Silicon Valley Redneck

Anatomy of a deadly cluster****

Juan Browne offers an update with much detail on the 737 MAX MCAS, what it was supposed to do, how it was developed, how it ended up the way it did, and what's being done to fix it.

It's an alarming picture of a serous, multifaceted process failure.  (There have been many others in the aviation business, and in other industries; the USCSB channel presents some fine examples of process problems.)

Thing is, most of the time a horrible process failure doesn't result in hundreds of dead bodies.  Typical outcomes involve frustrated engineers, products that never ship, and so on.  The prescribed answer is usually more process, as if the additional rules will be followed any better than the existing ones.

Every once in a while, some radical will proclaim that the process isn't doing what we want; therefore, we must do away with the process entirely and proceed directly to the desired outcome.  Somehow, this never seems to end well.

Carefully examining the existing process and adjusting it in realistic ways to ensure that it will actually be followed and, when followed, work as required, simply does not fit anyone's political model.

No, I haven't been eaten by the mountain lion.

The trails at Rancho San Antonio are once again open, so this morning I was back to my usual morning outing, interrupted by a dusty-footed lap cat.

Those other little fuzzy animals with big sharp teeth have apparently been chased out of the lower reaches of the preserve, with recent sightings being well up in the hills.  Quail, bunnies, and squirrels* were out and about, along with some of the two-legged regulars.

However, I've been both busy and short of sleep, so posting anything coherent has been unlikely, and I haven't even come up with anything interestingly incoherent.  Though my review of the literature regarding Eddorians continues, so I may yet have a full-beryllium-foil-hat post on the subject eventually.

* The ground squirrels and mice all seem happy today.

There can be only one

Back in the day, I found it alarming that Obama, as President, kept his campaign organization alive... even through his second term, when he was ineligible to run again.  And after he left office.

I found it troubling that he was (and is) maintaining this lobbying/activist operation loyal to him, personally.

(And, yes, I find it troubling that Trump is also in permanent campaign mode, but the precedent has already been set.)

Now, at long last, the Democrats are bothered by Obama's organization.

The Association of State Democratic Committees announced Tuesday that every leading presidential contender has vowed not to create “any organizing or messaging infrastructure that is parallel or duplicative" to the DNC or state parties. The signed pledge also binds candidates to publicly call on their supporters not to launch outside groups on their behalf.

Oh, wait.  They're not bothered by the same things I was.  They're bothered because it's disloyal to the Party.

Let's all recite the mantra:

All within the Party.  Nothing outside the Party.  Nothing against the Party.

There is no Party but the Party, and [watch this space] is its Nominee.

Somebody's confoozed here.

Duckduckgo has started giving me search results in German.

I checked the settings: language was "browser preference" (which should have been English); I changed it to English (US).  Results are still in German.  The duckduckgo-supplied text is in English, as, come to think of it, it was before.  The results are German.

Er.  Wait.  It seems to be specific to the search.  SpaceX's "Starhopper" is in the news, and I wanted to refresh my memory on what exactly they're up to with the flying stainless-steel water tower.  For some reason, the first several results for that search sind auf Deutsch.  (Argh.  And now I'm trying to remember my verb conjugations.  From high school.  Back when we rode our mastodons to school.)

Not quite grokking this one

Report: IBM is working on a tape drive with super-duper encryption to provide decades of security!

Nevertheless IBM research scientists say that they could arrive in 10 to 30 year’s time and could be used to defeat encryption methods used today. Therefore, banks and other organisations with lots of sensitive archived information need to prepare now and deploy new encryption algorithms designed to defeat quantum computer attacks.

Now just a doggone... is this even a good idea?

Sure, let's make backups impossible to read without a very elaborate key and exactly the right model of drive.  Is such a backup even a backup any more?

Besides, aren't backup tapes supposed to be physically secured?  Aren't banks supposed to have these things called "vaults" for storing, y'know, high-value stuff so it doesn't just wander off?

I don't get this one.  At all.

Do I note a certain lack of originality?

It appears that the Church of Joe McCarthy of the Latter-Day Stalinists has renamed Cokey McTurtle "Moscow Mitch."

Because, obviously, Russia, Russia, Russia!  No matter the lack of evidence; anyone not loyal to the Party must be a foreign agent.

C'mon, guys.  Not only can you not come up with anyone better than Alfred E. McGrathky to run against him, you can't even tag him with the obvious foreign connection and call him "Taipei Mitch"?  OK, maybe "Taipei Turtle" or something.

Or you could maybe try something substantive?  Oh, sorry.  I guess that might require some reference to those pesky "fact" things.  I know you don't like those.  Aside from bald assertions that are declared to be facts, of course, like the whole Russia! thing.

A very Monday morning update

How Monday morning could it be?

Well... the alarm cat went off at 0250.  Very insistently.

Having been awakened, I realized that I had a sinus headache.  Again.  Bleah.

So now I'm caffeinating, and catching up on the 'Net.  And... Gaaah!  World financial markets are looking dreadful, though the pre-market numbers for the stocks I'm following are in positive territory.  (Expect ongoing volatility: aside from any underlying economic issues, whereof there are plenty, the visible factors are: What dumb thing will the orange man say next; Will China go full Prague 1968 on Hong Kong (your local newspaper may not be covering this); and Will the central banks lower interest rates again?

Rancho San Antonio remains closed, so I guess I'll try to find my way to Fremont Older this morning, trying to get out the door by 6 to beat the crowd.  So waking up early might be a good thing... but, really, Huckleberry, couldn't you have waited one more hour?

The weekend?  I guess there was a weekend.  Mostly recuperating from Friday's exertions.  I got some work done on the ToasterCo project, though not as much as I'd intended, so I need to work more on that today, implying no more moving stuff from the storage locker until tomorrow at the earliest.  I did get most of the way through constructing a partial crate to protect my father's floor lamp (which is of wildly irregular shape, and somewhat fragile); still need to swing by a hardware store for some sort of mini tie-downs so I can secure the lamp to the base of the crate with giant zip-ties.

Update:  I did make it to Fremont Older... with a lengthy detour, as I somehow omitted either to refresh my memory on the route or start navigation on one of the appliances before setting out.  And, as one might expect, I missed a turn, and had to backtrack in the direction of morning commute traffic.  Turns out there isn't a weekday morning crowd there, but with the weather we're having I really should have gotten an earlier start anyway.

There aren't any non-hilly hike options there, and it turns out that the muscles used for uphill are the same ones used for lifting-with-your-legs-not-your-back, which turn out not to be entirely recovered from Friday.  Groan.

Oh, well.  There's nice scenery.  The sparkling vineyard is still there.  I saw a few turkeys, and a ferocious wild bobmouse.  OK, a vole, but that's sort of a bobmouse, right?

Then morning errands involved driving through Sunnyvale in the direction of the commute traffic.  Ugh.

Tired

Manual labor in the heat.  Funsies!

The big activity for the day: rent a van from U-Haul, load it up with a bunch of stuff from the storage locker (juggling a bunch of other stuff out of the way, in order to do so), bring it home, unload it into the cargo pod, and return the van.

Most of this went smoothly enough, aside from the whole manual labor in the heat thing, which was exhausting.  Making a goodly dent in the storage-locker contents (rather less than a full van-load, and nowhere near the capacity of the cargo pod, but I did get a significant amount of floor space cleared) went fairly quickly.  Some things ended up in the garage, rather than the pod, because (1) they need repacking for one reason or another, or (2) they need sealing, and I need to buy more packing tape.

Returning the van involved a detour; right about 1500, 101 southbound started getting slow, and just before Great America Parkway I caught up with parking-lot conditions, as various twinkle-trucks went by (hmmm, "AIRBAGS DEPLOYED/ 1 VEH WENT AIRBORNE / LANDED ON TOP OF ANOTHER CAR").  Fortunately I could take the exit there (already being in the right lane, because I really didn't like making lane changes in that van) and take Scott to San Thomas, which was where I needed to be.

I must have been doing a lot of lifting with my legs, not my back, because now my hips are sore.

Still need to do that at least one more time, probably Monday.  Most of the Monday stuff will be lighter.  Heavy stuff goes on the bottom of the pod; light & fluffy stuff can be stacked on top.  Maybe with a kayak on top of everything; I still need to determine whether the kayak will fit in diagonally.  And then try to arrange the lower layers so it's not resting on anything overly crushable.

Hey, we may yet accomplish the move with two pods and a lot of work, rather than one pod, one moving van, and ¾ of a lot of work.  But I'm kind of worried about weight limits, especially with all the boxes of books.

Additional:  Coupla notes for next time.  Total distance was 27 miles, and the 9' cargo van had a low ceiling, which was not so great for moving heavy stuff around in the further reaches.  A 10' truck would cost more per mile, but maybe has a higher ceiling?

Next trip, I'll be fetching a few more heavy items, plus a whole bunch of light, fluffy stuff that can be stacked on top without pushing the weight limit.  I'm thinking there'll be a third trip, after this pod ships out, to empty the storage locker (putting the contents in the garage, which after I'm done packing this pod will be nearly empty); then we can decide whether to use a second pod or a moving van for the remaining stuff.

And, somewhere in all this, my Sawzall seems to have disappeared.  I assume it'll turn up late in the process, as things get moved out of the way.

On today's agenda: buy packing tape and some additional plastic sturdy-bins (some for additional stuff; one to replace one that had just a little too much stuff piled on top of it in storage); do laundry; work on the ToasterCo project.  No heavy lifting for a while.

But wait, there's more:  The pod (or, more to the point, its transport) has a weight limit, so if I have the proverbial forty-two boxes, all carefully packed, I need to make sure they average less than 100 pounds per.

However... does weight distribution matter?  I started out piling up the heavy stuff at the end opposite the door - architecturally the back, but in transport, is that the front?  I know single-axle trailers are supposed to be loaded with the weight somewhat forward, so as not to lift the back axle of the tow vehicle, and airplanes are a lot less dangerous nose-heavy than tail-heavy, but what about whatever the pod rides on, not to mention the pod-picker-upper?  Anyway, I put some heavy piles at the front, too, and I'm leaving some room amidships for the last-minute heavy items.

Meanwhile, back at the usual morning stomping grounds

The situation at Rancho San Antonio has progressed, over the course of the week, from most upper trails closed to all upper trails closed to all trails beyond the farm closed to all trails closed.

Apparently the woods are full of monsters.  They've been there all along, of course, but mostly keeping a low profile; after all, today's mountain lions are descended from the ones that didn't try to munch on Indians, missionaries, and especially ranchers.  But it seems that enough generations have passed, with the big cats being a protected species, that they've decided that the strange two-legged critters are a harmless part of the scenery.

Alarmingly, the cats have been killing a lot of prey lately, both in the preserve and out.  Like, three (or possibly four) goats in one night, in a small area, plus many deer in the last few days.  Could be the carcasses are being taken away before they've had a chance to do much eating, so they need to kill again the next night, but the single-night goat cluster seems unusual.  Mountain lions don't normally have feeding frenzies, do they?

Anyway, looks like I'll need to do my morning walkies elsewhere the next week or so.  Got a few fallback locations, assuming the parking lots in the alternative places don't fill up too fast.  This calls for getting an early start.

Update:  Arriving at Fallback Hiking Location #1 at 0635, I found that I had the place all to myself.  A few other displaced Rancho regulars filtered in starting around 0730; the first pair I encountered had heard something about five people having been injured at Rancho, though they were't sure whether the injuries were from fighting with a mountain lion, fleeing in panic and falling down, or something else entirely.

Word is that Fallback Hiking Location #2 (which is more scenic, and less familiar, than  #1) likewise didn't fill up early, so that's an option for Monday if Rancho remains closed.  Then there are a couple of hiking locations closer to home, too, but they're not conveniently located for shopping on the way home (which mostly happens to the south).

Some hot-afternoon randomness

Having made a tech challenge go away by realizing that the task in front of me wasn't going to solve a problem that actually exists, and the afternoon having gotten far too hot and humid for any serious productivity (never mind manual labor), I find myself idly scanning the chatter.  And!

Seems Sean Spicer is supposed to be appearing on Starring With the Dunces Dancing With the Stars, and people are bent out of shape.  Prominent quote:

It's a slap in the face

No, no, no... not unless he's doing the Fish-Slapping Dance.  I think the phrase you're looking for is:

It's just a jump to the left

Yeah, not posting much.

I did get some incompletely-tested code (with some workarounds in it) handed off to ToasterCo.  It's about as tested as I can get it on the hardware I have here, which differs in some important respects from the production hardware.  I'll presumably be needing to spend some time in their lab soon.  In the future, we'll really need a strategy for dealing with a prototype here and a prototype there, with matching test setups*.

Today... well, I've woken up much too early the last couple of mornings.  Today I was draggy and drowsy, and not very useful.  I did get some stuff shuffled around, but there's vastly more to be done on that front.  A modest-sized U-Haul will shortly be involved, as the cargo capacity of a classic (NHW11) Prius turns out to be laughable.

I'm attempting (in my copious free time) to update my Visualization of the Cosmic All to explain certain recent events in terms of Eddorian interference in the affairs of Tellus.  If it comes together, and I'm not too busy, there may be a largish blog post with more than a suggestion of beryllium-foil headgear.

* Afterthought:  This will be especially true when here relocates to Dogpatch, making quick runs over to the ToasterCo lab mighty inconvenient.

Early-morning randomness

Up way too early; watching some YouTube vids.  I notice a title (old vid, already watched some time ago and the contents forgotten): "Five Most Dangerous Chemicals" or something to that effect.

Question: how does one establish dangerosity?  If we go by all-time total body count, what chemicals make the list?

I'm thinking it has to include good ol' DHMO (drownings), probably oxygen (fires), maybe iron (war, industrial accidents, etc.); what others should we include?

No, I'm not about to do the research.  If I were awake enough to do research, I'd be getting some real work done.

Interpretation

Insty linked to this piece on fashionable luxury beliefs as status symbols.

Example given:

A former classmate from Yale recently told me “monogamy is kind of outdated” and not good for society. So I asked her what her background is and if she planned to marry.

She said she comes from an affluent family and works at a well-known technology company. Yes, she personally intends to have a monogamous marriage — but quickly added that marriage shouldn’t have to be for everyone.

Interpretation given:

We feel pressure to display our status in new ways. This is why fashionable clothing always changes. But as trendy clothes and other products become more accessible and affordable, there is increasingly less status attached to luxury goods.

The upper classes have found a clever solution to this problem: luxury beliefs. These are ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.

Which, for a first approximation, is likely true.  But what if there's something deeper going on?

OK, kids.  Put on your class-warfare goggles now, and recognize the classmate as a junior member of the oligarchy.  What do we see beneath the surface?

Right.  A member of the hereditary oligarchy, raised with, and personally adhering to, values that promote success (and, in particular, intergenerational success), is taking the enlightened position that the peasants shouldn't hold those same values.  It's called pulling up the ladder behind oneself.  At some level, there's intent to sabotage the lives of the lower classes.

(One of these days I need to finish reading Black Rednecks and White Liberals.)

Rhymes with "Hell's Cargo"

Well, whaddya know?  Another day, another scandal (via).

Somehow, though, Big Finance seems to have nearly the level of immunity granted to the Deep Swamp.  Expect no consequences for these shenanigans.  And:

But many angry customers have filed complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Yeah, right.  The CFPB is, by design, not answerable to any duly-constituted branch of government, and not even 1/1024^th accountable to anyone.  As originally conceived by Elizabeth "Benito" Warren, it was a fully self-contained insiders' club, even appointing its own director (this particular feature got thrown out by the Supreme Court, and the nominal head of the CFPB is now appointed via the usual process when the old one's term expires).  Unlike any other government agency, it doesn't even have to worry about the remotest possibility of Congress cutting off its funding.

So, expect the CFPB to look after the best interests of insiders.  It doesn't need to listen to you, and it doesn't need to listen to your elected representatives.

And speaking of "Can't anyone...?"

Hello, Mr. Ford!  Want to know a nifty secret to selling pickup trucks?

See, when a prospective buyer comes to your web site and picks out a pickup-truck configuration, he's probably looking for more than pretty pictures and a price.  Chances are he'll also want to see the specs for the configuration he's chosen.

You know, dimensions, weight, maximum laden weight, maximum trailer weight?  That kind of stuff?  Stuff that people who are seriously shopping for serious pickup trucks want to know?

The guy who selects "maximum tow package" probably wants to know how much he'll be able to tow with that.  Toyota provides this information (not as accessibly as one might wish, but at least it's available).

Is there a secret part of the site?  A hidden link?  A tab that doesn't show up in my browser?  Are shoppers expected just to know this stuff already, or are they supposed to go visit dealers to find out?  Visit a newsstand for a copy of Ford Trucks Quarterly?  What?

At least they do provide nominal pricing, unlike purveyors of commercial lawn-mowing equipment.  Nominal price for what seems a reasonable configuration of an F-150 is roughly on par with nominal price of a known-suitable Tundra (which, alas, has the horrid new-Toyota styling).  But I don't have functional specs to compare!

Can't anyone do database development?

Tale of parking-ticket woe here (via Battle's Warm Blog).

I'd heard, long ago, the tale of someone with vanity plate NONE getting lots of spurious tickets in the mail; that was at least explicable in terms of minions of the law writing NONE on citation forms if a license plate was absent.

This, though... it sounds like the both the DMV's online registration-renewal system and a privately-operated, for-profit parking-fine collection system can't tell the difference between 'NULL' and NULL.  Which is important; one is a string (or character array) value, and the other is a keyword denoting the absence of a value.

If your database system can't tell the difference, it's not doing even the most basic input sanitization.  So what happens when Bobby Tables sneaks his name into an ALPR system, eh?  Or simply types it into the public-facing registration-renewal form?

Afterthought:  Now, just a doggone minute, here.  There's no freaking way the database should have been seeing the un-quoted NULL.  This is incompetence above and beyond the call of stupid.  This is...

... It's the coding version of taking the highest-profile inmate off suicide watch, putting him in a private cell with a bunk bed, a sturdy sheet, and no working surveillance cameras, and assigning that zone a pair of overworked guards who'll conveniently take a three-hour nap.  This is, like, Boeing-grade idiocy (but at least the DMV's database isn't in control of an aircraft... that we know of).  It's even worse than Google Finance (or at least worse than what I know of Google Finance's technical issues).

And remember: computers don't argue.

Work update

About done (as of late yesterday) bashing my head against the Verilog... with a couple of things mysteriously still not working, but I figure I'll just work around those in the C code, and sort out the remaining Verilog issues eventually on an FPGA eval board with a lot more test points..

Still quite a bit of C to be written, and no doubt I'll be longing for a multitasking RTOS (this project, like its predecessors, runs on the bare virtual-metal of an AVR core synthesized in the FPGA).  Busy afternoon today; busy weekend ahead.  Assuming nothing goes horribly wrong, Monday should be time to merge my code with some fiddly changes ToasterCo's engineers have made to the pre-fork code, and then they can commence integration and testing on the real hardware.  And maybe I'll have an excuse to go hang out in their air-conditioned lab!

I don't know much about Facebook Messenger, but....

Scandal reported here this morning; according to some of yesterday's accounts, some of the other Big Internet companies had been doing similar things.  Of particular concern:

Basically, if you allowed Facebook Messenger to automatically transcribe your voice calls, and the antisocial network's machine-learning code couldn't work out what you said during your nattering, an audio clip of your voice would be shared with a human to listen to and figure out what was said, according to Bloomberg on Tuesday.

Emphasis mine.  Now, by you and your here... does that mean only one side of the conversation would be transcribed?  That doesn't sound very useful.  And if both... what if one party to the conversation is in a two-party-consent state at the time?  How many wiretap statutes are worded in such a way as to apply to Messenger?  Did Facebook even consider this?

"Have you stopped deporting your wife?"

Surfing the Interwebs while waiting for the Verilog to compile, I find that β₀ (who is a furry) has proclaimed thusly:

Legal. Undocumented. Refugee. Asylum Seeker. The distinctions don't matter to President Trump. If you're an immigrant, he believes you have no place in this country—even though, for 243 years, immigrants have made America the greatest nation the world has ever known.

So, um.  What about Melania?

Oop!  Compilation complete.  Back to work now.

And I thought microwave ovens were bad.

With regard to user-interface design, that is.

Back in the olden days, nukers had two controls: a slider for power (OK, actually duty cycle, but notionally power) and a knob for time.  Simple, intuitive, and easy to adjust.

With the newfangled ones, it's all buttons.  Want three minutes at half power?  Push the POWER button six times, BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP BOOP, then the QUICK MINUTE button three times, BOOP BOOP BOOP, then the start button, BOOP.  Push a button one time too many, and you have to push STOP/RESET and start all over.

And don't get me started on knobless automotive UIs that require pressing some tiny, illegibly-labeled physical button to get a touchscreen into the right mode so you can select a submenu to tune the radio.  Or a GPS touchscreen UI with obvious touch buttons that do not-very-useful things, but you have to read the (not supplied) manual to find out that touching the screen where the buttons aren't is how you get to the important menu.

El Reg now tells the tale of how one of our destroyers came to collide with a tanker.  Truly horrible UI design is involved.

The investigation found multiple causes but among them was confusion created when throttle and steering functions were split between two different consoles. Control of the port and starboard throttles was split between two helm stations so when a helmsman thought he was slowing both throttles in fact he was only slowing one causing a sharp turn into the tanker.

What the actual...?

Did the ship designers learn UI design from watching Star Trek: The Next Generation?  Does anyone take human factors into account nowadays, or is looking cool the sole consideration?