Distance Learning? Works Well, Right?
October 29, 2020
I spotted this article from the ever reliable “real” news outfit Daily Mail: “Boy, 9, Is Forced to Sit on Concrete Outside His Closed Elementary School with His Laptop on a Cardboard Box Because His Family Can’t Afford Wi-Fi for Online Classes.” The write includes a story of the young boy kneeling in front of a cardboard box and using his laptop. The desk looks like a cardboard box.
Observations:
- Online access is not available to some students
- The young man — if the write up is “real” — wants to learn
- The modern world may offer many delights to those who can afford them. To those with fewer resources, life is not a bowl of cherries.
The cost of inequality can be considered in the context of knowledge lost. Perhaps the whiz kid economists who preach efficiency, fast twitch action, and Austrian economic theory can solve this young man’s problem?
No wait.
Apparently an individual with resources stepped forward and made online access possible.
That’s the spirit: Asset reallocation in action. Plus, perhaps we should expect the young boy to do more: Build a desk out of scrap wood, learn to code so he can piggyback on a neighbor’s Wi-Fi, or just embrace street crime?
I think education is a better option.
Stephen E Arnold, October 29, 2020
Nanodrone Fluid Propulsion
October 16, 2020
DarkCyber has been nosing around the technologies used in drones. Most attention seems to be directed at unmanned aerial systems. However, drones which operate in water are an important research area for a number of use cases; for example, targeted delivery of pathogens.
“What Tiny Surfing Robots Teach Us About Surface Tension” contains a number of interesting factoids. However, the passage which captured the attention of a DarkCyber researcher was:
That knowledge has led Masoud [the Michigan professor] to continue analyzing the propulsion behavior of diminutive robots — only several microns in size — and the Marangoni effect, which is the transfer of mass and momentum due to a gradient of surface tension at the interface between two fluids. In addition to serving as an explanation for tears of wine, the Marangoni effect helps circuit manufacturers dry silicon wafers and can be applied to grow nanotubes in ordered arrays.
The research also suggests was to use swarms of micro-sized drones to operate in swarms. Maybe targeted pathogen delivery?
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2020
Why Software Is Getting Worse
October 5, 2020
I have noticed that certain popular applications are getting harder to use, less reliable, and increasingly difficult to remediate. Examples range from the Google Maps interface to Flipboard. I suppose those individuals who use these applications frequently find their hidden functions delightful. I just walk away.
Now there’s an explanation of sort. Navigate to “Devs Are Managing 100x More Code Now Than They Did in 2010.” As I recall, software was flakey in 2010, but if the information in the article is accurate, the slide downhill is accelerating.
The write up explains:
Some of this code growth can be explained by increasingly complex code, but much of it comes from an increase in the diversity of platforms and tools used. Modern development—particularly Web development—generally means amalgams of many different platforms, libraries, and dependencies. The developers surveyed reported increases in the number of supported architectures, devices, languages, repositories, and more.
More code, more complexity and what do you get?
Interfaces that confuse the user. Weird error messages that point to nothing comprehensible. Certified upgrades that don’t install.
Is there a fix? Sure, just like the fix for the deteriorating physical infrastructure of roads and bridges.
Talk, promises, and budget discussions.
The result? Downhill fast, folks.
Stephen E Arnold, October 5, 2020
The Quantum Thing
October 2, 2020
Everywhere I look I see “quantum.” For example, consider this confection: “Can Quantum Physics Explain Consciousness? One Scientist Thinks It Might.” And what about “Google Confirms ‘Quantum Supremacy’ Breakthrough.” Or “Intel and QuTech Demonstrate High-Fidelity ‘Hot’ Qubits for Practical Quantum Systems”.
The most recent quantum news to catch my attention appears in “D-Wave Launches its 5,000+ Qubit Advantage System.” The write up explains:
These new systems, with over 5,000 qubits and 15-way qubit connectivity, are now available in the company’s Leap cloud computing platform. That’s up from about 2,000 qubits in the previous system, which featured six-way connectivity. Using Leap’s hybrid solver, which combines classic CPUs and GPUs with the company’s quantum system, users can now solve significantly more complex problems, thanks to both the higher qubit and connection count.
Exciting. I have a few questions:
- When will this technology be available in a mobile phone?
- How much does the cooling component cost to operate per month?
- How does one extract “accurate” data from the system?
Progress in marketing is being made. In practical applications, the charge to the future may be moving more slowly.
Stephen E Arnold, October 2, 2020
Drones: In the Sky for Sure
October 2, 2020
The US Federal Aviation Authority has decided the concept of drone deliveries is safe enough to grant Amazon Prime Air permission to fly beyond visual line of sight. But did the agency consider everything? Diginomica discusses some concerns in the article, “More Drones in the Sky in One Day than Planes in a Year—Amazonian Number-Crunching.”
The drones in question will carry small packages, up to 5 lbs. Reporter Chris Middleton estimates drone deliveries would mean about 4,500 drones in each city, constantly buzzing and swooping about our streets just to deliver things one could get by going down to the corner store (if such a thing continues to exist.) Sure, the project makes sense for the disabled or folks out in the country, but not for everyone else, Middleton maintains.
Any environmental boons from fewer delivery vehicles on the road must be weighed against the impact of building and disposing of drones and drone batteries. Then there are safety concerns—there are many creatures and things drones could crash into out there. Also, humans being what they are, drones will inevitably be targets for theft and sabotage. Furthermore, current aviation rules are designed for traditional air traffic; fleets of cloud-connected drones and, down the line, flying taxies will complicate matters in ways we have yet to imagine. The author summarizes:
“Small, lightweight drones are a harbinger of larger ones that will carry more items, heavier goods, or people – pilotless air taxis are being tested in several parts of the world. So it’s common sense to ask whether most people would tolerate the skies over their towns and cities being full of even small rotorcraft, each carrying a bottle of soda or some bananas…. “Is this a world that we really want to live in? Isn’t the idea itself just a bunch of bananas, lacking in any semblance of common sense? At this point it’s worth remembering that Amazon – like Google, UPS, and FedEx – is a US company designing things for a world that looks like America: a huge land mass, open spaces, grid-like cities with hundreds of miles between them, long straight roads, and thousands of rural communities. In that world, drone deliveries make perfect sense, and the same applies to China. But in densely-populated European countries, with their ageing cities and creaking infrastructures, the concept is a less easy fit. Taken together, the constant risk, noise nuisance, and intrusion into people’s lives seem extreme – all to deliver items that you could pick up from a local shop.”
Middleton concludes with a hope—that it does not take a disaster before regulatory agencies carefully consider the potential ramifications of giving the likes of Amazon, UPS, FedEx free rein throughout our skies.
Cynthia Murrell, October 1, 2020
Information Overload: Get Used to It
September 30, 2020
Modern humans have access to more information than any other generation before them. Better and more access to information is directly proportional to humanity’s technological progress. Scientific American’s article, “Unlimited Information Is Transforming Society” explores the correlation between technology and information.
Scientific and technological progress did not advance in the past as it does today. Any revelation was developed through craft traditions that contributed to humanity’s survival or daily tasks easier. Technology as we know it came about:
“In the late 1800s matters changed: craft traditions were reconstructed as “technology” that bore an important relation to science, and scientists began to take a deeper interest in applying theories to practical problems.”
Technology and science still did not work in tandem for years despite the parallels. For example, aviation was pioneered before scientists understand aeronautical science. The common belief was that machines weighing more than air could not fly.
What advanced science and technology the most in the past 175 years was the manipulation of energy and matter. The movement of energy and matter thus moved information and ideas. The best example of this is electricity, which led to then event of telecommunications devices, familiarly known as televisions, telegraphs, radios, and televisions. Electricity also changed manufacturing (moving factories away from water powered systems) and people’s daily lives from traveling to entertainment.
Computing would be the next big information mover and spreader. Nuclear energy and space travel were predicted to be the next big shake-ups, but the Cold War, a few nuclear meltdowns, and lack of funding for more space-related projects/earthly concerns were a few reasons they did not.
Everything is related (not in a conspiracy related way), but in how one sector of life affects another, such as electricity leading to television’s invention:
“That said, one change that is already underway in the movement of information is the blurring of boundaries between consumers and producers. In the past the flow of information was almost entirely one-way, from the newspaper, radio or television to the reader, listener or viewer. Today that flow is increasingly two-way—which was one of Tim Berners-Lee’s primary goals when he created the World Wide Web in 1990. We “consumers” can reach one another via Skype, Zoom and FaceTime; post information through Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat; and use software to publish our own books, music and videos—without leaving our couches.”
There is more information and access to it and this has also led to a more convenient way of life brought on by technological advances. Technology that also used to be available to a limited number of people, such as computers (remember big old monstrosities that took up entire building floors and processed 30 MB), are in the hands of children. Lines are blurring between the experts and the amateurs, public and private, male and female, etc. What does that mean for the future? One thing we do know is that we cannot predict that.
Whitney Grace, September 30, 2020
Technical Debt: Making Something Ignored Understandable to Suits
September 29, 2020
I have been fortunate to have been on the edges of a several start ups; for example, The Point (Top 5% of the Internet), a system ultimately sold to CMGI / Lycos in the late 1990s. When the small team began work on the product, we used available servers, available software, and methods based on our prior experience. When we started work on The Point in 1994, the task seemed pretty simple: Use what we know and provide an index to curated Web sites. At that time, it was possible to scan a list of new Web sites select ones which seemed promising. This was at first a manual process, but the handful of people working on this figured out ways to reduce the drudgery.
I learned (as one of the resources for hardware, software, and money) that those early decisions were both similar to established business economics and quite different in others. Let me give one brief example and then address the information in “Most Technical Debt Is Just Bullsh*t.”
For The Point one of the wizards on my team used Paradox. I know the Georgia Tech grade and Westinghouse Science winner asked me and I just grunted. Who cared? This was a mere test of an idea, not a project for an outfit like Thomson Corporation or the US government. My partner and I had worked on a CD of bird songs, and The Point seemed similar to that effort. Who knew in 1994? I sure did not.
That Paradox decision created technical debt. The database was okay, but it was not designed for multiple humans and software systems to update the files on a continuous basis. We could not do real time because the cheapo Sparc server I had was designed to run an indexing system called STAR. We figured out how to make Paradox work, but those early decisions had lasting impact.
I realized that making a database decision was similar to Henry Ford’s River Rouge. That concrete and building built at one end of the giant complex was not going anywhere. First, Mr. Ford was busy making cars. Second, Mr. Ford needed the resources to be directed at making more cars. Third, Mr. Ford had to make decisions about now problems, not problems that were not fully understood at the time of making fresh decisions. As a result, River Rouge became a giant thing that was mostly unchanged and unchangeable. The same observation can be made about Google-type companies. (Think of new features as software wrappers, not changes to the plumbing.)
That’s technical debt. The focus, resources, and understanding to change what has been put in place and actually working is not a hot topic for a robust discussion of “Let’s do this over again.” Nope.
The Louwrentius article dances around this reality in my opinion; for example, recasting Ward Cunningham, who coined the bound phrase, the write up states: Technical debt exists:
as a form of prototyping. To try out and test design/architecture to see if it fits the problem space at hand. But it also incorporates the willingness to spend extra time in the future to change the code to better reflect the current understanding of the problem at hand.
The write up ends with this statement:
Although Cunningham meant well, I think the metaphor of technical debt started to take on a life of its own. To a point where code that doesn’t conform to some Platonic ideal is called technical debt. Every mistake, every changing requirement, every tradeoff that becomes a bottleneck within the development process is labeled ‘technical debt’. I don’t think that this is constructive. I think my friend was right: the concept of technical debt has become bullshit. It doesn’t convey any better insight or meaning. On the contrary, it seems to obfuscate the true cause of a bottleneck. At this point, when people talk about technical debt, I would be very skeptical and would want more details. Technical debt doesn’t actually explain why we are where we are. It has become a hollow, hand-wavy ‘explanation’. With all due respect to Cunningham, because the concept is so widely misunderstood and abused, it may be better to retire it.
My personal view is:
- Technical debt is a bad way to say, “A software product or service is like a building that can either be a money loser or be torn down.” As long as it works — generates revenue — do as little as possible to keep the revenue flowing.
- Technical debt is fungible. It is like the poorly designed intake infrastructure for River Rouge. The bricks and concrete are not going away without significant investment and disruption.
- Technical debt is poorly understood. Humans are not very good at not knowing what one does not know. I suppose that Paradox-like. Who knew?
The good news is that CMGI’s check cleared the bank and The Point is now mostly forgotten like its technical debt. Who paid it off? I didn’t.
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2020
FinTech to TechFin: What Is With the Word Position Swap
September 29, 2020
I read an interesting essay called “A Look At The Power Shift From FinTech To TechFin.” I think the main idea is that banks are in the danger zone just as newspapers were and Main Street retail stores are.
I circled this passage:
With millennials becoming more and more comfortable using smartphones to pay for Uber, AirBnB, Amazon etc, the need for customer disintermediation arose and was well addressed by the FinTechs who had no overheads of physical distribution and were sitting on a lot of data. The ability to use non-traditional financial data, utilize SMS, utility bill payments and shopping history to build more accurate credit scoring helped the FinTech prove to be a credible challenge to the traditional lenders.
Okay. Thumbtypers on the march.
We also noted:
There is a need for an urgency to reposition and reinvent the traditional FinTech models as both, the customer expectation, as well as the landscape, is changing at lightning speed. There definitely would be tremendous action in the entire financial services space, including FinTech startups, within the next 2 years.
Several observations:
- Big shoulder financial outfits may such oxygen out of the space; for example, Goldman and Apple
- Regulators could — although it seems unlikely — might curtail monopolistic behavior in both banks and the rarified world of the FAANGs
- Consumers like those who pay a penalty for being 99 percenters might propel social pushback with more momentum.
Yes, there is a need for adaptation. I am not sure a marketing pitch is going to get the result the author views as necessary.
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2020
Silicon Valley CEOs Called Psychopaths
September 28, 2020
“Why Silicon Valley CEOs Are Such Raging Psychopaths?” calls Silicon Valley CEOs psychopaths. That’s not new, but the idea that these skilled managers are “raging” is a novel twist. The article states:
According to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist — the universally accepted diagnostic tool used to assess this disorder — a psychopathic personality includes traits such as a grandiose sense of self-worth, a lack of remorse or guilt, poor behavioral controls, pathological lying and a lack of empathy. These attributes aren’t just present “but celebrated in Silicon Valley,” says Gavet, who once held the position of executive vice-president of global operations for Priceline Group, among other roles.
The Gavet is, as if you did not know, is the author of a new book called “Trampled by Unicorns: Big Tech’s Empathy Problem and How to Fix It.” Maëlle Gavet worked at Priceline and tallied 15-years in Unicornville. The article states:
Research by the FBI found that companies managed by psychopaths tend to have decreased productivity and low employee morale. In fact, Silicon Valley’s psychopathic traits “trickle down through entire organizations,” says Gavet. “In effect creating psychopathic companies.” This is enabled by an “infantilized culture” at many start-up companies, where employees become accustomed to working in “hyper-privileged bubbles where their every whim is catered to and every need anticipated,” she writes.
Amazon takes a punch as well:
She sees evidence of it happening already. Tim Bray, a celebrated engineer at Amazon and their onetime vice president of Web Services, quit his job in May because of the “toxicity running through the company culture,” as he wrote in a blog post. “I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison,” he wrote.
DarkCyber notes that the publicist who nudged the New York Post to write an article and book marketing use case deserves a Google mouse pad. DarkCyber wonders if Rupert Murdoch’s other New York are property will provide similar dead tree coverage of the book?
Will Mr. Murdoch purchase a copy, or will the wiley John Wiley provide the esteemed publisher with a complimentary copy? This has been a tough year for trees. First Bolton, then Rage, and now the psychopath thing. Trees, be aware: There is Kindle to save you someday, maybe?
Stephen E Arnold, September 28, 2020
Quite an Emoji for 2020
September 28, 2020
DarkCyber does not use too many emojis. Sure, we put them in our DarkCyber video news program to add visual punctuation. Most days, words are okay or K in the lingo of the thumbtypers. One of the research team called attention to “These New Emojis Perfectly Sum Up This Dumpster Fire of a Year.” The image comes from an outfit called Emojipedia. We think this is the Oxford Dictionary updated for Gen X and Gen Y mobile messaging addicts.
Nifty and appropriate. Keep in mind that in about 12 weeks we can look back and reflect on the pandemic, economic erosion, social unrest, and the asteroid which will have collided with earth on or about the first week of November.
Does dumpster fire capture the spirit of this memorable year? The emoji does.
Stephen E Arnold, September 28, 2020
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