Syzygy

The quest for resolution independence

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:47:00 +0000

I sent this in an e-mail to a friend who was complaining about the lack of high DPI (dots per inch) consumer-grade LCD desktop displays. (Some models do exist, but are intended for the medical community and are pricey.)

A comparison of DPI for previous/current Apple computers and display products

Laptops:
13.3" (1280 x 800) = 113.49 DPI
15.4" (1440 x 900) = 110.27 DPI
17" (1920 x 1200) = 133.19 DPI

Cinema displays and old iMacs:
23" (1920 x 1200) = 98.44 DPI
24" (1920 x 1200) = 94.34 DPI
30" (2560 x 1600) = 100.63 DPI

New iMacs: (note that these are now 16x9, suitable for watching "widescreen" video without black bars instead of the 16x10, which is much more common for widescreen computer displays)

21.5" (1920 x 1080) = 102.46 DPI
27" (2560 x 1440) = 108.79 DPI

And while Apple has touted a push for resolution independence (along with 64-bit) for a while now, some things still appear to be broken (at least in the first Snow Leopard release. I haven't installed Snow Leopard yet, so I can't say if it's been fixed since then.):

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars/21
(scroll down to the Resolution Independence section)

On a further note, I do have minor gripes about the 16x10 computer displays, since my current HP display scales up widescreen input (via component) to the full size, so video games are stretched vertically ever so much (+11.1%). I believe this is simply because component is analog, and is being decoded by an onboard chip that then gets sent into the analog to digital converter (probably the same one that would decode a VGA signal). Not sure if this is still an issue on the newer LCD displays from HP and Dell that take consumer digital inputs like HDMI. (not that I have a PS3 or 360 to test anyway) I imagine it's still an issue with component video in. On the other hand having 16x10 IS useful for watching 16x9 video, because the black bars allow for UI popup that does not obscure the video at all.

stats on tv

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:15:00 +0000

I just saw a Toyota ad on tv that claimed that 80% of Toyota vehicles sold in the last 20 years are on the road today. What this statement would like you to believe is that if you buy a Toyota now, chances are good that it will be drivable for 20 years.

What the statement actually tells you is that of the cars sold over the period 1989-2009, 80% of those cars are on the road today. However, the distribution of "hard" failures is unknown, at least just from these statistics. It could be the case that all Toyota vehicles fail at exactly the 16-year mark: if Toyota sells the same number of cars each year, then the cars that would be running today were sold between 1993 and 2009, or 16 years worth (80%) of cars.

Alternatively, it is highly likely that the number of Toyota cars being sold today is much higher than it was in 1989, so of those 80% that are running today, most might have been sold in the last 10 years or so, which might put the average lifespan closer to the early teens.

powerpoint parsing fail

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:25:00 +0000

Yesterday, I was puzzled by this curious bullet-point at our weekly ecology seminar:
- recruitment unlikely due to Allee effects

Because I was parsing "unlikely" as an adverb modifying the verb "due" - of course, this didn't make any sense because Allee effects are not typically mentioned except as a mechanism to inhibit recruitment. Even more confusing was the previous sentence that no significant recruitment had been observed since the 1960s - so in some ways the statement that there *was* recruitment could have been new evidence to overturn earlier findings.

Eventually, I figured out that the intended parsing was for "unlikely" to be an adjective modifying the noun "recruitment" - recruitment is unlikely to occur because of low population densities (Allee effects).

Which begs the question of using complete sentences vs. phrases in powerpoint bullets: in this case, I think a complete sentence would have been fairly unambiguous, and would only have needed to be a bit longer - but in other cases, a complete sentence would take up a lot more space and be confusing as a block of text for the audience to read.

Loanwords in Japanese

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:08:00 +0000

Recently, I was eating in Sakura the other day and noticed something interesting on the specials menu, 黒豚ソーセジポトフ (kurobuta sausage potofu). Turning the menu over for the English side, all I found was the added word, soup, in parenthesis, which led me to believe that potofu was, indeed, derived from the French pot-au-feu. With that, I went ahead and ordered it, since the first and only time I had pot-au-feu, it was a delicious duck broth with seared foie gras and truffle oil. (thank you, Captain Jack!) Well, this one was not nearly so good - a rather bland vegetable mix with some decent sausage that tasted a bit more like hot dog than kurobuta, although in retrospect, I think that may be due to the rather unusual sweetness in kurobuta.

EDIT: This post wouldn't be complete without pointing you towards the wiki page on loanwords in Japanese, Gairaigo and the hilarious non-example "left-over", which refers to a "hit that goes over the left-fielder's head" in baseball rather than, well, leftovers. :)

clever spam

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 08:32:00 +0000

For the quick comic intro, see here.

In the latest round of human-blogs vs. spambots, I received this "interesting" comment on an oldish post. Since it's rather long, I'm only going to excerpt a particularly funny bit:

"School officials in Democratic-leaning New England say they have received relatively few charm bracelets." (with "charm bracelets" linking to what I assume is a jewelry site, but which probably sells viagra, too.)

Basically, it seems as though it's pulling random sentences from news clippings and then performing some basic parsing to replace certain phrases with its own links to create sometimes-grammatically-correct-but-always-humorous sentences.

The Snow Leopard Cometh

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:31:00 +0000

Well, Snow Leopard is out, and I've read the review. Here's my brief rundown:

Pros:
- performance improvements (resolving that dreaded kernel_task/CPU/overheating issue somewhat, I hope)
- decreased size (freeing up a few GBs for my paltry 80GB hard drive)
- gamma 2.2 (so I don't have to worry about color differences when my website is viewed on Mac vs. PC)

Cons:
- 64-bit apps (breaking the widescreen hack to Mail and the SIMBL-based color hack to Terminal) [these are not insignificant UI fixes that would not be particularly difficult for Apple to implement natively...]

Things I'm excited about that don't affect me at all:
- XCode 3.2 & Clang (cuz who doesn't like a compiler with a metallic silver dragon logo that doesn't support the programming language you use)
- QuickTime X (cuz hardware-based H.264 acceleration is nice IF your graphics card/chipset is supported)

the future of SSD drives

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:24:00 +0000

After reading about half of Accelerando and thinking about the nature of technology, I got to wondering about what was going on in the field of SSD development. Last I read, one of the major factors limiting SSD speed had to do with differences between read and write speed as well as write-leveling algorithms to ensure a drive-life as long as possible. However, in thinking about this problem of optimal use of SSD given their physical limitations, I got to remembering that other innovation in low-level data storage: separation of the physical drive from the storage methodology (in the form of zfs). Before I read up on it, I was confused about what zfs really brought to the table beyond traditional filesystems. (And the answer for most consumers is, none.) However, it does present some major advantages for those running large servers. (hence why it is a feature relegated to the server version of Snow Leopard) So now the question becomes, when will we get a filesystem (or operating system) specifically designed to not collide with the physical limitations of an SSD? Right now, Apple is in love with many small files, which makes incremental backups feasible and easy, but runs counter to effective SSD management.

I realize that at the moment, standard magnetic recording is still used in 99%+ of the market, but presumably people are going to realize that having TBs of storage space is not going to be useful when media creation has not drastically increased (nor pipe bandwidth). And if SSD development continues, we should soon see the advantages of dramatically faster / slightly more expensive data storage. After all, to the average consumer, the 1 TB (traditional) has very little marginal value over the 256 GB (SSD).

Now I know what to name my colonies...

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:37:00 +0000

About a year ago, I first became enamored with Galactic Civilizations II, a sequel to a game I'd never heard of, Galactic Civilizations (I). Turns out, this game is made by Stardock, who are much better known for their desktop enhancement software. Of course, this interest was spurred by reading PC Gamer's wonderful blog entries on the two expansions to Galciv II, found here and here. Regardless, my itch to conquer space in a turn-based game that looked to be detailed enough to satisfy my OCD-ness, yet simple enough to satisfy my impatience went unattended for over a year. (Partly because I realized how much of a time suck Galciv II was going to be.)

Fast-forward, and suddenly I was in Gamestop, trading in a bunch of games I wasn't going to play again so that I could replace a broken PS2 controller (to finish God of War 2 and feed that Katamari craving) when I saw Galciv II on the shelf. Unfortunately, it was merely the older expansion, but the guy behind the counter was glad to go into the back room and retrieve ... the Ultimate Edition, which includes both expansions and the original for forty bucks! (I guess there's a soundtrack cd too, but the soundtrack is not really designed for standalone listening.)

As of now, I've only completed a few of the missions and two games against the AI, one on a medium-sized map (5x5), and one on a large-sized map (8x8). FYI, there are three more size classes above large, which are Huge (12x12), Gigantic (18x18), and Immense (21x21). Needless to say, maps of that size would require a couple weeks blocked off to play, given that the large-sized map took me about 16 hours to complete...

So far, though, my experience has been excellent. I've only tried AI up to the normal difficulty, which hasn't been too much of a challenge so far. My only complaints are that there are some bugs (1 or 2 crashes to Windows and weird disappearance of the next turn button), but the autosave function resolves the former and save and loading the game resolves the latter. The lack of documentation is a more serious issue, however, particularly in the lack of clarity in game mechanics. For instance, when you research certain technologies, sometimes your stats get a boost, except that it's expressed as a raw integer (e.g. diplomacy +10), yet many of your stats are displayed as percentages. When you build certain social projects on your planets, some of them also yield boosts (e.g. diplomacy +25%), yet it's unclear whether that is an actual +25% to your diplomacy (including previous upgrades), or along the same lines as the +10 from a researched technology. Finally, sometimes, the difference between whether a social project's effects apply just to the planet or to the civilization are unclear, especially for things that boost morale.

But, it needs to be mentioned that the happiest time I had when playing was on one of the earlier missions, when I noticed the planets named Celes, Locke, and Sabin. Ahh, nostalgia. Luckily, there are 14 different FF6 characters, which will give me plenty of colony names for my first push among the stars.

wonderful security lesson from UCSD

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:36:00 +0000

From UCSD (summarized by me):

How to use the UCSD encrypted wireless network:

1. download this file from our website
[note: safari wouldn't let me save it as it was, forcing me to change the extension when saving, and then changing the extension back after it was downloaded]

2. double-click the icon

3. if it asks you for your password, enter it in and click ok

[...]

Yes, I was told to download a file, open it, and enter in my computer's password. Hmmm, if I didn't know what was actually going on, this would set off all kinds of warning bells. It is so nice that UCSD neglects to explain what it is I am doing and why I should click the "always trust" button when "this root certificate is not trusted", because any potential scammer/botnet creator/hacker/identity theft is sure to explain the mechanics behind why a root certificate is not verified and why entering in my password is ok.

Histograms in Excel for Mac 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:41:00 +0000

While I do have a whole 'nother post coming up about the failings of Excel 2008, one major issue that was resolved is the analysis toolpak causing Excel 2004 to crash. "Luckily", this problem is fixed by removing VBA from Excel 2008, which means there is NO analysis toolpak. Not that it was ever great to begin with, but I guess histograms are nice. Anyway, I figured people might actually want to do histograms of their own. To that end, I created an excel file that does histograms.

Some of the stuff is a bit of kludge, but I'm sure it's fairly self-explanatory: put your data in column A, and the number of points in the appropriate cell. If you need more bins, change the number of bins and adjust the chart accordingly.

Link Here

Obviously, this is intended for Excel 2008 (and 2007), but it should be backwards compatible with earlier versions, as long as you have the necessary updates to read the new file format.

You keep using that word [logic]: I do not think it means what you think it means.

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:45:00 +0000

From Francis Collins, who argues the following as scientific evidence for God:

An additional set of observations I found quite breathtaking and do to this day is the fact that the physical constants that determine the nature of interactions between matter and the way in which energy behaves have precisely the values they would need to have for any kind of complexity or life to occur.

I interpret the argument to be thus:
(1) the physical constants necessary to support life are extremely rare
(2) because the life exists, then God must exist.

I am skeptical that (1) is true, since we don't know ANYTHING about extraterrestrial life to say what could or could not be supported by different physical constants. It is outside our realm of knowledge to say that lifeform X could not exist under conditions Y because we don't know about all the different types of X or even all the different types of Y.

But for argument's sake, let's suppose you accept (1). Then you hit the BIG logical fallacy:

Because life exists (and the conditions to support life are astronomically rare), God must exist.

Which is completely ass-backwards, because the logical sequence of events is:

God exists => the physical constants of the universe are tuned perfectly => life exists.

Since we are alive, this statement CANNOT be disproven. It can only be disproven if we find (a) perfect tuning of physical constants of the universe and (b) the LACK of life. By definition, it would seem difficult to both determine the physical constants of the universe while not being alive and also proving that no life existed elsewhere in the universe.

This is an extremely basic logical fallacy that I learned about in 8th grade in the math unit on logic, but I'm sure I had an intuitive sense of why this was incorrect earlier than that. Claiming that this is "scientific evidence" for God is just plain BS, cuz last I checked *real* scientists (and scientists-to-be) use logic.

USPC 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:05:00 +0000

Update: Well, it turns out I was off by 3 on Window Pain (doh!), but Nick was nice enough not to penalize me for the late submission on Magic Puzzle'Rs - which means I actually ended up with a score of 95 and rank of 105 (about a 50 place drop from last year). Which actually is a bit heartening, because if I didn't make stupid mistakes, a score of 125 would put me at the 44-48 rank and being on top of things really would have netted me a top 20 finish this year. There is hope for 2010!

Well, I knew I probably wouldn't do as well as last year, given the little prep time I had this year. Overall, though, it wasn't bad. I think if I had spent an hour or two reading over the instructions so that I knew what puzzles would be nice to do and strategies to take, (and how to put in the answers) along with being in top shape, I could have scored in the 180 range.

Here's the breakdown:

1. Battleships - I finished this first and very quickly, due to a (correct) early guess on the second cruiser position. I forget my writing scheme, so I had to break out the white-out (doh!).

2. Sudoku - I wasn't really on top of my sudoku game, so I took a crack at this and stalled a few minutes in. I left it alone, came back later, made one guess and extended until I found a contradiction, and then changed it and solved the rest. Took about 20 minutes. (blargh)

3. KenKen - The instructions were somewhat confusing, but I figured out that 2 square cages *could* be multiplication or addition, and 3 square cages *must* be multiplication or addition. It should have been worded differently (ie. 2 square cages can be any operation, but there is a constraint on 3 square cages). Anyway, the singleton 2 helped by forcing the 4+6 on the 10 in the same row. 20 and 40 had to be multiplication, which forced some early numbers, and then there was a bit of casework on the bottom and top rows to get the rest.

4. Sum Thing - I guessed that the center node was the key, since it intersected with 4 pairs of lines - forcing it to be 4. I struggled a bit with placing the rest, until I realized that the 5 had to be in the only unconnected node to the center and it came around nicely.

5. Eminent D'OHmain - In retrospect, rather easy, if a bit time consuming. Probably took me around 15 minutes (after the test) to solve. (which really isn't that much better than my sudoku solve for the same number of points)

6. Switch Cheese - Really easy this time: I got all 10 differences in a few minutes using the good old cut in half, flip over and vdiff.

7. Writer's Block - I initially started looking at 3 down without significant progress and then went to 2 across and filled in everything nicely. Unfortunately I crossed off the MICHENER by accident and messed up the bottom left area. Ended up answering incorrectly. Doh...

8. Corral - I am not a fan of corral puzzles: they take me way too much time - so I left this out, spent about 20 minutes afterwards and still didn't get it. (I think I'm close, though.)

9. Coordinate Pairs - I started by looking at N and its possible pairs. Realized (3,0) was out of the question, as was (2,1) and (4,1), which left (4,2), and resulted in the solution.

10. Triangular Skyscrapers - Looked too complicated - regular skyscrapers is already pushing my point/minute rate - so I left this one alone. It took me about 30 min to get afterwards, once I was able to fix the positions of the 8 and 7's.

11. Window Pain - Halfway through counting, I realized what I was doing and sped things up a bit. I think the strategy here is to look at different sizes of squares and figure out possible positions for the upper left corner. Take the number of valid x-coordinates and multiply by the number of valid y-coordinates to get the solution. Bit annoying to add everything together.

12. Masyu - Spent 1 minute starting, and realized this was a much bigger Masyu than I had done in the past, with no real recent practice, so I left this one alone. I spent about 40 min afterward resolving everything but the middle of the right side, which probably would have been a good place to start. Still unsolved. (but I think I'm close)

13. C Note - I didn't have a good strategy for this one, so I left it alone. Afterwards, I realized you could start with the middle row, since exactly 2 of the 3 givens have to be ones digits. Some casework results in 56 for the middle of the right column, and some guessing led me to the answer. Also about 20 min.

14. Lucky Sevens - No complaints, but seemed real familiar. Actually in the same format as 2003 - 8. Unlucky Sevens - with many of the same words.

15. 2-3 Maze - I wasted about 20 min darkening unusable squares, screwed up a couple times, but eventually got the answer. Probably could have saved a bit of time, but oh well.

16. Sweet Sixteen - I have some intuition about trying to fit the middle 6 numbers, but never found a workable solution after some 20 minutes post-test.

17. Yajilin - Did a little bit, messed up - figured it was the same situation as Masyu (larger than expected and little practice), so I left it alone.

18. Wolves and Sheep in Fences - Also not a fan of fences.

19. Magic Puzzle'Rs - ARGH: spent over an hour trying to fit things in. I realized early that Merrell was key - since it had to be placed diagonally. I wasted about 20 minutes of trying to fit it in until I realized it would fit in the other diagonal location. Then wasted another 30 minutes trying to fit in the 7-letter names to no avail. Came back with about 25 minutes left and solved with 6 seconds to spare, but then spent 17 seconds to put in the answer. (Hey Nick, can you number the columns for me next time?) Overtime, but worth the penalty for the 10 extra points (20 for solving, -10 for overtime)

20. SuDOUku - Worked on it for a few minutes - screwed up - then solved afterwards in about 25 minutes, which is pretty good for the points award. DOH. The key was realizing which empty cells forced 2 of one number in a column or row, which then required no collisions in all other columns/rows. For instance, there is a forced 4 collision in column 7 or 8, which means all other columns contain exactly one 4, which can be placed in row 1 for column 6, which conveniently also means all the collisions for 4 are known (row, column, cell). The tricky part is realizing that there are 2 collisions for 7 along rows, columns, and cells.

21. Di-Agony - Haven't tried it and no real intention to, either...

22. Four Square - Spent about 10 minutes post test looking at some clues, but I've never really seen Snake before, so I left this alone.

23. Inside/Outside Corral - Remember what I said about Corral?

Results: I think 100 points. (Hopefully I counted correctly for 11.) I probably should've gotten 125 points (-15 for 7. and -10 for 19.) Again, if I had been able to prep and were in practice, probably could have also squeezed in KenKen, C Note, and SuDOUku for another 50 points. Ideally, maybe also Masyu or Yajilin, but I'm ok with trying to the potential 175 mark I think is doable for next year. (with appropriate point scaling)

11-year old genius, my ass

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:15:00 +0000

From the 11-year old graduating from East LA Community College:
"I feel it's a waste of time playing video games because it's not helping humanity in any way"

Yes, but so too is martial arts. (unless perhaps, you go into special forces. Let's not even mention his goal of being a movie actor...) For mental well-being, people do all sorts of activities to relax. Sure, some of them help humanity (volunteering at a homeless shelter, for instance), and some of them don't (yoga, television, video games). To take a stance on video games when you yourself are engaged in activities that don't help humanity is simply hypocritical.

Of course, calling an 11-year old a hypocrite is just plain silly, but when you're being put on a pedestal for graduating from college early, I feel justified in attacking your narrow view of the world.

And just to be clear, graduating from a community college when you are 11 is NOT a big achievement. I have no doubts that this kid is gifted, but to claim that he has thoroughly mastered any academic subject is a bit of a joke. The 14 year-olds making groundbreaking achievements in mathematics are geniuses; all this kid has shown is that he can read and recite from textbooks. His description of wormholes clearly demonstrates a lack of deep understanding of the topic.

If only the US had this problem.

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Thu, 28 May 2009 06:25:00 +0000

Apparently, the Netherlands are importing criminals from Belgium because there aren't enough in the Netherlands. (and Belgium is paying them a cool 30 million euros to do so.)

Hmmm, let's see, the Netherlands have 16 million people (according to Wikipedia) and 12,000 criminals in prison. That equates to about 75 detainees per 100,000 in the population.

By comparison, it is 751/100,000 in the US, or about 1% of all adults. Is crime rate actually 10 times higher in the US, or are we 10 times more likely to put people in jail for the crimes they commit (compared to the Netherlands)? My guess is that it is more of the latter than the former, given that the Netherlands has much laxer laws on drugs, which is one of the main causes for the high prison population in the US.

Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that the US will ever change on this, because there's very much a self-righteous view on punishing people for their crimes (rather than rehabilitating them to be useful to society). That, plus the prison union is pretty sizable and has an obvious interest in keeping themselves employed by supporting laws that put more people behind bars for longer.

Mmm, technology

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Fri, 22 May 2009 21:53:00 +0000

There's an interesting new feature on Amazon, where you can "upgrade" your book purchases, allowing you to view the entire contents online, make annotations, and print pages. Seems like an excellent idea, except for the price. For the benefit of viewing the books you already bought, you have to shell out some extra dough. I'm not sure exactly what the rate is, but it looks to be around 20% of the book's retail price. That's quite a lot of moolah to digitize your collection. I understand that redoing old works in new technology costs money, but there should be few costs once the infrastructure is in place. Plus, I'm sure there is the potential to have much higher volume of sales for pure digital works via Kindle and the like.

My belief is that if you buy a book, you shouldn't have to pay extra for different formats of the same thing (well, audio recordings are a bit different, as are different editions). I think a better business model would be to charge some sort of flat rate for books of different genres/lengths that is reasonable, rather than something based off of retail prices. (Actually, I'm not sure what the pricing scheme is, it would certainly be ridiculous if they charged more to upgrade a hardcover book than the identical paperback version.) As it is, I'm already miffed at the prices to buy things for Kindle. I would like to see a world where pure digital downloads are 3/4 price with the option to have the physical copy packaged and shipped for the 1/4 difference, with free digital versions included for all physical purchases.

this is NOT fiscal responsibility

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:56:00 +0000

Apparently, the governator intends to take the unconstitutional law on selling violent video games to minors all the way to SCOTUS after having been rejected by the 9th Circuit court of appeals. (via ars technica)

Still, I guess it's chump change compared to the massive amount of bond-based borrowing that was authorized by last year's Prop. 1 to build a high speed rail.

Fisheries, Finance, and Physics

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:58:00 +0000

[edited for clarity]

See what I did there with the phonetic alliteration? :)

Q. What is the difference between the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) and Banks?

A. Black holes created by the LHC are more transparent about where stuff goes...

One theory about the potential dangers associated with the LHC puts the risk of it destroying the Earth at 50-50 (watch the clip!). Of course, this must be qualified by examining the probability that this theory of assessing the risk of the LHC is correct (0%). Other estimates of the risk posed by the LHC suggest that the probability of destroying the Earth is at 10^-9. As Ord, HIllerbrand, & Sandberg rightly point out, this should be qualified by the possibility that the model is incorrect or that calculation errors have been made.

In most cases, it is impossible to gauge the failure probability for something like a single bolt on the space shuttle. In these cases, mathematical models are often used. Clearly, estimates of the probability of "rare" events need to take into account the possibilities that the models used to generate such probabilities are accurate.

Andy Haldane describes a similar problem with how the financial industry assessed risk: some of the initial events that sparked the issue were "unlikely"* Well, either we are extremely "lucky" or the model is incorrect. Unless you can demonstrate to me that the probability of the latter is less likely than seeing that kind of impossible event, I'm going to bet that someone somewhere screwed up. In fact, it's plain to see from Chart 1 of the notes for Haldane's speech how this could happen. In the chart, data collected over the last 10 years (1998-2007) suggested that the probability of negative GDP growth was, effectively, zero. Looking over the whole sample of time (1857-2007) in which this data has been collected, however, suggests that negative GDP growth occurs maybe 15% of the time. That doesn't seem like a big difference, but when you bet billions of dollars on what you think is a sure thing (non-negative GDP growth), but actually occurs maybe 1 in 7 times, that's an f-ing big risk.

What does this have to do with Fisheries, you ask. Well, according to the Magnuson-Stevens Act (yep, THAT Ted Stevens), "Conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available.". I suppose this means that fishing should not be a level where there is a significant risk of collapse. (whatever significant means...) Of course, the estimation of collapse risk is done using a model, which is fallible, possibly with high probability. If your best available science is not very good, is that sufficient to go plowing (or trawling, I guess) ahead? Your "best" model may suggest that you can fish 100,000 tons per year with < 1% chance of collapse, but if your model is only ~80% accurate (which is really good for fisheries models!), the upper bound on the probability of actual collapse is closer to 21% (0.8 * 1% + 0.2 * x, where x is unknown, but up to 1, potentially).

Logic and stats are nice when they're applied correctly, but more often than not, their use is exaggerated. And part of the blame does rest on the shoulder of scientists, who necessarily play up their results to get funding/acclaim/jobs. Still, that *is* why we have scientists advising the government, right? So that government officials will be able to take the best information available to make decisions? (and then we cross our fingers that our elected officials (or their appointees) know enough to weigh information properly...)

* shifts on the order of 25 standard deviations, which Andy calculates to occur roughly once every 10^135 years or
1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 years.

1) Ord, T., Hillerbrand, R., & A. Sandberg. Probing the improbable: methodological challenges for risks with low probabilities and high stakes. [preprint] (2009).

2) Haldane, A.G. Why banks failed the stress test. [speech] (http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/speeches/2009/speech374.pdf) (2009).

Is this what you call change?

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:31:00 +0000

This is exactly what I was worried about when Obama turned around and supported telecom immunity after he said he wouldn't...

From Salon:

But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the "state secrets" privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new "sovereign immunity" claim of breathtaking scope -- never before advanced even by the Bush administration -- that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is "willful disclosure" of the illegally intercepted communications.

One step forward, one step back...

Why Carbon Sequestration is Probably a Bad Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:39:00 +0000

The US Department of Energy is planning to start this week on a large-scale project for carbon sequestration in Illinois. So why is this a bad thing?

Well, let's suppose, in hypothetical candyland where government projects do what they are supposed to, without negative side effects, on-time and on-budget, that this project succeeds. Ok, good for us, we've removed CO2 from the atmosphere. I applaud your efforts DOE.

This does NOT solve the problem of rising energy needs. Rather, I believe the effect may even be in the opposite direction. Psychologically, the idea that CO2 emissions can be reduced "magically" will diminish efforts to change behavior to reduce CO2 emissions in the first place. And that IS a major problem. Fossil fuels WILL run out (or be hideously expensive) within a few decades at current rates of consumption (and growth in consumption). Running out of fossil fuels without the energy infrastructure to replace them is going to cause a major global crisis that will not be resolved easily. Not to mention, petroleum by-products (plastic) have vital uses and are even more important for a lot of products we commonly use.

Climate change is only one of the major global problems that needs to be addressed in the near future (i.e. this century). And CO2 emissions are only one facet of that problem. As reported by Arstechnica from the AAAS meeting, the numbers for replacing fossil-fuel energy production with "renewable" sources is already extremely daunting. The most economical/efficient way to address that problem is to tackle it from multiple directions: improved efficiency (less usage, less waste), increased production from "renewable" sources (e.g. solar, tidal, wind, etc.), and finally carbon-scrubbing to reduce CO2 concentrations back to pre-industrial levels (i.e. 280 ppm atmosphere, and slowly equilibrate the oceans to that level). Introducing a carbon sequestration project is putting the cart before the horse: we should be focusing on the SOURCE of the problem (energy consumption) rather than simply mitigating the aftereffects because it is the most publicly recognized facet of the problem.

But, in the end, I guess Congress is a lot better at punting the problem and buying time, than in spending preemptively to alleviate future problems. Unfortunately, I happen to be one of those young'uns who is going to end up paying for the mistakes of the past. (*cough* war on terror, social security, etc.)

DRM comments

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Here is the comment I sent to the FTC for their upcoming workshop on DRM:

I share the opinion of several others that there are aspects of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) that are particularly disruptive for consumers such as myself. Specifically, making the bypassing of Digital Rights Management (DRM) illegal is restrictive towards the needs of certain users. I built my desktop computer with a high-end monitor, and surround-sound speakers. In the interest of playing blu-ray high-definition (HD) movies, I began considering the purchase of a blu-ray drive to install in my computer. However, upon further research, I realized that playing back blu-ray movies would not be so simple. Because of High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP), a form of DRM on blu-ray discs, I would need to purchase a new video card that supports HDCP, a new monitor that supports HDCP, a new sound card that supports HDCP, a new receiver, in addition to software and "upgrading" to Windows Vista. Similarly, if I were to purchase a consumer blu-ray player (such as a PS3 or other device) I would need to purchase a new monitor and receiver to view/hear HD content. Needless to say, I was disheartened. Alternatively, if I downloaded blu-ray movies from the internet, there would be no such restrictions and I would be able to play HD content without

I fully support the entertainment industry by purchasing content legally. My personal feeling is that artists, writers, producers, etc. should be rightfully rewarded for their efforts. However, I do not like being forced to purchase hardware because of these restrictions. In effect, I am being punished for trying to play HD content the ONLY legal way. In addition to downloading content (a copyright violation) I could also use software to “rip” HD content to my computer for playback without needing a new video card / monitor / sound card / etc. However, under the DMCA, this manner of bypassing DRM is illegal.

As many have pointed out and will continue to point out, DRM is ineffective: it restricts users such as myself from enjoying the full freedoms of legally purchased content that are enjoyed by those who obtain such content illegally. As noted by security experts, DRM will always be imperfect: there will always be people who will be able to hack/crack/break the encryption and make the content freely available on the internet to download. DRM only creates shackles for legitimate users.

Furthermore, I would like to point out that this issue has been present for some time. DVD's which have CSS, a form of DRM, require a player that is capable of decrypting the content. However, such players, to my knowledge, were never legally available for users who run Linux operating systems. As such, a program, DeCSS was created in 1999 that bypasses this form of DRM and is illegal under the DMCA. The Motion Picture Association of America (spec. its former president, Jack Valenti) had promised to create legal DVD player software for Linux that would enable users to view DVD's with CSS encryption. However, to my knowledge, they have failed to follow through on this: thus, users who wish to play CSS-encrypted DVD's on a Linux computer can only use illegal tools to bypass the DRM

Industry CANNOT be trusted to follow through on their "promises" to facilitate use of legally purchased content for consumers and end-users. The only option for individuals, then, is to bypass DRM illegally, download content illegally (copyright violation), or forgo such content. The primary purpose of government is to protect the rights of individuals. Thus, the FTC should regulate the ability of industry to abuse DRM: creating additional exceptions to the DMCA for individuals to bypass DRM to enjoy content legally is a vital action to protect individual rights and freedoms.

LCD Monitors

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 01:21:00 +0000

I was sitting in lab the other day, staring at my monitor, wondering why it appeared so twinkly. After all, it was an Apple Cinema Display (aluminum-frame) 23", very similar to the monitor I have at home (HP L2335 23"), but for some reason, it was annoying the heck out of me.

Curious, I opened my laptop to look at its screen, and the display was not sparkly at all, although it was quite glossy, true to form. So, arriving home that day, I took to looking up LCD monitor information. I was, of course, interested in the possibility of buying a cheap second monitor for myself. Through some digging, I was not surprised to find that those large, cheap LCD screens mostly use TN panel technology, just like laptop panels. And if you've seen laptop panels at a bit of a vertical or horizontal angle, then you've seen the primary bad quality about a TN panel, which is really shitty viewing angle. Beyond that, color reproduction is also quite poor, although response time is the fastest. This wasn't anything new to me, but I was trying to figure out the panel type for Apple's LED cinema display, assuming that I will be able to get my hands on an DVI->displayport adapter or some updated Mac Mini that has a displayport output. This website, which keeps a comprehensive list of S-IPS and H-IPS monitors seems to indicate that Apple's monitors have always been S-IPS or H-IPS. Now confused about the issue of H-IPS vs. S-IPS, I found another site, which actually addressed my original question. The likely culprit is probably the anti-glare coating on the monitor that is causing the "twinkling".

Now, onto the amusing part of the whole issue, which is simply that Apple appears to have always used S-IPS and H-IPS panels, at least in their stand-alone monitors and the newer iMac's. Ironically, all the people who laugh at Apple fans who buy those products because they come with the "Apple Tax" are unaware of the display quality, esp. compared to some of the offerings by other manufacturers. (Certainly, the story of Dell pulling a bait-and switch with one of its monitors has been the source of a minor brouhaha in the past: the first rollout came with S-IPS [for reviews?] and then was switched over to S-PVA [for cheapness?].) All things considered, $800 (educational price) for a 24" LED-backlit H-IPS monitor is a pretty good deal. And for those more economically minded, the HP version without LED-backlighting is ~$600.

Oh, and HDCP, still hate its fucking guts.

Why I hate programming

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:32:00 +0000

There are generally two approaches to programming: The first approach (which is highly recommended) involves having a mental model of what the code will do, for which the only bugs that appear will be mistakes in typing, or algorithmic errors. These two types of errors are fairly easily distinguished, especially since typing mistakes usually pop up as errors during compiling.

The second approach involves writing code in very short sections at a time, and then fixing any bugs that may appear during compiling or running. One of the main problems is simply that bugs may be due either because a bit of code didn't do what you wanted it to do OR your algorithm was incorrect, in which case major pieces of code need to be rewritten. Another problem is simply that this method is extremely tedious. It is analogous to solving algebraic equations through trial-and-error. Sure it works, even if you don't know algebra, but ultimately we end up teaching everyone algebra.

This analogy also gets at the heart of the difficulty with the first approach: in addition to requiring would-be programmers to learn a language's syntax, they must also have a good (i.e. accurate!) mental model of how the language works. Once this model has been internalized, developing code becomes simpler and straightforward.

The problem I have with certain programming languages is that sometimes they do some things that are non-intuitive to me. Consider the following bit of code in Matlab:

A = ones(3, 5);

which creates a matrix of 1's with 3 rows and 5 columns (yes, it's silly, but bear with me.) Now, consider a slight variation on the code:

B = ones(3);

My initial mental conversation for what this code does might go something like this: "well, in the first example, we gave two arguments and got a two-dimensional matrix, so it makes sense that in this example, with only one argument, we should probably get a one-dimensional matrix. Since the first argument in the first example dictated the number of rows, B should have 3 rows, and be a column vector."

"Hah," Matlab says, "you expected a column vector, but instead, I'm going to give you a square matrix, with 3 rows and 3 columns."

To which I respond, WTF. If I wanted a 3x3 matrix, I could have just as easily called ones(3, 3); BUT, for some reason, probably historical, "people" expect ones(3) to return a square matrix rather than a vector, so that's what Matlab is going to give you. If you actually DID want a vector, you would use ones(3, 1) or ones(1, 3) depending upon your preference for rows vs. columns.

I should note that Matlab does indeed support 3-dimensional matrices:

C = ones(3, 5, 4)

which is equivalent to 4 3x5 matrices stacked on top of each other. When you need two dimensions, you don't need to specify 1 as a third argument, but when you only need one dimension, you DO need to specify 1 as a second argument. Not only is nonintuitive (to me), but it now becomes inconsistent as well.

Now let's take a look at a beautiful R example I just saw today:

x <- 1:10
length(x) # returns 10
length(x) <- 20 # now extends the length of vector x to be 20 elements

First of all, I should mention that R traditionally uses <- as an assignment operator. The introduction mentions that "In most contexts the '=' operator can be used as [an] alternative." It does NOT say that they are equivalent (or why would it say "most contexts"), but it also fails to mention cases where <- and = might work differently. To this, I am left puzzled.

The problem I have with this example is the third line. In the second line, length(x) returned 10, which we can guess intuitively returns the length of the vector x. However, the notation length(x) indicates that length() is a function, NOT a parameter for an object. The usage of a function is fundamentally different from simple value assignment, such as:

y <- 20

In the latter example, y is a variable, and thus is the target of assignment rather than something to be evaluated. A function, on the other hand, is different, because it is, well, a function. Users can write their own functions, with appropriately specified return values. Note that the user-defined functions operate in ONE direction only: arguments are specified, some stuff is done, and sometimes, a value is returned. To have that value then be the target of an assignment completely boggles the mind. In addition, it cannot be done with all functions. For instance, the following code gives an error:

x <- 1:10
sum(x) # returns 55
sum(x) <- 20 # error:
Error in sum(x) <- 20 : could not find function "sum<-"

In fact, the error does tell us something about the internal model for R: the message about "sum<-" not existing suggests that what is actually going on in the first example is that there are two DIFFERENT functions called length, and that "length(x) =" is actually syntactic sugar for some other function called "length<-".

The very nature of syntactic sugar should be to make a language easier to learn/type. However, in this case, it has only made me more confused...

Missing Textbooks

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:44:00 +0000

Here is a list of textbooks I own that have gotten misplaced sometime over the past 3 years, possibly in the same box or something. I no longer have any hope for retrieval, but here, I will mourn their passing.

Moore & McCabe - Introduction to the Practice of Statistics (4th edition - Magritte artwork on cover)
Parker - The Military Revolution
Nestler, Hyman, & Malenka - Molecular Neuropharmocology (1st edition, paperback)
Alberts et al. - Molecular Biology of the Cell (4th edition, hardcover, really just called "The Cell")
??? - Optics (blue hardcover, small silver diagram, rather old-timey: pre-color diagrams)

I will probably never have these books on my shelves again, as I very rarely buy the same thing twice. (Hey, you would buy Firefly again in blu-ray if it only cost 30 Canadian dollars, too!)

You go, NASA photo caption person

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:29:00 +0000

While browsing NASA's website for the latest multimedia from Cassini-Huygens, I stumbled across this excellent reference to Star Wars in the caption for this photograph of Mimas. I guess Yavin and Saturn were both gas giants...

election summary

noreply@blogger.com (Hao) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:54:00 +0000

the good: Obama won a pretty resounding victory. Now the people who previously held the opinion that we HAD to support Bush because he was our president, have no excuse not to support Obama. Then again, pointing out their contradictions (*cough WMD in Iraq *cough) hasn't worked that well in the past.

the bad: it looks like Prop. 8 is going to pass in CA. (I didn't have much hope for the similar amendments in other states.) CA is different, of course, not just because it is generally quite liberal, but because it already granted gays and lesbians the right to marry. This proposition is, in effect, not only taking that right away, but also calls into question, the legality of those marriages that have already occurred. It's still quite shocking to me, that people would vote for this proposition on such ludicrous grounds that it "protects" marriage, when in fact, it is quite literally, going to destroy marriages that currently exist.

Don't give me that bullshit about how the people have spoken, either: the "people" should never be allowed to vote on something as important as the taking away / giving of rights to certain groups of people. It is fundamentally bullying on a state level, that 52% can fuck over a minority group. As pointed out elsewhere, all you have to do is replace gay and lesbian couple with any other minority or non-minority group to see just how discriminatory this proposition is.

the mindboggling: Ted Stevens still has a narrow lead in Alaska, with 99% reporting. Yes, apparently you can still run for US senator, even with 7 felony convictions. You can even still vote in the election, as long as sentencing hasn't occurred yet, according to the Alaska Law Department. I disagree with not allowing felons or ex-felons to vote because I think it's against the spirit of the original US law, but I think if your law says convicted felons can't vote in an election, that should occur when he/she is convicted, not sentenced!

I don't think there is anything in place that actually prevents a felon from being US senator, although the Republican party clearly wants Ted Stevens to step down.

The big question is, of course, can you filibuster from prison?