Never been one to let the carrier drop

So, one of the things that really irritates me is when a company only offers functionality via apps. This is especially a problem with IOT devices, most of which will end up in the dump in a few years when there’s no way to install the app that enables them to be configured any more, but it’s also a problem with functionality in general.

There’s some major problems with requiring functionality to require a app to be installed

A: There’s some serious privacy concerns. Most people don’t read the list of privileges the app will have, and they can easily include access to the camera, filesystem, radio modem, etc. Even if the app just sends TCP traffic, the user seldom has much control over what that traffic includes, and that traffic can definitely be identifying

B: It is yet another way that the modern world tries to get you locked into upgrade train. At some point the app developers will stop supporting older operating systems and you will be forced to buy a new phone just to run a app you’re required to have in order to access $FUNCTIONALITY.

C: It is yet another way the modern world tries to get you locked into the throwaway economy, in that the manufacturers will stop maintaining apps for devices and they will become unavailable, at which point the devices will be unconfigurable and have to be replaced.

D: Most of the apps I’ve seen are ridiculously bloated. Taco bell needs 100 megs so I can order a taco? Many of them are also massively wasteful of CPU and/or poorly written. Most of them have at least one bug that will crash the app.

E: As a side effect of #D, there’s no chance that the developers know all the library code that’s in all the apps, or that the end users do. So, the apps also act as a security concern in that they may include libraries with security weaknesses that not even the developers are likely to know about

F: Apps are – generally – not friendly to the blind. There’s also the question of whether we should *require* people to have a smartphone in order to participate in the modern world. A particular company I’d like to underline who has done this but has absolutely no excuse for it is Venmo, who has chosen to remove the payment functionality from their web site in order to force users to install their app – probably partially because they can then sell private data about those users. I have reported them to the ADA in the hopes that it gets them forced to return the functionality to their web site.

In general, I am against the idea of installable apps in favor of web sites. A lot of apps are really just web sites wrapped, and with html5 increasingly we can get access to specialized hardware like GPS and video cameras without needing to install anything.

It strikes me as a dystopian world that requires people to own, not just a smartphone, but perpetually newer models of smartphone in order to participate. I think as end users we should collectively refuse to install apps whenever possible.

Another subject of dystopia that I should discuss in the future is the forced “upgrade” to newer and often worse versions of user interfaces.

So, one thing I forget that a movie I was watching reminded me of – the USA and the USSR are in essence holding a gun to the head of every person on the planet. If we were to ever have a nuclear exchange, the resulting nuclear winter would kill most of the people here. And we, of course, are selfish enough to think that capitalism and our perverse, twisted variant of Christianity are worth threatening everyone in the world.

We should voluntarily put down our gun.. but we won’t, because if there’s two defining traits of the USA’s military machine, they are selfishness and stupidity.

This is part of why I have so much trouble when people post their “if you like your freedom, thank my daddy” memes. Because the US army doesn’t fight for freedom – they fight to perpetuate slavery. We’ve overthrown free democracies in order to install our preferred autocratic leaders, we’ve killed millions of people in wars that were started over lies so our war machine could profit. I don’t understand how people can remain blind to all this.

So, one of the standard lies that conservatives push is that illegal immigrants “steal jobs”. This is a convenient thing for the conservative leaders to have gotten them to believe, but it doesn’t hold a lot of water. The same people are still doing the same jobs they always have.

What’s actually going on is that the US has carefully restricted immigration while continuing to advertise for i.e. farm workers in other countries, *knowing* that some would be desperate enough to become “illegal” and therefore have a major lack of rights. The existence of “illegals” does in fact hurt US workers insofar as the bosses are always going to choose a employee they can abuse over one they can’t – but in fact the best solution is just to grant citizenship to all of them. They’re not stealing jobs US workers are likely to take or even have the skills to take – and allowing them to bargain for better working conditions is to *everyone’s* advantage (see repeated discussions about how the rich do not actually understand how money works / are apparently morons or incapable of really large scale thinking). If these people have more money, they are not likely to hoard it, they will spend it – either by sending it home or by spending it in the USA. Either way, it will be increasing the velocity of money and therefore increasing the number of good things that get done.

If Joe Sixpack would like to look for who has “stolen” his jobs, he should probably look towards advancements in manufacturing and automation.

The videos for the two twitch broadcasts I did are now available for any who want to see them.

Show #1 – 2/15/21 – Setlist:
Sheer-Solo-TwitchBroadcast-021521.mp4

John’s Song (Original / M.Mesford/Sheer)
City Of New Orleans (Cover, Arlo Guthrie)
This City (Cover, Steve Earle)
America (Cover, Simon & Garfunkel)
Black Velvet (Cover, Alannah Miles)
Me and Bobby McGee (Cover, Kris Kristofferson)
Comfortably Numb (Cover, Pink Floyd)
Blackbird (Cover, J. Lennon)
House of the rising sun (Cover, traditional)
Closer To Fine (Cover, Indigo Girls)
A few of my favorite things (From “The Sound Of Music”)
One Tree Hill (Cover, U2)

Show #2: 2/20/21 – Setlist:
Sheer-Solo-TwitchBroadcast-022021.mp4

1% (Original, Sheer/M.Mesford)
Don’t Dream It’s Over (Cover, Crowded House)
The original broadcast included Dry County (Cover, Bon Jovi) which has been omitted due to technical issues
Us And Them (Cover, Pink Floyd)
Still Alive (Cover, Jonathan Coulton)
Tis Of Thee (Cover, Ani Difranco)
One (Cover, U2)
Lost Angeles (Original, Sheer/T.True/Alex)
Puff the Magic Dragon (Cover, Peter,Paul&Mary)
The Way It Is (Cover, Bruce Hornsby)
Will The Circle Be Unbroken (Cover, Traditional)
Imagine (Cover, J.Lennon)
Don’t You Forget About Me (Cover, Simple Minds)

Encores: Angel From Montgomery (Cover, J. Prine) / The Promise (When In Rome)

So, supposedly the ‘experts’ are claiming that the current decline in COVID cases has nothing to do with the vaccines. My suspicion is these “experts” have not played with a computer simulation. (Source: USA Today)

In my simulations, spread of a virally propagating phenomenon is *extremely* sensitive to changes in Nsub0, the number of cases that each case goes on to generate. Lower Nsub0 by 8%, the output effect is much more than 8% reduced. Lower it below 1.0, the fire slowly goes out.

I do agree that some of the decline in cases is because we’re being more careful because of the peak in cases. But I also suspect some of why people are being more careful is there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s much more difficult to say “let’s remain vigilant for a indefinite period of time” than it is to say “let’s remain vigilant for five more months”, which is what we’re now looking at. As a result, people who ordinarily would be less careful are being more careful. I have several friends this is true of. Therefore, the vaccine has a psychological effect that lowers Nsub0, as well as the ways that it obviously physically reduces Nsub0.

Now, I’ll also acknowledge some of the reduction of cases is we no longer have incompetent clowns at the helm – the ship is now being steered by adults, and as a result we’re probably not going to run into every single reef we possibly could any more. All that said, I guarantee you at least 1% – and more likely 10-15% – of the reduction in cases is the result of the vaccine.

So, several times over the years I’ve thought me and Elon Musk should sit down and have a discussion – which would probably, I readily admit, turn into a argument. But we have a lot of things in common, interest wise.

I am often struck by how Elon and Tesla both have the same sense of showmanship, and the same tendency to make utterly batshit claims occasionally.

Elon’s got some great ideas (reusable spacecraft, electric cars, possibly even underground transit) and some reeeeeally bad ones (hyperloop, semiballiastic orbital travel for point to point on earth). But I want today to address a particularly nutty idea he’s come up with – that we’d be able to do a manned Mars mission by 2026. (Claim made here).

This is absolutely true – if we don’t mind that it’s a one way trip, and that we’ll be sending people to die on Mars in a few weeks or months.

However, the tradition in American spaceflight is we don’t consider the crew expendable. Which means a more reasonable timeline is 2046 if we use conventional fuels, or 2036 if we use a NERVA.

Now, I know in general the world is against NERVAs, and I don’t deny that they’re a bit risky – if we did use a NERVA we’d probably have to send up the fuel rods encapsulated in the best tech we could put them in, and assemble them in space. I do feel like various forces have overstated the risk of using nuclear fueled spacecraft, and that’s another whole topic. But, I want to make the case for using a NERVA here.

If we used a NERVA, we would not need combustible fuel, just ‘reaction mass’. THis means any liquid or gas that can be liquified would do! This makes it easy to guarantee a return flight, assuming the spacecraft arrives in one piece on mars, because you can

A: Use the same reactor fuel to run a reactor that compresses Mars’s atmosphere into the reaction mass tanks
B: Use the same reactor fuel to power heat & light onboard the spacecraft and a connected ‘Hab’ a la the Martian
C: It’s very likely a NERVA would not suffer from many of the ‘cold soak’ issues that a conventional rocket engine does, because NERVA designs often involve very few moving parts and by definition the reactor itself is going to get the whole system plenty hot by the time the jet fires

However, given that we’ve shelved NERVA technology, it would still be many years, even if we used a NERVA, before we could talk about going to mars and returning. I don’t know if Musk is outrageously optimistic, or if he’s doing the ‘just one more hill and we’ll be at the top of the mountain’ technique of pushing humanity along.

Anyway, without a NERVA, let’s talk about the challenges, so we understand why 2026 is ludicrous

#1: With a combustible fuel rocket, carrying enough fuel for a two way journey is a non-starter. It makes the fuel load *the square* of the amount you need for a one way journey, because you must carry the fuel to move the fuel.
#2: With a combustible fuel rocket, generally after a burn adequate to reach escape velocity on earth, some maintenance must be done before another burn can occur. Very likely this would have to be done in orbit above mars. Fixing things in space is *tricky* and takes months of simulations and practice to pull off.
#3: With a combustible fuel rocket, a very real concern is ‘cold soak’.

a) Most spacecraft to date have avoided the challenge of trying to ignite something that has been sitting at -200 degrees by using hypergolic fuels – that is to say, fuels that when two dissimilar parts are mixed together, ignition happens automatically. However, hypergolic fuels are much less efficient than oxidized fuels AND they’re incredibly toxic. They are not suitable for a escape velocity rocket anywhere much bigger than the moon.
b) If not using hypergolic fuels, you actually have to figure out starting up the fuel and oxidizer pumps, then igniting the mix coming out of them. Bunch of moving parts to get all working together.

#4: We’ve often spoken of using a combustible fuel rocket and “making the fuel on mars”. If we can find water, we can electrolyze it and make hydrogen and oxygen, then liquify them and make fuel. OK, I agree, all that is true, but there’s a lot less sunlight falling on Mars than on Earth. Doing that with a solar array is going to take a loooong time (and at the same time we’ll also have to make enough power for heat & light for the crew). So we’re probably going to have to send a nuclear reactor to Mars anyway, just to make the fuel, unless we want to try to keep men alive on Mars for a year on our first foray – something that is also likely to end in a dead crew.

I’ve been having tons of fun with OBS and setting up scenes, filters, and the like. Most of the bugs are out. My twitch channel is https://twitch.tv/sheerpanic_. (note the underscore)

Planning a “official” transmission for Feb 15 at 6 PM. In the meantime, I’m doing test transmissions – I will delete the truly horrid ones and leave the rest up until they time out.

So, one thing I should probably be more clear on. While I rant repeatedly about republicans here, for the most part I mean the people actually in power. Granted, I am also sad at the people who put them there, and I do feel as if *real* conservatives have been totally deplatformed. I don’t agree with real conservatives, but I don’t think they’re evil. They just have a different definition of utopia than I do, which is kind of a one man’s heaven is another man’s hell sort of thing. The people who I loathe are the people who have risen to the top of the republican party, and who show a distinct delight in dirty deeds, a willingness to cheat, a complete lack of honor or morals, and that kind of thing. Not the man on the street.

For that matter, for all the denigration of the folks who broke into the capitol on the 6th – if the things they had believed were true, they would have been heroes. The real villians on the 6th where the lying president and the willing-to-cosign-his-BS republican leadership. The people who broke into the capital are mostly guilty of being gullible and easily lied to – something that we all have probably been a time or two.

Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bakker, it’s amazing how much parts of the story remind me of Trump. I guess grifters gonna grift, and the grift has changed very little over the years. I hope that as part of Trump’s sentence, some of his grifted money can be taken and put to some use better than the ones he would think of to put it to. Then again, Trump’s faithful don’t seem to have objected to Steve Bannon being pardoned for stealing their money – I guess they just keep telling themselves it’s all fake news.

So, I have gotten a twitch account at SheerPanic_ (note the underscore at the end). I will be setting up over the next few weeks to do a show in late Feb – I did my first test transmission today, and while there were a few minor warts it went better overall than I had any right to expect. I apparently need to get over yet another type of stage fright.. (it’s so bizarre. I’m over the “stage fright when multitrack deck is running” and I’ve put a pretty good dent in the “stage fright while performing IRL” but apparently video broadcasting is yet another thing.

It’s also never going to be beautiful – I don’t anticipate millions of viewers or anything like that, so I’m not going to build a set or set up special lighting for it. I will arrange to have multiple camera angles, and I will hard-mount them so they don’t get in the way when I’m doing other things in the studio. I’m going to see if I can set up rules in OBS to switch randomly between cameras as well.