Category Archives: Recommendations

Recommendations from around the web.

Romans Sure Knew How to Cook Concrete

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“A bunch of half-sunken structures off the Italian coast might sound less impressive than a gladiatorial colosseum. But underwater, the marvel is in the material. The harbor concrete, a mixture of volcanic ash and quicklime, has withstood the sea for two millennia and counting. What’s more, it is stronger than when it was first mixed.”

I’m quoting from the article below:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/07/04/ancient-romans-made-worlds-most-durable-concrete-we-might-use-it-to-stop-rising-seas/?utm_term=.f37807445b83^

Unsurprisingly, we still have a lot to learn from ancient cultures, even when it comes to technology. Sure, it can be argued that the Romans half-invented this super-strong type of cement, half-stumbled upon it by chance. From what we know, they were far behind us when it comes to understanding complex chemical reactions, but as the saying goes, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”.

In any case, here’s to the advancement of strong materials, mother nature, chance and new technological opportunities for us to survive a rising ocean and who-knows-what we might bring upon ourselves in the coming decades.

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Wise Quotes Pill for 2018

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Some years ago, I began passively collecting random bits of wisdom; quotes I would come across while roaming the web or during daily interactions with friends and colleagues. I didn’t limit myself at including only quotes from famous people. I collected from the anonymous, from the ancient unknown and included even original or quirky sayings I heard during some conversation. My collection of quotes is growing slowly but surely.

Today, I’ll share with you some of the best quotes I came across when browsing through a small section of my collection. Of course, should you want to have a look at the whole collection, you can always find it here^ (Note: I only upload the collection once a year so the link will lead to the file as it was at the publishing time of the latest “Wise Quotes Pill” article).

 

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

 

“Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.”

– Benjamin Franklin

 

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

– Thoreau

 

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

 

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.”

– Ambrose Moon

 

“Our scientific capabilities have outrun our spiritual capabilities. We now have guided missiles and misguided men.”

– Martin Luther King Jr.

 

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them – words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think.”

– Stephen King (Different Seasons)

 

“Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.”

– Henri-Frédéric Amiel, The Private Journal of Henri Prédéric Amiel, 1889

 

“You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

 

“The biggest problem in the world could have been solved when it was small.”

– Lao Tzu

 

“If you want to know the past, to know what has caused you, look at yourself in the present, for that is the past’s effect. If you want to know your future, then look at yourself in the present, for that is the cause of the future.”

– Majjhima Nikaya

 

“We are born in one day. / We die in one day. / We can change in one day. / And we can fall in love in one day. / Anything can happen in just one day.”

– Gayle Forman

 

“Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?”

– Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

 

“I have found that great ideas come when you have a great desire to have them.”

– Charles Chaplin

 

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

– Ray Bradbury

 

“Your state of mind is the most important factor in the outcome of your life.”

– Ziad K. Abdelnour

 

“It’s funny because we ask God to change our situation, not knowing he put us in the situation to change us.”

– Unknown

 

“This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”

– Alan Watts

 

“One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever face in life is choosing whether to walk away or try harder.”

– Ziad K. Abdelnour

 

“Time decides who you meet in life, your heart decides who you want in your life, and your behavior decides who stays in your life.”

– Ziad K. Abdelnour

 

“For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation will suffice.”

– Dr. Michio Kaku

 

“The greatest wisdom is to realize one’s lack of it.”

– Konstantin Stanislavsky

 

“Alone but happy, happy but alone…”

– Adrian Nastase (not the former prime minister of Romania)

 

“Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.”

– Anthony Robbins

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One More Hyper-car for the Hyper-consumerist Empire

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Diversity is beautiful. It’s the reason why our planet is so different than everything else we’ve encountered so far. Humans have added to the diversity through art and technology. But what if there is a boundary after which adding more diversity becomes ugly?

Some people don’t have running water. Some people start their day thanking that their home wasn’t blown up. Some people struggle in a hospital bed. Some people build cars like these:

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/mercedes-amg-project-one-hypercar-revealed/^

And some people buy them.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to be able to afford such a car. It’s “good diversity” to be able to use technology to build masterpieces like the one above. But not until we’ve done some progress in fixing our society. Not while there’s still people undergoing extreme suffering. We have bigger problems to tackle and issues to consider before we can play around on the race track.

Do I blame the engineers that build hyper-cars? Of course not. Besides being a former Formula 1 fan, I know that these people are only doing their job. I do blame, however, a society that doesn’t encourage these bright minds to work on fixing bigger, more meaningful problems. It’s a paradox:

In order for society to begin to want to fix itself, society must first fix itself.

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We Don’t Live in a Computer Simulation (Is That a Good Thing?)

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Every now and then, somebody is amazed at the ever-increasing power of computers to simulate reality. The accuracy of these simulations increases every year, in step with the increase in computing power. This has led some to extrapolate that eventually we will reach the ability to simulate an entire Universe, perhaps even including conscious beings. And if so, what if we’re a simulation ourselves? According to new research, this is, in principle, impossible due to, you guessed it, the most mysterious of phenomena: quantum effects.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/physicists-find-we-re-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation^

The article above presents this as good news. For me, this is neither good nor bad news. Actually, thinking of myself as a simulated object never dulled my sense of reality, nor my respect for life. And besides, if I’m simulated then perhaps there are some mighty creatures watching over my destiny. What I experience right now sure doesn’t feel fake so I couldn’t care less about the technology behind it. In any case, theories come and go and who knows what the future holds? Probably not even the simulators ;).

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What Artists Can Teach Us About Parenting

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Among the first questions I asked myself when I became a parent was: “what parenting book should I read now? Which is the best one?”. What the article below has taught me is that sometimes even an easy read can be more illuminating than all the books in the world. Make no mistake, there is a lot of knowledge that parents should absorb and parenting books are important. But so are little gems like this one, tiny pearls of perfectly concentrated wisdom, ready for you to integrate:

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artists-teach-parenting^

Parenting advice should always be taken with a BIG grain of salt. I personally think that parenting is not as scary or complex as it seems. I stand by my opinion that it’s down to three basic behaviors^. But then again, even though I’m a father, I’m a man, so what do I know?!

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Anything as a Service – A Cure for Consumerism

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We live in the age of hyper-consumerism^. Companies are desperate to convert as much raw material as possible into anything that can be purchased. The machine has been perfected to the point where even leftover byproducts from any production cycle can be fed back into another production line to manufacture something somebody would buy. Sometimes this includes using unhealthy materials, both for us and for the environment. But it doesn’t matter as long as it turns a profit. The machine has to keep producing something, anything, just please, buy it. This is wrecking our ecosystem and is woefully unsustainable.

Awareness regarding the bleak future we might be creating for ourselves after drowning our planet in toxic trash is increasing. However, most people still buy products built to last a very short time because there are no alternatives. And even when certain products could last longer, companies have gotten very good at fooling their followers^ that fashion doesn’t apply only to clothes, but to everything else as well. Now-a-days, many people willingly throw away perfectly operational devices just to jump on the latest model.

But a new economic model is becoming increasingly popular – the monthly payment for a certain service, sometimes metered based on how much a person has used the service. At the moment, this is particularly successful in the digital space (media streaming, software, data and bandwidth, games). Let’s see what a generalized version of this system could mean to our economy and ecosystem in the coming decades. I call it “anything as a service”. The term is already used for software, but in this case, it is truly anything.

The purpose of any post in the Futurology^ category is to launch a wild, boundless speculation regarding what the future holds regarding a certain concept. To get things going, here are some of the things I imagine can be happen in the near future (coming decades) with the widespread use of “anything as a service”. Feel free to submit your own ideas in the comments below. With your approval I may integrate these in the article, giving proper credit.

  • Since I mentioned fashion earlier, let’s start with a lovely example of how a company is disrupting the way people use clothes. Enter Rent the Runway^: for a monthly fee of $159, the service allows you to rent four pieces of clothing or accessories at a time and make exchanges as often as you like. The fee includes shipping both ways, dry cleaning, and insurance. Granted, that’s a hefty fee, but given that the company offers products from top designers (including clothes that retail for $1500), it is understandable. There are other clothing companies that have excellent return polices, even though there are some challenges^ that will need to be overcome.
  • What if instead of having to replace a smartphone every couple of years, or a TV once every five years, there would simply be a smartphone subscription, or a TV subscription? Pay $300 yearly and you are guaranteed the best smartphone in a given class, with a bi-yearly upgrade included (without the hassle of chaining yourself to a mobile carrier or the risk of spending hours bickering only to end up fooled by a sly salesman). Pay $200 yearly and you are guaranteed that your TV is always upgraded to the latest display standards. There will still be plenty of brands to choose from, all with their own different prices and features. Some retailers might even group several brands into the same pricing segment (not everybody cares about what brand their TV is, and if they’re not satisfied they can simply ask for another brand, with all transportation costs covered). Simplicity without harming diversity. Pricing and production philosophy will change drastically and for the better of everybody involved.
  • The main and definitive difference with this strategy is that instead of buying a particular model, you would buy into an entire line. For example, you want a smartphone with a screen of a certain size, featuring a good camera, not necessarily from a certain company. Or you want a TV that is good for gaming. Or a road-warrior notebook that is very light, has a secondary backup battery and has a mobile data subscription included. A buyer would simply add features on top of a base cost, each feature costing an additional $X per year. This will greatly simplify a customer’s decision process and it will make companies more responsible for what they manufacture, since they would lose yearly subscribers if their products aren’t good enough.
  • This will lead companies to improve their designs so that devices can have their parts easily replaced and upgraded. They will have to reuse as much as possible before throwing anything away. Eventually, the reusability standards will spread around companies and lines of products, as a way to reduce costs. If we look at the Rent the Runway example above: it encourages manufacturers to produce quality textiles, as they wouldn’t want these to be destroyed after a couple of washes, which is what happens very often to most clothes today. I have a sweater that I’m wearing since the 90s and it still looks better than some of the clothes I purchased a couple of years ago.
  • What happens when an entire generation of devices or appliances is replaced? This system would make it very simple for these devices to make it to lower price tiers, or be repurposed. For example, previous generation TVs could be used inside airports or restaurants.
  • While most of this will evolve naturally out of the need to keep a product alive for as many years as possible, some governmental regulation is also required, particularly when it comes to batteries and cables. This has become the main tool to force people to replace their electronics. Cables and adapters have always been a gold mine that companies abused in order to obtain additional profit (although it’s becoming quite ridiculous as of late). Design and water-proofing is another lie that companies use when justifying irreplaceable battery designs. Watertight watches have existed for decades and this didn’t prevent their manufacturers from allowing easy access to the device’s innards. Governments should enforce better practices in this area.
  • Another area that is in need of regulation is software. As Apple has proven, it’s not so difficult to regulate software. Did you notice the efficiency ratings on various home appliances? How about having the same ratings, but for software. If I download a text editor, I don’t expect it to take more than a second to start up, no matter how many features it has. Features can be loaded on demand, and based on their complexity, they shouldn’t be consuming ridiculous amount of resources. Anything else is simply bad coding. Poorly designed applications will be rated low on the efficiency scale (E or F). With the advent of machine learning, the process of rating software might become quite easy in the future, driven mostly by automated inspection programs.
  • How would “anything as a service” affect competition? Let’s start with an extreme but very useful example. If we look at Spotify, a music streaming service, it is quite obvious that less popular artists are having a very tough time competing with known artists, because income is based on the number of times a song is played. In turn, playtime is based on the taste in music of the majority, or even worse, on how some producers have become good at forming and exploiting what the general public likes. This situation will probably not be as bad in the case of appliances, electronics and software (unlike art, they have very specific functionalities). Even so, I believe a fix is possible for both situations.
    Again, I’ll be using Spotify as an example. The company’s Discover^ functionality is a recommendation system used to promote all and any music hosted by the service. I have already found hundreds of new artists using this feature. All “pay as you go” markets would have such a system. I believe the functionality can be improved, so that artists and products that are risking bankruptcy can be given an extra lifeline consisting of additional promotion. A human factor could also be introduced in the form of community voting and accredited judges that can save overlooked or underrated creators. Such a system will work well even for the top performers, because increased competition is often a source of great ideas.
    Another factor that can hurt competition is when a company takes advantage of its product catalog in order to force others out of business. Read about the concept of closed ecosystems (also known as walled gardens)^. This also happens within the current retail model, but it might become even more damaging for competition when a company can offer lower subscription prices to customers who purchase more of its subscriptions. This is a challenge that possibly requires regulation by an authority of some kind.
  • There is also one major positive competitive disruption that will occur when “anything as a service” takes hold. Companies that will stick to ways that are destructive towards the environment and disrespectful towards customers will pay a steep price, perhaps even face bankruptcy. If we consider companies to be similar to lifeforms^, what the “anything as a service” model will cause is nothing short of an extinction event of the old business model. And I sincerely can’t wait for that.

The Futurology Disclaimer: I do not claim that my ideas are original. I’m sure these suggestions are just scratching the surface of what can be achieved, but hopefully they’ve scratched enough to get somebody inspired to come up with more. I’m also sure many of these ideas are already being worked on by several organizations. If any of the ideas listed by anybody on this page are original and will benefit any organization, I expect credit to be given where it’s due.

Version history:

2018-02-11 – 1.0 – Written.

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The Spectre of Meltdown

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Security vulnerabilities are a dime a dozen now-a-days. But, when a couple of months ago we learned about Spectre^ and Meltdown^, it finally started to dawn on people just how insecure all our “high tech” really is. We’re using hole-ridden, bug-infested products.

If the Wikipedia articles above are too boring, here’s a relatively more layman-friendly breakdown of what happened:

https://www.wired.com/story/critical-intel-flaw-breaks-basic-security-for-most-computers^

https://www.wired.com/story/meltdown-and-spectre-patches-take-toll/^

I don’t know if the constant deluge^ of security exploits has resulted from the challenges that arise from working with highly complex technology or is caused by some sort of surveillance conspiracy. What’s certain is that this shows just how weak our technology is and how easily it can be overcome.

I will definitely not allow my home to be controlled by “smart devices” based on closed-source technology. And this includes closed-source hardware designs manufactured in factories under the control of expansionist governments:

http://mentatul.com/2016/06/15/cyber-warfare-is-scary/^

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Neanderthals Were More Alike Us Than We Think

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During the past year we’ve learned a lot about our closest primate relatives, the Neanderthals. For example we discovered the fact that they had long childhoods^, which is an indicator of intelligence (in the sense that childhood is time allowed for the brain to mature). We also learned about their social habits, most interestingly the fact that they seemed to have intimate, consensual relationships^ with members of Homo Sapiens (the two species co-existed on Earth for a long period of time).

This article puts it quite nicely. Humans didn’t outsmart Neanderthals, we just outlasted them:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/11/01/humans-didnt-outsmart-the-neanderthals-we-just-outlasted-them^

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Amazing Space Engineering, 40 Years Later

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It’s amazing what engineers can do even today with a 40 years old spacecraft. They just used thrusters that were dormant for 37 years to make an adjustment to Voyager’s orientation:

https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/12/03/voyager-1-probe-fires-long-dormant-thrusters-in-interstellar-space/^

That’s some damn awesome engineering right there! Good job US!

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Inside the Romanian Sex-Cam Industry

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After the recent revelations about the way pornography influences our society^, here’s another sobering piece, this time about the sex-cam industry, the fastest-growing sector of the global pornography business. In Romania, thousands of women work as “cam-girls” from studios and from home.

Let me be clear: it’s not shameful to have a job, and this job is less demeaning to women compared to other jobs in the pornographic industry. But from an ethical perspective, it’s a highly debatable topic. Often, it’s one step away from abuse and in general it tip-toes on the edge of the knife between legal and social inequality.

If you ask the models involved in the business (there is a small percentage of men as well), you can get very different perspectives. One former cam-girl says: “the next step is prostitution, I see that now.” (or filming demeaning pornography) According to another cam-girl: “It’s about selling your brain, not your body.” (I believe it’s probably both).

Here’s the full article:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40829230^

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