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September 22, 2015

Humanities, Social Sciences & Political Assholes

I’ve been meaning to get back into the habit of posting my random thoughts on this blog for quite some time, hopefully, I can start posting regularly again.

The following is a distillation of a Twitter rant from yesterday, plus various conversations I’ve had with people on social media over the past year.

Let’s start with this: what is about social sciences and the humanities that make people think it’s an intellectual inoculation against homophobia, misogyny and racism, or just ill-formed political ideas that would cause additional harm to various minority groups and/or weaker members of our society?

To be fair, it sounds like a good idea on its surface, because learning about human interactions, different types of people, the struggles people go through, etc., “should” make you not just a better person, but a more empathetic and caring person. However:

How do you explain the fact that pretty much everyone running for the GOP nomination was a humanities and/or social science major?

Better yet, economics is a social science, and it’s relatively easily to find conservative economics* majors (or full on economists), with ideas around taxation, minimum wage or the social safety net that would hurt a lot of people if implemented.

Case in point: Paul Ryan, a man who paid for his college education with his father’s social security benefits, a double major in economics and political science.

But there are others:

Ronald Reagan studied sociology.

Mitch McConnell was a history major.

Majoring in Latin American studies hasn’t stopped Jeb Bush from saying spewing a lot of the same immigration rhetoric as other GOP candidates, to be fair, he’s not one of the more extreme ones, but….

Hell just go through a list of GOP politicians and pundits, and you’ll find that a significant % (if not nearly all) were humanities and/or social science majors.

Also as someone who did manage to take some humanities courses here and there despite majoring in engineering, why do we presume that those courses are always taught from a progressive perspective?

I once took a class that spent far more time talking about how brutal the slave rising in Haiti was for the slave masters and white aristocracy, than it did discussing how horrible slavery was for the slaves. Let alone all the other evils of European colonialism.

Needless to say, as a person of Caribbean descent, I wasn’t amused. Especially since we spent so much time talking about other revolutions against tyranny… 

And don’t even get me started on literature classes that gloss over the blatant racism of James Fenimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking Tales” I recall writing in my notes: “Damn, this guy is racist”

I also recall writing in my notes for one of my classes: “are we studying history, or is this a highlight film for the so called triumphs of European colonialism?”

Maybe the humanities does lead people to become progressive, but I’ve yet to see the evidence. Perhaps a better way to look at it is: while these classes can challenge ideas, the fact that so much of it is open to interpretation creates a situation where many students will leave the class unchanged. 

Another part of my rant was directed towards the notion that STEM majors don’t take humanities classes, and if they did they’d be more open minded towards women, minorities, etc.

Ignoring for a second the fact that tech companies tend to have the best benefits, and (in my experience at least) have way more open minded employees than other industries. Let’s address this idea that STEM majors don’t take any humanities courses:

I’ll start by asking you to go to the web site of your Alma Matter, local college, or any random college and look up the major requirements for the following areas of study:

  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  • Computer Science
  • Mathematics
  • Neuroscience
  • Physics

Go ahead, I’ll be waiting here…

…okay, you’re back? I don’t know what University you looked at, but I’m going to guess you discovered the following:

  • The major courses + core (or foundational courses) was usually somewhere between 40-70% of the total credits needed to graduate.  
  • The major was usually offered by that University’s college of Arts & Sciences, bringing with it “distribution requirements” within humanities and social sciences.
  • In many cases someone could major in one of those fields and easily take enough humanities courses to get a 2nd major.

For example: a computer science degree at my Alma Matter required 36-39** credits of computer science courses, 30 worth of math & science and another 30 worth of humanities & social sciences, with the rest (out of about 120-122 total credits) being electives. Meanwhile the history major was 35 credits and the philosophy one was 40.

To be fair, requirements vary between schools and majors, but I think we can lay to rest the idea that STEM folks don’t take a significant amount of social science courses, no?

I’ll also note that engineers are a bit of an exception (this also applies to people getting science or math degrees from their college’s engineering school), as the total credits required to graduate and within major are quite a bit higher than other majors. For example: at my Alma Matter nearly all majors required 120-122 credits to graduate, while my electrical engineering program required 134-139. So while we did have to take six humanities and social science courses and had three “free electives”, our exposure to those subjects was far less than other STEM majors.

That being said, when you’re required to take well over 100 credits that are either in your major or math and science core courses, there isn’t much room for more humanities unless you make it a five year degree***

In any case, considering the world is full if racist, misogynist and homophobic people with humanities and social science degrees, I don’t see how adding more (to the slate of classes they already take) is going to make people in technology related fields more progressive.

Sure, there are people that lean conservative when they arrive at college and change over the course of their time there, but I think that’s a function of a lot more variables than just their humanities course load.

*IMO this doesn’t happen because learning economics causes you lean conservative, more like the subject’s theoretical approach to looking at the world (replete with idealized interactions) makes it easy to justify conservative ideas, or at least provide something to hide behind.

**On the semester system, multiple by 1.5 to get the rough quarter system equivalent.

***Do you want to make engineers pay for another year of college to take humanities courses? Do you want to drive over the bridge made by the engineer who had engineering courses cut out of his program, so he could take more sociology courses? I don’t.

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April 08, 2015

Audiophile Thoughts

I saw something amusing on Twitter a few weeks ago: someone tweeted a photo of their AV setup, bragged about how good it sounded and then trashed the idea of being an audiophile at the same time.

Needless to say, I found this to be rather silly, as I do claims that being an audiophile has been “debunked”.

Silly to a point where you could argue that an alternate title for this post could be: “audiophile, you keep using that word, but it does not mean what you think it means”

But let’s boil things down to their simplest state:

Have you ever heard an audio system and thought it sounded better than another? Have you ever upgraded your headphones and thought the new one sounds better than the last pair you had?

How about folks that buy record players and listen to recently released music on Vinyl as it sounds better than streaming, downloaded music or many pop CDs that are mastered to sound like the radio?

Sounds very audiophile-ish to me.

Because that’s all being an audiophile is: a person who seeks quality audio equipment/good sound. It’s not about buying $10,000 cables, a concept that many audiophiles laugh at, including those that write for audiophile magazines like Stereophile.

Speaking of Stereophile, whether they review a $300 component or a $30,000 one, they do a couple of really cool things:

They tell the exact set-up they used for the test

They describe the exact passages of music where they heard a difference

Everything is measured and tested in a laboratory, so if they say: “Device A will alter the original sound more less than Device B” there is actually objective science behind it.

But back to the main subject: being an audiophile just means you place a high value on systems that sound good, now some people take it to extremes, but most don’t.

Oh, but you claim that no one can actually hear the differences?

I’ll challenge that idea with a pretty simple test you can replicate yourself:

Grab your mobile device of choice, listen to Sade’s “No Ordinary Love” and really listen to the bass line*. When I listen to it on my iPhone as an Apple Lossless track via the included headphones, I just hear, well, a bass line. It’s pretty much the same story when I use my Sennheiser HD201 headphones.  

But what happens when I stream it to the stereo system** in my living room via Apple TV?

The baseline starts to separate into two different sounds: the baseline you’re familiar with and a kick drum playing the same rhythm, in fact, during certain sections of the song the kick drum is actually louder. One such example starts at the 1:30 mark.

Ultimate this is what being an Audiophile is really about: wanting to hear subtle details and differences in music you can’t hear on average equipment, as opposed to placebos and worthless tweaks.

For the record, I’m able to hear many of the differences I described using an aging pair of Dahlquist PDQ 26s***, a Harman/Kardon two channel receiver and a Panasonic DVD/CD Changer. I can’t hear the difference in my office using my MacBook connected to a JVC RX8020 A/V Receiver via a Musical Fidelity (Recommended by Stereophile) D/A Converter and a pair of Paradigm Atom V3**** monitor speakers.

You don’t really need to spend a lot of money to have a high quality system; you just need to spend wisely and match your components well.

There are other examples of details not being revealed until you listen to a track on a higher quality system:

Soundgarden’s “Overfloater” from their “Down On the Upside” album is a good example, as the guitar parts consist of several different guitar sounds blended together. I bought the album when I was in college, so it wasn’t until years later when I had a much better system that I could actually distinctly hear the different parallel guitar tracks.

Bjork’s entire “Vespertine” album is another good example, the track “Aurora” in particular has a rich and complicated sonic texture that is just easier to discern on high quality equipment.

Now these differences may not mean much to you, or you may not care or wish to pay money to hear them, but that doesn’t discredit or disprove their existence.

Sure there are people who pay thousands for cables and tiny cones to put under their CD players, but that doesn’t disprove sonic differences that are actually pretty easy to hear under the right circumstances. Better yet, do we discredit the need to eat healthy simply because there are people who take worthless herbal supplements?  

It’s important to note that source material matters quite a bit, it’s the reason why Stereophile often recommends top “Audiophile Recordings”, and tells you the tracks the use to test equipment. While “Love Deluxe” is a great album to use to hear differences between systems, lossy compression vs. lossless, etc., the typical pop album is recorded and mastered poorly so you may not hear any differences. In fact, moving up to a higher end system may make it sound worse as it will be easier to hear the deficiencies.

But, but, the Pono?

Well, maybe the iPhone is just better, or maybe the first Pono isn’t that good.

Seriously.

I haven’t heard a Pono or read a detailed Audiophile Review of one, but let’s not forget that the iPhone is no slouch. Stereophile magazine has raved about it for about a decade, especially when it’s playing lossless tracks and connected to a high quality iPod dock. So it’s entirely possible that all Neil Young did was build something that’s just equal to an iPod/iPhone, a device that’s already considered Audiophile quality. It could also be possible that a quick listen via headphones to everyday pop music doesn’t really reveal its potential.

Either way, there are literally thousands of songs out there that you can hear additional details in with the right equipment. Considering that’s what Audiophiles are truly after, I hardly think being an Audiophile has been “debunked”.

Footnotes:  

*An all time great bass line in my opinion.

**In case you’re curious: Apple TV connects to my Samsung HDTV via HDMI, which then outputs a digital signal to my Adcom A/V Preamp (aging, noisy and dying, which IMO makes the test more valid than if I did this test with a solid high-end pre-amp), which is connected to a Carver 760X Power Amplifier and a pair of Athena Speakers. Not the greatest signal path because of the Apple TV, but more than enough to illustrate the point.

***Between the Athenas and the Dahlquists, people are going to start to think that I have a thing for buying speakers made by defunct Canadian companies.

 ****They’re an awesome pair of bookshelf speakers by the way, and they only cost me $300. If I were using a better receiver or amplifier I’d hear the difference on those speakers too.

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March 14, 2015
Saw this at Costco today, not sure what this person plans on transporting in it though, because Costco. #Polaris #Cars

Saw this at Costco today, not sure what this person plans on transporting in it though, because Costco. #Polaris #Cars

Tags: cars polaris

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December 17, 2014

Random Tech Thoughts 12/17/2014

Just some random technology & business thoughts:

State Banks

The sudden drop in oil prices and the potential (if not inevitable) disproportionate impact on US shale producers reminds me of a blog post I wrote last year on State Banks. The post was a rebuttal to activist claims that the formation of more state banks would lead to stronger economies, as the state bank somehow insulates a state from negative economic cycles. The Cliff’s notes version was that said activists and journalists didn’t fully understand what North Dakota’s stand bank does, and that their economic stability was due to oil production not the state bank. 

Now that ND’s economy is at risk due to falling oil prices, I wonder where those state bank fans are now?

Peer-to-Peer Lending

I’m sorry kids, but your “technology” platform, throwing in a phrase like “peer-to-peer” and claiming disruption, does not, well, disruption of the financial industry make.

For one, how are you disrupting the financial industry when all the loans are originated through a bank once you collect the funds from investors? Doesn’t this mean that ANY traditional bank could just offer this same service? So where is the disruption?

Don’t worry, I’ll wait, while you figure out how to explain that one.

The other piece is that this model isn’t actually new, quite a few non-bank mortgage and auto lenders worked via the same model: they raised money from investors, and lent money directly to borrowers, while often working with 3rd party banks to help with servicing.

In any case, when I went to Lending Club’s web site and saw the suggestion of rolling over one’s 401k or IRA to invest in loans, and saw the suggestion that if you spread your money out among enough loans that there was a 99.9% chance of getting a positive return, I had a uncomfortable flashback to CDOs and the “Notes” certain non bank mortgage lenders used to sell to raise money.

We’ll see though, just saying the current presentation gives me pause. Especially since it seems to be focused on personal loans for debt consolidation and business loans, this doesn’t seem to be directed at prime borrowers and again, reminds me of near-prime and subprime non-bank lenders.

To be sure, I’m not saying P2P lending won’t be a thing, but, this smells less like disruption and more like a personal loan and business loan version of an age old less than prime, high interest model.

Rock Star Startups

The tech crash happened three months after I got my first grown man job, so, maybe I’m a bit cynical here. BUT, I really wish discussions of hot start-ups had more mentions of profitability and ability to finance growth organically then on how much money was raised in the latest funding round.

This is not to say that raising money isn’t important, however, how successful a business is will ultimately come down to revenues and profits, however, the size of the latest fund raising round shouldn’t be touted as the ultimate metric the way it’s often presented in the media.

You’ve seen the articles before:

“Company X aims to do Y with their great technology”, the article then basically parrots what sounds like talking points from a press release and then follows it up with “they’ve already raised Z dollars”, as if that someone validates all the rah rah fluff.

But maybe that’s why I’m not the CEO of a hot start-up, my main focus areas would be profits, the business relationships we were developing, sales & marketing, etc., raising money would be important, but getting to a point where we’re self-sustaining and officially viable would be more important.

 Apple Pay

A lot of the recent Apple Pay articles have spilled most of their pixels discussing the additional banks that are on board with Apple’s mobile payments solution, while ignoring or paying very little attention the two most important recent developments:

The addition of Winn-Dixie and Albertson’s to the world of NFC payments.

Ars Technica didn’t even mention it.

To put it simply: merchant support trumps bank support, especially when it’s a merchant like a grocery store that many households visit several times a month, if not multiple times a week; because if NFC isn’t available for the most common transactions like groceries and gas, mobile payments will never catch on.

I also wish that journalists would stop writing that EMV upgrades automatically mean NFC as well, as A) the two have nothing to do with each other B) there are a ton of EMV POS terminals available that don’t have NFC C) There are literally thousands upon thousands of merchants who have upgraded to EMV, but NOT NFC.

I also wish people would stop claiming it’s faster (it really isn’t) or that once you use it no one ever goes back. I stopped using it and removed it from my phone, and The Changster still hasn’t used it even though I set it up for her.

Your hype is not reality. 

iPod Anti-Trust

To be fair I didn’t follow the case closely enough to comment, but I will say this:

Cars tend to come with only iPod & iPhone support as far as controlling the device through the car’s systems, the audio and podcast features of the iPhone 6 (at least) are great when they work, but are often undependable, erratic & frustrating and iTunes is an embarrassment for a company with Apple’s engineering chops.

To be specific: duplicates of music and podcasts happens on a regular basis, artwork vanishes, podcasts sometimes show up as on the device but won’t play, the device will stop in the middle of a podcast and switch to music, iTunes synch features seem to work when they feel like it, and music from the same album is often split between multiple albums, even after you edit all the metadata so it’s the same.

None of these things are likely to change anytime soon, due to Apple’s closed ecosystem and lack of competition.

People frustrated with using their iPhones in their cars can complain until their hair falls out, but until several device manufacturers agree on a universal controller for using a device in a car, and there are options to iTunes that work with iPhones and other devices?

Nothing will change.

The push to lock customers in an ecosystem stifles innovation and encourages complacency. Apple will never fix iTunes or the issues with the music and podcast features in the iPhone, as they simply have no reason to. 

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December 15, 2014

Assessing Security Risks with One Question

If occurs to me that if you want to truly judge how vulnerable a company is to network attacks, social engineering and other security exploits, you can skip the security consultants, pen testing, social engineering experts, etc., and just look at how they prioritize their tech/IT projects. In other words: are your company’s security projects prioritized against operations and front-line revenue generating projects or are they prioritized against other security projects?  

Just think about it: if you have a fixed budget and IT executives have to prioritize a sales generating project vs. a security one, the business/revenue project almost always wins. This is especially true if security and front-line projects are competing for the same resources. Goes double if the primary incentives of the people in charge of prioritizing projects are to make sure the business focused items are taken care of and security isn’t a primary concern. 

E.g. how secure can you be if security projects and upgrades are often pushed to the side or delayed?

Behind many a breach, is a security project that would’ve fixed it if it had been made above the line. The other aspect of this is that if security projects are fighting to stay alive, there is no guarantee that newly found vulnerabilities will be resolved in a timely fashion, especially if they aren’t currently causing a problem.

Conversely if you have dedicated budgets and resources for security projects, and a security team that’s empowered to prioritize the projects that fix the most critical issues, you’re more likely to be secure, as security teams aren’t fighting for resources.

Remember, many of the most recent breaches weren’t committed by super genius hackers, instead they were hackers that were just exploiting gaps that I’m sure someone internally already knew about, but didn’t have the resources to fix.

So going back to my original point: I don’t need to be a master of penetration testing, a super hacker or major security expert to figure out how vulnerable your company is. All I need to know is how your company prioritizes security projects and how your security resources roll-up to the highest levels of leadership.

Not having dedicated development resources, funding and leadership for security just might be the biggest exploit of all: an organizational one that prevents you from continually & rapidly evolving your security posture in a way that keeps you safe.

Security is an arms race, so companies should be constantly looking to deploy next gen security measures in order to stay ahead of the attackers, and the only way to do this is with dedicated teams, funding and leadership. To put it another way, while attackers are figuring out how to crack your competitor’s current generation vaults, you should have already deployed the next generation vault and should be near complete on the design for next generation beyond that.

Instead, too many companies are in the “fire drill cycle” where current security is viewed as good enough until you’re breached, and then they go into fire drill panic mode, deploying new security measures until they feel safe again, and then ease back from improving.