Internet is becoming more and more polluted with junk-mail, people selling crap, and businesses which don't know their place on the net. They're all trying to make this wonderful place (i.e.: the net) in to hell (i.e.: real world). Internet should be viewed as a place of imagination, creativity, and most of all: fun. Internet is not some really advanced tool for searching for people to rip-off. It's about searching, and finding, things which are useful, helpful, and promote the sharing of ideas. This is what this site is striving to become.

Why today's Web blackouts are working. Yey, ...and this site made all the difference... eh, eh, eh.

Though seriously, it was a major pain not to have wikipedia for a bit... until everyone realized you could just hit escape real fast as the page is loading.

Kodak files for bankruptcy. Woa. Corporate evolution, with old dinosaurs going away... Strangely, Bill Gates is quoted as saying "kodak is finished" around 1980s time frame. It was pretty obvious for over a decade to anyone-but-Kodak that they had their eggs in the wrong baskets, or something.

- Alex; Thu Jan 19 07:54:48 EST 2012
January 19th at wikipedia...

Killed the site for a day (e.g. in line with a buncha other anti-SOPA folks this Wednesday).

Housing: The one bailout America could really use. Hmm... That I completely disagree with. Like the story comment: ``How can you "fix the market" is this some kind of communist oxymoron?''

- Alex; Wed Jan 18 01:18:41 EST 2012

Hmm... House Kills SOPA. Yey. But... Wikipedia, Reddit plan blackout in SOPA protest (?).

China's economic growth slows. That picture in the article is amazing. How the heck does anyone think it's a good idea to stack people so closely into such high density.

- Alex; Tue Jan 17 07:59:11 EST 2012

Yey, Friday 13th!

What the heck is wrong with domain registrars? Wasn't it not long ago that domain names were dirt cheap, and now suddenly profphreak.com auto-renews for $43 for 1 year! (and looking at other domains, it doesn't look much better). E.g. network solutions renew for 5 years and save a whooping 2% off their outragious everyday price.

- Alex; Fri Jan 13 23:11:46 EST 2012

Adjusted my Hawaii travel plans a bit... Will fly out to LA next Friday, spend two days in California, then fly onto Hawaii :-D

- Alex; Wed Jan 11 00:04:22 EST 2012

Went to summit Mt.Marcy; went from Loj to Colden Lake, then summit Marcy from the south, descend via north side, and back to the Loj. Just about 20 mile walk. Below the tree line, it's amazing---snow stacked feet thick on tree branches... complete calmness, no wind, no sounds of any kind. Pretty warm. Just amazing.

Above the tree line... urgh. very very windy, and very very cold. There's no "snow" above the tree line, there's just a layer of ice on the mountain, with very thick fog making seeing *anything* difficult. Took me an hour to get through "last 300 feet" to the summit--got lost, had to double back, each time going up and down, etc. The fog made it impossible to see the "next cairns" from the one you're standing next to... and since nobody ascended via south trail that day before me, there were absolutely no marks in the ice. No trail to follow, etc. Luckily on the way down via north trail I could follow a path of crampon tracks left by someone not long before..

- Alex; 20120107

Don't Copy That Floppy!

- Alex; Wed Jan 4 08:06:05 EST 2012

Stocks in 2012: Up, up, but not away... ``Investment strategists and money managers expect the S&P 500 will rise 7%, on average, in 2012, according to an exclusive CNNMoney survey.'' Hmm... is that a prediction of economic strength or inflation? If say inflation hits 15% a year, then I'd imagine S&P may actually run up 7% or so...

In unrelated news, bought Kalalau Trail camping permit...

- Alex; Tue Jan 3 08:25:52 EST 2012

Happy New Year!

- Alex; Mon Jan 2 21:20:51 EST 2012

So this is it... the year ends.

- Alex; Sat Dec 31 02:52:50 EST 2011

Been thinking... the problem with human race and energy is not that there's a lack of energy, it's the lack of utilization of that energy. If we really had an energy shortage we wouldn't worry about global warming, we'd be saying ``yey, we'll have more energy!'' We also wouldn't worry about the sun engulfing earth one day---or yellowstone exploding, etc., we'd use every little bit of energy out of those events. So anyways...

How much energy does it take to sustain a human life in relative comfort... including stuff like breathing and food. We know that bulk of what `humans use' comes from the sun in some direct or indirect way (e.g. we eat meat, which usually belonged to something that ate grass, which in turn used sun's energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into leafs, and release a bit of oxygen).

Now, we know we can grow stuff indoors with artificial light---so we have: electrical light turning carbon dioxide and water into leafs that we can eat. We also know we can generate heat (electrical heaters?). So we don't technically ``need'' the sun... if we can heat and illuminate enough water and plants, etc.

Skipping a bit here, but we also need our electromagnetic shield from the earth (can't take anything for granted---no matter how free it is). How much electricity would it take to generate a field big and strong enough to deflect solar radiation (or perhaps something 10x more?).

So, how much "electricity" would it take to sustain 1 life (or lets say 100?) in a sealed box, somewhere like Lagrangian orbit? Energy provided by an on-board nuclear reactor---how big of a reactor would it have to be to: generate a big enough magnetic field to shield the occupants, provide enough heat to make everyone comfy, provide enough light to plants to grow food and turn carbon dioxide into oxygen, enough grassy stuff to have occasional hamburger for lunch, etc.

Is such a setup feasible?

- Alex; Fri Dec 30 08:00:55 EST 2011

Is controlled fusion really possible?

Been watching a TV show about Jupiter, and how center of jupiter is so redicoulously squished, that no object we make on earth could survive there. Something about the insides being some exotic form of metallic hydrogen. That got me thinking: we can't make metallic hydrogen on earth (except for a few microseconds as we shoot lots of very powerful laser beams into a single point). And as we're compressing hydrogen to get it to fuse, it will have to go through this metallic hydrogen stage at some point... and since nothing on earth can survive in such an environment, nothing will be able to contain the reaction... and we haven't even gotten to fusion yet. Past metallic hydrogen, atoms will start to fuse, making the environment *much* worse for containment.

In other words, if we cannot hope of creating a craft to fly into the center of jupiter, do we have a hope of containing a piece of that with the materials we have on earth?

And no, fission isn't the same thing---fission happens slowly already, we just use purification and reactors to speed it up a bit (there's no extraordinary heat/pressure required to start the reaction reaction).

- Alex; 20111229

Went hiking in Catskills. Hiked up Peekamoose Mountain, and then realizing that there's still some day-light left, hiked Panther Mountain. Finished a bit after ``total darkness''; weird walking in the woods without any light (at higher elevations, it's easy to see due to snow). Total elevation gain for 1 day... around 7k feet.

- Alex; 20111226

Happy Holidays!

Occupy Wall Street Gives NYSE A Flaming Middle Finger For Christmas. Hmm... One has to wornder what really *is* going on at NYSE that all these protesters are protesting...

From what I know, NYSE doesn't actually do anything disagreeable to the protesters. Besides being the ``image'' of Wall Street... what else is there to NYSE? It's just a place where 10% of equity trades take place... You heard it right... most equity trades happen off-exchange... and 2008 collapse and bailout had little to do equities...

...maybe they're protesting the several floors occupied by regulation? How about the little-know-fact that penthouse magazine occupies one of the floors at NYSE... (note the ``20 Broad Street, 14th floor'' address). Occupy Penthouse!

While I somewhat agree with some of "occupy" protest demands (e.g. re-enstate Glass–Steagall Act, break up some too-big-to-fail banks, single payer healthcare, limit high frequency trading, ``do something'' about increasing income inequality, etc.), their choice of protest location is... well... just bad. Whatever they're protesting doesn't happen on Wall Street. Not even close. Most of 2008 troubles were caused by bonds (securitized mortgages), or other exotic issues, none of which trade at NYSE...

- Alex; Sun Dec 25 21:06:56 EST 2011

Eh, Trolley problem.

- Alex; Tue Dec 20 07:18:19 EST 2011

Federal Reserve keeps monetary policy on ice. Yey?

- Alex; Wed Dec 14 08:06:50 EST 2011

Report: Iran says it can control the drone. Not that I believe them, but if it's true, that would mean we have a bunch of incompetent idiots running IT projects at the military. Shouldn't these systems have an auto-self-destruct thingie in them if they 1) lose power that isn't restored for say 5 minutes, 2) tempered with (e.g. opened without proper cryptographic keys), 3) crashes?

I'm shocked it even has a recognizable shape of a drone at this point! I was always under the impression these things ran everything off volatile memory, which was loaded at boot time from a remote location (making a "reboot" of such a device impossible). Once it loses power [which is cut off in the event of *anything* physically damaging it], it becomes a dead piece of hardware, that the on-board-autodestruct turns into pile of unrecognizable trash.

In other news... 2012 forecast for the economy: Cautiously optimistic. Yey!

- Alex; Tue Dec 13 07:57:14 EST 2011

Kwaizy idea to save the economy: Make it a law, that only appraisals government or financial institutions can accept will come from ``certified appraisers''; and then require all ``certified appraisers'' to stand-by their appraisal---e.g. If you say this house is worth $500k, well... it's yours for $500k. If you say this portfolio of complex instruments is worth $10b, well, fine, it's yours for $10b. Something along these lines will force appraisers not to pull numbers out of their ass, and nobody will appraise anything overvalued, or else they'll end up with it at the price they appraised it at.

As things are, these folks are in effect creating a public quote for something that they themselves have no intention of honoring. Obviously you can have wacky prices with such a scheme.

- Alex; Sun Dec 11 13:16:31 EST 2011

Went to hike Mt.Mansfield in Vermont. There isn't a whole lot of snow. Maybe 3" on the ground on the road, about a foot average towards the top, with some wind-exposed cracks having accumulations of 4-5 feet. The road by the trail head was closed for the season (it actually had a buncha folks skiing on it!), so had to walk about a mile from car to the trailhead. Apparently I was the first hiker since last snowfall, as I didn't see any footsteps in the snow *anywhere* on the mountain. It was kinda hard at times to know where the trail is, 'cause there's no "trail on the ground", and all the trees are snowed in, and there are a few places where it `seems' like the tree-clearings go several ways.

Went up Profanity trail, and down via Long Path. Profanity is apparently the ``saner'' option in snow, both up AND down. Profanity trail doesn't have any of these ``this is your life right there'' places---yes, it's icy and steep, but every step seems like the worst you'd fall at most a few feet. The Long Path...amm... right around the top, there's a steep section, that's completely snowed in---if you slip there, you fall ALL the way down---and the trail forces you to make `jumps' that's just a bit out of reach for a steady footing. Interesting, though next time, I'd prolly use Profanity both up and down in such weather. On the bright side, I got to use my ice-axe :-)

The temperature was...amm...cold. The East side of the mountain didn't get much wind, but it was cold enough for fingers to almost immediately feel numb without a glove. Up at the top, the wind made breathing hard, and any exposed skin felt...exposed. I didn't dare take off gloves there. For next trip, need to buy a better balaclava... the cheap one I got didn't function all too well (it protected from the wind, but then my breath made it ice over. Also need to replace my crappy goggles (wiley sg1 are crap, they *scratched* when I removed some snow from inside them with my finger, and they're not the kind that protects your face from the wind).

Rest of the gear worked great---if it wasn't for the almost-exposed face, I would've been really comfy at the summit area.

On way down, met a couple walking downhill. Apparently they didn't have crampons, and couldn't get through some steeper areas. Met a few other hikers on their way up.

Teh Plan: this trip (~4200ft) is step 1, step 2 is Mt.Marcy ~5200ft (late december), step 3 is Mt.Washington ~6200ft (mid-January), [and step 4 is Mauna Kea ~14000ft, end of January].

- Alex; Sat Dec 10 23:54:19 EST 2011

Eurozone leaders reach new deal without backing of Britain. Woa, ``Britain is out of it, and will remain out of it... We're never going to join the Euro... We're never going to giveup the sort of sovereignty that these countries are having to giveup to join this union...'' --British Prime Minister. Never say never?

- Alex; Fri Dec 9 07:03:32 EST 2011

Neat concept: Flash Proxies. Not sure I'm comfortable with the idea of public websites allowing "others" to use YOUR computer for trafficing potentially illegal (in some parts of the world) data... but the concept is pretty neat.

- Alex; Thu Dec 8 07:51:52 EST 2011