A New Era of Climate Chaos

I watched some of last night's "presidential debate", which was neither presidential nor a debate. Here's an article that focuses on the climate change portion of the debate and ties it into the political trends from the Trump regime and its far-right supporters.

In recent years, the rise of ecofascism has also put a new twist on a hateful ideology. It left a horrific imprint on El Paso last year, when a gunman killed 22 people. He wrote a manifesto decrying corporate pollution and arguing the U.S. needed to “get rid of enough people” as justification for cold-blooded murder.

Just this month, we’ve also seen the far-right embrace wildfire conspiracy theories as a way to test boundaries and usurp power in Oregon. While it’s not textbook ecofascism, it’s a sign of the growing ways the far-right is using the climate crisis—which Republican policies are making worse—to further its goals of white supremacy.

The coming decades will be a time of great upheaval. Activists will be in the streets clamoring for just policies that meet the moment to deal with climate change and the intertwined issues of racism and inequality at the same time as Republicans are courting violent forces to repress the popular will. Climate denial was a form of slow violence. Now, Trump and Republicans appear to be embracing an accelerationist view while propping up polluters at all costs.

TV and Movie Reviews - September 2020

Short takes on TV shows and movies I watched in September. If the Blue Jays get blown out of the first-round playoffs, this list will get longer next month. 

TV Shows 

• Lovecraft Country: Based on the Matt Ruff novel. Each episode (of the three we've seen) has been compelling, but I'm having trouble figuring out where they're going with the series. (HBO)
• The Boys, Season 2: So far, a promising start to the season with more characters and more gore. (Amazon Prime)
• Killerman: An undercover cop gets into a car accident and ends up with 26 million in cash, a bagful of cocaine, and a squad of dirty cops after him. This one is well made, gritty and gory, and worth watching if you like action flicks. (Amazon Prime)
• Challenger: The Final Flight: A four-part documentary series about the Challenger disaster. I'm quite familiar with the disaster (I read the Rogers Report and a couple of books about it), so this didn't bring out any new facts, but it did make it very real as they interviewed many of the key NASA and Morton Thiokol people. Well done and worth watching. (Netflix)
• Fear City: New York vs the Mafia. A three-part documentary about how the FBI and US attorneys investigated and prosecuted the Mafia in New York in the 1980s. Another well done and fascinating documentary from Netflix.

Movies

• Inspector Lynley Mysteries: We binge-watched all six seasons of this and liked it a lot. I did find some of the episodes were a bit predictable but the characterization and acting made this series one of the better British police procedurals that we've seen. (Hoopla)
• Destruction: Los Angeles: Absolutely bad disaster flick with virtually no redeeming merit. Volcano, bad as that is, is far better. (Netflix)
• VelociPastor: We knew this was going to be bad but we had no idea how bad. It passed the line into so bad it's good, or at least hilariously funny. (Amazon Prime)
• The Godfather: One of the great American films and perhaps the best adaptation ever of a novel. I've seen it now many times, and it still captivates me. I'd put it in my top 10 films of all time. (Netflix)

Arrow Test Models Located

Searchers have apparently found what  some people call the Holy Grail of Canadian Aviation – test models of the Avro Arrow, the Canadian developed jet interceptor that was cancelled by the Diefenbaker government. 

The Arrow was arguably the most advanced jet interceptor of its time, and the cancellation had devastating effects on the Canadian aviation industry. The actual flight test aircraft, along with all their plans, were destroyed. For years, people have been searching for quarter-scale flight test models that were boosted by rockets over lake Ontario.

In the murky green deeps of Lake Ontario, about nine kilometres offshore of an old Canadian military outpost at Point Petre in Prince Edward County, a debris field of broken magnesium alloy mini aircraft parts mired in the mud and covered in quagga mussels suggest nine historically priceless, one-eighth scale test models of the full-sized aircraft, virtually disintegrated after they were fired on rockets and splashed down in Lake Ontario waters.

The evidence is undeniable, says the Raise the Arrow project team, which confirmed it has found at least one of the scale models on the lakebed scattered in pieces.

In the late 1950s, the scale models were fired from a Point Petre launch pad with telemetry that measured the hull performance of the swept-wing design to finely tweak the full-sized planes later built at Avro’s plant in Malton.

The model testing of the plane’s design was critical if the Royal Canada Air Force (RCAF) was to build a CF-105 all-weather interceptor ahead of its time and able to soar at Mach 2 speeds at heights well above 50,000 feet.

In an exclusive interview with The Intelligencer, project leader John Burzynski, president and CEO of Osisko Mining, confirmed after four summers of scouring the mucky lakebed, his team has finally located one of the baby Arrow models.

“What we found, basically, is a debris field. The one we found we are certain is one of the last four, it’s a very specific piece of the fuselage. You can see the metal. We have indications of yellow paint which strongly indicates it’s one of the last four. Only the last four were painted yellow and were of very similar construction,” Burzynski said.

For decades there have been rumours and conspiracy theories about the Arrow's demise, some people even thinking that an actual Arrow was spirited away, and is rusting away in a barn somewhere in Ontario, but sadly, nothing has ever turned up. 

Some Useful Android 11 Articles

One of the good things about getting a Pixel 4a was an immediate upgrade to Android 11. Here are some articles about Android 11 that I found useful or want to save for future reference.

• How Android 11 Beats iOS 14 for Handling Messaging Apps. Good article on using the new notification features in Android 11.
• The 8 Coolest New Features of Android 11. There's quite a bit there for what's been described as a minor release.
• How to Sep­a­rate Ring­tone and Noti­fi­ca­tion Vol­ume on Android. This is still not fixed in Android 11, so I will have to try the technique described in this article.
• The Android 11 Privacy and Security Features You Should Know. "Many of the updates to Google’s mobile OS are behind the scenes—but they can help you control your app permissions and keep your data safe."

Typography in Star Trek

Star Trek tried to present a complete, immersive future world and typography played a role. The excellent site, Typography in the Future, which has articles about typography in many manjor science ficition films,  has published an article about the typography in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Alas, The Original Series’s inconsistent typography did not survive the stylistic leap into the 1970s. To make up for it, The Motion Picture’s title card introduces a new font, with some of the curviest Es known to sci-fi. It also follows an emerging seventies trend: Movie names beginning with STAR must have long trailing lines on the opening S:

Illustrated by Bob Peak, the poster for The Motion Picture has become something of a classic. Its striking rainbow motif was reprised in a limited-edition poster for 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, presented to fans who attended a Star Trek fiftieth-anniversary event.

 

Notes on the Pixel 4a

More notes about the Pixel 4a and Android 11.

• Keyboard: On my Galaxy S8, I used Swiftkey as my default keyboard. On the Pixel, I tried using Gboard, but found that my preferred layout (with symbols chosen by a long press on the standard keys) too hard to use, because the symbols were just too small, and I couldn't find a theme with enough contrast. So I switched over to Swiftkey and found a high-contrast layout that works well enough, although I would prefer slightly larger keys and lettering.
• Battery: I was a bit worried about the battery life on the Pixel, because the battery is only 3140 mAh, but so far the battery life has been very good. Most days I can get through a whole day of normal usage and still have about 40 percent charge at the end of the day. I keep my screen brightness up fairly high, so people who can handle a dimmer screen will probably do better than that.
• Adaptive brightness: This setting seems somewhat inconsistent indoors but works very well outside. The screen is legible even in bright sunlight. 
• Camera: The camera is very good. I do find that colours are a bit less saturated than with the camera on the Galaxy S8, but they are accurate. The contrast range is better than on the Samsung. I like the level notification that tells me exactly when the phone is level so the horizon is straight. Almost every picture I've taken has turned out.   

Featured Links - September 27, 2020

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

• The Long Lost Manual for the World's Oldest Preserved Computer Has Been Found. The Zuse Z4, a digital computer built in 1945 and currently preserved at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, finally has a manual to fully reveal its secrets.
• 1,000-Year-Old Precursor to Stainless Steel Found in Iran, Surprising Archaeologists. "This steel was likely used to produce swords, daggers, armor, and other items, but these metals also contained phosphorus, which made them fragile."
• The Economics of a Space Empire: Paying for Intergalactic Wars. "We love space operas. LOVE. But we have questions. Like how does one even afford a death star? How does faster than light travel affect supply and demand!?"
• The only black hole we’ve ever seen has a shadow that wobbles. "The supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy has a shadow crescent that moves, like a dancer in the dark."
• It's Time to Dive Into the Beautiful World of Studio Ghibli. 400 images from Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, suitable for desktop wallpaper. 
• Podcast interview with SF author Charles Stross. " Did sci-fi books inspire you to enter science or engineering? In this fascinating conversation, Kevin talks with one of his favorite authors about a broad range of topics from Trotskyism to bioscience research."
  

Could Climate Have Worsened WWI and the 1918 Flu Pandemic?

Scientists have been saying for years that climate change will have effects on our health and could even be the cause of disease outbreaks or pandemics. Now researchers have proposed that a 'climate anomaly' could have worsened conditions in Europe during World War I, where the weather was unusually cold and wet for several years. Changes in migratory bird patterns may also have caused or contributed to the 1918 flu pandemic.  

“The data presented here show that extreme weather anomalies captured in [ice cores] and reanalysis records brought unusually strong influxes of cold marine air from the North Atlantic, primarily between 1915 and 1919, resulting in unusually strong precipitation events, and that they exacerbated total mortality across Europe,” wrote the authors in the paper.

This kind of climate anomaly, they said, happens about once a century. That it happened during the biggest war humanity had seen up until that point, while also coinciding with some of the war’s biggest battles, is unbelievably bad timing.

It’s also possible that this awful weather ushered in the pandemic, the authors argue. The excess precipitation, along with cold ocean air hanging over the Western Front, may have altered the migratory patterns of mallard ducks. This is significant because mallard ducks are “the primary reservoir [source] for the H1N1 avian influenza virus,” according to the study.

2020 Royal Society Science Book Prize Shortlist

There are many books about science being published, so how do you choose the good ones from the dross. You could start with this list of books, the 2020 Royal Society Science Book Prize Shortlist. 

• The World According to Physics by Jim Al-Khalili (Princeton University Press)
• The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson (Transworld Publishers)
• The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness by Susannah Cahalan (Canongate Books)
• Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships by Camilla Pang (Viking)
• The Double X Economy: The Epic Power of Empowering Women by Linda Scott (Faber & Faber)
• Transcendence: How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time by Gaia Vince (Allen Lane)

Reading PDFs on a Phone Just Got Easier

Adobe has announced an upgrade to its Acrobat Reader software on Android and IOS that should make it easier to read PDF files on a mobile device. It uses something called Sensei AI to reformat the document for the small screen. It's similar to the reading mode option on some browsers. 

The new Liquid Mode in Adobe Reader uploads your document to Adobe’s cloud service where it’s processed by Sensei to identify items like headers, images, and text blocks. The document is then delivered back to your device with a new mobile-friendly layout. Huge blocks of tiny text that run off the screen are automatically placed in line and given proper paragraph spacing, images fit neatly and take the rest of the document into account, and it can even make some sections collapsible. Essentially, it’s giving PDFs the kind of responsive design we expect from modern webpages.

Liquid Mode is unfortunately limited to Adobe’s Reader software for Android and iOS right now. So, if you’re attached to a third-party PDF app, you’re out of luck. That, of course, pushes people to Adobe’s own product, but in an interview with Fast Company, reps for the firm insisted that the primary motivation behind the feature was to find a solution to the problem that PDFs just aren’t as useful on mobile and people close these documents the minute they see what they’re getting into. Devs at Adobe went as far as exploring a new format altogether but decided that the ubiquity and compatibility of PDFs made them worth adapting.

It won't work if your document is bigger than 10 MB in size or if it's longer than 200 pages and, at this point, there's no desktop equivalent. 

I tested it on this report on satellite constellations and it worked quite well; the document was readable on my Pixel 4a, unlike the original PDF layout. To open Liquid View, first open the file in Acrobat Reader, then touch the leftmost icon at the top of the screen. 

I must admit that I am impressed. 

Some Disquieting Political Articles

I haven't been posting about US politics here much. Partly, that's a disinclination to fill the blog with political articles, and partly that's because I'm a nice polite Canadian trying to avoid controversy. 

But every once in a while, I come across something that I think deserves attention, and this is one of those times.  

First, here's an article from The Atlantic about how Trump could steal the election. This is not pure speculation; it's clear that the Republican regime is trying several different tactics outlined in the article. 

“We could well see a protracted postelection struggle in the courts and the streets if the results are close,” says Richard L. Hasen, a professor at the UC Irvine School of Law and the author of a recent book called Election Meltdown. “The kind of election meltdown we could see would be much worse than 2000’s Bush v. Gore case.”

A lot of people, including Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee, have mis­conceived the nature of the threat. They frame it as a concern, unthinkable for presidents past, that Trump might refuse to vacate the Oval Office if he loses. They generally conclude, as Biden has, that in that event the proper authorities “will escort him from the White House with great dispatch.”

The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that un­certainty to hold on to power.

For balance, here are some thoughts by historian Heather Cox Ricardson, from her daily newsletter "Letters from an American" for September 23. 

And, of course, Trump’s declaration has taken the focus off the Republican senators’ abrupt about-face on confirming a Supreme Court justice in an election year. The ploy laid bare their determination to cement their power at all costs, and it is not popular. Sixty-two percent of Americans, including 50% of Republicans, think the next president should name Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement.

The second tell in Trump’s statement is that Trump’s lawyers confirmed to Gellman that their strategy is to leverage their power in the system to steal the election. Surely, they would want to keep that plan quiet… unless they are hoping to convince voters that the game is so fully rigged there is no point in showing up to vote.

Trump’s statement is abhorrent, and we must certainly be prepared for chaos surrounding this election. But never forget that Trump’s campaign, which-- according to our intelligence agencies-- is being helped by Russian disinformation, is keen on convincing Americans that our system doesn’t work, our democracy is over, and there is no point in participating in it. If you believe them, their disinformation is a self-fulfilling prophecy, despite the fact that a strong majority of Americans prefers Biden to Trump.

Trump’s statement is abhorrent, indeed; but the future remains unwritten.

Finally, here's an article from a war gamer (drawn from an actual war game exercise conducted earlier in the year) about four possible scenarios that could lead to a second US civil war. None of them are appealing and most of them would be horrible. All of the scenarios are backed up with historical analogues. The scenarios described, along with its historical analogue) are:

• A Biden blowout (The American Civil War)
• A close Biden win (The Russian Revolution)
• A contested result (The Irish War of Independence)
• A Trump win (The Rwandan Civil War)

And if you this is overblown and all will be well, you need to study your history in more detail. 

The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

The title is somewhat grandiose, but Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" does cover a lot of musical ground. They have just revised and republished the list, which now includes a substantial number of 21st-century music. 

If you're wondering, the top album is now Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On".  

As for me, my choices for the top spot would probably be either Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" or the Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street", both albums that I find my listening to regularly and still finding new riches in them. 

Fall Sci-Fi and Fantasy TV Preview

Gizmodo has assembled a long, annotated list of science fiction and fantasy (SFF) TV shows that will be showing this fall. As usual, there's far more than one person could watch, so some filtering is needed. Here are shows that I think I'll be looking at. (Fair warning: my taste runs more to science fiction than fantasy and I'm not a big fan of comedy). 

• Utopia (September 25, Amazon). I've downloaded the British series that this was based on but haven't gotten around to watching it yet.
• Pandora (October 4, The CW). I missed the first season of this but might check it out, as my family has a taste for bad space opera. (There are very few good space opera shows). 
• neXt (October 6, Fox). I saw a preview of this, and it looks like it might be watchable.
• The Right Stuff (October 9, Disney+). Maybe it will be as good or better than the movie, although given that it's a Disney production, I have my doubts.
• Star Trek: Discovery (October 15, CBS All Access). The second season was marginally better than the first, but that's not saying much. I'll probably watch it just to see how badly they can screw up Star Trek. 
• The Mandalorian (October 30, Disney+). I am ashamed to admit that I enjoyed the first season of this. I hope they can keep the same dark tone and avoid getting too wrapped up in the Star Wars mythos.
• His Dark Materials (November TBD, HBO). The first season was quite good. I would watch the second season just for the deliciously evil Mrs. Coulter.
• The Stand (December 17, CBS All Access). This might be too timely to be comfortable viewing.

NASA Unveils Moon Landing Plan Details

NASA has finally unveiled a detailed plan (PDF link) to land astronauts on the moon by 2024. The first stage would involve three launches of the massive (and as yet untested) SLS rocket, culminating in a landing near the moon's south pole in 2024. That would be followed by the construction of a Lunar Gateway station in orbit around the moon and a permanent lunar base.

From Gizmodo:

The uncrewed Artemis I mission would involve the inaugural launch of NASA’s Space Launch System, which should happen in November 2021. The Orion spacecraft, designed to take astronauts to lunar orbit, has already been approved for prime time.

Artemis II would launch at some point in 2023 and deliver astronauts to lunar orbit, in what would be a reprise of the Apollo 8 and 10 “dress rehearsal” missions. This mission should give the crew an opportunity to manually pilot Orion, in a demonstration to assess the spacecraft’s “handling qualities and related hardware and software” which “cannot be readily gained on the ground in preparation for rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking, as well as undocking operations in lunar orbit beginning on Artemis III,” according to NASA.

During Artemis III, scheduled for 2024, NASA would deliver two astronauts—a man and a woman—to the lunar surface, which hasn’t seen a human footstep since 1972. The duo would stay on the surface for about seven days, during which time they’d collect samples and perform scientific experiments, among other tasks. These lunar explorers will be wearing fancy new spacesuits, dubbed Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Units, or xEMUs, designed to be more flexible and allow for more mobility than the Apollo versions.

I would love to see this happen, but realistically I doubt there's much chance that it will, given the current political environment and the pandemic. If I were betting, I'd put my money on SpaceX landing a modified Starship before NASA gets it's act together, and at about a third of the cost. 

Trump Administration’s Disregard for Wildlife and Culture Spreads Across North America

The Trump regime's roughshod ride over the environment is having consequences that affect more than just the United States. The border is just a line and wildlife, water, and air move across it freely, at least until walls are built. Pollution moves across it too, and the destruction of migratory habitat in one country affects the environment, wildlife, and culture of those living in another. 

This long article by a Canadian conservation scientist explains some of the consequences of the environmental disasters being caused by the Trump regime. 

At both its borders, the U.S. is eroding common causes and seems intent on defiling its neighbors. From the sensitive natural habitats and Native burial, spiritual, and other sites that the border wall is destroying, to sanctioning drilling in the Porcupine caribou calving grounds which the Gwich’in call “the sacred place where life begins,” these acts impudently erode cultural and natural resources all three countries share. Conservation diplomacy is dying.

Lawsuits over the Mexico-U.S. border wall are now joined by lawsuits over the Arctic, the latter of which the organization I work for has signed onto. As a conservation scientist who’s researched large mammals and now works for an organization in the Yukon intent on protecting wilderness landscapes, I’ve come to understand that our conservation goals cannot simply stop at national boundaries and must respect the Indigenous groups who for centuries have managed the land in a sustainable way and depend on it to this day.

Reverting Facebook To the Classic Interface

I published a guest post yesterday by Jay Linden about how much he dislikes the new Facebook desktop interface. He raises some good points, but on the whole, I prefer the new interface. It did take a bit of getting used to but I find the organization more logical and consistent. Also, I prefer dark mode and the new interface supports that.  

However, your mileage may vary, and if you prefer the "classic" Facebook interface, there are ways to revert back to it, even though Facebook has removed that capability from users at the beginning of September.

One is RevertSite, which you can install as an extension or add-on in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox. I've tried it and it does work as advertised. The icon used to toggle it on or off doesn't appear in my Facebook, but you can turn it on or off (or uninstall it) in the Externsions menu. 

Another option is to log in to the mobile Facebook interface from your desktop. I think you'd have to be pretty desperate to try this as it's ugly and not very usable.

Also, Chrome users can use Old Layout for Facebook. I haven't tried this one.

Update: Jay points out that RevertSite may break audio and video chats. You can get around this by opening Messenger directly at www.messenger.com.

Surviving a COVID-19 Winter

By any reasonable measure, COVID-19 is going to be with us over the winter and well into 2021. Even if a vaccine becomes available, it's going to be a long time before it can be produced and distributed in quantity. Winter is always a prime time for virus-spread diseases, and this year will be no exception. So how do we get through the winter?

The Atlantic, in its continuing coverage of the pandemic, has some good advice on what we can do to get through the winter. I should note that the article is intended for an American audience, and some of the advice won't work, or work well, in Canada's harsher climate. But it's still worth reading. 

Along with masking and distancing, time itself can effectively be another tool in our bundles. It’s not just the distance from another person that determines transmission; it’s also the duration. A shorter interaction is safer than a longer one because the window for the virus to enter your airways is narrower. Any respiratory virus is more likely to cause disease if you inhale higher doses of it. If you do find yourself in high-risk scenarios, at least don’t linger. Fredrick Sherman, a professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, recommends that if someone near you coughs or sneezes, “immediately exhale to avoid inhaling droplets or aerosols. Purse your lips to make the exhaling last longer. Turn your head fully away from the person and begin walking.”

Even as it gets colder, continue to socialize and exercise outdoors when possible—even if it’s initially less pleasant than being inside. It’s worth thinking about sweaters, hats, and coats as protective measures akin to masks. During the holidays, don’t plan gatherings in places where you can’t be outdoors and widely spaced. This may mean postponing or canceling long-standing traditions. For a lot of people, that will be difficult and sad. For some, it will be a welcome relief. In either case, it’s better than sending a family member to the ICU.  

Why Facebook's New Desktop Interface Sucks

This is a guest post by Jay Linden, a friend, retired technical writer, and musician. He recently posted on Facebook about how much he dislikes Facebook's recent redesign of their desktop interface. I thought his comments were worth sharing here. 

RIP decent Facebook experience. I am no longer able to back out of the dimwit "improvements" that make it nearly impossible to do anything in less than twice as long as it used to take. I can learn to find where they've hidden things (like more than 2 chat windows, like friend requests, like 3/4 of what I used to have room to see). But nobody can learn to make this steaming unusable mess pleasant.

On top of covid, the Earth burning, the end of flash, the end of kindness, this.  Thanks a lot, Facebook. You've really proven how much more important your little egos are than the comfort of billions of human beings you've enticed to rely on you while we make you filthy stinking rich.  Thanks.

Let's see where to start:

• Vastly too wide column for the newsfeed (we're soaking in it). Takes twice as long to read *anything* than in the properly optimized text line structure of the "classic".
• In spite of that, 2/3 of the page is wasted on the left and right sides.
• Management of messenger windows is a dog's breakfast and you can only see one at a time, two if you're not showing your list (used to be 3 or 4).
• Icons at the top are huge, spread out and I'd say pig ugly but that would insult pigs.
• The Friend Requests icon is gone, and while it's one of the key things we need to see, it's hidden in a text link on the left at top, where it disappears when you scroll down.
• Yet there are gigantic and utterly useless icons for Pages, Groups, Marketplace, and Watch. All things that worked perfectly well as "notifications" except for Marketplace.
• Maybe the worst two parts: 
• The notifications are gigantic and you can see only seven or eight of them even though they run from top to bottom and occupy almost the whole right third of the window. I used to be able to see and read ten or more in the top half of the window, in a configuration in which it was obvious that the notifications are in a dropdown. Now you can't tell if it's a popup, a dropdown or a new pervasive column.
• Even worse, in the left column. When everything was text and mini-icon, you could see about 20 items in the left column. Now you can see about half of that, honkin' big and nasty looking.

We honest to crud don't need everything to be so spaced out that you have to look through several screens in order to see the same stuff that used to sit in front of you, easy to find, and easy to read. It takes, literally and measurably, twice as long to do anything. Sure, you can get used to it. But you're still going to grow old twice as fast.

If I'm chief architect, and my user experience guy points me out *any* of those eight pretty egregious screw-ups above, my designer fixes it immediately or is assigned to a new role cleaning dishes in the caf. I'm sure they'd have plenty of company. "Custodial party of eight?"

The sad thing is that not a single one of those areas was a problem last month. None of them were broken.

Just as a quick P.S. I know we don't all have the same rig, the same experience, etc. But I have heard almost nobody, among my own contacts, in any group or on any page, who's said anything good about this disaster.

Taxonomical decisions (like why to leave Marketplace up and remove Friends) are generally subjective for such a diverse audience, and it may well be that people prefer immediate access to Marketplace over Friends, even if I don't. But if all they'd done is swap out Marketplace for Friends, I'd have called it a dumb decision and gone on.

Between the stupid thin-black-on-white in the top margin, the grotesque text size that requires a preposterous increase in eye tracking, and the spread of text that might as well be one word to a page, the result is an interface that's less appealing than a Herb Tarlek leisure suit.

© 2020 by Jay Linden.

Featured Links - September 20, 2020

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

• How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled. "NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic."
• The Downside of Conveniently Signing In With Google, Facebook, Twitter, or Apple. There's some good advice in this article. 
• How Cities Can Reclaim Their Streets From SUVs. "Pickup trucks and large sport-utility vehicles have flooded the streets of U.S. cities, a trend that’s been lethal for pedestrians and bike riders. Here’s what urban leaders could do about it." 
• Twitter thread. "How a design flaw and poor maintenance in electrical transmission towers caused wildfires in California that cost 16.7 billion dollars and 85 lives."
• Real Neurons Are Noisy. Can Neural Implants Figure That Out? "The brain has adaptive noise filters that change with conditions, making signals 20 – 100 percent more accurate."
• How Hospitals' Profit Orientation Led to Covid-19 Unpreparedness. The perils for a for-profit healthcare system laid bare.

Some Music Videos

Here are some music videos that I've enjoyed watching recently. 

• Ralph Towner - Father Time (Live in Korea) Pro Shot

• DUNE (2020) - Official Trailer Music - CLEAN VERSION - FULL MAIN THEME SONG - Eclipse (Hans Zimmer)

• Joni Mitchell - House of the Rising Sun (Official Video)

• Grateful Dead - Sugar Magnolia > Scarlet Begonias, Orchard Park, NY 1990/07/16

• Colin Linden - Rumours of Glory

• Syd Perry - Lovers Rock

Will the PATH Come Back?

The PATH, the sprawling underground shopping network in downtown Toronto, is a dead zone. The office towers above the PATH's corridors are largely empty, the food courts are deserted, and most of the shops are closed or out of business. 

The Globe and Mail reports on the current state of the PATH, and it's not good.

During lunchtime this week, many of the restaurants in the food courts throughout the PATH were closed. Staff, security guards and cleaners outnumbered patrons. At one food court, every restaurant was shut except for a fast-food Shanghai 360 and a coffee shop. There were decals on the floor directing traffic and showing people where to wait in line for the food. But no one was waiting.

At a Tim Hortons, four masked staff stood behind the counter, while one served the sole customer. Some of the seating was blocked off in an attempt to observe physical-distancing requirements. But only a handful of people were using tables, including two workers on a break.

The pandemic has hit fashion retailers, restaurants and their commercial landlords particularly hard, and perhaps nowhere more so than the PATH, which is highly reliant on the office economy and public transportation users. Tunnels are a hard sell for people worried about being inside. And while many of Toronto’s above-ground restaurants have been able to create makeshift patios, food courts buried under the financial district don’t have that option.

I have not been downtown since before Christmas. This article both saddened and disturbed me. It will be a long time before the PATH returns to anything near to what it was pre-covid

Notes on the Pixel 4a

Here are some notes about things I discovered when setting up my Pixel 4a after switching from a Samsung Galaxy S8. These are mostly for my future reference but may help other users. 

Email: I was happy with the Samsung Email app but it isn't compatible with my phone (some Samsung apps will install but not that one). I used it to monitor my soltys.ca email account. After a bit of searching, I found BlueMail, which has far more features than I am likely to use, but it will do for my limited needs. Installation was easier than I expected it to be, having spent too much time getting the Samsung app working on my old phone. (Yes, I know about Gmail and use it too).

Browser: Although the phone has a dark mode, Chrome doesn't use it for viewing websites. It does have a Simplified View mode, which uses dark mode and removes advertising distracting elements, but which doesn't always work. So I installed Samsung Internet and switch to that for most web browsing. At some point, I will look at the new Firefox for Android. 

Clock: The Clock app has the same features as the Samsung one, but its interface could use an overhaul. To enter time for an alarm, you have to enter all six digits of the time in HH:MM:SS format. On the Samsung clock, you could enter numbers in each field for hours, minutes, seconds; so for example 1 in the hour field and 30 in the minute field. The Google Clock app starts out with seconds, so if you want an alarm for just one hour, you have to enter 5 digits instead of one. Of course, I could just use a Google Assistant voice command, but still, it's not user friendly.

Notification Sounds: On my Samsung, I could control the ringtone and notification volume separately. Not on the Pixel. This is a pain, because if I keep the ringtone volume up high, I get bombarded with loud app notifications unless I turn them off individually. There are some apps that I want to hear a notification sound from, but not at a loud volume. If Samsung can do this, why not Google? (I may have found a solution. More on that later).

Gestures vs. Buttons: One of the very first things I did was turn off the gesture navigation introduced with Android 10 that replaces the Back, Home, and Overview buttons. I have no idea why anyone would think that gesture navigation is better. I'd be perfectly happy if I could find a way of moving the Back button to the right side of the screen, which is where it lived on the Samsung phones and ten years of muscle memory expects it to be. 

Windows PowerToys Are Back

There's some good news for Windows users. Windows PowerToys are back.  

Windows PowerToys has been around in one form or another since Windows 95, but it has now been resurrected as a set of open-source tools and are under active development. The current release includes the following tools:

• Color Picker is a tool for HEX and RGB color identification.
• FancyZones creates a window manager that makes it easier to build complex window layouts.
• File Explorer Preview adds Scalable Vector Graphics and Markdown previews to File Explorer.
• Image Resizer puts an image-resizing option into the File Explorer context menus.
• Keyboard Manager adds options for remapping keys and shortcuts.
• PowerRename is a tool for bulk file renaming in File Explorer via search-and-replace or regular expressions.
• PowerToys Run is a powerful search tool. Use it to find folders, files, applications, and other items.
• Shortcut Guide pops up an overlay screen of Windows-key shortcuts for as long as the Winkey is pressed and held.

These tools are intended for power uses (duh) and are under active development, so expect the occasional bug, and be careful using them. 

See this AskWoody newsletter article explaining how to set up PowerToys and how to use a couple of the tools. 

Science Fiction Is Good For You

Before the term largely went out of common use, I often referred to science fiction as a vaccine against future shock. (If you're not familiar with the term, read this.) I thought then, and still do, that reading SF helps you to think about a wider range of societies, give you an appreciation (if not an understanding of) for science, and perhaps helps to make you more tolerant of others.

According to this article, reading science fiction can have a big impact on younger readers. 

Reading science fiction and fantasy can help readers make sense of the world. Rather than limiting readers’ capacity to deal with reality, exposure to outside-the-box creative stories may expand their ability to engage reality based on science.

 A 2015 survey of science fiction and fantasy readers found that these readers were also major consumers of a wide range of other types of books and media. In fact, the study noted a connection between respondents’ consumption of varied literary forms and an ability to understand science.

But it offers more than just an appreciation of science.

From the “Harry Potter” and “Hunger Games” series to novels like Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” and “Parable of the Talents” and Nancy Kress’ “Beggars in Spain,” youths see examples of young people grappling with serious social, economic, and political issues that are timely and relevant, but in settings or times that offer critical distance.

This distance gives readers an avenue to grapple with complexity and use their imagination to consider different ways of managing social challenges. What better way to deal with the uncertainty of this time than with forms of fiction that make us comfortable with being uncomfortable, that explore uncertainty and ambiguity, and depict young people as active agents, survivors and shapers of their own destinies?

I think that this also applies to older readers, although the positive effects are likely to be less than for younger readers who probably aren't as set in their mental attittudes. 

 

 

 

House Report On Boeing 737 MAX

The US House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has issued its report on the Boeing 737 MAX. As Gizmodo puts it: "  In short: It was a perfect storm of shit where everyone made deadly mistakes."

“The MAX crashes were not the result of a singular failure, technical mistake, or mismanaged event,” the new report, which was posted online Wednesday morning, reads.

“They were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA—the pernicious result of regulatory capture on the part of the FAA with respect to its responsibilities to perform robust oversight of Boeing and to ensure the safety of the flying public.”

The report, written by Democrats in the House, is the culmination of 18 months of investigation to identify the primary cause of the crashes. Early reports suggested that technical failures involving the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) in the planes were to blame.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who was following aviation industry sources after the two crashes. 

Pixel 4a First Impressions

Up until now, all of my smartphones have been Samsungs, starting with the original Samsung Galaxy and moving on up to the Galaxy S8. I decided that it was time to upgrade because the S8 is more than three years old, which means that it's no longer receiving timely updates and will be stuck on Android 9. 

Over the last few years, phones have gotten more expensive and being retired, I can no longer afford the top-of-the-line flagship phones. Fortunately, mid-range phones are available that are perfectly adequate and have the features I need. I narrowed my choices down to the Samsung A71 and the Google Pixel 4a. The deciding factor was the timely updates for the Pixel; as I type this, my phone is downloading Android 11, which likely won't be available until at least the end of the year for Samsung phones. The other main factors were size; the A71 is just a bit too big for me to hold comfortably, and the Google camera is better. 

Overall, after getting the basic setup done, I'm happy with my choice. The setup itself was straightforward as I had already moved most of my applications from Samsung to Google some time ago. The Pixel came with a small adapter that allowed me to connect the old and new phones to transfer my apps, photos, music, and other data. The only time-consuming part was recreating my home screen layout, which is a manual process. 

Despite having a slower processor, the Pixel seems adequately fast, certainly comparable to the S8. I set up the fingerprint scanner, which I never used on the Samsung, and it has been almost 100 percent reliable. Battery life seems to be good, although I won't be able to tell for sure until I finish getting the phone set up. 

The Pixel camera is very good, especially in low light, even without the Night Mode feature. With that, it's far superior to the camera on the S8, although from what I've seen online, it may not be a lot better than the newest Samsung phones. The lens appears to have a slightly wider angle than the lens on the S8, but it's hard to compare directly as I had the S8 camera set to a 16:9 aspect ratio, and the camera on the Pixel defaults to 3:2. (So far, I haven't found a way to change that). Pictures seem to have slightly lower contrast than those on the Samsung, but with a wider dynamic range, which is particularly noticeable in the sky in outdoor shots. (Then again, we're under high haze from the West Coast forest fires, so the sunlight is substantially dimmer than it would be normally). 

It will take me a while to get used to the differences between Android 11 and Samsung's OneUI. Samsung offers more options for customization and is generally a bit easier to use. There are some subtle differences in basic functionality. For example, when setting the font size, Google gives you three choices and Samsung five. Samsung also offers more choices for fonts. I'll get used to it eventually.

That's enough for now. I'll probably post more about specific features after I get more used to the phone.

Walt Whitman: Still Relevant?

I studied English literature in university, and in one of my courses, I read a lot of Walt Whitman. At the time, I was quite taken with his writing, although I haven't read much recently. (I still have a copy of Leaves of Grass on my Kindle, should the urge strike me). What I remember most about his poetry was the energy and vividness in which he described the turbulent times in which he was living. 

The New York Times has just published a long appreciation of Whitman and his writing, and they feel that he's now especially relevant. 

IF IT IS presumption to scrutinize forebears through modern lenses, what is it for those forebears to scrutinize us? More than any poet I’ve read, Whitman dedicated himself to that retroflex scrutiny, writing directly to future readers. He sees us — “you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence” — walking the same streets he walked, watching the same sea gulls, boarding the same ferries. And, often enough, we see him back. Before the pandemic, when my husband and I visited Fulton Ferry Landing for ice cream, we watched the sea gulls and the run of the flood tide just as he said we would, and from the same spot as in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” Even the ice cream spoke of Whitman, being the product of Ample Hills Creamery, a name likewise drawn from that poem.

History walks the same ground as the present, I said earlier. But history is also the ground itself. The dirt beneath our feet, Whitman often observed, is the residue of our elders; the flowers we lay on graves are born of the bodies interred there. If the Civil War was won by the Union at the cost of a generation of young men he loved, so too was his vision of a greater American people — a casteless, democratic American people — built from loves, like Doyle’s, he eventually outlived. Yet flowers, or at least grass, grew from all their graves.

It's a long article but worth reading, especially if you haven't encounter Whitman before. 

 

Cory Doctorow On IP

Intellectual property (IP) is a term that's come into more common usage in the last few years as different people and organizations fight to gain control over software, books, music, photos, and movies. 

Cory Doctorow, SF author and consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been fighting for the IP rights of individuals for many years. He's written a long column for Locus magazine about it, a deep dive into the murky world of intellectual property rights and how they're being lost to the control of faceless multinational corporations.

When you look at how “IP” is used by firms, a very precise – albeit colloquial – meaning emerges:

“IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.”

That is, in a world of uncertainty, where other people’s unpredictability can erode your profits, mire you in scandal, or even tank your business, “IP” is a means of forcing other people to arrange their affairs to suit your needs, even if that undermines their own needs.

There are some ways in which this is absolutely undeniable. Take DRM, “Digital Rights Manage­ment.” These are the digital locks in our devices that prevent us from using them in ways that the manufacturer dislikes. Your printer uses DRM to force you to buy ink that the manufacturer has ap­proved; your phone uses DRM to force you to buy apps that the manufacturer has approved. Ventilators from Medtronic and tractors from John Deere use DRM to force you to get them repaired by the manu­facturer – and to scrap them when the manufacturer decides it’s time for you to buy a new one.

Copyright laws – that is, “IP laws” – ban tamper­ing with DRM, making it a serious, jailable felony to provide others with tools to bypass DRM. From Section 1201 of the US Digital Millennium Copy­right Act to Canada’s Bill C-32 to Article 6 of the EU Copyright Directive, countries around the world have imposed indiscriminate bans on breaking DRM.

These are all copyright laws, but, tellingly, the ban on breaking DRM is not limited to copyright infringement. Bypassing DRM to get your printer to accept third-party ink is not a copyright violation: you’re not reproducing its code, nor are you duplicat­ing the traces etched into its chips. But even though you’re not breaking copyright when you jailbreak your phone, you’re still breaking copyright law. The law bans legal conduct, if you have to break DRM to engage in it. This isn’t copyright protection – it’s felony contempt of business-model.

It's a long article but important and worth reading. If you don't have the time, he's published the TL;DR summary on his Pluralistic blog.

Is There Life in Venusian Clouds?

It turns out that Venus may not be as lifeless as previously thought. Astronomers have detected signs of phosphine in Venus' atmosphere, a compound that should signal the presence of life, although unknown geologic processes can't be ruled out. 

From Nature Astronomy:

Measurements of trace gases in planetary atmospheres help us explore chemical conditions different to those on Earth. Our nearest neighbour, Venus, has cloud decks that are temperate but hyperacidic. Here we report the apparent presence of phosphine (PH3) gas in Venus’s atmosphere, where any phosphorus should be in oxidized forms. Single-line millimetre-waveband spectral detections (quality up to ~15σ) from the JCMT and ALMA telescopes have no other plausible identification. Atmospheric PH3 at ~20 ppb abundance is inferred. The presence of PH3 is unexplained after exhaustive study of steady-state chemistry and photochemical pathways, with no currently known abiotic production routes in Venus’s atmosphere, clouds, surface and subsurface, or from lightning, volcanic or meteoritic delivery. PH3 could originate from unknown photochemistry or geochemistry, or, by analogy with biological production of PH3 on Earth, from the presence of life. Other PH3 spectral features should be sought, while in situ cloud and surface sampling could examine sources of this gas.

For a less technical take on the findings, see this New York Times article. 

The astronomers, who reported the finding on Monday in a pair of papers, have not collected specimens of Venusian microbes, nor have they snapped any pictures of them. But with powerful telescopes, they have detected a chemical — phosphine — in the thick Venus atmosphere. After much analysis, the scientists assert that something now alive is the only explanation for the chemical’s source.

Some researchers question this hypothesis, and they suggest instead that the gas could result from unexplained atmospheric or geologic processes on a planet that remains mysterious. But the finding will also encourage some planetary scientists to ask whether humanity has overlooked a planet that may have once been more Earthlike than any other world in our solar system.

“This is an astonishing and ‘out of the blue’ finding,” said Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of the papers (one published in Nature Astronomy and another submitted to the journal Astrobiology). “It will definitely fuel more research into the possibilities for life in Venus’s atmosphere.”

The Quest to Find Odd Perfect Numbers

I'm not sure why I find articles about advanced math and number theory so interesting. I was something of a math whiz when I was a teenager and took two years of math and physics in university before running into tensor calculus and switching to English literature. But I still enjoy reading about some of the more arcane aspects of math, and number theory certainly fits that bill. 

So here's an article about mathematicians quest to find odd perfect numbers or alternatively to prove that there aren't any. 

AS A HIGH school student in the mid-1990s, Pace Nielsen encountered a mathematical question that he’s still struggling with to this day. But he doesn’t feel bad: The problem that captivated him, called the odd perfect number conjecture, has been around for more than 2,000 years, making it one of the oldest unsolved problems in mathematics.

Part of this problem’s long-standing allure stems from the simplicity of the underlying concept: A number is perfect if it is a positive integer, n, whose divisors add up to exactly twice the number itself, 2n. The first and simplest example is 6, since its divisors—1, 2, 3, and 6—add up to 12, or 2 times 6. Then comes 28, whose divisors of 1, 2, 4, 7, 14, and 28 add up to 56. The next examples are 496 and 8,128.

Leonhard Euler formalized this definition in the 1700s with the introduction of his sigma (σ) function, which sums the divisors of a number. Thus, for perfect numbers, σ(n) = 2n.

But Pythagoras was aware of perfect numbers back in 500 BCE, and two centuries later Euclid devised a formula for generating even perfect numbers. He showed that if p and 2p − 1 are prime numbers (whose only divisors are 1 and themselves), then 2p−1 × (2p − 1) is a perfect number. For example, if p is 2, the formula gives you 21 × (22 − 1) or 6, and if p is 3, you get 22 × (23 − 1) or 28 — the first two perfect numbers. Euler proved 2,000 years later that this formula actually generates every even perfect number, though it is still unknown whether the set of even perfect numbers is finite or infinite.

Nielsen, now a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU), was ensnared by a related question: Do any odd perfect numbers (OPNs) exist? The Greek mathematician Nicomachus declared around 100 CE that all perfect numbers must be even, but no one has ever proved that claim.

There probably is some practical application for this kind of number theory research, but that doesn't matter. It's just a real cool and deep intellectual exercise, and I find it fascinating that mathematicians have been working on it for millennia and still haven't come to a resolution. 

Featured Links - September 13, 2020

Links to articles I found interesting but didn't want to do a full post about:

• Why the Pandemic Will Be a Long, Long Haul. "Even with a vaccine and better treatments, COVID-19 will be damaging people’s health for decades."
• Bill Cunningham | New York, New York. Street and fashion photography from the 1980s by an ace photographer. 
• UK mathematician wins richest prize in academia. "Martin Hairer takes $3m Breakthrough prize for work a colleague said must have been done by aliens."
• Denis Villeneuve Explains Why Dune Had to Be Filmed in the Real World. I am so looking forward to seeing this movie.
• AI Ruined Chess. Now, It’s Making the Game Beautiful Again. A former world champion teams up with the makers of AlphaZero to test variants on the age-old game that can jolt players into creative patterns.
• New Hubble data suggests there is an ingredient missing from current dark matter theories. There's something happening here, but you don't know what it it, do you, Mr. Jomes.

Astronomy Photographer of the Year Contest Winners

The winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest have been announced. There are many truly spectacular photos to admire. This one, by Nicholas Roemmelt, is my favourite.

The prestigious Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition has announced the winning photos of its 2020 contest. From galaxies and star-forming nebulae through to planets, aurorae, and annoying satellite trails, these photos remind us that Earth is but a peculiar speck in the vastness of space.

This is the 12th running of the photo contest, which is managed by Royal Observatory Greenwich in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine and Insight Investment. For this year’s contest, judges had to pore over and shortlist 5,000 entries gathered from six continents.

The Notion Note-Taking App

For some time, I used an app called TreePad+ as a note-taking app. Unfortunately, it's no longer being maintained or updated, and while the copy that I have installed on my PC still works, it's not cloud-based, which limits its usefulness. As a replacement, I've been using Evernote a bit as well as Google Keep, but neither have the usefulness or simple usability of TreePad+. 

Recently, I've stumbled upon an app called Notion that might work for me. It's cloud-based with apps for Windows and Android, which means I can use it across machines and platforms. It supports a hierarchical structure (which I like) as well as other layouts, comes with templates, and can export to standard formats. 

You can find out more about it on Notion's site, or look at this article from MakeUsOf which describes many features of the software. 

Notion is free for personal use but offers additional features intended for teams and business use if you want to get a monthly subscription. 

Tech Workers - Come to Canada

It's clear that the Toronto and Southern Ontario tech scene is booming, even in the middle of the recession caused by the pandemic. If you want to see just how lively it is, check out the BetaKit site, which covers news about Canadian startups and tech innovation.  

There are many reasons for this, not the least of them being the anti-immigration policies of the current US regime. Wired looks at this in more detail in this article.

But there's a new global winner: Canada, and particularly Toronto. Since 2013, the tech scene there has grown faster than in any other North American city. In 2017, Toronto added more tech jobs than Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington, DC, combined; in 2018 (the most recent year for which numbers are available), the city was second only to the Bay Area in new tech jobs. Toronto is so crammed with immigrants that nearly 50 percent of all residents were born outside the country.

“I call it our secret sauce,” says Humera Malik, founder of Canvass Analytics, which creates AI that helps factories monitor their machinery and processes. Malik, who is from Pakistan, hired over three-quarters of her firm's engineers from abroad, including Iran, Singapore, and India.

What happened? For one thing, Silicon Valley, now a victim of its own success, is unlivably expensive. Toronto is cheaper. There is also Toronto's pull factor: It has become a global AI hub because it's the home of deep-learning pioneers like Geoff Hinton at the University of Toronto—and “brilliance attracts brilliance,” notes Garth Gibson, head of the city's Vector Institute, which supports AI in academe and industry.

But this is also a story of the US actively chasing away immigrants. The system can be laborious to navigate (Yuan's application was denied eight times before he got in). And it's gotten harder. Donald Trump began his road to the White House by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and then banned travelers from Muslim countries as one of his first presidential acts. This summer, to the horror of Silicon Valley, he suspended H-1B visas for the rest of the year. He proposed, and then under pressure retracted, rules making it nigh impossible for foreign students to remain in the country during the pandemic.

I'm not surprised. About a decade ago, I had a line on a senior technical writing job in Silicon Valley, via a friend. It would have paid me more than double what I was making at the time. But I couldn't afford to live there, especially taking the cost of US health care into account. Yes, I would have had a good health plan through my prospective employer, but what would happen if I lost my job? That's not something I've ever had to worry about here in Canada. I stayed here and I have no regrets.  

Toxic Nostalgia

There's an HBO documentary called Class Action Park about a New Jersey water pack and playground that was notorious for injuring and even killing its patrons. On Twitter, Jason Sanford links that park and people's tolerance of it to the dark underbelly of SF fandom, using a concept called "toxic nostalgia". 

What really clicked everything for me was when @chaneyj  wrote "A lot of the good old days were quite bad and not healthy for any of us at all. It hurts for some people to admit that because, as I noted earlier, those days were so formative to our identities." (5/14)

I grew up on classic science fiction and fantasy. It was formative to my identity as a SF writer and fan. But in the years since I’ve also learned how many of the authors I admired in my youth were actively harming others. (6/14)

And how fandom tolerated and enabled racism, sexism, and abuse for decades, and refused to welcome many people into the genre. How the SF/F genre literally helped birth a sham religion to fleece people. (7/14)

It's a thoughtful read that acknowledges the flaws of the past without indulging in the excesses of modern cancel culture.

Yet Another Dark Matter Alternative

Physicists are still trying to detect dark matter, which some theories posit may make up more than 80 percent of the mass of the universe. I've always had a problem with it; it just seems counter-intuitive that we wouldn't be able to detect something that has such a major effect on our world. 

There are alternative theories. Now one of them seems to have passed a critical test (although it still has to pass muster, i.e., peer review).  

or decades, a band of rebel theorists has waged war with one of cosmology’s core concepts — the idea that an invisible, intangible form of matter forms the universe’s primary structure. This dark matter, which seems to outweigh the stuff we’re made of 5-to-1, accounts for a host of observations: the tight cohesion of galaxies and packs of galaxies, the way light from faraway galaxies will bend on its way to terrestrial telescopes, and the mottled structure of the early universe, to name a few.

The would-be revolutionaries seek an alternative cosmic recipe. In place of dark matter, they substitute a subtly modified force of gravity. But attempts to translate their rough idea into precise mathematical language have always run afoul of at least one key observation. Some formulations get galaxies right, some get the contortion of light rays right, but none have pierced dark matter’s most bulletproof piece of evidence: precise maps of ancient light, known as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). “A theory must do really well to agree with this data,” said Ruth Durrer, a cosmologist at the University of Geneva. “This is the bottleneck.”

Now, two theorists say they’ve finally squeezed an alternative theory of gravity past that obstacle. Their work, which was posted online in late June and has not yet passed peer review, uses a tweaked version of Einstein’s theory of gravity to reproduce an iconic map of the early universe, a feat that even some rebels feared to be impossible. “For 15 years we’ve just been dead in the water,” said Stacy McGaugh, an astronomer at Case Western Reserve University and a longtime advocate for modified-gravity theories who was not involved in the research. “It’s a huge leap forward.”

More Grim News About Melting Ice

As if this year hasn't been bad enough, there's more grim news on the climate change front. Recent research shows that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting at a rate that would match the worst-case scenarios in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2015 fifth assessment report. That would raise global sea levels by 17 cm. (6.7 inches) by the end of this century. It doesn't sound like much, but it would have major effects on cities and coastal areas already feeling the effects of sea-level rise.

 “That’s enough to double the frequency of storm-surge flooding in many of the world’s largest coastal cities,” Anna Hogg, study co-author and climate researcher in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, said in a statement.

Until recently, the main cause of global sea level rise has been thermal expansion—seawater expanding as it heats up. But over the past five years, the researchers say, ice melt has become the main thing pushing up the world’s oceans. The new research follows an August study which found Antarctica’s ice sheet is becoming vulnerable to quick destruction by melt water seeping into its fractures. And on the other side of the world, research published earlier this year found that sunny skies added to the woes of last year’s record Greenland melt. Plenty of smaller sources of ice are also becoming problematic, from disappearing glaciers in the Alps to Iceland.

Alarmingly, the study authors say that since sea level rise is already meeting scientists’ worst-case projections, the actual worst case could be even more severe. It may require completely reimagining the climate models used to estimate sea level rise.

New Features In Android 11

If you have a Pixel device, or one of a handful of other recent Android phones, you can now install Android 11. I'd be happy to write an actual review, but I'm stuck with a 3-year-old Android phone running Android 9. (For now, I plan on getting a Pixel 4a soon).

If you're curious about new features, here's an article that describes some of the best new features in this release.  In my case, the more granular control over notifications and app permissions look to be the most useful, although there are many small tweaks to other features.

THE PANDEMIC MIGHT have thrown a wrench in Google's plans to show off all things new with Android this year, but it hasn't stopped the company from launching the latest version of its mobile operating system.

Android is the OS that runs on a variety of devices from manufacturers like Samsung, LG, OnePlus, Motorola, Sony, and even Google. The new version is called Android 11 (Google switched from fun dessert-themed names to boring numbers last year.) The new Android doesn't introduce any dramatic changes to the platform, but when you update, you'll notice a few interface tweaks and a handful of new features offering meaningful everyday improvements. Before we get to the new features, let's talk about how to get the update.

There's more on the release in this Mobile Syrup article.

 

Still No Aliens

Astronomers (and others) have been searching for aliens for many years, but so far, none have turned up. Radio telescopes are now able to search millions of stars at a time looking for "technosignatures" - radio signals that would indicate the presence of a technological civilization.

Unfortunately, the latest such search has come up blank. 

The astronomers were searching for radio waves between 98 and 128 MHz, as these “narrow band signals” are “consistent with radio transmissions from intelligent civilizations,” according to the new study. Of course, we remain the only intelligent civilization known to produce these sorts of radio signals, but aliens, if they exist, likely produce them as well.

This latest SETI endeavor was conducted in January 2018 and included a region of space known to contain at least six exoplanets. To date, MWA has examined 75 known exoplanets at low frequencies.

The new search, which included over 10 million stars, was “orders of magnitude” higher than previous MWA surveys, as the authors wrote. From the 30 hours of observation, 17 were “free from imaging artifacts likely caused due to the instrument being actively worked on during the day, while the observations were taken at night.”

The null result is not entirely surprising, as the volume of space surveyed by the astronomers is still exceptionally small. In the press release, Tingay said it “was the equivalent of trying to find something in the Earth’s oceans but only searching a volume of water equivalent to a large backyard swimming pool.”

 

2020 Dragon Awards

The winners of the 2020 Dragon Awards have been announced. These are presented by Dragon Con, normally held in Atlanta over the Labour Day weekend, but this year held virtually. Over 6,000 people voted, which is more than voted for the Hugo awards this year. 

Some of the winners:

• Best Science Fiction Novel: The Last Emperox by John Scalzi
• Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal): The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
• Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel: Finch Merlin and the Fount of Youth by Bella Forrest
• Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel: Savage Wars by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole
• Best Alternate History Novel: Witchy Kingdom by D. J. Butler
• Best Media Tie-In Novel: Firefly – The Ghost Machine by James Lovegrove
• Best Horror Novel: The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

Featured Links - September 8, 2020

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

• 9 Built-in Android Settings to Increase Your Device Security. "Have an Android device? You must know about these key utilities that help keep your device secured."
• Arctic Wildfires Have Never Released This Much Carbon Dioxide. "The Arctic fires are equivalent to Spain’s emissions. Eastern Russia? All aviation emissions in pre-pandemic times. Western Russia? Basically a shade above what the UK spews in a year."
• Gravity, Gizmos, and a Grand Theory of Interstellar Travel. "For decades, Jim Woodward dreamed of a propellantless engine to take humans to the stars. Now he thinks he’s got it. But is it revolutionary—or illusory?"
• Become an Overnight Netflix Pro: 50+ Tips and Tricks You Should Know. Quite a few things I didn't know about and I've been using Netflix for years.
• NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory Opens Treasure Trove of Cosmic Delights. Some spectacular astronomical photos. 
• Fall Movie Preview 2020: From ‘Tenet’ to ‘Dune’ (We Hope). "Time-bending thrillers and sci-fi blockbusters, musical remakes and horror-icon redos, award-courting dramas and A-list comedies — yes, there still is a fall movie season."

Have a Happy Labour Day

It's another long weekend up here in the Great White North. Well, it's not white right now, but it will be all too soon. (You folks in Colorado might be in for it this weekend, if some weather predictions are accurate). 

So I'm taking the weekend off to enjoy the good weather while it lasts. I'll be back on Tuesday.

In the meantime, enjoy these flowers from my back yard.

 

Supply Chain Disaster Looms in Britain

It looks more and more like the UK is in for massive disruptions when Brexit happens at the end of this year. The British government plans on introducing a new software system to track trucks coming into the country, without a chance to do proper testing beforehand.  

The Road Haulage Association and the Freight Transport Association, now Logistics UK, has written to the government detailing the risks if IT systems are not available for users' acceptance testing and training.

“We are concerned that mass user testing of the software will not be possible until October – or maybe even November: this is far too late for the thousands of companies and tens of thousands of people who build our complex supply chains to redesign their own processes and contractual relations before the Transition Period ends.

"This timeline brings Smart Freight [System, the new post-Brexit arrangement] onstream at the height of the Christmas peak – traditionally the busiest time of year for the logistics industry – the worst possible time for our members to test and train staff in new working practices,” said Sarah Laouadi, European policy manager at Logistics UK, in a statement.

“Even if the software is ready by the end of the year, the government’s plans ignore the users’ perspective – our members will need time to learn the new system, adopt it and help to iron out any potential issues in the system,” she added.

I am boggled by this. I can't imagine it going well at all. If you are living in the UK, it's probably time (if you haven't started already) to stock up on non-perishable items.  

Cloud Loss and Climate Change

Recent research and updates to climate models are indicating that the global climate is more sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide than previously thought. A doubling of carbon dioxide from current levels could result in a 5.6C (10F) increase in temperatures. Part of the reason for that change in predictions is that scientists are getting a better handle on the role that clouds play in moderating global temperatures. 

Even more troubling, some research indicates that there is a tipping point in carbon dioxide levels, around 1,200 ppm. or roughly triple what it is now. This could be reached in a century or so if emissions remain at current levels. That would result in a sudden decrease in could levels and an extra 8C rise in temperatures.

Climate physicists at the California Institute of Technology performed a state-of-the-art simulation of stratocumulus clouds, the low-lying, blankety kind that have by far the largest cooling effect on the planet. The simulation revealed a tipping point: a level of warming at which stratocumulus clouds break up altogether. The disappearance occurs when the concentration of CO2 in the simulated atmosphere reaches 1,200 parts per million — a level that fossil fuel burning could push us past in about a century, under “business-as-usual” emissions scenarios. In the simulation, when the tipping point is breached, Earth’s temperature soars 8 degrees Celsius, in addition to the 4 degrees of warming or more caused by the CO2 directly.

Once clouds go away, the simulated climate “goes over a cliff,” said Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A leading authority on atmospheric physics, Emanuel called the new findings “very plausible,” though, as he noted, scientists must now make an effort to independently replicate the work.

The US Economy Is Cooked

I've been wondering for some months now how the US financial markets can be so buoyant when the real economy (the stores, factories, and services that employ people) is in such bad shape. 

Cory Doctorow, SF author and activist, has some thoughts about that.  

Between mounting costs for housing, education, transport and health – a place to sleep, a path to employment, a way to get to work, the physical capacity to do your job – being alive has meant increasing your debt burden.

And now the US real economy – the wage-generating (and thus debt-servicing) economy – has ground to a halt. The finance economy continues to boom, largely on the (obviously false) premise that debts will continue to be repaid.

It's worth contrasting the US approach – the $1200/person bailout, the $6T finance bailout – with other countries that are less beholden to their finance sectors.

Canada and many EU governments simply assumed the payrolls of firms, relieving them of their major expense and providing ready cash to consumers that the can use to purchase from those retailers that remain.

His post is a response to this article from Naked Capitalism. Both are worth reading.  

 

Build Your Own Turing Machine

I've posted here before about some of the projects my talented cousin, Michael Gardi, has been developing. His latest is a bit of a departure from his previous recreations of classic 60s educational computing toys. It's a Turing Machine demonstrator.  

For something that has been around since the 1930s and is so foundational to computer science, you’d think that the Turing machine, an abstraction for mechanical computation, would be easily understood. Making the abstract concepts easy to understand is what this Turing machine demonstrator aims to do.

The TMD-1 is a project that’s something of a departure from [Michael Gardi]’s usual fare, which has mostly been carefully crafted recreations of artifacts from the early days of computer history, like the Minivac 601  trainer and the DEC H-500 computer lab. The TMD-1 is, rather, a device that makes the principles of a Turing machine more concrete. To represent the concept of the “tape”, [Mike] used eight servo-controlled flip tiles. The “head” of the machine conceptually moves along the tape, its current position indicated by a lighted arrow while reading the status of the cell above it by polling the position of the servo.

Mike goes into more detail about his design choices in his Hackaday project site. Here'a a bit of it.

One might think having an eight cell "input area" would  limit the tasks TMD-1 could perform.  In actual fact I could not find any interesting programs that could not be run in eight or less cells on an unbounded tape. What does interesting mean? Well the program would have to do something non-trivial (something more than writing a single symbol to the tape) and then stop. Stopping is important because there is nothing interesting about a program wondering down a tape to infinity (at least after the first millennia or so). 

To  be brutally honest, there is only one program that runs on on a 3-symbol / 3-state Turing machine that is truly interesting, the "busy beaver".  The busy beaver "game" consists of designing a halting, binary-alphabet Turing machine which writes the most 1s on the tape, using only a given set of states, in this case 3-states. By definition a busy beaver program running on TMD-1 is prohibited from using the endmarker symbol. I won't spoil the ending but this program runs fine in eight cells.

In actual fact implementing TMD-1 as an Linear Bounded Automata makes it a lot more interesting and fun. Being able to determine the beginning and end of the input area is key. With this little LBA we will be able to:

• Treating the input area as a binary number find the one's compliment. (Making the input/tape alphabet 0 and 1 was not by accident in this case, although by convention this is often the case. )
• Find the two's compliment of the "binary" number in the input area.
• Count in binary (ascending and descending).
• Sorting. Move all the 1's in the input area to the right or left.
• Shift the input area one cell to the right or left (multiply / divide by 2).
• Cylon eye with head lamps ;-)

You get the idea. As an LBA the Turing Machine Demonstrator is a much more capable teaching tool even with only eight cells for the input area.

He has more detailed instructions, including a parts list and the files needed for 3D printing, on the Instructables site.