A Stanford University study has shown that children who postponed kindergarten for up to one year showed dramatically higher levels of self-control. The study uses data from Denmark, where children have access to good pre-kindergarten (starting as early as 12-18 months).
The results of this study make perfect sense to me. It’s a confirmation of something I long believed to be true. I think that whatever parents can do to delay the institutionalization of their child (enrollment into the current industrialized educational system) will greatly help any young mind. I believe more studies like this will show up in the coming years. The sooner the better:
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Ah, parasites! Those pesky little critters that suck the life out of various other organisms. But guess what, they’re more important than most people think. According to a new study, anywhere between 10% to 30% of the world’s parasitic species might go extinct due to global warming by 2070. This might seriously (and negatively) disrupt the ecosystem via the domino effect:
Probably this will add to the list of horrors^ that awaits us thanks to what we’ve done to the planet.
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The title says it clearly enough. A “no first use” pledge might work much better than threats if we want to advert a nuclear war with, for example, North Korea. Given the size of the country’s army, even a conventional weapons conflict would have devastating consequences on the Korean peninsula. But a “no first use” pledge would probably prevent that as well, since it could include something like “no state will use nuclear weapons as long as its territorial integrity is preserved”. Here’s an article that describes all this in more detail:
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Software is becoming more important with every passing year. We now live in a world where processes across the economic and social spectrum can be scaled, optimized and improved through software. Sometimes it’s automation, at other times it’s reinterpreting and transforming entire workflows into something that can be done remotely and collaboratively via various centralized systems (applications, websites, etc.).
Software is also a very new concept in the world of engineering. Its completely immaterial nature makes it difficult to craft using known techniques and processes. Unfortunately, the vast majority of companies out there haven’t yet adapted to software. Sometimes even companies that think of themselves that they are doing software go about it in a completely mechanical way. They put everything underneath the umbrella term “IT” (Information Technology). There is a very important distinction between technology and correctly (profitably) applying that technology.
Good software product design is essential for economic success. However, like the rest of the software universe, product design is a very rapidly changing set of methodologies and practices. Many companies are far behind where they should be in order to produce quality software.
Here are three videos that quickly and painlessly explain some key concepts about product lifecycle. Keep in mind the words of renowned product specialist Marty Cagan: today, “product” is almost synonymous with “software product” because software has become so ubiquitous.
I consider these videos to be a game-changer for anybody involved in building products. No matter what your role is, you are the force that can bring this change in your workplace and help towards building better products.
In the first video, Marty Cagan talks about the root causes for product failure:
[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/02689-WelcomeToFascinatingWorldOfProduct-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’Welcome to the Fascinating World of Product’ desc=’Sometimes even companies that think of themselves that they are doing software go about it in a completely mechanical way.’]
We often hear that we “should take better care of ourselves”, like for some reason we’re missing out on life’s awesome hedonistic opportunities. I always felt that this way of thinking is incredibly superficial. This article explains very well what self-care really means:
I respect the fact that many people have difficult lives. But I also believe that a significant percentage of such people make their life more difficult by not integrating some practices that might make their passage through this existence much more pleasant. That’s slightly paradoxical because enjoying life has so little to do with micro-managing opportunities for enjoyment and everything to do with learning how to dance in your current circumstances.
As one of my favorite quotes says:
“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”
– Viviane Greene
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Thanks to climate-change skeptics, we’ve been fortunate to have a lot of talented, driven people doing great research that proves just how real and dangerous climate change really is. Unfortunately, even with the best of intentions, the media has turned the frequent updates from the scientific community into a deluge of climate change news, which led to the audience developing a sort of selective hearing when it comes to this topic. “Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before”. However, here on Mentatul I need to address dozens of topics while keeping at roughly one post per week. This forces me to be very selective about what I post. So yes, this one is important.
Two articles are the reason for this post. The first one is about farts. Cow farts to be precise. The methane that they contain, to be even more precise, and how it affects global warming:
And then I read this other article^ that lead me to another, even better article, which provides a rather appalling prognosis for our future. And it’s not even “the worst case scenario”. I’m sorry to say, but given all the statistics I’ve seen recently, it seems to be that the following article is presenting a future that has a high probability of becoming reality. And I see very few governments do anything about it, especially when it comes to the world’s biggest polluters.
I am tempted to say that you shouldn’t read this if you’re currently feeling good with your life, because this piece is a real downer. But it is also one of the most relevant and well-written articles on climate change that I’ve come across in the past couple of years. This is an alarm bell made of pure gold:
I consider myself lucky to still have running water, electricity and generally healthy food available. In the same time, I feel it is almost disrespectful towards my child to enjoy all this without doing something about the immediate (speaking on a generational level) danger we’re in. I plan to do whatever I can to raise awareness about this topic. It’s never too late.
[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/02618-LatestGreatestClimateChange-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’The Latest (and Greatest) on Climate Change’ desc=’Thanks to climate-change skeptics, we've been fortunate to have a lot of talented, driven people doing great research that proves how real and dangerous global warming really is.’]
It is said that “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”. Well here’s one guy that did something about the mind poison that is racism (the illusion of separation, taken to the extreme). Some months ago, in the midst of racial tensions at the Air Force Academy, general Jay Silveria delivered a convincing and moving speech against racism:
I am extremely happy when I see that certain people in positions of power take a stand against infectious, debilitating ideologies. As a matter of fact, I’m so happy that I’m going to (almost) ignore the fact that this speech comes from a person that presides over an institution that trains people into the art of killing other people (which is sometimes erroneously called “defending the values we believe in”).
But who knows, maybe the good general will one day hold a lecture against the very concept of war. Judging from this speech only, this is an honorable man that is doing the best he can given the circumstances, which is really all that can be asked from soldiers!
Here’s the YouTube version, in case the other link expires:
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Once upon a time, governments were major stakeholders in most large-scale technological and scientific ventures. Such projects were either built directly by the government, or by companies in which the people had a lot of say. But all that is far behind us. Now-a-days, government isn’t exactly “the people” anymore. And now, it’s corporations who build the telecommunication infrastructure for tomorrow:
I find it rather sad that as I’m typing this, I am pondering which is worse: having my digital life in the hands of corporations that will exploit it however they see fit, or (/and?) allowing governments to keep encroaching on our privacy and freedom? It’s becoming harder to distinguish between the two, especially as corporations have proven time and again that they can easily buy government.
It’s enough to look at how the political freak-show in the USA (not even a full year into its tragic, 4-years lifespan), is already spreading its tentacles across our civilization like a plagued octopus. The monstrosity is currently busy destroying what was left of “the land of the free”. Here’s how the American FCC (Federal Communications Commission) plans to eliminate the Net Neutrality^ laws that the Obama administration painstakingly managed to get through:
They call it “Restoring Internet Freedom”, and as the article above points out, the name is laughable. But then again, given the state of education worldwide (which leads to generalized compliance), governments can go on with passing draconian laws using these disgusting euphemisms.
Here are some even better law names that I’m putting forward so that governments can use in the coming decades:
“Labor Market Liberation” – a law to eliminate those pesky minimum wages.
“Nutritional Defense Initiative” – outlaws all ecological products, so that there can be no competition to industrialized, dangerous food.
“Empowering Citizen Security” – a law that allows citizens to spy on each other for as long as they report to a central authority. I bet they’re going to call that central authority the Situational Technical Assistance for Solidarity Initiative (STASI).
I can come up with more, but I think I made my point.
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Throughout the past years there have been several high-profile occasions when apps were in the news for questionable tracking strategies. Even applications that do not use novel means of compromising our privacy are gobbling up increasing amounts of data while their creators cash in on the profits obtained from selling the user’s digital life^ to the highest bidder. At the receiving end of this deluge of spyware are we, the people.
Even for those of us that do read the list of permissions an app requests upon installation, it is hard to avoid installing certain apps because they come with other features that we need. It’s an old trick that is akin to the Trojan horse. This is how these dubious app creators get in our back yard: by offering something that is 90% useful and 10% spyware, but which must be accepted as a whole.
Devious solutions for the same old need
Smartphone espionage has gotten very clever as of late. Check these two^stories^ about ultrasonic tracking. According to one research, hundreds of Android apps with an install base in the millions include a library that is used for this purpose. The way this works is by listening to ultrasonic audio “beacons” implanted in advertisements. Humans can’t normally hear sound in this range, but smartphones’ microphones can.
When a user has one such application running and an advertisement that includes an ultrasonic marker plays on TV or anywhere around the user (for example radio or an ultrasound-emitting advertisement panel in a shopping mall), the app can make an association between the user and the played content. This can be used for simple tasks such as sending a unique ID back to a service which then sends a shop’s deals to a user, but it can just as well include a lot of other information about the device and its owner.
Some of the things this system can achieve are rather worrying. For example, it can be used for determining a user’s (approximate) location even if the GPS is turned off or out of range. This can be done by having a particular advertisement panel emit a unique ultrasound beacon. This can later be used to determine when the user is in its proximity. The system can also be used to track a user’s TV-watching habits without consent. Some of these uses are legitimate though, like pushing advertisement and coupons to somebody that has given their consent for using this “feature”. A few such apps disclose the tracking prominently. But this is usually not the case.
More recently, the Uber app was found to be capable to record portions of the iPhone screen^. The company defended itself saying that this was done in order to send images with maps to the iWatch (using the iPhone to render the map because the iWatch lacked the required performance). There’s a gazillion ways this can go wrong not if but when hackers manage to leverage this capability in order to steal passwords and other sensitive information. The feature was reportedly removed but it still shows exactly what the smartphone really is. And there’s no way to sugar coat this…
The smartphone is a surveillance device
Economically, it is used by corporations to mine data^ out of people and use it to manipulate them into buying products. The smartphone grew into a fascinating tool for mass surveillance because it comes with a bunch of features that users really want. I mean, it’s really nice to have a browser and a video camera available at all times, right? Except that all these “free” apps are just a gateway for companies that are tracking users ever since advertisers figured how to use our digital lives against us and our vulnerable minds.
Currently, the goal most of these companies have is to get us online for as much time as possible. As for the camera and the other (many) sensors inside a phone, we might end up not being the only ones controlling them. There are innumerable cases of this technology being used with criminal intent. There’s only need for one backdoor to take control of our devices and that backdoor’s existence is ensured by the producers of these devices.
Governments will of course not oppose this (they’ll even encourage it^) because the greatest concern of a government is to maintain its appearance as a legitimate organization. Investigative journalists^ and whistle-blowers^ have greatly damaged governments^ and corporations as of late. By increasing surveillance capabilities under various pretexts, governments and corporations hope to prevent the next public relations scandal. I’m not even blaming them; they’re just trying to survive^. But people who realize they’ve been sold behind closed doors won’t remain the loyal followers that these entities need in order to justify their existence.
To make things easier for themselves, governments will make sure they also have access^ to whatever technologies are deployed on these devices. One problem, however, is that the citizens of one country may use devices produced in another country. What is the percentage of electronics we manufacture in Asia? And then there’s this thing about hardware backdoors^.
Innocent bystanders
A few days ago I was waiting in line for an old lady that wanted to change the battery of her phone. It was a keypad phone of the kind considered modern 15 years ago. The image of her sitting there in front of the cashier will stay with me for a long time because, in an instant, my mind ran through the entire planned obsolescence racket^ and understood the inevitable verdict that will be given by the system this woman fell prey to.
In the past years I’ve become increasingly aware of the hideousness of hyper-consumerism^. But this situation has put a face on it. Of course, the shop couldn’t help her. The only option for the old lady was to switch to some other phone, most probably with a non-replaceable battery, so she can be forced to change it every few years. Not to mention she must adapt to new software every time it happens and probably be at the receiving end of automatic updates that will change features in her phone, which is exactly what an old lady wants from her device (not!).
With corporations making money from data and with governments drooling over the private lives of its citizens, it’s no wonder that phones with replaceable batteries have disappeared off the market (using “water resistance” as a cheap excuse). Yes, there is a likely connection between forcing people to upgrade their phones and the need to make sure that those people voluntarily carry around the latest and greatest in spying technology in their pocket. Hey, some people will even queue for days and pay outrageous amounts for these things.
Reasons & solutions
But why is it like this? The answer is terrible in its cruel simplicity. These are the rules of the Human Game^ at this point in time. What’s terrible is that even though we are directly responsible for creating and tolerating these rules, we also face an extremely powerful opposition to change them. The machine has grown into a huge, lumbering beast whose behavior harks back to our most ancient instincts, such as the imperious need to survive. Corporations need to earn money. They exist for this purpose and this purposealone. So it is no wonder they buy governments and do whatever it takes in order to survive in the jungle of a (stock) market^ that is the very heart of the machine.
Can this all change? Of course it can. And the solution is wonderful in its beautiful simplicity. We just need to change the criteria with which we purchase goods and services and with which we vote. It’s as simple as that. We need to change the rules of the Human Game. Stock market processes can be changed to encourage responsible and long-term investment. Governments can be encouraged to invest into research and education. Corporations will have no alternative but to transform themselves into entities that value the environment and respect their customers. Because otherwise, nobody will purchase what they’re peddling. There’s only need for one commercial entity in every field to prove that this works. This will generate a mass extinction of the old business model. And it’s us, the consumers, who can trigger and sustain this.
The very reason I write these words is because I strongly believe in this change. And what’s beautiful is that the change doesn’t even need to be sudden (and therefore potentially violent). Actually, it can’t be sudden because this modification in people’s mentality will not occur overnight. It will take time until more of us are ready to champion this cause and for it to spread. But it will happen. Of that, I am sure. I just wish that it will happen before another disaster strikes our civilization.
A lovely (even if sad) wordplay
In closing, here are a few other factoids from the war against privacy (I noticed that ZDNet has a pretty good section about all this):
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I love the Internet at times like this. Here’s a beautiful answer to a series of pictures that the elite has shamelessly published online. I never really expect empathy from the likes of those that control financial systems, but this way of launching a “money product” is particularly disgusting. Financial honchos have staged a nonchalant photoshoot as if they were fundraising for orphanages. The online response has been hilarious (while in the same time highlighting the sadness of the situation we’re in):
One of the best comments: “Mnunchin’s wife looks like these bills are part of her master plan to take over Gotham City”
What more there is to comment really? Those that understand will understand. Those that do not, will understand later (hopefully before it is too late). The people happily putting their signatures on those bills are the people that casually wear clothes worth the yearly food budget of countless people crushed over in disadvantaged countries by the industries and mining companies that provide child-labor goodies to the “developed” world. I put “developed” in quotes there because having the biggest guns does not have anything to do with having the wisdom and kindness necessary to advance a species to the next evolutionary step^.
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Because being informed is just not enough anymore…
