Some SF&F TV Worh Watching

The last part of the year was marked by the release of several major SF&F television shows. It's clear that the effects technology and producers' understanding of how to adapt a novel to the long-form television have reached the point where it's possible to make a quality show out of even the most complex stories. Here are some comments on five shows that we watched.

• The Mandalorian turned out to be quite watchable, if not quite up to the quality level of the other shows discussed here. It's obvious Disney put a lot of money into the first live action Star Wars show; the sets and effects were first rate. They turned down the cuteness, concentrating it in one character, Baby Yoda, who will not doubt sell enough merchandise to cover the show's budget. I liked it more than any of the movies, but it's still just warmed over 1930s space opera. 
• His Dark Materials is a BBC/HBO co-production based on a trilogy of novels by Philip Pullman. There was a movie adaptation a few years ago that failed at the box office; this show is much, much better. I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy a fantasy with a young girl as the lead, but enjoy it I did. Pullman's complex world is perfectly realized and the longer format gives room to explore some of the darker aspects of the books. 
• For All Mankind has a simple premise, the Soviet Union beats the US to the moon. They then rub salt in the wound by landing a woman astronaut. This prompts the beginning of a new space race, with women having prominent roles. The alternate history elements are subtly developed and the technical aspects of space flight are faithfully rendered. I suspect that some male viewers are going to have trouble with the emphasis given to the stories of the female characters, as it's not common in SF&F TV shows. But it works and adds a lot of depth to the show. I am looking forward to the next season, especially after they ended the first season with Sea Dragon launch!
• Watchmen turned out to be not at all what I expected and was much better. The original graphic novel is a classic and one of the major literary works of the last part of the 20th century. Wisely, the creators of the TV series decided not to do a straight reboot, but instead created a somewhat indirect sequel to the book. It took some getting into but turned out to be an original and powerful series. 
• I'll say it right up front. The Expanse is the best science fiction television series ever. It's based on the best selling series of novels and novellas by James S. A. Corey (the pseudonym of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franks). The fourth season takes the series up the end of the fourth novel, although it incorporates elements from some of the novellas and later books. It's initially set in the a politically complex and tense solar system with well-developed and divergent societies on the Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt, and the moons of the outer planets. The science is believable, they don't ignore physical realities, and the characters are people you care about. Kudos to Amazon for taking up the series after SyFy cancelled it and keeping up the quality. 

An honourable mention goes to Carnival Row, which we watched earlier in the year. It took a while to get into it but I'm looking forward to the next season. I would have included the fourth and final season of The Man in the High Castle with the five shows above, but we didn't get around to watching it before the end of the year. It's next on our list. 

Is Sqribble a Rip Off?

I got an email today for a piece of software called Sqribble. Although billed as being for ebook creation, it appears to output only PDFs.  I hadn't heard of it before and the claims sounded quite incredible.

This is unbelievable…

New revolutionary technology has JUST been launched that allows you to INSTANTLY create professional Ebooks, Reports, Guides, Lead Magnets, Whitepapers, and digital info-products AUTOMATICALLY, and “ON-DEMAND”… at a push of a button!

So I did a bit of googling and found this. 

Competition is good!  Seriously I believe that competition in any industry strengthens the market, validates what you are doing and accelerates innovation.

When someone clones software, wraps a new skin on it, adds some bells and whistles and launches it as ’Never been seen before, amazing software’ – this is not innovation.  This is effectively stealing.

So the creators of Designrr are claiming that Sqribble is basically a cloned rip off of their software. If you get the email that I got, you probably should ignore it. 

Quantum Computing Is Making Big Strides

I haven't paid much attention to what's happening with the development of quantum computing. Up until recently it seemed like more of a laboratory curiousity than anything else. But that's changing, as this article from Discover Magazine points out.

Engineers test the accuracy of quantum computing chips by using them to solve a problem, and then verifying the work with a classical machine. But in early 2019, that process became problematic, reported Neven, who runs Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab. Google’s quantum chip was improving so quickly that his group had to commandeer increasingly large computers — and then clusters of computers — to check its work. It’s become clear that eventually,  they’ll run out of machines. 

Case in point: Google announced in October that its 53-qubit quantum processor had needed only 200 seconds to complete a problem that would have required 10,000 years on a supercomputer.

Neven’s group observed a “double exponential” growth rate in the chip’s computing power over a few months. Plain old exponential growth is already really fast: It means that from one step to the next, the value of something multiplies. Bacterial growth can be exponential if the number of organisms doubles during an observed time interval. So can computing power of classical computers under Moore’s Law, the idea that it doubles roughly every year or two. But under double exponential growth, the exponents have exponents. That makes a world of difference: Instead of a progression from 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 bacteria, for example, a double-exponentially growing colony in the same time would grow from 2 to 4 to 16 to 256 to 65,536. 

That's impressive. I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing quantum computers for home and business use. It might be time to start investing in companies that make liquid helium cooling systems.

Holiday Hiatus

Christmas is coming in a few days. I'm going to take a week or so off from blogging to do all the usual Christmas things. I may be back before New Year's or maybe after.

Here's a picture for you to look at in the meantime.

I hope you all have a pleasant holiday and best wishes for the coming year.

We'lre Toast 18

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. It is part of an ongoing series of posts.

Climate Change and Environment

• The Last of the Arctic's Old Sea Ice Is on the Verge of Vanishing. Only 1.2 percent of ice in the Arctic Ocean is older than four years.
• America After Climate Change, Mapped. The maps are pretty, as long as you don't think too much about what they mean.
• Degraded soils mean tropical forests may never fully recover from logging. This probably is true for Canada's boreal forests. 
• New ice river detected at Arctic glacier adds to rising seas. "We really didn't expect to see this."
• Carbon Dioxide Could Make it Harder to Think. It looks more and more like an Idiocracy future.
• 2019 wasn't just protests and Fleabag: It was the year a climate truth bomb dropped. To quote Bruce Cockburn: "Some people don't see the light until it shines through a bullet hole."

Politics 

• False Idol — Why the Christian Right Worships Donald Trump. I cannot understand how anyone who considers themselves a Christian can support Trump.
• This Is How A Society Dies. We've just seen Britain kick over the stool. All that's left now is the twitching. And it will be the same in the US next year when Trump gets re-elected.

Technology

• SUV shaming: I care about climate change, so why am I driving an SUV? Yes, why, when they're so bad for the environment?
• Unraveling the Secret Origins of an AmazonBasics Battery. This illustrates the complexities of modern global supply chains and why they can be bad for the environment.
• Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming. Canada is a big part of the problem. 

Videos from an Astounding 90 Years of Analog Symposium

City Tech, the New York City College of Technology, CUNY recently held a symposium titled "An Astounding 90 Years of Analog Science Fiction and Fact". From their website:

It was a great success! We had over 100 attendees comprised of scholars, writers, editors, fans, and City Tech students and faculty. The partnership between Analog Science Fiction and Fact and City Tech helped the event grow and reach new audiences, and the combination of scholarly presentations, an editors’ roundtable, and writers events–a writers’ roundtable and the keynote by SF writer Mike Flynn made the event speak in powerful and engaging ways to the many different attendees.

Were I living in New York, I'd definitely have attended, but I'll have to settle for the videos of the talks and Q&A sessions, which they've very kindly put up on their website for fans of Analog to view. I count myself among them; discovering Analog (and back issues of Astounding) was one of the high points of my teenage years. 

Tips for Research Writing

Writing scientific research papers has much in common with the type of writing I did as a technical writer, requiring accurate and clear presentation of complex information. This article describes five common mistakes in research writing and explains how to fix them.

This part applies to almost any knid of writing:

Your results may be complicated, but your writing shouldn’t be. You may think that obscure words or complicated sentences make you sound clever but it is far more effective to use simple language that your reader will understand and enjoy reading. 

Disappearing Stars

Stars shouldn't just disappear. They do explode and can turn into neutron stars, black holes, and nebulae, but they don't just go out. But a new study claims to have found roughly 100 stars that have done just that.

A comparative analysis of historical and contemporary astronomical data has resulted in the discovery of approximately 100 star-like objects that unexpectedly vanished. These strange occurrences are likely natural, but scientists say alien technology is a remote possibility.

They start off as dim red dots in the night sky. But then they start to get brighter—anywhere from several to thousands of times brighter. And then they disappear, vanishing from sight in typically less than an hour.

What makes this study notable is that the authors don't rule out the possibilty that they could be detecting signs of alien civilizations.

 Fascinatingly, the researchers devoted significant space in the new study for a more radical possibility: the activities of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). Of course, invoking the alien card is often a good sign that scientists are flummoxed—something seen repeatedly over the course of astronomical history. But that doesn’t mean they should refrain from raising this possibility, and this case is no exception.

As the authors speculate, the dots of red light could be powerful lasers used for interstellar communication or heat waste emanating from Dyson spheres—hypothetical megastructures that envelop entire stars.

Featured Links - December 17, 2019

Links to things that I found interesting but didn't want to do a full post about.

• How to Use the Linux Command Line on Android With Termux. This could be useful the geekier among us. 
• Why Are So Many Gen Z Kids Becoming Furries. Furry culture is hitting the mainstream. 
• ‘Hurricane Truthers’: Bonkers Conspiracies Are Putting Lives in Danger. As Jerry Pournelle said: "Think of it as evolution in action."
• The Next Nuclear Plants Will Be Small, Svelte, and Safer. There has been some discussion about using this kind of reactor in isolated areas of Canada.
• Tweak These Google Chrome Settings to Level Up Your Browsing. I've been using Chrome for years and didn't know about some of these.
• The Witcher Guide: Who's Who, What's What, and Which Is Witcher. I will be referring to this often, I think.

Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Menace?

SF author Charlie Stross just gave a talk about artificial intelligence to the IT Futures conference held at the University of Edinburgh. He's posted the transcript on his blog.

Stross has given more thought to the future of society and technology than just about anyone I can think of and this talk distills some of the ideas that have been influencing his books over the last decade or two. I found this part especially intersesting.

Let's get back to the 90/9/1 percent distribution, that applies to the components of the near future: 90% here today, 9% not here yet but on the drawing boards, and 1% unpredictable. I came up with that rule of thumb around 2005, but the ratio seems to be shifting these days. Changes happen faster, and there are more disruptive unknown-unknowns hitting us from all quarters with every passing decade. This is a long-established trend: throughout most of recorded history, the average person lived their life pretty much the same way as their parents and grandparents. Long-term economic growth averaged less than 0.1% per year over the past two thousand years. It has only been since the onset of the industrial revolution that change has become a dominant influence on human society. I suspect the 90/9/1 distribution is now something more like 85/10/5 — that is, 85% of the world of 2029 is here today, about 10% can be anticipated, and the random, unwelcome surprises constitute up to 5% of the mix. Which is kind of alarming, when you pause to think about it.

And this:

 Companies don't literally try to pass the Turing test, but they exchange information with other companies — and they are powerful enough to process inputs far beyond the capacity of an individual human brain. A Boeing 787 airliner contains on the order of six million parts and is produced by a consortium of suppliers (coordinated by Boeing); designing it is several orders of magnitude beyond the competence of any individual engineer, but the Boeing "Chinese Room" nevertheless developed a process for designing, testing, manufacturing, and maintaining such a machine, and it's a process that is not reliant on any sole human being.

Where, then, is Boeing's mind?

I don't think Boeing has a mind as such, but it functions as an ad-hoc rules-based AI system, and exhibits drives that mirror those of an actual life form. Corporations grow, predate on one another, seek out sources of nutrition (revenue streams), and invade new environmental niches. Corporations exhibit metabolism, in the broadest sense of the word — they take in inputs and modify them, then produce outputs, including a surplus of money that pays for more inputs. Like all life forms they exist to copy information into the future. They treat human beings as interchangeable components, like cells in a body: they function as superorganisms — hive entities — and they reap efficiency benefits when they replace fallible and fragile human components with automated replacements.

Technical Communication Links - December 15, 2019

Some links related to technical communication.

• What is Application Guard and what it means for Office 365? A new security feature for Office.
• Recordings from the DITA-Open Toolkit Day held in Brussels last month. 
• Can New York Plug All Its Subway Holes Before the Next Storm Hits? Good on the MTA for taking action.
• Presentations from the Adobe TechComm Roadshow Canada, held in September. 
• How to Write Good Commit Messages: A Practical Git Guide. This might be useful if your shop uses git, especially if you use it for docs. 

Some Best Of Lists

This is the time of year for annual "best of" lists. Since its the end of a decade, we'll get an extra set of lists for the decade. This post is compilation of some of those lists so I can check out some of the entries later. I will probably update this list during the last part of the month, so you may want to check back later for updates.

• The 100 Best Albums of the 2010s (Rolling Stone)
• The 100 Best Songs of the 2010s (Rolling Stone)
• The 50 Best Albums of 2019 (Rolling Stone)
• The 50 Best Songs of 2019 (Rolling Stone)
• 20 Best TV Shows of 2019 (Rolling Stone)
• The 25 most binge worthy TV shows of 2019 (Now Magazine)
• The 11 Best (and 6 Worst) TV Shows of 2019 (io9/gizmodo)
• 25 Best America and Country Songs of 2019 (Rolling Stone)
• Rob Sheffield's Top 20 Albums of 2019 (Rolling Stone)
• The 50 Best Movies of the 2010s (Rolling Stone)
• The Best Toronto Albums of 2019 (Now Magazine)

Inside the Burning of the Amazon

Rolling Stone magazine is not what it used to be, but buried in the fluff pieces about the latest musical sensation they still manage to publish some amazing in-depth articles about politics and the environment,

The Lawless Frontier at the Heart of the Burning Amazon is the best piece of journalism I've read on the burning of the Amazon rain forests. I was just going to include it in the last We're Toast link post, but it's too good to bury it with a bunch of other links.

I’m on a highway called BR-163, a rutted road from hell that has been in some state of construction since Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship 40 years ago. I’m deep in the northern state of Pará — 1,500 miles from the Atlantic coast, and a three-day drive to Rio de Janeiro. For the past two hours we’ve been navigating potholes the size of moon craters and swerving around a caravan of tractor-trailers. Winding south through the Xingu basin, BR-163 starts in Santarém, a muggy port city on an Amazon tributary, and ends 1,000 miles south, in Brazil’s breadbasket, the state of Mato Grosso. Literally translated as “thick jungle,” Mato Grosso is where Colonel Fawcett disappeared looking for the Lost City of Z. Now almost entirely denuded, a lot of it looks like Kansas. 

The road we’re traveling points to Brazil’s future as a commodities superpower. No country exports more soy and beef than Brazil. We pass hundreds of trucks headed to the Amazon port, loaded with soy, where they will unload on tankers sailing for Europe and China. Ten degrees from the equator, BR-163 is a dividing line of sorts, a demarcation point between the natural world and what seems to be its destiny: an industrialized monoculture that creeps further north every year.

As a result, BR-163 has become notorious — few areas of the Brazilian Amazon have seen more rapid deforestation over the past 10 years. I’ve been told that if I want to understand the forces that are driving the destruction of the world’s most important curb against climate change, this is the place to go. 

It's a vivid, powerful article that avoids the sensationalism of some of the recent coverage and dives deep into the complexities of life in the Brazilian frontier. Fair warning: You may find it depressing. I did. 

More Tips for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides

Googles apps, especially Docs, Sheets, and Slides, look simple on the surface, but they have features that might not be immediately obvious. This Gizmodo article has 21 tips for these apps to help you streamline your work and use them to their fullest.

Scanning through the list, I found a few that I wasn't aware of. I ddin't know that Sheets has a macro recorder and that you can use IFTTT (If This Then That) to create automatic feeds and simple dashboards.

We're Toast 17

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. It is part of an ongoing series of posts.

Climate Change and Environment

• Climate-heating greenhouse gases hit new high, UN reports. Head of World Meteorological Organization says ‘no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline’.
• Nestlé Is Sucking the World’s Aquifers Dry. And its not just using all that water that's a problem-what happens to all those bottles, and where does the plastic come from? 
• Cracks in Greenland's Ice Sheet May Be Making It More Unstable. Water flowing under the ice sheet may destabilize it.
• Will Buffalo Become a Climate Change Haven? "With climate change, the world is going to suck, but Buffalo may suck less."
• Oceans running out of oxygen as temperatures rise. I am pretty sure that this has been predicted, and it's definitely not good if verified. 
• The Florida Keys flooded for 10 weeks straight and rising oceans could make this the new normal. "Scientists say climate change is making king tides higher and longer lasting."
• Coal Is Dead But China Is Reviving It. This is a big step backward. 
• Can We Survive Extreme Heat? "Humans have never lived on a planet this hot, and we’re totally unprepared for what’s to come."
• Alaska Cod Fishery Closes And Industry Braces For Ripple Effect. The cause is warm waters caused by climate change, not over-fishing.

Politics 

• Why the Impeachment Fight Is Even Scarier Than You Think. "Political scientists have studied what our democracy is going through. It usually doesn’t end well."
• The Russian hackers who hit the 2016 election have been very busy since. "New tools, tactics, and techniques show Russian hackers famous for targeting Americans have been active around the world."
• A Fight Over a 'False Solution' Is At the Center of the Madrid Climate Talks. Will they have the nerve to stare down the fossil fuel industry?

Technology

• Ruthless Quotas at Amazon Are Maiming Employees. "This holiday season, Amazon will move millions of packages at dizzying speed. Internal injury reports suggest all that convenience is coming at the expense of worker safety."
• At An Outback Steakhouse Franchise, Surveillance Blooms. Little Brother is watching you.

Why Your Android Device Needs Data Protection and How to Do That

Guest post: This is a guest post provided by techwarn.com.  techwarn.com showcases the latest tech news, reviews, and downloads with coverage of entertainment, gadgets, security, enthusiast gaming, hardware, software and consumer electronics.

Your Android phone might not be some Fort Knox for the US Government, but have you ever stopped to think of what would happen should anyone get access to your phone’s data?

It's easy to think not much is at stake. Quite frankly, we beg to differ.

What You Stand to Lose in An Android Data Hack

When you bought your Android device, you had to set it up with a Google account. The importance of this is that you get to save and back up all your files in line with such a Google account so that you can easily port phones later in the future.

At the base of that, there is one important thing you missed – everything about you might be on that Google account.

This means a single hack could grant anyone access to your Google Photos app, and there is no telling what they would find there. Suddenly, all those pictures you thought had been buried away will come to the surface again. Even the ones you deleted from your device might have been backed up on Google Photos before you removed them yourself.

That is putting things mildly.

A hacker could plant malicious codes on your unit instead, and you might not know until it is too late. Imagine what would happen if someone installed a keylogger on your phone to record all your key presses. They could easily use this data to get your passwords into different accounts, decipher your bank login details, and so much more.

Again, we know your phone is not Fort Knox, but you do see why you must  protect the data on it anyway?

Protecting your Android device

Fortunately, Google has put some security measures in place to keep hackers at bay. Unfortunately, these measures from Google are the bare minimum, and they can be gotten around with the right skills and motivation.

That is why you should build on the existing security protocols to make your data safer. Here’s how:

1) Keep Google’s security settings

As we said above, your phone comes with some security settings out of the box. It is expected that you leave them be so that you don’t expose yourself. Some of these security settings are:

• Prevention of app installations from unknown sources – This functionality is built into your Android phone to ensure apps from anywhere other than the Play Store don’t make it onto your device. That is because Google has checked the apps it allows onto the Play Store for malware and certified them, but won’t be able to help you when you go installing an app from anywhere else.
• Keeping the device grounded – Your OEM knows how much power and performance you should get from your unit, and they have worked that into the OS. However, some people feel the need to root the device to get more speed, power, and performance out of it. 

While you would surely get that, know that it is at risk of voiding your warranty and leaving the system open to attacks it could have otherwise warded off.

2) Update Often

This goes in two ways – system and application.

Sometimes, you might get a notification from Google or your OEM of a pending update you should attend to. Many either disregard this message or wait a long time before they get the update at all. The same goes for when you receive notifications to update your apps to a newer version.

While it is true that updates are sometimes sent to improve the aesthetics of apps and the system, they are also there to ensure everything keeps running as it should. By that, we mean the updates run a maintenance check to patch vulnerabilities and address security issues that were found.

This is even more common with the higher end Android phones which get monthly security updates.

Not installing the updates as fast as they come leaves you vulnerable to attacks from hackers who know how to exploit the loophole you should have fixed.

3) Install a VPN and Antivirus

We lumped these two together so you don't think they are independent of one another.

An antivirus is great for cleaning out the viruses that must be lurking around in your device while preventing others from coming in. It could also be the difference between falling for a phishing scam/ opening malicious documents and not, so you should totally get one.

That said, they can’t handle the function of a VPN.

When you install a VPN specially optimized for the Android OS, you get protection anytime you access the Internet. Your Internet traffic is no longer everyone’s business, making it impossible for a hacker to snoop on what you are doing online.

This kind of protection comes in handy when you are browsing the web and accessing sensitive information on a free/public Wi-Fi network.

4) Use 2-Factor Authentication with all your accounts

Enabling 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) on your online accounts keeps your accounts from getting hacked because of weak or repeated passwords. 2FA is a method for platforms to confirm your identity before letting you log in. With 2FA enabled, you will be prompted for a secondary one-time password that’s only shared with you either via an SMS or an authenticator app. This confirms to the platform that you are not an imitator.

Why is 2FA necessary? Most people stick to the same password across all of their accounts, be it banking, email, online shopping, and so on. If the password is ‘pwned’ in a data breach with any of the platforms, all of your accounts would be compromised. 2FA keeps that from happening. While it’s always a good idea to use unique strong passwords everywhere, having 2FA saves you from losing your accounts all at once in the unfortunate event of a ‘pwn’.

Wrap Up

Alongside making sure you have 2FA enabled on your accounts, keeping a strong password, and backing up your files regularly, your Android device will be prepared to face any attack that might come its way.

Featured Links - December 8, 2019

Links to things that I found interesting but didn't want to do a full post about.

• 24 Google Docs Templates That Will Make Your Life Easier. Some of these should be useful and it's easier using a template than designing from scratch.
• (Almost) Every Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV or Movie Adaptation in the Works Right Now. So much to watch, so little time.
• Gamma-ray laser moves a step closer to reality. A small step; it will be years before there's any practical application of this.
• Here's What Happens When an 18 Year Old Buys a Mainframe. "Connor Krukosky is an 18-year-old college student with a hobby of collecting vintage computers. One day, he decided to buy his own mainframe...an IBM z890. This is his story." If you have 45 minutes to watch the video, it will probably be the best 45 minutes of your week. 
• Thoughts on trolls, bots, and anti-vaxxers. Tips on handling them from Crawford Kilian, author and publisher of the H5N1 blog. 
• Dogs may be smarter than we think — and can benefit our health in ways we don't realize. "Studies show our four-legged friends can identify more words than previously thought and even help us learn."

All of Tor.com's Short Fiction for 2019

The Tor.com website has become one of the major venues for publishing short science fiction and fantasy. This year they published 13 novelettes and 22 short stories, all of which you can read for free on their website.

To make it easier, they've collected links to all of the stories on one page. Here you'll find stories by some of the top writers in the field, including Mary Robinette Kowal (winnter of this year's Hugo and Nebula awards), Annalee Newitz, Rich Larson, Michael Swanwick, Seanan McGuire, and many others. Check it out. How can you go wrong?

A Game of Moons

I just finished reading Luna: New Moon, the first book in Ian McDonald's Luna trilogy, and I can't recommend it highly enough. McDonald is one of the best SF writers currently publishing. His books are complex, fast paced, and highly literate.

McDonald is getting some serious recognition with this trilogy. The Guardian published a review of Luna: New Moon by Adam Roberts, himself an SF writer of some note.

As with the physics of the environment, so with the socioeconomics of lunar life. McDonald’s world of lunar colonists is dog-eat-dog, or indeed dog-push-dog-out-of-airlock. Rival families compete to exploit lunar resources: the rich prosper and the majority poor go to the wall. Helium-3 is plentiful, and mining it provides cheap energy for Moon and Earth both. Five family-owned corporations, or “dragons”, dominate, and although they operate within the law, they are all mafia-style organisations. Lunar law is rather looser than earthly varieties: lawyers challenge other lawyers to to-the-death physical combat in open court, possession is much more than nine-tenths of the law, and a general frontier town ethos obtains.

The story largely concerns the powerful Corta family, originally from Brazil, ruled by the fierce but dying matriarch Adriana Corta. Her first-born son and heir, Rafa Corta, is a hothead, the Sonny Corleone of the novel; his younger brother Lucas, calmer and a better tactician, is more Michael Corleone. The Cortas are effectively at war with the “Mackenzie Metals” family, originally from New Zealand. After somebody tries to assassinate Rafa with a cyberengineered fly, and when the Cortas snatch a lucrative new mining property from under the noses of the Mackenzies, matters heat up fast. There’s a lot of intrigue, some violence, rather more sex – healthily polymorphous and energetic, this – and all the pleasures of a cut-throat soap opera in space: a sort of Moon-Dome Dallas.

I'm not sure Dallas is the best comparison; Game of Thrones would be better as McDonald's story has similar depth and quality. 

Recreating Early Educational Computing Devices

Back in June I posted about a replica of the Minivac 601, a 1960s toy intended to teach digital circuit design, that was produced by my awesomely talented cousin, Michael Gardi.

Mike has been busy since then and has come up with more replicas of these early devices.

First here's a 3D printed replica of the Digi-Comp II marble computer. "Intended as an aid for teaching computer concepts, the Digi-Comp II can count, perform basic arithmetic, and obtain either the "1's" or '2's" complement of a number. The device can be run in auto mode where the balls are released automatically after each step of an operation until the operation is complete, or in manual mode where the user initiates each step."

Then there's the GENIAC (Electric Brain) Replica. "GENIAC, which stood for "GENIus Almost-automatic Computer", was an educational toy billed as a "computer" sold from 1955 through the sixties for about $20. Designed and marketed by Edmund C. Berkeley, with Oliver Garfield, it was widely advertised in science and electronics magazines. GENIAC provided many youths of the day with their first exposure to computer concepts and Boolean logic."

And then there's the CARDIAC (CARDboard Illustrative Aid to Computation) Replica. "The CARDIAC Instructable presented here is not a computer, it's a  device to help you understand how a computer works. You the user will: decode instructions by sliding panels up and down, move the program counter "lady bug" from one memory location to the next, perform the duties of an arithmetic logic unit (ALU), read inputs from one sliding strip, and write output results to another (with a pencil). Along the way you will you will learn the internal workings of a typical Von Neumann architecture computer. Some fairly sophisticated programs can be executed (by you manually remember) on the CARDIAC. Stacks, subroutines, recursion, and bootstrapping for example can all be demonstrated."

Finally, here's his latest and likely most sophisticated project, the Digi-Comp 1 Redux. He says:

Today's Instructable is a little different. It's a brand new machine that is a "mashup" of the following classics: 

• Digi-Comp I: My new design is mostly based on the mechanics and "programming model" from this machine.
• Digi-Comp II: The look and feel of the new machine came from both my Digi-Comp II replica and the Digi-Comp I.
• Minivac 601: From the Minivac 601 I used the old telephone switchboard patch cord mechanism to connect the solenoids to the proper logic elements.
• GENIAC Redux: The GENIAC Redux replica used magnetic reed switches and magnets to implement the logic elements. My new design follows suit.

I wanted my new machine to have the wonderful ascetic of these vintage models that I know and love. I want people to believe that it could in fact have been from the 50's or 60's. However since it is not a replica I didn't feel compelled to limit myself to the technologies of the era. What does this mean? Read on and find out. 

If you want to try building one of these, you will need a 3D printer and a moderate amount of mechanical ability and tools. They would probably be ideal projects for a high school computing class or computer group.

SpaceX Closing Florida Starship Site

SpaceX has had two sites building its new Starship prototypes, one in Boca Chica, Texas and one in Cocoa Beach in Florida. It now looks like the Florida site is being shut down, possibly temp;orarily, and important hardware is being moved to Texas.

Combining the appearance of Starship hardware on GO Discovery just yesterday and reports of major Cocoa layoffs, it’s all but certain that the Starship components on Discovery are going to head to Boca Chica, Texas. Schlang’s source also indicated that all affected employees were given the option to transfer to Boca Chica or Hawthorne, a prime indication that this abrupt change in plans is more a strategic move than a financial one. With any luck, most affected employees will be able to transfer to Florida pad operations or Boca Chica, although such a major and abrupt change is likely a no-go for anyone with major ties to South Florida.

According to the article, SpaceX will focus on Starship development in Texas, at least for the Mk3 prototype. Future development in Florida will likely take place at the main SpaceX site, removing the need to transport the vehicle over public land.

Hubbe Advent Calendar

It's now time for Advent calendars and the Hubble Advent Calendar is my favourite. Check it out each day before Christmas to see a gorgeous new image of our amazing universe.

Things May Be Slow Around Here

We're now entering the holiday season. I have a lot of things to do before Christmas, so posts may be sparse for the next month or so. I expect that you will have better things to do than read this anyway.

Featured Links - December 1, 2019

Links to things that I found interesting but didn't want to do a full post about.

• How to set up a two-factor authentication app on your smartphone. 2FA apps are more secure than SMS messaging.
• Holland Aims To Bring Back Its Starry Night. We need to follow their lead.
• Thousands of medieval manuscripts now online in full color through digitization project. Yet another internet time sink. 
• We Tried 8 Methods of Cooking Bacon and Found an Absolute Winner. See if you can guess what gave the best results. 
• Trends and Technologies Shaping Our Tomorrows. An interview with one of my favourite SF authors, Ian McDonald. 
• High Fructose Corn Syrup Has Been Quietly, Deceitfully Renamed. This is important to know if you want to stay healthy.
• The Cold Hard Truth About Icing Your Injuries. I've always found heat to be more effective.