Energy, History, Security

Rivian penalized for price hike as market awards Tesla “prize” for price hike

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File this one under why markets clearly are not even close to rational.

Here’s one headline from March:

Tesla raises prices across entire range

The March 15th price hikes are purely speculative to “protect” the company from consumers demanding value from cars sometime in the future.

The price increases are designed to cover higher costs for the next six to 12 months, which protects Tesla on orders for cars that it may not deliver for a year.

That’s a form of speculative/misleading surge pricing linked to stress, which Uber and Lyft have been criticized for years and still haven’t figured out as immoral.

…in the wake of the shooting, fare prices quoted by rideshare companies had skyrocketed due to understandably increased demand. […] Surge pricing spiked after a bomb in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan injured dozens in 2016; in Sydney, Australia during a 16-hour hostage crisis in 2014; in London after a vehicle was deliberately driven into a crowd of pedestrians in 2017; and in 2020 after eight people were shot in downtown Seattle, leaving one dead.

The basic calculus here is when companies try to benefit themselves as others are experiencing higher risk, it’s a form of gouging (the kind condemned throughout the COVID19 pandemic, or that Texas wealth depends upon).

In theory someone can’t ethically spike prices for bread after an earthquake just because speculation that people in panic/desperation can be coerced to pay more.

It’s a different story when higher supply prices in the past force a change to production costs, given actual explainable inputs instead of gambling on opaquely speculative futures.

Now here’s another headline, this time in April

Tesla snatches coveted relic from GM and Ford

Coveted relic? Just call it a prize. The news here is that Ford saw its value drop precipitously when it announced a price increase in just one car model.

Ford’s stake in Rivian was valued at $5.1 billion on March 31, down from $10.6 billion at the end of 2021, the company said. The young electric vehicle manufacturer had a very difficult start to the year, marked by major difficulties in managing increases in production rates and a PR crisis after a controversial rise in the prices of its vehicles. Rivian shares thus lost 51.5% of their value between December 31 and March 31.

Tesla somehow boosted its value by doing the same thing that dramatically lowered Ford’s valuation. Right?

Moreover, Tesla announced their March price hike as some kind of toxic mockery tactic a week after they watched Rivian declare it cared about trust and would roll-back its price hike.

Rivian is rolling back price hikes on preordered vehicles following backlash from its customers. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe apologized to customers in a letter published Thursday. “I have made a lot of mistakes since starting Rivian more than 12 years ago, but this one has been the most painful. I am truly sorry,” Scaringe wrote.

The CEO of Rivian talks about pain, about caring for people and losing trust. These are concepts obviously completely alien to the CEO of Tesla, which has produced a car killing more people at a faster rate than any competitor.

It reminds me of how Ford himself in the early days became successful being a horrible fascist-loving racist who lied and stole from others, inspiring men like Hitler and Goebbels to be even crueler. He was a horrible human in so many ways there’s never enough time to document it all.

Like who really talks about Ford taking millions of dollars from the U.S. government to deliver “tractors” during WWI and… just walking away with the money delivering zero product (Ford favored Germany and took orders without delivering product in order to help sabotage Americans supporting Britain).

The Ford Motor Co., according to the War Department, received from Wilson’s administration $249,000 for tools which were never delivered. I suppose Henry has them yet. He also has the money, unless he spent it on this election. The Ford Motor Co., for tractors: Number delivered, none. Amount paid, $1,299,000. Where are those tractors? They might be converted into golden chariots, for all I know. The Ford Motor Co., for spare parts: Number delivered, none. Amount paid, $5,517,000.

The American car-maker supporting the wrong side during war was no real secret. In 1922 the New York Times profiled Adolf Hitler who said a picture of Henry Ford was hanging on the wall of his Munich office.

The wall beside his desk in Hitler’s private office is decorated with a large picture of Henry Ford. In the ante-chamber there is a large table covered with books, nearly all of which are a translation of a book written and published by Henry Ford. If you ask one of Hitler’s underlings for the reason of Ford’s popularity in these circles he will smile knowingly but say nothing.

Translation of “a book”? Come on, just say the title.

Source: Wikipedia

Goebbels literally cites Ford’s writing and publications for his own anti-semitism.

Ford’s own attitudes towards Jews were the major reason for the publication of “The International Jew.” His anti-Semitic beliefs formed along several strands from his upbringing, attitudes, and personal beliefs.

No wonder in 1925 Hitler mentioned only one American in his autobiography (Mein Kampf): Henry Ford.

Perhaps the real rationalization then of what makes Tesla so loved by completely unregulated investors is being more Ford than even Henry Ford: a company consistently awful to the planet, accusations of racism piling up, its staff and customers trying to rapidly dump poor quality products and only increasing pain?

Honestly that really does sound like Ford, but begs the question of how soon before Tesla will have its necessary Pinto/Bronco market reaction moment. How many Tesla must catch on fire, how many people dead?

We’ve all known for years that ALL the Tesla models are unsafe at any speed.

The CEO of Tesla does in fact seem to exhibit Ford-like “permanent improvisation” (abuse of trust) that signals fascism, and he repeatedly makes only positive Hitler references.

What kind of prize are we really talking about here?

Security

Facebook’s Meta Algorithms Harming Children by Pushing Toxic Content

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A new report reveals how easy it is to prove “Meta” business logic intentionally harms children

“One of the things I was struck by was how profoundly easy it was to identify this pro–eating-disorder bubble,” said Rys Farthing, data policy director at the advocacy group Reset Australia and the leader of the research.

Farthing said that exposure to the content was primarily driven by Instagram’s suggestions about which users to follow. Test accounts that expressed an interest in weight loss or disordered eating were quickly flooded with recommendations from the platform to follow other users with these interests, including those that openly encourage disordered eating.

The most telling part is two-fold. First, Facebook tries to undermine trust in journalists, as I’ve written about before here. Their official response cited in the article is to allege that people reporting on harm to children don’t understand what it’s really like to be inside Facebook trying to profit on harm to children.

Second, the researcher here in fact says the exact opposite of what’s being alleged — he’s in the business of putting himself out of business. He understands exactly why Facebook’s business model is so toxic.

Researchers, journalists, and advocates have been raising alarms about disordered eating content on Instagram for years, culminating in fall 2021 when internal Facebook documents provided by whistleblower Frances Haugen showed that Instagram led teen girls to feel worse about their bodies. This new report shows that Meta’s struggles to curb this kind of harm are still ongoing.

But Farthing and others hope change may be around the corner: US Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn recently introduced the Kids Online Safety Act, which would create a duty for platforms to “act in the best interests of a minor” using their services. The California legislature is considering a similar provision, modeled after the UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code, that would require companies to consider children’s “best interests” when building or modifying their algorithms.

“If we can muster the courage to actually hold tech companies to account, we could get some of this legislation through,” Farthing said. “And maybe when we have this conversation next year, I might actually have put myself out of business.”

Think hard about that contrast in integrity of work.

Then think hard about the fact that Facebook has attracted far more illegal child sexual abuse images than any other platform — last year alone nearly 30 million reports.

As a platform claiming to be advanced, they instead are using obviously outdated methods and unethical practices that only invite more abuse and harm. Other tech companies take the exact opposite approach from Facebook because any images they are unsure about are reported to be investigated further, putting society and safety first over profits.

For example Facebook is known to be classifying millions of abused children as adults because they see it as a loophole to avoid the cost of protection — treat a 13-year-old as “fully-developed” to lower reporting levels. Facebook moderators have literally complained they have been pressured to “bump up” children to adult class or face negative performance reviews. This nonetheless backfires since it represents an invitation for child abusers to flock onto the platform, increasing levels of abuse images to exploit what seems to be ongoing willful ignorance and toxicity of Facebook management.

History, Security

Subtle Tweak to AI Blows Up Missile Accuracy Test

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This article saying the USAF is concerned about narrow definitions of success is a great read.

In a recent test, an experimental target recognition program performed well when all of the conditions were perfect, but a subtle tweak sent its performance into a dramatic nosedive,

Maj. Gen. Daniel Simpson, assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, said on Monday.

Initially, the AI was fed data from a sensor that looked for a single surface-to-surface missile at an oblique angle, Simpson said. Then it was fed data from another sensor that looked for multiple missiles at a near-vertical angle.

“What a surprise: the algorithm did not perform well. It actually was accurate maybe about 25 percent of the time,” he said.

It reminds me of 1960s IGLOO WHITE accuracy reports, let alone smart bombs of the Korean War, and how poorly general success criteria were defined (e.g. McNamara’s views on AI and the Fog of War).

Security

Twitter as Bully Pulpit: “political right enjoys higher amplification compared to the political left”

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A report from December 2021 factors into the reasons political right groups pushed Elon Musk to take over Twitter and privatize it to help them silence the political left:

Politicians and commentators from all sides allege that Twitter’s algorithms amplify their opponents’ voices, or silence theirs. Policy makers and researchers have thus called for increased transparency on how algorithms influence exposure to political content on the platform. Based on a massive-scale experiment involving millions of Twitter users, a fine-grained analysis of political parties in seven countries, and 6.2 million news articles shared in the United States, this study carries out the most comprehensive audit of an algorithmic recommender system and its effects on political content. Results unveil that the political right enjoys higher amplification compared to the political left.

In other words, a political right is operating on zero sum communication theory. When someone who disagrees with them is able to speak, the political right believes their own rights are being suppressed. Civil rights for all humans is treated as a loss to white nationalism, which rejects the idea of others having equality to them.

This helps explain the weird phenomenon where the political right get more leeway on Twitter than others to spread harm at the same time complaining that they are being over-censored. They want opponents silenced and until that happens they will argue that they are being censored by the very presence of any opposition.

If Martin Luther King were on Twitter today the political right would surely argue that until his account is completely silenced they will not be satisfied, much in the same way Tesla has told its black staff to “be more thick skinned” about abuse at work or quit.