Futurist

There are 396 posts filed in Futurist (this is page 22 of 40).

The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ | World news | The Guardian

Good stuff from the Guardian.

There is a revealing moment in the most recent piece written for the Guardian by Sir David Omand, former head of GCHQ. He said that “the real debate we should be having … is about what privacy in a cyber-connected world can realistically mean given the volumes of data we hand over to the private sector in return for our everyday convenience, and the continued need for warranted access for security and law enforcement.”

That’s a total non-sequitur: Omand seems to think that just because we hand data over to Google and Facebook the government automatically has the right to access it. It’s as if, thanks to a global shortage of sticky gum, envelopes can no longer be sealed, so as a result the government awards itself a new right to mass-intercept and read everybody’s letters.

via The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ | World news | The Guardian.

PopSci decides Internet comments are “bad for science.” That’s lazy and wrong.

Slate’s Will Oremus has a nice counterpoint to Popular Science’s recent decision to disallow comments on its web stories.

Now, I get as annoyed as the next right-thinking person when Internet commenters misconstrue scientific research—let alone when they regale me with tales of their aunt’s third cousin who makes $73 an hour working from home. But I couldn’t help but notice an almost religious zeal in LaBarre’s framing of her magazine’s mission. Spreading the word of science? Undermining bedrock scientific doctrine? Substitute “Christianity” for “science” and “Christian” for “scientific” in those two phrases and perhaps you’ll see what makes me uncomfortable here. These aren’t the words of a scientist. They’re the words of an evangelist.

via Future Tense.

Air Force introduces QF-16 drones

Boeing and the Air Force just introduced a new drone to their drone program: the F-16. It was the first time an F-16 has ever flown without a pilot aboard.

This video reminded me of my visit to the Tyndall drone range in 2009, watching old F-4 Phantom IIs roar over me. It was like I was back in the Navy with my destroyer acting as plane guard behind an aircraft carrier on flight operations.

Here’s a great story on the drone program if you’d like to learn more.

Goldsboro Broken Arrow

Yesterday, news outlets ran a story based on newly-declassified documents concerning the 24 January 1961 crash of a B-52 near Goldsboro which resulted in the release of two megaton-sized atomic bombs. I became captivated by the story and spent what free time I had today collecting information on it for its Wikipedia page.

I had known about the crash for some time as UNC’s ibiblio server has hosted documents about it for nearly two decades. It seemed to be an interesting plane crash story with a nuclear angle but it make me worried. What I did not know until today is just how close one bomb was to nuclear detonation, vaporizing much of eastern North Carolina and raining deadly fallout all over the East Coast.

Yesterday’s stories highlighted the fact that only one switch kept one of the bombs from completing its arming cycle and setting off a detonation 250 times as powerful as the bomb that leveled Nagasaki, Japan. While that’s certainly scary enough, today’s sleuthing revealed a much more terrifying situation. It turns out when the second bomb was found it had been fully armed. Its arm switch had been activated. No one knows why the bomb plummeted harmlessly into the ground at 700 MPH instead of reaching a thermonuclear critical mass and wiping out all living things within a 10 mile radius. Only sheer blind luck saved us from nuclear incineration.
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Innovation and competition

theideafactory

The book The Idea Factory made me question what we know about innovation and the free market.

Conventional wisdom says that a free enterprise system that rewards innovators with market success is what drives innovation in this country. However, this was not the case at the fabled Bell Labs, where brilliant AT&T scientists brought forth a dizzying number of groundbreaking discoveries, one after another.
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Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy | Wait But Why

This Huffington Post repost of a Wait But Why post draws an unflattering picture of Generation Y:

Say hi to Lucy.

Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y.

I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group — I call them Gen Y Protagonists — Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.

So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Only issue is this one thing:Lucy’s kind of unhappy.

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War is so last decade

America & Not America. This sums it up.

America & Not America. This sums it up.

Congress and the President are having a tough time drumming up support for bombing Syria. Locally, an informal Triangle Business Journal poll had 79% opposing war to just 21% supporting it.

One of my Facebook friends noted this:

Interesting that adamant left- and right leaning friends are posting the SAME photos & links regarding Syrian intervention. Refreshing change to see harmony! Wonder what impetus is bringing us together – is it expense, not wanting to intervene in another country, more pressing issues at home, or…?

I think a decade of never-ending war in the Middle East kind of sapped Americans’ enjoyment of the thing. I think we as a country are starting to question the utility and effectiveness of bombing as a foreign policy. Seeing Americans from both sides of the political spectrum reach this conclusion gives me hope that maybe we have turned the corner on the all-war-all-the-time mentality that has gripped this country for the last 25 years.

Ex-spooks debate Snowden’s actions

I’m a member of a Facebook group called United States Navy Cryptologic Technicians. Last week a member authored a post which questioned why NSA leaker Edward Snowden wasn’t being hunted down with all available resources. It spawned a very lively debate amongst ex-spooks about Snowden’s motives and those of the NSA, a debate which continues as I post this. There are many former spooks like myself who find the NSA’s new reach to be quite alarming, while others seem to be comfortable with Americans’ almost complete lack of online privacy. Several point out that Snowden took an oath to protect this information and broke his oath.

I took a similar oath when gained my security clearance. Like every other servicemember, however, the first oath I took was support and defend the Constitution of the United States “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” To the extent that the latter conflicts with the former, the former (being the law of the land) always takes precedence. In addition, it was drilled into us as sailors that it was our duty to disobey an unlawful order. In hindsight this is far easier to say than do, as in practice disobeying a lawful order would most likely put you in a world of hurt. At least the government would come out looking good during your court-martial.
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North Hills and Brier Creek

Last week I had a delightful opportunity to meet my friend Mandy for lunch at a restaurant in Brier Creek. Not being familiar with the shopping center, I managed to park a short distance from my destination and spent a good 10 minutes walking from building to building to find it.

The walk made me realize just how vehicle-centric Brier Creek truly is. There are few or no sidewalks anywhere in the parking lots. There are no crosswalks at its internal intersections, either. The whole time I was on foot I felt like a sitting duck as cars whizzed by me. It seemed that shopping centers like Brier Creek fit an outdated mold of shops plunked down amidst acres and acres of parking lots. Sure, the stores are shiny and new but the paradigm is a dinosaur.
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