Snowshoe hike and video on Monday - 26 January 2022

Trapped for days in a ground-hugging fog, we sought escape on Monday, 24 January 2022.  The weather report had gotten monotonous: day after day of heavy fog warnings in "lowland areas" covered the entire Puget Sound area.  Fog filled the valleys of metropolitan Seattle all day and the Weather Service extended the warnings each day for yet another day.  We had some days of pretty steady rain before that, so we were getting stir-crazy.  Another case of COVID cabin fever struck.  The fog went up to about 3000 feet and there was rumored to be sun above, so we knew where we had to go - to the mountains.  But not just any "mountains".  Stevens Pass is only about 3000 feet, barely above the fog, so we decided to go for Mount Rainier.

We usually head for the Henry Jackson Visitor Center at the Paradise area in Mount Rainier National Park (MRNP).  We have been there many times over the years, usualy a couple times each year.  It is easy access, has plenty of parking (if you arrive early enough), and the Paradise area is open year-round.  We visit the Sunrise area during the summer and shoulder seasons, but it is a bit farther and, well, it closes in the winter so it is not open until June or so?  The route to Paradise takes us through Puyallup, Elbe, Longmire, and up the part road to Paradise.  Our travel was uneventful.  We left the house about 9am (against an 8:30am target departure) and arrived with plenty of room to be found.  Of course, the 24th of January was a Monday, so we were riding the benefits of a retired life.  On the weekend, the crowds are sure to be much larger.

We grabbed our snowshoes, poles, and packs, and headed for the trail to Camp Muir.  Normally, there are some broad stairs and asphalt trails to welcome visitors, but all that was buried under snow.   We rather followed the asphalt trails but they are hard to find under the snow - and irrelevant.  However, muscle memory in the legs from all those summer visits lead one to familiar routes.  A few people were out with hiking boots but we were glad to have snowshoes.  Very simply, we did not have to look where we were walking.  Postholing was not a concern and we did not have to choose compacted routes;  the area of the snowshoes spreads our weight.  With the claws and heals on the snowshoes, we could walk a straight line that took us straight up a slope or allowed us to wander without fear of sliding sideways.  The younger set may not need poles, but the older crew finds them helpful to pull or restrain on slopes and very handy for balance.  We walked to a point a bit above the Dancefloor, closer to the Nisqually canyon, appreciated the views, and then headed down by the Dancefloor.  

The views were grand.  We could see the whole area above the fog in the valleys.  Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens stood proud on the horizon to the south, the Tatoosh Range clearly visible, and, of course, Tahoma herself to the north.  There was the odd cloud or contrail across the sky, but bright blue burned all around and above.  The temperatures were astounding - hot.  We did not measure the temperature, but a fellow hiker told us it was in the upper-60F range.  He said 67F, and while I am reluctant to believe that exact number, I did have to stop twice to remove layers of insulation.  I ended up wearing a wicking t-shirt and a "fishing" shirt.  It did get chilly in the shade, but we spent most of the time above the tree-line, so the sun warmed us virtually the entire time.  It was quite comfortable when walking, but I did put on my puffy sweater when we stopped.  Most of the people around us were also hiking in various ways (mostly snowshoes but several boots), and one guy even had a sled that he was pulling.  I guess he was going to spend the night at Camp Muir.  And there were a handful of skiers.  The overall hike was 2.5 miles (round-trip) in 2:00 hours, and the vertical rise was 870 feet.  Paradise is right around 5000 feet altitude.  

I grabbed some photos, but I used this outing as a training ground for GoPro video.  In the past, I have done timelapse and even Time Warp to some degree of success, but with this trip I wanted to do some post-processing to produce a more structured video. I did skip the bit about preparing a story - my "story" was to be a snowshoe hike on Mount Rainier - so I planned for a series of clips.  To this end, I chose Video > Cinematic at 4K, 24fps, SuperView, and auto-steady (I think GoPro calls it hypersteady or similar).  I used handheld with no special adaptations (no external stabilizer, just the in-camera features).  On the route up, I started with shorter clips, a minute or so each and mostly panoramas, and on the return down, I took longer clips while in motion.  I ended up with about 20 minutes of video that I cut down to 14 minutes in DaVinci Resolve 17.  My first edit ran over the YouTube limit of 15 minutes, so my second version cut that down to almost exactly 14 minutes and I added some titles.  I did nothing with the audio and I only used fades on the title sections - no fancy crossfades.  

(Note - although I can adjust the placement of the photos, Blogger insists on centering the video.)

A Wreck Not the Edmund Fitzgerald - 23 January 2022

In Vancouver BC there is a barge.  Washed up in a storm, it has come to rest in a park.  The analysis seems to conclude that it has found a final resting place; it will not move under natural causes.  So someone wrote a song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnqFpswfquI

Seeding for Spring - 21 January 2022

Early, I know, but I have put down some grass seed.  We have had a period of dry weather (meaning 24-36 hours without rain), so it remains relatively cold, but I am optimistic that the seed will germinate given a chance.  The bag officially says 60-80 degrees, and we are in the 40's, so consider this an experiment.

The daffodils are peeking abovve the ground, a good six inches up, and the hellebores have been showing for a couple weeks, so life is active.  At the worst, I am feeding the birds.  I admit that I did apply it far more thickly than advised.

Most of the delivery trucks are fine, but a couple of them are challenged by the long, narrow driveway.  The occasional driver will leave the drive and plow through the grass.  One would think that the cement curbs could serve as a hint, but they seem insufficient in practice.  I try to ignore the stripes, but they eventually get to me and I head out with yet more seed.  Further, there are a couple areas that get limited sun, so I reseed often.  I am starting to think that I need a couple patches of shade garden.

I am also looking into pruning.  The apple tree will need to be pruned and the raspberries will be helped by a good pruning.  I did prune the apple tree last year at this time, but evidence suggests I did precisely the wrong things.  We ended up with about four (4) apples even though the tree appears healthy.  Clearly, I cut all the wrong bits.

  

Forest Forensics - Figuring out what happened here - 19 January 2022

Interesting things happen in the forest all the time.  Whether we hear the tree fall or not, we can look around to deduce what has happened.  I know a little bit about this, for example, stumps that indicate logging or root-dishes from a tree that has fallen over, but (professor) Tom Wessels goes far beyond my poor abilities to extract key events from subtle clues.  He includes obvious clues such as stone fences running through the woods to more subtle clues such as the flatness of the area in the forest (or not).  Fires, farming, hurricanes, logging, disease, snowstorms - each leaves different imprints on the land and on the trees that survive the event. With careful observations and deductions, he can even give rough time estimates for the event, some of which can correlate back to recorded history (e.g., "the hurricane of 1857" and such).   I am going to read his book and see what I can deduce about the forests in this area.  His work seems to be primarily on the forests of New England, so I will have to do some adaptations for the forests of the Pacific Northwest.  Should be fun.

Forest Forensics, or Reading the Forest: Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3

He has books, too.

Recruiting and hiring - 13 January 2022

Recruiting to hire is the hardest task that any manager has. There are other tasks that require more emotional energy, but recruiting has the largest single impact over the longest time.  If a manager hires the wrong people, the team will go to crap, productivity will sour, and the whole team will be eliminated.  Yes, this is a worst-case scenario, but no manager wants to have 20% or even 10% of their team to be misfits or unproductive.  The way to build up the team to prevent bad endings is through recruiting and hiring.

So why do managers encourage the use of trick questions and simple coding tests to evaluate candidates?  Entire companies are proud to tell you that they hire based on these criteria.  Stupid.  They should know better.

How many utility covers are there in Seattle?  How many gas stations are there in LA?  why are utility covers round?  What is the volume of water flowing in the Mississippi as it passes New Orleans?  What is the length of a catenary chain hanging under the following conditions?  Do you really have a job that requires the skills needed to answer these questions?  If so, you must work in a library.  

Write code to reverse a linked list in-place.  Write code for itoa() (returns a character string given an integer).  Give me ways to detect loops in linked lists.  These are useful questions for an aspiring programmer, but the hiring manager needs far more information to make a good hiring decision.  Unless the hiring manager runs a coding sweatshop, in which case, carry on.

None of these questions reveals sufficient substance about the candidate or their skills.  There are many, better ways to get information about the candidate so that the hiring manager can make an informed choice.  Consider.

0. Start with the job description and the resume (CV).

Work from the information on the candidate's resume (CV) and in the job description.  (You do not have a job description?  Go back and start again.  You are not ready to hire.)  Ask questions about what the candidate did regarding an entry on the resume, what problems they solved, and how they achieved success.  Many candidates will respond with answers about the team or the project - repeat the question and emphasize that you want to know what the candidate personally did.

1. Read the resume in advance.  Make notes.  Plan  your interview strategy.  Be consistent.

2. Read the job description in advance.  Understand what skills and experience are required for the role.  If there is flexibility, understand the dimensions and the limits. If you are not sure, contact the hiring manager for clarification.

3. Understand the skill levels required for the position.  The skill mastery for an entry-level position is not the same as for a senior-level position.

Give the candidate a chance to breathe and to think if they do not answer immediately.  Or if their answer is terse.  Just listen in silence, and the candidate should respond.  If the silence goes on for too long, prompt the candidate with something benign such as "tell me more" or "please expand on that".  Often the candidate will be reluctant to speculate, so you can invite speculation ("if you need to speculate, you can tell me your thoughts").  

NB - some candidates will be limited by NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, or other confidentiality requirements.  Ask if that is limiting their answer.

If you ask a challenging question beyond that required in the role or the level of the position, that can give you insight as to the growth potential of the candidate.  A person willing to speculate may or may not succeed in your environment.

Some candidates will reply that a topic was so long ago that they do not recall details.  While this is a valid response, I have found that people with long memories are often better able to apply a wide range of skills - skills that they have retained over time.

4. Divide the questions across the interview team.

5. Include an outlier on the interview team to help assess breadth of the candidate.

Everyone on the interview team should have a primary area on which to focus their questions.  These areas can be defined based on the resume (demonstrated skills and training) and from the job description (required skills and training).  The interviewer is not bound to precisely their primary area, but they should explore that primary assigned area in depth before they ask questions outside the primary area.  This avoids the problem of everyone asking about the most recent job (or school) assignment.  That only gives the hiring manager multiple copies of the same snapshot of the candidate;  distributing the areas allows the hiring manager to see a broader picture of the candidate.

The hiring manager can defend the ultimate hiring decision by referring to the primary areas that were explored in the interview and relate those to the requirements in the job description.  Some will argue that "fit with the team" is important, and we will cover that shortly.

6. The candidate should do most of the talking during the interview.

7. Beware of hiring for "fit".  This can lead to unconscious bias.

simply, if the interviewer is doing too much talking,  the interview is evaluating the wrong person.  The interview is to evaluate the candidate, therefore the candidate should talk the most.  That said, the interviewer is responsible to cover the topic areas of interest, so the interviewer must control or drive the interview.  A talkative candidate may give insights to areas not of interest, and the interviewer must drive the conversation back to the important topics.  

In the wrap-up meetings, interviewers will casually say things like "I liked the candidate".  This is not a dating site; the hiring manager is not choosing a sports team.  It is easy for human beings to like others who are most like them, people who have had shared experiences or who have common likes.  this can lead quickly down a path to EEO hell (equal employment opportunity).  Hiring for "fit" is interesting, but it must be relegated to a low priority in the hiring decision.  It may break a tie between candidates who are similar on many other criteria - and, even then, should be used carefully and as a last resort.  Now, some people are hard to deal with or are unclear in their communications.  A candidate who has left seven prior positions after 12-18 months with a story about "stupid management" will probably leave your position after 12-18 months with a new story about the hiring manager's stupidity, but there may be critical skills or environment differences that would allow that person to succeed in your organization.  Do not hire such a candidate blindly, but neither should the hiring manager shun them.  If the team consistently hires for "fit", not only can the hiring manager run afoul of EEO requirements, but the hiring manager can end up with group-think and a shortage of creativity across the team, leading to a fatal lack of diverse ideas. 

8. When the interviewer finds themselves leaning toward a decision, shift the questions to try to disprove the emerging decision.  

9. Stretch the candidate.

As mentioned earlier, include someone outside the nominal boundaries of the job description and the resume.  The hiring manager may be surprised to find that the candidate has broader skills than represented on paper.  this breadth may be a valuable addition to the team.

10.  There is no such thing as an "OK" candidate or an interviewer being "on the fence" (undecided).  The hiring manager must treat "OK" and "undecided" as no-hire.

All candidates should receive equal and fair treatment.  To support a hiring recommendation, each interviewer owns their decision and they should each test that decision.  If I start to "like" a candidate, I may start asking easy questions, which makes it easy to hire them.  To increase confidence in your hiring recommendation, challenge yourself when you start to lean toward a decision.  

Interviewers are human and will tend toward "good news" - or, at least, will avoid bad news.  It is tempting to say "OK" or "on the fence" rather than to say "no".  A "no" could harm someone's career or deny them a job that they need.  No one wants to be the bad guy.  

11. Hold an debrief meeting shortly after the interview (same day is ideal but next-day is more common).  

12. Each interviewer must state clearly their results and recommendation.

Thus, each interviewer must state a clear hire/no-hire recommendation and back it up with particulars.  The interviewers do not need to agree and they The hiring manager is responsible to collect the input and use it to determine a hiring decision.  The hiring manager may disagree with the collective recommendation, sometimes for reasons that must be kept private, but all interviewers should speak and each must make a clear recommendation.  there should be no silent interviewers.  If someone is silent, you did not need to include them and you wasted the time of the interviewer and the candidate.

13. Collect and keep records. 

Candidates will return.  sometimes a candidate will find a position that does not fit and they will return quickly to the hiring pool.  the hiring manager can review the records to determine how aggressively to pursue the candidate - or let them continue to look elsewhere.  NB - some interview process, perhaps abbreviated, is always appropriate, so a prior interview is not to be treated as a sure-hire ticket.  Situations change and requirements change, so a refresh interview is necessary unless the interval since the last interview is extremely short.

finally, we live in a litigious world.  Keep critical records for a reasonable time.  The hiring manager does not need to keep all records for all time, but a summary document should be retained for a few years.  It is not sufficient to keep the records with "HR".  To protect themselves, the hiring managers should keep a confidential file for their own use.  In the worst case, the hiring manager may be sued as an individual (e.g., the corporation will simply say "here is a list of all the training we gave the hiring manager and we let the hiring manager have the final decision - go sue the hiring manager and leave us out of it").  when sued as an individual, the corporation may not provide access to all the files; the corporation may routinely delete the necessary files.  In the end, the hiring manager must protect themselves.

Hiring can be great.  Although the process may be onerous, the hiring manager will find talented people to add to the team for every more success.  Just be sure to interview wisely.

Photo: sourdough bread takes time and effort to make, but the results are worth it.

 

Seals and Chops - 11 January 2022

In 1215, King John applied the royal seal to the Magna Carta, indicating his assent to the terms therein.  We in the West think of a physical seal or signet ring largely as an historical practice, one long since replaced with a signature or modern cryptographic "signatures".  The idea of a physical Great Seal struck into a blob of hot wax that might represent us in a legal sense is a complete anachronism.  The seal was also somewhat of a security device in terms of protecting the contents of a letter.  Recent articles reinforce this.  Among them ,the New York Times was so struck by a recent discovery that they ran an article, saying:

To safeguard the most important royal correspondence against snoops and spies in the 16th century, writers employed a complicated means of security. They’d fold the letter, then cut a dangling strip, using that as an improvised thread to sew stitches that locked the letter and turned the flat writing paper into its own envelope. To get inside, a spy would have to snip the lock open, an act impossible to go undetected.

Catherine de’ Medici used the method in 1570 — a time she governed France while her ill son, King Charles IX, sat on its throne. Queen Elizabeth did so in 1573 as the sovereign ruler of England and Ireland. And Mary Queen of Scots used it in 1587 just hours before her long effort to unite Britain ended in her beheading.

The "dangling strip" was extended the identification stamp to seal a letter for security purposes.  Presumably the combined task of recreating the wax seal and the folding of the strip was beyond the ability of craftspeople to counterfeit. The idea of a seal is long gone in the West.  But it remains significant in some Asian cultures, especially in PRC-China.

As reported in The Register:

Crucially, Wu [the CEO of ARM-China] retains Arm China's company chop — an item akin to a company's official seal. Under Chinese law, possessing the chop gives Wu authority over the company regardless of its board's intentions. Transferring possession of a chop is not straightforward so even though he's not wanted by Arm, Wu remains in charge. Lawsuits battling over the future of the outfit are percolating through the courts.

Arm is not happy Wu remains in charge, and continues to engage with China's government to explore a resolution.

Ref. Arm says it has 'successful working relationship' with Chinese joint venture run by CEO who refuses to leave

In the West, if a CEO is deposed, their signature is no longer legally binding.  The signature of John Doe, CEO, is superseded by the signature of Jane Smith, CEO.  Done.  None of John's pens or pencils can validate a check or conclude a contract once Jane is declared CEO.  In contrast, Mr. Wu retains the chop of AMD-China and therefore remains in control.  Mr. Wu can conclude contracts, validate large payments through checks, and conclude other legal business.  The parent company of ARM can only look on.

About five years ago, I was in PRC-China and a colleague there had a chop carved for me.  I was thinking about posting an image of the stamp face here, but it occurred to me that would make forgery trivial.  I may not view the chop as a legal commitment, but others may.  So here is the chop with the associated ink pad.

Powers of Ten, Submicroscopically - 9 January 2022

Scales can be fascinating.  In this use, I am not referring to fishy bits but to computing bits, physical and computational.

On the physical side, I recently discovered a Powers of Ten redux video located on YouTube, Powers of Ten 2.  The video starts from a couple having a picnic lunch on a beach near Sicily and expands through the planets and galaxies to reach the cosmic microwave background.  In a similar spirit, there is an interactive website called Scale of the Universe 2 that allows a user to find things of a very small scale, from people and dinosaurs down to atoms, neutrinos, quarks, and the Plank limit.  In this spectrum, the website shows a "transistor gate" at 25 nanometers (25nm).  I cannot find a date on the site to know when it was prepared, but the information is now long stale.  As I write in January 2022, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is shipping products in large volume using 6nm technology from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).  The next AMD products will be in 5nm technology and Apple is already using that (TSMC 5nm) for their chips.  TSMC has already announced plans for 3nm and 2nm technology.  Intel, although having troubles for the last several years, is projecting products that will be built using 5nm and smaller.  When I started my engineering schooling (Purdue University and UC-Berkeley), we were grappling with the emerging opportunities of 1 micron technology, that is 1000nm, and we are now close to 1nm.  It is becoming inconvenient to talk about these sizes - no one wants to talk about 1/4nm or 0.25nm, so Intel has recently switched to Angstroms as the unit of measure.  Therefore, Intel talks about 20A (2nm) and 5A (0.5nm) as future technologies.  In the past, engineers would compare transistor sizes to the thickness of a human hair, but we must now compare to the size of atoms.  In a silicon crystal (used to manufacture chips), the interatom spacing is about 3A or 1/3rd of a nanometer.  Therefore, speaking loosely, a 3nm transistor is about 10 atoms across. 

On the computing side, we used to build supercomputers as very large single computers.  Somewhere in the 1990s, the "wolfpack" approach to cluster smaller computers took over the supercomputer world.  Instead of building a single computer that ran faster and faster, we would partition the computational work across  "clusters" of small computers.  Working together, communicating, the many small computers would solve problems faster than the biggest single computer.  Today, thousands of small computers (each more powerful than the single supercomputers of old) solve enormous problems.  The race for the fastest computer in the world is described by the "Top 500" list maintained out of a research group at the University of Tennessee.  As I write, the current fastest computer in the world in is Japan and is measured at about 400-some petaflops; that is 400 x 10^15 floating point operations (FLOPS) per second.  A new supercomputer is being built in Tennessee called Frontier, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL.  It will run at 1.5 Exaflops, or 1.5 x 10^18 FLOPS/second -- over three times faster than the current record-holder.  There are rumors of similar supercomputers in China (PRC), but no one has published data to confirm this.  When I started engineering school, the fast computers were measured in MIPS, approximately millions of operations per second, or megaflops (10^6).  In another year of so, the El Capitan supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL) will turn on and deliver even more exaflops, probably more than 2 exaflops. (If the step from 1.5 to 2 sounds unimpressive, recall that the fastest documented supercomputer today is about 0.5 exaflops).

The fastest computer in the world in 1975 was the Cray-1, pictured below.  It achieved about 160 megaflops.  I took this photo at the Supercomputing Conference in 2018.

Pointers, A Look Back - 8 January 2022

Programming languages for computers come in many varieties and styles, each trying to solve a particular problem.  Although I started substantial programming in Dartmouth BASIC, then FORTRAN, and then MUMPS & assembler, I quickly latched on to the C programming language as a favorite when it became available to me.  This was about 1974 or 1975 at Purdue University using Kernighan & Ritchie C on a VAX running UNIX BSD.  Coming from BASIC, FORTRAN, & MUMPS, I was new when it came to the pointer data type, but I leveraged my assembler knowledge to get a working understanding.  Although I may have mastered the syntactical aspects of pointers and most of the operational aspects, there was a key concept that confused me.  (For those that like to jump ahead, "char *foo" is not the same as "char foo[]".)

I was working at Bell Labs on the AT&T 3B2 computer system that was still under development.  In fact, I had architected the first IO card and then started working on the development of software for the first smart IO card.  The smart IO card had an Intel 80186 on it; that is about it, because it was a prototype.  The intent was to design a test card that would accept commands and return results.  To this end, I wrote a small "IO application" that would run on the smart IO card.  I have forgotten quite what "work" the IO card was to do, but the on-card firmware needed to allocate an array and to some kind of work on it.  The style at the time was that one should have short files and short functions, on the order of a printed page (60 lines or so), so I wrote the firmware in two files.  One file to set up the programming environment and interface with the CPU, and a second file that contained the "worker" code that would be invoked by the main file.  As I recall, I wrote the main file to declare

    char    work[1000];

I was trying to be super-clever, so the worker file had a matching declaration of

    char    *work;

To be charitable to myself, I thought this bit of cleverness would get me around the problem of the size of the array - the data types and names aligned, and the programmer needed to set the right size in the main file.  My intentions were pure.

Unfortunately, this code did not run.  I thought I found a hardware bug in that the interrupt table that was so carefully constructed in the main file was coming up as all zeros as soon as the first IO command was dispatched.  Pat Walsh and a gentleman whose name I forget were the hardware guys for the IO bus.  I took my bug to them.  Aha, guys!  Your hardware is busted!  They accepted my analysis and started work to find the hardware bug.  After two days of careful work, they came back to me with a question: why did I have code that was writing zero to 1000 bytes starting with the interrupt vector table?  As I recall, the 80186 had important control tables starting at physical address zero, tables such as the interrupt vector table.  A little research reveals this is correct - "[addresses] 0000h - 03FFh are reserved for interrupt vectors."  My code was writing over the interrupt table.  When the next interrupt came in - crash!

Someone reading carefully will notice that the main declaration allocates 1000 bytes of memory named "work", while the worker file declared two bytes of space named "work" as a pointer type.  Oops.  As I learned, compilers at the time would set the initial value of "work" to zero, so when the code dereferenced "work" (*work=0 or work[0]=0), the code would write over the interrupt table at location zero, exactly like the code instructed.  The solution was simple: the code simply should to declare the array "work" consistentlly in both files.  After changing everything to "char work[WORK_SIZE]", the code worked.

I found out today that Patrick M. Walsh, 57, of Wheaton IL, passed away July 12, 2016 after a battle with cancer.  Rest in peace, Pat.

COVID-19 Omicron Thoughts - 7 January 2022

This is not a happy prediction, but I see no other likely path.

We will all get COVID-19 before this is over.

The Omicron variant has overtaken the Delta variant in the last couple of weeks.  The exact charts vary, but in December 2021, Delta was fading as Omicron took dominance.  By January 2022, Omicron has all but replaced Delta in the US for new infections.  

People being careful and taking precautions are being tested as COVID-positive.  Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, two prominent talk-show hosts who have responded intelligently throughout the COVID pandemic have tested positive and cancelled their shows.  As a reference, here is an NPR article on Fallon and Meyers, dated 4 January 2022.  

Finally, we have known for over a year that the virus spreads by air.  Some fraction of the US population, some estimates are in the 30-40% range, are resisting vaccination.  Even if it is only 20%, this leaves a vibrant pool in which the COVID virus can live, mutate, and spread because we all need to breathe.  Wearing masks can help, self-isolation can help, and postponing interactions can help, but we must ultimately visit grocery stores and perform other tasks that will put is in exposure to people who either do not care or will lie about their vaxx status.  

When I add these together, there is simply no way to avoid exposure.  If you run this over a month or so, that is a handful of visits, and the probabilities add up to certainty.

The only protection is the vaccination protocol - (usually) two vaccinations plus a booster.  To extend protection, another booster is very possible, perhaps in the mid-year of 2022.

Happy New Year!

New rising - 1 January 2022

Back in January 2020, I started baking sourdough bread.  I had no specific reason beyond resuming a hobby from the 1990's in Westford, a suburb of Boston.  We had returned from a trip to France where the bread is universally excellent.  It is so good that bread is not some mere addition to a meal but an element of the meal just like the meat, the spices, and the vegetables.  I thought I would try to recreate the crusty, chewy, holey bread of France.  A lofty goal, but maybe I could get close enough for daily use.  This was before the Time of COVID.  We heard odd snippets of reports out of Wuhan, but surely we would be protected by modern medicine.  

By the end of February 2020, it was clear that COVID was coming and the first deaths were reported in nearby Kirkland WA.  By the first days of March 2020, I knew that one of those first deaths was Doug Lambrecht, a friend from BSA Scouting.  By 4 March 2020, the risk of COVID was clear and immediate, so I closed the AMD Bellevue office and directed people to work from home.  We all thought it would blow over by June or July 2020, and we started looking for hobbies.  Some people started knitting while others turned to bread.  The store shelves quickly ran out of flour (as well as toilet paper - not correlated!).  I had already resumed bread-making, so I was all set to become stereotypical.

In resuming my bread-making, I used a simple method to start the sourdough starter using cultured yeast and then let it go wild on the kitchen counter.  Many recipes are available and I started with a simple one.  A cup of flour, a cup of water, a tablespoon of sugar, a packet or two of dry yeast, and some vigorous stiring.  Put the mixture in a Tupperware pitcher and let it sit, open-topped, on the kitchen counter for a few days.  Stir periodically, maybe twice a day.  The flour is unbleached and organic; in Westford, I used King Arthur's all-purpose but the Redmond Costco provides a flour sourced from Utah that works well.  Let the culture bubble and rise a bit as the yeast devours the sugar and starts to work on the flour.  Microbes in the kitchen air will join the mix.  We hope that these will provide the "sour" portions of the flavor profile while the yeast remains the worker to lift and stretch the gluten formed in the flour.  Eventually, the starter will settle down and the morning will bring a layered product at rest.  This happens more quickly in warm climates and in the summer, more slowly in cooler climates and in the winter - anything from one to three days.  My Tupperware pitcher is translucent, so I can clearly see a white (lightly tan-colored) layer on the bottom and a darker but clear "liquor" on the top with a slightly sourish aroma.  Note that my food has an aroma rather than a "smell".  I feed the sourdough culture with a cup of flour and a cup of fresh water, then let it sit overnight one more time.  The pitcher comes with a close-fitting lid.  It is not air- or water-tight, but it protects the starter by limiting evaporation.  And it prevents against odd things that might otherwise fall in.

Digression on history.  The western pioneers (often seeking gold) carried their sourdough starter in a doughier, drier form.  They simply used less water so that the sourdough starter was more like a ball of dough than a liquid.  This ball of dough went in the flour barrel and rested on top.  Closing the barrel protected the contents from animals.  These pioneers took the name "sourdoughs" from the bread that formed a major part of their diets.

Digression on flour measurements.  I have always used measuring cups to measure flour in my recipes.  I have seen the videos and read the articles about how important it is to weigh flour.  I have received all the lectures on packing flour and how the volumetric measurements can vary while weight measurements stay true. I even started to believe this so I bought a scale.  I argue that bread is a product of feel, and so weight or volume are simply a starting point that does not require accuracy.  Let me repeat that:  a scale is not necessary for home baking.  As the dough develops, an observant baker will add a little water or or a little flour to adjust the texture to obtain the desired results. Consistency is important, so if you, as a baker, cannot measure flour consistently, you might want to consider a different hobby.  So please do not whine at me about grams or weight.  Measure your ingredients carefully, volume or weight, and adjust. 

To make my bread, I started with the King Arthur Flour recipe and adapted it.  I put a cup of my sourdough starter, well stirred, in a mixing bowl and add three cups of flour and 1-1/2 cups of water.  I mix this up and loosely cover it to rest overnight.  I feed my starter with one cup of flour and one cup of water.  When the starter starts to bubble again, I put the lid on the pitcher and return it to the refrigerator after a good stir.

A note on maintaining the starter.  When I pull the starter out the refrigerator where it is stored, the starter has settled into two layers.  The bottom layer is pretty solid, almost like a potter's clay, and the upper layer is a dark liquid.  After pulling the starter from the refrigerator, I stir it to mix the two layers.  It takes a minute or two to stir the layers together, but keep mixing until the starter is uniform.  Then I feed the starter as noted above.  This regular feeding makes more volune than the one cup of starter that I withdrew for the bread, so I periodically skip a feeding or go to half-and-half on the flour and water so that the level of the starter does not overflow the container.  After feeding, I let the starter sit overnight, then store it in the refrigerator for up to three weeks before feeding again.  If you need to go longer than three weeks between feedings, either dry out some starter or freeze some.  I think the starter can go months in the refrigerator between feedings, but having a backup is prudent.

Let the starter-flour-water mix sit overnight, covered loosely, to develop.  By the next day, the "slack" dough should be showing a lot of bubbles.  This is the risk of sourdough - sometimes the yeast just does not want to work, but this is extremely rare and often indicates some mishandling (e.g., a too cold kitchen).  A "slack" dough is simply a dough that has a lot of water in it, it is very pourable.  To the dough, add a cup of flour.  On the flour, sprinkle a tablespoon of sugar and a half tablespoon of salt.  The sugar is to feed the yeast and the salt is mainly for flavor.  Common advice is that you do not want the sugar or salt to touch the dough directly, thus the comment about "on the flour".  (I made a salt-free bread, but the flavor is not right.  That said, if no-salt is required, leave it out.)  Add a second cup of flour on top of the sugar and salt.  Start mixing.  I like to use a rubber spatula (probably one made from silicone, but I still call it a rubber spatula).  You want a generally uniform mix, but you do not have to be a perfectionist.  It is too easy to leave unmixed flour on the bottom, so keep mixing and turning the dough until it is broadly uniform, especially at the bottom.  In times of low humidity, the flour will be dry and need some help.  I add anyting from a tablespoon to a quarter-cup of water to smooth out the dough, either at this point or after the first kneading.

I combine my dough in a mixer bowl because I use a breadhook to knead.  I used to do it by hand, but the slacker (wetter) doughs are hard to handle and a mixer makes it easier.

So take that dough and knead by hand or mount the bowl on the mixer stand.  I knead for 4-5 minutes, in either mode, then let the dough rest for 4-5 minutes and knead again for a final 4-5 minutes.  The goal is to get smooth, elastic dough that is well mixed.  I let this rise in the mixer bowl for 1-2 hours.  I set a timer for one hour and check how the rise is going.  To control the temperature, I put the dough in an unheated oven and turn on the oven light; the oven light keeps the temperatures around 90F, which works well for me.  Some ovens have a "warm" or "rise" temperature setting, but I find this is too warm and it encourages the bread dough to rise too quickly.  After the first hour, check the dough, looking for a doubled volume.  If not yet doubled, add 30-60 minutes and check again.  If it has doubled, "knock down" or "punch down" the dough.  the phrase "punch down" captures the spirit - make a fist and stick it in the middle of the dough, collapsing the air out. 

Some bakers will recommend a light kneading or "folding" process at this point.  This is "to build the structure" of the dough.  I find this is not necessary.  Handle the dough enough to collapse the air bubbles and you are good.  Handling a slack dough is hard, the dough is sticky, so I try to handle it as little as possible.  

Do a general folding (repeated folding of the dough will squeeze out the bubbles) and shaping.  I like a boule, a ball-shaped loaf, so I drop the defalted dough into a dutch oven pot.  You can cut the dough into long loaves to get baguette shapes, or cut pieces of dough to fit into rectangular bread loaf pans - up to your preference.  The boule gives an artistic sense of "peasant" and "rustic" that I like, so that is my usual choice. 

If you leave it too long, the dough will rise and collapse, leaving you with a dished top.  All is not lost, just do the folding and be more attentive during the second rise.  The dough is robust and will usually recover in the second rise.

I usually do a second rise in the dutch oven pot.  This second rise is said to develop the flavor of the bread but you can skip the second rise if you are busy.  I line the dutch oven with a piece of parchment paper to minimize any sticking.  You can also grease the dutch oven, but I find the parchment paper to be more reliable.  I just let the excess paper stick out the top and will later use the "ears" to pull the bread from the dutch oven when baking is done.

After much experimentation, I find the dutch oven to be an important tool.  It helps maintain and control the shape of the loaf, and it seems to help the crunchy crust develop.  Alternatively, I used to put the parchment paper on a baking sheet and plop the boule in the middle of the sheet.  This works well, but the slack dough tends to spread out while the dutch oven will hold the circle and encourage the dough to rise.  The baking sheet bread tends to be shorter and the dutch oven encourages taller bread.  I prefer the later.  Furthermore, the lid of the dutch oven helps to keep in moisture while baking, and that seems to help the crust develop.  Professional bakeries have ovens that will inject steam during baking and the dutch oven will do something similar with the moisture already in the dough.  There is nothing special about the dutch oven - you can use the steel dutch oven that came with your cookset, get a fancy French enamelled dutch oven, or use a camping-style cast iron dutch oven.  Just choose one that is large enough for your loaf (about 5-6 quarts) and has an oven-safe lit and handles.

For the second rise, put the lid on the dutch oven and return it (containing the dough) to the warm oven.  Again, I use the oven light and do not turn on the oven.  Be careful to watch the second rise for that doubling in size.  Unlike the first rise, it is difficult to recover an over-risen dough on the second rise; you will either need a third rise or will need to make do with a concave loaf (tastes fine but looks funny).

You can skip the second rise if you are in a hurry.  I also skip the slashing of the dough and let it crack naturally as the bread bakes.

When the rising is done, it is time to bake the bread.  I start from a cold oven.  In fact, I have the bread rising in the oven, sitting in the dutch oven, and just turn on the oven to bake.  I do not recall what source suggested it, but it works fine to start baking in a cold oven wiht the lid on the dutch oven.  Set the oven to 450F and set a timer for 25 minutes.  The oven temperature will rise to 450F during the 25 minutes and the bread will continue to rise a bit within the dutch oven, eventually starting to form that crust in the steamy environment within.  After 25 minutes, remove the lid from the dutch oven and reset the timer for another 25 minutes.  

After 50 minutes overall, your bread is done when you decide the top is suitable brown.  Pull the lidless dutch oven from the oven.  I remove the bread from the dutch oven using the "ears" of the parchment paper.  Leaving the bread in the dutch oven too long will allow escaping moisture to make the loaf soggy.

After cooling for an hour or so, I slice boule in half.  Although the slices will vary in size, it is easy to slice slices from the demiloaf.  

Variations.  When the dough is slack, the air bubbles in the final bread will tend to be larger and the texture will be closer to rustic bread.  A dry dough is easier to handle in the baking process and produces finer bubbles, producing a texture closer to commercial bread.  You can experiment to find your favorite texture.  And instead of a boule, you can shape the bread to regular loafs or baguettes as noted before.  You can also use the dough to make pizza or focaccia on a baking sheet.  Finally, you can make dinner rolls.  I suppose one can make hamburger buns but I have never tried it.  The sourdough flavor and texture improve all these forms.

The original King Arthur Flour recipe has one add baking soda to the dough with the sugar and salt.  I just started leaving it out and have not gone back.  You do not need the baking soda.

Lawn and garden - 28 December 2021

We have bird feeders out around the house, partially for our entertainment but also for the cats.  The suet feeders get the attention of "larger" birds and the cats while the hummingbird feeders attract hummingbirds and the people.  In the past, we have had problems with squirrels who seem to think the feeders are for them.  After a few years of battle, the squirrels have largely given up.  A "witch's hat" protects the suet feeder, an anti-squirrel cage protected another feeder, and we have switched to shuttered anti-squirrel feeders for the seed feeders.  The squirrel-cage approach was effective on keeping out the common gray squirrels but it also blocked the medium and larger birds; the cage did not block the native red squirrels (smaller than their gray cousins) and it seemed to confuse a lot of birds who clung to the outside, unable to solve the riddle of entry.  In the end, we abandoned the cage in favor of shuttered feeders.

the shuttered feeders have an internal spring.  For light creatures like the birds, the weight is not enough to counter the spring, but when a squirrel gets on the feeder, their weight squashes the spring and that closes the shutters so that food is no longer accessible.  It takes a couple days of failed attempts, but the squirrels eventually give up.  The area under the feeder is kept clean because we buy the shelled seed.  there is some spillage onto the ground, but birds (and the odd squirrel) patrol the ground under the feeder and keep the area clean.  Occasionally a neighbor will warn that feeding birds attracts rats, but there is no evidence of this.

the suet feeder one time attracted a rather large critter.  A bear entered our suburban backyard and trashed the suet feeder in a successful attempt to eat the suet within.  We never did find the suet feeder.  I went out the next day and discovered a hole in the cedar fence.  I patched the hole with some scrap wood and we have since replaced the fence, so I expect our ursine friends will take the easy route and search for easy pickings among the neighborhood rather than out backyard.  Any neighbor concerned enough can put up their own fence.

To counter the squirrels and the bear, we have switched to hot-pepper suet.  It turns out that birds cannot taste capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers, but the mammals can.  A mouthful of hot-pepper suet is nothing to a bird, but it will be long remembered by a mammal.

In an unusual turn, the nectar in the hummingbird feeders froze yesterday.  A winter storm had brought 20-something-degree temperatures to the area and remained overnight, so be brought in the feeders overnight to thaw them.  I redeployed them this morning and the hummers have been battling over the feeders all day.  An "alpha" hummer seems to own the feeder and they chase off interlopers all day, feeding occasionally.  It is supposed to get down to 24F tonight, so we will bring them in again to redeploy tomorrow.

Web3 derives from Web2 and a screed on Bitcoin and Ethereum - 28 December 2021

I have recently read a couple news articles and position papers about the emergence of Web3.  The advocates claim is the fulfillment of the original promise of an open and egalitarian Internet.  I am sure some of the advocates are pure-of-heart and believe this, but the bulk of the Web3 wave is driven by those seeking power (influence) and money, especially money.  Let us peel the smelly onion that is Web3.

If we roll back the clock to the original web, what some call Web 1.0 in retrospect, we can look at the basic technologies.  Let us skip the original World Wide Web or Internet - WebZero - because it was limited to military, academics, and a few commercial researchers.  The main part of the world did not become aware of the web or the Internet until around 1995 or so.  Bill Gates wrote his famous "internet everywhere" memo about that time, and injected the web technologies into Win95 where the world discovered "the web".  Wired Magazine places the Bill Gates memo on 26 May 1995 - see this link to Bill Gates memo.  At the time, there were two kinds of connections to the newly visible web; at a major corporation, there was high-speed internet (perhaps a megabit/second or so) and from home there was dial-up at speeds from 1200-56Kbit/sec.  For home users, the connection was provided by AOL or the like for a monthly fee and used the telephone system.  I think the three main applications (or uses) of the web were e-mail, BBS systems, and limited web browsing, all text based with very limited graphics.  The graphics were so limited, that even GIFs were rare, and a 1 megapixel photo was a luxury.  I will ignore porn, the "killer app" that drives so many advances in technology.  Even the limited gaming was text based.  Not sure about that?  Does this ring a bell?  “You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.” Zork.  In the midst of all this technological glory came a new application that would fund major expansions of the web.  In summary, Web 1.0 brought us spam. 

We now proceed to examine Web 2.0.

The demand for a "more immersive experience" drove the expansion of e-mail, BBS, the nascent Web, porn, and primitive gaming, and this was often driven by spam.  The emergence of GIFs, animated GIFs (amazing!), higher-quality images with more colors (hint: porn), and multi-player gaming drove an increasing demand for web services and capacity.  High-speed internet became available in more homes (but still not fast enough for gamers who held game nights that spawned tech wizards fluent in routers and Ethernet).  In a serendipitous alignment, these technologies allowed for full-on advertising.  Older players like AOL and new players like Google and Yahoo could collect data on users to feed them advertisements targeted to their interests.  Amazon came along and brought this to a fine art with the original patents on recommendations and collecting reviews to share with other customers.  Where companies used to pay Madison Avenue to create stories about obviously wonderful products, Amazon shared recommendations and reviews are simply advertising supplied by the users instead of Madison Avenue.  Amazon could pay a few reviewers to create a few reviews that would generate buzz, but they could collect hundreds of volunteer reviewers and assemble their submissions into gigantic, endless reviews that would generate massive buzz.  All this cost Amazon a few cents of computing and storage to collect and present the data, and a few employees to get the ball started rolling.  This is now ubiquitous in any on-line retail outlet, and pretty common on manufacturers' sites with consumer products.   Along the way, images and videos got better in Web 2.0, and while that helped consumers, it helped  the sellers sell better.  Ultimately, Apple turned it into the music streaming business (big revenue), YouTube turned it into a video-streaming business (funded by advertising), and Netflix turned it into movie-streaming (funded by subscription fees).  Google search and GMAIL are funded by advertiser fees as are Facebook and Twitter.  FAANG and all the vampires driven by advertising brought to use by Web 2.0.   

We now welcome Web3.

As with all self-described disruptions, there must be some icon-bashing, and so the numbering changes:  we lose the space and the "0" to give the radical-looking "Web3" moniker.  We are early in the transition to post-Web 2.0 technologies, but the leading contenders seem to be bitcoin (in the general sense, although Bitcoin is the premier example) and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), both built on the blockchain technology.   Bitcoin (lower-case) has become so popular that there are hundreds, if not thousands of bitcoin types.  

NFTs are still struggling to emerge, but there are a handful of NFT exchanges (like auction houses more than anything).  (As a foreshadow, I wrote recently that one can tell the NFT business is rotten because a Trump has entered the business; Melania, to be specific, but it would not surprise me if Ivanka, Jared, Don, Don Jr., and Eric were to shortly issue NFTs; I am not sure that Baron or Tiffany are allowed to participate with the big scammers in the family business entering first).  To finish up quickly on NFTs, there are no reputable participants and none of the active participants can state any coherent value or benefit to NFTs; an NFT is a con by definition, so let us return to the fabled bitcoin marketplace.  

The original Bitcoin was invented or described by someone with the name Natoshi Sakamoto, but no one knows who this is and no one has come forward with a credible claim to be this inventor who holds large amounts of the earliest Bitcoins.  These original Bitcoins are presently worth millions of dollars (USD).  Although any reasonable (living) person would come forward with a demonstrable, valid claim and own that money, no one has, so let us put the identify question aside for the moment and turn to the technology that underpins bitcoin.  

There are lots of people in the world who think bitcoin is pretty cool and have invested their money in Bitcoin.  there are other people who think the idea is cool, so cool that they have created new bitcoin types with different attributes.  One of the most famous alternative bitcoin types is called Dogecoin, named after an Internet meme (the Doge, a dog) and created originally as a parody of Bitcoin - which promptly made it a desired type of bitcoin now worth real money.  (See "icon bashing" mentioned earlier - must be an iconoclast to be a distrupter).  A particular problem with Bitcoin (original) is that it does not scale -  transactions in Bitcoin using the proverbial blockchain ledger are costing about $5, which makes many transactions too expansive (buy a gallon of milk and it costs more to pay for the payment than for the milk, itself).  This is a serious problem for a "currency".  The shopkeeper does not charge you $5 every time you buy something at the store, and Bitcoin looks pretty expensive such that  there are now subsidiary "bitcoin" types that have a lower transaction costs and are bundled into larger Bitcoin transactions.  The other problem is that Bitcoin transactions are slow - the Bitcoin blockchain can handle something like 10 transactions per second across the entire world.  Ten transactions/second shared across seven billion people is, well, a long wait.  This is not a good sign for the adoption of Bitcoin. 

After Dogecoin, another alternative coin is Ethereum.  Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is based on a block-chain technology but it uses something Proof Of Stake (POS) rather than Bitcoin's Proof Of Work (POW), and Ethereum has the ability to attach a "smart contract" to a coin or a transaction.  According to the Coinbase website, "Smart contracts, like regular paper contracts, establish the terms of an arrangement between parties. But unlike an old-fashioned contract, smart contracts automatically execute when the terms are met without the need for either participating party to know who is on the other side of the deal — and without the need for any kind of intermediary."  While many people consider "smart contracts" to be a major advance of technology, I view them as a pending disaster, but let us do a brief digression on POS and POW.  I must confess that I love the irony of Bitcoin being closely associated with "POS", but where was I?  Back to Proof Of Work.  To make a long story short, POW takes a tedious computing problem and shares it with anyone who wants to try to solve it.  These potential solvers are called "miners".  The miners race to find a solution to the tedious problem and the first one to find a solution reports the solution.  If all the other miners agree the solution is correct, that first miner gets a prize - a newly created ("minted") Bitcoin.  The tedious problem is useless - it is difficult to solve, true, but the solution is the answer to a question that no one will ever ask.  There are miners out in the world who have built specialized supercomputers that use vast amounts of electricity to "mine" the Bitcoin tokens (various words are used: bitcoin, coin, and token are common phrases).  This is POW - to solve a tedious, useless math problem.  Proof of Stake, or POS, recognizes this waste of energy and apportions winnings (new Ethereum coins) to anyone who can show they have a lot of Ethereum coins already and are willing to do the tedious calculation.  The difference is that one Stakeholder does the useless computation instead of all the miners doing similar, useless computations at the same time in a race.  In short, POS declares that only the rich can be miners; the rich get richer.  That screams "con" to me, but let us return to the "smart contracts".

The idea of a "smart contract" is appealing.  One writes up a great contract that encodes all the important criteria and conditions into the contract - in other words, one writes a program that is to be run in association with the Ethereum coin.  This removes all the overhead of people handling the transaction and places it in a piece of programming code; the disrupters "disintermediate" all those unnecessary business people, bankers, and lawyers who would otherwise gum up the works.  But this is based on a curious assumption, the assumption that someone, somewhere can write a  program that can handle all possible circumstances and resolve all possible errors, including circumstances and errors that have not yet been encountered or imagined, then it assumes that program can be written perfectly to capture the intent and spirit of every thought of both parties to the contract.  We know this is not possible for two obvious reasons.  First, we know programs are littered with errors.  Anyone who has ever had to "restart, reboot, reinstall" knows that software is fallible.  Some will argue that software got people to the moon, but the programmers at NASA spent years writing and laboriously checking that code - only to have it fail at the last minute so that Neil Armstrong had to turn off the computer so that he could land the LEM safely (roughly summarized).  Even if the resulting software were perfect, no one wants to wait years and spend millions of dollars for a "smart contract".  The other assumption is that those "unnecessary business people, bankers, and lawyers" are, in fact, unnecessary.  Anyone who has dealt with a bureaucracy knows that they routinely fail to operate correctly.  I can think of dozens of times that I have had to call the bank, the credit card company, the insurance company, the airline, the hotel company, or the government to get a problem resolved by a person instead of a website or an automated calling system.  Each of those was a contract with governing terms and conditions and something went wrong such that the automated systems could not resolve the problem.  Placing all that complexity into "smart contract" software invites disaster and problems, and if the "smart contract" runs automatically with no chance of human override, then the consumers will need lawyers and judges to sort out the problems.  Large companies pay talented lawyers to write air-tight contracts, but we read the news about company-suing-company to resolve some million-dollar issue that the contract did not cover.  Smart contracts?  No thank you.

Finally, let us ask what bitcoin transactions are used for.  the most common examples are to purchase porn, to purchase illegal products such as guns and drugs, and to evade tax and financial laws. Someone asserted that most of the NFT purchases were done in bitcoin so that bitcoin could be converted out of bitcoin for investment diversification; this is almost a form of money laundering.  In any event, when you take the transaction costs into account, bitcoin has no identifiable purpose that might be legitimate.

Summarizing, if Web3 is the grand world of bitcoin and NFTs, then Web3 brings only fraud and evasion.

I am left only with the conclusion that Web3 is something to be avoided and it needs government intervention and regulation.

     

People want to believe: NFT fraud Melania style - 16 December 2021

And if you still were not sure that NFTs are a scam, the final bit of evidence has been announced.  Melania Trump, gold-digger and person who truly does not care about you, has announced an NFT.  If you think the gold-digger attribute is too cruel, the announcement says that a "portion of the proceeds will 'assist children aging out of the foster care system'" -- a PORTION.  You can be sure that the other portion will assist Melania.  

If you were unsure about NFTs, thinking that there might be some residual value in the concept, you can now rest assured that the lowest of the low have entered the ring and that all honesty has fled.  Interested parties may now line up to be fleeced.

Full details via CNN -

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/12/16/politics/melania-trump-nft/index.html

 

(c) By Regine MahauxWeaver, Hilary (3 April 2017). Here's What You Should Know About Melania Trump's Official First Lady Portrait. Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on 7 April 2017. "[O]n Monday[,] . . . the White House released [Melania Trump's] first official portrait, which was taken by Belgian photographer Regine Mahaux."Laurent, Olivier (4 April 2017). The Story Behind Melania Trump's Official Portrait. Time. Archived from the original on 7 April 2017. - whitehouse.gov/administration/first-lady-melania-trump (page) (archived)whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/flotus.png (direct link) (archived)whitehouse.gov/copyright (license) (archived), CC BY 3.0 us, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57696382

People want to believe, NFT fraud edition - 13 December 2021

The timing of this tweet is perfect. NFTs are frauds. NFT Fraud is a thing. Self-parody is real.

https://twitter.com/nfttheft/status/1469445764275339265?s=21

People want to believe, NFT edition - 13 December 2021

There is a message here, and it is both uplifting and depressing.

 I have been reading about NFTs for months and still fail to succumb to the allure.  I just watched a video, courtesy of BoingBoing, that is located here -  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXaYUEspyG8

and as referenced from BoingBoing -

https://boingboing.net/2021/12/13/what-is-the-true-nature-of-the-nft-bubble.html

The video, named "How Celebrities are Making MILLIONS with Selling JPG’s (NFT’s)" [sic], takes seventeen minutes to explain, first, that NFTs are a bubble and, second, that NFTs are not a scam.  I will grant that the first ten minutes are correct: NFTs are a bubble.  I take issue with the second part: NFTs are a scam.

The best argument for the long-term validity of NFTs is that they provide some sort of a guarantee that one possesses an original.  This is the non-fungible aspect.  The presenter notes that it is trivial to make a perfect copy of a digital original;  he somehow completely glosses over this key fact when comparing NFTs to conventional works of art.  He argues that, somehow, an authenticated work of art by Picasso, Rothko, Rembrandt, or Banksy is equivalent to an NFT.  This is either self-deceiving or disingenuous.  The unacknowledged fault in this argument is that the conventional work of art is unique.  It cannot be duplicated or reproduced and it exists in exactly one place.  It is true that there is a large business, science, and art for the authentication of art works, and it is true that this sometimes has its failures, but it generally works to support the uniqueness and origin of a particular piece of art.  For NFTs, there is no such thing.  A particular NFT, itself, certifies to the uniqueness of a collection of bits, but those bits can be copied perfectly with no way to determine the original.  Further, those exact bits can "exist" in many places (hundreds, thousands, millions of URLs) and they can be moved to a new location trivially - with or without leaving a copy behind.  If the Mona Lisa is removed from the Louvre, there is no copy left behind, perfect or otherwise.  Further, if an artist can make money from the resale of the art (likely a good thing), it seems likely that the artist (or agent) can make another NFT.  Nothing makes the second NFT more valuable than the first.  One can argue that the first NFT is a "first edition" and that brings value.  However, this discussion again calls the basic question - what is the value of an NFT?  

The presenter argues that an NFT has the same exclusiveness as owning a Ferrari or an exotic watch.  The Ferrari has no value on city streets as 35 remains the speed limit for all cars; the watch does not keep better time than the cheap digital watch.  Thus the Ferrari and watch bring status because of exclusivity and expense.  But a fancy car or watch is difficult to make - they are not mass produced using a "copy" command on a cheap PC.  They are not trivially distributed on cheap USB memory sticks.  So if you are the kind of person who is impressed with logos imprinted on leather or carved into steel watches, then maybe an NFT is for you.  But the Ferrari will still be putt-putting along at 35 and will eventually become scrap metal, so enjoy it while you can.  Ferrari will make more cars next year while Rembrandt will remain dead.  The exclusiveness analogy fails.

The presenter mentions in passing that Bitcoin whales are buying NFTs to evade taxes on BTC gains.  The whale converts capital gains on the BTC investment (wager) into the value of an NFT.  Well, yes, that works now.  But eventually the whale will want to convert that NFT into cash to buy their yacht or their pizza, so the NFT will collapse into an cap gain at that point and taxes will be due.  Of the NFT market will collapse and the cap gains will evaporate.  Ultimately, this practice is a statement that the long-term promise of the Bitcoin world is not good (a purchase of NFTs signal low confidence in BTC; if confidence in BTC was high, investments would remain in BTC).  This also means that the world of NFTs is rather like the island of dry cleaners that prospers because everyone takes in each others' laundry.  That will not last long.

To summarize the depressing part of the NFT story, NFTs represent people who are seeking something for nothing.  They seek huge profits at the expense of others with no effort from themselves.  Think about that NFT booster - they add nothing to the value proposition of NFTs.  They are in a pump-and-dump model with the hope that they will get out before the crash caused by the dump.  Which NFT whale will start dumping first?

I said at the start that the moral here was both depressing and uplifting.  I have dwelt on the depressing bit.  The uplifting bit is that many people remain optimistic.  Now that I see that written, it feels inadequate.  NFTs are depressing and a lot of innocent people will lose money.

Lost Mail and Checking, 8 December 2021

In yesterday's mail, I got a repeat bill, a "late" bill.  I checked my records and I had sent a check a month ago (11 Nov), but the vendor has not received my payment as of about 5 December.  I can understand why he might be a little grouchy.  I checked my records, and all the other checks written shortly before and after had cleared the bank, so it looks like Ol' Man Dejoy, the Postmaster, has Done It Again.  After screwing up the USPS, he is now losing mail.  I could pay a few bucks to issue a stop-payment on the lost check, but I am too cheap.   Instead I have sent a replacement check and will be watching should the errant check wander in. 

This is one of the few bills I pay by check.  As this service is ending, I think I have two left that are not in autopay mode.  This gives me a chance to think about checking.  We used to write 10-20 checks a month.  There use to be fleets of small airplanes that would collect and deliver bags of checks to smaller banks in the rural towns.  I used to order checks by the box-full and go through several hundred a year.  And I used to deposit checks received from others.  All that is now gone, or severely reduced.  Of the remaining two checks a month, both could go on autopay, and maybe I should arrange that this afternoon.  There will be the occasional check for donations or large amounts (e.g., buying a new furnace), but I would be down to 10 a year from hundreds a year.  

I could pay the remainder by credit card.  One of the things that gives me pause is that the credit card companies take a cut.  I could have paid the furnace deposit by credit card, but they would have imposed a 3% fee.  I notice in my contributions that the "bank" is taking a fee on the order of 3%, and on the smaller amounts, the "bank" usually sets a floor amount for the minimum fee - often 50 or 75 cents.  When a goup of us would go to lunch and split the check, the bank would get four or five of the 75 cent fees for the one lunch ticket.  That is $3-4 that the restaurant will not get.  There is a similar story at the weekly farmers' market where the little guy, the farmer, loses a buck or so on the deal when you pay by credit card.  With the advent of COVID, everyone avoided the handling of cash and moved quickly to the credit transaction.  In some cases, the farmer took the hit and in other cases, the cost of vegetables went up so that the bankers could collect their fees.  

Instead of turning into a rant, let me simply point out that we should go back to cash for those small transactions.  The bankers are driving much nicer cars than the poor farmers and restauranteurs.  

Working with Medicare and Social Security: Follow-up Follow-up, 7 December 2021

I suppose this is the way things normally happen in life.  Once you buy a car, you suddenly routinely see them on the road when you have never noticed them before.  In this case, I contacted my U.S. Representative's office to ask them to inquire at the Social Security Administration (SSA) about the revision to dates of my eligibility for Medicare.   I completed some confirmation forms for them (approval to use my personal information) and then went out to get the mail.  

Sure enough, that was the day that the confirmation mail arrived from SSA to grant my eligibility for Medicare.  I promptly called the Rep's office to explain and cancel my request.  The office is working remotely, so the interactions are through voicemail and email.  One does not actually talk to anyone, but I tried to be clear in my message (both times).

Now to convince everyone that I am on the "special" enrollment schedule and I am not late for the annual enrollment schedule that ended yesterday (7 Dec).  I got the confirming mail after the close of business, thus I was unable to respond in time to meet the deadline, anyway.

The Mobile Phone of 2031 - 6 December 2021

Twenty years ago, a flip-phone was considered the peak of technology for mobile phones.  Nokia dominated the industry.  Voice and text were the dominant applications (we did not use the phrase at the time) - some limited web browsing was likely possible, but it was really, really crappy.  An integrated camera might be one megapixel on a high-end phone, maybe as poor as  640x480 on a typical phone.  I am not looking at references but that is probably a reasonable summary.   In a revolutionary move, the iPhone was introduced by Apple in 2007 (announced in January, units delivered to US customers on 29 June and then worldwide in 2008).  Since then, a touch screen and ability to run general applications has been the backbone of the mobile phone.  An article today asks where the mobile phone will be in 10 years.

https://gizmodo.com/what-will-smartphones-be-like-in-10-years-1848138666

I thought I would answer this question.  I have been thinking about this for the last 5-6 years and have some predictions.  Most of the predictions I have seen are along the lines of "more of the same" - more bits and colors on the screens, longer battery life, faster CPUs and applications.  I think these answer the wrong question.  I think we need to turn the question around and ask what problems are being solved by a smartphone-like device.

A smartphone is not just a phone: it is a computer.  Therefore it has storage, compute, input, and output.  In today's form, we call these FLASH, CPU, keyboard & voice, and screen & speakers.  But that is a narrow definition.  As Scott McNealy and SUN Microsystems have said, the network is the computer.  Applying this thought, the smartphone is the connection to a larger world, a network of storage, computers, input devices, and output devices.  We used to store music but now we stream it; the storage is in the cloud.  We used to run apps directly on the phone, but now there is a distrubuted model (think about how Siri, Alexa, Maps, and other apps work).  We are surrounded by inputs such as location, sounds, text/typing, and gestures.  We consume output in the form of displays and spoken prompts ("recalculating...").  We are limited by power as seen by the eternal complaints about limited batteries and carrying auxilliary batteries to "make it through the day".  These are all limitations of the small form-factor of the current smartphone.  We are also facing new demands and applications such as payment through the smartphone (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Venmo).  And we are starting to see the smartphone as a means of identity - you can open your front door or start you car with your phone; this exposes security concerns to be solved.

If we combine all these things, we can get a clearer idea of where smartphones are going.  Ultimately, they will be little radios: to talk to the cloud storage and compute; to the cellular network for text, voice, and data;  to connect to the input and output devices around us (Bluetooth, WiFi, others); and to provide credentials for purchase or access.  These radios will have enough compute capability to work with the cloud for larger storage and compute problems; some local storage will be available for caching, but only part of the vast data resources - your top-100 playlist may be on the device, but your total collection will remain in the cloud, perhaps in the form of a subscription.  Similarly, your smartphone will do just enough computation to get you thru day-to-day, and bigger compute will be in the cloud - this is a form of "compute caching".  Computation and storage are useless if they cannot connect to the user, so we get to the input-output devices.

I am surrounded by screens.  I have a 16-inch screen on my laptop, a 30-inch screen on my workstation, a 60-inch screen in my living room.  when I get in my car, I have another screen.  When I get on an airplane, I have yet another screen.  Cabs in Japan have screens, so it is nothing to add them to taxis and Uber cars in the US.  None of these require power from  my device - they have their own power sources.  My smartphone only needs to be able to connect - wirelessly, I presume.  Screens are so cheap that they will appear in kitches, bedrooms, airport waiting rooms, dental waiting rooms, and -- everywhere, and all of them with their own power sources outside my smartphone.  Technology like ChromeCAST and AirPlay show that screens outside my smartphone can be drawn into service.  Even you glasses can be used.  Input devies are even easier - for $100, I can get a device that projects a keyboard on any flat surface to allow me to type.  Some evolution of this idea will allow tablet and keyboard style input.  But voice and gestures will be even more common than today's Siri, Alexa, and Hey Google.

Security is the next big problem to solve.  all of these wireless connections (cloud, screen, Bluetooth, Wifi) are openings for attacks.  But the smartphone device can be programmed to carry my secret keys and allow secure communications.  this is not a solved problem, but the proliferation of VPNs and two-factor verification give a sense of where this is going.   Note also that payment systems systems depend on this being solved, or your bank account will be eternaly zero.  Finally, the proliferation of COVID vaccination status shows that identity is closely tied to smartphones as the carrier.  This simple example will be expanded to include access to cloud services from subscription feeds to financial transactions in increasingly secure methods.

Camera is the one app I have neglected  Some sort of on-board display seems necessary to make a camera work and a small display can be used for other purposes as well, to display security codes as well as directions and red/yellow/green indicators for whatever purpose. 

In the end, we have a small device - anything from a TicTac box to a deck of cards - with a camera lens, a small display (1-in by 1-in, for example), limited storage and CPU, radios, and a battery.  Everything else will come from outside and be displayed outside.  For most of the day, you will not even take it out of your pocket.

I tried to convince a colleague of this idea when we were walking in Beijing, both there on a business trip about eight years ago - roughly 2006.  He was not buying it; his predictions were wrapped around more-of-the-same (better screens, better batteries, a smartphone to the core).  Therefore, my 10-year prediction may take longer than 2031 to arrive, but I think it inevitable.

--andy

Lawn and Garden - 3 December 2021

It has been a quiet period dominated by lawn and garden work.  

We have seen an increase in bird activity, so the suet and nectar get refilled more frequently.  I am guessing that we went through a migratory phase that has changed the populations.  During the Fall migration, there were lots of seeds available naturally and this seemed to reduce the need for supplemental feeding.  The new Winter populations have settled in, the winter pickings are few, the cold raises the need for food and - voila! - we have hungy birds again.  The hummingbirds are reluctantly sharing the feeders (they were quite territorial in the Summer months) and the suet is savaged by packs of maurading little birds.  

The garden work has mostlly been pruning.  Our Howe Sound cabin has a rose that has been growing at one corner of the cabin since about 1938-40, planted by Susan's grandmother.  This is an original "old rose", a climber that has survived benign neglect and active construction for about 80 years.  In advance of the construction, we were unsure if it would survive, so we took a half-dozen clippings back to our Redmond house.  Several of the cuttings remain in pots, large pots, and several are in the ground.  The grounded roses are very happy.  We did not really know what we were planting, how the cuttings would adjust to their new home, but the last few years have shown them to be taking quite well to the new surroundings.  for the last couple of years, the one by the back deck has grown up onto the (south-facing) roof and the one by the entrance has tried to capture any number of delivery persons.  I pruned both in the past week, completely filling the 96-gallon composting container twice.  The thorns on the old rose are quite effective as deterrents; wicked things.  This makes pruning a challenge.  I have settled on a technique that starts at the edges and prunes inward and downward.  This limits me to smaller cuttings and the work goes slowly.  Once I have removed a good bit of the rose bush (about half), I can come in from the side and this allows me to cut off larger bits.  The composing service is very handy - they use an automated truck to collect the contents of the bin and I can just wave good-bye to the thorns.  The alternative would be to run the rose cuttings through the chipper-shredder, and that would be awful.  The canes going in would be constantly grabbing at fabric and flesh, neither of which is pleasant.  And the service means the rose bits go off to become compost. Win.

I came across a video, now misplaced, that explained a technique for pruning and trellising old roses.  It was an eye-opener.  I have decided to try its technique.  I am now pruning the roses to grow large, healthy canes in a horizontal pattern.  From these will grow smaller canes, reaching vertically, that will carry the rosebuds, creating a wall of roses.  Nice.  We have not had any mildew or pest problems, so these old roses seem quite hardy and the veritcal growth will lead to more sun (mor blossoms) and good ventilation (controlling mildew and pests).  I will need to rebuild the arbor so the roses have something to grow on, but that will be another story.

Shattered Fence, Fallen Tree - 23 November 2021

This is actually an experiment to see if I can embed movies in a post.  It does show the fallen tree that broke the new fence in the windstorm around Halloween 2021.

<pause>

Well, it did some sort of upload, but there is no image here. 

Next experiment - upload to YouTube and link to there.

The video is here: https://youtu.be/423yL75Lkp0

It seems one must click and follow - the video is not embedded.

Oh, look - there is one button to upload images and one to upload videos.  Let us now pause to upload the video.

.

I am not looking at the final version, but the original portrait image has been truncated to landscape.  Not sure how Blogger determines this.