Category: Geek stuff

If it involves physics, math, computer science, electronics or has general geek cachet, this is the place for it.

LED bulbs

LED bulbs are dramatically more efficient than incandescent or halogen lamps, and beat out compact fluorescent bulbs in terms of how quickly they turn on and avoiding toxic contents.

These bulbs, which are now widely available in large hardware stores, plug directly into a socket that would previously have taken an incandescent bulb and include all the electronics necessary to run the LEDs.

Two things to watch for: if you have any dimmer switches or if you’re wiring or electricity supply are a bit unreliable, make sure to get bulbs that are advertised as dimmable. Others will buzz at you and may die rapidly, whereas ordinarily LED lamps should last for five years or more.

In addition to how much light they put out (expressed as lumens or watt equivalents) and the colour temperature (roughly how yellow or blue the light looks), make sure to check the color rendering index for the bulbs. I just replaced some buzzy old 100-watt equivalent LEDs with four of FEIT Electric’s 800 lumen / 60W equivalent “enhance” series bulbs. Perhaps on account of their 90+ CRI rating, they give the room a more natural look.

One other thing: I would really avoid ‘smart’ lightbulbs that connect to the internet. These are multiple serious indications that they are desperately insecure and may compromise your home network.

Google’s AdWords suck for internet security AND content generators

Having ads on this site is pretty awful for several reasons.

The site is plugged into Google via both analytics and advertising. For people not running an ad blocking plugin, this often leads to ads which are unappealing and often offensive.

If you don’t want Google to know everything you (or everyone with access to your machine) do online, you’re going to need to make a big effort and do a lot of research into, like, cryptographic and technical means of confounding state surveillance.

If you would pay one cent a year or more to support an ad-free site, please leave a comment.

Radios

Carrying around and being close to transmitting radios makes me nervous.

They may be programmed to harm their owner from the outset, or reprogrammed by private hackers or government forces.

They are the means through which ubiquitous surveillance is maintained, alongside agreements and clandestine action against fixed-line phone and internet providers. Perhaps the most important rule for understanding computer, internet, and network security today is that your government is attacking you.

So… when I walk around with radios it stresses me out. That includes the cell network, WiFi, and Bluetooth radios in the ragged old iPhone4 which I sometimes carry. It includes the capable and sophisticated antennas in my laser-etched Macbook.

To an extent, it includes the increasingly inescapable RFID tags built into passports, credit cards, and bank cards.

I distrust the state.

I think the unprecedented ability of the state to track and permanently archive our conversations, movements, and financial transactions alters how we should feel about democracy, governance, and technology.

If you are evil, or curious, or a nationalistic defender of state authority, you need to start studying software defined radio.

In contrast, I find radios which can only receive comforting and anachronistic. “Radio” still means to a lot of people, a machine to receive and interpret data sent by radio frequencies. GPS receivers and radio clocks are good examples.

Beginner Judo

My first four sessions of the beginner Judo course at Hart House have been challenging and stimulating. I think I have already doubled the number of pushups in my entire adult life.

It means not attending weekly climate change meetings, but a break to focus on my PhD research seemed to be necessary anyway. Things are going well on that front, and I am particularly excited to be working regularly with Dr. Andrea Olive and Dr. Kate Neville. I have a lot of reading and thinking to do, but I feel like progress is being made both conceptually and pragmatically.

Fall is my favourite time of year, especially in this part of the world. I should keep an eye on the wind forecast over the next couple of weeks, as good kiting weather may crop up (I find 16-25kt steady winds ideal for two-line delta kites).

Sagan on the always/never dilemma with nuclear weapons

Still, at a fundamental level, it is important to recognize that the military commands controlling U.S. nuclear weapons have been asked to do the impossible. Peter Feaver has used the phrase, the “always/never dilemma” to describe the twin requirements placed on U.S. military commands. Political authorities have demanded, for the sake of deterrence, that the organization always be able and willing to destroy an enormous variety of targets inside the Soviet Union, at a moments notice, under every conceivable circumstance. They have demanded that military commanders always be able to execute such attacks at any time of day, 365 days a year. They have demanded that our nuclear forces always be effective, regardless of whether the U.S. struck first or was retaliating after having suffered a catastrophic nuclear attack. And, finally, they demanded that the military, while doing all this, never have a serious nuclear weapon accident, never have an accidental detonation, and never permit the unauthorized use of a weapon to occur.

In retrospect, it should be acknowledged that while the military organizations controlling U.S. nuclear forces during the Cold War performed this task with less success than we knew, they performed with more success than we should have reasonably expected. The problems identified in this book were not the product of incompetent organizations. They reflect the inherent limits of organizational safety. Recognition of that simple truth is the first and most important step toward a safer future.

Sagan, Scott D. The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons. Princeton University Press. 1993. p. 278–9 (emphasis in original)

Strategic Command and Control: Redefining the Nuclear Threat

Bruce Blair’s Strategic Command and Control: Redefining the Nuclear Threat (1985) effectively demolishes some of the core ideas in U.S. nuclear strategy. The book is largely focused on command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) and emphasizes how, while the U.S. raced ahead with developing vast numbers of nuclear weapon systems, it does not have a command and control infrastructure that is capable of functioning after being attacked. This makes notions of protracted nuclear war, ‘flexible response’, or negotiation while a nuclear war is ongoing seem entirely misguided. The ability to understand what is going on and exercise effective control over forces is certain to be degraded by everything from unintended strikes on C3I systems located near nuclear weapons, to the electromagnetic pulse effects of nuclear weapon detonation, to the destruction of RADAR systems, to the deliberate or collateral destruction of warning and communication satellites, to human errors and delays.

It’s obviously not the most up-to-date book, but it seems highly likely that most of the key arguments about the U.S. remain relevant. Between all the effects a series of nuclear strikes on the U.S. would have, it’s quite plausible that any ability to respond flexibly or continue to make sophisticated choices for days or weeks after the attack will be eliminated.

The issues discussed are also relevant in a world of nuclear proliferation. Politicians, military figures, and the public in all nuclear weapon states may systematically pay too much attention to the number and capability of nuclear weapon systems, while neglecting questions about the robustness of their command and control infrastructure and the plausibility of their doctrines for nuclear war fighting.

If you love chess, you need to try Hive

I have never been a big appreciator of board games. For instance, I think Scrabble puts too much emphasis on word positioning as opposed to word length or sophistication. Many other games have outcomes which sometimes combine the sin of being largely random with the sin of being tedious in the execution.

Hive is nothing like that. It’s fast, and neither random chance nor hidden information have any relevance. Once they become familiar with the simple and intuitive moves, chess players will readily begin finding intriguing similarities between the two games. Tempo is critical to both, and the game tree of both becomes enormous in the mid game.

You can play Hive online for free, with no chance of accidentally making an illegal move or going more than a few hours without an opponent. I usually play as ‘sindark’.

Ethics and discount rates

The discount rate is a basic tool of accounting and economics: people and institutions often need to deal with costs and benefits which will arise in the future, and it doesn’t usually make sense to simply value them as if they were happening today. A person expecting pension payments of $1,000 per month in thirty years probably shouldn’t value them as though they had the money in hand today, and neither should the organization that will be making the payouts.

To adjust for the time difference, people doing accounting choose an annual discount rate by which to reduce the value of things expected in the future.

Problematically, however, the compounding effects of this across long periods of time can make the specific rate you choose into the most important feature of the calculation. This has an extreme effect in climate change economics.

In the context of pensions, a recent Economist article explained:

The higher the discount rate, the less money has to be put aside now; American public plans tend to use a discount rate of around 7.5%, based on the investment return they expect to achieve…

A promise to pay a stream of pension payments in the future resembles a commitment to make interest payments on a bond. A bond yield is thus the most appropriate discount rate. But given how low bond yields are, pension deficits would look larger (and required contributions would be much higher) if such a discount rate were used. A discount rate of 4%, for example, would mean the average public pension plan would have a funding ratio of only 45%, not 72%, according to the CRR.

That last bit means that American institutions which owe pensions to employees in the future may have only 45% of the money which is necessary for that purpose, rather than the 72% which they currently believe themselves to possess.

While there is an intellectual and even a moral case for discounting the future, it seems clear that it’s a practice with considerable moral risks associated. We are in a situation where simply by making optimistic assumptions we can reduce the burden which we owe to future generations. If we get things wrong, especially in the multi-century case of climate change, they will have no way to hold us to account.

Psychologically, this may also lead to us ‘discounting the future’ in other ways. If people expect corporate and government pension plans to be broke by the time they retire, it may inspire a super-cautious response of independent personal pension saving, or it may lead to people writing off any hope of financial stability in old age and simply ignoring the risk. Such temptations may be even greater for those who see the massively inadequate response the world is undertaking in relation to climate change and ask whether – even if governments, firms, and individuals did set aside adequate retirement savings in the near future – the world will still be intact enough in the second half of the 21st century for those funds to be meaningful.