This is from May 2018.  Probably not a big deal, back then.

Top White House official in charge of pandemic response exits abruptly

I try to keep up with on-line privacy issues, but I learned a lot from this article. For instance, I did not realize that companies can (literally) individually target ads.  Toyota can (literally) tell Facebook to send Steven Guccione Toyota truck ads.  I always assumed this was based on some profile and, hence, anonymous.  Anyway, a good, non-technical read from a former Facebook security lead, now a critic.

Facebook’s political ad problem, explained by an expert

From the Houston Chronicle (certainly not a paper expected to be unfriendly to the oil and gas business).  Flaring is literally burning up natural gas coming out of oil wells.  This is so widespread in the Eagle Ford fracking region that it can be seen from space at night.  That crescent shaped area outside of San Antonio isn’t a city, it’s burning gas.

Flaring in Texas reaches levels not seen since 1950s, oil industry regulator says

I’m have to admit I have mostly been on the other side of this argument.  I agree with most of what they are saying, but I think it misses a key point.  Housing prices tend to be based on being “close” to high paying jobs.  But today “close” is measured more in time than in distance.  An hour in traffic is an hour in traffic, no matter if you go one mile or ten.  I think much of the problem is poor transportation infrastructure.

One of the best quotes:

Nearly all of the biggest challenges in America are, at some level, a housing problem. Rising home costs are a major driver of segregation, inequality, and racial and generational wealth gaps. You can’t talk about education or the shrinking middle class without talking about how much it costs to live near good schools and high-paying jobs. Transportation accounts for about a third of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions, so there’s no serious plan for climate change that doesn’t begin with a conversation about how to alter the urban landscape so that people can live closer to work.

My favorite ex-president.  Carter put solar on the White House roof back in 1976.  Reagan took it down in 1981. From People:

Jimmy Carter Put Solar Panels on His Farmland and They’re Now Powering Half of His Georgia Hometown

From Salon:

Noam Chomsky: “The Democrats abandoned the working class decades ago”

In an interview with Wallace Shawn, Noam Chomsky explains how elitism and atomization have created political rifts

For anyone who has not experienced the US medical system recently.

I was a bit of a skeptic when Self-Driving car technology started development a few years back.  I am actually somewhat familiar with the technologies involved, having done some AI work back in the 1990s (including work on the Army’s Autonomous Land Vehicle) and have kept up with recent developments.  I would have to say I’m not a complete skeptic, just a skeptic that by 2020 cars would able to safely drive millions of people around the major cities of the world.  An article by Vox gives a bit of a recap.

It’s 2020. Where are our self-driving cars?

In the age of AI advances, self-driving cars turned out to be harder than people expected.

So where do things go from here?  I see a few things going forward:

• Slower, fixed route vehicles like busses might make more sense, especially at first
• Simpler tasks like long haul trucking make similar sense
• Change roads adding beacons and / or signage to help automated driving
• Have cars communicate with each other to improve navigation and safety

Some things that don’t get much mention:

• Is driving that much of a chore for most people?
• Would better public transport be a better option all around?
• For things like Uber (taxis) is eliminating the human even desirable?
• What about malicious actors, both other drivers, pedestrians and even traditional hackers?  Will this tech stand up under attack?

Lots of good is coming out of this work. The various assists (lane changing, braking) are nice and potentially life saving additions to autos.  If it took the far out vision of full autonomy to get there, I’m ok with that.