…through formal software verification. This seems like sort of a big deal. Particularly in the era of the Internet of Things and self-driving cars. Of course, the weakest link in security will remain the flawed unit between the seat and the keyboard.
Category Archives: Mathematics
Microsoft’s Cancer Cure
Derek Lowe isn’t impressed.
@Rand_Simberg @Dereklowe @Eaterofsun Maybe they could just install Windows 10 into the tumors?
— Tech_Noir (@LV__666) September 21, 2016
XKCD And Climate
I’m generally a big fan of Randall Monroe, but I thought his latest was a misfire. This is a more accurate take.
The Reactionless Drive
Here’s a crazy idea: Let’s actually test it in space.
It’s worth noting that the cubesat revolution has made such things affordable.
California’s Pension Bomb
As I’ve often said, you can get a federal bailout, or remain a huge state. Those would be my conditions.
“Black Lives Matter”
Heather McDonald writes about the myths of the movement:
For starters, fatal police shootings make up a much larger proportion of white and Hispanic homicide deaths than black homicide deaths. According to the Post database, in 2015 officers killed 662 whites and Hispanics, and 258 blacks. (The overwhelming majority of all those police-shooting victims were attacking the officer, often with a gun.) Using the 2014 homicide numbers as an approximation of 2015’s, those 662 white and Hispanic victims of police shootings would make up 12% of all white and Hispanic homicide deaths. That is three times the proportion of black deaths that result from police shootings.
The lower proportion of black deaths due to police shootings can be attributed to the lamentable black-on-black homicide rate. There were 6,095 black homicide deaths in 2014—the most recent year for which such data are available—compared with 5,397 homicide deaths for whites and Hispanics combined. Almost all of those black homicide victims had black killers.
Police officers—of all races—are also disproportionately endangered by black assailants. Over the past decade, according to FBI data, 40% of cop killers have been black. Officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are killed by police.
Some may find evidence of police bias in the fact that blacks make up 26% of the police-shooting victims, compared with their 13% representation in the national population. But as residents of poor black neighborhoods know too well, violent crimes are disproportionately committed by blacks. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in the 75 largest U.S. counties in 2009, though they made up roughly 15% of the population there.
Such a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities means that officers will be disproportionately confronting armed and often resisting suspects in those communities, raising officers’ own risk of using lethal force.
The Ferguson Effect is going to make life much worse in the black communities.
[Update a while later]
“Black Lives Matter is acting like a racist hate group. You can only imagine how the press would treat Tea Partiers or Trump supporters who acted this way.”
Yes. Oh, and hey remember those New Black Panthers that Eric Holder let off the hook after the case had been essentially won?
[Update a few minutes later]
The Justice Department laughed off the armed New Black Panther Party threat.
The administration also called ISIS the “Jayvee team.”
Rationalia
More thoughts from Kevin Williamson.
[Friday-afternoon update]
Another piece at New Scientist. It’s a terrible idea.
[Bumped]
Climate Research
I’d say it’s worse than useless; it’s actively societally harmful.
Peer Review
A spot-on rant.
It is highly highly overrated.
Space And Time
Louise Riofrio has a new Kickstarter project to highlight her cosmological theory.