Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

In today’s United States, a judge could sentence you to jail based on a software generated risk report which the defendant has no right to review.

There is already anecdotal evidence that these programs will show higher risk for non-white defendants:

When Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. visited Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute last month, he was asked a startling question, one with overtones of science fiction.

“Can you foresee a day,” asked Shirley Ann Jackson, president of the college in upstate New York, “when smart machines, driven with artificial intelligences, will assist with courtroom fact-finding or, more controversially even, judicial decision-making?”

The chief justice’s answer was more surprising than the question. “It’s a day that’s here,” he said, “and it’s putting a significant strain on how the judiciary goes about doing things.”

He may have been thinking about the case of a Wisconsin man, Eric L. Loomis, who was sentenced to six years in prison based in part on a private company’s proprietary software. Mr. Loomis says his right to due process was violated by a judge’s consideration of a report generated by the software’s secret algorithm, one Mr. Loomis was unable to inspect or challenge.
Continue reading the main story

In March, in a signal that the justices were intrigued by Mr. Loomis’s case, they asked the federal government to file a friend-of-the-court brief offering its views on whether the court should hear his appeal.

The report in Mr. Loomis’s case was produced by a product called Compas, sold by Northpointe Inc. It included a series of bar charts that assessed the risk that Mr. Loomis would commit more crimes.

The Compas report, a prosecutor told the trial judge, showed “a high risk of violence, high risk of recidivism, high pretrial risk.” The judge agreed, telling Mr. Loomis that “you’re identified, through the Compas assessment, as an individual who is a high risk to the community.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against Mr. Loomis. The report added valuable information, it said, and Mr. Loomis would have gotten the same sentence based solely on the usual factors, including his crime — fleeing the police in a car — and his criminal history.

At the same time, the court seemed uneasy with using a secret algorithm to send a man to prison. Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, writing for the court, discussed, for instance, a report from ProPublica about Compas that concluded that black defendants in Broward County, Fla., “were far more likely than white defendants to be incorrectly judged to be at a higher rate of recidivism.”

………

In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that a Florida man could not be condemned to die based on a sentencing report that contained confidential passages he was not allowed to see. The Supreme Court’s decision was fractured, and the controlling opinion appeared to say that the principle applied only in capital cases.

Mr. Schimel echoed that point and added that Mr. Loomis knew everything the court knew. Judges do not have access to the algorithm, either, he wrote.

There are good reasons to use data to ensure uniformity in sentencing. It is less clear that uniformity must come at the price of secrecy, particularly when the justification for secrecy is the protection of a private company’s profits. The government can surely develop its own algorithms and allow defense lawyers to evaluate them.

This is why the privatization of an essential state function is a bad thing.

This is as about a perfect example of a Kafkaesque situation as is possible:  Condemned with a secret report using a secret method.

Yeah, This Makes Me Give to the DNC

I know that some people are suing the DNC (Democratic National Committee) for being biased during the primaries.

Even if the case that has merit, and I don’t think that it does, but I am an engineer, not a doctor, dammit,* I feel that this is firmly in the philosophical category of things that should not be adjudicated in a court of law.†

Additionally, I do not think that DNC donors are “consumers”. 

Reducing politics to the status of a consumer transaction seems to me to cheapen politics.  (As much as this concepts buggers the mind)

That being said, the statement from the DNC’s counsel are rather revelatory:

Last Monday, Senior U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch heard oral arguments regarding a Motion to Dismiss filed by attorneys representing the Democratic National Committee and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in the class-action lawsuit filed against them. The lawsuit seeks damages on behalf of Democratic Party donors who made financial contributions to Bernie Sanders and the Party under the presumption the primary would be conducted fairly per the DNC’s charter. The lawsuit was filed in June 2016 following the release of leaked emails showing behind-the-scenes collusion between the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and other entities to ensure Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee prior to Americans casting votes in the party’s primary contests.

………

The crux of the Motion to Dismiss asserts the Judge is not in a position to determine how the Democratic Party conducts its nominating process.

The DNC asserts the following:

  • The DNC is under no obligation to obey its own by-laws which guarantee neutrality. (Notwithstanding the fact that by-laws are legally binding,)‡
  • That impartiality is undefinable and unenforceable.
  • There is no legal meaning to being a DNC member.
  • DNC counsel is unaware of how the DNC is involved in state primaries and caucuses.
  • That the DNC actually conducted a fair primary, even though they did not have to.
  • Counsel was unwilling to answer the question as to whether the DNC has a legal responsibility to tell the truth.

I understand that this is a motion to dismiss, and lawyers tend to make the broadest possible arguments at this stage, but even in the context of this, this is NOT something that should leave anyone favorably disposed to the Democratic Party establishment.

*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!
†But I’m an engineer, not a philosopher, dammit.*
‡Yes, I know, legal talk, but I have actually founded a not-for profit, so this sh%$ that I know, and I have done, so no Dr. McCoy moment.

Gorka Out

Sebastian Gorka, who was brought into the Trump Administration as a terrorism expert, is leaving the administration.

It appears that this was not because his PhD was basically fraudulent, no because he was a member of a Hungarian Neo-Nazi Group, but because the so-called terrorism expert could not get a security clearance:

Sebastian Gorka, an adviser to Donald Trump who has been under pressure over his links to Hungarian far-right groups, is leaving the White House.

 A senior official said Gorka, a former counterterrorism analyst for Fox News who joined the administration as an adviser, will be leaving the White House in the coming days.
Trump aide drew plan on napkin to partition Libya into three
Read more

 The official said that Gorka had initially been hired to sit on the strategic initiatives group, an advisory panel created by Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon to run parallel to the national security council.

But that group fizzled out in the early months of the administration. Gorka was unable to get clearance for the national security council after he was charged last year with carrying a weapon at Ronald Reagan Washington national airport.

………

In recent weeks, one White House source told the Washington Examiner that Gorka’s role had diminished to the point where he was appearing on television, “giving White House tours and peeling out in his Mustang.”

How the hell do you get a position in the White House, particularly working national security, when you cannot get a security clearance, particularly when 15 years earlier, he also could not get a security clearance in Hungary.  (It appears that his CV is a bit dodgy.)

Seriously, this is a guy who should be asking, “Do you want fries with that?”

And This Is a Bad Thing Because???????


More real jobs, fewer contingent laborers, what’s not to love?


Higher wages too.

Various economists have noted just how disastrous it will be as advanced societies transition from population growth to population decline.

It appears that this catastrophe will involve improving working standards for ordinary people.

Oh the horror!  Who will be left to overpay economists?

Japan’s tightest labor market in decades shows signs of reversing a long shift toward the hiring of temporary workers.

The number of full-time, permanent workers is rising for the first time since the global financial crisis, outpacing growth in temporary jobs over the past two years.

“The labor shortage has become so bad that companies can’t fill openings only with part-timers,” said Junko Sakuyama, Tokyo-based senior economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.

Japan’s 2.8 percent unemployment rate is the lowest since 1994 but most of the hiring over the past decade or so has been for temporary, often part-time positions, known as non-regular.

A shift back toward permanent hiring could help sluggish consumer spending pick up. Economists say a decades-long move toward non-regular jobs is partly to blame for weak consumer demand. Non-regular workers now make up more than a third of the workforce. Many work part time, and all on average receive less pay, few benefits, little training and no real job security.

It’s too early to declare a trend reversal, but the number of regular jobs grew by 260,000 in March from a year ago, while part-time, temporary and contract jobs rose by 170,000, the internal affairs ministry reported on Friday. Last year, 510,000 permanent jobs and 360,000 non-regular ones were added.

I’ve said it many times:  Economists who talk about population declines like they are the end of the world are completely unconnected to the real world.

The historical record, most notably the aftermath Black Death (1346-1353), which show that population declines are followed by increases in standards of living and productivity.

The people who don’t do better are (in the 1300s) the nobility or (today) the holders of capital, rentiers, and people who alibi the decrease in well being for the rest of us (economists) who find that they need to spend more to pay people to work for them.

My heart bleeds borscht for them.

Kill Me ……… Just Kill Me

Perhaps the only businessman sleazier than Donald Trump is Running for President.

Of course, I am referring to Mark Zuckerberg, and it’s enough to make me vote for Chelsea Clinton:

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 1, 2017

Please Make It Stop

Just an ordinary non-candidate for office doing ordinary non-candidate for office things pic.twitter.com/IMGLyYsfdJ

— Will Rahn (@willrahn) April 27, 2017

It’s enough to make me vote for Chelsea Clinton for President.

Linkage

Have some George Carlin:

The Little Fighter that Could

Bulgaria has selected the Gripen to replace its MiG-29’s:

Bulgaria has selected the Saab Gripen as its new future fighter aircraft, the country’s interim deputy prime minister reportedly announced on 26 April.

 Stefan Yanev said talks will now take place with Sweden to acquire eight aircraft to replace its Warsaw Pact-era MiG-29 ‘Fulcrum’ fighters, the Reuters news agency reported, adding that a special commission into the procurement will be set up within a week.

 ………

 While not specified in the Reuters report, Saab had offered Bulgaria the C/D-variant of the Gripen, and had offered to restart the production line which had recently transitioned over the E model (some Gripen C/D work has continued as Saab prepares for an expected Slovakia contract) .

 In apparently securing selection, the Gripen beat-off competition from the Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon, which Portugal was offering second-hand, and from the Eurofighter Typhoon, surplus models of which were being offered by Italy.

I gotta think that the lower direct operating cost, on the order of ½ that of the Typhoon, and about ⅓ less than the F-16, had a lot to do with this decision.

I also think that there may have been a preference for new, rather than 2nd hand fighters for all the wrong reasons.(i.e. national pride).

Not Enough Bullets

American Airlines tends to underpay its employees relative to industry norms, and it shows.

Now that some of its unions have won some benefits in contract negotiations, the malefactors of great wealth are whining:

American Airlines is giving pay raises to its pilots and flight attendants, who have complained they are paid less than peers at other airlines. Wall Street isn’t happy.

 The raises come about two years before contract negotiations. Assuming they approve the increases, pilots and flight attendants will receive additional pay totaling close to $1 billion over three years.

 At a time when American and other airlines are seeing higher costs for labor, fuel and maintenance while finding it difficult to raise airfares, this goodwill gesture didn’t sit well with investors.

 “This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers,” Citi analyst Kevin Crissey wrote in a note to clients. Investors showed their displeasure by sending American Airlines Group Inc.’s stock down 5.2% to $43.98 on Thursday.

(emphasis mine)

Seriously, Mr. Crissey needs to be sent to China and forced to work at Foxconn 14 hours a day and 7 days a week for $300 a month making iPhones.

Airlines suck like 1000 Hoovers all going at once, and much of this is because the endless downward pressure on wages, working conditions, by senior management.

If American does not want to become the passenger beating/bunny killing United, it needs to improve its product, and its product is produced by those icky labor sorts.

Please Kevin Crissey, while you are dining on that excrement, could you do us the favor of expiring.

Preach It, Brother!

In the Guardian, Thomas Frank makes a very good point, that “The Democrats’ Davos ideology won’t win back the midwest.”

The current neoliberal consensus is that globalization benefits the deserving, and that if you lose, it’s because you’re stupid, and never studied in school:

The tragedy of the 2016 election is connected closely, at least for me, to the larger tragedy of the industrial midwest. It was in the ruined industrial city of Cleveland that the Republican Party came together in convention last July, and it was the deindustrialized, addiction-harrowed precincts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that switched sides in November and delivered Donald Trump to the Oval Office.

………

And what I am here to say is that the midwest is not an exotic place. It isn’t a benighted region of unknowable people and mysterious urges. It isn’t backward or hopelessly superstitious or hostile to learning. It is solid, familiar, ordinary America, and Democrats can have no excuse for not seeing the wave of heartland rage that swamped them last November.

Another thing that is inexcusable from Democrats: surprise at the economic disasters that have befallen the midwestern cities and states that they used to represent.

The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country is the utterly predictable fruit of the Democratic party’s neoliberal turn. Every time our liberal leaders signed off on some lousy trade deal, figuring that working-class people had “nowhere else to go,” they were making what happened last November a little more likely.

Every time our liberal leaders deregulated banks and then turned around and told working-class people that their misfortunes were all attributable to their poor education, that the only answer for them was a lot of student loans and the right sort of college degree … every time they did this they made the disaster a little more inevitable.

………

Of course it isn’t working out that way. So far, liberal organs seem far less interested in courting such voters than they do in scolding them, insulting them for their coarse taste and the hate for humanity they supposedly cherish in their ignorant hearts.

Ignorance is not the issue, however. Many midwesterners I met share an outlook that is profoundly bleak. They believe that the life has gone out of this region; indeed, they fear that a civilization based on making things is no longer sustainable.

………

I have no doubt that people in this part of America would respond enthusiastically to a populist message that addressed their unhappy situation – just look, for example, at the soaring popularity of Bernie Sanders.

As things have unfolded thus far, however, our system seems designed to keep such an alternative off the table. The choice we are offered instead is between Trumpian fake populism and a high-minded politics of personal virtue. Between a nomenklatura of New Economy winners and a party of traditional business types, willing to say anything to get elected and (once that is done) to use the state to reward people like themselves. The public’s frustration with this state of affairs, at least as I heard it on my midwestern trip, is well-nigh overwhelming.

………

But when “the resistance” comes into power in Washington, it will face this question: this time around, will Democrats serve the 80% of us that this modern economy has left behind? Will they stand up to the money power? Or will we be invited once again to feast on inspiring speeches while the tasteful gentlemen from JP Morgan foreclose on the world?

The argument of the privileged (center) left is that this is inevitable, and people who are harmed by this are to blame for this harm.

It is a pernicious attitude, one that stems from their inability to recognize their own unearned privilege.

This destructive sanctimony needs to be purged from the Democratic Party.  Let the Republicans have them.

How Not to Design Reasonably

One of the fails going around the internet is Juicero, which is selling a press to squeeze raw juices from its pouches into a cup.

This press recently had its price reduced to “only” $400, for a juicer.

What’s more reporters at Bloomberg discovered that you could get about the same amount of juice from the pouches using the Mark 1 human hand.

Not bad for a company that has raised $120 million in VC funding  ……… For a juice squeezer.

After all of this product designer Ben Einstein did a a disassembly and a deep dive, and  he found a ridiculously over-designed mess.

The short version is that there is a press using a custom motor and custom gear train, a half dozen machined aluminum parts which drives an aluminum plate against the pouch to uniformly apply pressure.

Einstein inventoried the following:

  • An extremely complex plastic molding, including co-molded parts.
  • A heavy custom machined aluminum frame.
  • A custom power supply.
  • Massive custom hinges on the door.
  • Custom sliders.
  • A very robust custom gearbox.  
  • Etc.

Looking at this problem, I immediately have a better way of doing things.

I could make a prototype using an off the shelf aquarium pump for less than $100 in in parts.  (It would work like the so called “Neat Squeeze” toothpaste tube), or do something similar with a store bought pasta maker retailing for $29.99.

That took me all of 15 minutes to think about it.

This is all of Silicon Valley dysfunction in a squeezable pouch.

So Not a Surprise

This is no surprise. The British financial system is arguably the 2nd most invested in money laundering of any in the world (after Luxembourg). Any meaningful crackdown on money laundering would blow a big hole in the City of London’s balance sheet:

So near and yet so far…

Hopes were riding high yesterday that UK parliamentarians might seize the opportunity to take historic action to end decades of financial secrecy in the UK’s Overseas Territories. We blogged about this yesterday highlighting the fact that a lot of ongoing Parliamentary business was at risk of being shelved because of the sudden general election called by British Prime Minister Theresa May. There’s a phenomenon known as the wash-up period which “refers to the last few days of a Parliament before dissolution. Any unfinished business is lost at dissolution and the Government may need the co-operation of the Opposition in passing legislation that is still in progress.”

An amendment was tabled for the Criminal Finances Bill some months back which would have obliged the UK’s Overseas Territories (including such secrecy havens as Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and the Caymans) to create fully public registers of the beneficial ownership of companies. As we asked yesterday in our blog, will the UK parliament step up to the mark? Unfortunately, today we have the answer. No. Defeat has been snatched from the jaws of victory.

This is not a surprise.

There is corruption at the core of big finance, and the British financial industry is rather more corrupt than most, and they have been paying protection money to the political establishment for years.

Changing this will require coordinated and intense political activity over a period of years.

I am Amused

Jean-Luc Mélenchon who was in the tightly clustered top 4 Presidential candidates in the first round of balloting is approaching the question of an endorsement in the runoff is an interesting way, he is asking his supporters to decide.

He will not be endorsing Le Pen, but there is a question of whether to vote at all:

French leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Tuesday launched a consultation asking his supporters if they plan to vote for Emmanuel Macron in the second and final round of the presidential election on May 7.

Mélenchon was the only one of the main candidates not to tell his backers to choose Macron rather than the far-right’s Marine Le Pen after the first round of voting on Sunday.
According to the consultation, sent to 450,000 registered supporters of Mélenchon’s “France Untamed” movement, “None of us will vote for the far-right. But does it mean we need to give voting advice?”

They are then given three options: Vote for Macron, spoil the ballot paper or abstain.

………

On the campaign trail, Mélenchon was a vocal critic of Macron, the centrist candidate and former banker, and that has continued since the vote, with the veteran left-winger saying he “will oppose the far-right candidate and the candidate of extreme-finance.”

This is some high class trolling, and I approve.

Adding a bit of a pucker factor for Macron is a good thing.

At worst it’s an annoyance for the candidate about nothing, at best it forces to the candidate to be about something, for a while at least.

But of Course

It turns out that the Australian bureaucracy created to collect fees for content creators has been diverting these fees to lobby against changes in their copyright laws:

Even though stories of copyright collecting societies failing to distribute the monies that they collect to artists abound — we wrote about one just a few weeks ago — this doesn’t seem to discourage others from continuing to bend the rules somewhat. Here, for example, is a story from Australia, where there is a major battle to switch to a US-style fair use approach to copyright. Naturally, the affected industries there hate the idea of allowing the public a little more leeway in the use of copyright materials. So Australia’s copyright collection agency decided to build up a war-chest to lobby against such changes. The Sydney Morning Herald explains where the money for that fighting fund is coming from:

Australia’s government-mandated copyright collection agency has been diverting payments intended for journalists and authors to a [$11 million] “future fund” to fight changes to the law.

Specifically, the monies come from payments made by educational establishments in order to use orphan works. That’s a major change of the agency’s policy that was not disclosed to the Australian government’s Productivity Commission that oversees this area:

[The Copyright Agency] has been criticised in a Productivity Commission review that is before the government over the transparency of its accounts and its practice of retaining, rather than returning, millions of dollars collected from schools and universities on behalf of the owners of “orphan works” who can’t be traced.

This reinforces a point that I have made on numerous occasions: IP protections are government subsidies through the enforcement of monopoly rents, and are justified only to the degree that they encourage the creation of protected works.

Any amount in excess of this results in parasitic rent seeking, because this is the most effective way to make EVEN MORE money.

Copyright and patent have gone from a way to “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” to a mechanism that corrupts the political process and hinders progress.

Just get a Persian Cat and Complete the Bond Villain Thing


USS Macon, 1934


Zorin Industries Blimp, 
James Bond: View to a Kill, 1985

Google founder Sergey Brin is making himself an airship:

Larry Page has his flying cars. Sergey Brin shall have an airship.

Brin, the Google co-founder, has secretly been building a massive airship inside of Hangar 2 at the NASA Ames Research Center, according to four people with knowledge of the project. It’s unclear whether the craft, which looks like a zeppelin, is a hobby or something Brin hopes to turn into a business. “Sorry, I don’t have anything to say about this topic right now,” Brin wrote in an email.

The people familiar with the project said Brin has long been fascinated by airships. His interest in the crafts started when Brin would visit Ames, which is located next to Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. In the 1930s, Ames was home to the USS Macon, a huge airship built by the U.S. Navy. About three years ago, Brin decided to build one of his own after ogling old photos of the Macon.

In 2015, Google unit Planetary Ventures took over the large hangars at Ames from NASA and turned them into laboratories for the company. Brin’s airship, which isn’t an Alphabet project, is already taking shape inside one. Engineers have constructed a metal skeleton of the craft, and it fills up much of the enormous hangar.

Seriously.  This, and James Cameron’s plans for his “asteroid mining operation” are disturbingly close to a plot device from a Bond film.

Happy Dance Time


Out Standing!

A member of Connecticut’s Working Families Party has just won their first ever seat in the Connecticut General Assembly:

Union leader Joshua Hall became the first Working Families Party candidate to win a seat in the state House, collecting 41 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s 7th District special election.

 Hall, vice president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers and a former Weaver High School teacher, received 625 votes in an upset of Rickey Pinckney, the Democratic-endorsed candidate, who received 512 votes, and petitioning candidate Kenneth Green, who took 367 votes, according to unofficial election results released late Tuesday by Democratic Registrar of Voters Giselle Feliciano.

 ………
Hall’s win marks just the second time a Working Families Party candidate has won a legislative seat. Ed Gomes was elected to the Senate in a 2015 special election.

………

 all has leaned heavily on his experience in education and promised to fight for resources that the district needs, including school funding. Earlier this month, he said he opposed a plan by the governor to have municipalities pick up a portion of teacher pension costs — a proposal that would cost Hartford about $17 million.

 “That $17 million is going to break Hartford Public Schools. It’s going to break the city,” he said. “I’m going to make sure that it does not happen.”

 In his statement, he also said he would prioritize the availability of good jobs, strong neighborhoods and a “just budget.”

 “That starts with eliminating backdoor tax increases on working families and setting budget policy that generates revenue without harmful cuts,” Hall said.

One hopes that the sort of bottom-up campaigning will be a trend.

The high profile campaigns for Governor, Senator, and President favored by parties like the Greens has been shown to neither win elections nor build the party.

Until there is a meaningful force to hold the Democratic party to account for completely ignoring their promises of a just society, they will never keep their promises.

Linkage

Not a video this time, because this still picture is too good: