Spinor Info

More yottabyte insanity

Computers, Economy, Politics No Responses »

Jun 172013

The presumed yottabyte capacity of the new Utah Center of the NSA, about which I commented a few days ago, is still making the rounds on news channels and news cites. Someone calculated that a yottabyte is equivalent to 500 quintillion printed pages. CNN helpfully added that a stack of paper with this many pages could reach all the way to the Moon and back 66 million times.

What they ought to have calculated is the size and volume of 250 billion 4 TB hard drives.

A lighter hard drive weighs about 0.4 kg. 250 billion of them? That would be 100 billion kilograms. Or 100 million metric tons. Or roughly 1000 of the largest cargo ships, each the size of a small city, filled to capacity with hard drives.

A hard drive is about 15/16″ tall. That’s 2.38 centimeters. 250 billion of them? Why, it’s a stack tall enough to reach all the way to the Moon and back 8 times.

The volume of a standard hard drive is about 342 cubic centimeters. 250 billion? That would be just a tad under 0.1 cubic kilometers (8.56 × 10⁷ cubic meters, to be a bit more precise). That would be a field that is a kilometer square, filled with hard drives to the height of a small-ish skyscraper, about 25-30 stories high. Large as the Utah facility is, it’s by no means large enough.

Some might want to point out that if the NSA used flash memory instead, the volume (and also the power consumption) would go way down. True. But the price would go up. Flash memory is still roughly an order of magnitude more expensive than hard drives. So if the NSA wanted to build a yottabyte facility using flash memory, instead of spending 1.5 times the GDP of the entire United States, they’d be spending 15 times that amount. Or roughly three times the “gross world product”, estimated at 83 trillion US dollars.

Perhaps CNN and friends should do a little more math, not just to impress their readers but also to fact check the stuff that they report. Would be nice.

For illustration, I chose a Hungarian bank note from 1946, reportedly the highest denomination ever printed anywhere: it is a 100 quintillion pengő note. It is still far short of a yottapengő: you would need 10,000 of these banknotes. Then again, by the time hyperinflation ended and a new currency (the Hungarian forint, still in circulation) was introduced, the exchange rate was 400 octillion pengős to the forint; that would be 400,000 yottapengős.

International data roaming prices

Communication, Internet No Responses »

Jun 162013

Last month, I was in Europe. It was fun (apart from a stomach bug that crippled me for two days.)

While in Europe, I used my smartphone. My phone is unlocked. I originally planned to purchase SIM cards in Hungary and the UK, to minimize costs. In the meantime though, I found out that Telus had fairly decent international data roaming packages. I already have a Telus SIM card, in a data stick that I use as a backup Internet connection. So instead of wasting my time hunting for local SIM cards with the right features, I put the Telus SIM card into my phone for the duration of this trip.

I used 191 megabytes of data, 51 minutes of voice, and 1 text message during this trip. The first 100 megabytes were covered by a $65 data package, after which data was charged at $1/megabyte. Here is the breakdown of my final bill:

Package	$65.00
Data	$90.72
Voice	$76.50
Text	$0.60
TOTAL	$232.82

As it turns out, the plan I chose was not optimal: a slightly different plan that combined voice and data would have saved me an additional 17 dollars or so. But it is hard to anticipate in advance how you would use your phone (I expected to rely more on Skype, but Skype was often not working very well). On the other hand, without a plan, I would have paid through my nose:

Package	$0.00
Data	$953.60
Voice	$76.50
Text	$0.60
TOTAL	$1,030.70

Even this is nothing though compared to what Rogers would have charged me. Without a plan, the amount is almost astronomical:

Package	$0.00
Data	$1,907.20
Voice	$102.00
Text	$0.75
TOTAL	$2,009.95

Even with the best plan available at the time (purchasing three times 75 megabytes plus 40 minutes of international voice roaming) I would have paid more than three times as much as I paid Telus:

Package	$725.00
Data	$0.00
Voice	$14.85
Text	$0.00
TOTAL	$739.85

Rogers has since introduced new prices and new roaming packages, so it is only fair to check what I would have paid under the new scheme. After purchasing 100 megabytes of data and 40 minutes in advance, the total would have come to:

Package	$160.00
Data	$91.00
Voice	$14.85
Text	$0.00
TOTAL	$265.85

So the new Rogers plan is still beaten by the old plan of Telus to the tune of over 30 dollars (or more like 50 dollars, had I purchased the optimal Telus plan).

No wonder Rogers doesn’t want you to unlock your phone.

Yottabyte

Computers, Politics No Responses »

Jun 112013

In reaction to the news about large scale NSA surveillance, the new NSA data storage facility currently under construction in Utah has been mentioned frequently. Along with the factoid that this facility will supposedly be able to store a yottabyte of data.

Yottabyte? That is a lot of data. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. An incredibly large amount of data. And in this case, I mean “incredible” in the literal sense of the word, as in not credible. Despite the fact that this tidbit even appears on Wikipedia.

A yottabyte is a trillion trillion bytes. A trillion terabytes, in other words.

The largest commercially available hard drives currently hold about 4 terabytes of data. To store a yottabyte, you would need a quarter trillion, or 250 billion 4TB hard drives. That would amount to about 35 hard drives for each living person on the planet.

A 4 TB hard drive consumes about 3-6 W of power. Say, 4 W on average. 250 billion drives would therefore consume a trillion watts of power. Which is roughly the peak electrical power generation capacity of the entire United States. We know that the Utah facility will consume a lot of power, but the figure I’ve seen mentioned in one article was a much more modest 75 megawatts. Which is about one ten thousandths the amount of power I just calculated.

Then there is the price. The retail price of a 4TB drive is a tad under $200 these days. Presumably, they would cost a lot less if purchased in bulk; say, $100 per drive, including power supplies, interface circuits, whatever. So 250 billion 4TB hard drives would only cost 25 trillion US dollars.

That is, more than one and a half times the United States GDP.

However important it is for the United Stasi of America to keep a watchful eye over every citizen of the world, I don’t think a price tag like this is feasible. Indeed, the cost of the facility is a lot less, reportedly around 1.5 to 2 billion dollars. Let me round it up to 2.5 billion; after all, government projects are rarely completed within budget. And let me assume that all that money is spent on data storage. Well… that’s still not a yottabyte. It’s one ten thousandths of a yottabyte. Or 0.1 zettabytes. Or 100 exabytes.

Still a staggering amount, but much more modest. After all, large service providers like Google are already storing hundreds of petabytes, even exabytes of data. And the entire world may already have collected a few zettabytes.

But not yottabytes. Never mind the NSA; the world as a whole is still a long way away from a yottabyte. Probably a couple of decades, even assuming continuing exponential growth in global data storage capacity.

In any case, a yottabyte is an insane amount of data, even for an institution like the NSA. It is sufficient to store about eight years worth of broadcast quality video for each individual living on the planet. Or, if you are content with lower video quality, a complete visual record of the entire life of every living person on the planet could easily fit in a yottabyte.

Besides… is it really believable that the NSA sits on top of a technology that increases the efficiency of data storage by 4-5 orders of magnitude, a factor of 10,000 or more? There are some really smart people working for the NSA, to be sure, but they are not space aliens. Exotic storage technologies may be in the works in storage technology labs, but I suspect that when they become practical and usable, we will first see them in our next generation gadgets, not secret US government data centers.

So no, the NSA is not going to store a yottabyte of data, breathless news reports and the hype notwithstanding. Not even a zettabyte. A few exabytes, maybe.

Which is still a lot. Far too much, in fact, for my comfort.

Light on Mars

Space No Responses »

Jun 092013

The other night, Curiosity was working late.

You walk around on the surface of a planet, and it is pitch dark. Suddenly, you spot a light on the horizon. It’s steady; it’s artificial. You conclude that it’s a sign of civilization.

And indeed it is. What you see is an artificial light… but it belongs not to a living creature but to a robotic explorer. One that was created by a civilization a couple of hundred million kilometers away. A civilization that only invented electric lighting just over two centuries earlier.

I find it eerily beautiful to see an artificial light bathing the rocky surface of an alien planet.

The Huffington Post’s concern about the cancer of Europe

Hungary, Politics No Responses »

Jun 092013

John Feffer, writing for the Huffington Post, expresses his grave concern over political developments in Hungary in recent years. He suggests that Hungary may be symptomatic of a cancer that is spreading across Europe: a rejection of liberal values, a rise of nationalism and xenophobia, combined with a growing distrust in European institutions.

I wish I could argue that Feffer is wrong. But he isn’t. Not only is some of the political rhetoric coming from Hungary frightening, but so is the attitude of ordinary people towards the country’s Roma minority, towards Europe, towards Western values.

Yet as Feffer notes, Hungary is not alone: similar sentiments are also on the rise elsewhere in Europe. And unless the EU manages to get its economy under control, things will get worse. Indeed, I have a feeling that the worst is yet to come, and that things will get a lot worse before they’ll get any better.

Facebook miseries

Internet, Personal No Responses »

Jun 082013

Today I realized that in the past month, my blog has once again become what blogs were meant to be originally: a write-only medium that nobody reads.

Well, almost. The few people who actually bother to look it up at spinor.info could still read it (and thank you for your interest!) The few people who follow my tweets may have seen my posts. People on Google+ may have seen them as well, but are there still people on Google+?

However, the WordPress plugin that I’ve been using for the last couple of years now to publish my posts automatically on my Facebook page has quit on me. And since I was not usually checking my own Facebook posts, I didn’t even notice that something was amiss, I merely assumed that my Facebook friends were really not that interested in what I had to say.

In reality, my posts never made it to Facebook. The culprit has been one of the stupid “migrations” of the Facebook API (Application Programming Interface), which I foolishly enabled, thus breaking the plugin.

Anyhow, thanks to a helpful hint by the plugin’s developer in a WordPress support forum, I was able to find the cause and fix the problem.

I have yet to figure out why people who develop software on which other people depend, most notably people who develop software libraries that are used by other people’s programs, are so keen on making changes that seemingly serve no useful purpose other than breaking said other people’s programs.

Grumble.

Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength!

Computer Security, Internet, Politics 2 Responses »

Jun 082013

Yes, it’s Orwellian, and this time around, it’s no hyperbole.

The US government apparently not only collects information (“metadata”) on all telephone calls, they also have the means collect e-mails, online chats, voice-over-IP (e.g., Skype) telephone calls, file transfers, photographs and other stored data, and who knows what else… basically, all data handled by some of the largest Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Skype and others.

Last summer, I decided to revamp my e-mail system. The main goal was to make it compatible with mobile devices; instead of using a conventional mail client that downloads and stores messages, I set up an IMAP server.

But before I did so, I seriously considered off-loading all this stuff to Google’s Gmail or perhaps, Microsoft’s outlook.com. After all, why should I bother maintaining my own server, when these fine companies offer all the services I need for free (or for a nominal fee)?

After evaluating all options, I decided against “outsourcing” my mail system. The fact that I did not want to have my mail stored on servers that fall under the jurisdiction of the US government played a significant role in my decision. Not because I have anything to hide; it’s because I value my privacy.

Little did I know back then just how extensively the US government was already keeping services such as Google under surveillance:

From the leaked slides (marked top secret, sensitive information, originator controlled, no foreign nationals; just how much more secret can stuff get?) and the accompanying newspaper articles it is not clear if this is blanket surveillance (as in the case of telephone company metadata) or targeted surveillance. Even so, the very fact that the US government has set up this capability and recruited America’s leading Internet companies (apparently not concerned about their reputation; after all, a presentation, internal as it may be, looks so much nicer if you can splatter the logos of said companies all over your slides) is disconcerting, to say the least.

True, they are doing this supposedly to keep us safe. And I am willing to believe that. But if I preferred security over liberty, I’d have joined Hungary’s communist party in 1986 instead of emigrating and starting a new life in a foreign country. Communist countries were very safe, after all. (And incidentally, they were not nearly this intrusive. Though who knows how intrusive they’d have become if they had the technical means available.)

One thing I especially liked: the assurances that the NSA does not spy on US residents or citizens. Of course… they don’t have to. This will be done for them by their British (or Canadian?) counterparts. No agency is breaking any of the laws of its own country, yet everybody is kept under surveillance. And this is not even new: I remember reading an article in the Globe and Mail some 20 years ago, detailing this “mutually beneficial” practice. I may even have kept a copy, but if so, it is probably buried somewhere in my basement.

Meanwhile, I realize that the good people at the NSA or at Canada’s Communications Security Establishment must really hate folks like me, though, running our own secure mail servers. I wonder when I will get on some suspect list for simply refusing to use free services like Gmail that can be easily monitored by our masters and overlords.

Another cat

Cats, Personal No Responses »

Jun 072013

This beautiful cat belonged to my mother-in-law. I last saw him just a few short weeks ago, when I visited her in the city of Pécs, Hungary.

Sadly, my use of the past tense is justified, as Frici (which was his name) is no more. He passed away today, from what appeared to be a severe urinary tract issue, I was told. He was only about four years old. He was a stray that ended up with my mother-in-law after she lost her previous cat.

Yes, we know that it’s just a cat. Yes, we know that cats who spent some time on the street as strays like Frici are much more likely to acquire an infection, or just suffer the consequences of prolonged malnutrition or dehydration that would eventually shorten their lives. Still… Frici was much too young to pass away, and did not deserve to pass away in pain.

Life, I guess. Cherish every day of it, who knows how many are left.

George’s tree

Personal No Responses »

Jun 022013

This morning, my wife and I attended a very moving ceremony in the memory of my good friend, George Olah, who passed away earlier this year.

George’s daughters decided to dedicate a tree in a public park in Ottawa to their father. A little marble plaque at the foot of the tree bears George’s name, the dates of his birth and death, and the Hungarian word for cheers, “egészségedre”.

A violinist was also present. The sound of a solo violin during a cloudy, rainy day was especially poignant and it helped set a somber mood. At one point, when the violinist was asked to play one of George’s favorite tunes, I was able to capture a few seconds of it with my cell phone.

Yet we also had plenty of laughs. George, after all, was a very happy person and his stories were always delightful. My favorite moment: when one of George’s daughters told us that the city permit would even have allowed them to set up a trampoline, several of us exclaimed, “Why didn’t you?” That is because we all knew that George would have loved something so unconventional.

Trouble in Turkey

Politics No Responses »

Jun 012013

The good citizens of Istanbul decided that they’ve had enough: they need to defend Turkish democracy against a semi-autocratic government.

I am enough of a conservative to think that street riots and settings things on fire rarely (if ever) solve problems, but I certainly understand the protesters’ concern and frustration.

From: CNN Breaking News [mailto:BreakingNews@mail.cnn.com]

Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2013 4:31 PM

To: textbreakingnews@EMA3LSV06.TURNER.COM

Subject: CNN Breaking News
Turkish authorities have detained 939 people in connection with anti-government protests across 30 provinces, Interior Minister Muammer Guler told Turkey’s semi-official Anadolu news agency on Saturday.The demonstrations began this week in protest of government plans to level a park in Istanbul. But many demonstrators say they now are protesting against authoritarian policies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
As demonstrators clashed with police Friday in Istanbul, protests spread to several other cities, including Ankara, the capital, and the port city of Izmir.

Commercials on Canadian public radio

Canada, Politics, Radio No Responses »

May 282013

The destruction of public radio in Canada continues: Our beloved bureaucrats at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission decided to allow the CBC to air commercials on Radio 2.

Dear CRTC: the CBC is not a private company. It is partially funded by the Canadian public. Its mandate is not to make money but to promote Canadian culture. Instead of allowing this travesty, how about holding them to account for the on-going destruction of a national treasure?

Two documentaries about the rise of authoritarianism in Hungary

Hungary, Politics No Responses »

May 272013

Even as the Hungarian ultra-right is seeking closer ties with the Arab world, in search of an ally against a common enemy (Jews), none other than the English edition of Al Jazeera aired a half-hour documentary about the rise of the right, the rise of anti-Semitism, the plight of the Roma, and the increasingly authoritarian nature of Viktor Orban’s government.

Meanwhile, the Franco-German cultural channel Arte broadcast a 50-minute German-language documentary titled “Ungarn – Demokratie oder Diktatur?” (Hungary: Democracy or Dictatorship?) expressing similar concerns, but also providing more historical background.

Of course, apologists for the Orban government will dismiss these, like they dismiss all criticism, as liberal propaganda produced by naive (or worse, corrupt) Westerners who know nothing about Hungary, do not speak the language, and were duped by traitorous liberals, former communists, or Magyar-hating Jews. Yes, and pigs fly, too.

Cats on Google Street View

Cats, Internet, Personal No Responses »

May 262013

I noticed that the pictures on Google Street View for our neighborhood were updated recently. Much to my delight, I noticed that two cats from the neighborhood, cats that we have known for at least seven years, were photographed by Google’s cameras:

Yes, my wife and I are both fond of cats. Not just our own four cats but also cats from the neighborhood.

Spousal abuse

Hungary, Legal, Local Ottawa, Television No Responses »

May 252013

As I was watching the news unfold about the gruesome court case of an Ottawa husband who is accused of first abusing and then torturing his wife to death by scalding her and then denying her medical treatment, I was reminded of an award-winning Hungarian commercial about spousal abuse.

There are uncanny similarities between some of the details of the Hutt case and this commercial.

Virtuous pagans

Religion No Responses »

May 242013

How about this: some 700 years after Dante placed virtuous pagans in the outermost circle of Hell, beyond the reach of Satan, and free of any punishment save the fact that they are not allowed in the presence of God, we now have a Pope who says that it’s okay to be an atheist so long as you do good. And Jesus redeemed every human being, not just faithful Catholics.

Wow. Thank you, Pope Francis.

Eric Weinstein’s Theory of Everything

Physics No Responses »

May 242013

Physics blog sites are abuzz about Eric Weinstein and his Amazing New Theory of Everything. For a moment, I actually confused him with Eric Weisstein, well known in physics and math circles as the founder of Mathworld, which, in the pre-Wikipedia days, was the Internet’s pre-eminent mathematics encyclopedia (only to be hijacked for a while by an unscrupulous CRC press). No, Weinstein is someone else: he is a mathematical physicist turned economist. In any case, he is no dummy, nor does he appear to be a crackpot. He is outside of academia, but, well, so am I, so who am I to complain?

So Weinstein gets invited to Oxford to give a public lecture, and he talks, for the first time, about ideas he has been working on for the past twenty years, about unifying physics.

This is greeted by a headline in The Guardian that reads, “Roll over Einstein: meet Weinstein“. Others follow suit, and soon physics news and blog sites far and wide discuss… what, exactly? Well, no-one really knows.

That is because Weinstein has not published anything yet. Not even a non-peer reviewed manuscript on arxiv.org. This is pointed out in one of the few sensibly skeptical blog posts, written by Jennifer Ouellette on Scientific American’s blog site. Ouellette actually quotes a tweet by Sean Carroll: “Pretty sure Einstein actually wrote research papers, not just gave interviews to newspapers.”

Ouellette goes on to quote Oxford cosmologist Andrew Pontzen, who observes that these “shenanigans” have “short-circuited science’s basic checks and balances”. I couldn’t agree more. This is true even if Weinstein turns out to be right in the end.

Which is conceivable, since Weinstein is no crackpot. But it is much more likely that his theory will join many others, including Garrett “surfer dude” Lisi’s aesthetically beautiful E8 theory, that just don’t have much to do with observable reality.

The art of throwing someone under a truck

Canada, Politics No Responses »

May 222013

So Mr. Harper finally answered questions about the scandal brewing in Canada’s Senate. I found his comments rather pathetic, unfortunately.

In particular, this one: “it was Mr. Wright’s money, it was his personal money that he was repaying to the taxpayers on behalf of Mr. Duffy, it was his personal decision and he did this is his capacity as chief of staff, so he is solely responsible and that is why he has resigned.”

If Mr. Harper is speaking the truth, he should resign as he is obviously incompetent and out of touch even with his innermost circle of staff members. If he is lying, he should resign for, well, for blatantly lying to the people of Canada and for throwing his closest friends and associates under the truck for the sake of staying in power.

What an unsightly spectacle.

The case of the disappearing right-click menu

Computer Security, Personal No Responses »

May 222013

Today, the weirdest thing happened on my main desktop computer: the right-click menu of Windows Explorer, as well as the Windows desktop, disappeared. I was also unable to bring up the Properties dialog, even through the menu bar.

The worst part of it is, I could not figure out what happened. A reboot didn’t fix things, nor did an obvious Registry hack (making sure that HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoViewContextMenu is set to 0. For some reason, it was set to 1.) Eventually, I resorted to the big guns and used System Restore (thanks to the fact that I do backups daily, I had a restore point from 2AM this morning) to fix things. Still, it bugs me that something happened that I do not understand.

In comparison with another, mostly identical system, I noted that the other system had no subkeys under the Policies key whatsoever. So I wonder exactly when and how the Explorer and System subkeys were created on this workstation.

And while I was at it, I searched the Registry a little more and found another, possibly relevant entry: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoViewContextMenu. Once again, this Registry value is missing from the other machine, so I wonder how, why and when it was created on this workstation.

This is deeply disturbing. I don’t like mysteries, especially not on a machine that I use on a daily basis. Life is short and one does not need to resolve every mystery, but occasionally, such unexpected behavior can be a sign of a security issue.

Gingrich perplexed by his smartphone

Communication, Politics No Responses »

May 132013

Upon watching this video produced by Newt Gingrich, I can only wonder: What was he thinking? What was his team thinking?

Does Newt Gingrich, the technologically savvy, well-educated former House speaker and presidential wannabee really not know that the thing he is holding in his hands is called, indeed has been called for more than 15 years… wait a moment… a smartphone?

But then, a commenter on YouTube suggested that it should be called a horseless telephone. I like the idea.

Windows 8 adventures

Computers No Responses »

May 102013

So a few weeks ago, I purchased a new laptop. For just a tad over 500 bucks, I was able to get a fairly decent lightweight ASUS machine. Most importantly, it is a machine equipped with a touch screen, allowing me to experience Windows 8 as intended by its designers.

And I really gave it a try. During my recent trip to Europe, I took this laptop along. And, I made it a point not to install software such as a replacement Start menu; I wanted to experience Windows 8 exactly as its designers intended.

What can I say? I am not impressed. The way the world of Microsoft’s “Modern UI” is grafted onto Windows just feels… well, it feels like a kludge. The apps are not bad but they leave a lot to be desired. The built in mail app crashed on me countless of times, and even when it was working, it was rather finicky when it came to synchronizing IMAP folders. The built in Skype app crashed on my countless of times, and even when it was working, it was often stuck in a disconnected state, with no obvious means to initiate a reconnect. Windows itself boots up very quickly, which is a good thing, but unfortunately I needed to reboot it more often than I should have: that is because Windows 8 sometimes just went berserk, for instance during a perfectly ordinary network copy operation that locked up so bad, I had to hard reset the machine to recover from this failure. Simply put, I am not used to having to reboot a modern operating system regularly as a means of recovering from trivial malfunctions.

When things worked, they worked fine. The mail app is actually quite decent. The gestures, one can get used to (again, a touch screen helps a lot.) The laptop played nice with my Bluetooth headset, which made Skype a pleasure to use (when it worked.) Nonetheless, I kept missing the Start menu, and I kept missing the Aero glass interface.

When I finally got back home, sitting down in front of my trusty workstation that runs Windows 7, it actually felt like I was finally using a “proper” version of Windows as opposed to a downgrade or older edition. This is not supposed to happen. Even with Vista, one may have felt that it was misguided in many ways, but it did feel like an upgrade of Windows XP. Windows 8 does not feel like an upgrade of Windows 7. Quite the contrary.

I will continue to use my new laptop, as I have gotten quite fond of this machine. It was very good value for the money. (Finally I have a laptop weighing less than 4 pounds that has zero trouble playing back an ISO image of a Blu-Ray disc and has enough battery power for a feature length movie.) And I don’t really mind Windows 8. It’s just… it’s just… just silly.

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