News roundup, 10 Feb 2025

- The fact that a bunch of Musk-rats straight out of high school have been given access to the crown jewels of the US Treasury's IT systems has many tech professionals shaking in their boots at what kind of damage they could do, either intentionally or otherwise. Administration officials tried to claim that there's nothing to worry about because they only have read access to the systems, but this appears not to be true. Moreover, many of the systems these lads have been given access to are running code that's decades old and which they probably didn't learn about in high school computing class, and which furthermore is highly integrated with other systems. All it could take is for one of these kids to break something and you could have a situation where the US government's ability to make a payment could be compromised. And that's not even considering the possibility of intentional harms that could be done, say by feeding big databases about millions of people into an AI that's been trained to spot signs that someone could be an enemy of Musk or Trump.

- Justin Trudeau thinks that Donald Trump is entirely serious in his desire to annex Canada. Apparently in a recent phone call between the two leaders Trump spewed a litany of grievances against Canada, including actual policies (e.g. supply management) as well as imagined ones (e.g. Trump's belief that American banks are prohibited from operating in Canada). Trudeau thinks the most likely motive is US access to critical minerals. Meanwhile the US has imposed 25% tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminum, and Trump continues to make declarations about how Canada is "not viable as a country".

- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced an agreement with El Salvador that would effectively allow the US to use the troubled Central American country as a penal colony, sending not only deportees of any nationality but also American criminals to be housed in prisons there. I guess that will suffice until Musk can set one up on Mars, as seen in D. G. Compton's novel Farewell, Earth's Bliss.

- BC Conservative leader John Rustad is coming under fire for a social media post in which he falsely accused former provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry of "promoting fentanyl use" due to her harm reduction advocacy. There are obvious fears that this could lead to threats to her safety; then again, she's lived with threats against her life for several years simply for being a voice of reason on COVID-19.

- Last year, Minneapolis City Council approved a pilot project where food deliveries to students living in residence on the University of Minnesota campus are done by robots. Now, halfway through the study, the city is considering whether it's necessary to regulate them in some way, in order to ensure safety as well as to protect jobs. On cue, the techbros on r/Futurology are in a tizzy at the mere thought of regulation.

- Someone has been putting copies of a far-right book into "Little Free Libraries" around Ottawa. The title of the book in question has not been made public.

The new Fatal Shore?

With all the obsession with crime these days, it's hard to even get a word in edgewise about such things as prevention. Just look at what happened in Wednesday's municipal election -- I'm pretty sure that a big part of the outcome was a rejection of anything other than a purely punitive approach to the problem. The thing is, it can't go on forever like this. It costs a heck of a lot to keep people in jail, and doesn't really solve the crime problem anyway -- yet ask the average person on the street how to approach the problem, and they'll likely tell you to get tough, hang 'em high, etc. How will this play out in the long run?

One possibility, of course, is that the general public will come sufficiently to their senses that it will be politically possible to put more focus on rehabilitation. Unfortunately, the likes of Sun Media make it awfully hard to have an intelligent conversation with the average person on this issue, so the "get tough" approach is likely to continue for the forseeable future. But how will society deal with the escalating costs of keeping people incarcerated (not to mention the recidivism rate if convicts' issues aren't properly dealt with while they're on the inside, with is the case now and will only get worse as they incarcerate more and more people). The British found a "solution" to the problem in the late 1700s by setting up penal colonies (most famously Australia, but for a time Bermuda and the American colonies were used for this purpose as well). Of course, that's not so easy to do now that there are no more new frontiers.

Or are there? Recently I came across this story about plans for setting up a Mars colony. What leaps out is this:

Worden's comments prompted speculation that trips to Mars could be only 20 years away. Commentators talked about the difficulties of such a trip because of the cost, estimated at $10 billion US one-way, and the likelihood that the explorers would not be able to ever return to Earth.

My emphasis. It would be tough to get people to volunteer for such a mission, but I bet some will suggest sending criminals. You'd still need a few volunteers to run the place, but the general labourers would be virtually free. This idea is explored in D. G. Compton's 1971 novel Farewell, Earth's Bliss, and I don't doubt that it will be proposed in all seriousness in the years to come. It's not my idea of a good solution to the crime problem, but in one way it would be an improvement on previous penal colonies -- at least in this case it wouldn't involve the displacement and destruction of indigenous peoples, since there are none on Mars.