In other news...

[Old Man]

 

More like there's no way I think Secretary Mattis or his subordinate officers whom such an endeavor would have to be executed through would stand for it. One thing I'll say for this administration, it's increased my respect for the ethics and level-headedness of the US Military leadership by leaps and bounds.

 

When the administration is so bad it makes Mad Dog Mattis look ethical and level-headed, you know we're screwed. 

[Zeropoint]

I wish I knew more about how to determine which locations in the US are likely nuclear targets. I currently live in a decent-sized but hardly large city whose only importance is that it's the state capital. How much do I need to worry about nuclear war affecting me directly? I don't know!

[Badger]

 

I'd imagine the known places with our missiles would be most strategic for this question.  DC I'd imagine, too.  Places with large military bases.    

 

 

[Cancer]

Depends on the goals of the attacker.

 

Back in the MAD era, such things were based on immediate nuclear strike capacity.  B-52 bases were up there.  SSBN bases were way up there.  Command centers were up there.

 

If you're just after terror, doesn't matter so much.

[Badger]

True, which is why NYC is always a terror target, the symbolism is their b##t##d  wet dream

[Badger]

Noticed on some site that: Jim Carrey thought he had "10 minutes to live".  Well, if we can be rid of him, sorry, Old Man, we may have to sacrifice you.  

[Pattern Ghost]

Is Jim Carrey an ewok or something?

[Bazza]

Yes. 

[Old Man]

On the importance of good user interface design

[death tribble]

 

I wish I knew more about how to determine which locations in the US are likely nuclear targets. I currently live in a decent-sized but hardly large city whose only importance is that it's the state capital. How much do I need to worry about nuclear war affecting me directly? I don't know!

All the major cities would be affected if you are talking about a superpower launching missiles or dropping bombs. A state capital would be a target as if other places were hit government could shift there. So in a major exchange you would be get it. Nothing to worry about as it is a done deal. But if we are talking one bomb.then the target would be Washington DC first and New York City second. It would then depend on the goals of the attacker if another city was selected but likely the larger ones like Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas (Independence Day), Boston, Boise (yeah I don't get why here but work with me on this one) etc

 

If we are talking about the Korean then Hawaii and California should be worried first.

 

I lived in London which in the event of conflict is a target and now live in Plymouth which has a major dockyard. Either way I'd be for it. I can't do anything about it so do not worry about it.

[death tribble]

 

Noticed on some site that: Jim Carrey thought he had "10 minutes to live".  Well, if we can be rid of him, sorry, Old Man, we may have to sacrifice you.  

Well there are those of us thinking 'Why not sacrifice Badger to appease Old Man ?'

 

I want people to know that I would willingly sacrifice any or all of them if it meant something momentous. Like seeing the Divine Gillian or a guaranteed Superbowl win for the Minnesota Vikings.

[Christopher]

 

That's what makes Hawaii the goal of the North Korean missile program. Not because Kim Jong Un wants to attack it (he may be isolated from objective reality, but he knows that the American response would be annihilatory -- and he would be powerless to prevent it), but because a nation that can a.) send a nuclear warhead to Hawaii, and b.) have it come even close to landing where you aimed it will be crossed off everyone's Nations You Can Afford To Simply Ignore list. That's why a nation that cannot feed its people has 5% on the population serving in the military on active duty.

In any Kim/Trump exchange, I consider the Kim the sane one.

 

It is easy to missunderstand his intentions if you miss one important part: He only stays in power because he can tell his people "America wants to destroy us".

 

 

On the importance of good user interface design

A dropdown menu was indeed a poor design. A checkbox you have to unckek after geenrating he form would work better.

 

Also, the real warning should be a lot more active. Something on the line of "you have 10 seconds to cancel or strart right now" rather then "are you sure?". With a warning system that is run by humans, we can not exclude the propabiltiy that the human is put out of order at the least convenient time (like between selection and confirmation).

[Christopher]

Machine Learning and Adversarial Examples. Aka, how do I trick a machine learned neural network into recognising what is not there?

 

As machine learned system (image and speech recognition) become more common, attacks on them will become more common.

The first approach to attacking googleNow and Siri was relatively easy to make out:

https://video.golem.de/audio-video/20415/demovideo-voice-hack.html

 

But the attack has evolved. It became better. Harder to recognise:

http://nicholas.carlini.com/code/audio_adversarial_examples/

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.01944.pdf

 

They got a 100% reliable way to fool Mozilla Deep Speech. Moreover, you can fool it into hearing up to 50 characters per second, wich can easily go unnoticed by a human listener.

And this suddenly reminded me of a Case in Gene Roddenberry Andromeda: Tyr's Lance weapon was hacked. By Music.

[Sociotard]

 

Hawaii alert: False missile alert sparks panic

 

 

Nobody is getting fired. The public unions at work!

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455431/hawaii-missile-false-alarm-no-consequences-bureaucrats

[Old Man]

 

To be honest, around here the person getting the blame is the guy who fumbled foreign policy so badly that we have to have missile alerts in the first place.

 

I usually dismiss conservative publications like the National Review out of hand, but this particular article is especially laughable.  It starts with the bald faced lie that military officers are always held accountable for failures on this scale, and then goes into an irrelevant tangent about Japanese business culture.  (One wonders if that tangent would have been included if the director's last name was Smith.)  It complains about a supposed lack of accountability in public service but conveniently forgets that corporations are even less accountable.  Accountability for this particular fiasco will in fact occur this fall, on Election Day. 

 

Meanwhile, what actually happened was that in less than 12 hours, the public officials in charge figured out what happened, took immediate steps to prevent it from happening again, disciplined the poor bastard who chose the wrong option on the pulldown menu, and went on camera to take personal responsibility.  There was exactly zero finger pointing.  That's pretty damn refreshing when the rest of my news feed is full of politicians banding together to elect child rapists while shouting "no collusion!" loudly and often, hoping to convince themselves it's true.

 

But by all means, take the opportunity to smear public unions!  Even the article didn't go that far.

 

 

[Sociotard]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

To be honest, around here the person getting the blame is the guy who fumbled foreign policy so badly that we have to have missile alerts in the first place.

 

Bush 41, for botching the peace with Russia and the opening it left to start drawing down our presence in SK? Eisenhower, for getting us involved there in the first place?

 

Quote

Accountability for this particular fiasco will in fact occur this fall, on Election Day. 

Hawaii is a de facto one-party state. What're they going to do, vote for a Republican?

 

Quote

But by all means, take the opportunity to smear public unions!  Even the article didn't go that far.

It's the only reason I can think to not fire the guy who did it. 

 

[Starlord]

Perhaps they are otherwise an exemplary employee?

[Pattern Ghost]

IMO, the UI designer and whoever signed off on the project are more at fault. It's possible neither of those is still around. Not scapegoating the poor bastard who got stuck with a poorly implemented UI seems reasonable to me.

[Badger]

12 hours ago, death tribble said:

Well there are those of us thinking 'Why not sacrifice Badger to appease Old Man ?'

 

I want people to know that I would willingly sacrifice any or all of them if it meant something momentous. Like seeing the Divine Gillian or a guaranteed Superbowl win for the Minnesota Vikings.

 

Well, we badgers don't go down that easily.  We're like roaches with hair in that way.

[Lawnmower Boy]

2 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

IMO, the UI designer and whoever signed off on the project are more at fault. It's possible neither of those is still around. Not scapegoating the poor bastard who got stuck with a poorly implemented UI seems reasonable to me.

Firing other people for screwing up an easily-screwed-up things seems perfectly reasonable to me, just as long as everyone remembers the vitally important principle that I'm excepted, because I'm special. 

 

[Christopher]

6 hours ago, Sociotard said:

Nobody is getting fired. The public unions at work!

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455431/hawaii-missile-false-alarm-no-consequences-bureaucrats

 

3 hours ago, Sociotard said:

Bush 41, for botching the peace with Russia and the opening it left to start drawing down our presence in SK? Eisenhower, for getting us involved there in the first place?

I have to ask you a question I only ask with clear republican supporters: Are you intentionally trying to appear dumb with those links?

Because if you do, I can inform you that you are on the right track!

If not, then I have some bad news for you.

 

Not getting that Trump was meant? Pretty dumb.

Not thinking that Trumps interaction with Kim made the scenario a whole lot more likely? Even dumber.

[Sociotard]

1 hour ago, Christopher said:

 

I have to ask you a question I only ask with clear republican supporters: Are you intentionally trying to appear dumb with those links?

Because if you do, I can inform you that you are on the right track!

If not, then I have some bad news for you.

 

Not getting that Trump was meant? Pretty dumb.

Not thinking that Trumps interaction with Kim made the scenario a whole lot more likely? Even dumber.

 

Yes, I understood that Trump was the dummy indicted in the post. I was pointing out that the US has a long and storied history of botching peace with NK. Trump isn't new.

 

Trump had nothing to do with this scenario. Trump has nothing to do with NK testing increasingly powerful rockets and warheads. He just sabre rattles in a stupider manner than most Presidents, and he's disturbingly impulsive. It's the missile testing that made the false alert seem more legit.

 

Let me ask you a question in turn.  Say we'd Elected Clinton.  Yay! Do you have any inkling that would have slowed the tests?  Okay, so lets say Clinton was President when this happened:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that North Korea will face consequences because of "provocative and belligerent" actions that include threatened military attacks against U.S. and South Korean warships.

Clinton also underscored Wednesday the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea and Japan in the aftermath of North Korea's nuclear and missile tests this week. She said that talks at the United Nations "are going on to add to the consequences that North Korea will face."

Clinton's stern statement came after North Korea threatened military attacks against U.S. and South Korean warships and called Seoul's decision to join an international program to intercept ships suspected of aiding nuclear proliferation tantamount to a declaration of war.

I'll say this for Clinton: her statements were more intelligent and reasonable and saner than Trumps. But she still threatened them.  One time she said they reminded her of raising a belligerent teenager.  So imagine reading those threats that NK says are tantamount to declaring war.

 

And then the missile alert goes out.

 

My question for Christopher: Is the panic any less in this world? Where the Hawaiians know that the President is a known hawk who recently insulted the North Koreans, just as the missile warning went out? I have my doubts. I don't think so. I think this had nothing to do with the dummy President. I think a civil servant should have fallen on his sword, but was protected instead. People could have died in that panic, and blaming the President for sabre rattling, when all our Presidents sabre rattle (but usually smarter than Trump)

 

Here's the thing; Americans do not feel respect or humility. That's why I'm never going to get the chance to vote for someone who will be a real force for peace; my compatriots are too bloodthirsty to allow it. But blaming the President for everything is nonsense, just as it was in the "Thanks Obama" days.

[Badger]

Being one who doesn't care for Trump*, I do have to say, we cant really blame him for NK (his handling, yes.  But, the problem itself not so much).  In hindsight, it is a situation, we the nation, even the world, largely ignored for 20 years, and now that problem has found a way to make itself known.  Clinton-Bush-Obama all have varied roles in this coming to a head, if we want to blame a President (which I am not so sure should be done).  We all dropped the ball, I guess.  

 

I do worry that 20 years or less from now, we will have this very situation with Iran, though.

 

*Yeah, for clarification, for any newcomers.  The Presidential election was the one election in 2016 I did not vote in.  Like everyone I didn't care for Trump, and I could not in good conscience vote for Clinton.  And I do have to live with my own self, so it is what it is. 

 

 

[Christopher]

1 hour ago, Sociotard said:

Yes, I understood that Trump was the dummy indicted in the post. I was pointing out that the US has a long and storied history of botching peace with NK. Trump isn't new.

His stupidity is new. There is not much you can "botch" in dealing with NK. The Kims need "American wants to wipe us out" to stay in power. But he managed to botch that anyway.

 

How does one botch dealign with NK?

 

1 hour ago, Sociotard said:

My question for Christopher: Is the panic any less in this world? Where the Hawaiians know that the President is a known hawk who recently insulted the North Koreans, just as the missile warning went out? I have my doubts. I don't think so. I think this had nothing to do with the dummy President. I think a civil servant should have fallen on his sword, but was protected instead. People could have died in that panic, and blaming the President for sabre rattling, when all our Presidents sabre rattle (but usually smarter than Trump)

1) If you expected a System involving human action to work flawlessly, you are once again trying to sound dumb for no apparent reason.

2) This was a innocent mistake. There is no thing for "maybe causing a death by a mistake". No harm was done.

3) Trumps 24/7 insanity puts everyone on edge. That makes such mistakes more likely

 

So based on how granularily the blame is to be cast on the User, the UI Designer, President Trump and the history of US/NK Relations, I felt no reason to fire that guy.

He was moved off it. He can not repeat that mistake. Why do you want him fired?

[Hermit]

Easy folks, let's keep it polite.