Ten miners killed, others rescued in Indonesia blast

A coal mine explosion, caused by a build-up of gases, has killed 10 people in Indonesia Photo: AAP

 Dec 10,2022

Ten miners have died in a coal mine explosion in Indonesia’s West Sumatra province and four others have been rescued, officials say.

“The last victim was found after a search in a 240-metre-long tunnel. Most of the victims suffered burns. All of the survivors experienced shortness of breath and were evacuated for further treatment,” Octavianto, a spokesperson for the local search and rescue agency, said.

The blast, caused by a build-up of gases including methane, occurred in the privately owned mine in Sawahlunto district.

Rescuers used blowers and exhaust fans to remove the gases from the mine to make it safe to enter.

“The team struggled to find victims considering the location was quite difficult,” Octavianto said.

Videos distributed by the National Search and Rescue Agency showed rescuers carrying victims out on stretchers and giving them oxygen from tanks.

Others showed yellow body bags being carried from the pit.

Landslides, flooding and tunnel collapses are some of the other hazards miners face.

In April, an overloaded truck carrying 29 people hit a hillside and overturned near an illegal gold mine in West Papua province, killing 18 people and injuring others.

In February 2019, a makeshift wooden structure in an illegal gold mine in North Sulawesi province collapsed due to shifting soil and the large number of mining pits.

More than 40 people were buried and died.

BANNED AS ANTI PERSONNEL WEAPON

US considers transferring cluster munitions to Ukraine

December 8, 2022, 

Remains of missiles used by Russian occupiers to strike Kharkiv, November 29, 2022 (Photo:REUTERS/Vitalii Hnidyi)

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is considering Ukraine's request for cluster munitions, CNN reported on Dec. 8.

According to CNN, in recent months, Ukrainian officials and lawmakers have called on Washington to approve the transfer of cluster munitions, which are banned in more than 100 countries, but which Russia continues to use against civilians in Ukraine. The network called the request "one of the most controversial since the beginning of the war."

The report said that senior White House officials have been considering the request for several months. Apparently, the option is viewed as a "last resort" – if stockpiles of Western arms and ammunition start to run "dangerously low." At the same time, CNN’s sources said that the request hadn’t yet been seriously considered due to Congressional legislative restrictions on the transfer of cluster munitions, related to the fact that they could pose a danger to civilians.

“For Ukraine, cluster munitions could address two major issues: the need for more ammunition for artillery and rocket systems the United States and others have provided, and a way of closing Russia’s numerical superiority in artillery,” CNN said.

Read also:

Russians use banned cluster munitions against Kryvyi Rih

Ukrainian Defense Ministry told CNN it does not comment on reports of requests for specific weapons or ammunition.

Cluster warhead are imprecise by design, releasing a large number of submunitions to damage enemy vehicles and infantry. These submunitions spread over a wide area and often fail to explode. Left unobserved, they can kill or injure civilians – long after the battle is over. Locating and removing them also poses challenges. By 2022, more than 120 countries have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, banning the use of these weapons.

New Indonesian Criminal Code seen as blow to human rights

The US and Australia have warned that the overall tone of the legislation could scare off investors and tourists

By JOHN MCBETH

DECEMBER 9, 2022

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has overseen a progressive agenda up to now. 

Photo: AFP / Tracey Nearmy


In a single stroke, the Indonesian parliament’s decision to criminalize extramarital sex and freedom of speech in the newly enacted Criminal Code has dealt a potentially damaging blow to investment and tourism and the country’s reputation as the world’s largest Muslim democracy.

Around the world, the reaction was overwhelmingly negative from Indonesia-watchers who have followed the Joko Widodo government’s impressive progress over the past eight years as it seeks to claim a rightful place among the world’s top economies.

“Indonesia has just scored a devastating own-goal, killing the wonderfully positive buzz they got from their G20 success,” said one stunned foreign businessman, referring to the Group of Twenty summit in Bali and the ongoing World Cup in one breath.

The United States and Australia have already warned that the overall tone of the legislation could scare off investors and foreign visitors, and the United Nations says some of the 624 articles are incompatible with basic freedoms and human rights, including the right to equality.

Civil-society activists have threatened a wave of protests and in a reflection of the broad opposition to the code, police have blamed it for Wednesday’s suicide bombing at a Bandung, West Java, police station, in which one patrolman was killed and 11 people were wounded.

“Articles in the new code violate the rights of women, religious minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, and undermine the rights of freedom of speech and association,” New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a strongly worded statement.

The legislation also lays down a maximum three-year jail term for anyone insulting the president, vice-president, parliament and other state institutions, the Pancasila national ideology and the national flag.

With dozens of other articles prescribing penalties for online and offline defamation reported by individuals, critics point to the lack of any definition of what constitutes an insult and how it will be adjudicated.

Activists face six months’ jail for holding demonstrations without a police permit if the protest turns violent, causes harm to the public interest or disrupts public services, vaguely worded language that harks back to an earlier authoritarian era.

Suspects who intentionally spread what is considered to be fake news that incites street riots face six years in prison. Others found guilty of staging hoaxes that could lead to public unrest are liable to four-year sentences.

Law Commission chairman Bambang Wuryanto, who caused a stir recently with his apparent ignorance of the separation of powers among the judiciary, legislature and executive, said parliament’s mission was to decolonize, consolidate and harmonize criminal law.

Although it may take three years to craft implementing regulations, analysts saw the new code, which replaces one dating back to the Dutch colonial era, as a victory for the religious right wing – even if it did have to give ground on criminalizing all sex outside marriage.

Senior HRW researcher Andreas Harsono said the legislation contains “oppressive and vague provisions that open the door to invasions of privacy and selective enforcement that will enable police to extort bribes, lawmakers to harass political opponents and officials to jail ordinary bloggers.”

“In one fell swoop, Indonesia’s human-rights situation has taken a drastic turn for the worse with potentially millions of people in Indonesia subject to criminal prosecution under this new deeply flawed law,” he added.

Indonesia is full of couples without a marriage certificate who, theoretically, will be breaking the law, especially indigenous people and Muslims in rural areas married in unregistered kawin siri ceremonies.

That could also include foreigners, particularly Australians making up a large percentage of the 6.2 million tourists who visited Bali in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic cut the numbers to zero.

A closer examination of the provision suggests they are unlikely to be at risk of prosecution, but it may still be enough to deter them from traveling to Indonesia if they feel zealous authorities will seek to enforce their own interpretation of the law.

In a country where girls as young as 12 are often married off to older men for what is said to be an effort to prevent youthful promiscuity, adultery is similarly punishable by a year’s imprisonment, doubling the current penalty.

Wuryanto and Justice Minister Yasonna Laoly, both members of ex-presodent Megawati Sukarnoputri’s ruling Indonesian Democratic Party for Struggle (PDI-P), say critics should take their grievances to the Constitutional Court – the only legal channel open to them.

But trust in the country’s highest court has declined sharply since it was formed in 2003, capped by parliament’s recent decision – subsequently ratified by President Widodo – to recall a sitting justice for what it claimed was poor performance.

The firing of deputy chief justice Aswanto, who had seven years still to run in his 15-year term, was widely regarded as parliament’s retribution for the court returning the 2020 Omnibus Law for further consideration a year after it was voted into law.

Aswanto was one of three People’s Consultative Assembly–nominated justices on the nine-man bench. The other six are appointed by the president and the Supreme Court, though on the understanding there is a distinct separation of powers.

The bench’s independence has now been called into question by legal experts, including respected former chief justice Jimly Asshiddiqie, who insist the move is unconstitutional and should be repealed.

While the Islamic-leaning Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) may be the sole parliamentary opposition, the passage of the new code demonstrates the potency of an Islamist minority, who normally win only 12-13% of the national vote.

With most political parties looking ahead to the 2024 elections, politics will also have played a significant role. “Right now is a great opportunity for all [lawmakers] on all sides to show they are morally upright parliamentarians deserving of being elected,” one Western official observed.

How much Widodo may have supported the legislation is unclear, but in 2019 widespread demonstrations forced him to delay passage of a previous draft criminal code and order his cabinet to conduct a “socialization” of the bill.

Insiders say Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin, a conservative 79-year-old cleric and former chairman of the influential Indonesia Ulema Council (MUI), was behind the push to revive the talks in 2020.

Amin was compelled to step down from his MUI post when he became vice-president in October 2019, but he was quietly appointed to the organization’s advisory council a year later. One analyst said: “No political party wants to bat against the MUI.”

As a senior religious adviser to then-president Bambang Susilo Yudhoyono, Amin oversaw the issuance of controversial edicts against secularism, pluralism and liberalism during Yudhoyono’s two-term presidency between 2004 and 2014.

The powerful organization also added its voice to a highly inflammatory 2008 fatwa banning the propagation of Ahmadiyah teachings that played no small part in the violence against the tiny Islamic sect that followed.

Harsono, who has closely followed the prolonged debate over the code, told Asia Times that extramarital sex, cohabitation and blasphemy were always the three most contentious issues that stood in the way of a necessary consensus.

But he says instead of being resolved with political trade-offs, they were watered down by introducing so-called “safeguards” where the crimes of illicit sex and cohabitation can only be prosecuted after a complaint from the husband, wife, parents or children of the accused.

For all that, however, it will still disproportionately impact women and adult members of the already-embattled LGBT community who are more likely to be reported to authorities.

Amid all the gloom, Australian academic Tim Lindsey, a specialist on Indonesian law, does point to one positive change in the new code. That’s the introduction of a probationary period for death sentences under which good behavior will be rewarded with commutation to a term of imprisonment.

“However, this reform is a lonely one,” he said in a recent article in The Conversation. “Too many of the changes introduced by the new code are highly regressive, removing or restricting freedoms previously won” as Indonesia emerged from 32 years of authoritarian rule.

Indonesia sex laws 'nail in coffin' for LGBTQ rights

Agence France-Presse
December 08, 2022

This picture taken on December 5, 2022 shows activists holding a protest against the new criminal code outside the parliament building in Jakarta. © Adek Berry, AFP

Indonesia's legislation banning sex outside marriage represents a major new threat to the LGBTQ community's rights in the conservative country, where same-sex unions are not recognized.

"It's another nail in the coffin at the moment. A big nail," Dede Oetomo, an activist with the LGBTQ rights group GAYa NUSANTARA, told AFP.

Once enacted, the legislation approved Tuesday in parliament would punish sex outside marriage with one year in prison, while unmarried people living together could face six months in jail.

The reforms make it riskier for gay couples to live together openly in a country where they already face widespread discrimination and anti-LGBTQ regulations, according to activists.

"Before the new criminal code, it was already bad. People can be searched even in their private residences. Although it was not systematic, but it can happen," Oetomo said.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, and its constitution recognizes six religions.

Homosexuality is not illegal in the Southeast Asian nation -- except in the police, military and in Islamic law-abiding Aceh province -- but rights groups say the legislative changes pose an inherent risk to LGBTQ people.

"Many LGBTQ couples have been living together under the radar, as same-sex marriage isn't allowed here," said Robby Nasution, a 30-year-old freelancer who lives with his partner in Bali.

"With the new law, this means that another right has been taken away from the community."

Kai Mata, a musician and activist, said LGBTQ communities were "bracing ourselves for impact and backlash" from the legislation, which stood "against our rights to exist".

The amendments still need to be approved by President Joko Widodo before they come into force.
'Living in fear'

Albert Aries from Indonesia's Law and Human Rights Ministry defended the amendments before the vote and said they would protect the country's marriage institutions.

Sex outside marriage could only be reported by a spouse, parents or children, drastically limiting the scope of the amendment, he said.

But Andreas Harsono from Human Rights Watch said LGBTQ people were "living in fear" in a society that was becoming "more and more conservative".

"If they are reported by a member of their family, their life can be ruined," he told AFP.

There are already dozens of national and local regulations that affect LGBTQ people, and some have been arrested on charges of lewd conduct under anti-pornography laws.

Last month, two Indonesian soldiers were given a seven-month jail term for having gay sex, which the military deems "inappropriate behavior".

At least 15 members of the police and military have been fired in recent years for having gay sex, according to Amnesty International in 2020.

Last year in Aceh province, two men were sentenced to nearly 80 lashings each for having sex.

"Of course, I feel this country is not safe for me," said Gusti Arirang, 29, a musician who identifies as pansexual.

"I'm not pessimistic about Indonesia's future progress as I am trying to stay strong. But now I have more concerns and am more cautious."

Analysis-Peru's presidential curse will prove hard to lift despite Castillo ouster

Reuters
December 08, 2022


By Marco Aquino and Anthony Esposito

LIMA (Reuters) - Peru's first female president Dina Boluarte, who unexpectedly came to power on Wednesday after her former boss was ousted and arrested, will need to tread carefully to avoid her recent predecessors' fate of being forced out of office early.

In a day of high drama, Pedro Castillo was removed from the presidency in an impeachment trial after he tried to dissolve Congress illegally in a bid to stay in power. That followed months of instability and two prior impeachment attempts by a hostile legislature.

One of Boluarte's first official acts upon becoming president was to implore for a political truce and to pledge to form a broad cabinet of all ideological stripes.

But that could be tough in a country long riven by divisions between conservatives loyal to former president Alberto Fujimori, those dead set against "fujimorism," and a broad chunk of the populace fed up with traditional politicians.

"Boluarte called immediately for a dialogue among all political actors. That's easier said than done," said Jason Marczak, senior director of the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

The speech was her first after being sworn in as Peru's sixth president in just five years and was an apparent gesture to win support from both the electorate and the unicameral Congress, where she has no party backing of her own after being expelled from Castillo's far-left Peru Libre party earlier this year.

"The last Peruvian president to not belong to a political party, Martin Vizcarra, was impeached by Congress in 2020, leading to a wave of protests," said Marczak.

A former civil servant, Boluarte is a relative unknown who shot to prominence alongside Castillo as the vice president on his ticket when the pair pulled off a shock election victory in 2021. But after Wednesday's events, the 60-year-old Boluarte lambasted Castillo for his "attempted coup."

Peruvian politics are notoriously volatile and, while her succession was cheered in the chamber, it is unclear how long she will be afforded a truce by lawmakers.

Boluarte may ultimately have to call for early elections to bring stability to a country that has been mired in political turmoil for years, largely because of a constitution that allows its Congress to easily oust presidents. Lawmakers have led seven impeachment trials in recent years.

"I know there are some voices talking about early elections and that is respectable democratically... later in coordination with all organizations we'll be looking at alternatives on how to better reorient the country's path forward," Boluarte said on Thursday, her first full day in office.

Bringing forward elections slated for 2026 could revamp a fractious Congress, which faces extremely low approval ratings. In a November poll the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP) asked respondents what should happen if Castillo were impeached, and 87% said that a general election should be convened.

"She talked about staying (in office) until 2026 and she has the law on her side, but let's not forget this is a two-part problem: the Executive and Congress. One part was resolved and there is still the other part of the problem, which is Congress," said Fernando Tuesta, political analyst and former head of Peru's electoral authority.

Also vital to having a successful administration will be appointing an experienced prime minister who can wrangle with a Congress known for its contentious relationship with the presidency, as well as a cadre of credible ministers.

"Even if she appoints someone who can fit this job description, he/she would struggle to make enduring alliances because Congress is such a choppy environment with little party loyalty and a very transactional mindset," said Nicholas Watson, managing director of consultancy Teneo.

Boluarte is expected to announce the makeup of her cabinet in the coming days.

One of her first challenges will be to deal with diehard Castillo supporters, who are threatening to make her life difficult from day one.

"(Peru's new President) Dina Boluarte is not our president," said Sonia Castaneda at a protest on Wednesday in Lima, where some pro-Castillo demonstrators clashed with police. "Let the people elect her, then I will recognize her (as president)."

(Reporting by Marco Aquino in Lima and Anthony Esposito in Mexico City; Editing by Christian Plumb and Rosalba O'Brien)

Meta battles U.S. antitrust agency over future of virtual reality

Reuters
December 08, 2022


By Katie Paul and Diane Bartz

SAN JOSE, Calif./ WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration on Thursday accused Meta Platforms Inc of trying to buy its way to dominance in the metaverse, kicking off a high-profile trial to try to prevent the Facebook parent from buying virtual reality app developer Within Inc.

The FTC sued in July to stop the deal, saying Meta's acquisition of Within would "tend to create a monopoly" in the market for virtual reality (VR) fitness apps. It has asked the judge to order a preliminary injunction that would halt the proposed transaction.

In an opening statement, FTC lawyer Abby Dennis said the Within acquisition was part of Meta's bid to acquire new and more diverse virtual reality users, including customers of Within's popular subscription-based virtual reality workout app Supernatural.

That would complement Meta's existing virtual reality users, who tend to skew young and male, and be more focused on gaming, Dennis added.

"Meta could have chosen to use all its vast resources and capabilities to build its own dedicated VR fitness app, and it was planning on doing that before it acquired Within," Dennis said, pointing to a plan from early 2021.

The plan, Operation Twinkie, involved expanding a rhythm game app called Beat Saber that the company acquired in 2019 into the fitness space via a proposed partnership with digital fitness company Peloton, Dennis said.

She cited an email from Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg saying he was "bullish" on fitness and calling the proposed partnership with Peloton "awesome."

Lawyers for Meta and Within argued that the FTC did a poor job of defining the relevant market and said the companies compete with a range of fitness content, not just VR-dedicated fitness apps.

Meta's lawyers also disputed that plans for a Meta-owned VR fitness app had proceeded beyond low-level "brainstorming" and argued that the FTC underestimated the competition in the market it had defined, citing the potential for fellow tech giants Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc's Google and Bytedance to join the fray.

Rade Stojsavljevic, who manages Meta's in-house VR app developer studios, testified that he had proposed the tie-up between Beat Saber and Peloton but did not develop a formal plan and never discussed the idea with either party.

Internal documents from early 2021 that were displayed in court showed Stojsavljevic proposing acquisitions of VR developers before they could be "cannibalized" by competitors and discussing pressure from Zuckerberg to "get aggressive" in response to reports of a prospective Apple headset.

The trial, scheduled through Dec. 20, will serve as a test of the FTC's bid to head off what it sees as a repeat of the company acquiring small upcoming would-be rivals and effectively buying its way to dominance, this time in the nascent virtual and augmented reality markets.

The FTC is separately trying to force Meta to unwind two previous acquisitions, Instagram and WhatsApp, in a lawsuit filed in 2020. Both were in relatively new markets at the time the companies were purchased.

PRESSURE TO PRODUCE HIT APPS

A government victory could crimp Meta's ability to maneuver in an area of emerging technology - virtual and augmented reality - that Zuckerberg has identified as the "next generation of computing."

If blocked from making acquisitions in the space, Meta would face greater pressure to produce its own hit apps and would give up the gains - in terms of revenue, talent, data and control - associated with bringing innovative developers in-house.

Within developed Supernatural, which it advertises as a "complete fitness service" with "expert coaches," "beautiful destinations" and "workouts choreographed to the best music available."

It is available only on Meta's Quest devices, which are headsets offering immersive digital visuals and audio that market research firm IDC estimates capture 90% of global shipments in the virtual reality hardware market.

The majority of the more than 400 apps available in the Quest app store are produced by external developers. Meta owns the most popular virtual reality app in the Quest app store, Beat Saber, the app it was considering expanding with the Peloton partnership.

The social media company agreed to buy Within in October 2021, a day after changing its name from Facebook to Meta, signalling its ambition to build an immersive virtual environment known as the metaverse.

Zuckerberg will be a witness in the trial. Other potential witnesses are Within CEO Chris Milk and Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth, who runs the company's metaverse-oriented Reality Labs unit.

The trial is at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington and Katie Paul in San Jose, Calif.; Editing by Alexandra Alper, Matthew Lewis and Cynthia Osterman)

FLORIDA

Climate change heats devil fish that possess St. Johns River

I HAD TALIPIA FOR DINNER LAST NIGHT

2022/12/07

Radesh Arjoon fills a container with the day's catch of armored catfish at the boat ramp on Hwy. 50, 

RAOUX/Orlando Sentinel/TNS

ORLANDO, Fla. — In another alarm of nature spiraling to hell in Florida, scientists suspect global warming has enabled devil fish to plague and ravage the St. Johns River.

This summer, a team of state water and wildlife experts with the help of a commercial fishing crew cast industrial nets in a Central Florida portion of the river several miles south of Cocoa called Lake Winder.

Of the estimated 40,000 pounds of many species hauled in for examination, only a small portion, less than 20 percent, was Floridian: bass, crappie, brim, catfish, bowfin and others.

The rest were exotics: a type from South America broadly known as armored catfish, some of which are known also as devil fish, and tilapia from Africa.

Since that exploratory outing, unanswered questions have loomed. Why are the invaders there, why do they vastly outnumber natives, are they mucking up water quality and are they mowing down essential aquatic plants in the river? Research plans are unfolding.

“We are in the early stages of investigating whether we can lay the blame on these exotic fish,” said Reid Hyle, a freshwater fisheries biological scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.

Those exotic invaders have been established in parts of Florida for decades but there hasn’t been much clarity on population numbers, Hyle said.

Also probing the disruption to fish populations is the St. Johns River Water Management District, a state agency responsible for the use and care of surface and under ground waters from Orlando to Jacksonville.

Scientists know that armored catfish tear up river bottoms for nesting and that tilapia consume aquatic plants – behaviors that may upset water quality and ecosystem balance.

“A bigger issue we suspect on why they are increasing over time is climate change,” said Erich Marzoff, the district’s director for water and land resources. “We just don’t have the frequency of hard freezes that we have had in past decades.”

The well documented rise in Florida temperatures has been particularly meaningful for the state’s warming winters, which has ushered a northern migration of aquatic plants, including mangroves, and fish, including snook, that aren’t particularly cold hardy.

Central Florida is a tipping point between freezes that rarely occur in South Florida and still occur somewhat often in North Florida.

Even in North Florida, however, tilapia and armor catfish have an increasing impact on the St. Johns River near Jacksonville.

Those exotic fish are “contributing to the decimation of eel grass that has been weakened by saltwater intrusion and more frequent hurricanes,” said Lisa Rinaman, leader of the environmental group St. Johns Riverkeeper.

To some extent, natives have learned to take advantage of or at least entertain themselves with the invaders, said Doug Sphar, a resident of Lake Poinsett, which is next to Lake Winder, and a longtime contributor to Florida’s environment.

“Tilapia are keeping the gators fat and happy,” Sphar said. “I often see and hear them taking on a big tilapia. They seem to play around with them like a dog with a new chew toy. I also see gators taking on armored catfish.”

Hyle said a major cold snap in 2010 massacred tilapia and armor catfish along the St. Johns River in Central Florida.

“The kill was extensive,” Hyle said. “It was amazing to go out on the St. Johns after that happened and go ‘wow, that’s how many of these things were out here.’”

For tilapia and armored catfish, lethal water temperatures start at the low 50s. They are more suited for tropical conditions of where they came from – waters of the Nile and Amazon river systems.

Fish are given a lot of different common names by nonscientists. The armored catfish netted in Lake Winder are called that because of their impressive scales. While cold wimps, they otherwise are tough as nails and can survive out of water for hours.

Two types of armor catfish were hauled in and they aren’t closely related.

One was the brown hoplo that can grow to about 10 inches in length. They nest by chewing vegetation into foamy spit balls that cradle eggs.

Largemouth bass and snook eat hoplos, which, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissioner, also are “highly sought after as food by Floridians with cultural ties to Trinidad and parts of South America.”

Of the more than 1,000 pounds of brown hoplos netted by the researchers, they were quickly sold for $3.50 a pound.

The other armored catfish, a kind often seen in always-warm springs, such as Wekiwa and Blue in Central Florida, is sometimes referred to as a pleco, for plecostomus, a popular aquarium species.

They aren’t actually a pleco, a rather small fish, Hyer said. They are a vermiculated sailfin catfish, he said, which can grow to 20 inches and 3 pounds, which is why they have been dumped by aquarium hobbyists into lakes and rivers.

In Texas and Mexico, vermiculated sailfin catfish sometimes are called devil fish.

The research crew brought in 9,000 pounds of the fish. There is no market for them. Some were hauled to a landfill and others were released back to the river.

In public presentations on the Lake Winder findings, the water district has included the popularly known name of pleco and the attention-getting name of devil fish.

Also from the Lake Winder study, nearly 23,000 pounds of tilapia were sold for 58 a cent a pound.

Devil fish bore holes into river banks to nest. Tilapia dig potholes along river bottoms, leaving what looks like a moonscape of craters.

Both nesting behaviors are thought to stir up sediment and dislodge aquatic plants.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on its website still describes devil fish, or vermiculated sailfin catfish as “occasionally found in Center Florida.”

“We really had no idea,” said Marzoff of the water district’s understanding of armor catfish populations in its flagship water body, the St. Johns River. “We suspected they were moving north and we had no good recent data.”

Along with pursuing research on the harm caused by the invading fish, the water district also is contemplating a remedy like one long implemented at Lake Apopka to get rid of a trash fish called gizzard shad that has a role in exacerbating water pollution.

The water district invites commercial crews to net as many Apopka shad as they can, which are sold typically as crab bait to offset the cost of removing the fish.

A public-private partnership like that may work to get rid of tilapia and armored catfish in the St. Johns River, Marzoff said. “We may not have to pay a whole lot.”

 The ChatGPT chatbot is blowing people away with its writing skills. An expert explains why it’s so impressive

The Conversation
December 07, 2022

Shutterstock

We’ve all had some kind of interaction with a chatbot. It’s usually a little pop-up in the corner of a website, offering customer support – often clunky to navigate – and almost always frustratingly non-specific.

But imagine a chatbot, enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI), that can not only expertly answer your questions, but also write stories, give life advice, even compose poems and code computer programs.

It seems ChatGPT, a chatbot released last week by OpenAI, is delivering on these outcomes. It has generated much excitement, and some have gone as far as to suggest it could signal a future in which AI has dominion over human content producers.

What has ChatGPT done to herald such claims? And how might it (and its future iterations) become indispensable in our daily lives?

What can ChatGPT do?

ChatGPT builds on OpenAI’s previous text generator, GPT-3. OpenAI builds its text-generating models by using machine-learning algorithms to process vast amounts of text data, including books, news articles, Wikipedia pages and millions of websites.

By ingesting such large volumes of data, the models learn the complex patterns and structure of language and acquire the ability to interpret the desired outcome of a user’s request.


ChatGPT can build a sophisticated and abstract representation of the knowledge in the training data, which it draws on to produce outputs. This is why it writes relevant content, and doesn’t just spout grammatically correct nonsense.

While GPT-3 was designed to continue a text prompt, ChatGPT is optimized to conversationally engage, answer questions and be helpful. Here’s an example:




A screenshot from the ChatGPT interface as it explains the Turing test.

ChatGPT immediately grabbed my attention by correctly answering exam questions I’ve asked my undergraduate and postgraduate students, including questions requiring coding skills. Other academics have had similar results.

In general, it can provide genuinely informative and helpful explanations on a broad range of topics.




ChatGPT can even answer questions about philosophy.

ChatGPT is also potentially useful as a writing assistant. It does a decent job drafting text and coming up with seemingly “original” ideas.




ChatGPT can give the impression of brainstorming ‘original’ ideas.
The power of feedback


Why does ChatGPT seem so much more capable than some of its past counterparts? A lot of this probably comes down to how it was trained.

During its development ChatGPT was shown conversations between human AI trainers to demonstrate desired behaviour. Although there’s a similar model trained in this way, called InstructGPT, ChatGPT is the first popular model to use this method.

And it seems to have given it a huge leg-up. Incorporating human feedback has helped steer ChatGPT in the direction of producing more helpful responses and rejecting inappropriate requests.




ChatGPT often rejects inappropriate requests by design.

Refusing to entertain inappropriate inputs is a particularly big step towards improving the safety of AI text generators, which can otherwise produce harmful content, including bias and stereotypes, as well as fake news, spam, propaganda and false reviews.


Past text-generating models have been criticized for regurgitating gender, racial and cultural biases contained in training data. In some cases, ChatGPT successfully avoids reinforcing such stereotypes.



In many cases ChatGPT avoids reinforcing harmful stereotypes. In this list of software engineers it presents both male- and female-sounding names (albeit all are very Western).


Nevertheless, users have already found ways to evade its existing safeguards and produce biased responses.

The fact that the system often accepts requests to write fake content is further proof that it needs refinement.




Despite its safeguards, ChatGPT can still be misused.

Overcoming limitations

ChatGPT is arguably one of the most promising AI text generators, but it’s not free from errors and limitations. For instance, programming advice platform Stack Overflow temporarily banned answers by the chatbot for a lack of accuracy.

One practical problem is that ChatGPT’s knowledge is static; it doesn’t access new information in real time.

However, its interface does allow users to give feedback on the model’s performance by indicating ideal answers, and reporting harmful, false or unhelpful responses.

OpenAI intends to address existing problems by incorporating this feedback into the system. The more feedback users provide, the more likely ChatGPT will be to decline requests leading to an undesirable output.

One possible improvement could come from adding a “confidence indicator” feature based on user feedback. This tool, which could be built on top of ChatGPT, would indicate the model’s confidence in the information it provides – leaving it to the user to decide whether they use it or not. Some question-answering systems already do this.
A new tool, but not a human replacement

Despite its limitations, ChatGPT works surprisingly well for a prototype.

From a research point of view, it marks an advancement in the development and deployment of human-aligned AI systems. On the practical side, it’s already effective enough to have some everyday applications.

It could, for instance, be used as an alternative to Google. While a Google search requires you to sift through a number of websites and dig deeper yet to find the desired information, ChatGPT directly answers your question – and often does this well.



ChatGPT (left) may in some cases prove to be a better way to find quick answers than Google search.

Also, with feedback from users and a more powerful GPT-4 model coming up, ChatGPT may significantly improve in the future. As ChatGPT and other similar chatbots become more popular, they’ll likely have applications in areas such as education and customer service.

However, while ChatGPT may end up performing some tasks traditionally done by people, there’s no sign it will replace professional writers any time soon.

While they may impress us with their abilities and even their apparent creativity, AI systems remain a reflection of their training data – and do not have the same capacity for originality and critical thinking as humans do.

Marcel Scharth, Lecturer in Business Analytics, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Op Eds

Why Using ChatGPT to Write this Op-Ed Was a Smart Idea

By Christos Porios, Contributing Opinion Writer

Harvard Crimson
December 9, 2022


Editor’s note: The following op-ed was entirely written and edited by ChatGPT, a recently released artificial intelligence language model that is available for anyone to use. No manual edits were made; all changes were made by the author and op-eds editor providing feedback to ChatGPT on the drafts it generated.

— Guillermo S. Hava and Eleanor V. Wikstrom, Editorial Chairs

— Raquel Coronell Uribe, President

As students, we are constantly challenged to produce high-quality written work. From papers to presentations, our assignments require extensive research and careful analysis. But what if there was a tool that could help us with these tasks and make the learning experience even better?

Enter ChatGPT, the helpful (and maybe even self-aware) language model trained by OpenAI. With its ability to generate human-like text based on a prompt, ChatGPT can be a valuable asset for any type of written work. In fact, this very op-ed was written with the help of ChatGPT!

Using ChatGPT for written assignments does not mean that students are taking shortcuts or avoiding the hard work of learning. In fact, it can help students develop their writing skills and deepen their understanding of the subject matter. By providing suggestions and ideas, ChatGPT can serve as a virtual writing coach, guiding students as they craft their own original work.

But what about the issue of authorship? Isn't using ChatGPT like copying someone else's work? Not at all. Copying is the act of reproducing someone else’s work without giving credit. When using ChatGPT, students are still required to do the intellectual parts of their own research, analysis, and writing to provide the necessary input for the tool to generate text. These are the parts of the writing process that require critical thinking, creativity, and insight, and they are the key to producing high-quality work. ChatGPT is a tool to assist in these tasks, rather than replacing them entirely.

The concept of authorship is complex and often misunderstood. At its core, authorship is about the creation of original ideas and the expression of those ideas in a unique and individual voice. When using ChatGPT, students are still responsible for their own ideas and voice. The tool simply helps them organize and present their thoughts in a more effective way. In fact, using ChatGPT can actually help students better maintain their own authorship by providing them with a tool to support their writing and avoid potential pitfalls such as plagiarism.

Some may argue that using a tool like ChatGPT stifles creativity. However, using ChatGPT can actually support and enhance creativity in the same way that a camera can in the art of photography. Just as a camera allows a photographer to capture and manipulate light and shadow to create a unique image, ChatGPT allows a writer to capture and manipulate words and ideas to create a unique piece of writing. Traditional writing without the aid of ChatGPT can be compared to painting, where the writer must carefully craft each word and sentence by hand. In contrast, using ChatGPT is like using a camera to quickly and easily capture and organize ideas, allowing the writer to focus on the creative aspects of their work.

It is important to remember that ChatGPT is a tool, not a replacement for the hard work of learning. As with any new tool, there will always be those who are skeptical or hesitant to embrace it. Some professors in academia may view the use of ChatGPT in written assignments as cheating. However, this is a misguided perspective. Using ChatGPT is no different from using a thesaurus to find more interesting words or using a dictionary to check the definition of a word. These tools are essential for the writing process and can help students reach their full potential in their writing.

The widespread use of Google searches has revolutionized the way students conduct research. In the same way, using ChatGPT can revolutionize the way students write. It offers a new and powerful tool that can support the learning process and help students produce their best work. So let's embrace this new technology and see what it can do for us. After all, if ChatGPT can come up with a catchy title like this one, just imagine what it can do for your next paper!

Christos Porios is a first-year Master in Public Policy student at the Harvard Kennedy School.

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/12/as-chatbot-sophistication-grows-ai.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-new-human-like-chatbot-chatgpt-says.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/12/chatgpt-is-astonishing-but-human-jobs.html

SCI FI TECH
How far has nuclear fusion power come? We could be at a turning point for the technology

The Conversation
December 07, 2022

Nuclear fusion is what generates the energy of the sun: scientists are getting closer to controlling a sustained fusion reaction on Earth. Marko Aliaksandr/Shutterstock

Our society faces the grand challenge of providing sustainable, secure and affordable means of generating energy, while trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to net zero around 2050.

To date, developments in fusion power, which potentially ticks all these boxes, have been funded almost exclusively by the public sector. However, something is changing.

Private equity investment in the global fusion industry has more than doubled in just one year – from US$2.1 billion in 2021 to US$4.7 billion in 2022, according to a survey from the Fusion Industry Association.

So, what is driving this recent change? There’s lots to be excited about.

Before we explore that, let’s take a quick detour to recap what fusion power is.
Merging atoms together

Fusion works the same way our Sun does, by merging two heavy hydrogen atoms under extreme heat and pressure to release vast amounts of energy.

It’s the opposite of the fission process used by nuclear power plants, in which atoms are split to release large amounts of energy.

Sustaining nuclear fusion at scale has the potential to produce a safe, clean, almost inexhaustible power source.

Our Sun sustains fusion at its core with a plasma of charged particles at around 15 million degrees Celsius. Down on Earth, we are aiming for hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius, because we don’t have the enormous mass of the Sun compressing the fuel down for us.

Scientists and engineers have worked out several designs for how we might achieve this, but most fusion reactors use strong magnetic fields to “bottle” and confine the hot plasma.


A donut-shaped magnetic confinement device called a tokamak is one of the leading designs for a working fusion power generator, with many such experiments running worldwide. Christopher Roux, EUROfusion Consortium, CC BY

Generally, the main challenge to overcome on our road to commercial fusion power is to provide environments that can contain the intense burning plasma needed to produce a fusion reaction that is self-sustaining, producing more energy than was needed to get it started.
Joining the public and private

Fusion development has been progressing since the 1950s. Most of it was driven by government funding for fundamental science.

Now, a growing number of private fusion companies around the world are forging ahead towards commercial fusion energy. A change in government attitudes has been crucial to this.

The US and UK governments are fostering public-private partnerships to complement their strategic research programs.

For example, the White House recently announced it would develop a “bold decadal vision for commercial fusion energy”.

In the United Kingdom, the government has invested in a program aimed at connecting a fusion generator to the national electricity grid.

The technology has actually advanced, too

In addition to public-private resourcing, the technologies we need for fusion plants have come along in leaps and bounds.

In 2021, MIT scientists and Commonwealth Fusion Systems developed a record-breaking magnet that will allow them to build a compact fusion device called SPARC “that is substantially smaller, lower cost, and on a faster timeline”.

In recent years, several fusion experiments have also reached the all-important milestone of sustaining plasma temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius or above. These include the EAST experiment in China, Korea’s flagship experiment KSTAR, and UK-based company Tokamak Energy.

These incredible feats demonstrate an unprecedented ability to replicate conditions found inside our Sun and keep extremely hot plasma trapped long enough to encourage fusion to occur.

In February, the Joint European Torus – the world’s most powerful operational tokamak – announced world-record energy confinement.

And the next-step fusion energy experiment to demonstrate net power gain, ITER, is under construction in France and now about 80% complete.

Magnets aren’t the only path to fusion either. In November 2021, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved a historic step forward for inertial confinement fusion.

By focusing nearly 200 powerful lasers to confine and compress a target the size of a pencil’s eraser, they produced a small fusion “hot spot” generating fusion energy over a short time period.

In Australia, a company called HB11 is developing proton-boron fusion technology through a combination of high-powered lasers and magnetic fields.
Fusion and renewables can go hand in hand

It is crucial that investment in fusion is not at the cost of other forms of renewable energy and the transition away from fossil fuels.

We can afford to expand adoption of current renewable energy technology like solar, wind, and pumped hydro while also developing next-generation solutions for electricity production.

This exact strategy was outlined recently by the United States in its Net-Zero Game Changers Initiative. In this plan, resource investment will be targeted to developing a path to rapid decarbonization in parallel with the commercial development of fusion.

History shows us that incredible scientific and engineering progress is possible when we work together with the right resources – the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines is just one recent example.

It is clear many scientists, engineers, and now governments and private investors (and even fashion designers) have decided fusion energy is a solution worth pursuing, not a pipe dream. Right now, it’s the best shot we’ve yet had to make fusion power a viable reality.

Nathan Garland, Lecturer in Applied Mathematics and Physics, Griffith University and Matthew Hole, Senior Research Fellow, Mathematical Sciences Institute, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The disturbing truth about phony conservative victimhood

Amanda Marcotte, Salon
December 08, 2022

The friend of a gun violence victim lights candles in front of a portrait during a vigil for the victims of a mass shooting that killed five people at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado

How on earth did Anderson Lee Aldrich have a gun? That's one of the biggest questions lingering in the aftermath of the shooting at Club Q on November 19. On December 6, Aldrich was formally charged on 305 separate criminal counts after a shooting left five people dead and 22 injured, all staff and customers at an establishment that has been characterized as a "sanctuary" for LGBTQ people in the largely conservative community of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Despite conservatives seizing on Aldrich's lawyers saying the defendant is nonbinary in a court filing, the Republican district attorney, Michael Allen, included 48 counts of bias-motivated crimes in the charges.

This was not Aldrich's first brush with the law, though the word "brush" really underplays what allegedly happened in June 2021. Stories have trickled out of Colorado for a couple of weeks now, but on Wednesday the Associated Press released a stunning, in-depth report that should raise the question of why Aldrich had been allowed to own guns.

"You guys die today and I'm taking you with me," they quoted Aldrich as saying. "I'm loaded and ready."

So began a day of terror Aldrich unleashed in June 2021 that, according to sealed law enforcement documents verified by The Associated Press, brought SWAT teams and the bomb squad to a normally quiet Colorado Springs neighborhood, forced the grandparents to flee for their lives and prompted the evacuation of 10 nearby homes to escape a possible bomb blast. It culminated in a standoff that the then-21-year-old livestreamed on Facebook, showing Aldrich in tactical gear inside the mother's home and threatening officers outside — "If they breach, I'm a f----ing blow it to holy hell!" — before finally surrendering.

An extensive search of the home afterward found bomb-making materials, according to the report. Aldrich, who the report says claimed to want to be "the next mass killer," was arrested by the El Paso County Sheriff's office and charged with three felony counts of kidnapping and four other charges. Then, for reasons still unknown, the charges were dropped. According to the AP report, there is no record of law enforcement requesting a court order to seize any guns Aldrich possessed under Colorado's "red flag" law that allows the sheriff's office, among others, to do so in the face of a violent threat, even if there are no criminal charges. While those seizures are temporary, the court can be petitioned to extend them, and such a move could have kept Aldrich on the radar of law enforcement.

"Red flag" laws are, in reality, a very modest gun reform. But the NRA has gone out of its way to paint the laws as a liberal conspiracy against gun rights. When Colorado passed its own version of the law in 2020, El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder tried to make himself a face of this narrative, painting gun owners as the "real" victims. Republicans in El Paso County declared themselves a "Second Amendment Sanctuary" and Elder went on "60 Minutes" to brag about how he would not enforce the provision. He has even threatened to challenge "the constitutionality of this law."

We don't know why the red flag law was not invoked in Aldrich's case. But the habit conservatives have of casting themselves as victims and the actual victimization of LGBTQ people are not unrelated. Those who are so caught up in self-pity over imaginary politicized slights often can't — or won't — see how they are contributing to a climate conducive to actual violence and abuse directed at queer people

That's been most evident in the rise of the despicable "groomer" accusation levied against LGBTQ people and allies. Popular right propagandists like the Libs of TikTok Twitter account and Fox News have equated expression of LGBTQ identities with "grooming" children as if simply being gay and being around kids is the same as manipulating children to make them easier to abuse. False claims that conservatives are trying to "protect" children from "grooming" have been made as grounds for violent protests at drag shows and legalizing discrimination against LGBTQ people. Most notable is the "don't say gay" law in Florida, in which vague wording about "instruction" on "sexual orientation or gender identity" scares both teachers and students into staying closeted at school.

In the world of psychology, there's a term for a strategy domestic abusers use against victims: "DARVO," which is short for "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender." This also describes the rhetorical strategies the right uses when justifying bigoted or dangerous rhetoric or behavior. The "groomer" lie is a classic example. Wallowing in DARVO too long can distort a person's view of reality. It can even recast a person who allegedly claimed to want to be a mass killer as a potential victim of would-be gun grabbers.

On Monday, the Supreme Court bore witness to how bizarre and delusional this brand of conservative self-pity can get. It started with the case itself, 303 Creative v. Elenis, in which a Colorado website designer is challenging the state's anti-discrimination law on the grounds that she might want to tell a gay couple she won't make a wedding website for them. Never mind that no one has actually hired her to do such a thing or complained about her for not doing it. She doesn't even make wedding websites. Such is the level of anti-LGBTQ victim-tripping — they're now invoking imaginary gay couples to argue against in fantasy scenarios. (For more on why this case is so stupid it shouldn't have even gotten to the Supreme Court, read Mark Joseph Stern's story at Slate.)

During arguments, Justice Samuel Alito, always eager to troll, started to spool out hypothetical examples of how anti-discrimination laws could harm people he imagines liberals care about, such as, uh, "Black Santa."

"If there's a Black Santa at the other end of the mall and he doesn't want to have his picture taken with a child who's dressed up in a Ku Klux Klan outfit, that Black Santa has to do that?" Alito asked the Colorado solicitor general.

Any lawyer could tell you the question is painfully stupid. As the Colorado solicitor general reminded Alito, "Ku Klux Klan outfits are not protected characteristics under public accommodation laws" while sexual orientation is. Alito tried to cover up his error with a gross joke about "Black children in Ku Klux Klan outfits," but it was too late. He had gone on record equating gay couples planning a wedding with people in KKK outfits harassing a Black Santa.

Alliance Defending Freedom, the anti-LGBTQ group behind this lawsuit, is trying to portray it as a case about harmless protection for "sincerely religious" people. And yet arguments swiftly arrived at a conservative judge equating LGBTQ people simply living their lives with people dressed in white supremacist terrorist group uniforms. Talk about reversing victim and offender.

That's why the outcome of this case could have dangerous ramifications, well beyond the seemingly narrow question of whether creative professionals can decline to do work for same-sex weddings. It feeds into a larger false Republican narrative casting bigotry as victimhood at the hands of a supposed "woke" conspiracy of overbearing LGBTQ people who are somehow harming conservatives by performing in or hosting drag shows, getting married, or just living out of the closet. And that rhetoric in turn helps to fuel a rising tide of actual victimization of LGBTQ people, allies and bystanders.

As Vice reports, armed militias like the Proud Boys or Patriot Front "in at least four states mobilized to shut down and intimidate events involving drag queens over the weekend." In Louisiana, a tipline is open for people to report librarians for having books with LGBTQ characters on the shelves. In California, a gay state senator reported being targeted by a bomb threat by people calling him a "groomer."

There's nothing new about Republicans playing the victim as cover for their own poor behavior, but it's safe to say the tendency has grown worse in the past few years under the leadership of Donald Trump, who is perhaps the whiniest fake victim in the country. We're subject to weekly, often daily, rants from Trump about how he's a victim, often when he's being criticized or is the subject legal inquiries into his various schemes to victimize others, from election officials to the president of Ukraine. In the era of rising hate crimes against LGBTQ people, phony conservative self-pity is more than just gross. It's undermining public safety.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Editorial: Radicalization for all: German coup plot shows power of online conspiracies

2022/12/09

Police stand outside a residence that they raided on Dec. 7, 2022, in Berlin, Germany.

 - Carsten Koall/Getty Images North America/TNS

A secret group of German ultranationalists being arrested after plotting to overthrow the government, murder the chancellor and install a monarch is a situation you might expect to find in a 19th or 20th century history textbook, not contemporary headlines.

Yet in these strange times we live in, exactly that happened this week as German police arrested 25 people of a roughly 50-member group of fanatics bent on reestablishing a state modeled around the nation’s Second Reich, under Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck. Better that than the Third Reich under you know who. All hail the descendant of a former noble family calling himself Prince Heinrich XIII.

There are plenty of crackpot groups out there, but this one set itself apart by having members as prominent as the aristocratic Heinrich and a former German federal legislator, military officers and reservists, and plans already drawn out for the new state they would supposedly create. Most alarming though, were the ideological motivations of some of the adherents; according to prosecutors, in addition to the homegrown Reichsbürger movement, members were driven by COVID conspiracy theories that first took hold in the U.S. and the all-American QAnon conspiracy.

While we often talk about the risk of political violence posed by dangerous disinformation and conspiracy-mongering here, it’s worth remembering that this noxious cultural export, driven largely by U.S.-based social media companies and often trialed on U.S. audiences, is driving a risk of extremist violence everywhere.

QAnon began as a series of obscure postings on the far-right message board 4chan, growing out of earlier Pizzagate theories about a supposed cabal secretly controlling U.S. and global institutions. Now, this one bizarre movement is getting warped into whatever local flavor is most appealing and radicalizing people into violence, highlighting the fact that content moderation and efforts to combat the spread of disinformation online have global implications. The reckless actions of tech titans like new Twitter owner Elon Musk have consequences around the world, and they should have to answer for that.

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