Category: Geek stuff

If it involves physics, math, computer science, electronics or has general geek cachet, this is the place for it.

Constancy

There is a real sense in which this site has been the most constant part of my life since 2005. During that time, I moved from Vancouver to Oxford to Ottawa to Toronto. The group of people who I spent time with shifted several times. I moved from school to employment – from shooting using a Canon A510 point and shoot digital camera to using a 5D Mk II – from exploring the British isles by minibus to exploring North America by Greyhound.

The content has shifted somewhat, the banners have changed, but this is still basically the same thing it was six years ago – a way to stay in touch with friends around the world, discuss ideas, and generally think things through by writing them down.

Playing the lottery is not necessarily irrational

People sometimes describe lotteries as a tax on those who are bad at math. The tickets are worth less than their face value, given the size of the payout and your odds of winning.

That is all true enough. At the same time, it bears remembering that we each get to live a single very finite life. Used well, the winnings from a lottery could improve that one and only life a lot – particularly if the money is used to advance a particular cause that is important to you, rather than used hedonistically.

Losing the cost of a bunch of lottery tickets is irrational if your aim is to maximize how much money you are likely to have in your life. At the same time, betting on a long shot can be rational in the sense that there is a large amount of upside that you have no hope whatsoever of capturing if you do not play.

Expressed another way, the problem with lotteries is that you basically pay $5 for a one-in-a-million shot of winning $1,000,000. The ticket is overpriced and the money is probably wasted. At the same time, there is probably no other way in which you are going to get $1,000,000. At least playing the lottery gives you some chance, however infinitesimal.

The logic is similar to that of buying insurance against your house burning down. If you had a huge number of houses, you would be better off not paying premiums and just dealing with the cost of fires yourself. Because you only have one house, however, you overpay on premiums in order to avoid a catastrophic outcome.

All that said, and as I have argued before, I don’t think lotteries and casinos should be allowed to advertise. It is better for the state to keep gambling legal and regulated, rather than allowing it to become one more racket for organized crime along with drugs and prostitution. At the same time, neither the state nor private companies should be permitted to take advantage of the weak understanding of probability in the general public through advertising a profoundly false promise that winning is likely. Casinos also should not be allowed to serve alcohol.

To sum up, winning the lottery is an extreme long shot, but when you only have a single chance to try something it can be a rational strategy to accept a set risk (the near certainty that the money spent on a ticket is wasted) in exchange for a chance at a large benefit.

Civilian unmanned aerial vehicles

For about US$2,000, you can get a pretty ridiculous camera-equipped UAV, which can be controlled by radio at a range of up to 15km. People fly them using live video streaming to goggles.

One group of people using these drones has made some impressive videos of places like New York City and the Matterhorn. Their work is pretty audacious, both in terms of how they flirt with the destruction of their drones by flying close to obstacles and because of how they flirt with trouble with the authorities by flying low in major urban centres.

These drones may have been part of the inspiration for the drone-related plot points in William Gibson’s latest novel, Zero History.

Related:

Computational photography – Synthcam

I have been experimenting with an iPhone program called SynthCam which is intended to produce interesting focus effects (using synthetic aperture) and reduced noise in low-light images.

It isn’t the easiest program to use, but it does seem like it could produce some interesting effects – particularly when it comes to intentionally limiting depth of field, which is a limitation of the standard iPhone camera.

This article has much more information on the concept behind computational photography and the current state of the art in the field.

Web-connected door control

You know what would be very convenient? If the door to your home had an RFID card reader so that it could be programmed to let in anyone with a particular card. You could give houseguests a few days worth of access, without having to worry about getting keys back from them.

Because it would be web-connected, you could authorize people to have access to your home remotely. You could even have an option for unlocking the door through a web interface – for instance, in order to let a repairperson into your place.

There would need to be good security all along the line, from the radio communication between the RFID cards and the reader to the communication between the door control system and you via the web. Rather than try to achieve that though proprietary means, it would be better to publish all the hardware plans and software code and let people spot weaknesses that could then be fixed.

Who respects fancy degrees?

Apparently, attending a top-tier law school is more useful if you want to become a professor at a top-tier school than if you want to work for a top-tier firm. Quite plausibly, academics are impressed by people who have attended institutions they themselves respect, while law firms may be more focused on a person’s actual performance than the name at the top of their diploma.

I wonder if something like that is true about academia generally: that a doctorate from Harvard is more impressive to the hiring boards of universities than to the governance boards of major non- and inter-governmental organizations, charities, think tanks, governments, etc.

Previously:

The value of a doctorate

On recession and the value of graduate school

Pedaler’s Wager photos

Thanks to the generosity of a fellow photographer, I had access to a MacBook Pro for a few hours tonight and I was able to process and upload my photos from the Clay and Paper Theatre Company’s 2011 summer show: The Pedaler’s Wager.

The show was very colourfully and professionally put on, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. At the same time, I think it may have glossed over some of the hardships of pre-industrial life and some of the benefits of the current global economy. While there are certainly many critical problems with it, and much that needs to be done to make it sustainable, I do think it serves important human needs and that those who are most critical of it are often those who benefit from constant access to its nicest features. That includes things like modern medicine, communication technology, and transport. It seems a misrepresentation to say that the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath have transported the average person from a blissful pastoral state into a situation of agonizing bondage.

Of course, the purpose of art is not to carefully express both sides of every argument. By provoking us to think in new ways, art can give us a better overall sense of context and an appreciation for important facts that were previously concealed.

Roaming without roaming

Data roaming with Fido is ruinously expensive – about a dollar a meg – so I will be foregoing cellular network access while in the U.S.  I will probably find WiFi from time to time and thus be able to update my blog, post to Twitter, and upload photos to Flickr.

The meticulous documentation of my somewhat absurd journey will become punctuated rather than continuous.