O Canada

Sure, I can post this a year in advance. Around this time of year I grew up with Mischief Night. Mischievous things were done, mostly involving rotten eggs. Never thought about it as a regional phenomenon, but apparently it's limited to this little corner of the United States. Then again I never thought I'd be sh** out of luck to find a taylor ham, egg and cheese sandwich anywhere else.

Way more interesting is the Canadian version of Mischief Night, called Mat Night, and where you guessed it - they swap neighbors' doormats in the middle of the night. 

Mischief Night, apparently, is a Jersey thing. Here's how this mayhem started.
Oct 29, NJ.com

Manual Override Autocrash

We are already at their service.
We are already neglecting Asimov's Laws.
We don't see it yet because it's automatic updates and automatic screen rotation. When it's automatic plane-flying, or rather automatic plane-crashing, some might see it. Once it's automatically running your entire life, with no consideration to you the end user as an individual, with no consideration to a manual override, it will be too endemic, too pervasive, and too powerful for you to do anything.

The pilot's manual choices should always override software.
-random reddit comment by NotYouDude

Notes:
Wiki link

Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
Seattle Times. Mar 17, 2019.

Boeing 'misjudged 737 Max pilot reactions'
Sep 2019, BBC News

"...which was designed to make the aircraft easier to fly."

Post Script:
And you can't make this shit up -- the automated security system in your house automatically called the cops on the automated floor cleaner in the house. If only they talked to each other first...

Deputies surround burglar in Oregon home, find out suspect is Roomba trapped in bathroom
April 2019, Local News

Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics

The Bull's Eye

We're reading here about the Yellow Vests in France, on a random message board:

"The yellow vests feel like the American Occupy Wall Street movement back in the early 2010's. Started by people with genuine concerns only to be hijacked by anarchists and hippies who didn't entirely know what they want, with no actual leadership or chain of command, but wanted a reason to misguidingly express their personal political ideologies (drum circles and rioting depending on where they fall on the spectrum)."
-random message board contributor

Another contributor's response calls out the fact that one of the critical reasons for the Occupy Wall Street movement failing was due to the lack of public space in which to protest, something that today at almost ten years later is still not being fully appreciated, as seen by the continued emaciation of public space in New York City. (See the Starbuck's Bathroom Debacle of 2018 for further fodder on that)

I would rather draw attention to this -- the Yellow Vests have fallen by the same means as Occupy Wall Street -- hyper advanced NSA-type persistent surveillance plus members over-communicating on under-secure channels (social media etc) equals targeted takedown of leaders, and eventual loss of purpose. Hong Kong protesters, on the other hand, use layered operating systems on their phones for military-level security, to provide one example of adaptation.

Mental Vaccines Are Coming to Take Your Thoughts Away

Fear not fellow Americans, we'll be cured of the Fake News Blues in no time.

You see it everywhere --  we're turning fossil fuels into planet-killing death gas because climate change isn't real, turning kids into petri dishes for vintage diseases because the immune system isn't real, and even turning unscrupulous businessmen into national superheroes, because morals aren't real!

But finally, some psychologists from Cambridge have developed a mental inoculation that builds your resistance to bad data through small doses of exposure. The way it works is that they give you some real data (climate change; it's real), and then they give you some fake data (climate change; Chinese conspiracy!), and THEN they give you the reasons why the fake stuff is fake and the real stuff is real.

When you see it side by side, and when you see the rebuttal come from the same source as both the real and the fake, you build a little bit of resistance.

Notes:
Mental “vaccine” protects both parties from plague of fake news and lies
Jan 2017, Ars Technica

Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change
Global Challenges, 2017. DOI: 10.1002/gch2.201600008

Here is for those who are trying to reconcile how climate change can be a national security threat and yet not a threat both at the same time:
A brief introduction to climate change and national security
Yale Climate Connections, 2019

See also

All Aboard

Sure is a lot of talk about the coming juggernaut that is the 5G network. I'm not so sure that we'll be swimming in holometric datagrams within the next couple years, but I am trying hard to imagine what it will be like. What am I doing today, as a totally routine task, that would have been impossible while I still had a 1x phone in my pocket? Real time traffic? Meh, 1010 Wins.

Those artificial humans though?

She is attractive, emotive, and all-too-real. But Lia is an emotionally intelligent "artificial human"  with expressions and slight skin imperfections that make it difficult to tell that she is digital.

Lia has a virtual brain, virtual nervous system and even digital versions of dopamine and oxytocin that affect her neurons and autonomously trigger facial muscles. She can make eye contact with you—you'll see your own reflection looking at her—and read your face, detecting your emotional state. If you smile, Lia will smile back.
-Soul Machines

image source: Wall Street Journal link

Notes:
5G can make digital humans look real and turn real people into holograms
Mar 2019, phys.org

People think and behave differently in virtual reality than they do in real life
Jan 2019, phys.org

Partially Related Post Script:
An approach for motion planning on asteroid surfaces with irregular gravity fields
Feb 2019, phys.org

^I'm no extraterrestrial scientist but this is the kind of thing that makes even hard science fiction sound soft

Totally Unrelated Post Script:
Just keeping track; more face things:
AI fake face website launched
Feb 2019, BBC

Nanodata

A future 'human brain/cloud interface' will give people instant access to vast knowledge via thought alone
Apr 2019, phys.org

Biodistribution and biocompatibility of nanoparticles, looking out for that.

Image Source: M.C.Escher - Bond of Union - 1956

On the Multi-Dimensionality of Cultural Communication

Facebook 'labels' posts by hand, posing privacy questions
May 2019, Reuters

Facebook uses only five dimensions to categorize your pictures. Of these, we have these: 1. Subject (food, person, animal), 2. Occasion (day at the office, 1st birthday party), 3. Intention (plan, inspire, joke). The labeling is done by hand, in order to train machines. Meat-handlers they're called in the industry. Just kidding I made that up; but that's what they are -- because our machines are too stupid right now to be able to do this.

The problem is that humans are also too stupid. Rephrase that -- it's not that humans are stupid, it's the wrong humans being used. The Big F-Book uses meatmen in Romania and the Philippines. Now I'm not sure if I'm getting this right, but it sounds like some human flesh engines from one culture are interpreting the actions of another culture a half a world away.

The problem is when things get lost in translation. If we don't get the cultural nuances right, the resulting data will be messed up. Imagine there is some little quirk, a little difference or misunderstanding between the Filipino labeler and the American poster that labels all x-posts as y. And that error gets scaled up until a huge mistake is made when screening your background for some dystopian automated system that you really want to be a part of, or not, like the criminal justice system for example.

We can't ignore these differences. They may seem small, but they get scaled by the millions. At 150mph, the tiniest pebble will throw your motorcycle right off the road.

Post Script:
Talking about multi-dimensionality, try categorizing smells.