This is strange…

A touchscreen with keys that rise and disappear
http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/06/a-touchscreen-with-keys-that-rise-and-disappear/?hpt=hp_bn5

I am almost curious enough to explore the technology behind this. It seems rather amazing that you can have actual buttons at will, but I am aware of several substances that can dramatically change shape and size with electric current. I wonder if it is limited to specific buttons at specific places or if it is possible to make any part of the surface any texture. The latter, I think, would probably be cool enough to get app developers to take on the programming effort and could drive sales, but I doubt the average smart phone user would pay much of a premium for just buttons.

Remarkably, good news on the budget front

We Can Tame the Debt Without Breaking Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/we-can-tame-the-debt-without-killing-entitlements-20120607

Interestingly, as the article points out, everyone wants to focus on the disastrous upper bound where the debt reaches multiples of GDP in a couple of decades, but to me the real interesting element is that it is _possible_ (note, I didn’t say _probable_) for us to maintain our social safety net _AND_ slowly pay down the debt. Of course, that means we need tax ‘increases’ (since when did the expiration of a _temporary_ tax cut translate to a tax _increase_? Man we live in a fucked up country!) and some sort of control over defense spending (something you would think would be trivially accepted since we have ended one war, are ending another and are switching to vastly cheaper drones to randomly kill innocent people). Today, politically, that appears to be totally out of the realm of possibility, but it is nice to know that our leap off the fiscal cliff isn’t preordained, just the result of brain dead idiocy on the part of our corrupt, criminal political ‘leaders’.

Federal Debt

As a btw, here is a link to the CBO summary: http://cbo.gov/publication/43288.

Where _won’t_ there be life?

Could these strange new microbes survive on Mars?
http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/63941-could-these-strange-new-microbes-survive-on-mars

As our ability to better detect the presence of life increases in sensitivity, the locations where we find life increasingly making it easy to wonder if there are any locations on this planet that do NOT support some sort of life. While I am not a general fan of panspermia (all it does is push the question of the origin off someplace else), life has proven to be so robust on this planet that it is increasingly plausible to me that space itself is ‘infected’ with life. Indeed, while I still hold that life can originate quickly and easily, given the appropriate conditions (where appropriate is a pretty low threshold: liquid water, temperature gradients, and a variety of minerals and carbon), any newly evolved life could quite plausibly have to immediately compete with extraterrestrial ‘invaders’ that have had the benefit of several billion year’s worth of evolution. As such, it might be a rare planet that produces totally unique life of its own, the typical case might be a hybrid of some space invaders and whatever local ‘talent’ produced.

It sure would be nice to explore space enough to learn at this level of detail, but given NASA’s budget woes I suspect we are on the verge of a great pullback on space. It might be that India or China will pick up the slack (China certainly exhibits willingness), but we are in the midst of a massive brain drain in NASA and getting that knowledge reproduced somewhere else (in another language and/or culture) might be such a lengthy process that no one makes the effort.

I am not a person who thinks we need to have humans mucking around in order to get great science, I think robots can do an adequate enough job and tend to be so much cheaper that the cost/benefit seems clear. What we need is not only a commitment to regularly send out probes, but also a commitment to update the technology as well. NASA developed ion drives decades ago but they are only just finally making it into space. While risk aversion is often beneficial (though that didn’t help the Columbia or the Challenger, did it?) there should be some facility to rapidly test new technology, particularly when it has the potential to so radically reduce cost or duration of investigations.

Oh well, I guess we will just have to be happy with the odd picture from the Hubble before it de-orbits and burns to slag.

Run! Just not too much or too fast

Moderation as the Sweet Spot for Exercise
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/moderation-as-the-sweet-spot-for-exercise/

So, what would you give for an extra 6 years of healthy life (if you are a guy, ‘only’ 5.6 for women)? Would you get up off your ass and go for a couple mile walk a couple of times a week? Perhaps squeeze in a slow shamble? Of course, it doesn’t have to be jogging, it could be biking or some other aerobic activity, just get up off that damn couch and move around and get the blood flowing!

What sort of agony do cancer sufferers go through for just a few more years of life? The cure is nearly as bad as the disease! Here the ‘cure’ is hardly a bad deal at all and instead of just living a few more years, you get the added benefit of greatly reducing your chance of diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, etc. Why is it so difficult for Americans to shake their booties?

Most Transparent Administration Ever

Probing Obama’s secrecy games
Will high-level Obama officials who leak for political gain be punished on equal terms with actual whistleblowers?
http://www.salon.com/2012/06/07/probing_obamas_secrecy_games/

Another in a long series of complaints about our police state. I know that it is pointless to continue to harp on this, but I just keep fantasizing that someday the trend will reverse. Silly, I know, but I guess I am an eternal optimist in that regard.

As Glenn discusses, that McCain and company are complaining about the leaks is intended to keep the President from leaking, not for increased transparency or legal accountability. What we really need is the opposite, but the most critical element of a police state is the unequal application of the law. If we can send a raft of administration officials off to do a couple of decades of hard time for leaking, then at least we will begin to resolve some of the police state issues. Then, perhaps, we can tackle the fact that our government is committing crimes against its own citizens…

Slowness in posting

I will be slow to post for a while. I got authorisation from my beautiful wife to cut my regular hours to part-time so I could work on some research for a while. Initially I thought I would have several months (many years ago she gave me a year to start a software ‘biz; I had a lot of fun, but didn’t make any money, so rejoined the ranks of the working stiffs after 9 months), but she has been getting wishy washy on me and now I think I am down to a few weeks. I am putting in three – half days on my regular job, so have lots of time if I can focus. My employer, the contracting company and the agency all graciously allowed me this time, I really appreciate it. Not only does this mean I don’t have to look for a new job, but I keep my clearance active and keep some (about 30%) income coming in.

Initially, when I thought I had several months, I was planning on working on my image compression / meta-data extraction program, but given what appear to be the new time constraints I didn’t figure I would make enough progress to be able to keep motivated to continue work once I was back to ‘slaving’ 40 hours a week. Instead I opted to work on my securities prediction algorithm I have been noodling for nearly 20 years. When I was in my stats class during my MBA program (’94, I think, so 18 years) my professor talked about an approach he was using that would enable him to predict, with very high accuracy, the next value in a chaotic dataset (it was nearly useless for predicting any past that, though). He wanted someone to take the time to apply the technique to the stock market and I was quite interested in doing so, but my programming skills (if one were to care to dignify my level of ability at the time as a ‘skill’) were such that about all I could do was fantasize. Later, as my skills increased, I ran up on the Catch-22 situation I have been battling with pretty much since I became a professional programmer. I only really have 6 or so hours of programming ability in me on a daily basis and that was pretty much exhausted by the time I got home from work (I did start a couple of times, but the approach I was using at the time was error prone and I never worked through all the bugs). I wonder, now, why I didn’t think of pursuing it during my 9 month hiatus I mentioned above, but what I recall was I was intending to build an evolutionary algorithm-based shift-scheduling algorithm and when I was having problems with that I decided to switch careers (unsuccessfully, as it turns out) to information security. Anyway, over the years I have refined the idea substantially and think I have simplified the overall approach to the point where it is practical to have the core of the algorithm built in just a couple of weeks. I feel confident I can test the program working 40 hours, it can be running while I am sleeping and while I am at work, so really I wouldn’t have much to do anyway.

The basic approach (which based on some Googling isn’t that novel any more, I just hope that my implementation is successful) is to use genetic programming techniques coupled with machine learning to produce an algorithm to predict future trends in the price of market securities (stocks, bonds, etc.). It is an ideal programming technique for the lazy bastard that I am as the program is doing all the work and I just sit back and watch. The core of the program (the same core, btw, that is in my image compression algorithm, so even without any predictive success on the markets my time is not wasted) randomly generates programs (not actual binary, though I have given a lot of thought to that level of optimisation, but a sort of byte code that is interpreted), then evaluates each program against a known data set (where the machine learning comes in) and using the power of evolutionary computation the algorithm evolves until it can predict (or rather post-dict) the known data set. Knowing the power of this programming technique there is no doubt in my mind that it will, with appropriate tweaking of the evolutionary parameters, be able to produce an algorithm that will post-dict every stock price for, say, DELL, and I think there is an excellent chance it can predict the entire market. The question is does the algorithm have any sort of predictive value whatsoever, something that will probably take weeks or even months of testing to determine. Possibly it can predict long-term market trends, possibly it can predict with enough certainty most stocks next closing value to make a few bucks, possibly, of course, not a damn thing. If it does work, though, it should be like legally minting money!

I will be sure to let my reader(s) know if I get anything that looks promising. My plan, if that fantasy is realised, is to build a hedge fund around it. I have read a lot about hedge funds and they look like the perfect thing for me, presuming, of course, I can find enough people to pony up $100 million or so.

Wish me luck!

Greenhouse/pool update

After much dilly dallying I finally got motivated to update the web site for our greenhouse / pool construction project:

http://sol-system.com/koxenrider/property/greenhousepool/spring12update/index.html

I am way more motivated now that I can see progress from each weekend’s worth of effort. There was a long time where I was very down on the whole thing since I would engage in backbreaking hard labor all weekend and not be able to see the progress. I am cautiously optimistic that the pool will be swim-able this fall and the building enclosed so I can start my aquaponics research this winter.

The Malware to end all Malware

Stuxnet, Flamer, Flame, Whatever Name: There’s no good malware
http://blog.eset.com/2012/06/03/stuxnet-flamer-flame-whatever-name-there-is-no-good-malware

I commented on my feelings on Stuxnet before, but thought I would post the above article as it does an excellent job of stating what I was attempting to relate.

There are articles now that indicate it was actually the US behind Stuxnet, so it would seem that our government is indeed dumb enough to

…create a revolutionary new shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missile and issue it to your troops while simultaneously placing all of the manufacturing blueprints and operating instructions into the public domain and on your website for anyone to download, plus a toll-free number from which anyone can order the tools and materials to build their own missiles, with free shipping on all orders.

It won’t be long now before attacks are made on US targets using the exact same code that was used to produce Stuxnet, Flamer and Duqu. Courtesy of your very own government! Isn’t that reassuring?

Do Not Kill List

It is sad that our country has got to this point, and somehow I doubt this petition will do a damn bit of good, but please read this article and then consider signing the petition:

Please don’t kill me, Obama
Why I created a petition for the president to create a “do not kill” list — and why you should sign it
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/31/please_dont_kill_me_obama/

I tried accessing the Whitehouse site so I could post the link here directly (this is supposed to reach it), but it seems the site is down for ‘maintenance’:

Our Apologies….

The site is currently undergoing maintenance. We appreciate your patience while we make some improvements.

Please check back soon.

Coincidence or government conspiracy? You decide!

Cheaters are as cheaters do

Why We Lie
We like to believe that a few bad apples spoil the virtuous bunch. But research shows that everyone cheats a little—right up to the point where they lose their sense of integrity.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304840904577422090013997320.html

This is a really interesting article, I urge all my reader(s) to take a few minutes and read it. The upshot is that cheating is contagious, that most everyone does it a little, but interestingly, most people _don’t_ do it if immediately prior to an opportunity to cheat they are reminded not to.

Very interesting results and based on the descriptions, the experiments are very well thought out. Not terribly flattering report on human nature, though, and I expect most people will read it saying to themselves that it doesn’t apply to them. Personally, I rarely lie. I discovered long ago that the more you lie the less value each lie has until lying becomes so part of your personality such that no one will ever believe you when you speak the truth. I also find that keeping track of the various lies is tedious and it is much easier to tell the truth. That isn’t to say that I don’t ‘shade’ the truth, ‘truth’, after all, is malleable and depends on viewpoint and context.

For the most part I never cheated on school exams, I was more interested in learning how much I knew rather than getting the best grade (I have never attached as much value to grades as the rest of society seems to). There have been a few cases, though, where I felt a test was idiotic and cheated so I wouldn’t have to take it again. I also fairly routinely ‘cheat’ by exceeding the speed limit and have been known to run a few red lights (almost exclusively when the intersection is totally empty and the idiot light is taking its sweet time to change (I really resent having a colored piece of glass making decisions in my life)).

I also don’t seem to be able to be much of a con artist. Despite being a misanthropist and rather detesting the human species in general, I can’t seem to bring myself to take advantage of the sheeple. If I could, I am sure I could compete with old Bernie Madoff for biggest crook. In my youth I was involved in various criminal activities, but more along the lines of the Stainless Steel Rat where I focused on insured businesses rather than individuals. I have no doubt that if my circle of friends had been a wee bit more criminal I would have settled into a life of crime without a second’s thought. Sometimes I think wistfully about what might have been, but over time I decided that I could accomplish more of my goals if I could be successful legitimately (though I haven’t been having a lot of luck with that!). Clearly there is a spectrum of amorality and I clearly fall in one zone. Probably because I had loving parents and a wholesome upbringing I didn’t continue the whole route down the road to becoming a sociopath, but I certainly can see echos of myself when I watch these shows on criminals and their psychology. I am reminded of this line in the (relatively) new series Sherlock (there is a lot to like, though I could spend a day complaining about little things):

“I’m not a psychopath, I’m a high-functioning sociopath; do your research.”

I suspect I am somewhat in alignment with that, though I do have empathy and feel other people’s pain (I hate watching tear jerker movies because I hate to have my tears jerked, not because I don’t understand). I can see the potential, though, that had I had a miserable life growing up (like so many psychopathic criminals tend to have) I might have easily gone another route or developed thick emotional calluses.

Anyway, enough about me, go read the article!