Today I learned: A canary trap is a technique to identify an information leak by giving different versions of a sensitive document to several suspects and observing which version gets leaked.
I was familiar with the technique, but I’d never heard the name before, and I was ignorant of the technique’s history.
This Wikipedia article gives 40 years of history. I expect the canary trap is much older than that–thousands and thousands of years.
Researchers are using Shoggoth, a monster out of HP Lovecraft, as a mascot for AI.
Kevin Roose at The New York Times:
@TetraspaceWest, the meme’s creator, told me in a Twitter message that the Shoggoth “represents something that thinks in a way that humans don’t understand and that’s totally different from the way that humans think.”
Attempts to train AI to be more human-like are like putting a smiley face or human mask on Shoggoth. It’s still inscrutable, but it creates the appearance of understandability.
That some A.I. insiders refer to their creations as Lovecraftian horrors, even as a joke, is unusual by historical standards. (Put it this way: Fifteen years ago, Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t going around comparing Facebook to Cthulhu.)
And it reinforces the notion that what’s happening in A.I. today feels, to some of its participants, more like an act of summoning than a software development process. They are creating the blobby, alien Shoggoths, making them bigger and more powerful, and hoping that there are enough smiley faces to cover the scary parts.
Adam Engst at TidBITS writes an in-depth review of the new, experimental Arc browser for Mac. Lately I’m switching off between Arc, Orion, and Safari.
Cory Doctorow: The FDA literally granted pharma company Ferring a monopoly on shit. More precisely, the FDA rescinded its “discretionary enforcement” guidance relating to fecal microbiota transplants (FMTs), where doctors implant a small quantity of processed poop from one person to another, which turns out to be a powerful, safe treatment for serious and potentially fatal intestinal infection. The FDA ruling makes it illegal for doctors to source their poop from Openbiome, a nonprofit that coordinates between doctors, patients, and donors to provide safe FMTs. Ferring conducted clinical trials on FMTs and received approval for an FMT product called Rebyota, which charges $20,000 per treatment, compared to Openbiome’s $1-2k per treatment. So sick Americans will have to pay 10x higher for shit.
We recently learned about “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” a 2017 movie directed and written by Luc Besson of “The Fifth Element,” which Julie and I both love. The previews have the same look and feel as the other movie. It stars Dane DeHaan (never heard of him), and Cara DeLevingne, who appeared in “Carnival Row”—we enjoyed the first season of that—along with a hell of a supporting cast: Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Rutger Hauer and John Goodman.
Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design:
The term brutalism is derived from the French béton brut, meaning “raw concrete”. Although most brutalist buildings are made from concrete, we’re more interested in the term raw. Concrete brutalist buildings often reflect back the forms used to make them, and their overall design tends to adhere to the concept of truth to materials.
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A website that embraces Brutalist Web Design is raw in its focus on content, and prioritization of the website visitor.
Panpsychism is the view that the mind “or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.”
Possibilianism is a religious philosophy that’s open to exploring possibilities. Neuroscientist David Eagleman described it this way:
Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I’m hoping to define a new position — one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story.
The iPhone will auto-reply to text messages—but only when you’re in Driving Focus. I want auto-reply in all Focus modes. I hope that’s coming in the next version of iOS.
I woke up this morning and decided to break up with the novel I’m currently reading. This is a new thing for me; I recently decided to start more books and quit reading more books when they’re not working for me.
I’m not finding that resolution easy. A part of me feels compelled to finish a book once I start, as if failure to complete was wasteful, like not eating all the food on my plate. But of course, that’s ridiculous, and quitting reading a book that isn’t working opens up time to read something I might enjoy more.
The book I’m quitting is “Cetaganda,” by Lois McMaster Bujold. It’s part of her Vorkosigan series of novels. These are far-future science fiction about a hero named Miles Vorkosigan. Miles is the son of one of the most powerful men on the planet Barrayar, scion of a warrior caste. Miles’s father was one of the greatest warriors and statesmen of Barrayan history, who saved the planet after a revolution and coup against the rightful Emperor, and then ruled as regent.
But Miles is not his father; he’s disabled, short and frail, with a rare medical condition that makes his bones fragile and easily breakable. He’s also brilliant, hyperactive, a wise-ass, and prone to getting himself into trouble and thinking himself out of it. The books have an enthusiastic fandom and won a lot of awards.
But I always find myself having to push through the middle of the Vorkosigan books, and in the case of “Cetaganda,” it’s too much pushing.
The Vorkosigan stories are mysteries of one kind or another: murders to be solved, spy plots to be uncovered, military capers to be executed. The plots are intricate. I think the books are meant to be read quickly, over two or three days at most. I read books slowly, over weeks or months, and I get confused about what’s going on in the Vorkosigan novels and who’s who.
The books were written in the 90s, and they already seem a little dated.
Julie went to school with Bujold, though they were not close. And here’s an interesting Wikipedia bit: Bujold’s inspirations for Miles include T.E. Lawrence, a young Winston Churchill, a disabled hospital pharmacist she once worked with, “and even herself (the ‘great man’s son syndrome’).” I’ll have to ask Julie what, if anything, she knows about Bujold’s father.
I may come back to Miles Vorkosigan. But not today.
So what should I read next? I think I’m going to stick with series novels. I like series. Once you find a series you like, they’re reliable, familiar, and comfortable. Here’s what I’m thinking:
Blood Work, Michael Connelly’s seventh novel. Connelly primarily writes about Harry Bosch, an LAPD detective, but he also writes novels about other characters, and this character is new to me, Terry McCaleb, an ex-FBI agent retired on medical disability.
Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies is not, despite the title, by Parker, but instead by Ace Atkins. It’s a novel about Boston private detective Spenser (first name never revealed), who Parker invented and wrote about in dozens of books until Parker died in 2010. Then Atkins was hired by Parker’s estate to continue the series.
The Parker novels meant a lot to me. I read them in my 20s, and they were the last books I read in a period of my life where I drew role models from fiction, which started in childhood. I looked to fictional characters as I tried to figure out how to live life, and Spenser was the last of those for me.
Also, I fell in love with Boston by reading the Spenser books and taking frequent business trips to that city. I moved there in 1992 and decided I wouldn’t say I liked it after all, but I met Julie there, and we moved together to California and got married.
So the Spenser books are a big deal for me.
Ace Atkins has done a surprisingly good job continuing the Spenser series. His first four books are good but could be better, but he gets going with the fifth, Slow Burn. I’ve read other series where a living author tried to pick things up from an original author who died, and they don’t quite work out; Atkins shows that it can succeed.
Slow Burn isn’t Parker’s Spenser; it’s a collaboration between the two writers (one of whom happens to be not living anymore).
Those are the leading contenders for what I’ll read next. Others on the candidate list:
I’ll probably go with the Connelly, but it’ll be hours and hours and hours until I decide, and who knows where the world will take me in that distant future of later today?
What great books have you read recently?
