Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Let’s All Hope Trump Recovers

Posted on October 3, 2020 by Michael Froomkin
Trump and Pence

Both Dangerous

There are two main reasons why we should all hope that Donald J. Trump recovers from COVID-19.

The first is that we should never wish death on people, even people we may dislike intensively for all the evil they have done. (Similarly, we should condemn those who seek to dehumanize their opponents. This is why I condemn the practice, common in certain parts of the Internet, of referring to Trump as ‘the Trumpanzee’.)

The second is that were Trump to die, Vice-President Pence would become the Republican candidate for President in the next election. I am aware that this is not a legal inevitability, but it is, from what I know of the convoluted mechanisms by which the party would have to replace him, a practical certainty.

Trump is losing this election, and I cannot imagine that some great national bounce of sympathy for an irony of Sophoclean proportions will change that. But Pence, for all that he was a failed Governor and remains a religious zealot, is largely a blank slate to most voters. Maybe the upcoming Vice-Presidential candidates’ debate will substantially change that, but probably not. And a blank slate is a chance to reboot. If nothing else, it would be a chance to peel off the voters who were voting against Trump as a person rather than Trumpism as a program.

It might be that many people would say Pence was compromised by his years of silence and sycophancy. Others might view it as loyalty, misguided or not. And the right-wing evangelical vote would flock to the polls.

Ask yourself this: what would Never Trumpers like the Lincoln Project do if Pence were the candidate? Would they shift targets or fold their tents? I don’t want to find out.

Posted in 2020 Election, COVID-19 | 5 Comments

Perhaps the Only Even Slightly Good Thing to Come Out of the “Presidential” Debate

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Michael Froomkin

Weird Al, who is notorious for taking months to fine-tune a new composition, did one in fewer than 48 hours.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Perhaps the Only Even Slightly Good Thing to Come Out of the “Presidential” Debate

Decency

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Michael Froomkin

Latest video from the Lincoln Project really sums it up,

… especially in light of suggestions like this one,


that Trump game plan was to trigger Biden’s stutter.

Time to pull this clip out from the archives?

Posted in 2020 Election | 6 Comments

‘Fusion Power Just Ten Years Away!’

Posted on September 30, 2020 by Michael Froomkin

So suggests the New York Times in Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor Is ‘Very Likely to Work,’ Studies Suggest,

Scientists developing a compact version of a nuclear fusion reactor have shown in a series of research papers that it should work, renewing hopes that the long-elusive goal of mimicking the way the sun produces energy might be achieved and eventually contribute to the fight against climate change.

Construction of a reactor, called Sparc, which is being developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a spinoff company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is expected to begin next spring and take three or four years, the researchers and company officials said.

Although many significant challenges remain, the company said construction would be followed by testing and, if successful, building of a power plant that could use fusion energy to generate electricity, beginning in the next decade.

Before you get too excited, however, consider my previous post on this topic — in 2018, under the headline Fusion Allegedly Just Five Years Away — BBC:

I’ve written before on how fusion power is always coming, never here. About a year and a half ago I posted this:

Fusion Power is Only 15 Years Away, we’re told. I guess that’s progress since in just the last few years people have said its Always 50 Years Away, or maybe Always 30 Years Away, or maybe formely 30 years away, now its more like 50 years away, or maybe just forever 20 years away, or 13 Years Away.

So ten years away is progress, right? Then again three years ago it ten years away so maybe we’re going backwards?

Or maybe we’re looking at the wrong scientific advance here: what we really have is an odd form of time travel?

But comes now the BBC to tell us that according to some startups, maybe fusion power is just five years away, which certainly seems like the frontier is getting closer…or some startups have at least got fusion going on their hype…

I’m sure someday one of these predictions will be right. Someday. Meanwhile, however, the hype frontier has moved back to ten years from five…

Posted in Science/Medicine, Sufficiently Advanced Technology | Comments Off on ‘Fusion Power Just Ten Years Away!’

Devastating

Posted on September 29, 2020 by Michael Froomkin

What do you get when VoteVets and the Lincoln Project team up? You get this:

Posted in 2020 Election | Comments Off on Devastating

Funniest Software License Ever?

Posted on September 28, 2020 by Michael Froomkin

There have been funny terms of service and software licenses in the past, like the TOS that demanded your first-born son, and the one that offered $10,000 to the first person to read it and get in touch, but I think this, via BoingBoing might be my favorite:

Voynix recently wrote something he calls The Spite License. They say it is, “in essence, a trapdoor — it allows potential licensees to use the software under the terms of the secondary license (as shown here, the standard MIT license) if and only if they do not read the license file itself.”

Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>

Permission is hereby granted to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated materials to make use of the software and associated materials according to the terms of the MIT License (see included file `LICENSE_MIT`) IF AND ONLY IF they have not read any portion of this file.

Any person who has read any portion of this file may not make any use of the software and associated materials for any purpose whatsoever. Any permissions previously granted to any person to use this software and associated materials terminate and are revoked with immediate effect upon their reading of any portion of this file.

Why did they create this? Voynix offers two reasons:

  • Because it’s funny
  • Because you want randos on the Internet but not big companies with lawyers who make their engineers actually read licenses to use your software
Posted in Law: IP | Comments Off on Funniest Software License Ever?