Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

Love this! This is a nice way to make hidden information more directly accessible to people, especially this sort of "situated" app--what's the cool thing near me/I'm looking at? I'm doing something similar for aircraft.

February 4, 2026 at 3:34 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

I ran across this classic Drew McDermott piece from 1976, "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MEETS NATURAL STUPIDITY". I forgot what a fun writer he is. dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MEETS NATURAL STUPIDITY

Drew McDermott MIT AI Lab Cambridge, Mass 02139

As a field, artificial intelligence has always been on the border of respectability, and therefore on the border of crackpottery. Many critics <Dreyfus, 1972>, <Lighthill, 1973> have urged that we are over the border. We have been very defensive toward this charge, drawing ourselves up with dignity when it is made and folding the cloak of Science about us. On the other hand, in private, we have been justifiably proud of our willingness to explore weird ideas, because pursuing them is the only way to make progress.

Unfortunately, the necessity for speculation has combined with the culture of the hacker in computer science <Weizenbaum, 1975> to cripple our self-discipline. In a young field, self-discipline is not necessarily a virtue, but we are not getting any younger. In the past few years, our tolerance of sloppy thinking has led us to repeat many mistakes over and over. If we are to retain any credibility, this should stop.

This paper is an effort to ridicule some of these mistakes. Almost everyone I know should find himself the target at some point or other; if you don't, you are encouraged to write up your own favorite fault. The three described here I suffer from myself. I hope self-ridicule will be a complete catharsis, but I doubt it. Bad tendencies can be very deep-rooted. Remember, though, if we can't criticize ourselves, someone else will save us the trouble.

Acknowledgment-- I thank the AI Lab Playroom crowd for constructive play.

Wishful Mnemonics

A major source of simple-mindedness in AI programs is the use of mnemonics like "UNDERSTAND" or "GOAL" to refer to programs and data structures. This practice has been inherited from more

February 3, 2026 at 6:41 AM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

These are the airports currently supported by the ATC app (atc.com)

February 2, 2026 at 5:55 AM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

"amazing way to reply to a long email you don't give a shit about" Roger Schank (known as the "godfather of AI" at one point) appears to have emailed Epstein. Dated 2009, after Epstein had been convicted as a sex offender, but the email seems more like news sent to a mailing list not a personal msg.

On Apr 15, 2009, at 2:05 PM, roger schank <
Brooklyn, New Haven and Me
Roger C. Schank
› wrote:
When Bart Giamatti announced that he was leaving Yale, where I was a professor, to become president of the National League, I dropped a note to my soon to be ex-boss asking him to do me a small favor: "Make the Dodgers move back to Brooklyn." He responded that they probably didn't want to move back to Brooklyn, which seemed obvious enough, but he seemed to miss the point.
I suppose I wrote to him because I had been looking at videos for a video-based educational software project I was working on and found myself watching a videodisc showing Johnny Podres shut out the Yankees in the last game of the 1955 World Series. This was the beginning of a joyful madness that engulfed Brooklyn, where I lived, and lasted until the rumors of the Dodger's impending move began to circulate in my sixth grade class in
I was eleven years old when the Dodgers abandoned me, and I took it hard. I agreed with those who placed Walter O'Malley beside Hitler on the list of great evil doers of our time. Of course, with an adult perspective, this may seem a bit silly, but it still has the ring of truth to me.
In 1962, I became a Met fan. I cut classes in my last days at Stuyvesant High School, hoping to see the Mets actually win a game. Within a few weeks, I was hooked again, but this time it was I who abandoned Brooklyn, going off
to college, never to return. I kept up my devotion to the Mets, but in 1969 I was at Stanford, in California, far far away. I could barely teach my class the day the Mets won the series because I was so exultant, but it was a joy not shared, or even understood, by my students.
In 1973, during the Mets next shot at the championship, I was living in Switzerland. You can't even hear the Armed Forces Radio Network in Switzerland.

January 31, 2026 at 11:35 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

"…Straub declined to provide specifics on which requirements were relaxed or the software development assurance level of the Autoland function. The FAA also did not provide specifics…" It seems strange for information like that to be secret, has that been done in other cases?

Garmin thought it had a strong safety case for relaxing some of these standards for a system designed for emergency use only. The FAA and European Union Aviation Safety Agency generally agreed, although Straub declined to provide specifics on which requirements were relaxed or the software development assurance level of the Autoland function. The FAA also did not provide specifics, telling TAC in an email: "Multiple FAA divisions collaborated on the Autoland certification. We certified it to deploy in emergency situations when pilots cannot operate the aircraft. The FAA accepts the use of emergency systems to avert serious incidents, as long as the equipment performs as intended and complies with safety regulations."

January 30, 2026 at 8:09 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

7/ Today's ADS-B data spoofing hit airplanes.live, adsb.lol. adsb.fi, and theairtraffic.com

ADS-Bified version of what looks like Charlie Kirk.

ADS-Bified version of a meme J.D. Vance.

January 30, 2026 at 12:35 AM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

6/ It looks like ADS-B Exchange finally shut down the spoofer. Or maybe the spoofer stopped on their own, but the image doesn't appear to be done.

January 29, 2026 at 7:58 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

5/ The image drawing/spoofing is still in progress. They haven't been able to stop the spoofing. I can't tell who this is supposed to be an image of.

January 29, 2026 at 7:39 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

3/ You can see them in the replay though: globe.adsbexchange.com?replay=2026-...

January 29, 2026 at 7:30 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

2/ Interestingly ADS-B Exchange seems to have blocked direct access to the two ICAOs involved: adfdf9, adfdf8. If you try to look at them you get redirected to the base map. Kind of a brute force approach. globe.adsbexchange.com?icao=adfdf9,...

Screenshot of using curl to try to access the spoofed aircraft.

January 29, 2026 at 7:29 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

1/ They did it again. More ADS-B spoofing drawing images in ADS-B Exchange. x.com/TheIntelFrog...

January 29, 2026 at 7:26 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

Well *I* thought this was a kind of funny response to the question of why would an air traffic controller at a non-radar tower look at ADS-B Exchange sometimes instead of just installing their own SDR which is obviously a superior solution? But it has been deemed Not Good.

Screenshot from Hacker News thread:

O points by jjwiseman
Imagine your boss doesn't like you looking at ADS-B sites because it's not data from an FAA approved system but as long as you're discreet and not actually breaking a reg they don't yell at you. Then they come in and see that you installed an antenna, RTL-SDR, and raspberry pi in the tower.

January 29, 2026 at 5:20 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

There's a big GPS jamming exercise active over LA right now.

A screenshot of the "NOTAM Mapper" web tool, showing details of a GPS interference notice (NOTAM) affecting a large portion of the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico.

The interface is divided into two main sections:

Left Side (Textual Data): Displays the raw and formatted text of NOTAM !GPS 01/076 ZLC. The notice states that GPS services (including WAAS, GBAS, and ADS-B) may be unavailable within specific radii centered at 332451N 1183430W (near San Clemente Island). The interference is scheduled daily from 0700-1400 UTC between January 27 and January 31, 2026. A table summarizes the affected areas by altitude:

452 NM radius at FL400 to Unlimited.

417 NM at FL250.

356 NM at 10,000ft MSL.

319 NM at 4,000ft AGL.

295 NM at 50ft AGL.

Right Side (Map): An interactive map centered on Southern California, overlaid with concentric red circles representing the different interference radii. The outermost circle extends north toward Sacramento, east past Las Vegas and Phoenix, and south deep into Baja California.

January 28, 2026 at 11:42 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

It's an inflection point, a phase change, a new ability unlocked in creative ADS-B spoofing. We've seen primitive vector art before, but as far as I know never raster spoofing. (This isn't RF spoofing, this is sending bad data over the network to an aggregator.)
x.com/thenewarea51...

A screenshot from the ADS-B Exchange flight tracking website showing a flight with the callsign "VANCE1" and hex code ADFDF9. The aircraft is listed as a Boeing VC-25A (the model used for Air Force One). On the map, the flight path has been spoofed to create a large, pixelated portrait of a face in shades of pink and red against a blue background.

A view of the completed ADS-B flight path art. The spoofed signals have successfully rendered the "Curly Hair JD Vance" meme as a massive pixelated portrait over a map. The face is composed of bright red and pink trails, while the surrounding rectangular border is filled in with shades of purple and blue.

A meme image of JD Vance, edited to give him a full, thick beard and voluminous, curly brown hair. He is wearing a blue suit with an American flag pin and a bright pink tie, looking directly into the camera against a solid blue background.

A technical close-up of the ADS-B Exchange map showing the dense grid of spoofed data points used to "paint" the image. Each point includes labels for speed (80kt) and various altitudes (ranging from 12,000ft to 50,000ft). A timestamp from January 27, 2026, is visible, highlighting the complexity of the coordinate injection used to render the portrait.

January 28, 2026 at 5:08 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

“The NTSB determines that the probable cause of this accident was the placement of a helicopter route in close proximity to a runway approach path with no procedural mitigations to separate helicopter and fixed-wing traffic" and they ignored data indicating it was dangerous.

January 28, 2026 at 7:19 AM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

The NTSB had a meeting today on the probable cause of the mid-air collision in Washington D.C. last January between a passenger jet and a Blackhawk helicopter. "We should be angry, because for years no one listened. This was preventable, this was 100% preventable."

January 27, 2026 at 10:19 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

haveibeenpwned.com should make a nice shareable badge so we can share these like Spotify Wrapped or something.

25 Data Breaches. Oh no - pwned! This email address has been found in multiple data breaches. Review the details below to see where your data was exposed.

January 27, 2026 at 7:07 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

I tried using Oracle Cloud (I know…). Within a day they suspended my account and told me to contact support. But my account doesn't qualify for support for some obscure reason. They really Oracled it up.

Your account membership is not active to access the support features. To enable access, your user account must be approved for at least one active User Group associated to an active Tenancy. Please contact your Admin or Customer
User Administrator in regards to your access.

January 26, 2026 at 10:37 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

"…neither of them seemed to know the danger until it was too late. They believed they were operating in some version of the normal state…where the police usually respond with discipline and restraint."
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/o...

One of the saddest things about the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti is that you could tell that neither of them seemed to know the danger until it was too late. They believed they were operating in some version of the normal state (what Frankel called the "normative state") where the police usually respond with discipline and
restraint.

January 26, 2026 at 10:36 PM

John Wiseman

@lemonodor.bsky.social

The ATC.com app by Enhanced Radar is so good. I experimented a few years ago with doing AI-powered transcription and event detection (and got my IP banned by LiveATC), but they really did it and made it super slick.