OpenId's big problem

If you really look at the comment box at the bottom of any of my posts, you'll find a whole bunch of ways to say "I'm a human". One of these is OpenID. I like OpenID, and its cousin OAuth, on general principle. People shouldn't have to be hooked up to some suspect overlord like facebook or google to participate, you know?

(On consideration, my "reasons" for not allowing "anonymous" comments may be suspect. Maybe I should allow that. But that's not related to my point.)

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror made a recent post about "install our apps" pop-ups. You know the kind:

One of the points he makes is that with so many apps, apps kinda need to be free. Otherwise, they're overpriced. But that brings us to this old privacy-freak adage:

When apps are free, you are the product.

OpenID and OAuth are intended to help solve this problem. And that, in a fit of paradoxical irony, is their problem. The very thing they're supposed to do, is the very thing the people who'd have to adopt it don't want.

Without huge, hyper-driven use demand, they're doomed.

Faulty Thinking: "some things man was not meant to know"

Breakpoint, who I respect in general, just aired a radio article on transhumanism. And their concerns are good, and need to be considered. That doesn't mean they didn't commit a thinking error.

The main point of the article was that knowledge can be used evily, and some forms of knowledge can be put to greater evils than others. With which I agree. It then claims that such areas shouldn't be researched at all. Here they went wrong.

The trouble is that any piece of knowledge that can be discovered, can be rediscovered. History supports this claim just as much as it does theirs, if not more. What matters is when it's discovered, and by who.

(There's a handy example of this in cryptography, the study of secret communication. A group of people working for the british government invented the form of encription now used for internet banking, -- before powerful computers existed. The british government kept it hush, because they didn't have a way to break it. Later, some american academics came up with the same system, without knowing anything about the british version.)

If you'll forgive my archtypes, I'm going to go with a supervillian analogy. Say a supervillain is doing genetic research. He discovers a way to trigger a latent genetic defect in the majority of humanity--a virus that causes cancer, maybe. He can then release it, or threaten to releas it, on major cities or even the whole planet.

But if a good guy scientist has been researching as well, and discovers the trigger first, she and others can research and find an antidote or a vaccine. Then, by the time the supervillain is ready to unleash his disaster virus, maybe it won't work anymore. Certainly it won't be as bad. Now imagine if the scientists hadn't been working on the antidote.

I won't argue with the should-ness of their claim. But as the line being crossed sooner or later is inevitable, it's far better to look in hope for Prometheus than to wait in fear for Pandora.

Efficiency and Creativity

I was thinkin' about science fiction and technological explosions. A scifi writer and utopian once said something about how "machines will eventually take over so much of what we currently do with manual labor, humanity will be in a state of enforced leisure. What an envied thing it will be to work!" (That's not even close to an exact quote.)

Humans are, of course, really inefficient at a lot of things.

How does one measure efficiency of creativity?

I saw Amber Dow today.
Not so much I "really saw" her, as literally saw her. I spotted her crossing the street as I was driving out to pick up my brother. She was probably on her way home, but beyond that, I really don't know anything.

I feel weird, kinda bad about this. In school she was one of those kids, the odd ones who're social outcasts and seem to possibly even like it that way. Not that that really means anything, I was one too. Part of me feels like maybe I should try to re-connect with her. Just kind of a hey, how're you doing, hang out kind of thing. I don't really know what the purpose of that would be, though. It's not like I know we share much in the way of interests, and she's probably an 'All Grown Up' Actual Official Adult by now (unlike me, who's faking it). It'd probably entirely be just for nostalgia (or even pseudo-nostalgia) purposes.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel a little depressed these past couple days. I should retract that; I know some people who have had "actual" depression -- don't go pedantic on me, I know, I know -- and I know I don't have that.

I'm making a new blog tag, undrafted. It'll probably be something like "this never went through any drafts, so it may be incoherent / logically inconsistent / not spellchecked &| grammar-checked / otherwise generally wrong". Maybe I should make a "here's what the tags mean" post.

A snippet

Knowledge can only be used for Good or for Evil. There is no in-between.

Well, that's enoug derping around on the internet for one day

Over on RationalWiki I stumbled across their page about "QuantumMAN". Not that I'm not endorsing RationalWiki. I don't know nearly enough about them to do so. A lot of their articles I've read have been completely reasonable "okay, really?" examples ranging from "eyeroll" to "facepalm". But QuantumMAN, assuming it's an accurate representation (a fair assumption to make as far as I'm concerned, given what gets mentioned), is actually painful to think about. Anyone with any knowledge of applied quantum mechanics, biology, or computers could tell you that there's no way in the universe for their claims to make sense. Even /r/VXjunkies is more plausible, likely due to the fact that they don't even try to be plausible.

Google+, revisited

Oh, gee, thanks a lot, Google. I'll just go through a crap-ton of work to delete my entire Google+ account AGAIN.

Seriously. You'd think they'd mention when they're offering to create a Google+ account for you, but noo...

A Quick Followup Note on God

There's a C.S. Lewis quote I love about Lewis's time as an atheist. Basically, Lewis didn't believe in God, and at the same time was angry at God for not exiting. I'm not exactly angry per say, but that's pretty much where I think I am right now. I'm not entirely sure that I think God doesn't exist, but in that case...

Leaves

My (library) copy of House of Leaves came in today. I already know that mainly I don't know what to think of it. I bet it could make for a great (La)Tex leaning tool, trying to re-create it. Whoever double-spaces their sentences, though; I like that^[1].

Apparently there is also braille which my edition does not have. Has anyone got notations or pictures or somesuch of those?

Footnotes:

^[1]Their monospaced sentences, at least. I can't tell about the other ones (I haven't gotten to them yet, but I doubt I'll be able to tell even once I do get there).

repoetry: "dancing tv-heads"

i am a product
of this
society
i pick-pocketed
my personality
from a ghastly array
of tv shows
and teenaged drama
if you would like a re-run
of last night's
late night
sitcom
i'm at your service

i am a product
of this
society
if you want some fashion advice
from me
because i dress
so well
log on to
pinterest
they'll tell you
exactly
what i would
because everything i wear
no matter how weird
or ugly
i wear because
they told me
to

i am a product
of this
society
i do not
think for me
i have an iphone
that has replaced
the normal functions
of my brain
it remembers everything
for me
i know everyone
we talk
all the time
i text
really fast
i'm so connected
i mean,
i'm plugged into
everything...

i am a product
of this society
my thighs
don't touch
and a lovely
mountain ridge
adorns
my back
a cavern
in my
belly
come explore
me
a beautiful
bony
product
of this
society

I AM A PRODUCT OF THIS SOCIETY
and you all should really stop blaming me
for being a social deviant
for being unwilling
to conform
to this new normal
sanity isn't
statistical
and this isn't
1984
meaning:
just because a billion people
do this crap
it doesn't make it
right
doesn't make it
make
sense
i will not hold onto your tail
and follow you
blindly,
society
because you don't know
where the frick
you're going
anyway
if we progress
one more step
we'll all be
dead

-- Rachel H. © 2013 an' stuff.
Reblogged (with permission) for posterity and my own interests.

You Ever Walk Into a War Zone? My Shoulder Angle Sits Left.

"You ever walk into a war zone?"

What?

"Yeah, yeah, I know that's a bit of a weird question, coming from me. I'm a namby-pamby coddled kid from some anonymous place in the northern united states, who's never had to deal with shortage or hunger or fighting or even something as simple as life-threatening illness. Bear with me for a moment. You ever walk into a war zone?"

Uh, not really. I mean, I'm… how'd you put it… a namby-pamby coddled kid from some anonymous place in the northern united states &c &c.

"That's not true, and you know it."

Like feck it's not. What are you talking about?

*Smack!* "Tonight. May 10 2013. Fish fry kitchen. Any bells?"

That wasn't a war zone.

"Like feck it wasn't. Okay, maybe not a conventional war zone. On the pure atoms-photons-and-eyeballs level it was just a dozen or so people standing around with their eyes closed. But you know. You know. You saw. That was as much a war zone as anything your most miscalibrated imagination can come up with."

---

So yeah, I walked into a war zone tonight. Tail end of fish fry, a whole bunch of adults (well, older adults I should say holy crap I'm twenty) gathered in the kitchen. From what I overheard, 'he' (whoever he was) had bleeding nose and ears, broken ribs, ruptured spleen, and was being airlifted. Bad s***.

I'm standing just outside the door to the kitchen. Maybe I'm in the doorway; at any rate I moved just inside the kitchen and then back to just out over the next 30-60 seconds. Anyway, I'm standing in the entryway to the kitchen, and all these adults just start praying. Now, there's nothing particularly weird about this. We were at a church event, prayer happens, especially when it looks like things have gone south¹. But this is a little different. This time, almost in overlay, I can see this battlefield going on, as they're praying. I wish I had better terms to describe what I actually saw, I only saw it for a very brief flash. That was just enough for part of me (much the same part that goes in for surface flash/'coolness', the part that self-inserts into, say, Star Wars to hijack the plot by Saving The World with Really Cool Stuff) to want to jump into the fray, complete with Cool Ninja Moves and stab this and save that; luckily, the rest of me was like "dude?" It's about this point that my angle showed up.

Now, at this point, I have to pause to say that I don't want you thinking I'm one of those angle kooks. Granted, this pause probably doesn't appear to help my case. My point is that I'm not sure whether I actaully believe in angles, much the same way I'm not sure whether I actually believe in God. According to a fair number of people around me they do, most notably including one lady who, assuming there's truth such matters, is absolutely right about these things. Sort of the Albert Einstein or Eliezer Yudkowsky of this area.²

Anyways, my angle shows up. I'm not in the kitchen anymore, I'm just outside the door by now, so he's leaning in to get a better view. And he's all antsy, he's got this – not look, exactly, that's normally what it's called, it's more like feel – he's got this feel about him like "uhg, man, I really should be in there". Because he's an angle, and this is spirit warfare, and this is, like, why he exists, it's what (well, the other thing; still assuming that all this is true) he's good at, it's what he's for. So he looks at me like "dude." And I'm like "Dude, don't let me stop you. This is your thing. Go do what you gotta do." He didn't, of course, I guess I shoulda been explicitly sending him by joining in. I don't really know why. So I told him "You gotta go, go," and he's there antsing, and at this point I turn and go around the kitchen ('cause I'm not going through the kitchen when it's full like that) and back outside. And that's the sixty seconds or thereabouts.

Right, so my angle. He's left. You know the whole shoulder angle/shoulder demon deal³? My shoulder angle sits left. Which isn't a very accurate word picture, since it makes me think they're, y'know, little guys, six or nine or eighteen inches roughly. They're not. But I could literally feel him leaning in on my left shoulder. Yes, I mean literally.

Anyways. That's my story.

---

Footnotes:

¹ That's a really crappy turn-of-phrase, come to think of it. Why is 'going south' a bad thing? We went to Florida earlier this year, and that was great – well, the two days or thereabouts we actually spent in Florida, rather than in the car. (A road trip is quite a different proposition.)

² She says my angle's name is Erasmus (I really hope I got that spelled correctly). Apparently he's got one of those mortarboard-style professor hats. I wonder if he sports it like just kind of chill?

³ Which, apparently, in the original version wasn't angles and demons, but angles of [good|light] and angles of [evil|darkness].

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