Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Robot Radio

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

Ian Kerr and i had a great time talking robots on WLRN’s Topical Currents. They’ve posted the podcast as Our Robot Future And Bizarre Circumstances To Ensue and now you can listen too.

Posted in Robots, The Media | Comments Off on Robot Radio

Best Line of the Day?

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

Brad DeLong channels Cosma Shalizi:

Haven’t you just constructed an enormous and pointless intellectual apparatus involving […], in increasing order of implausibility, speaking intelligent aquatic waterfowl, options pricing, Vulcans, teleportation, Bayesianism, and time-travel just in order to be able to say the obvious thing: “The probability of an HRC victory is uncertain: it might be as low as 0.45 or as high as 0.95, and we will be able to sharpen our estimate as election day comes closer”?

Well, I laughed. Maybe you just had to be there. Or read the whole thing. Note that the order of implausible events is nicely snarky.

Posted in 2016 Election | Comments Off on Best Line of the Day?

On Topical Currents Today

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

TC-Logo-smI’m going to be on WLRN’s “Topical Currents” call-in show today at 1pm, to discuss our book Robot Law, and the topic of robots more generally. I’ll post a link to the podcast version when I have it.

Posted in Robots | 1 Comment

Math Anxiety

Posted on May 7, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

It’s more dangerous than we suspected.

(“Ivy League economist ethnically profiled, interrogated for doing math on American Airlines flight” … although he’s actually … wait for it … Italian.)

Spotted via Kevin Drum, Heroic Passenger Recognizes Quantitative Economics as True Threat to America.

I am wondering if I need a new blog category for “paranoia”?

Posted in Law: Right to Travel | Comments Off on Math Anxiety

“Harassment”

Posted on May 7, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

The NYT’s Nick Corasaniti says this ad from the Arkansas Senate race “could well become a blueprint for how other Democrats — incumbents and challengers alike — attack their Republican opponents by linking them to Donald J. Trump.”

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Avira Does Not Play Nice With GCal Under IE11

Posted on May 5, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

avira-logoFor the record: under Win 7, IE 11, the Avira antivirus browser plugin causes Google’s calendar site, GCal, to freeze up and do other strange things. Using just Avira real-time protection, the main anti-virus program, does not cause the problem, just the browser add-on. The odd thing was that Gmail worked fine, but Gcal locked up, or got caught in a scripting error.

The fix is simple: disable the Avira add-on.

And, before you ask, no I don’t use IE much, but I do use it to access a 2nd gcal calendar that belongs to an organization without signing out of Google on my main browser or commingling the two identities in any way.

Posted in Software | Comments Off on Avira Does Not Play Nice With GCal Under IE11