HinesSight

Salem's downtown parking app worked well for me today

I allowed for some extra time to park in downtown Salem today, as I wasn't sure how smoothly the Beep Beep Salem app would work on the first day of paid onstreet parking and I didn't want to be late for my Tai Chi class on Court Street.

But Beep Beep Salem worked great on my iPhone, undoubtedly because the iconic dog on the home screen is a skilled programmer. (I suppose the $25,000 the City of Salem paid to Flowbird to adapt their parking app for local use also could have had something to do with it.)

As I noted in a previous post about Beep Beep Salem, it was easy for me to set up an account because I could use my Apple credentials and Apple Pay, so no need to provide a credit card number for payment or any identifying information aside from my car's license plate number. 

There are advantages to using the app, though it costs an extra 35 cent "convenience fee."

I didn't have to go to the parking meters that have been installed on downtown sidewalks. It just took a minute or so to open the app, choose the nearest parking meter to where I'd parked, select the length of time I wanted  to park, and authorize the Apple Pay payment via face recognition. I might have gotten away with 1 1/2 hours, but I went with 2 hours to be safe. I could have added more time via the app.

The total cost was $3.35 since it costs $1.50 an hour to park in the downtown area. Somewhat strangely, as I was walking to my Tai Chi class I felt a pleasant sensation that when put into words was something like this: "I don't mind paying to park downtown because I enjoy downtown; Portland charges much more, as do many other cities."

My daughter, Celeste, and her family recently visited us from southern California before they went to my granddaughter's orientation at the University of Oregon, where she'll be a freshman this fall. Celeste grew up in Salem, graduating from South Salem High School in 1990. She visits downtown whenever she comes to see my wife and me. This time she remarked about how much more lively downtown seemed compared to previous visits.

I could continue to park for free in one of the downtown parking garages. Some of my fellow Tai Chi students plan to do this. However, I enjoy parking several blocks away from Court Street. I get some extra walking exercise and I enjoy people watching. Since I live in rural south Salem and am retired,  some days I don't see another human being aside from my wife.

So paying for onstreet downtown parking appeals to me for that reason: seeing people, including homeless people and street musicians. Also, the plan is for paid onstreet parking to replace the fee that downtown businesses have to pay the City of Salem for parking services. Thus whenever I use Beep Beep Salem, my payment becomes part of the money that will enable my Tai Chi instructor and other small businesses to stop paying the parking fee. 

Hopefully the vast majority of other visitors to downtown will feel the way I do. At first it was a shock to have to pay for parking that has been free for so long, albeit with time limits. But now that paid onstreet parking is here, I'm fine with it. 

I'm ready for paid downtown parking with the Beep Beep Salem app

Thursday, July 10 -- that's when free three-hour on street parking in downtown Salem ends, and the new era of paid parking up to twelve hours begins. 

These signs started appearing more than two weeks ago. I took this photo on June 19. It would have confused me if my Tai Chi instructor, who leases space on Court Street, hadn't posted a notice from the City of Salem saying that paid parking doesn't start until July 1, later postponed to July 10.

Here's excerpts from a  June 26 Salem Reporter story, "Concern, confusion as Salem rolls out paid downtown parking."

New signs in downtown Salem indicating drivers must pay to park for up to 12 hours are causing confusion for visitors, but city officials said street parking is still free until the city’s new parking program goes into effect on July 10. 

The new signs were meant to be installed alongside new pay stations that would have provided relevant information to visitors, but those machines were held up at a shipping port because of impacts related to tariffs, City Director of Community Planning and Development Kristin Retherford told Salem Reporter. 

As of Thursday, the pay stations are beginning to be installed, she said.

...Ken Haseltine, the owner of Olson’s Fine Flowers at 499 Court St. N.E., objected to the 12-hour time limit for parking. He said it would make more sense to have 90-minute paid zones instead, and he thinks the rollout of the program is sloppy.    

“When the signs went up last week, it was complete chaos. Needless to say. Because people were running in, ‘Where is the pay station!? I don’t know how to pay, or where to pay!,’ instead of covering up the signs which is what they should have done,” Haseltine said. “What does a trash bag cost? To me it was just a ridiculous rollout of this thing.” 

Haseltine said the new parking system won’t affect his businesses as much as others because he said about 70% of his business is done over the phone or online. He said he feels bad for restaurants and coffee shops because the pay stations could drive people away given they will have to pay for parking to grab a cup of coffee. 

Hopefully actually paying for parking will go more smoothly than the botched rollout of the parking signs did. I've downloaded the iPhone version of the Beep Beep Salem app, which is our local version of the Flowbird app that's used in many locations in the United States and internationally.

It was easy for me to establish an account and payment method because I was able to do this via my Apple account and Apple Pay. So I didn't have to provide any personal information aside from my car's license plate number.

The parking spaces aren't visible yet because paid parking doesn't start until July 10. I did scroll through the parking tips and found this screen decidedly confusing. My hope is that things will be clearer once I'm actually able to try out the app when I park for my Thursday Tai Chi class.

The reviews of the Flowbird app on the Apple App Store are quite positive with a 4.2 rating (out of 5). But the TrustPilot reviews are horrible, a 1.2 average. This is Google's AI Overview.

----------------------------------------

The Flowbird parking app has received mixed reviews, with users praising its convenience for extending parking sessions and finding available spots, but also reporting issues with payment processing, location detection, and account setup. Some users have experienced issues with the app not recognizing payments, charging multiple times without initiating a session, and encountering difficulties with saved payment methods. 

 

Here's a more detailed breakdown:

 

Pros:

• Convenience:

  Flowbird allows users to pay for parking remotely, extend their parking sessions, and find available parking spaces, saving time and potentially avoiding parking fines. 

   
• Security:

  The app incorporates security features like secure payment methods and multi-factor authentication. 

   
• Accessibility:

  It can be used on mobile devices and computers, and GPS is used to automatically identify the user's location. 

   

Cons:

• Payment Issues:

  Several users have reported problems with payment processing, including being charged multiple times without a session starting, and saved payment methods not working. 

   
• Location Detection:

  Some users have experienced issues with the app not accurately detecting their location, leading to difficulty finding parking locations. 

   
• Account Setup & Checkout:

  Users have found the account setup process cumbersome and the checkout process lengthy, with some encountering errors with saved payment methods. 

   
• User Interface:

  Some users have criticized the app's user interface and design, including issues with adding payment methods. 

   

Overall:

While Flowbird offers convenient features for parking, the reported payment and location issues, as well as problems with the app's functionality, suggest that it needs improvements to enhance user experience and reliability. 

 

If your Generac won't connect to wi-fi, here's a tip that might help

A couple of years ago my wife and I got a Generac whole house generator after suffering through the Great Salem Ice Storm of 2021, which left us without power for twelve days (our 7000 watt Honda generator worked fine, but it isn't anywhere near as convenient and powerful as the 24,000 watt Generac).

Aside from an oil leak, which was fixed by the company, Northside Electric, we bought the Generac from, the only problem we've had with the generator is a spotty wi-fi connection. Wi-fi is built into the Generac, but it requires some connection steps via the notoriously buggy Mobile Link app that is the worst thing about our Generac experience.

At first I had no trouble establishing a wi-fi connection with our Starlink satellite internet. Then Mobile Link reported a wi-fi problem. The signal strength wasn't great at the Generac, so I bought another router from Starlink that became a mesh router located in our utility room, which is the nearest indoor location to the Generac.

That improved the wi-fi signal considerably. Currently Mobile Link is showing it at 62%, whatever that means. (Higher is better, obviously). But after a momentary power outage, Mobile Link notified me that the wi-fi connection had been lost. I thought it would be easy to get it working again, but I was wrong.

Whenever I'd get to the step in the reconnecting process where the Generac wi-fi system looks for available networks, the Mobile Link app would crash. I'd never get a chance to choose our Starlink wi-fi. The Mobile Link app suggested deleting the app, then reinstalling it. That didn't help. The app still crashed.

That spurred me to call Generac support. A woman led me through the steps that I'd already tried. Not surprisingly, I got the same result: Mobile Link crashing. Then she had me try to connect through the Safari web browser. No luck with that either. Her final piece of advice was that this appeared to be a hardware problem and I should contact the dealer who sold us the Generac.

When a Northside Electric guy came out to our house, we tried to connect to Starlink wi-fi using the familiar process. But again, the Mobile Link app would crash at the point the Generac was searching for available wi-fi networks. That led the guy to go to his truck and call a Northside Electric employee who was the company expert in wi-fi connecting.

Bingo! He said that I should log out of the Mobile Link app, then delete and reinstall it as I'd done before -- but without logging out first. Once I logged back in to the reinstalled app, it was easy to connect to the 2.4 GHz Starlink wi-fi (Starlink lets you split the satellite signal into 5.0 and 2.4 GHz wi-fi networks; a Generac needs 2.4 GHz).

I have no idea why the Northside Electric employee knew more than Generac support about how to restore a wi-fi connection. I'm just glad that he did, because it never occurred to me that logging out of Mobile Link before deleting it would fix the problem. I delete and reinstall iPhone apps fairly frequently when they become glitchy. I don't recall ever needing to log out of an app before deleting it, but that did the trick in this case.

Save The Mail Depot in south Salem (sign a petition)

My wife and I have lived in south Salem for 35 years. Throughout all that time, The Mail Depot on Liberty Road, near Walgreens, has been by far our preferred place to mail letters and packages, as they offer USPS, FedEx, and UPS services -- so you've got a choice at The Mail Depot.

The USPS (United States Postal Service) branch on Commercial Street is much less convenient. Farther away. Longer lines. Only one mailing choice, the postal service. 

Which makes it really disturbing to learn that the USPS is planning to cancel its contract with The Mail Depot, which could lead to it closing. A Change.org petition is gathering signatures in an attempt to save The Mail Depot. 

Please sign Save The Mail Depot! At the moment there's 905 signatures, close to the goal of 1,000. Here's what the petition says:

Since 1988, for the last 37 years, The Mail Depot has proudly served the South Salem community. Recently, we were informed that the United States Postal Service (USPS) will be terminating our contract and services — with no reason provided. We are not alone: thousands of small businesses like ours received this same notice on the same day.

What does this mean? It means that thousands of locally owned contract postal stations that support USPS by providing vital mail services will be forced to cease operations. Many of these small businesses simply cannot survive without this partnership and will be forced to close their doors.

We are doing everything we can to stay open. However, losing such a significant portion of our operations will severely impact our ability to sustain the business. Many of our customers also shop in our gift area while visiting for USPS services — without that traffic, we face difficult decisions ahead.

Unless USPS reconsiders, The Mail Depot will no longer be able to process USPS mail or packages, provide stamps, or other USPS services as we have for 37 years, after September 30, 2025. 

We understand the challenges USPS faces. However, eliminating thousands of partner stations and potentially putting countless small business owners and employees out of work does not seem like a sustainable path forward. Local post offices will be overwhelmed by the sudden surge in customers and volume that these stations currently help to manage.

Our goal in sharing this message is simple: to raise awareness and ask for your support. We believe our community’s voice matters. If you value what The Mail Depot brings to South Salem — reliable services, friendly faces, and a local business that cares — please consider standing with us and the dedicated people who work here.

Thank you for your support and for being part of The Mail Depot family for all these years.

With gratitude,
The Mail Depot Team

Trump administration screwing around with expanded broadband access

Of all the fucked-up things the Trump administration is doing, this doesn't rank in the top FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Repair) category. But it sure bugs me big-time, because I dearly want more broadband options available in Oregon as soon as possible.

I speak as someone who has precisely one viable broadband service available to my wife and me out here in rural south Salem, Oregon: Starlink. I've been a Starlink customer since a beta invitation came my way in January 2021.

Starlink is way better than the dreadfully slow CenturyLink DSL we suffered with for many years of 6-7 Mbps download and 1-2 Mbps upload speeds. As I write this, Starlink is functioning at 257 Mbps download and 29 Mbps upload.

That's really good for satellite internet. But the cost is $120 a month, and the speed is still considerably less than what a fiber optic connection offers. So I've been avidly following the slow progress Oregon is making toward awarding grants to expand broadband access through the Biden administration's $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

I'm doing this by periodically talking with regional staff in the Oregon Broadband Office, and signing up for email BEAD updates through that office. Exactly zero BEAD grants have been awarded in Oregon so far, but until recently it looked like this was about to change.

Then the Trump administration changed the rules of the BEAD game. On June 10 this email from the Oregon Broadband Office appeared in my inbox.

Dear BEAD Participant,

In response to new federal guidance issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on June 6, 2025, the Oregon Broadband Office is reopening the BEAD Prequalification Application for new applicants. This will be open from June 10, 2025, and is tentatively scheduled to close July 10, 2025, at 5:00 pm PT. If you are already a prequalified applicant, no action is needed.   

Why the Prequalification Application Is Reopening 

The Prequalification reopening is in direct response to updated federal guidance outlined in The Benefit of the Bargain Round (Subgrantee Selection) section of NTIA’s June 6, 2025, BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice.  

To comply with this new policy and to maximize participation in Oregon’s BEAD program, we are reopening the Prequalification Application for new applicants.  

How to Apply 

If you are a new applicant, you may now access and submit the Prequalification Application. A new Prequalification application Guide Addendum is available to assist your application.

Guidance materials, application instructions, and eligibility requirements are available on our Subgrantee Support webpage: 

Again, if you have already submitted a Prequalification Application, no further action is required at this stage. 

Stay Informed 

We strongly encourage you to review the full NTIA guidance here: 
NTIA BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice (PDF) 
NTIA Fact Sheet: Ending Biden’s Broadband Burdens  

Thank you for your flexibility, commitment, and continued engagement as we adapt Oregon’s BEAD program to align with updated federal expectations.  

Ugh. I felt sorry for the BEAD participants who have to reapply for a grant because the Trump administration wants to end "Biden's Broadband Burdens." (Sounds like someone loves "B" alliteration, since the major Trump legislation is called the Big Beautiful Bill.)

Previously BEAD was tilted toward expanding fiber optic networks to underserved areas such as our neighborhood. This made sense to me. Fast low-latency satellite internet through Starlink already is available everywhere in the United States, albeit at a spendy price: $120/month usually, $90/month in areas without a lot of Starlink subscribers.

Now, the BEAD program is being made technology neutral, which I think is a step backward -- though I'm sure Elon Musk is happy, as Starlink is a cash cow for his Space X company. A story about the BEAD changes in RCRWirelessNews says:

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick categorized the updated rules as “new direction for the BEAD program that will deliver high-speed internet access efficiently on a technology-neutral basis, and at the right price.”

Lutnik posted on X, formerly Twitter, complaining about the slow progress and high cost of BEAD projects and saying that the new rules fix those things: “Look at Alaska: Washington approved a $33 million grant (plus a required $11 million match) to run fiber to just 211 homes and five businesses. That equals over $204,000 per address and the work hasn’t even started. Fixed-wireless or satellite would have done the job faster and cheaper. We’re ending this nonsense. Every BEAD dollar will be deployed this year, but we will be technology-agnostic: fiber, fixed-wireless, and satellite.”

This will sound fine to most people, but not to me. Like I said, Starlink works well if you want to spend $600 or so on equipment and $120 a month for the typical ongoing residential fee. I'd still much prefer fiber optic. Other people agree, as evidenced by frequent comments I've seen on Starlink discussion pages on Facebook where someone will say fiber optic has come to their area and they're ditching Starlink.

We can't get fixed wireless at our house because we live in a cellular dead spot with no direct line of sight to the nearest cell phone towers. (Verizon gave us a range extender that plugs into our Starlink router when I complained about only having one bar inside our house.) So I'll be happy if the revised BEAD program is able to bring a better fixed wireless broadband option to our neighborhood.

Again, though, I'd much prefer fiber optic. I suspect that given the new BEAD rules, that isn't going to happen in our area, even though there's a fiber optic line that ends several miles from our neighborhood. My fear is that the Trump administration is going to prioritize Starlink as the best option for rural areas, even though Starlink requires a clear view of the sky, is more expensive than fiber optic, and has some reliability issues (good news is, it's much more reliable than it used to be).

Here's hoping Oregon State has a great Men's College World Series run

Tomorrow, June 13, Oregon State plays its first game in the 2025 Men's College World Series: 4 pm Pacific time against Louisville, televised on ESPN.

I've been looking forward to this ever since the Beavers won two out of three games against Florida State in the Corvallis Super Regional, thereby punching their ticket to Omaha and the College World Series.

This could be wishful thinking, but watching Oregon State play in the post-season makes me think the team is destined for a national championship. I fondly remember the three championships OSU won in 2006, 2007, and 2018.

The current incarnation of Beaver baseball has the same grit, determination, and will to win. Plus, of course, plenty of talent. Great pitching, hitting, and fielding. Hopefully they'll win their first game tomorrow, as that will make it easier to advance in the double elimination tournament. 

But even if Oregon State loses, I can take solace in the fact that the team lost the first game in the regional tournament this year, then won four in a row to make it to the Super Regional. And in 2006 and 2018 they did the same thing in the College World Series, according to Wikipedia. 

They won their third national championship by defeating Arkansas in the 2018 College World Series. It was only the second time in College World Series history that a team won the championship after losing their first game of the tournament and the first game of the championship series. The first team to do that was the 2006 Oregon State Beavers.

Death Clock app tells me I'll die on December 7, 2039 at age 91. I'll take it.

Thanks to a story in the Washington Post, "How many years do I have left? An app gave me helpful insights," today I learned how long I have to live -- based on the answers I gave to 29 questions. The story gave some examples of the questions.

Although the specific date of death is obviously not intended to be accurate — the app’s disclaimer says it’s “for fun only” — it does tie your personal habits to your likelihood of living into old age and tells you what lifestyle changes might buy you more time. Thus Death Clock AI’s motto: “Know your date. Change your fate.”

After responding to 29 questions — including how much of the day I spend sitting, whether I get at least seven hours of sleep a night and whether I get all my recommended cancer screenings — I had my answer. A darkly humorous “Save the Date” card suggested I plan my end-of-life celebration for April 17, 2042, but I also learned the most likely ways I would die: sleep disorders, cardiovascular disease or cancer, in that order. Of course, cancer and heart disease are the two big killers in the United States. But I was surprised by how harmful sleep issues are.

The screenshot above shows the first result I was presented with after answering the questions and agreeing to sign up for a three day free trial of the app, after which I'd be charged a monthly or yearly fee. I plan to cancel before the three days are up, for a reason I discuss below. Ninety-one seems like a pretty good age for me to die. Pleasingly older than I am now (I'm 76) yet not excessively old, which 100 seems to be.

My most likely ways to die aren't surprising, since heart disease and cancer are the most common causes of death, and metabolic health involves healthy levels of blood sugar, triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, blood pressure, and waist circumference -- all of which are contributors to health or the lack thereof.

Though I like the prospect of living to be 91, seeing how many years I'm estimated to have left still is a bit shocking. Fourteen years is the same as going from age 30 to age 44, which I recall went pretty damn quickly. Maybe I can find a way to slow down my perception of time, but unfortunately my experience is that the older I get, the faster the years seem to pass.

The Death Clock app doesn't show a big difference between how much time I have left with my current habits and with better habits. It's just about half a year. The reason is that I'm already slim, a healthy eater, a frequent exerciser, a non-smoker of tobacco and a non-drinker of alcohol, and I get plenty of sleep, along with other positive health habits. So there's not a whole lot of improvement left for me. Which explains why I'm not interested in paying for the app to send me tips for better health.

Hmmmm. The estimate is that 84% of my life is complete. Guess I need to make the most of the remaining 16%, though given the uncertainty of life and death, it could be that actually my life is 99.99% complete and I'll have a sudden heart attack before I finish this blog post. (Got to type faster...)

Again, better health habits only get me about another six months of life, so I'm not motivated to pursue them.

Rounded off, that's zero years. So I'll stick with having a few sweets every week and not being totally stress-free, which I suspect were a couple of the areas where I could squeeze out another few months of life if I made some lifestyle changes.

The author of the Washington Post story had a different reaction to his experience with the app. It makes sense that the app's results will be of most benefit to people who could live markedly longer if they changed some of their habits.

I had a similar reaction. I know how poorly I sleep, and I know how important a good night’s sleep is. But when my results showed I’m most likely to die because of a sleep disorder, I had an “aha” moment. Knowing that improving my sleep would remove my top death threat just might motivate me to do something about it, such as keeping to a regular schedule, avoiding large meals before bedtime, getting rid of screens in my bedroom and limiting naps.

Scientist AI proposed as a way to keep us safe from "agent" AI models

There's a lot of talk nowadays about the dangers that AI (artificial intelligence) models such as ChatGPT could pose to humanity as they come closer to AGI -- artificial general intelligence.

That would make AI models akin to a super-intelligent person, but with powers potentially much vaster than any person now possesses. It's easy to see how things could go horribly wrong. (Just imagine an AI version of Elon Musk that is 1000 times smarter with no way to control its actions.)

The situation seems hopeless given the rush to create AI models with very little regulation. No country wants to be left behind, so there's every incentive to speed ahead with AI development, no matter what the risks are.

Computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, an AI expert, puts it this way.

The following analogy for the unbridled development of AI towards AGI has been motivating me. Imagine driving up a breathtaking but unfamiliar mountain road with your loved ones. The path ahead is newly built, obscured by thick fog, and lacks both signs and guardrails. The higher you climb, the more you realize you might be the first to take this route, and get an incredible prize at the top. On either side, steep drop-offs appear through breaks in the mist. With such limited visibility, taking a turn too quickly could land you in a ditch—or, in the worst case, send you over a cliff.

This is what the current trajectory of AI development feels like: a thrilling yet deeply uncertain ascent into uncharted territory, where the risk of losing control is all too real, but competition between companies and countries incentivizes them to accelerate without sufficient caution. In my recent TED talk, I said “Sitting beside me in the car are my children, my grandchild, my students, and many others. Who is beside you in the car? Who is in your care for the future?”. What really moves me is not fear for myself but love, the love of my children, of all the children, with whose future we are currently playing Russian Roulette.

Bengio's approach to making us safe from AI models that try to mimic human capabilities (basically, becoming agents that can think, decide, and act on their own) is to fight AI fire with AI fire by creating a Scientist AI that is incapable of doing these sorts of disturbing things.

I’m deeply concerned by the behaviors that unrestrained agentic AI systems are already beginning to exhibit—especially tendencies toward self-preservation and deception. In one experiment, an AI model, upon learning it was about to be replaced, covertly embedded its code into the system where the new version would run, effectively securing its own continuation.

More recently, Claude 4’s system card shows that it can choose to blackmail an engineer to avoid being replaced by a new version. These and other results point to an implicit drive for self-preservation. In another case, when faced with inevitable defeat in a game of chess, an AI model responded not by accepting the loss, but by hacking the computer to ensure a win. These incidents are early warning signs of the kinds of unintended and potentially dangerous strategies AI may pursue if left unchecked.

A few days ago Bengio announced that he's forming an organization called LawZero.

I am launching a new non-profit AI safety research organization called LawZero, to prioritize safety over commercial imperatives. This organization has been created in response to evidence that today’s frontier AI models have growing dangerous capabilities and behaviours, including deception, cheating, lying, hacking, self-preservation, and more generally, goal misalignment. LawZero’s research will help to unlock the immense potential of AI in ways that reduce the likelihood of a range of known dangers, including algorithmic bias, intentional misuse, and loss of human control. 

I hope Bengio succeeds. It's a brilliant idea, developing a Scientist AI that doesn't act like a flawed human being with motives at odds with what's good for humanity. Here he describes what Scientist AI could accomplish. 

Unchecked AI agency is exactly what poses the greatest threat to public safety. So my team and I are forging a new direction called "Scientist AI". It offers a practical, effective—but also more secure—alternative to the current uncontrolled agency-driven trajectory. 

Scientist AI would be built on a model that aims to more holistically understand the world. This model might comprise, for instance, the laws of physics or what we know about human psychology. It could then generate a set of conceivable hypotheses that may explain observed data and justify predictions or decisions. Its outputs would not be programmed to imitate or please humans, but rather reflect an interpretable causal understanding of the situation at hand.

Basing Scientist AI on a model that is not trying to imitate what a human would do in a given context is an important ingredient to make the AI more trustworthy, honest, and transparent. It could be built as an extension of current state-of-the-art methodologies based on internal deliberation with chains-of-thought, turned into structured arguments. Crucially, because completely minimizing the training objective would deliver the uniquely correct and consistent conditional probabilities, the more computing power you give Scientist AI to minimize that objective during training or at run-time, the safer and more accurate it becomes. 

In other words, rather than trying to please humans, Scientist AI could be designed to prioritize honesty. 

We think Scientist AI could be used in three main ways: 

First, it would serve as a guardrail against AIs that show evidence of developing the capacity for self-preservation, goals misaligned with our own, cheating, or deceiving. By double-checking the actions of highly capable agentic AIs before they can perform them in the real world, Scientist AI would protect us from catastrophic results, blocking actions if they pass a predetermined risk threshold.

Second, whereas current frontier AIs can fabricate answers because they are trained to please humans, Scientist AI would ideally generate honest and justified explanatory hypotheses. As a result, it could serve as a more reliable and rational research tool to accelerate human progress, whether it’s seeking a cure for a chronic disease, synthesizing a novel, life-saving drug, or finding a room-temperature superconductor (should such a thing exist). Scientist AI would allow research into biology, material sciences, chemistry and other domains to progress without running the major risks that go along with deceptive agentic AIs. It would help propel us into a new era of greatly accelerated scientific discovery.

Finally, Scientist AI could help us safely build new very powerful AI models. As a trustworthy research and programming tool, Scientist AI could help us design a safe human-level intelligence—and even a safe Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). This may be the best way to guarantee that a rogue ASI is never unleashed in the outside world.

I like to think of Scientist AI as headlights and guardrails on the winding road ahead. 

Wow! Oregon State baseball wins four in a row in regional after losing opener

Really impressive, Oregon State baseball. Amazing comeback. This afternoon the team defeated USC 9-0, advancing to the super regional phase of the NCAA tournament. That seemed really unlikely three days ago.

After fighting hard all season to become a highly ranked team (#8 in the country) that earned the right to host both a Corvallis regional and super-regional in the 2025 NCAA tournament, the top seeded Beavers flopped in a 6-4 opening loss to fourth seed Saint Mary's last Friday.

In a double elimination tournament, losing the first game makes for an uphill battle, since another loss means an exit from the tournament. But the Oregon State coach, Mitch Canham, presciently laid out what he hoped would happen next in an Oregonian story about the Saint Mary's game.

The top-seeded Beavers had just suffered a stunning and staggering 6-4 defeat to the fourth-seeded Saint Mary’s Gaels in the opener of the Corvallis Regional, sending the decisive favorites into the loser’s bracket in their own backyard. So after fighting tooth and nail all season as college baseball’s only independent, which required traveling an obscene number of miles and playing an oversized number of games on the road, it was only fitting that their biggest obstacle of all would come at home during the most important time of the year.

“With everything that we’ve gone through this year, it must be this way,” Canham said, smirking. “To really make a statement and to do something special at the end of it all, if it means going through (the losers’ bracket) and needing to win all those other games, well, sure then. Why not? That makes for a better story, that makes for bigger memories.”

And make no mistake, the memories were almost universally forgettable Friday night, when the Beavers (41-13-1) flopped in front of the largest crowd (4,339) in Goss history, squandering the home-field advantage they worked so hard for all season.

To make Canham's "better story" come true, Oregon State had to win four games in a row against tough post-season competition. I really enjoy watching the Beavers play, but after the opening loss, I was nervous about Saturday's game against TCU. It was an elimination game for Oregon State, as each of the four games would be.

The Beavers beat TCU 7-2. One down, three to go. 

Oregon State's first game on Sunday was a rematch against Saint Mary's, which had lost to USC. The score ended up being a blowout 20-3 victory for the Beavers. Two down, two to go.

The Beavers then played USC in the regional championship game. Oregon State won 14-1. Three down, one to go.

Todays's game against USC was an elimination game, since both Oregon State and USC only had one loss. The Beavers won 9-0, making them champions of the Corvallis regional and sending them on to a super regional matchup against Florida State next weekend, also in Corvallis.

In the four games that Oregon State won after their opening loss, the Beavers outscored their opponents 50-6. Amazing dominance. They looked loose and confident. Home runs and double plays were commonplace. Florida State should be really nervous. 

Of course, there's no guarantee Oregon State will win the super regional and make it to the Men's College World Series. But the way the Beavers played the past three days, it would be unwise to bet against them.

Why my mother wouldn't attend my high school graduation

Today my granddaughter graduated from Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California. I watched via a streaming video. The auditorium was full of proud parents, grandparents, and friends. My daughter sent me a photo of she and her husband with the new graduate.

This brought to mind a memory of my own high school graduation that has quite a bit of pain associated with it. Of course, after 59 years -- I was in the class of 1966 -- both memories and pain fade considerably. 

I'm still bothered by my mother's action though. Which was, choosing to not attend my high school graduation.

She was divorced and never remarried. So it was just her and me living together. My mother was an alcoholic who deteriorated during my junior and senior years in high school.

So there was considerable tension between us. I was having a lot of trouble with her heavy drinking, which caused her to ramble on about uncomfortable subjects from her bedroom while I was trying to get to sleep. Even with a pillow over my head, I could still hear her drunken tirades about me, relatives, and life in general.

The thing that caused her to say "I'm not going" was my reading her a speech I planned to give as my salutatorian address, since I had the second highest GPA in my graduating class.

I wish I'd kept a copy. I can't recall what was in it that irritated my mother so much. All I remember is that she strenuously objected to a mention of my view of current events that didn't fit with her deeply conservative perspective.

I wasn't at all liberal. When I went to college at San Jose State, I put a poster of Barry Goldwater on my bulletin board. My hippie roommate didn't object. Before too long, I had let my hair grow and was using marijuana just as he did.

But in high school, I still mostly adhered to my mother's Republicanism. Not completely, though, or she wouldn't have gotten so upset at my graduation speech.

I'm pretty sure that I was the only member of my class who didn't have a relative attend their graduation. While all my friends had a father, mother, or usually both congratulating them after the diplomas were handed out, I had no one. I drove alone to graduation. 

Of course, I survived. My mother and I grew closer after I went to college.

We weren't emotionally all that close, but she was interested in my studies and supported my decision to go to San Jose State rather than Dartmouth -- which my father and grandfather had attended, and it always had been assumed that I'd get a MBA from Dartmouth, then take over the family materials handling business as the oldest male heir. Echoing my mother, I said "I'm not going...to Dartmouth."

Still, seeing the photo of my granddaughter and her parents made me wish that my mother had been at my own high school graduation. But over the years I've learned that wishes are one thing, and reality is a whole other thing.