Month: March 2008

Israel’s electric vehicles

Fuel research lab

Shai Agassi has a bold plan to transform personal transportation in Israel: electric cars built by Renault and Nissan using lithium-ion batteries from NEC. The crucial difference between this plan and those simply intended to encourage customers to buy individual electric vehicles is that Agassi’s company plans to provide battery infrastructure, in the form of recharging outlets and battery swap stations. Each battery is initially expected to provide 124 miles (200 km) per charge, with recharging happening both at parking-meter type stations and at centres where depleted batteries can be swapped immediately for charged ones. The batteries are expected to last 1,500 charges, or 150,000 miles (240,000 km).

The pricing model is also interesting. While it is still evolving, it will probably take the form of a monthly fee based on expected mileage. The company selling the battery exchange plans will subsidize the purchase of the cars, to some extent, increasing the rate at which people switch over from gasoline vehicles. The Israeli government has pledged $200 million to help get the scheme running. Given the incentives for clean vehicles that the government has promised to maintain until at least 2015, company officials suggest that their electric cars will cost half as much to buy and operate as gasoline ones would.

Israel does have unique characteristics that arguably make this approach especially suitable. Foremost among those may be its small size. One of Agassi’s batteries would be sufficient to drive across it from east to west, with two or three being required to go from north to south. That said, if this model proves successful, one could certainly imagine it working in other relatively confined high-density areas, from Manhattan to Shanghai.

Who wants to go up Grouse?

I am amused and pleased to have played a role in organizing a hiking trip in Vancouver involving Emily; my friend, former classmate, and former flatmate Kai; his friend Verena; and my father. Vicarious social mountain climbing – the last resort of we flatland dwellers.

Actually, the whole thing was great fun, even from 4,808km away.

[Update: 28 Mar 2008] Emily has a post on this.

Any used computers kicking around?

I find myself with a renewed interest in setting up a VNC compatible Linux-based terminal server. I don’t want to use my existing laptop because (a) I don’t want to leave it all on the time and (b) I don’t want to expose it to possible attack from the wider internet. As such, I am looking for a fairly basic used system – PC or Mac – that someone is willing to let go cheaply. A computer that got relegated to a closet when a newer one was purchased might be perfect.

Do any readers in the Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal area have any such hardware kicking around? It only needs to be capable of running a virtual private network client, terminal server client, and web browser.

Car standards in China and North America

The Toronto Star has reported that: “No gasoline-powered car assembled in North America would meet China’s current fuel-efficiency standard.” Even the proposed tougher Californian standards – the ones about which there is a big fight with the Environmental Protection Agency – will not do so. In the United States, there is a proposal to require 35 mile per gallon (14.9 km/L) performance by 2020. Today, all Chinese cars are 36 mpg (15.3 km/L) or better. Canadian cars average 27 mpg (11.5 km/L), and don’t have to meet any minimum standard of that type.

That’s certainly something to consider the next time you hear that tougher standards will maul the auto industry. Judging by the relative performance of Japanese and American car companies, it might be fairer to say that continuing to pump out dinosaur vehicles is more likely to leads to its demise on this continent.

Snake oil in science magazines

Climbing wall

One odd tendency I have noticed is the frequency with which popular science magazines contain ads for very dubious products and services: often, precisely the sort you would expect the scientifically knowledgeable to shun. Looking through this month’s Scientific American there are ads for ‘stress erasing’ gizmos, a machine that supposedly makes you fit and muscled on the basis of four minutes of exercise a day, and dubious dietary supplements. I recall that Popular Science regularly featured ads for hypnosis machines and virtual reality helmets supposedly capable of teaching you a new language in hours.

Why do companies selling such things consider the readers of science magazines to be a good target audience? One element is probably that actual scientists don’t read these magazines. The articles they publish are not peer-reviewed and can sometimes be quite low-brow (Scientific American, in particular, seems to have made a big shift towards the Popular Mechanics end of the intellectual spectrum). While the readers are unlikely to be scientists, they are likely to have an acute interest in scientific things, novel ideas, and new technologies. Probably, advertisers are taking advantage of the way in which seeing an ad in a trusted publication already full of novel claims provides it with more legitimacy than it might accrue on its own.

In the broader picture, this is just one reflection of the fundamental problems of authenticity and verification that exist in our society. People can’t decide if climate change is happening, whether taking vitamins is helpful and worth the cost, or whether radiation from cell phones is dangerous. Perhaps more than ever before, people are in a world that is incomprehensible due to the abundance, rather than the absence, of information. Those looking to bring in a few dollars from gullible armchair scientists are taking advantage of that confusion.

Dark comedies

I first experienced Jhonen Vasquez‘s work in the form of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: a darkly comic feature of my high-school days. Johnny is insane and believes he needs to keep a wall in his house painted with fresh blood so that demons do not push through from the other side. On the basis of that, you might wonder why Nickelodeon decided to produce a children’s television show created by the same man. Invader Zim is not nearly as dark as Johnny – though it definitely has its moments – and I think it is funnier overall. In one episode, the megalomaniacal alien Zim is concerned that a human nurse will uncover his secret identity as an alien because he lacks human organs. His solution is to start stealing them from his classmates in a macabre and hilarious episode called “Dark Harvest.”

The series is worth watching just so that you can exchange the most hillarious lines with other devotees.

For those already enamoured with Zim it is worth noting that you can buy every episode on DVD for $29.59. At that price, it may soften the rueful chastisement embodied in the angry fist you wave at those $70 seasons of The Sopranos. They even had the gall to split series six in two parts, so they could rob people twice…

Rainbow tables

Transit archway

I have previously written about one-way hash functions and their importance for cryptography. Recapping briefly, hash functions take some data (a password, a picture, a file, etc) and pass it through a mathematical algorithm. This produces an output with two special features. First, it should be very difficult to find two pieces of data that produce the same output (collisions). Second, it should be very difficult to work backwards from the hashed version to the original. By ‘very difficult,’ I mean ‘challenging for a government with cryptoanalysts and millions of dollars worth of hardware.

Rainbow tables are a novel way of reversing hash functions. Basically, these consist of massive databases of hash and plaintext data. Rather than trying to calculate back from the hash you have to the password you want, you can use the hash in combination with the latter to get the password quite quickly. Since many applications and operating systems use hashed passwords to increase security, having access to rainbow tables could make them significantly easier to compromise.

This is just another example of how math-based security is constantly challenged by evolving technology and falling prices. Being able to afford enough storage for rainbow tables alters the security of hash functions generally. MC Frontalot definitely had it right when he argued that: “You can’t hide secrets from the future with math.”

PS. As with slugs, the best defence against rainbow tables probably consists of using salt.

Climate blogs

For those wanting more information on climate science and policy than they are getting from here, these are some blogs to consider:

  • Gristmill: Diverse, accessible, and very frequently updated
  • R-Squared Energy Blog: Written by an oil expert, mostly about petroleum and biofuels
  • RealClimate: Usually very detailed and quite technical, raw climatic science
  • ClimateEthics: Infrequent posts, but long and complex ones
  • DeSmogBlog: Fairly similar to Gristmill. Sometimes has very interesting information
  • The Oil Drum: More than you will ever want to know about hydrocarbons

No matter what your appetite for climate information in blog form, those should satisfy it.

Are there any others that people read and would recommend?

Ideas for smarter elevators

O-train bridge, Ottawa

I am not sure if any elevator manufacturer has done so, but it seems to me that adding some sensors and algorithms could significantly improve the efficiency of the machines in tall buildings. It could be a very practical application of utilitarianism, aiming to reduce the average per-person journey time as much as possible.

For instance, if there are two elevators moving past a floor where someone has requested a stop, the one carrying fewer people could be assigned the pause, even if the fuller cabin would be there sooner. Similarly, if a number of people got on at once and only one additional floor was selected, the movement of that elevator to that floor could be prioritized, bypassing people waiting on other floors.

To implement this, all you would really need is weight sensors in the elevator floor (or a tension sensor on the cable) and perhaps thermal sensors in the waiting areas to identify how many people are awaiting an elevator on any particular floor.

Another good mechanism might be a panel on the ground floor – or any sky lobbies – where each person waiting indicates their destination floor. They could then be routed to a particular elevator. For example, if ten people are all waiting on floor 1 to go up to floor 40, an elevator might be assigned just for them, saving them the delay of a dozen stops up along the way.

One last idea is a phased return system following fire drills and other sorts of evacuation. Having random collections of people enter elevators ensures stops every few floors. It would be fastest to carry everyone who is going there to the second floor, then do the third, and move on up the building.