For modern structures, fast forward time where my house is by 2k years and the most likely way to ID this as a homesite would be what's left of the concrete foundation. Which would be buried in fill and possibly broken as part of a landslide some time in the intervening millennia. The structure itself would be incomprehensible unless the plastic plumbing somehow also survived (the copper pipes would eventually leech into the soil and disappear.)
Punt the timescale out to 50K years and things get a lot dicier. Again, the concrete foundation is the best bet to ID this as a homesite as it's already embedded in the ground and is durable (but not structurally sound) over a scale of at least centuries. On that kind of timescale, this foundation would have been a victim of a landslide and probably subjected to regular flooding (on the scale of decades) to further scatter remains. It would show as an anomalous rock strata.
Put it further to 500K years and we're on the far side of a bunch of climate change. This foundation would be a rubble streak, at best, and possibly embedded in other concrete-rubble from other homesites. The site itself would be long gone.
As always, the best sites for preservation over that kind of time are sites not on slopes, are geologically stable, and aren't subject to water erosion. Even then, it would be the remains of concrete, anomalous rock strata, that would tell future diggers what might have been here. My area has had human habitation for at least the last 10k years, possibly longer, and we know about them mostly from rock-shelters, earthworks, and worked artifacts; hardscapes. If a given culture isn't making hard things? We might never find out about them.
]]>The biggest will be the difference between the work-from-home class and the physical-presence glass. The WFH folk may stay on WFH for most of 2020, while the physical-presence class flaps between home and work. This will increase casualties among the physical-presence class, and by extension resentment.
The work-from-home class will get infections from variations in stay-at-home, and group-size limits that public health authorities institute. Less likely to riot and push politicians for structural reforms.
All in all, pulsing the infection hose to keep critical-care rates within capacity will slowly build herd-immunity (assuming that's persistent long enough) at an absolutely stunning cost to everyone involved.
]]>The GenX'ers with suddenly dead parents will see that influx of equity as a lifeline for their equally suddenly under-water mortgage. That will set such people above their peers with surviving parents.
Of course, any kind of excess deaths among the age-groups with actual assets to distribute is going to lock Probate courts up tight for years. So, if you're in that group, make sure your wills and such are up to date.
]]>By the way, that's why the 2nd wave of Spanish Flu was so terrible; it struck the age groups that usually shrug off pandemics.
I keep thinking that this thing will trigger one of the bigger generational wealth-transfers in several decades. The over-70 set all have estates, dying early is a great way to give a lot of money to the 30 to 50 set.
]]>Ah, the dependency problem from software made physical.
Given my earlier comment about regulators being the bigger thorn in the side of manufacturers than criminal liability, we'll see some interesting interactions between the physical platform (General Motors Sensor Platform 2022.1) versus the software platform (Samsung Drive v 13.02.89). Having software be in-scope for safety regulation the way it is for aviation, trains, and medical devices means that the industry's favorite axiom of development is suddenly a massive liability. You can move fast, but you most definitely cannot break shit.
Given the accidental death in the problem, the arbitration requirements are only binding on the 'user' of the platform, which in this case is the guy who got a distracting pop-up right before the kid got killed. He won't be able to sue to recover the costs of his lost car because of their faulty automation, but that isn't the criminal question. Given the exclusive deals common in the west, and the complete lack of incentive for open platforms, a Subaru is likely to only come with a single software vendor's driver-automation. This reduces the targets of the criminal investigation rather nicely. While General Motors may publish an actual open spec for auto-drivers and create an app-store for people to buy auto-drivers from, I have serious doubts that's where they are going. No, it'll be Samsung/Microsoft/Apple/Google and other multi-billion dollar companies providing the things.
When the after-accident review shows that the safety features were downgraded in order to provide a discount on the monthly subscription fee, the regulator will come after the software maker of that specific model of car. Given that nearly all of that model of car on the road run the same software, thanks-be to exclusive marketing deals, the recall (mandatory patch) will apply to all of those models of car. Being a regulator, if the problem is severe enough, they can ban all of the bad version of software from the roads until it's fixed. For criminal penalties that faceless megacorps understand, that's a pretty good one.
For the criminal penalties that the bereaved relatives understand, not so good.
]]>But this isn't a full-automation vehicle, exactly, it's a supervised one. The premise of the problem is set up so that the vehicular automation is primary, with a human having the ability to press an override button and be honored.
One of the things I've heard again and again is you can't arbitrate away criminal liability. Only legislation can do that, and it does it by defining 'criminal' in ways that allow delegation to non-state actors. In our dystopian corporatist future maybe, but not quite yet. The global nature of that arrangement won't be a shield for a county prosecutor looking to for who to punish. No, that arbitration arrangement is there to prevent the taxi-operator from getting any damages through suits.
Back to criminal. There are two phases of this incident.
I have a very strong suspicion that a vehicle able to be on the roads, with an occasional remote supervisor, will have robust authority to act in its own stead as a piece of approved consumer safety gear. A fatality in this case will be treated similar to a freight-train killing someone on the tracks. It has to be shown that the operator/supervisor was unable to stop it from happening, and at that point liability shifts. I believe you're right in that there won't be a single person hauled before a court to be told, "it's your fault, you get to go to jail". The grieving family will have no criminal liability to hold to and make themselves whole.
No, the interesting stuff happens during the regulatory post-mortem. Because that grieving family sure as hell will raise the matter with the appropriate regulators. Fatal accidents are like that. This is where the ineffective nature of the supervisor workflow will be analyzed, and decisions made to either make that more robust or to further deprecate it as an actual 'supervisor'. The ability of those devices to be sold will be assessed, and the decision of whether or not to withdraw such devices from the market will be made. The mandatory minimum safety automation will be assessed once more, and recommendations made to adjust those margins.
My airplane friends joke that for every regulation the US FAA has, there are deaths behind it. I imagine autonomous vehicles will be much the same. But we have to get through the slaughter first.
Which is why it won't be criminal liability that pains the perpetrators, it will be denial of access to the market that does it. Or adjustments to mandatory minimum features that affect the profit-line that does it. Or if a company racks up enough fatal accidents, a class-action suit against them will deny that LLC the right to exist and hurt the parent corporation in lost opportunity and marketshare. Or the insurance industry making certain features uneconomic to market. That is where criminal liability will go.
]]>Cut to surveillance agencies world-wide: The Satoshi wallet is active! Cut to another basement, one with SS insignia all over: Whoa, the satoshi wallet is active. HEY I KNOW THAT GUY! We shoot trap on weekends!
Chapter 2: Atomwaffen command breaks the wallet up into 10 parts (possibly exchanging out of BTC) to fund a new uprising. Cue the chase.
After Baltimore PD seizes a $1.2Bn BTC wallet while busting skinheads, a goldrush starts among US police departments. Suddenly, white supremacists (and their computers) are enemy number 1. Cut to scenes in someplace where a Forensic tech brings home a BTC wallet to look at and drool over, that will fund their retirements.
Meanwhile, in Europe AltReich allies start pressing hard in elections. The Germans boot down some doors and seize more wallets, but Italy has a problem now that a sizable percentage of their legislature are AltReich.
The forces of Nazi-affiliated white-supremacist oppression are eventually beaten down since the US is fairly good at keeping large sums of dark money from being efficiently moved around. Yay! All it took was a radical increase in police surveillance financed by the Satoshi wallet. And that's how a gay pot-smoking liberal from Colorado accelerated the US police panopticon, and fascist rot in the EU!
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