Dan Q

Month: April 2018

Digest for April 2018

Summary

This month I produced almost no original content, but I shared a number of interesting content from elsewhere around the web, including an explanation of the power of compound interest (and why saving for a pension early is often more-important than saving lots), a curious poem, and a short film about what would happen if all the cautionary tales your parents told you were true. More are below.

All posts

Posts marked by an asterisk (*) are referenced by the summary above.

Reposts

Reposts marked with a dagger (†) include my comments or interpretation.

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Compound interest and retirement

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

Compound interest and retirement (datagenetics.com)

Bert put aside three and a half times as much money as Alf, but by delaying he has a smaller pension pot.

Spectacular example of why when saving (e.g. for a pension) it’s often more important to save early than it is to save lots. So get saving! Even with an understanding of compound interest, these numbers can surprise you.

The only time better than today would have been yesterday, and you already missed that boat.

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Pyramid Scheme by Hera Lindsay Bird | Poetry Magazine

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Pyramid Scheme by Hera Lindsay Bird (Poetry Foundation)

For RWT

the other day i was thinking about the term pyramid scheme, and why they called it pyramid scheme and not triangle scheme
and i asked you what you thought
you thought it added a certain gravitas, and linked the idea of 
economic prosperity
with some of history’s greatest architectural achievements
unconsciously suggesting a silent wealth of gold and heat
a triangle is two dimensional, and therefore
a less striking mental image than the idea of a third dimension of financial fraud
which is how many dimensions of financial fraud the term pyramid scheme suggests
but i had to pause for a second at the financial fraud part
because it occurred to me i didn’t know what pyramid schemes really were
i knew they had something to do with people getting money from nothing
like
the person at the top of the pyramid scheme, or more accurately
triangle scheme, acquires a number of investors and takes their money
and then pays the first lot of investors with the money from another bunch of investors
and so on and so forth
all the way to the bottom of the triangle
or pyramid face
which is the kind of stupid thing that happens
if you keep your money in a pyramid and not a bank account
although if you ask me banks are the real pyramid schemes after all
or was love the real pyramid scheme? i can’t remember

maybe it’s better to keep your money in a pyramid than a bank
and i should shop around and compare the interest rates on different pyramids
maybe i should open up a savings pyramid
with a whole bunch of trapdoors and malarias
to keep the financial anthropologists
i mean bankers out
my emeralds cooling under the ground like beautiful women’s eyes

i think this was supposed to be a metaphor for something
but i can’t remember where i was going with it
and now it’s been swept away by the winds of
whatever
but knowing me, it was probably love
that great dark blue sex hope that keeps coming true
that cartoon black castle with a single bird flying over it

i don’t know where this poem ends
how far below the sand
but it’s still early evening
and you and I are a little drunk
you answer the phone
you pour me a drink
i know you hate the domestic in poetry but you should have thought of that before you invited me to move in with you
i used to think arguments were the same as honesty
i used to think screaming was the same as passion
i used to think pain was meaningful
i no longer think pain is meaningful
i never learned anything good from being unhappy
i never learned anything good from being happy either
the way i feel about you has nothing to do with learning
it has nothing to do with anything
but i feel it down in the corners of my sarcophagus
i feel it in my sleep
even when i am not thinking about you
you are still pouring through my blood, like fire through an abandoned hospital ward
these coins are getting heavy on my eyes
it has been a great honor and privilege to love you
it has been a great honor and privilege to eat cold pizza on your steps at dawn
love is so stupid: it’s like punching the sun
and having a million gold coins rain down on you
which you don’t even have to pay tax on
because sun money is free money
and i’m pretty sure there are no laws about that
but i would pay tax
because i believe that hospitals and education
and the arts should be publicly funded
even this poem
when i look at you, my eyes are two identical neighborhood houses on fire
when i look at you my eyes bulge out of my skull like a dog in a cartoon
when i am with you
an enormous silence descends upon me
and i feel like i am sinking into the deepest part of my life
we walk down the street, with the grass blowing back and forth
i have never been so happy

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Coding without a keystroke: The hands-free creation of a full video game

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Coding without a keystroke: The hands-free creation of a full video game (Ars Technica)

Coder wants to grow the speech-to-text coding community, uses his fun game to advocate.

Dig Dog screenshot

Dig Dog is a pretty fun little video game. Call it “Spelunky for kids”—and don’t think of that as a backhanded compliment, either. Dig Dog, which launched Thursday on iOS, Xbox, Windows, and Mac, shaves away some of the genre’s complications, controls smoothly, and has depth. It’s as if the modern wave of randomly generated, dig-for-surprises adventures had existed in early ’80s arcades. (And all for only $3!)

I liked Dig Dog enough when I stumbled upon it at last year’s Fantastic Arcade event in Austin, Texas. But my interest in the game spiked when its creator reached out ahead of this week’s launch to confirm something I’m not sure any other video game creator has done: coding an entire game by himself… without using his hands.

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The Tyranny of Convenience

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The Tyranny of Convenience (nytimes.com)

Convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the world today. As a driver of human decisions, it may not offer the illicit thrill of Freud’s unconscious sexual desires or the mathematical elegance of the economist’s incentives. Convenience is boring. But boring is not the same thing as trivial.

In the developed nations of the 21st century, convenience — that is, more efficient and easier ways of doing personal tasks — has emerged as perhaps the most powerful force shaping our individual lives and our economies. This is particularly true in America, where, despite all the paeans to freedom and individuality, one sometimes wonders whether convenience is in fact the supreme value.

As Evan Williams, a co-founder of Twitter, recently put it, “Convenience decides everything.” Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences. (I prefer to brew my coffee, but Starbucks instant is so convenient I hardly ever do what I “prefer.”) Easy is better, easiest is best.

Convenience has the ability to make other options unthinkable. Once you have used a washing machine, laundering clothes by hand seems irrational, even if it might be cheaper. After you have experienced streaming television, waiting to see a show at a prescribed hour seems silly, even a little undignified. To resist convenience — not to own a cellphone, not to use Google — has come to require a special kind of dedication that is often taken for eccentricity, if not fanaticism.

 The Tyranny of Convenience

For all its influence as a shaper of individual decisions, the greater power of convenience may arise from decisions made in aggregate, where it is doing so much to structure the modern economy. Particularly in tech-related industries, the battle for convenience is the battle for industry dominance.

Americans say they prize competition, a proliferation of choices, the little guy. Yet our taste for convenience begets more convenience, through a combination of the economics of scale and the power of habit. The easier it is to use Amazon, the more powerful Amazon becomes — and thus the easier it becomes to use Amazon. Convenience and monopoly seem to be natural bedfellows.

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Are You Ready to Have Friends with Kids?

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Are You Ready to Have Friends with Kids? (The New Yorker)

Once you have friends with kids, your life is no longer about you. It’s about your friends’ kids.

Having friends with kids is a huge responsibility. It’s not for everyone. Maybe you like swearing, and having a child in the room would cut into that. Maybe you have ambitions outside of liking Facebook pictures of wispy-haired toddlers in pumpkin patches. Maybe you’re terrified that your friends will ask you to hold the baby and you won’t know what to do with the head because its neck doesn’t work yet and you’re afraid you’ll kill it.

Many couples choose not to have friends with kids and find fulfilling friendships with like-minded couples who also value disposable income over propagating the human race. Before you decide if having friends with kids is right for you, it’s important to ask yourselves a few questions.

Having friends with kids is a huge responsibility. It’s not for everyone. Maybe you like swearing, and having a child in the room would cut into that. Maybe you have ambitions outside of liking Facebook pictures of wispy-haired toddlers in pumpkin patches. Maybe you’re terrified that your friends will ask you to hold the baby and you won’t know what to do with the head because its neck doesn’t work yet and you’re afraid you’ll kill it.

Many couples choose not to have friends with kids and find fulfilling friendships with like-minded couples who also value disposable income over propagating the human race. Before you decide if having friends with kids is right for you, it’s important to ask yourselves a few questions.

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Where does my council tax go?

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Where does my council tax go – a Freedom of Information request to South Somerset District Council (WhatDoTheyKnow)

I have recently recieved my council tax bill and would like to know excatly where my money goes. On the minimal breakdown that is stated on the letter, it states i pay three different council departments i also contribute towards adult social care, may i state i do not use this service and i have no one in social care so why should i pay it. I also have no full time police force, fire service or ambulance service why am i paying for these. I have not used these services therefore why am i not refunded for the services that i do not use. I want to know the excact breakdown of where the £936 pound i give to south somerset district council go. As i feel i am being ripped of and paying for services i do not use. Yours faithfully, james

The following Freedom of Information request was published on What Do They Know?, and it’s glorious:

Dear South Somerset District Council,

I have recently recieved my council tax bill and would like to know excatly where my money goes.

On the minimal breakdown that is stated on the letter, it states i pay three different council departments i also contribute towards adult social care, may i state i do not use this service and i have no one in social care so why should i pay it. I also have no full time police force, fire service or ambulance service why am i paying for these. I have not used these services therefore why am i not refunded for the services that i do not use.

I want to know the excact breakdown of where the £936 pound i give to south somerset district council go. As i feel i am being ripped of and paying for services i do not use.

Yours faithfully,

james

Dear James,

Your question is quite broad and more than a little mystifying. To the extent that it’s a Freedom of Information Request, I can tell you that a more thorough breakdown of South Somerset District Council’s (SSDC’s) finances for financial years 2012/13 – 2015/16 are available on this page of our website: https://www.southsomerset.gov.uk/about-us/finance

I recommend looking at the Summary of Accounts documents—there is a helpful pie-chart in each. Our Statement and Summary of Accounts for the 2016/17 financial year will be published after the 27th of July.

Please note that SSDC collects Council Tax on behalf of other local authorities, including Somerset County Council and Avon and Somerset Police (these are, I think, the ‘departments’ to which you refer). These authorities will have published similar statements of accounts.

The rest of your questions touch on deeper issues about the philosophy of public service and the extent to which these services should be free at the point of use. The Freedom of Information Act is not the appropriate platform to debate these issues. But I offer the following parable:

In ancient Rome Marcus Crassus became very wealthy by creating the first fire brigade. But his brigade was not publicly funded, nor did they sell fire insurance. When the brigade arrived at a burning building, Crassus would negotiate with the owner a price he considered reasonable to put out the fire. His brigade would let the building burn until a price was agreed. If the owner failed to agree, they would let it burn to the ground.

Whilst you don’t need adult social care now, you may one day. And the people who DO need it now aren’t in a position to agree a reasonable price for it.

Perhaps if you are interested in researching public service, you could use a public library (which is free at the point of use).

Kind regards,
Zac

Legal Services
South Somerset District Council

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Does anyone have the right to sex?

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Amia Srinivasan · Does anyone have the right to sex? (London Review of Books)

When we see consent as the sole constraint on OK sex, we are pushed towards a naturalisation of sexual preference in which the rape fantasy becomes a primordial rather than a political fact.

On 23 May 2014, Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old college dropout, became the world’s most famous ‘incel’ – involuntary celibate. The term can, in theory, be applied to both men and women, but in practice it picks out not sexless men in general, but a certain kind of sexless man: the kind who is convinced he is owed sex, and is enraged by the women who deprive him of it. Rodger stabbed to death his two housemates, Weihan Wang and Cheng Hong, and a friend, George Chen, as they entered his apartment on Seville Road in Isla Vista, California. Three hours later he drove to the Alpha Phi sorority house near the campus of UC Santa Barbara. He shot three women on the lawn, killing two of them, Katherine Cooper and Veronika Weiss. Rodger then went on a drive-by shooting spree through Isla Vista, killing Christopher Michaels-Martinez, also a student at UCSB, with a single bullet to the chest inside a Deli Mart, and wounding 14 others. He eventually crashed his BMW coupé at an intersection. He was found dead by the police, having shot himself in the head.

In the hours between murdering three men in his apartment and driving to Alpha Phi, Rodger went to Starbucks, ordered coffee, and uploaded a video, ‘Elliot Rodger’s Retribution’, to his YouTube channel. He also emailed a 107,000-word memoir-manifesto, ‘My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger’, to a group of people including his parents, his therapist, former schoolteachers and childhood friends. Together these two documents detail the massacre to come and Rodger’s motivation. ‘All I ever wanted was to fit in and live a happy life,’ he explains at the beginning of ‘My Twisted World’, ‘but I was cast out and rejected, forced to endure an existence of loneliness and insignificance, all because the females of the human species were incapable of seeing the value in me.’

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Child Abuse Ad Uses Lenticular Printing to Help Children While Remaining Invisible to Adults

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Child Abuse Ad Uses Lenticular Printing to Help Children While Remaining Invisible to Adults (Laughing Squid)

The ANAR Foundation and Grey Group Spain have created a unique advertising campaign that only kids can see. The ad campaign uses lenticular printing to show individuals below a certain height — children, in this case — a certain image, while taller people see a different image. Children looking at the ad see a photo of an abused boy, a help hotline, and the message ‘if somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you,’ while adults can only see an unbruised photo of the boy with the text ‘Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.’

Lenticular printing

The ANAR Foundation and Grey Group Spain have created a unique advertising campaign that only kids can see. The ad campaign uses lenticular printing to show individuals below a certain height — children, in this case — a certain image, while taller people see a different image. Children looking at the ad see a photo of an abused boy, a help hotline, and the message “if somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you,” while adults can only see an unbruised photo of the boy with the text “Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it.”

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At long last, a use for lenticular printing (I mean, aside from making real-world stickers out of your favourite animated GIFs…).

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No, Panera Bread Doesn’t Take Security Seriously

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No, Panera Bread Doesn’t Take Security Seriously – PB – Medium by an author (Medium)

tl;dr: In August 2017, I reported a vulnerability to Panera Bread that allowed the full name, home address, email address, food/dietary…

tl;dr: In August 2017, I reported a vulnerability to Panera Bread that allowed the full name, home address, email address, food/dietary preferences, username, phone number, birthday and last four digits of a saved credit card to be accessed in bulk for any user that had ever signed up for an account. This includes my own personal data! Despite an explicit acknowledgement of the issue and a promise to fix it, Panera Bread sat on the vulnerability and, as far as I can tell, did nothing about it for eight months. When Brian Krebs publicly broke the news, other news outlets emphasized the usual “We take your security very seriously, security is a top priority for us” prepared statement from Panera Bread. Worse still, the vulnerability was not fixed at all — which means the company either misrepresented its actual security posture to the media to save face or was not competent enough to determine this fact for themselves. This post establishes a canonical timeline so subsequent reporting doesn’t get confused.

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