sabik's blog

The relationships in the stories we tell

Jiří Baum — Wed, 22 May 2013 09:36:45 +0000

The other day I saw an analogy somewhere that teenagers effectively getting their "sex ed" from watching porn is a bit like doing "driver's ed" by watching James Bond films. Come to think of it, though, it could be worse — people could be getting their "sex ed" by watching James Bond films.

Stories are how we make sense of the world, right? What sort of stories, then, are we giving our children and ourselves? Do they involve relationships that are healthy and positive, or ones that are problematic? If the latter, if the stories we tell celebrate problematic and even deeply disturbing relationships, what impact does that have on us, on our world?

And there are some pretty troubling stories out there, whether it's the likes of James Bond on the one hand or something like Beauty and the Beast or Twilight on the other.

Bitcoin central

Jiří Baum — Wed, 15 May 2013 03:47:50 +0000

One of the selling points of Bitcoin is that it has no central point of control... yet it does.

About 85% of the hashrate is divided among 5 parties, the large mining pools, and not equally. There are countries with more parties than that in parliament! These mining pools pretty much control the day to day transactions. If they decide to reject, say, payments to a certain address, that address is blocked. So far, they've only (publically) used this power to deal with bugs and version incompatibilities.

The authors of the standard client have substantial control in practice, and also have been known to exercise it. For instance, they hard-code "known good" blocks in the client, over-riding the block chain. They exercise control on a longer time scale than the pools.

On a longer time scale still, there was a rather large amount of central control at the point of initiation, and Satoshi Nakamoto clearly took advantage of it. Of all the possible ways to initially distribute the Bitcoins, he chose one likely to substantially enrich himself and (to a lesser extent) other early adopters, at the expense of other desirable properties for a monetary system.

In three different ways, on three different time-scales, there is indeed quite substantial degree of central control in Bitcoin. Some of them, especially the last, may be unavoidable; but we should not be blind to them.

Post-scarcity now

Jiří Baum — Tue, 07 May 2013 02:52:42 +0000

We live now in what is, in a very real sense, a post-scarcity world; we just haven't learned to behave that way.

A small fraction of us (low single digit percentage) can produce enough food to feed everyone. By any definition, that's post-scarcity, and an amazing concept for anyone more than about a hundred years ago. People go around asking each other in autumn "what are you thankful for", because everyone has been able to forget the traditional: "I'm thankful that there was, in fact, a harvest, that it looks like we won't starve this winter".

Sadly, we are not so good at distributing this plenty, so that many of us on this planet go hungry — not generally to the extent of famine (except during armed conflict), but hungry none the less. There would seem to be room for improvement.

When will we turn our post-scarcity world into a true post-scarcity society?

Terraforming the galaxy

Jiří Baum — Mon, 06 May 2013 05:25:50 +0000

It was an old race, older by far than the Ancients, back in the mists of time, who first looked up at the stars and dreamed of travel. Yet their science was young, for it was only their own, and the speed of light is a difficult barrier. They could breach it, just, but not in their spaceships. Only their gates could let them travel faster than light, and then only to places where another gate had been built.

The galaxy was yet barren.

So they toiled and built spaceships — space probes, really, for they could take no passengers. They set them the task of searching the galaxy for other worlds, building gates and moving on. They built well. Even now those ships pass from star to star, continuing their work, yet frugal and careful that they do not overwhelm.

Then they pass from history, how or why we do not know.

On a million promising worlds, gates stand; all within the zone that was once, long ago on a vanished world, called "temperate". From time to time they activate — perhaps simply a self-test, some sort of maintenance, perhaps deliberately — spreading seeds of life from world to world, first primitive, then more and more complex.

So when you see the gates on your television, wonder not why they stand in so similar a forest on each world; it is the same forest, spread from world to world by the gates themselves.

Privacy; a draft

Jiří Baum — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:51:00 +0000

What is privacy? Here are a few different aspects, named mostly for their breaches.

Orwellian — A secret that no-one else should know. This is the one that's intended by the phrase "if you have nothing to hide..."; it's often the first people think of, but it's also often not the most important kind.

Peeping Tom — This is in some ways the complete opposite: there is no secret at all. There are just some things we prefer to keep, well, private, hidden by pants and shirts and bathroom doors, even while everyone pretty much knows exactly what's there.

Kafkaesque — The facts or actions are innocent in themselves, but they can be mistaken for something problematic, or at least problematic to authority, perhaps when combined and/or shorn of context.

Freedom to fail while learning, playing, experimenting, creating; without the freedom to fail, there can be no creativity.

Integrity of context — I'm not sure whether this is another kind, or rather an over-arching framework for all types of privacy.
Everything we do has a context, and we act differently depending on the context, the situation, the people around us. It's unpleasant when contexts collide. Taking someone's action out of its context and placing it in another may well be the core of breach of privacy. Something that should have been personal made public, something that should have been among friends made professional, something that should have been practice judged as polished performance.

Google Glass

Jiří Baum — Wed, 01 May 2013 06:35:22 +0000

Is Google Glass likely to be disruptive? Does it fall into the class of truly innovative products, or will it turn out to have niche use at best, like video phones and jet packs?

It's cool, to be sure; but is it cool in a world-changing way? Or is it, to borrow Bruce Sterling's mildly derogatory turn of phrase, a toy rocket-ship?

Food miles and self-driving cars

Jiří Baum — Wed, 01 May 2013 06:22:56 +0000

Thought: the invention of self-driving cars will probably encourage more local production and consumption, simply by reducing the cost of "truck" food miles.

Bitcoin is not disruption

Jiří Baum — Wed, 01 May 2013 06:02:26 +0000

The bitcoin experiment has been going on for a few years now.

It is not disruption.

Fundamentally, it is a re-implementation of a known, somewhat obsolete form of currency. The basic mechanism is old and well-known, with old and well-known advantages, features and problems. The on-line protocol may be novel, but the actual financial properties are nothing new.

There are no compelling use cases or killer applications for bitcoin. It may appeal to fans of the gold standard, but they already have a more reliable place to go: gold bullion.

The promoted features are overblown, esoteric or both. The privacy of bitcoin is likely illusory, given that the transaction log is public and breaking pseudonymity is not all that hard. Silk Road is even worse. Even bitcoin's resistance to government interference is largely useless; what are you going to do, donate to Wikileaks? Is that all bitcoin is good for? What's Wikileaks going to do with it, then?

I guess the experiment had to be done.

If you want to disrupt the financial system, re-implement LETS.

Democratic social network

Jiří Baum — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 04:57:28 +0000

The problem with social networks such as Facebook is ultimately that the incentives are all wrong. Fundamentally, they are answerable to shareholders, often at the expense of users. Users are the product.

Distributed, federated networks are one possibility, but they have their downsides. Many technical aspects are much more challenging than centralised (secure multi-party computation). They're more difficult for casual users (need to install SW rather than just visiting a website). In a centralised network, the centre can do things; lead, manage, steward; A/B testing, compelling, market-building things; represent the network as a single entity / legal person. It's a technical solution to a social problem.

Idea: Run a centralised network as a community project, with a foundation behind it and Debian-style governance. It would have the same structure as centralised networks, but with the CEO ultimately answerable to the body of the members rather than shareholders.

If successful, the president of the network would have mandate from ¾ billion people (current size of FB). Few in the world can say that... In some ways, a network like that really could take over the world, become the next generation of governance, lead to the foundation of a world government.

Older things — parallel-run, today, backlinks, auth, ecash, inflatable sailing boat...

Jiří Baum — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 09:10:50 +0000

A few things that used to live on my homepage before I even had a blog... but which really belong here.

parallel-run - A perl script that runs a bunch of commands simultaneously. Works similarly to debian's run-parts, except everything happens at once. A companion script, watch, can be placed in the directory to be run and displays the commands that are running on VT10. (I use these for my IP-up directory, partly because some of the IP-up scripts have high-latency, low-bandwidth handshaking, partly because if one of the scripts hangs, the others will be able to run regardless; normal run-parts will never get past a faulty script that can't contact its server.)
Current time in Melbourne
A very primitive back-links implementation (using Alta Vista)
A few thoughts on Web-page authentication and a brief comparison of e-cash with other things
Details of home-made sailing rig for inflatable boats are available, though it's been quite a while since I last sailed it... these days I usually sail something larger.

Hmm, some of those are pretty old or even outdated!