Rory – Page 6 – Rory Parle

March 17, 2012

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig

Today is Paddy’s Day (not “Patty’s Day”, which is some kind of weird American barbarism). And this is the first time it’s fallen on a weekend since 2007.

Back then I had been finished university and unemployed for about six months—it was just a couple of weeks before I started working at Google—so I wasn’t in a position to properly celebrate. I hadn’t even moved out of home yet. So instead of being in Dublin I would have been celebrating in my home town of Greystones, which has the distinction of having the lowest pub to person ratio of any town in Ireland.

Fast forward a few years and I’m living in London. London has the downside that when Paddy’s Day isn’t on a weekend it pretty much doesn’t happen. For some reason it’s not a public holiday here. What gives? But there’s a corresponding upside that when it does fall on a weekend there are a heck of a lot more nightlife spots in London than in Greystones. You don’t decide which one to go to by tossing a single coin.

Strangely, London has decided that Paddy’s Day celebrations will actually happen tomorrow, on the 18th. Maybe they figured observing what is effectively a giant piss-up, where for many people national pride is directly proporional to alcohol consumption (and my people are very, very proud), on a Saturday might lead to a bit of a mess. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if the threat of having to work with a patriotic hangover has any effect on the celebrations.

The parade tomorrow starts at Green Park at noon, and ends at Trafalgar square.

I imagine the rules for participants in London’s parade don’t have quite the same form as those for people marching in New York’s parade, which features this fantastic item:

4. The only banners allowed are ones identifying the unit or “England Get Out of Ireland”. Only one banner for each unit. NO EXCEPTIONS!!

March 13, 2012

Cabin in the Woods

For the last couple of years Eileen and I have been slowly working our way through the complete series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. It had been several years since I watched both shows during their original airing, and Eileen had only seen a few episodes. Now we’re coming toward the end, having finished Buffy and being some way into the last season of Angel (which carried on for another year on its own, after Buffy and co ran out of monsters to fight in Sunnydale). We’ll soon reach the end, and that means we’ll no doubt be feeling feel a certain withdrawal from Joss Whedon’s strange genius.

So it’s a good time for Whedon to be releasing a very cool looking new movie.

No, I’m not talking about The Avengers, although that does appear to hold a certain amount of catsuited charm. I’m talking about Cabin in the Woods, created by Whedon and former Buffy / Angel writer Drew Goddard.

If you watch the trailer you’ll see it initially looks like a fairly standard, cliché young-people-in-the-woods horror movie. When I first watched it I thought I was seeing a preview of an Evil Dead remake. But it never takes long for Whedon to throw convention on its head. By the end of the trailer it starts to look more like a twisted hybrid of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Truman Show.

Which would also like to see.

Cabin in the Woods premiered at South by Southwest at the weekend, and appears to have been received pretty favourably. Meredith Woerner from io9 calls it, “a shining beacon of promise for people that don’t need shaky cam to get their fear fetish rocks off. It’s the thinking geek’s horror film.”

I think it promises to be the best thing to happen to horror movies since Scream.

March 12, 2012March 13, 2012

What if none of us goes for the blonde?

Next week I’ll be starting a six-week course on game theory, provided by Stanford University. Thanks to the wonders of the modern age it won’t cost me a penny and I won’t have to travel to California to take part. (Even though I’ve never considered travelling to California to be particularly onerous, I do have a few commitments on this side of the ocean.) You can do it too, if you want.

The course is part of a collaboration called Coursera, which is offering free courses from the University of Michigan, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.

It works much like a regular university course, only online. There are short (eight to 15 minute) video lectures, ungraded review quizzes, as well as graded problem sets and a final exam. Because it’s online it’s necessarily a bit more asynchronous than an in-person course would be, so you can watch the lectures and do the coursework largely to your own schedule.

The full list of available and upcoming courses is at www.coursera.org. Among the more interesting sounding subjects are natural language processing, computer vision and cryptography. There are other courses in development, including computer science 101 if you find you haven’t got the background for the more advanced subjects.

It’s not all computer science and mathematics. Two of the upcoming courses are anatomy and making green buildings.

Enrollment looks to still be open for just about all of the courses and, like I said, they’re free.

I chose game theory because I’ve had it at or near the top of my mental “must learn about these subjects” list for a while. It’s a branch of mathematics that deals with strategic interactions. It’s not just what you would usually think of as games, like chess and blackjack, although those are certainly part of the subject. It also deals with lots of interactions in politics and business, which can be thought of as “games” with their own (bizarre) rules and strategies. Also, as memorably relayed by Russell Crowe, it deals with the subject of how to pick up women in bars.

The most famous topic in game theory is probably the prisoners’ dilemma, which poses the question, “How can I successfully screw over my friend in order to get away with a crime?” So obviously the practical applications of the subject are appealing.

March 10, 2012March 12, 2012

Narrow the gap

In recognition of International Women’s Day, which falls on March 8 every year, Gina Trapani (of Lifehacker and This Week in Google fame) launched Narrow the Gapp, highlighting the gap in salaries between men and women doing equal work.

(Edit, March 12: Gina has now posted about this on her own blog, Smarterware.)

For example, in software engineering women earn on average only about 91% of what men earn.

The data is from the United States, but the problem is world wide.

My natural first reaction to seeing statistics like this is to think, “It’s terrible that this is the case, but I’m sure it’s not true of my company.” And maybe I’m right. After all, I don’t work for a conventional comany. But even if I am right, that means that for every woman I work with who justly earns what her male colleagues earn, there is someone at another job who has it twice as bad as the stats imply.

Here’s the thing about gender and its relation to software engineering. I’ve seen some strange things in my time, but I’ve never seen anyone use a penis to improve his programming. It seems weird that you might be paid extra for having one.

A common argument that comes up every time the pay gap is mentioned is that men are better at negotiating salaries. But isn’t that still part of the problem? Pay should be related to the work you do, not your ability to negotiate with your employer. If men are more likely to be willing or able to negotiate higher salaries, then that is itself a systematic bias against women whether or not it’s rooted in overt discrimination.

It’s also likely that if men are generally more successful at negotiating it might not be because they’re better at it. It’s just as likely that they’re successful because of the attitude of the person they’re negotiating with. A lot of negotiation is in the perceptions of the person on the other side. Discrimination (intentional or otherwise) creeps in wherever it can.

March 8, 2012

The gamification of football

Part of my ongoing, half-assed attempt to get myself into shape involves playing indoor football every week with some of my colleagues.

We aim to have five people per team, but we rarely hit that number. Sometimes we play an exhausting three-a-side game. We once played seven-on-seven, which was like trying to move a ball around a crowded nightclub. Often one team will be bigger than the other.

All in all it’s a pretty non-competitive event. We don’t make much of an effort to keep track of the score, and even when we do we’re still very likely to give up on scorekeeping at the end and just declare “last goal wins” when we’re about to run out of time.

Our relaxed approach to the game means that we’re more likely to try a manouvre that might look cool—like a bicycle kick or a diving header—than to do something that will actually lead to scoring a goal.

Chatting after the game today we came up with the idea of ‘gamifying’ the game. Just like many parts of life are being ‘gamified’ these days—like unlocking points and badges for visiting certain places in Foursquare—you can imagine getting achievements for things that you do in a real football game.

Some badge ideas:

Head boy: Score with a header. This is the achievement I spent most of today’s match trying (and failing) to unlock.
BFFs: Set up the same player for a goal, or have them set you up for a goal, 3 times in a match.
Poultry farmer: Be on the receiving end of a foul. (Is that too bad a pun?)
Postman: Hit the post 5 times in a match.
Greg Louganis: Take a dive!

Any other ideas?

The next step is to write the image recognition software to analyze video footage of a match and assign achievements (thereby earning the ‘Spent altogether too much time on such a silly idea’ badge).

March 7, 2012

Apple special event

While I wait for the new version of iPhoto for iPad (and, apparently, iPhone) to show up in the UK App Store, I want to revisit my predictions post from Monday and see what came true.

Yes, of course, there is a new iPad with a retina display. Interestingly, it doesn’t appear to have a name. It’s not iPad 3. It’s just iPad. As Sam Vermette pointed out on Twitter, new iterations of Mac products don’t carry version numbers either. You don’t look forward to the MacBook Pro 6; it’s just the new MacBook Pro. It makes some sense to treat non-Mac devices in the same way.

The new iPad is not thinner and lighter than iPad 2, as I said it would be. In fact it’s very slightly bigger. The price remains the same though, and iPad 2 remains available at a reduced price as I think everyone expected it would.

There is now a version of iPhoto for iOS. Or at least there will be once it arrives at your local App Store. It’s an App Store app rather than a built in, so it won’t be replacing the existing Photos app. But it looks great. I expect the Mac iPhoto app will be seeing some updates in the near future to catch up with this iOS version.

There was no mention of any change to Maps. That’s what I expected. Like I said, I’m pretty confident this will come with the next iPhone.

I said that Apple TV wouldn’t see an update, or that if it did it would only be a small change. I think that was correct. The updated Apple TV is evolutionary. This was never going to be the event where Apple shows us the future of television. Whether or not that event ever happens is still up for debate.

March 7, 2012

Hack all the things

It’s TED season again so we’re being treated to a new round of videos from the conference. This one, sent to me by my friend and colleague Jack Chant, actually dates back to October. It’s from TEDxMidAtlantic, one of the many TEDx franchise conferences.

In it, Avi Rubin from Johns Hopkins University talks about the security implications of the increasing ubiquity of computerized and networked devices. He has a great collection of examples of attacks that computer security researchers have been able to apply to everything from car brake systems to pacemakers.

It’s a pretty entertaining tour through the world of things you really wouldn’t want to have hacked.

Many of the attacks Rubin talks about are based on the general field of machine learning. Though I’m far from an expert in the field, it was the topic of my masters thesis so I have a passing familiarity with it.

Rubin didn’t mention my favourite example of a machine learning hack: acoustic keylogging. That’s fancy words for figuring out what someone is typing by listening to their keyboard. It relies on the fact that the different keys on a keyboard will make subtly different sounds, and with enough data you can teach a computer to distinguish them.

In 2005, researchers in Berkeley created a system which analysed a 10 minute recording of someone typing English text, and formed a model that could figure out from the sound of a single keystroke which key was most likely to have created the sound. The system didn’t even need to be told what the original text was. It could figure that out on its own.

With just that 10 minutes of recording forming the basis of the model, their system was able to make reasonable guesses about random (non-English) typing, including passwords. It could identify 80% of 10 character passwords in fewer than 75 guesses. Maybe 75 sounds like a lot to you, but consider this: even assuming all of the passwords were composed entirely of lowercase letters (reducing the space of possible passwords as much as possible) it would take on average 50 trillion guesses to get one right without help.

Now imagine how well it would work if that mysterious flower delivery van that’s been across the street for over week had a directional microphone pointed at your computer the whole time. Time for a quieter keyboard maybe.

If you’re interested in the details, the paper that introduced me to this kind of attack was called Keyboard Acoustic Emanations Revisited (pdf), by Zhuang et al and it’s available in its entirety online for free.

March 5, 2012July 28, 2012

Apple’s Wednesday announcement

What’s coming out of Apple on Wednesday?

iPad 3, duh

Not a whole lot to question about this prediction. The rumours that the iPad 3 will have retina display have been circulating for months, and the invitations to Wednesday’s event all but confirm that those rumours are correct. iPad 3 will be (probably) thinner, lighter, better resolution, and the same price as iPad 2.

For those looking for a cheaper tablet, iPad 2 may remain available at a lower price than before, the same way that iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS have done since iPhone 4S was released in October.

New iPad software

One of my favourite aspects of Apple events is that I very often get new toys to play with without having to fork over hundreds of pounds for new kit. Hardware announcements almost always come with at least a little bit of new software that existing users can take advantage of.

That said, there certainly won’t be an iOS update. iOS 5 is too new for that. Not to mention that Apple has to give developers a chance to update their apps before pushing a new system out, so we’re extremely unlikely ever to get one by surprise. But there’s a decent chance of us getting some new or updated apps.

Neven Mrgan predicts an overhaul of the iPad’s Photos app into something much more like iPhoto for Mac. That sounds like a nice improvement to me.

There’s also the outside chance of Siri making an appearance, although given her reportedly poor reliability while still confined to the iPhone 4S I’m not sure it would be a good idea to open up that system to the millions of existing iPad owners. If Siri makes up any part of this week’s announcement, I’d bet on it being for iPad 3 only.

Maps

Here are a few facts:

Apple is no longer on very friendly terms with Google, the supplier of mapping data for iOS maps.
Maps on iOS hasn’t seen a significant update in years.
Apple has been buying mapping technology for a while.
Apple likes to control every aspect of its products.

It’s easy to surmise that a new version of iOS Maps will appear eventually. Despite my loyalty to Google, I’m actually excited to see what Apple does with this. Maps is one of the areas in which Android trounces iOS right now, so it will be great to see what Apple comes up with.

As confident as I am that a new Maps is on its way, my bet is that it won’t be happening on Wednesday. It will form part of the next iPhone announcement instead. How often do you use Maps on your tablet versus on your phone?

Apple TV

Since Walter Isaacson’s Jobs biography came out people have been speculating about what Apple would do with the Apple TV. That’s because Jobs apparently let on to Isaacson that he had finally figured out what Apple needed to do to change the shape of the TV industry the way it has done with music.

I believe that something is happening with TV in Cupertino, but there’s no sign that this week’s event is where it will be unveiled. If it’s as big a change as people seem to think then there’s no sense overshadowing the iPad 3 launch with it. If it’s a smaller update, then it doesn’t merit time to dilute the main message of the event.

On the other hand, there have been stock shortages reported of Apple TV units, so an update isn’t out of the question.

March 4, 2012March 5, 2012

You are not so smart

I made a new years resolution this year to read more books. It’s pretty likely you did too, if you’re the resolution type. I’m aiming to average a book every two weeks. According to Goodreads I’m actually a little ahead of schedule, having completed seven books in the last nine weeks or so.

One of the better books I read recently is You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney. It’s about why you’re very likely wrong—or at least inconsistent—in a lot of what you think and do.

For example, if I offered to give you £50 now or £60 in a week then, besides being suspicious of my motives, you’d be pretty likely to take the £50 now. But If I offered to give you £50 in four weeks or £60 in five weeks, you’d most likely hold out the extra week for the £60. The two scenarios are logically equivalent, but our brains are configured to strongly prefer things that benefit us right now, even over things that will benefit us more in the future.

Or how about this? If you’re holding a hot cup of coffee when you first meet a person, you’re more likely to form a first impression of them as a “warm” person than if you are holding an ice coffee. Thousands of irrelevant contextual factors play into our impressions of other people, and we literally think in metaphors.

This trailer explains pretty accurately why I waited until late at night to write this blog post despite having had the entire late afternoon and evening to do it:

Chapter by chapter the book bounces through a whole host of ways in which our brains play tricks on us, confuse us, and ultimately fail us. Sometimes there are good reasons. For example our over-eagerness for seeing patterns would have been helpful for spotting predators on the savannah; and failing to see a pattern that is there—say the face of a tiger in the bushes—is potentially a lot worse than mistakenly seeing something that doesn’t really exist.

On the other hand, often our minds’ failings are just due to not being all that well put together.

Frustratingly, among everything else, there’s even a pretty good case made that I won’t succeed in my resolution to read more books.

You Are Not So Smart is based on the website of the same name which McRaney started in October 2009. He describes the website’s purpose thus:

The central theme here is that you are unaware of how unaware you are. There is branch of psychology and an old and growing body of research with findings that suggest you have little idea why you act or think the way you do. Despite this, you create narratives to explain your own feelings, thoughts and behaviors, and these narratives become the story of your life.

The book is well worth a read. Just be aware that if you put it on any kind of “to read” list with the intention of getting to it later then there’s a pretty good chance you’ll never get around to it. Because you are not so smart.

March 3, 2012March 4, 2012

Carbonite and Rush Limbaugh

Update, March 4: Carbonite have changed their position and have now withdrawn sponsorship from Limbaugh’s show. Kudos to them for choosing the right path even when it means abandoning a very effective marketing platform.

I recently signed up for an off-site backup service called Carbonite. It’s a system for backing up your computer data but, rather than storing the backup on an external disk in your own home, it backs up to servers operated by Carbonite. The idea is that if you keep all of your data and backups in one place you’re at risk of losing it all at once. A fire or burglary could very easily leave you not only without your computer but also without your backups. Keeping the backups somewhere else, in this case in a datacenter, protects you in that kind of event.

Sounds great, right? I thought so too.

Unfortunately, some time into this initial backup but still quite a while from finishing it (the first backup takes a long time), I discovered a very compelling reason to cut it short and seek out an alternative provider.

Here’s why. Carbonite pays people to verbally abuse young women in public.

On February 29, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh had this to say about Sandra Fluke, a student who was supposed to speak at a US congressional hearing on contraception and religious liberty:

What does it say about the college co-ed Susan [sic] Fluke who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex—what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.

Charming. But, hey, not a huge surprise. This is American conservative talk radio. What do you expect?

The trouble is, Carbonite is one of Rush Limbaugh’s sponsors. He makes money saying this crap, and the precise mechanism by which he makes that money is that Carbonite, and other companies, give it to him.

Carbonite paid Rush Limbaugh to call Sandra Fluke a prostitute on the radio.

At this point a reasonable company, or at least an ethical one, would distance themselves from what was said and withdraw future sponsorship. Here’s what Carbonite CEO David Friend said:

The nature of talk radio is that from time to time listeners are offended by a host and ask that we pull our advertising. […] We do not have control over a show’s editorial content or what they say on air. Carbonite does not endorse the opinions of the shows or their hosts.

In other words, “We just pay him to say this stuff. That doesn’t mean we endorse it.”

He goes on:

I will impress upon him that his comments were offensive to many of our customers and employees alike.

Or, “I hope that a media personality who thrives off controversy will reconsider his abusive and degrading statements at my request, even while I continue to scribble out his next paycheck.”

Limbaugh won’t change his tune just because advertisers ask him to. The only way to reach him is to pull the sponsorship. Similarly, David Friend won’t change his position just because his customers ask him to. The only way to reach him is to stop giving money to Carbonite.