Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

We Robot 2023 CFP — Boston Sept. 29-30

Posted on March 17, 2023 by Michael Froomkin

We Robot 2023 will be in Boston, MA, jointly hosted by the Boston University School of Law and the MIT Media Lab.

We Robot is the most exciting interdisciplinary conference on the legal and policy questions relating to robots. The increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread deployment everywhere—from the home, to hospitals, to public spaces, and even to the battlefield—disrupts existing legal regimes and requires new thinking on policy issues.

If you are on the front lines of robot theory, design, or development, we hope to see you here in Boston. Come join the conversations between the people designing, building, and deploying robots, and the people who design or influence the legal and social structures in which robots will operate.

We would also love to have you as a sponsor. If you are interested in discussing sponsorship opportunities, please get in touch.

News and Updates (twitter)

Key Dates

  • March 6: Submissions for papers, posters, and demos open.
  • March 27: Abstracts for papers and proposals for demos due.
  • April 7: We aim to have responses to paper and demo proposals.
  • June 1: Call for posters closes, but acceptances may be offered on a rolling basis (i.e. it may be beneficial to submit earlier).
  • August 31: Full papers due. They will be posted online at the conference web site unless otherwise agreed.
  • September 29-30: We Robot Conference
Posted in Robots, Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on We Robot 2023 CFP — Boston Sept. 29-30

There Was a Seventh Child

Posted on March 11, 2023 by Michael Froomkin

For Americans of my generation–a little too young to be drafted into it–there are three iconic photos of the Vietnam War. One is of Saigon’s Chief of Police conducting a summary execution of a Viet Cong officer. A second is of a naked child fleeing down a road after being napalmed, aka the ‘Napalm Girl’ photo. And the third is the famous picture of people clinging to a helicopter’s landing gear as it took off, overladen, from the US’s Saigon embassy as the war effort collapsed.

That third picture, we now know, was to be only the first of a series of photos of ignominious retreat from ill-considered colonial Great Power maneuvers, with the latest coming out of Afghanistan.

That second photo has a subsequent history too, although it is more inspiring, as the victim not only survived, but surmounted the trauma caused by her injuries and also the injuries caused by the world-wide publicity of the photo; eventually she founded an international charity.

Huan Nguyen, being sworn in as a Vice-Admiral in 2019.

It turns out, however, that the subsequent history of the first photo is perhaps the most amazing. The man executed had killed a South Vietnamese Colonel and six of his children. The seventh, then nine, survived and after the fall of Saigon, managed to reach the US. He later joined the US Navy. Yesterday he was promoted to the rank of Admiral.

Posted in Politics: International | Comments Off on There Was a Seventh Child

250 Miles North of Here

Posted on March 7, 2023 by Michael Froomkin

A man in Daytona Beach, Florida heard someone at his front door and thought it was a visitor for his son. Unfortunately when he opened the door to welcome the guest, it turned out to be a nearly 8-foot long alligator.

“The alligator lunged and he was bitten in the upper thigh,” said Daytona Beach police spokesman Carrie McCallister.

Source: boingboing, Man opens front door only to be bitten by huge alligator

Posted in Florida | 2 Comments

Somebody is Having a Good Week

Posted on February 20, 2023 by Michael Froomkin

An amazing barrage of good headlines for someone in the news:

  • Ukraine:
    • CNN, Biden’s trip to Kyiv delivers the starkest rebuke possible to Putin:

      “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” he declared. “The Americans stand with you and the world stands with you.”

      Biden’s words might have lacked the poetry of “Ich bin ein Berliner,” or “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” But Biden’s visit instantly went down in history alongside two defining trips to divided Berlin by Presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan that were flashpoints of the Cold War and each of which sent their own image of US resolve to the Kremlin.

    • The Atlantic, Biden Just Destroyed Putin’s Last Hope:

      “Simply by taking the hazardous trip to Kyiv, Biden made a strategic move of cardinal importance.” […]

      This is a gut punch to Russia’s leader. The Russians received word of the trip, we are informed—and presumably the threat, stated or implied, that they would get a violent and overwhelming response if they attempted to interfere with it. For a leader obsessed with strength, like Putin, that is a blow. His own people will quietly or openly ask, “Why could we not prevent this?” And the answer, unstated, will have to be, “Because we were afraid.”

      The visual contrast between an American president with his signature aviator sunglasses walking in sunny downtown Kyiv with the pugnacious and eloquent president of Ukraine and a Russian president who has yet to visit the war zone is also striking.

    • CNN, Biden’s Ukraine visit upstages Putin and leaves Moscow’s military pundits raging: “‘Biden in [Kyiv]. Demonstrative humiliation of Russia,’ Russian journalist Sergey Mardan wrote in a snarky response on his Telegram channel.”
  • The Border Crisis: Daily Beast, Biden’s Plan to End the Border Crisis Is Already Working:

    [C]haos is already dramatically on the decline, as President Biden’s Jan. 5 immigration actions were the first major step in decades to get the border under control.

  • Domestic Policy: NYT, Rick Scott Drops Social Security From Plan as G.O.P. Retreats From Entitlement Cuts:

    Senator Rick Scott of Florida finally recognized this week what leading figures in his party had been telling him for a year: Most Republicans no longer wish to discuss cutting Social Security and Medicare as a way to balance the federal budget and bring down the soaring debt.

    After decades of talk of scaling back the popular — and increasingly expensive — federal entitlement programs for older Americans, Republicans have for now abandoned that approach. It is an acknowledgment of the political risks of shrinking benefits relied on by millions of voters.

    The capitulation by Mr. Scott, who on Friday relented and explicitly walled off Social Security and Medicare from his proposal to terminate all federal programs every five years and subject them to congressional review, was the latest evidence that Republicans would be looking elsewhere for savings in a coming showdown with the White House and congressional Democrats.

The guy just might be tough to beat in 2024…

Posted in Politics: US | Comments Off on Somebody is Having a Good Week

Avast Antivirus Blocks DisplayFusion

Posted on February 11, 2023 by Michael Froomkin

I was called in to debug a relative’s Windows 10 PC. All of a sudden DisplayFusion, the program that ably manages multiple monitors, was not doing anything.

Investigation showed DisplayFusion was active in the Task Manager. The item it creates on the Windows right-click task menu was still there, but none of the items in the sub-menu did anything. The telltale extra button in other programs’ windows, the one that lets you send them to the screen, was missing.

Various combinations of stopping DisplayFusion, restarting it, rebooting the machine did nothing. Updating everything in sight made no difference. Malwarebytes reported no viruses. Google revealed no useful hints. Stopping Avast did nothing either…

But totally uninstalling Avast (and replacing it with Windows Defender) then rebooting–that did the trick.

So I’m writing it up here, in case anyone else has the same issue, likely caused by a recent update to Avast’s antivirus files. Then again, who uses Avast these days?

Posted in Software | Comments Off on Avast Antivirus Blocks DisplayFusion

Where Are the Florida Senate Candidates for 2024?

Posted on February 11, 2023 by Michael Froomkin
Fla Senate results by County

County map of Florida 2022 Senate results by Aldinz333, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Now’s about when you would expect serious candidates for 2024 Senate election to let it be known they have an interest.  For legal reasons, it often makes sense to delay a formal declaration until much later, but you would expect to see subtle online campaigns, maybe an exploratory committee or three. Yet on the Democratic side it seems awfully quiet.

Although far from great, the general political picture is more mixed than it might seem:

That last point is in my mind the key: I can’t think of any Democrats with a statewide profile who’d be a plausible candidate.  Val Demings lost to Rubio, and I’ve seen no sign she wants another Senate race. That means the best Democratic candidate will be someone with a strong local base. I don’t follow local politics outside South Florida to even have an idea what the field is–which is a sign of the problem.

Thoughts, anyone?

Posted in 2024 Election, Florida | Comments Off on Where Are the Florida Senate Candidates for 2024?