From BSOD to UOD

I don't get many "Blue Screen of Death" type events these days : In any of the Ubuntu, Android, iOS, Window environments I interact with. Certainly not like the good old days when rebooting every couple of hours felt normal. (I used to keep my foot touching the side of my deskside machine. The vibrations of the hard disk used to be a good indicator of life back in the good old days. Betcha that health monitor wasn't considered in the move to SSDs. Nothing even to listen too these days, never mind touch.)

I do get Updates of Death though - and these are nasty critters!

For example, your machine auto-updates and disables the network connection leaving you unable to get at the fix you just found online....

Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Genetic Football

Genetic Football is a thing. Wow.

As a thing, it is part of a bigger thing.

That bigger thing seems to be this: given enough cheap compute power, the time taken to perform zillions of iterations can be made largely irrelevant.

Start stupid. Just aim to be fractionally less stupid the next time round, and iterations will do the rest.

The weirdest thing about all of this for me is that if/when iterated algorithmic things start showing smarts, we will know the causal factors that lead to the increased smartness, but not the rationale for any individual incidence of smart-ness.

As a thing, that is part of a bigger thing.

That bigger thing is that these useful-but-unprovable things will be put to use in areas where humankind as previously expected the presence of explanation. You know, rules, reasoning, all that stuff.

As a thing, that is part of a bigger thing.

That bigger thing is that in many areas of human endeavor it is either impossible to get explanations - (i.e. experts who know what to do, but cannot explain why in terms of rules.), or the explanations need to be taken with a pinch of post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc salt, or a pinch or retroactive goal-setting salt.

As a thing, that is part of a bigger thing.

When the machines come, and start doing clever things but cannot explain why....

...they will be just like us.

Statistics and AI

We live at a time where there is more interest in AI than ever and it is growing every day.

One of the first things that happens when a genre of computing starts to build up steam is that pre-existing concepts get subsumed into the new genre. Sometimes, the adopted concepts are presented in a way that would suggest they are new concepts, created as part of the new genre. Sometimes they are. But sometimes they are not.

For example, I recently read some material that presented linear regression as a machine learning technique.

Now of course, regression has all sorts of important contributions to make to machine learning but it was invented/discovered long long before the machines came along.

Cutting the inconvenient protrusions from the jigsaw pieces

There is a school of thought that goes like this....

(1) To manage data means to put it in a database
(2) A 'database' means a relational database. No other database approach is really any good.
(3)  If the data does not fit into the relational data model, well just compromise the data so that it does. Why? See item (1).

I have no difficulty whatsover with recommending relational databases where there is a good fit between the data, the problem to be solved, and the relational database paradigm.

Where the fit isn't good, I recommend something else. Maybe index flat files, or versioned spreadsheets, documents, a temporal data store....whatever feels least like I am cutting important protrusions off the data and off the problem to be solved.

However, whenever I do that, I am sure to have to answer the "Why not just store it in [Insert RDB name]?" question.

It is an incredibly strong meme in modern computing.

Algorithms where human understanding is optional - or maybe even impossible

I think I am guilty of holding on to an AI non-sequitur for a long time. Namely the idea that AI is fundamentally limited by our ability as humans to code the rules for the computer to execute. If we humans cannot write down the rules for X, we cannot get the computer to do X.

Modern AI seems to have significantly lurched over to the "no rules" side of the field where phrases like CBR (case based reasoning) and Neural Net Training Sets abound...

But with an interesting twist that I have only recently become aware of. Namely, using bootstrapping to use generation X of an AI system to produce generation X+1.

The technical write-ups about the recent stunning AlphaGo victory make reference to the boostrapping of AlphaGo. As well as learning from the database of prior human games, it has learned by playing against itself....

Doug Englebart springs to mind and his bootstrapping strategy.

Douglass Hofstadter springs to mind and his strange loops model of consciousness.

Stephen Wolfram springs to mind and his feedback loops of simple algorithms for rapidly generating complexity.

AI's learning by using the behavior of the previous generation AI as "input" in the form of a training set sounds very like iterating a simple Wolfram algorithm or a fractal generating function, except that the output of each "run", is the algorithm for the next run.

The weird, weird, weird thing about all of this, is that we humans don't have to understand the AIs we are creating. We are just creating the environment in which they can create themselves.

In fact, it may even be the case that we cannot understand them because, by design, there are no rules in there to be dug out and understood. Just an unfathomably large state space of behaviors.

I need to go to a Chinese room, and think this through...

LoRa

LoRa feels like a big deal to me. In general, hardware-lead innovations tend to jumpstart software design into interesting places, moreso than software-lead innovations drag hardware design into interesting places.

With software driving hardware innovation, the results tend to be of the bigger, faster, cheaper variety. All good things but not this-changes-everything type moments.

With hardware driving software innovation however, software game changers seem to come along sometimes.

Telephone exchanges -> Erlang -> Elixer.
Packet switching -> TCP/IP -> Sockets

BGP Routers -> Multihoming
VR Headsets -> Immersive 3D worlds

etc.

I have noticed that things tend to come full circle though. Sooner or later, the any hardware bits that can themselves be replaced by software bits, are replaced:-)

This loopback trend is kicking into a higher gear at the moment because of 3D printing. I.e. a hardware device is conceived of. In order to build the device, the device is simulated in software to drive the 3D printer.  Any such devices that *could* remain purely software, do so eventually.

A good example is audio recording. A modern DAW like ProTools or Reaper now provides pure digital emulators for pretty much any piece of audio hardware kit you can think of: EQs, pre-amps, compressors, reverbs etc.

XML and St Patrick

I am finding it a bit hard to believe that I wrote this *fourteen* years ago.

Patrick to be Named Patron Saint of Software Developers
In a dramatic development, scholars working in Newgrange, Ireland, have deciphered an Ogham stone thought to have been carved by St. Patrick himself. The text on the stone predicts, with incredible accuracy, the trials-and-tribulations of IT professionals in the early 21st century. Calls are mounting for St. Patrick to be named the patron saint of Markup Technologists.

The full transcription of the Ogham stone is presented here for the first time:

DeXiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, accommodate the bizarre tag names and strange attribute naming conventions of others.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly, making liberal use of UML diagrams. Listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, they too have their story and won't shut up until you have heard it.

Avoid loud style sheets and aggressive time scales, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare your schemas with others, you will become vain and bitter for there will always be schemas greater and lesser than yours -- even if yours are auto-generated.

Enjoy the systems you ship as well as your plans for new ones. Keep interested in your own career, however humble. It's a real possession in the changing fortunes of time and Cobol may yet make a comeback.

Exercise caution in your use of namespaces for the world is full of namespace semantic trickery. Let this not blind you to what virtue there is in namespace-free markup. Many applications live quite happily without them.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign a working knowledge of RDF where no such knowledge exists. Neither be cynical about Relax NG; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment in the world of markup, James Clark is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth such as control over the authoring subsystems and any notion that you can dictate a directory structure for use by others.

Nurture strength of spirit to nourish you in sudden misfortune but do not distress yourself with dark imaginings of wholesale code re-writes.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. If you cannot make that XML document parse, go get a pizza and come back to it.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. Loosen your content models to help your code on its way, your boss will probably never notice.

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and all other acyclic graphs; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with your code, however knotted it may be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace with your shelf of manuals. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, software development is a pretty cool thing to do with your head. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.