, rather than engine manufacturers and current maintenance contractors Pratt & Whitney, to read and act upon engine health data, but has not yet been deployed.

      Although the release version of ALIS is intended to be version 3, with various beta releases bringing incremental extra capabilities until the release of v3, “delays in ALIS 2.0.2 development have also delayed the development of ALIS 3.0,” said DOT&E. This, warned the director, would result in key functionality being released as updates to v3.0 instead of being baked into the “final” software package deployed to F-35 customers – including the UK.

      ………

      The 62-page report also revealed that the F-35 is temperamental when ground crew plug their Panasonic Toughbook diagnostic laptops into the aircraft and sync them: “In many instances, maintainers must attempt to synch several PMAs [portable maintenance aids – the laptops] with an aircraft before finding one that will successfully connect.”

      ………

      Moreover, testing of ALIS up until 2016 took place on “representative hardware” instead of actual aircraft and ground base equipment. “The current closed environment does not adequately represent the variety of ways in which the Services operate ALIS in different environments,” DOR&E drily noted.

      There was also a significant problem the first time that US personnel tried deploying F-35s and ALIS away from their home base:

      …they had a great deal of difficulty using ALIS on the local base network. After several days of troubleshooting, Information Technology personnel and ALIS administrators determined that they had to change several settings on the base network at Mountain Home and in the web interface application (i.e., Internet Explorer) to permit users to log on to ALIS. One of these changes involved lowering the security setting on the base network, an action that may not be compatible with required cybersecurity and network protection standards in place.

      ALIS is used by naval and air force personnel to determine in real time the state of the aircraft, view flight plans, and review each jet’s entire history from the moment it leaves the factory. It is an end-to-end management and planning system for pilots, maintainers and commanders alike – the ultimate vendor lock-in.

      Controversially, it also sends each jet’s history back to the US, regardless of which country actually owns that aircraft – though Lockheed has promised it won’t read the pilots’ names.

      (emphasis mine)

      That “Vendor Lock-In” snark points to one of the more significant problems with the program, that the inmates (Lockheed-Martin) are running the asylum.

      At every step of the process, LM has been allowed to design the system to ensure that it sits athwart all operations extracting a toll, and the results have been buggy under-performing and opaque systems.

      Compare this to the latest Saab Gripen, which is on time and on budget, thanks largely to a reliance on modular software and the use off the shelf systems wherever possible.  (Here and here)

      Lockheed used the same architecture for the F-22, and updates are tortuous and expensive.

      Even if this plane achieves all of its performance goals, it will be unaffordable for many nations from a direct operating cost perspective as a result.

      About F%$#ing Time

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      “What you measure is what you get,” the saying goes, and for a long time, America’s transportation policy establishment was obsessed with measuring one thing: car congestion. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent in the quest for free-flowing vehicular traffic. The result is wider highways, more sprawl, and more people stuck in congestion.

      But this week U.S. DOT took an important step to change course, releasing new standards to guide how transportation agencies measure their performance. Advocates for transit and walkability say the policy is a significant improvement.

      An earlier draft of these rules would have codified outdated highway-era dogma, emphasizing the movement of cars and trucks as a primary goal. Thousands of comments poured in demanding an approach that factors in the value of transit, biking, and walking — and the agency listened.

      The revised U.S. DOT standards will lead agencies to assess their work in ways that support investments in transit and active transportation, according to Stephen Lee Davis at Transportation for America, which led the charge to reform the rule. Keep in mind that funding is not at stake here — U.S. DOT can’t reward or punish state DOTs based on how they perform. But state DOTs will now have to set new goals and report on their progress, and advocates will have new ways to hold transportation policy makers accountable.

      The changes:

      • Movement of people, not just autos must be tracked.
      • Carbon emission impact must be measured.
      • People using mass transit, bicycles, and walking must be counted. 
      • The final goal is no longer a traffic jam free rush hour.

       My only question is why it took so long to do this.

      Quote of the Day

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      A joke I’ve told 1,000 people in the months since leaving Davos is that the conventional wisdom of Davos is always wrong,

      —Kenneth Rogoff, who noted that he started to worry about a Trump win when, “Fellow attendees at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting last January said it could never happen.”

      While intended as a joke, it is true.

      When bad really things happen it almost always happens because the conventional wisdom has failed, and the species known as “Davos Man” is incapable of looking beyond the conventional wisdom.

      Quote of the Day

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      We used to joke that conservatives say government sucks and then when they get in power they prove it. Now it seems that conservatives say that government sucks and liberals bend over backwards to make their case for them.

      —Atrios

      He’s making the point that these days, among Senior Democratic Party Leadership at least, any sort of social welfare provisions cannot be universal, but instead must be aggressively (and expensively) means tested, to ensure that “The Poors” get a big serving of dirt that they have to swallow down.

      By spending money to require misery, these programs are effectively paying for misery.

      This is F%$#ing Inspired

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      Self-driving cars are all the rage right now, though I really don’t see the tech taking off for a very long time.

      The problem is how to make an AI play nice with people on the road, who are inattentive, stupid, violent, vindictive, and frequently malicious.

      And once you do, how do you test it?

      Rolling it out on the road, with an operator in the drivers seat, is expensive.

      Just the liability insurance would be insane.

      Obviously, one solution, for the software at least, is to test it in a virtual environment, but this raises an important question: Where can one find a virtual reality that even comes close to mimicking the insanity that is humans driving cars?

      Three Words: Grand Theft Auto:

      Developers building self-driving cars can now take their AI agents for a spin in the simulated open world of Grand Theft Auto V – via OpenAI’s machine-learning playground, Universe.

      The open-source MIT-licensed code gluing GTA V to Universe is maintained by Craig Quiter, who works for Otto – the Uber-owned startup that delivered 51,744 cans of Budweiser over 193km (120 miles) using a self-driving truck.

      The software comes with a trained driving agent; all developers need is a copy of the game to get cracking. After that, programmers can swap out the demo AI model with their own agents to test their code and neural networks. Universe and Quiter’s integration code takes care of the fiddly interfacing with the game.

      Video games new and old provide great training grounds for developing reinforcement learning agents, which learn through trial and error – or rather, trial and reward when things go right. OpenAI’s Universe was released in December, and is a wedge of open-source middleware that connects game controls and video displays to machine-learning agents so they can be trained in the virtual arenas.

      Admittedly, GTA, with its hot rods, weapons, and rampant crime is only a pale shadow of commuting in Boston,* but putting self driving automobile software through its paces in the fictional burg of San Andreas, is a truly inspired reuse of code.

      *No joke: I knew that it was time for me to leave New England when I screamed at someone for NOT cutting me off in a parking lot.

      Facepalm

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      A few days ago, it was revealed that conservative hack Monica Crowley and Trump’s designee for senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council had extensively plagiarized in some of her books.

      I didn’t consider it a big deal, because his cabinet is shaping up to be a complete cluster F%$#, and the wingnut welfare system ignores such things.

      But today, I read that Crowley heavily plagiarized her Ph.D. dissertation:

      Conservative commentator Monica Crowley, who is slated to serve in a top national security communications role in Donald Trump’s presidential administration, plagiarized thousands of words of her 2000 dissertation for her Columbia University Ph.D., a CNN KFile review has found.

      On Monday, Politico reported that it found more than a dozen examples of plagiarism in Crowley’s Ph.D. dissertation. CNN’s KFile has found nearly 40 lengthy instances of Crowley lifting paragraphs from numerous sources, including several scholarly texts, the Associated Press, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

      The revelation comes on the heels of another CNN KFile investigation, which found more than 50 instances of plagiarism in Crowley’s 2012 book, “What The (Bleep) Just Happened.” On Tuesday, the book’s publisher, HarperCollins, announced that it would stop selling the book until “the author has the opportunity to source and revise the material.”

      OK, this qualifies as a big deal, particularly since Columbia looks to have cause to rescind her doctorate.

      Don’t worry though, she’ll be fine. She’s the Republican equivalent of a “Made Man”, so she will be taken care of.

      A selected sample of plagiarism with a huge amount of yellow highlighting after the break:

      Even the Liberal New Republic………

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      While I have said on many occasions that the new New Republic is better than when it was owned by virulent bigot Marty Peretz.

      I find the articles far more thoughtful, and the self satisfied smugness and arrogant idiocy is in far smaller supply.

      Still, sometimes it returns to form, and the stupidity is epic, such as when Senior Editor Jeet Heer suggests that in 2020, the Democratic party should run a celebrity rather than an accomplished politician for President.

      Some points:

      • That’s what we did this year.  Hillary Clinton’s viability in politics has always been as a celebrity, wife of the Governor of Arkansas, and then wife of the President of the United States.*
      • Hillary lost.
      • Trump did not win through celebrity, but through selling the lie that he cares about the ordinary working folks. He did that by pointing out the truth that the the celebrity-political complex did now.
      • It reinforces the idea that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the real world.  It’s why the hit musical is called La La Land, and not The Real World.†
      • It serves to deflect from the real failure here, which was that the party establishment, in a stunning exhibition of solipsism, nominated one of the few political figures on the face of the earth‡ who could lose to Trump, because of this.

      I get it: Nominating Meryl Streep is easier than fixing the party, and you support stupid lazy.

      Gaaaahhhh!  I hate pseudo-intellectual contrarians.

      *This is not to say that she is not a capable person, it’s just that if you look at political leaders, they don’t get to be the Senator from the 3rd largest state in the US, and then Secretary of State, and the nominee of the party without being a governor, or a mayor, or a congressman, or a city councilman.
      †Also, if they called it The Real World, MTV would sue their asses.
      ‡Other names that spring to mind as other potential losers, are Clayton Williams, Adlai Stevenson, Kathleen McGinty, Patrick Murphy, Evan Bayh, Ted Strickland , Kathleen Kennedy Townshend, Martha Coakley, Frank Murkowski (lost to Palin, for F%$#’s sake), and George P. Mahoney. (Had to spend some time on the Google machine to get a list even this short.)