Interesting Links for 26-01-2018

[andrewducker]

Why Tesla's Autopilot Can't See a Stopped Firetruck

(tags: automation driving )

Climate change: Sandwiches eaten in UK have same environmental impact as eight million cars

(tags: globalwarming food uk )

Brexit: MPs won't have full details of EU deal when they vote on it, Philip Hammond reveals

(tags: europe uk )

'It breaks my heart that my daughter might think she only exists because terminations were forbidden'

(tags: abortion children ireland )

North Korea sends rare announcement to all Koreans, calls for unification

(tags: NorthKorea )

Seven in 10 UK workers are chronically broke

(tags: uk economy society money )

The female price of male pleasure - "An 8 on a man's Bad Sex scale is like a 1 on a woman's."

(tags: sex society pain )

Tariff Engineering (Changing your products in tiny ways to avoid taxes)

(tags: tax design )

The Birds. Would like to Come In.

(tags: birds )

The democratisation of AI-powered realistic fake celebrity porn

(tags: ai porn celebrity )

Vulnerable industrial controls directly connected to Internet? Why not?

(tags: internet infrastructure OhForFucksSake hacking )

The fascinating story of the Dutch intelligence agency spying on the Russian hackers who affected the US election

(tags: hacking Russia usa netherlands spying )

Daily Mail apologises to Nicola Sturgeon over flag story

(tags: DailyMail scotland flags apology )

Alt-Right and Marxists are more conflict-oriented than the political mainstream

(tags: politics psychology )

Are religious people really less smart, on average, than atheists?

(tags: religion Intelligence )

Senator Demands FBI Director Explain His Encryption Backdoor Bullshit

(tags: encryption security Technology usa )

Why American men are getting less marriageable

(tags: marriage usa work society )

Comments

[simont]

Suddenly I wish I was a resident of Oregon so I could vote for that senator!

[snippy]

Sen. Wyden is safe, don't worry. I, a resident of Oregon, am certain of this.

[alithea]

Bloody flags!!

Can we just not have that nonsense over here please, it's bad enough in NI!

[danieldwilliam]

If I were very rich one of the things I would do would be to set up a fund to underwrite lawsuits for defamation against the Daily Mail. If the Daily Mail mentions your name you get a free go at suing them.

I hope that would stop them publishing such badly researched pish as the flags story.

[alithea]

Good plan. I shall add that to my list of ways to spend the money if the Boy ever wins the lottery ;)

[momentsmusicaux]

> Sandwiches eaten in UK 'have same environmental impact as eight million cars'

Right, but how does that compare to the carbon footprint of the same number of sandwich consumers eating something else? Without that, the figure's meaningless.

[andrewducker]

It says that half of that would vanish if we made sandwiches at home, and it breaks it down by type of sandwich.

[momentsmusicaux]

Skim-reading at work, sorry!

[andrewducker]

:-)

Consent Issues

[danieldwilliam]

We seem to be having a problem getting beyond a false dichotmy of "This behaviour is lauable. This other behaviour is criminal" rather than the

Illegal - criminal
Illegal - civil
Immoral
Unethical
Socially Unacceptable
Rude
Distasteful
Selfish
Would Not Make Me Proud of You
Okay
Good
Laudable
Exemplary

sort of continuum that I think would be more useful

Re: Consent Issues

[andrewducker]

I think that there's a rear-guard action going on here from people who have gotten away with, well, light maiming, and are busy shouting "It's not murder, so it's fine!" in an attempt to prevent anyone from criticising them.

(And of course there's some from the other side. But it seems rather lesser to me.)

Re: Consent Issues

[danieldwilliam]

Yes I think that's true, and it's happening alongside a number of people who have been told to behave one way and are now being told to behave another way. Those peope are confused and confused people are confused.

Re: Consent Issues

[andrewducker]

I think this illustrates it quite nicely:
http://andrewducker.tumblr.com/post/170260521200/jfargo-cocksmasher69-lapis-lazuli-chan

Re: Consent Issues

[danieldwilliam]

Yeah.

North Korea

[danieldwilliam]

North Korea talking about re-unification is either terrifying or delightful depending on how I imagine the North Koreans are imagining re-unification working in practice.

Re: North Korea

[andrewducker]

Agreed. We need more context from our delightful North-Korean dictator chums!

Re: North Korea

[danieldwilliam]

WARNING! CONTEXT ARRIVING IN 4 MINUTES! WARNING! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! CONTEXT ARRIVING IN 4 MINUTES!

Tariff engineering

[errolwi]

And once again I am grateful for NZ's simple VAT system. One rate, on everything (except exports, financial services). No case law around cakes etc.

Re: Tariff engineering

[andrewducker]

That would simplify things a lot.

[elf]

The article about marriage is... interesting.
"Either men don't like their female partners earning more than they do," Dorn says, or women feel like "if the man doesn't bring in more money, then he's an underachiever."

Erm. Or maybe, women have been abused and oppressed in marriage for millennia, and they're now getting the economic power to avoid that. Marriage is becoming a choice for women who enjoy marriage, rather than something women have to put up with in order to avoid starving, or being a target for random men.

At no point does the article even consider that women might have some influence over marriage statistics, other than being a money-seeking mass of bees who just aren't interested in the current fields of male flowers. It mumbles something about gender norms, but mostly in the sense of, "oh hey some couples might be okay with the woman earning more!"

[zotz]

As I understand it, there's been a lot of research over the years indicating that income is more of an issue for women. Whether that's been changing in recent years I don't know, but presumably the information's out there.

[elf]

Income of partner is more of an issue for women than men because women face a lot of discrimination in trying to get their own income. It's more of an issue than many other traits, because the ones most women really care about are (1) not easy to identify by survey and (2) not often the basis of starting a marriage. (We all hope for a husband who consistently treats us like a person, not a sex-and-housework robot that nags him to take out the garbage. But we can't predict that in advance. So far, we have no systematic way to tell the difference between "guy who is attentive to women because he thinks they're people" and "guy who is attentive because he wants to lock one into a long-term servant role, and will revert to his norm as soon as the honeymoon's over.")

The article does some interesting twists to claim that "men are not making enough money to attract women!" instead of "women are now able to make enough money not to need men; men will have to find some other feature that women are willing to get married for."

[zotz]

That may be part of the issue, but the findings were that this preference was stronger for women in higher-earning jobs than for women in general.

My problem with the article is that it says some things that would be surprising but (given that people often have odd priorities) aren't impossible, but doesn't cite any real evidence in support of them.

[heron61]

Senator Demands FBI Director Explain His Encryption Backdoor Bullshit

Once again, I'm pleased to live in a state progressive enough to elect 2 sensible and humane Senators - Ron Wyden is one of them.

[calimac]

I'm not sure I understand the story about the flag story.

So the charge that Scotland hauled down the Union Jack is ... true, is it? Only that it was instituted by Salmond, not Sturgeon.

But Sturgeon hasn't reversed it, has she?

If that's the case, I wouldn't call it "false", just "having an important error in it".

But if it is false, then I'm misunderstanding ...?

[andrewducker]

The charge is that Sturgeon hauled down the Union Jack and that this is a slap in the face of The Queen. The truth is that Salmond made the change - but also (and I now notice that this isn't in the BBC story) that it was done with the agreement of the royals - instead flying the Royal Standard, which they were apparently happy with.

[danieldwilliam]

The decision was also made several years ago and isn't really *news*.

All that has happened recently is that the manual for the people who put up the flags was updated to incorporate the change in policy made about six years ago.

[calimac]

Thanks, especially as that explains why something that's not news is in the news anyway.

(I do know enough to know that the Salmond administration ended several years ago.)

[danieldwilliam]

I think the perception on the part of the SNP is that the Daily Mail (in particular) has a policy of throwing mud at them in the hope that it sticks and that the mud they are throwing is created by taking small things, looking for the worst possible potential outcome, spinning it in the worst possible way, and presenting it as a calculated insult to the Queen / Unionist voters / Our Brave Boys and solely designed to drive Scotland out of the UK against the wishes of the electorate - it's TREASON!. And the constant mudslinging from the Daily Mail is setting the tone for the conversation for much of the rest of the press.

It's difficult for the SNP to push back against because the readership of the Daily Mail is not inclined to give the SNP a sympathetic hearing and you get an attitude of no smoke without fire from casual observers and the details are hard to get hold of in the two minutes most people are prepared to spend reading beyond the headline.

So, I think the reason Sturgeon has been so vocal about this one is that it is demonstrably nonsense and if she can get folk to accept that the Daily Mail is spouting demonstrable rubbish on this it is easier for her to establish that the Daily Mail is spouting rubbish in cases where the facts are less clear cut.

Also, I suspect Sturgeon is still pretty annoyed about the Legsit front page.

[calimac]

Mutatis mutandis that's the way the US Democrats are treated by the conservative media, so I get this.

Since the scandals are imaginary, my usual response to "There's no smoke without fire" is "In this case, the smoke comes from a SMOKE MACHINE."

[danieldwilliam]

Yeah, the Mail treats the SNP the way Fox news treats Democrats and Sturgeon has found the smoke machine is trying to yank the power cord out.

Are you familar with the Stop Funding Hate campaign?

[calimac]

By the way, the story about the Dutch spying on the Russian hackers and telling the US intelligence agencies about it has spawned all sorts of goofy headlines of the "News Flash! Netherlands Revealed as Ally of the U.S.!" sort.

[andrewducker]

Who knew that the US even had allies!

(Makes me despair a bit. Considering that until quite recently I assumed that the US was generally considered allies with most of the Western world!)

[calimac]

What they meant, I presume, was not surprise that the US and the Netherlands are allied, but that the alliance involved such intimate sharing of information.

Which again shouldn't be a surprise if anyone was paying attention.

But of course the US won't have any allies very soon the way it's acting.