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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Transition team emails

lundi 18 décembre 2017 à 01:00

Mueller got the troll's transition team's emails from the federal agency that handled them. The troll's men are trying to pretend that this was somehow improper. The San Francisco SPCA has discontinued use of a security patrol robot.

Homeless people, and anyone walking in the area, are right to be suspicious that it is making and transmitting videos. If it wasn't actually doing that at the time, it could have been reprogrammed to start doing so at any moment. We must judge these systems by the worst they _could_ do, and ignore the side issue of what they are doing today.

As for recording car license plates, it should be illegal for an automated system to take notice of them, except when it comes across a license plate that is sought by court order or else invalid.

Criminalization of protest

lundi 18 décembre 2017 à 01:00

ALEC is now promoting state laws to imprison pipeline protesters.

Transition team emails

lundi 18 décembre 2017 à 01:00

Mueller got the troll's transition team's emails from the federal agency that handled them. The troll's men are trying to pretend that this was somehow improper. The San Francisco SPCA has discontinued use of a security patrol robot.

Homeless people, and anyone walking in the area, are right to be suspicious that it is making and transmitting videos. If it wasn't actually doing that at the time, it could have been reprogrammed to start doing so at any moment. We must judge these systems by the worst they _could_ do, and ignore the side issue of what they are doing today.

As for recording car license plates, it should be illegal for an automated system to take notice of them, except when it comes across a license plate that is sought by court order or else invalid.

Sea level rise to come

lundi 18 décembre 2017 à 01:00

A scenario of a hurricane hitting Miami in 2037 illustrates the world-wide effects of sea level rise to come.

This is just one of the disasters that global heating will cause.

Vinyl chloride

lundi 18 décembre 2017 à 01:00

The scientist who proved that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer was subsequently paid by Monsanto and other chemical companies for 20 years, even being paid by them to investigate a specific chemical; he concluded that vinyl chloride did not cause cancer, a conclusion that the World Health Organization subsequently rejected. Was his conclusion influenced by his conflict of interest?

It is true that, when that was published, there was no rule about stating conflicts of interest. The rule was made in response to awareness that conflicts of interest such as these were undermining the integrity of research.

If the scientist did give all consulting fees to an academic organization that he founded, that doesn't mean he wasn't avid for more fees to make the organization bigger, or that he could not possibly have biased his research to get them.

Biasing research does not always mean lying. There are more subtle ways that involve fooling oneself. If he was convinced that the main causes of cancer were things that the victim had consumed, that too could have been a motive for bias in the same direction.

Wikipedia's article on vinyl chloride, as of 23 Feb 2017, footnotes a printed article from the Houston Chronicle that says chemical companies tried to manipulate research about the medical effects of vinyl chloride. When companies do this, they typically try many avenues of influence.