This week's podcast: Weapons with minds of their own

The future of warfare might just be computer algorithms – artificial intelligence that enables weapons to decide what to hit – and therefore whom to kill. The United States is in a race to harness gargantuan leaps in AI to develop new weapons systems for a new kind of warfare. Pentagon leaders call it “algorithmic warfare.” But the push to integrate AI into battlefield technology raises a big question: How far should we go in handing control of lethal weapons to machines?

Tips for navigating the treacherous ticket market

As “hot vax summer” picks up, tickets are now in high demand for the return of live music, sports and theater. But a frenzy for limited tickets can create a perfect storm for ticket resale traps. As we reported in the spring, fans complain of all sorts of problems when buying tickets to live events, from price gouging to buying phantom tickets.

Reporter Byard Duncan put together a handy guide for avoiding ticket traps this summer. Here are his four tips:

Know what site you’re buying from. You might think you’re buying tickets directly from the venue hosting the event, but if you look closer, you may realize you’re on a third-party site. A lot of ticket resale websites are cleverly designed to mimic the look of websites for primary vendors.

Make sure your tickets actually exist. Ticket resellers often engage in “speculative ticketing,” which is a fancy way of saying they sell you tickets they don’t actually own. The easiest way to avoid accidentally purchasing a speculative ticket is to buy directly from a venue’s official box office.

Don’t always believe the first price you see. Ticket resellers often tack on fees toward the end of the checkout process. Do some comparison shopping between sites and see how the price of the ticket changes when you begin to check out.

Procrastinate – if you can. The peak of demand for tickets is usually when the first tickets go on sale. From there, the prices often steadily decline until the game’s first pitch is thrown or the concert’s first note is played. This means that the closer you get to the start of an event, the more desperate resellers become to offload inventory.

Read the guide: Planning to buy tickets to a live event? Read this first.
Read the investigation: ‘How is this legal?’

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What went wrong in deadly fire seasons?

Smoky skies are ahead. The West Coast is in the grips of a major drought that’s making everyone fear this year’s wildfire season will be worse than ever. More than 40 of California’s 58 counties are now under a state of emergency.

As we prepare for more conflagrations, it can be helpful to look back to the past. In 2018, Reveal and KQED investigated what went wrong during the deadly 2017 wine country wildfires. The investigation found three big problems with California’s emergency fire system:

• Electrical problems sucked resources and delayed emergency response: Many fires were caused by downed power lines, which overwhelmed the electrical grid and lit new blazes. These electrical problems sucked firefighting resources to smaller blazes, leaving first responders short-staffed when larger fires broke out later.
• Communication among first responders broke down: Inconsistencies in the technology and terminology used by different jurisdictions to tell people to evacuate caused confusion and delayed alerts to the public.
• Emergency 911 centers were overwhelmed: Operators were juggling dozens of calls at once and often unable to answer calls from people in danger. When fire victims did get through, dispatchers didn’t know what to tell them about the safest way to flee the flames.

This newsletter is written by Sarah Mirk. Have any feedback or ideas? Send them my way.