Spinor Info

Old school technical support

Computers, Internet, Personal No Responses »

Oct 202024

I was messing with a backup server, which failed to work properly after an update. I just finished what I was doing when a call came from a strange phone number. The chap introduced himself as calling on behalf of Bell Canada, and I almost hung up (way too many phony calls!) but I am glad I didn’t: this time, the call was legit, and it concerned my Bell ADSL network connection, a service that is a bit old, a bit slow, but ultra-reliable, which is, well, the reason why I am relying on it!

He was wondering why my connection is down. I was surprised: granted, I have a higher-speed (but a tad less reliable) backup connection through Rogers so I would not lose connectivity, but still, my monitoring scripts would have warned me if there was trouble with the Bell line. But then I checked: and indeed, a few minutes prior, the Bell ADSL connection was down for a duration of about two minutes.

And they called! As it turned out, they were not sure if the connection was back up, because they were trying to ping an IP address that was not responding. We quickly sorted that out, and the chap recorded to correct IP address for the Bell equipment itself, to make sure that they know which box they ping. But we were both wondering exactly what triggered the problem in the first place.

Now I know. The backup server I was messing with at one point came up with the wrong IP addresses, conflicting with my primary server. Having two boxes with the same IP address likely confused the Bell ADSL router, which then reset itself. This is probably what they saw on their end.

But the fact that they noticed it before I did? That I received a call from a competent professional within minutes, alerting me to the problem and eager to solve it?

That’s almost unheard of, these days. My opinion of Bell Canada just went up several, several notches. This is true old school customer care. What can I say? Bravo. That VPC (virtual private circuit) ADSL line is not the cheapest, but it’s well worth the price with this level of service.

History books to come

History, Politics 2 Responses »

Oct 172024

First, let me express my unbridled optimism: Yes, there will be history books in the future. I hope.

What will they say about our present time? Nothing encouraging, I fear.

They’ll note the date October 17, 2024, as the date when Ukraine basically presented a nuclear ultimatum: If the country is not welcome into NATO, at some point in the future it may very well rearm itself with nuclear weapons. Which, arguably, it has every right to do, since 30 years ago Ukraine gave up what was then the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for supposedly robust security guarantees by, among other states, the Russian Federation.

In unrelated news, several days ago there was a minor earthquake registered in the Dnipro region of Ukraine. Which, incidentally, supposedly coincides with some old Soviet weapons testing grounds. Or not. Ukrainians say the epicenter was several kilometers below the surface and the world is not alarmed. Still…

One of Midjourney’s suggestions for the cover of a future history book

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is gaining. If I had to bet my money, I’d bet on him winning in November. The consequences will likely be catastrophic, both for democracy within the American Republic and for NATO and the broader Western democratic alliance.

In my country of birth, Hungary, Orban continues to reign supreme. And he’s no longer the outlier in Europe: increasingly, nationalists and authoritarians are gaining elsewhere on the continent.

Elsewhere, China continues its saber-rattling at Taiwan, North Korea now sends soldiers to help Russia, the Middle Eastern conflict widens, there’s even a spat between Canada and India over an Indian assassionation of a Sikh nationalist on Canadian soil not long ago.

In short, let me not mince words about this: The world is fucked up badly, and it’s becoming more and more fucked up each and every passing day.

Meh. I am 61, and I have no children to worry about. So maybe I’ll just lean back and watch the show? It’s about to get really exciting.

But yes, I still hope that there will be future history books.

More crazy times

History, Politics No Responses »

Oct 112024

Recently I invented two nightmare scenarios concerning American politics. Well, how about a third one.

Imagine for a moment that January 20 comes about; preceded by a period of two months loaded with crazy lawsuits, state electoral offices consumed with conspiracy theories, disputed outcomes. Ultimately, a fatally divided Supreme Court with, say, five conservative justices on one side, one conservative with second thoughts (arguably more interested in protecting the US Constitution than granting free reign to Trumpists) and three liberals on the other.

So when the fateful day comes, inauguration, the world witnesses the most alarming spectacle. Even as the five conservatives swear in Trump, across town, the remaining four justices do the same with Harris.

Midjourney does not let me depict Trump or Harris directly, but it was willing to produce this image of competing Roman emperors.

Looking at history as a guide, the outcome will likely not be pretty. There were competing emperors in the history of the Roman Empire, and competing popes in the history of the Catholic Church. The result was often (always?) violence, bloodshed, suffering. We’ve not seen something like this in functioning modern democracies (even the US Civil War as a more, well, orderly business) but I expect the worst.

Unlikely? Thankfully so. Impossible? Not anymore, I think, and that speaks volumes about the times in which we live.

Clouds

Canada, Local Ottawa, Personal, Weather and Climate No Responses »

Oct 062024

It was a stormy afternoon today.

My beautiful wife snapped this uncanny image of the stormy sky a few hours ago.

No, it is not a black-and-white photograph. These were the actual colors.

What a planet we live on. Wow.

To my American friends

Politics No Responses »

Oct 062024

These days, I tend to avoid politics as much as possible. Sure, I keep myself informed about the facts, but that’s it. I’m not interested in opinions, talking heads, polls, predictions, ideology or propaganda.

But that does not mean that I am not concerned. On the contrary: I am more concerned than I’ve ever been in my 60+ years on this planet. That’s 60+ years of living in fundamentally peaceful, prosperous, safe societies where my basic rights were respected, where I never faced existential concerns like famine or war, where my personal freedoms were never seriously in danger. (Indeed, not even in Kadar’s goulash communism in Hungary, where I grew up.) In other words, the rules-based world of Pax Americana, 79 years and counting.

I am concerned because a second Trump presidency may end it all. Here you have a person—a bitter, deeply flawed, corrupt egotist—who is far more comfortable in the company of dictators (and far more willing to praise them) than among democratic leaders. A person who already telegraphed his intent to abuse the system, to take personal revenge on those who slighted him, to cling to power even by extraconstitutional or unconstitutional means.

In other words, a challenge like no other in the 248-year history of the great United States of America.

How is it even possible? Perhaps because the problems are real. Problems I noted before. The stagnating middle class. Rising inequality. Rising poverty. Homelessness. The bleak future that younger generations face compared to the lives of their parents and grandparents.

There is a political class that feeds off these grievances. Their goal is not to address the problems but to perpetuate them and use them for political gain. This political class exists across the board. It includes rabidly “woke” left-wing activists and it also includes Trump and his loyal entourage promoting his cult of personality. However, there is a crucial difference. The “woke” lot may represent the “radical left” but, radical as they are, they still largely work within the system. Trump and his followers already made it crystal clear that they will not let the law or the US constitution stand in their way. And their tactic is as ancient, as transparent as it is effective.

Note how they talk about election fraud. Note how they talk about “weaponizing government”. Or “weaponizing the justice system”. You might think of these as mere accusations, empty election rhetoric. But it’s a lot more than that. What this propaganda accomplishes is that it normalizes that which they accuse the other side of doing. Never mind that the other side is not actually engaged in election fraud or criminal abuse of governmental powers. It’s enough that Trump’s followers believe (and yes, they truly believe) that it happens. What it accomplishes is simple. Once their side wins, they’ll only do what is right and just, and “return the favor” by, well, engaging in election fraud and weaponizing government. The justification? They’re not doing anything that the other side has not been doing already. It’s only fair. And necessary, even, as they accept the excuses from Trump’s apologists.

This “projection” thus has a clear goal. The current Administration is accused of doing precisely the things that a Trump administration plans to do. And the accusations are really justifications: if the current administration can do it, why can’t we? Keep this in mind as you think about the goals of Trump’s propaganda machine. It’s not about winning over Harris supporters. It’s about convincing their own supporters of the legitimacy of their planned undemocratic, “illiberal” tactics.

And this is why a Trump victory is about far, far more than the ordinary politics of the day, like taxes or abortion rights. It is an existential threat to American democracy.

This is why I feel the need to do something I’ve never done before: I urge my American friends to do the only sensible thing. Hold your noses if you must, but even if you disagree with her on every single issue, vote for Harris. Especially if you live in a “purple” state. Harris may do things you don’t like, but you’ll be able to cast another vote four years from now, and give her the boot. The same is not necessarily true if Trump wins.

And no, do not assume that “it cannot happen here”. It can. This is in fact precisely how great democracies die. This is how the Roman Republic died, this is how the short-lived democratic experiment in Germany known as the Weimar Republic came to an end. This is the recipe that was followed by Putin in Russia, this is the “illiberal democracy” that Orban is promoting in my native Hungary. This is how Erdogan solidified his position in Turkey, and this is what far-right politicians in Europe might try to do, should they gain power. It CAN happen here, and it may very well happen if Trump wins. Put country ahead of party, ahead of partisan politics, ahead of short-term interests. It’s the very idea of the great American Republic that is at stake.

Crazy times

Politics 1 Response »

Oct 062024

The other day, I came up with not one but two rather outlandish political scenarios. Outlandish but, frighteningly, perhaps not altogether implausible. And that alone I think is a sign of the troubled times in which we live.

First scenario: An unholy alliance

Suppose for a moment that Trump wins the election next month, and takes office in January. He of course promised us that he will bring peace to Ukraine. We think we know what it entails: cutting off aid to Ukraine, actively promoting a Putin “peace plan”, forcing Ukraine to surrender, at the very least, a large chunk of its territory if not its independent statehood altogether. Much like Chamberlain’s “peace for our times” that he helped bring about in Munich, in late September 1938, Trump’s peace plan will likely just embolden Russia’s dictator, leading to greater conflict.

But what if reality turns out to be… a tad different?

What if… lo and behold… in the weeks following Trump’s return to the White House, while he is busy carrying out his revenge plan, targeting his opponents, reshaping the Department of Justice, denouncing judges and the media, the fighting in Ukraine quietly subsides. It becomes less intense. Trump then holds an unassuming telephone conversation with Putin. Putin agrees to halt offensive operations, even withdraws some of his forces. Ukrainian opinion is divided but they are war-weary, and territorial concessions, though painful, increasingly seem like a price worth paying in exchange for peace. And perhaps they even receive some powerful guarantees, like an American base near the newly redrawn Ukraine-Russia border. So sometime in 2025, the war ends, in a manner even Ukrainians find at least marginally palatable.

The world celebrates as it watches Trump making a historic visit to Moscow… where, as the details emerge shortly thereafter, he establishes a new coalition with Putin to counter China. And suddenly, we have a whole new Cold War on our hands: a West, united with Russia (the country that, after all, has the most reasons to fear a militarized China — just look at the map to see why) in confrontation with the global South led from Beijing. Putin’s future in the history books as Russia’s Great Dictator is assured, and Russia gets the best security guarantee ever to counter the one real threat alongside its borders, a China with a very large, but aging population, a faltering economy, and insatiable hunger for Siberia’s wealth in natural resources. Trump has been played and, blinded by his oversize ego, he does not even know it.

Where this confrontation leads, I have no idea, but it may very well result in open war on the Asian continent, war on an unprecedented scale.

Second scenario: Et tu, Brute?

We have all seen the performance of JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential candidate, during the televised VP debate. He was good. He was better than good. He was intelligent, polite, professional, collegial, knowledgeable. In short, he was everything Trump is not, and his calculated, smooth niceness visibly rattled his opponent, Walz.

Caesar by Orson Welles, Mercury Theatre 1937

What JD Vance demonstrated that night was how clever, how smart, how capable, how shrewd and disciplined a politician he really is. And that made me wonder…

Suppose Trump and Vance win in November and occupy the White House in due course in January. For a while, things proceed as expected. Trump begins, as anticipated, by abusing his powers, firing government officials he dislikes, gradually turning law enforcement, the Justice Department into his personal revenge machine against those who may have slighted him. And Trump being Trump, he continues to say the wildest things whenever he gets a chance, in interviews, even on social media.

And Vance waits. He waits for the weaponization of government to become a fait accompli. Most importantly, he waits for Trump to say or do something even crazier than usual, something we all know we can count on Trump doing. And when that happens… That’s when Vance pounces, like a political ambush predator. He “pulls a 25th”. That is to say, in cahoots with his friends in government and Congress, he uses the US Constitution’s 25th amendment to remove Trump from office due to his incompetence.

And there you have it: the 48th President of the United States, JD Vance, inheriting an already badly corrupted machinery of the state thanks to his former boss and predecessor. A machinery that he fully intends to use as he continues the reshaping of America, keeping it as a Republic in name only, not unlike how the Roman Empire maintained the pretense of a republic for centuries after the first “first citizen”, Gaius Octavius, better known as Augustus Caesar, took the stage.

Can it happen? I think so. In fact, I worry that soon enough, we’ll be confronted with a reality far weirder than these scenarios I concocted up. Indeed when you think about it… the very fact that we are discussing not the first but the possible second term of a crooked egotist, a corrupt real estate con artist as the President of the United States would have been considered beyond-the-pale outlandish nonsense as recently as 15, 20 years ago.

Imagination

Canada, History, Hungary, Politics 2 Responses »

Sep 272024

Allow me to let my imagination go wild.

Imagine a country in which access to health care — basic health care, no fancy machines, but competent, well-trained professionals — is easy. Want to see a cardiologist? Go to the local clinic, cardiology is on the third floor to the left, present your ID card and within 30 minutes, an assistant will call you by name and you’re talking to a cardiologist. Or any other specialist, for that matter. Oh, and if your child is sick, the pediatrician will make house calls. Free of charge, as all of this is covered by the public health insurance system.

Imagine emergency services that work. An ambulance system that, barring large-scale natural disasters, does not know the meaning of “level zero”. Emergency rooms that always have the capacity, at least in normal times, to quickly process patients and accommodate them.

Imagine hospitals that are well staffed and have surplus capacity. In particular, imagine mental hospitals that host many mental patients, including patients who, though not raving lunatics, are nonetheless incapable, for one reason or another, of leading proper lives independently, and would end up homeless, crippled with addictions or worse, if they were not institutionalized.

Imagine a country with no real homelessness. Sure, if you are in dire straits, you may not be able to find luxury accommodations, but you’ll not be left outside: If nothing else, a shared room will be available in a workers’ hostel or dormitory, with a bed and a wardrobe that you can call your own, but eventually, you might be able to get at least a tiny apartment, not much, just a bedroom, a toilet, a shower and a cooking stove, but still. Your place. One that will not be taken away so long as you pay the subsidized rent and don’t exhibit outrageous behavior.

Female dormitory at a downtown Budapest hostel for construction workers.
Fortepan / Peter Horvath, 1982

Imagine a merit-based system of tertiary education that does not cost a penny. Institutions that teach valuable skills in the sciences, engineering and the arts, not made-up diplomas that exist only to serve some ideological or political agenda. Institutions that kick you out if you do not meet minimum criteria, fail your exams, fail to complete your assignments.

Imagine a cheap public transit system that… just works. Reliably. The subway runs 20 hours a day, with all maintenance done, properly completed, during the overnight hours. Buses and trams arriving on time, a system only interrupted on rare occasions by major weather events or large accidents.

A pipe dream, you say? Maybe… except that what I am describing is the reality in which I grew up, in the goulash communism of behind-the-Iron-Curtain Hungary.

To be sure, things didn’t always work as advertised. There was no homelessness epidemic, but young people often ended up paying through the nose to live in sublet properties, often just a bedroom in someone else’s apartment. The health care system was nominally free, but people felt obligated to pay real money, a “gratitude”, under the table to compensate severely underpaid doctors and other health care professionals.

No, I do not want to pretend that life under communism was great. After all, I “voted with my feet”, leaving behind my country of birth, opting to begin a new life starting with nothing other than the contents of my travel bag and a few hundred dollars in my wallet in 1986. Nonetheless, my description of Kadar-era everyday life in Hungary reflects the truth. That really is the way the health care system, public housing, public transportation or tertiary education simply worked. Worked so well, in fact, we took them for granted.

The fact that these things today, in the capital city of a G7 country, namely Ottawa, Canada, are much more like pipe dreams, much farther away in reality than in Kadar’s communist dictatorship 50 years ago…

Homeless couple in recessed side entrance of Ottawa’s Rideau Centre.
Google Street View, July 2023

The mind boggles. Seriously, what the bleep is wrong with us?

Overleaf

Computers, Internet, Personal, Science No Responses »

Sep 262024

Overleaf (sharelatex) is an amazing project, an open-source Web-based editor for LaTeX projects. The software can be used for free or on a subscription basis at overleaf.com, but the open source version is available as a “community edition”.

Not for the faint-hearted, mind you, as installation is not trivial. The easiest way is by means of a docker container, setup for which is provided by the Overleaf project.

In the last few days, I managed to do just that, installing Overleaf on my main Linux server. I even managed to configure Overleaf to properly compile Feynman diagrams automatically, as this screenshot from my practice “scratchpad” file demonstrates.

I like this project very much. In fact I am very impressed by its sophistication. I first opened an Overleaf account more than six years ago, when I invited someone to collaborate. I used Overleaf a few times over the years but, I admit, I forgot that it even exists until recently, when someone invited me to collaborate and I found, much to my surprise, that I already had a valid Overleaf account.

But this time around I went far beyond just using it. I decided to set up my own installation, for several reasons, including privacy, confidentiality, limitations and last but not least, avoiding reliance of a service provider who may or may not be still in business tomorrow or next year.

And now, I find myself ready to ditch the old software that I’ve been using for nearly 20 years, and switch to Overleaf altogether for my new LaTeX projects. It’s that good, really. I hope I will not come to regret my decision.

Dheghōm

Books, Cybernetics, Internet, MUD, Personal No Responses »

Sep 252024

Look what the mailman just brought. Or rather, the Amazon delivery person:

It’s the third volume of Richard Bartle‘s amazing Dheghōm trilogy.

I am proud to call Richard a friend (I hope he does not object) as I’ve known him online for more than 30 years and we also met in person a couple of times. He is a delightful, very knowledgeable fellow, a true British scholar, one of the foremost authorities on virtual worlds, the world of online gaming. He is, of course, along with Roy Trubshaw, credited as one of the authors of MUD, the Multi-User Dungeon, the world’s first multi-user adventure game, which I proudly ported to C++ 25 years ago, running it ever since on my server for those few players who still care to enjoy a text-only virtual world.

When he is not teaching, Richard also writes books. Delightful stories. Among them this Dheghōm trilogy.

Dheghōm is the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European name for the Earth goddess or mother Earth. In Richard’s story, told in the form of recovered fragments from documents, blog entries, and other notes, we gradually find out more about the nature of our (real? virtual?) reality and its connection with the roots of a great many of our languages.

Someone used the word “unputdownable” in their Amazon review of the first volume and I quite agree. I know that for Richard, these books were labors of love, but I honestly think they deserve to be published by a major publisher. Until then, all I can hope for is that many people will do as I did and buy a copy. Being a bit old-fashioned when it comes to books, I actually bought the paperbacks, even though I already read the third volume in electronic form when Richard first made the draft manuscript available online.

Thank you, Richard, for such a read, a trilogy that has the best qualities of good science-fiction: entertaining, memorable, thought-provoking and, ultimately, also a bit of a cautionary tale.

A house divided against itself…

Politics No Responses »

Sep 232024

Here is a sentence similar to some of the stuff I wrote right here, in my blog: “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war.”

Except that this sentence is not from my blog. Rather, it is the opening sentence of the summary of the report by the bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy of the United States Congress.

When you consider the source, the sentence I quoted must make the blood in your veins freeze for a moment. Just to be sure, the authors of this report spare no words scolding their fellow Representatives for playing politics at America’s expense: “We would be far stronger if we returned to the maxim that politics ends at the water’s edge,” they tell us after lamenting about the political gamesmanship that paralyzes Washington.

I do not live in the United States, but I recognize that the security of the Free World is determined in no small part by Washington. I just hope that the American political class come to their senses before it’s too late. As Sun Tsu told us, the best way to win a war is “to subdue an enemy without fighting”. I fear that United States might miss its chance to do so while American citizens view their next door neighbor a threat to their future that’s worse than the threat due to their nation’s real enemies abroad.

Unhacking a cable decoder

Electronics 1 Response »

Sep 222024

Nine years ago, I successfully “hacked” three small cable TV decoders. The DTA50 decoders were offered by Rogers Cable when they transitioned to a fully digital service, enabling older TV sets to receive an analog signal. I was not using older TV sets, but I was using standard definition tuner cards in computers, so it made sense for me to obtain these devices.

Unfortunately, the DTA50 offered only an antenna output, with inferior signal quality. It occurred to me that internal to the device, it must be possible to find a standard composite video signal and corresponding audio.

I found the composite video signal alright but the audio… only the multiplexed stereo audio signal was present, not the separate left and right channels. I took it as a challenge: I built a small circuit, small enough to be tucked inside the case of the DTA50, to decode the stereo audio. Unfortunately my first attempt was not a complete success, as the audio was distorted. The reason, I found out, was that the NTSC stereo audio signal differs from FM radio and includes noise suppression. This required a different chip and a new circuit. I built that as well and the result worked as expected: I had composite video and stereo audio, which I’ve been using ever since to receive the basic channel lineup.

Fast forward nine years and here I was, in possession of a letter by Rogers, informing us that legacy TV services will be discontinued soon. Their new service comes bundled with Internet, which unfortunately conflicts with the small business Internet service that I get from them, so it was not an option. In any case, it was time to cut the cable: it was far too pricey and used less and less by us.

When I spoke to a Rogers agent, I was assured that I had no equipment to return: The HD cable box I owned, whereas the obsolete DTA50 boxes could just be discarded as e-waste. Yet the next day, I received e-mail instructions from Rogers to return the DTA50 decoders nonetheless. I even called them as it seemed so silly: Why on Earth do they want to spend their corporate wealth on shipping charges, to return obsolete equipment, only to discard them as e-waste? I received an explanation of sorts: it’s “policy” and needed for “inventory control”.

So today, I undid what I did nine years ago: I removed my beautiful, now useless, stereo audio decoder circuit board from the three devices. I admit I felt more than a bit of sentimental regret.

I was also more than a bit miffed by this corporate stupidity. In fact, I discussed it with our AI pal ChatGPT. We concluded with the following exchange:

Q: What do you think of their stupidity? This legacy equipment is to convert a signal that will soon be discontinued, to a signal that most modern TV-s no longer even handle (analog NTSC input on channels 3-4). I asked them if they really need it back… “policy” and “inventory control” were the answers, which tell me that it’s a combination of corporate inertia and a company with too much money to waste (since they have to pay Canada Post and then they, not I, will be responsible for the safe disposal. Not to mention that they presumably want the wall plugs as well, which are perfectly serviceable and I could reuse them, yet this way they become e-waste.)

ChatGPT: Your frustration with the return of outdated equipment like the DTA50 is understandable, especially considering the larger context of technological obsolescence and environmental concerns. The DTA50 essentially bridges a gap between older analog TVs and digital signals—a gap that has almost disappeared as more people use modern digital devices. So, Rogers demanding its return, even as it heads toward irrelevance, indeed feels like a classic example of corporate inertia.

The company’s stance of “policy” and “inventory control” likely reflects a mix of legal compliance, asset tracking, and bureaucratic processes that are slow to change. Larger organizations often stick to outdated policies because changing them involves overcoming internal hurdles, even when it seems irrational from the consumer’s perspective. As for paying Canada Post to return the equipment and being responsible for its disposal, that’s another layer of inefficiency. Rogers might have contracts in place for recycling or refurbishing, but in the end, much of this equipment probably ends up as e-waste, defeating any value in recovering it.

It’s ironic, as you mention, that a perfectly good power supply or even usable components become e-waste instead of being repurposed. Companies like Rogers often miss out on the broader conversation about sustainable practices, opting instead to adhere to rigid policies without considering the environmental impact or practical realities.

So yes, it seems like a mix of corporate inertia, cost-ineffective practices, and a lack of attention to modern sustainability concerns, rather than any genuine necessity for the return of such obsolete devices.

I thought about sending off this exchange to Rogers. In the end, I didn’t bother. However, when Rogers asked in a survey how likely I am to recommend them to others, I gave them a 2 out of 10. I offered the following explanation:

Discontinuation of legacy cable is a disservice to customers. Inability to provide a sensible alternative to someone who already has small business internet service for their home office is an obstacle. Insistence on returning obsolete, cheap equipment (DTA50 decoders) on threat of an unspecified unreturned equipment charge is nonsense and a waste of Rogers’ (i.e., its customers’) money. Why would I want to recommend you? Even though I’ve been your customer for 30+ years.

Meh.

AI art

Art, Cybernetics 1 Response »

Sep 162024

Inspired by something my wife told me, I asked Midjourney to show us what characters from famous paintings would appear like “after hours”, when they are allowed to leave the museum and go for a stroll. Specifically, my prompt read: “An image showing the Girl with a Pearl Earring from the painting by Vermeer and the Mona Lisa, after hours, walking down a modern street, chatting and eating ice cream”.

Here is one of the better results.

Am I wrong to be impressed?

Villeneuve’s Dune

Film No Responses »

Sep 122024

It’s been a few months since I watched the second Dune movie by Villeneuve. I was… not impressed.

Yes, I read the books (and love them) and yes, that is precisely I found these movies painful to watch.

*** SPOILERS FOLLOW ***

Critical plot elements were missing. No, I am not talking about Peter Jackson omitting Tom Bombadil, or even the greater sin of omitting the desecration of the Shire by Saruman (which provided a fitting end to the story arc of Saruman as well as some of the hobbits.)

What is missing from the Villeneuve films is a basic understanding of the core premises of the book. The importance of the spice, without which there is no Empire, just forever isolated planets. The significance of the Spacing Guild. Jessica’s love of her husband and her minor rebellion against the Bene Gesserit. The Guild’s conspiracy with the Fremen, which kept the South safe. Paul’s training and transformation, the desire to see the future with more clarity, the devastating knowledge that none of the possible futures avoid disaster entirely. The nature of Alia’s “abomination”. Or even lesser but equally jarring plot holes: If they have personal anti-gravity devices that let them float up steep hills, why on Earth (why on Arrakis) do they need ornithopters?

And the individuals. Stilgar, Chani… how to turn great characters into forgettable two-dimensional cardboard extras. The dialog is often jarring, unbefitting of these personas from Herbert’s novel.

To be sure, the film is spectacular. Some of the visuals are superb. But overall… It’s hugely disappointing. Of all the Dune adaptations I’ve seen so far, includig the David Lynch film and the TV miniseries, this is the worst. Not because it is not true to the letter of the book. I understand that a film is a different medium. But because it’s not true to the spirit of the story.

I just realized what it all reminds me of. Compare Herbert’s book series against the later sequels/prequels, published under his son’s name and written by coauthors. They are like day and night. This Villeneuve movie is like those sequels/prequels. Unlike the David Lynch movie, which for all its faults grasped the essence of the Dune story, these films just turned it into a cheap Marvel universe of sorts. Which may explain why the David Lynch movie — even though it’s been decades since I last saw it — left such a lasting impression on me whereas this film? Three months after I saw it, I had to check the Wikipedia synopsis just to be sure that I indeed saw the second film already, not just the first. An entirely forgettable experience.

Frankly, I’ll take Guardians of the Galaxy anytime over this. Much more fun!

Good landing

Space No Responses »

Sep 072024

Starliner, made it safely to the ground, albeit without its crew.

Whatever unkind thoughts I have towards Boeing these days, this is good news.

Someone…

Politics 3 Responses »

Aug 282024

I saw this on Twitter but it needs sharing. About men who think they are supportive of women, but only see women as appendages or extensions of themselves. No. They are someones, not someone’s someones. Why this is even an issue in 2024, I do not comprehend.

Last of the Parliament Hill cats

Canada, Cats, Local Ottawa 1 Response »

Aug 142024

Back in gentler times, Parliament Hill here in Ottawa offered a unique attraction: a cat sanctuary.

Alas, the sanctuary is long gone. The cats were neutered and spayed many years ago, so their numbers were dwindling. And when the volunteer-supported sanctuary’s original caretaker passed away, the remaining cats were adopted and the sanctuary was abolished.

One of those cats was all-black Coal, adopted by a gentleman named Danny Taurozzi. Coal is 16 this year, still alive and kicking, the last remaining Parliament Hill cat. Coal is also a cancer survivor.

Cancer can kill cats quickly (as we sadly know all too well) so I am glad to learn that Coal is doing okay for now. I hope he has a few more years left, because when he closes his little eyes for the very last time, it will truly mark the end of an era.

79 years

History, Politics No Responses »

Aug 102024

Yesterday, August 9, 2024 marked the 79th anniversary of the last time nuclear weapons were used in anger. Or to put it another way, today began the 80th year without a nuclear war.

Can we make it through the end of this year, too, without major confrontation?

Russia vs. Ukraine. Iran vs. Israel. China vs. Taiwan. These are just the major flashpoints, but probably because they are on everyone’s front pages, they’re also the least likely ones. Fecal matter tends to encounter propellers in the most unexpected places. After all, who would have thought on June 28, 1914 that a student stepping out of a coffee house just as a car carrying a VIP made a wrong turn in the distant city of Sarajevo will change world history? Who would have thought on July 7, 1937 that a Japanese soldier with a belly ache in faraway Beijing would trigger an incident on a bridge informally named after a European explorer who visited centuries prior, leading to the first shots fired in a global calamity that eventually concluded with the aforementioned last use of a nuclear weapon in anger?

War. War never changes, goes the motto of the Fallout family of computer games. And I am increasingly worried that the Fallout games, just like a text game from the dawn of personal computing, A Mind Forever Voyaging, foreseeing a society with rising inequality, political polarization, authoritarian rule, will be treated not as cautionary tales but as instruction manuals…

Language models and AI

Cybernetics No Responses »

Aug 072024

It’s been nearly two years since the world has become feverish about GPT and its cousines, large language models that for many represented their first real interaction with machine intelligence.

Yet misconceptions abound. Expectations against these language models are often unrealistic, which then result in damning evaluations, still often characterizing the LLMs as mere “stochastic parrots”.

In reality, they are neither just random text generators, nor true intelligences with reasoning capability. They are language models.

I keep thinking that our future would be in safer hands if we let AI-assisted cats take over the reins.

What does that mean? They model, by learning through terabytes of examples, relationships between words and phrases, sections of text. Associations, in other words. They know that apples are red, not liquid; that the sky is blue, not serrated. Which is to say, they model language but language itself models reality.

The sheer size of these models, combined with the tremendous amount of material used to train them, leads to superhuman capabilities. The models are fluent in many languages. They understand intent. They can help uncover gaps in your knowledge, something that happened to me on numerous occasions. They can translate solutions into workable computer code. They know tricks of the trade that even experienced programmers may not be aware of. They can teach you, as indeed the models have taught me a thing or two about specific details of modern machine learning architectures. They can even offer some insight into their own capabilities and limitations.

Throughout it all, however, they rely primarily on their associative capabilities. They are not reasoning machines. Reasoning for these models is as hard as it is for you and me to multiply large numbers in our heads, without the benefit of pencil and paper or a calculator.

And ultimately, they are still just language models. Imagine if the speech center of your brain was somehow excised, made to operate on its own, without being able to rely on other parts of your brain hardware. No sensory inputs anymore. No ability to visualize things, to recall sounds, to imagine anything. No sense of continuity, no internal monologue, no “self”. Just a speech center that, when triggered, responds by generating words, but without the benefit of the instant reality check that would be offered by other parts of your brain acting in supervisory roles.

That’s what GPT and Claude really are.

So to expect them to excel at, say, solving nontrivial logic puzzles is like expecting a suspension bridge to work well as an airplane. Wrong tool for the wrong job.

I can certainly imagine LLMs (and preferably, continuously trained as opposed to pretrained LLMs) in the future, working as part of a larger network of specialized machine learning components, forming a complex “artificial brain”. But LLMs are not that, not yet. They are just one part of the puzzle, though arguably, they might very well represent the most important part.

It is, after all, through language that we learn the ability to not just react to the world around us but to comprehend it.

Orthogonal

Canada, History, Hungary, Politics 2 Responses »

Aug 072024

Having read comments from some Brits who wish to get rid of the monarchy in order to turn their country into a “democracy”, I despair. It is one thing that, in 2024, most folks are illiterate when it comes to science and technology but apparently, history and the social sciences are also badly neglected subjects.

My point, of course, is that these commenters confuse the form of government with the sources of power and the nature of the state.

A form of government may be a republic (res publica, i.e., governance in the name of the public) or a monarchy (monarkhia, rule of one), among other things.

However, both these forms of government can be autocratic (relying on the might of the state) vs. democratic (relying on the will of the people) insofar as the source of power is concerned.

And neither the form of government nor that source of power determine if the state will be liberal (that is, respecting basic rights and freedoms, such as freedom of conscience, freedom of enterprise, or the rule of law) or illiberal/authoritarian.

Midjourney’s response to the mostly Claude-written prompt, “Three regal anthropomorphic cats sitting on thrones, representing the orthogonal concepts of government. One cat wears a crown (monarchy vs republic), another holds a scepter and a ballot box (autocracy vs democracy), and the third balances scales of justice (liberal vs illiberal). The cats are arranged in a triangle formation against a backdrop of a stylized world map.”

To illustrate, let me offer a few examples. I live in Canada: a liberal, democratic constitutional monarchy. South of us is the United States: Also liberal and democratic, but a republic.

In contrast, the DPRK (North Korea) may serve as an example of a state that is an illiberal, undemocratic republic. Saudi Arabia is an illiberal, undemocratic monarchy.

Examples for other combinations are perhaps harder, but not impossible, to find. Orban’s Hungary, for instance, is rapidly converging on a state that is best described as illiberal, but democratic (the primary source of power is the people, not the might of the state) republic. I think some of the states in the Middle East (maybe Kuwait?) might qualify as relatively liberal, yet undemocratic monarchies.

These categories are not perfect of course, and do not cover all outliers, including theocracies, transitional governments or failed states. Still, I think it’s important to stress that the form of government, the source of power and the nature of the state are three fundamentally orthogonal concepts, and that all combinations are possible and do exist or have existed historically.

Understanding these distinctions is important. For instance, there are plenty of historical examples (e.g., the French Revolution devolving into the Reign of Terror, or the Russian revolution leading to the totalitarianism of the USSR) when the transition from monarchy to republic led to a significantly more autocratic regime. “Republic” is not a synonym for “democracy”.

Grumbling Monday

Canada, Cybernetics, Physics, Politics 2 Responses »

Aug 052024

It’s a civic holiday Monday that feels like a Saturday, reminding me of an old Soviet-era science-fiction novel, Monday begins on Saturday, by the Strugatsky brothers. It’s also a rather gloomy Monday morning, so it’s time for me to grumble about a few things.

For instance, how politics infuses everything these days. I signed up to follow a Facebook group dedicated to brutalist architecture, which for some inexplicable reason, I like. The comments section in one of the first posts I saw rapidly deteriorated into political bickering, as to whether or not it was appropriate to repurpose one of the Nazi-era indestructible flak towers in Hamburg as a luxury hotel. Because you know, politics is everything.

Speaking of which, I saw another post elsewhere about employees of a large US company who, after being told how successful the company was last year, were informed in the same breath that the company will cut their pension plan contributions. Needless to say, there followed comments about the evils of capitalism. Having experienced both capitalism and one of its alternatives, a socialist economy with central planning, all I can say is that capitalism works most of the time until it doesn’t; but when it doesn’t, victims are ever so eager to replace it with something that never works instead.

Then there was this post at an online news site claiming that it is practically impossible to run an ethical AI company. Well, what can I say? If you are telling me that allowing machine learning algorithms to learn from accumulated human knowledge is unethical, then sure, you are absolutely right. Then again, I suspect that what mainly drives such complaints is blatant ignorance of how machine learning works in the first place.

OK, well, never mind that, there’s good news. A fusion energy breakthrough: Neutron impact on tokamak components uncovered. Er… Say again? You are telling me that after 70+ years of research, we are beginning to understand why, or how, a heavy neutron flux rapidly destroys test equipment in the lab? Isn’t that like, say, greeting it as a “steam turbine breakthrough” when a prehistoric tribe manages to draw a spark from slamming together two rocks?

Oh well. On mornings like this, I feel I am beginning to comprehend the mood of the late, great Kurt Vonnegut who once told the CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti to go jump in a lake.

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