Niall Ferguson is a conservative British historian who teaches at both Oxford and Stanford, where he chaired a right-wing lecture series called Cardinal Conversations. Read the rest
Aaron Persky, the California judge who let rapist Brock Turner off with a 6-month term in county jail, was removed from a new case Tuesday after prosecutors complained they lacked confidence in him.
"We lack confidence that Judge (Aaron) Persky can fairly participate in this upcoming hearing in which a male nurse sexually assaulted an anesthetised female patient," Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. He called the move "rare and carefully considered". ...
Stacey Capps, chief trial deputy for the District Attorney's office, said the new case was reassigned to another judge and a hearing was held on Tuesday afternoon. She said that the victim was "particularly vulnerable" factored into the move. Capps said in the new case, Cecil Webb stands accused of touching the vagina and breast of a woman who was anesthetised ahead of a surgery at a Santa Clara hospital in November 2014.
Rosen, though disagreeing with Turner's sentence, earlier backed the judge against criticism of his impartiality. But now he, too, is a critic of his impartiality. Read the rest
In a pre-sentencing letter to the judge released today by the New York Times, convicted rapist Brock Turner fails to own any responsibility for raping an unconscious woman behind a trash dumpster on Jan. 17, 2015. Turner's plea letter reads like a laundry list of white male privilege lost. It touched the white male judge in all the right places. Turner begs for leniency in his letter, and he got it. Read the rest
I love it when nature inspires technology. A group of researchers has developed a glove that will allow humans to stick to and scale walls. This bit of amazingness is being modeled on the feet of geckos.
Unlike tree frogs, whose sticky toe pads give these amphibians the ability to cling to surfaces, gecko toes instead use friction created by microscopic hair-like structures called setae that hold up the animal's body weight.
This adaptation has been studied before, but so far physics and gravity have prevented any practical application for human use. We're simply too large and heavy. That has all changed now based on the work of Michael Elliot Hawks of Stanford University, who has developed a synthetic nano-fiber "setae" that can hold the weight of a human.
If and when these become available to the public, I'm definitely adding them to my wish list! Read the rest
In MetaPhone: The Sensitivity of Telephone Metadata a pair of Stanford researchers recruited test-subjects who were willing to install spyware on their phones that logged the same "metadata" that the NSA harvests -- and that the NSA and President Obama claims is not sensitive or privacy-invading. The researchers applied basic analytics to the data and uncovered -- surprise! -- incredibly compromising information about the personal lives, health, and finances of their subjects, just by looking at metadata. What's more, harvesting the subjects' metadata also revealed sensitive information about the subjects' contacts' lives. (via Techdirt) Read the rest
I'm late getting to this (my own fault, I missed an important email), but We: Robot, the Robotics and the Law Conference at Stanford Law School is still accepting papers until Jan 18. Last year's event was apparently smashing, and this year's CFP is quite enticing:
The following list is by no means exhaustive, but rather meant as an elaboration on conference themes:
* Legal and policy responses to likely effects of robotics on manufacturing or the environment* Perspectives on the interplay between legal frameworks and robotic software and hardware* Intellectual property issues raised by collaboration within robotics (or with robots)* Perspectives on collaboration between legal and technical communities* Tort law issues, including product liability, professional malpractice, and the calculation of damages* Administrative law issues, including FDA or FAA approval* Privacy law and privacy enhancing technologies* Comparative/international perspectives on robotics law* Issues of legal and economic policy, including tax, employment, and corporate governance
In addition to scholarly papers, we invite proposals for demos of cutting-edge commercial applications of robotics or recent technical research that speaks one way or another to the immediate commercial prospects of robots.
Call For Papers: Robotics and the Law Conference at Stanford Law School Read the rest
Ryan Calo sends his call for papers for a Stanford Law School conference on robotics and the law.
"This is our second year---the first conference took place in Miami. This year's focus is on legal and policy issues surrounding the immediate commercial prospects of robotics, including personal robots, drones, driverless cars, telepresence, and robotic surgery. We're calling it 'We Robot: Getting Down To Business.'
The program committee, which consists of both law professors and roboticists, seeks submissions on a range of topics of relevance to the burgeoning robotics industry, as well as demos of robot prototypes or products. Legal scholars and technologists alike are warmly welcome to submit papers and/or attend. Hope to see you there!"
Call For Papers: Robotics and the Law Conference at Stanford Law School Read the rest
