Geek stuff – Page 64 – a sibilant intake of breath

‘Failure due to dishonesty’ at SFU

Last year, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver introduced a new grade for university courses: ‘FD’ or ‘failure due to dishonesty.’ Department chairs are empowered to give the grade on the basis of “behavior [that] warrants a severe penalty”. Usually, it is applied to repeat offenders. The grade continues to appear on a student’s transcript until two years after graduation.

To me, this seems like a sensible thing to do. Particularly when it comes to take-home essays, cheating in university is easy. When students do it, they harm the quality of education that everybody gets, while also gaining unfair advantages when it comes to things like scholarships. Having a mechanism for conveying the fact that someone has behaved in a seriously improper way (rather than failing a course for some more acceptable reason) would be beneficial both in terms of deterring bad conduct and by giving an obvious sign to anyone making decisions on the basis of a transcript, whether the issue at hand is a scholarship, grad school admission, or a job.

Password reuse

The latest XKCD comic identifies one of the major security failings of the internet today: the tendency of users to use the same password on more than one important site. It’s fine to use the same password for a bunch of news sites that do not store important personal information. What’s foolish is using the same password for a potentially vulnerable site and for something important, like a bank’s website or the password on an encrypted hard drive partition. Doing so risks allowing someone to compromise your information, one step at a time.

Another related risk is password recovery systems. Countless websites allow users to either have their password emailed to them or reset their password via email. That means that anybody who gains access to an email account linked to such features can then gain access to any sites that rely on that sort of password replacement system.

The wisest thing seems to be using strong unique passwords for email and other important sites, then having a couple of lower tier passwords to use for general sites that do not pose security risks. Random.org has a password generator, though the trick of building up a password from a memorable piece of music or poetry is probably less troublesome and still quite secure. An alternative approach is to have unique passwords for everything and rely on a password management program (or a piece of paper kept guarded in your wallet) to keep track of them.

Online security would also be better if all sites allowed the use of passphrases, rather than just passwords (and sometimes ones with an absurdly short maximum length). Two-factor authentication can also help.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize winning 800-page account of the history of the atomic bomb is a comprehensive and highly important book. He covers the science, from the earliest theorizing about the structure of the atom through to the early stages of the development of thermonuclear weapons. He also covers the political and military history associated with the Manhattan Project, and touches upon attempts to develop nuclear weapons in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Rhodes also goes beyond straight history to examine the scientific and military ethics associated with the development and use of the bomb, while also raising questions about what the existence of nuclear weapons means for global politics in the long term. The book goes beyond being a detailed historical account, by also engaging in serious ethical questioning about the implications of this dreadful technology. The book is also quite philosophical in places, such as when contemplating the nature of science.

One overwhelming message from Rhodes’ book is the horror of modern war – from ingenious combination poison gas attacks during WWI through to strategic bombing of civilians in WWII and the ongoing threat of thermonuclear annihilation. While nuclear weapons have certainly increased both the actual and potential horror of war, Rhodes uses appalling examples to show how they are not at all necessary for people to treat one another atrociously. That in turn affects the ethical status of using atomic weapons: was doing so preferable to invading Japan with conventional forces? Were any other alternatives available? Regardless of how you answer such questions for yourself, Rhodes’ account of warfare is one that cannot fail to produce revulsion in whoever reads it. His extensive use of primary documents and quotations – particularly when describing the destruction wrought by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – is effective both at conveying the history and providing some understanding of how people were thinking at the time. Colourful anecdotes also give a human quality to the account, such as when Rhodes describes personality clashes between military officers, or the existence of a women’s dorm at Los Alamos that was “doing a flourishing business of requiting the basic needs of [the] young men, and at a price.”

In addition to providing the broad strokes of history, Rhodes provides fairly detailed accounts of the lives and personalities of the key scientists, military figures, and politicians. Indeed, one of the most interesting things about the book is how it draws together timelines that would normally be treated separately: scientific discoveries alongside social and geopolitical developments. Seeing them described in parallel gives the reader a strong sense of context, and hints at some of the linkages between scientific advancement and other aspects of history.

I have some minor quibbles with The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It doesn’t always define terms at first usage, which could make some passages difficult to understand for those who don’t have a pre-existing familiarity with the subject matter. He also provides extremely little information on the spies within the American nuclear weapons program who provided so much critical information to the Soviet Union, greatly speeding the development of their nuclear and eventually thermonuclear weapons. He also only hints at how a permanent nuclear institution emerged in the United States. While many at Los Alamos scattered at the end of the war, there were those who realized as soon as the theoretical possibility of nuclear weapons arose that they would profoundly alter the security of states and the relationships between them.

Ultimately, Rhodes shares the conviction of the physicist Niels Bohr that nuclear weapons have fundamentally changed world politics. He argues that they have “destroy[ed] the nation-state paradoxically by rendering it defenseless” and calls upon states to accept the necessity of “dismantl[ing] the death machine”. Specifically, he argues that nuclear weapons make the settling of disputes between states by armed conflict impossible, creating the need for some form of world government. Rhodes stresses the risk of accidental or unauthorized war – a risk that can only grow in severity as more and more states acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Unfortunately, it is hard to share his conviction that such a transformation is really possible. For people of his generation, the fact that most of humanity could be wiped out in less than an hour in a major nuclear exchange is a novel and terrifying feature of life. For those who were both during and after the Cold War, it is a reality that most have been aware of since childhood. Still, there is every reason to continue to try to reduce the risks associated with nuclear weapons. Doing so includes working to prevent the proliferation of such weapons to new states, as well as working to reduce the danger of accidents and the sheer number of weapons deployed.

Rhodes continues the history of nuclear weapons with a successor volume on thermonuclear bombs: Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. In the course of reading Rhodes’ book, I was also compelled to write posts on cancer and the neutron, anti-Semitism, the nature of human rights, Pearl Harbor, and the distinction between nuclear ‘devices’ and deployable weapons. Rhodes also has a third book on nuclear weapons – The Twilight of the Bombs – which I certainly aim to get around to reading eventually.

Spies and the media

Earlier, I raised the question of whether spies are useful given that you cannot fully trust them.

The other night, I realized that much of what spies did for monarchs in the past is now done by the media. Rather than having a person in a foreign capital who you trust to relay current information, you can count on a vast media apparatus doing so in a reasonably open and effective way. The media is better than a spy because they have more resources and are unlikely to be feeding false information specifically to you (though they do get things wrong at times).

Indeed, it is a fair bet that most of the fantastic volume of reports produced by America’s new intelligence apparatus are primarily recycled from unclassified news sources and the internet.

The melt rate in Greenland and Antarctica

The latest issue of Nature Geoscience features an article by David Bromwich and Julien Nicolas, in which they produce an estimate of the rate at which the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting in response to climate change. Their estimate is based on satellite gravimetry using the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission (mentioned before). They concluded that previous estimates hadn’t properly taken into account the phenomenon of isostatic rebound and that, as a consequence, the rate of ice loss is about half what was estimated before:

With glacial isostatic adjustment modelled in, the loss from Greenland is put at 104 gigatonnes, plus or minus 23 gigatonnes, and 64 gigatonnes from West Antarctica, plus or minus 32 gigatonnes.

On the basis of this, they concluded that icesheet loss accounts for about 30% of observed sea level rise, rather than the 50% estimated before. The remainder is the result of the oceans expanding as they warm up.

Inevitably, the reduced ice melt estimates will be jumped upon by climate change delayers and deniers. This once again re-enforces the asymmetry in the debate between scientists and those who argue for inaction on climate. The latter never admit their mistakes but jump on any correction, error, or update from scientists as proof that climate science is deeply uncertain, and that no action should be taken now.

Kessler Syndrome

When an atom of uranium undergoes fission in the right circumstances, it produces multiple neutrons which in turn induce fission in other uranium atoms, creating a chain reaction. Today, due to a lack of caution on the part of governments, there is a risk of something similar happening to satellites in orbit around the Earth. When they collide or get blown up, satellites produce large quantities of fast-moving debris. This can cause additional satellites to disintegrate, in turn.

The nightmare scenario is one resembling a nuclear chain reaction, in which a small number of initial collisions produce debris, additional collisions, and debris in an escalating cycle, until certain orbits are no longer safe and usable. This scenario is called Kessler Syndrome, a possibility first identified in 1978 by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler.

The risk of this outcome can be reduced by improving procedures in the future. For instance, satellites can be designed so that they fall out of orbit when they cease to be useful. There could also be financial incentives put in place to encourage the operators of satellites to behave responsibly at the end of their lives – for instance, a bond that is paid when the satellite is launched and which is refunded when it burns up in the atmosphere. If a satellite is simply left to die in orbit, the bond money can be put into an insurance fund, to compensate the owners of any satellite that it collides with.

It may also be possible to deal with some of the existing junk in space, using a variety of methods such as lasers, the after-the-fact attachment of small disposal rockets to existing satellites, or possibly the use of some kind of membrane to catch small pieces of debris.

Quantum cryptography

In theory, quantum cryptography (mentioned before is as good as a one time pad, without the need for a secure channel through which to exchange keys. Potentially, it could also employ quantum phenomena to verify that nobody is eavesdropping.

In practice – as with all cryptographic systems – there are weaknesses to be exploited. One known attack exploits a weakness in some sorts of photon detector. Another works by manipulating synchronization signals.

Quantum cryptography may well have some useful applications, but people who expect it to be foolproof and completely secure probably aren’t thinking too well.

Non-nuclear EMP

Several fictional portrayals have drawn attention to the possibility of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) being used as a weapon, capable of disabling or destroying electronic equipment over a wide area. Such pulses can be created by detonating nuclear weapons at high altitude, though doing so in a war would provoke international outrage. To get around that, the United States and possibly others have developed non-nuclear EMP generators:

One such weapon uses a small charge of explosive to ram an armature down the axis of a current-carrying coil, squeezing its magnetic field so violently in the process that it emits a powerful burst of electromagnetic energy over distances of several hundred metres. Another type employs a Marx generator (a machine used for simulating lightning strikes) to dump a large electrical charge stored in a bank of capacitors into a specially shaped antenna.

American defence forces have converted a number of cruise missiles to function as non-nuclear EMP generators. Apparently, cars parked up to 300 metres away have had their alternators, ignition coils and engine controls disabled this way. Such e-weapons are said to have been used in Kosovo, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan.

Intriguingly, a pair of such devices has recently broken cover. The Counter-Electronics High-Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) is an unmanned aircraft fitted with a microwave pulse generator—presumably for disrupting enemy communications. The Pentagon has also announced that it is deploying an electromagnetic weapon, believed to be called Max Power, for detonating roadside bombs and disabling enemy vehicles. Both CHAMP and Max Power mimic the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear explosion—albeit over a narrowly focused area and without the geomagnetic effect.

Such weapons could be useful for reducing civilian casualties in war, particularly in situations where military targets are located in civilian areas. For example, if a state put an air defence RADAR station in a residential area, an EMP weapon could disable it at lesser risk to the civilian population, compared with conventional munitions.

Apparently, electromagnetic pulses can also be used to punch holes through steel for industrial purposes.

Subpixel rendering

I am often struck by how websites look so much better on the average Mac than on the average Windows machine. I think one major reason for that has to do with how fonts are rendered:

Mac OS X’s Quartz is distinguished by the use of floating-point positioning; it does not force glyphs into exact pixel locations, instead using various antialiasing techniques, including subpixel rendering, to position characters and lines more accurately. The result is that the on-screen display looks extremely similar to printed output, but can occasionally be difficult to read at smaller point sizes.

By contrast, subpixel rendering seems to be off by default on Windows machines. Turning in on in Windows XP is straightforward enough, however:

Click Start, click Control Panel, click Appearance and Themes, and then click Display.
On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
Click to select the Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box, and then click ClearType in the list.

I still don’t think it looks quite as good as the Apple system, but it does seem to improve serif fonts especially. Without it, they tend to look rather awkward and spidery.

Two axes for the left-right political spectrum

Ubiquitously, people use the left-right spectrum to sort people, political parties, and governments according to their political views. Like any model, it has its simplifications. At the same time, it is useful enough to be worth retaining.

That being said, this categorization can conceal important axes of disagreement. Not everyone on ‘the left’ or ‘the right’ agrees. For example, this is demonstrated by the vast differences between libertarians (generally considered right wing) and social conservatives. The former want to legalize drugs, allow gay marriage, and let people have whatever kind of sex they want. The latter sometimes want to lie to children to prevent sex and drug use, use scripture as inspiration for law, and preserve existing power structures.

One more complex model that I think is useful takes two considerations into account:

How necessary do you think government is? Can it be beneficial?
How important are an individual’s own values, compared to those of their community?

On one axis, there is the range of views from ‘government is beneficial and absolutely essential’ to ‘government is harmful and not needed.’ On the other is an axis from ‘individuals should be free to live however they want’ to ‘people should live according to an external moral code’.

All combinations are possible. Anarchists agree that government is not needed and probably harmful, but disagree about whether we should all follow a particular ethical framework and, if so, what the framework should resemble. Some anarchists assume that – freed from government – people would probably arrange themselves into communistic little autonomous communities. Others prefer rather more militant notions of what anarchism might involve.

People of all political stripes disagree about the extent to which traditional or religious values should motivate how people behave, as well as the degree to which they are embedded in law. For instance, some people would like government to enforce morality by treating adultery as a criminal offence, or by criminalizing abortion, or by restricting the use of climate damaging fuels, or by forbidding companies from bribing public officials, etc, etc.

Of course, there is a big difference between enforcing ‘harm principle’ ethics, where only actions that damage unconsenting bystanders are restricted, and a more open-ended enforcement of morality by government. For people deeply concerned about how one person doing what they wish can prevent others from having the same freedom, government is often seen as an essential mechanism for preserving the overall liberty of everyone.

One element that is not well captured in this model is the range of different moral codes people want to see applied. These include everything from ‘traditional family values’ to various forms of religious fundamentalism to non-religious but dogmatic social philosophies like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.

Still, I think this framework has some use, when it comes to understanding the range of political views that exist.

[Aside] To clarify my own view, I naturally recognize that governments can be extremely harmful: even oppressive to the point of murderousness. That being said, I think they are necessary because of how interconnected the world has become and, at their best, can do enormous good.