Spinor Info

A tale of two covers

Jul 152017

Imagine for a moment that you spent the last two years on a remote base in Antarctica, with no access to the Internet, indeed no contact with the outside world. And now, you just returned.

You learn that the new president of the United States is none other than The Donald. Then, before you get any more details, someone presents you with these two Time magazine covers, and asks you to take your pick: which one is real, which one is “fake news”?

Hint #1: The real time cover has an aspect ratio of 4:3. The fake is a little wider.

Hint #2: It was the fake cover that was used as decoration at numerous Trump properties until very recently.

Bonus fact: None of this seems to matter to Trump’s base. They remain committed to Trump, they remain convinced that all this is a witch hunt, and their biggest problem is that Trump did not do as he promised, and did not lock up the real “witch”, Hillary Clinton. I find this cult-ish behavior scarier than any of the shenanigans pulled by Trump & Co.

A visit by MJ the cat

Cats, Personal No Responses »

Jul 142017

An old friend showed up on our doorstep a short while ago, just as I was getting ready to call it a day:

This is MJ the cat. He has been visiting us for more than 12 years already, but tonight was his first visit in 2017.

We know where he lives, and we have seen him in recent weeks, so we knew he was okay. But he is getting a bit old. So we were not surprised that he wouldn’t come this far (his home is several hundred meters from here, across Cobourg street, which is not free of traffic even late at night.) But lo and behold, tonight we noticed him peeking through the vertical window pane next to our front door.

He stayed for a while. He gobbled down some cat food so vehemently, it’s as though he has been starving. (For the record, we know that he is treated well by his owner.) He even got some cat treats and a little bit of catnip. Then finally, once he had enough of our company, he just turned around and left.

Good old MJ. I hope he will keep coming back for many more years to come.

The Solar Gravitational Telescope

Personal, Physics No Responses »

Jul 132017

Slava Turyshev and I just published a paper in Physical Review. It is a lengthy, quite technical paper about the wave-theoretical treatment of the solar gravitational telescope.

What, you say?

Well, simple: using the Sun as a gravitational telescope to image distant objects. Like other stars, the Sun bends light, too. Measuring this bending of light was, in fact, the crucial test carried out by Eddington during the 1919 solar eclipse, validating the predictions of general relativity and elevating Albert Einstein to the status of international science superstar.

The gravitational bending of light is very weak. Two rays, passing on opposite sides of the Sun, are bent very little. So little in fact, it takes some 550 astronomical units (AU; the distance between the Earth and the Sun) for the two rays to meet. But where they do, interesting things happen.

If you were floating in space at that distance, and there was a distant planet on the exact opposite side of the Sun, light from a relatively small section of that planet would form a so-called Einstein ring around the Sun. The light amplification would be tremendous; a factor of tens of billions, if not more.

But you have to be located very precisely at the right spot to image a particular spot on the exoplanet. How precisely? Well, that’s what we set out to figure out, based in part on the existing literature on the subject. (Short answer: it’s measured in tens of centimeters or less.)

In principle, a spacecraft at this distance, moving slowly in lateral directions to scan the image plane (which is several kilometers across), can obtain a detailed map of a distant planet. It is possible, in principle, to obtain a megapixel resolution image of a planet dozens of light years from here, though image reconstruction would be a task of considerable complexity, due in part to the fact that an exoplanet is a moving, changing target with variable illumination and possibly cloud cover.

Mind you, getting to 550 AU is costly. Our most distant spacecraft to date, Voyager 1, is just under 140 AU from the Sun, and it took that spacecraft 40 years to get there. That said, it is a feasible mission concept, but we must be very certain that we understand the physics thoroughly.

This is where our paper comes in: an attempt to derive detailed results about how light waves pass on both sides of the Sun and recombine along the focal line.

The bulk of the work in this paper is Slava’s, but I was proud to help. Part of my contribution was to provide a visualization of the qualitative behavior of the wavefront (described by a hypergeometric function):

In this image, a light wave, initially a plane wave, travels from left to right and it is deflected by a gravitational source at the center. If you squint just a little, you can actually see a concentric circular pattern overlaid on top of the distorted wavefront. The deflection of the wavefront and this spherical wave perturbation are both well described by an approximation. However, that approximation breaks down specifically in the region of interest, namely the focal line:

The top left of these plots show the approximation of the deflected wavefront; the top right, the (near) circular perturbation. Notice how both appear to diverge along the focal line: the half line between the center of the image and the right-hand side. The bottom right plot shows the combination of the two approximations; it is similar to the full solution, but not identical. The difference between the full solution and this approximation is shown in the bottom left plot.

I also helped with working out evil-looking things like a series approximation of the confluent hypergeometric function using so-called Pochhammer symbols and Stirling numbers. It was fun!

To make a long story short, although it involved some frustratingly long hours at a time when I was already incredibly busy, it was fun, educational, and rewarding, as we gave birth to a 39-page monster (43 pages on the arXiv) with over 300 equations. Hopefully just one of many contributions that, eventually (dare I hope that it will happen within my lifetime?) may result in a mission that will provide us with a detailed image of a distant, life-bearing cousin of the Earth.

Microsoft broke my Skype device

Communication, Computers, Personal 1 Response »

Jul 122017

Microsoft broke my Skype device, and I hate them for it.

It’s one of these:

Yes, it’s an older gizmo. About ten years old. I even had to repair it once, replacing the small condenser microphone in the handset, which went dead.

But we really liked it. It worked very well. It is a dual-line phone: landline + Skype. And while it has no video, chats, teenage chatbots and such nonsense, it performs the basic function of Skype flawlessly: It lets you make bleeping voice calls.

Or rather, it used to perform that basic function flawlessly. Today, the device signed itself out of Skype forever, it appears, if online news sources about the demise of Skype devices can be believed.

Damn you, Microsoft. If this is how you are “improving the user experience”, please stuff your improvements where the Sun doesn’t shine. I don’t want smileys. I don’t want chatbots. I want good old, solid, reliable Skype that, among other things, lets my wife and I call our aging parents overseas, lets me talk to clients, and lets me talk to colleagues. And, well, just plain works.

Sure, we can use Skype on our smartphones. And we do, when the occasion warrants it. But this device was convenient, too. And I really cannot understand why support for it had to be killed by Microsoft. Perhaps pure spite?

One of these days, I’ll start compiling a list titled, How can you tell that a company hates its customers? If I ever get around to doing it, this thing with Skype will certainly make that list.

Moleman

Computer Games, Hungary, Personal No Responses »

Jun 212017

I just finished watching a 2016 Hungarian documentary film about the early days of the computer game industry in Hungary.

I was also interviewed via Skype for this film, albeit not much of my conversation with the filmmaker remained in the final cut. But that’s okay… it is, in a sense, fitting, because after the first few “heroic” years, I was no longer taking part in games development, whereas others continued and produced some amazing software.

Anyhow, I enjoyed this film. I met familiar faces (though I admit I would not have recognized all of them on the street after 30-odd years) but I also found out details about those days that I just didn’t know. I don’t necessarily agree with everything that was said in the film, but by and large, I think it paints an interesting, reasonably complete, accurate and balanced picture of what computer game development was like, what it meant to us in the early 1980s behind the Iron Curtain.

For what it’s worth, I bought my downloadable copy. (No DRM.) I think films like these deserve our support.

Too much tolerance?

Politics No Responses »

Jun 042017

In the wake of last night’s attack, British PM May told us what the problem is. We are too tolerant, she says. The Internet, in particular social media, is too unregulated. Even Trump piped in: it’s time to stop being politically correct, he tweeted.

I love it how these super-intelligent conservatives tell the dumb liberal sheeple the way it is. They have such wonderful, simple solutions! We are just too blind to see it. You see, all we have to do is become intolerant! Censor the Internet! Call Muslims names, maybe even make them eat pork sausage, and all will be well… there will be no more terrorism.

So I guess the real terrorists are these evil liberals who stand in the way of such simple, perfect solutions. Who actually dare pointing out that terrorism is pretty much dead last on the list of likely causes of death for the average Westerner.

Elite club on climate change

Politics, Weather and Climate No Responses »

Jun 012017

Donald Trump, Demagogue-in-Chief of America the Greatest, now took his proud nation to new heights: America joined forces with the ever-so-enlightened, wonderful regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, along with Central America’s Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, announcing that his nation will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Americans must be so proud. Gone are the days of Obama leading from behind… instead, their orange-skinned leader is now proudly leading them behind.

To be honest, I don’t mind it too much. I always wondered just how effective the Paris agreement was going to be anyway. And it’s not like Ottawa’s climate is too hot… nor do I have any children to worry about, so why should I care if we leave behind a messed up world when my generation dies?

The only thing that bothers me about this is the, well, stubborn anti-intellectualism and outright, blatant stupidity. Not just the Deceiver-in-Chief’s, mind you. A few hours ago I witnessed a brief debate between a CNN anchor and Rand Paul about the nature and origin of the current climate change and its comparison to past climate events. Talk about the blind leading the sightless…

Numbers everywhere

Mathematics, Personal, Television No Responses »

May 312017

I am watching the morning news and it’s all about numbers. Some good, some not so good, some really bad. Here are a few, in descending order:

2018: The year when Ottawa plans to introduce a new low-income transit fare.
417: The provincial highway number of the Queensway, which has been reopened after yesterday’s huge crash.
175.6: The amount of rain, in mm, that Ottawa received in the month of May.
80: The estimated number killed by a massive ISIS terrorist bomb in Kabul.
21: The highest expected temperature of the day and, incidentally, the entire week, in Centigrade.
15: The new minimum wage, in Canadian dollars, as proposed by the Ontario provincial government.
7: The age of a baby, in months, who died allegedly due to her mother’s negligence in Gatineau.

I thought of turning these bullet points into a numbered list, but that would have been too confusing.

Is your mother proud of you being a crook?

Computer Security, Internet, Personal No Responses »

May 292017

Is your mother proud of you being a crook?

I have asked this question many times in recent months; basically, every time I receive a call from the “computer support department”, trying to tell me how my computer is full of viruses or whatever.

I usually don’t expect an answer; as a matter of fact, I usually just hang up, although more often than not, the other party hangs up first before I get a chance. Understandable… that’s what they are trained to do by their criminal masters.

Today, for some reason, I chose not to hang up. And the gentleman on the other and of the line asked me to repeat myself instead of hanging up on me. I obliged. After a moment of silence, I actually got an answer.

“Well, sir, I need the money.”

That was an unexpectedly candid admission, not that I was not aware of this basic truth. These callers, usually in boiler rooms somewhere in India or Pakistan, do this because they need to earn a living.

But it’s one thing to earn a living, it’s another to defraud vulnerable people, old ladies and whatnot. I told that much to this agent. He just repeated himself, defensively: “But I need the money.”

So I told him that I understand. That I, too, was a refugee once 30 years ago. (True.) But even when I had no money, I did not start defrauding people. I asked him to think about this, please; then thanked him and hung up.

Did I accomplish anything? I don’t know. Is it valid to compare my situation 30 years ago: granted, a refugee, but a refugee in a first world country (Austria) with no family to worry about and with guaranteed shelter and food at the Traiskirchen refugee camp, which I declined to take advantage of only because I found work (no fraud involved, but it’s true that I had no work permit) and I was able to afford better accommodations?

Yes, I read Les Misérables. No, I do not want the poor to be disproportionately punished, with no grace or mercy.

Still, I think there is an ethical line to be drawn here. No matter how great your need is, I still don’t think this moral justification applies when you work for a criminal enterprise, earning a living from defrauding vulnerable people halfway around the world.

Is Trump taking a dump on his desk?

Politics, Television No Responses »

May 192017

Moments ago, Anderson Cooper made his opinion clear about a guest on his show who was defending Trump:

LOL. Well said, Anderson.

Stormy contrasts

Art, Local Ottawa, Nature, Personal No Responses »

May 182017

I am no photo artist, and my best camera is, well, my phone. That’s it.

Even so, a few minutes ago I felt compelled to take a couple of photographs. We are a few minutes away from sunset and a big storm just began. Then I looked out my window and I found the building across the street brighter than the sky above.

The light came from the other side of the sky. The Sun was not visible but the sky in that direction was bright enough to light things up.

Photographs (especially, photographs taken with a phone) really don’t do these sights justice. The contrasts were amazing.

Games as art

Computer Games No Responses »

May 162017

In my copious amounts of free time (yeah, right) I’ve been playing with the second installment in the Metro 2033 game franchise, Metro Last Light. Like its predecessor, it is set in (or mostly, under) post-apocalyptic Moscow, in what remains of the tunnels of the Moscow Metro, with stations acting as city states, and the protagonist fighting mutants, aliens and human enemies alike.

My only complaint about these games is that the gameplay is very linear: you just advance the story, your actions do not alter it in any meaningful way, apart from contributing to the choice of ending that is shown after the final battle.

But the atmosphere of the game is brilliant. Brilliantly dark, that is. And the game is beautifully crafted.

Here is one example: midway through the game, you find yourself in a station named Venice, so called because it is half-flooded. (Or was it the station under the Bolshoi Theatre? Not sure.) As you wonder around, you encounter… a shadow play artist, entertaining a small group of children, showing shadows, some of which are quite recognizable as the monsters of the game.

This character plays no role in the story. You do not interact with it. It does not advance the game in any which way. It’s just… there. Because… well, what would a post-apocalyptic subway station be like without a shadow play artist?

It was when I encountered this scene that I became fully hooked by the atmosphere of the Metro games. This is no more just entertainment… this is a form of art.

Russian political humor

Politics No Responses »

May 102017

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, is in Washington today.

Reacting to a shouted question by a journalist, he felt it was appropriate to respond with a joke:

I am not even sure what words to use to characterize it. I think the video speaks for itself. Очень смешно, министр.

Interesting weather

Local Ottawa, Personal No Responses »

May 082017

Not only is there severe flooding in our region (I’ve lived in Ottawa for nearly 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything remotely like this) but this “spring” weather is anything but.

In fact, yesterday CTV News almost apologized for their forecast:

And the saddest part? They were not wrong. I see flurries outside.

Fortunately, the flooding doesn’t affect us, despite our proximity to the Rideau River.

Russian hacking and the Podesta e-mails

Computer Security, Politics No Responses »

May 062017

One of the major events during last year’s presidential campaign was the hacking of e-mails of the Democratic National Congress. In particular, the hacking of the e-mails of campaign chairman John Podesta.

How it happened is simple. Podesta received a bogus e-mail, purportedly from Google, that there was an unauthorized attempt to log in to his account, and that he should change his password. A helpful link in the form of a button was provided.

Podesta’s assistant was suspicious and asked for expert help. The expert inadvertently described the e-mail as “legitimate” (presumably, he meant to write “not legitimate” or “illegitimate”) but advised that Podesta should change his password, and provided the correct (Google) link for password changes.

The assistant forwarded the e-mail to Podesta, adding in her own words that “The gmail one is REAL”. This prompted Podesta to change his password… using the fraudulent link provided to him in the original message. By doing so, Podesta inadvertently disclosed his e-mail password to Russian hackers.

How do we know that they are Russian? There are many reasons to believe this to be the case, but I just noticed another peculiarity. (It is possible that I am not the first to notice this, of course.) Look at the subject line of the Podesta e-mails:

Subject: Sоmeоne has your passwоrd

Now try searching for the word “Someone” on this page using your Web browser’s built-in search feature (hitting Control-F activates this feature in most browsers). Can you see (or rather not see) how nothing in this Subject line is highlighted?

That is because several of the o’s in this subject line were typed on a Cyrillic keyboard, and they are Cyrillic characters. A Cyrillic ‘о’ appears very much the same as a Latin ‘o’, but it has a different code (hexadecimal 043e as opposed to 006f):

Funny thing is… I got this subject line straight from Wikileaks. You know, the same Wikileaks who are protesting high and low that the e-mail dump is not from Russia. Yet on their very own Web site, the e-mails that resulted in the Podesta hack contain Cyrillic characters. Go figure.

Class vs. boorishness

Politics No Responses »

May 022017

I am watching a live interview on CNN with Hillary Clinton.

As I am listening to her eloquently chosen words and watch her classy demeanor, I am reminded of the thin-skinned, narcissistic, pussy-grabbing (his own words, not mine!) boor who currently occupies the White House and feel compelled to ask again from my American friends, especially those who still think that this sad misogynist is going to make America great “again”: What the fuck is wrong with you?

Artsy cat pic

Cats, Personal No Responses »

Apr 182017

I sometimes take pictures of our cats.

Very rarely, the pictures are actually interesting. (I am no photo artist.)

This morning, I snapped a picture of our cats Kifli and Rufus, as they found a place on top of some Amazon shipping boxes.

What I didn’t expect is the effect of light, filtered through the blinds, on their fur, especially Rufus’s.

Instant survey

Local Ottawa, Television No Responses »

Apr 172017

Here is today’s gem of a survey question from CTV Ottawa:

My answer is greenish-pink, with whipped cream.

(To their credit, a corrected question appears on their Web site.)

Unknown interval signal

History, Music, Personal, Radio No Responses »

Apr 082017

Remember what radio used to be like, especially shortwave?

Many stations had an interval signal. This signal, usually just a few musical notes, was played whenever the station would otherwise be silent (e.g., between the end of a program and the time signal at the top of the hour.) I remember many an interval signal fondly.

But one of them, I just cannot identify. Namely this one:

Bugs the devil out of me.

My exchange with Huawei

Personal, Technology No Responses »

Apr 062017

My current phone is a Nexus 6P.

I picked this phone for one all-important reason: It is a “pure Android” phone, directly supported by Google. Which means that instead of being at the manufacturer’s mercy when it comes to updates, I receive monthly security updates from Google. In this day and age, this is a deciding factor for me.

I got the phone in September. Sometime in the winter, I noticed that a speck appeared in photographs taken by the phone’s main camera.

Its appearance suggests that it is a small dust particle stuck between the camera visor and the camera itself, or inside the camera optics perhaps. Others apparently encountered the same issue. Some were able to shake the phone until the speck vanished. I tried to do the same but to no avail. Obviously I do not want to damage or destroy the phone.

I was trying to decide whether or not to live with it. A friend of mine suggested that I should contact the manufacturer since the phone is under warranty. I decided to do just that. Here is the exchange of e-mails that followed:

From: Viktor T. Toth

Sent: Tuesday, April 4, 2017 10:24 PM

To: ‘SupportCanada@huawei.com’ <SupportCanada@huawei.com>

Subject: Nexus 6P warranty issue
Greetings,
I obtained a Nexus 6P from Rogers Canada in September 2016.
A few months ago, I noticed that its camera developed a speck (see attached, lower right corner; the picture is of a uniformly illuminated white sheet of paper). Researching online, I found out that it is not an uncommon problem, and may be due to a loose dust particle inside the camera. Some people had luck shaking the speck lose. I tried gently tapping/shaking the phone, to no avail.
I also learned that this issue may be covered under warranty.
Please enlighten me if this is the case and, if so, how the warranty process works.
Sincerely,
Viktor Toth
Attachment: IMG_20170404_221736.jpg

From: Huawei Device Support [mailto:supportcanada@mail01.huawei.com]

Sent: Wednesday, April 5, 2017 2:41 PM

To: Viktor T. Toth

Subject: Nexus 6P black spot
Dear Mr. Toth, receive a warm greeting.
We widely appreciate the information you provided us, and gladly inform you that on the attachment you can find information concerning your inquiry. 
We are at your service.
Best regards.

C.B.W.
Attachment: Black spots on camara.pdf

From: Viktor T. Toth

Sent: Wednesday, April 5, 2017 3:17 PM

To: ‘Huawei Device Support’ <supportcanada@mail01.huawei.com>

Subject: RE: Nexus 6P black spot
Dear Huawei support,
I thank you for your response but I find it quite unacceptable. If you had looked at the image that I sent to you, you would have seen that the “impurity spot” is actually about 100 pixels in diameter and very prominently noticeable in every picture that I take (attached enlarged, cropped image should also appear below):
If this is an acceptable impurity to you, I pity your customers. (This a crop from an actual photo of a white sheet of paper taken by the phone; I did not enlarge or manipulate it in any way.)
I also wonder if you perhaps misunderstood my inquiry and thought that I was referring to the display of the phone, as opposed to its main camera.
I’ll probably learn to live with this speck or attempt a repair. Your response as well as what I read online about your Canadian warranty support gives me little confidence that I can seek help from you.
However, I thank you for reminding me that when it comes to my next phone purchase, I should take into account the manufacturer’s support policy as well as the quality and capabilities of the device when I make my decision. The Nexus 6P may be a premium quality device, but your support perhaps isn’t.
Sincerely,
Viktor Toth
From: Huawei Device Support [mailto:supportcanada@mail01.huawei.com]

Sent: Wednesday, April 5, 2017 6:55 PM

To: Viktor T. Toth

Subject: Huawei Mail Support
Dear Mr. Toth.
We appreciate your preference, and deeply regret any inconvenience that you are experiencing with your Huawei device, however in order to correct this situation, in the attached file you will find a detailed answer to your question. 
We are at your service.
Best regards.

C.B.W.
From: Viktor T. Toth

Sent: Wednesday, April 5, 2017 8.02 PM

To: ‘Huawei Device Support’ <supportcanada@mail01.huawei.com>

Subject: RE: Huawei Mail Support
I have not received an attachment in your response to my second inquiry.
Sincerely,
Viktor Toth
From: Huawei Device Support [mailto:supportcanada@mail01.huawei.com]

Sent: Thursday, April 6, 2017 12:43 PM

To: Viktor T. Toth

Subject: Huawei Mail Support
Dear Mr. Toth, receive a warm greeting.
We widely appreciate the information you provided us, and gladly inform you that on the attachment you can find information concerning your inquiry.

We are at your service.
Best regards.

C.B.W.
Attachment: Service Center Information. Toth.pdf

Somehow, in light of this exchange, I do not feel particularly confident that it is a good idea to send in my phone for repair.

FYI, Huawei: The long-distance prefix in North America is 1, not 001.

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