Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • July 8, 2022 9:23 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Re : Twitter v Musk

Welcome to the Show…

“that never ends”… So sorry I got bored and walked out of the show some time ago (is it a month or two, feels longer)…

Because I could clearly see the way things were going and that this was very probably comming. Basically the minute Musk pushed for honesty where the Twitter board under Bret Taylor had been less than explicitly truthful with their SEC filings…

The Twitter board ~5% fake figures were clearly made up at best and far far away from the Social Media norm of 20% (yup investigators have indicated 20% of social media posts made are “fake” in some way on average depending on which brand/type of SM).

The problem is as Bret Taylor would have been told, giving the “fire hose” to Musk would not help Musk one way or the other because he is not setup in anyway to processes it (nor is anyone else, probably not Twitter themselves either as that would be “target practice at the podia”).

So as I said a few weeks back as long as Musk did not look he could carry on pretending and not be complicit in what the Twitter Board had done with their SEC filings etc.

But he’s looked and now he’s made what he’s found somewhat clear to the SEC as he was “duty bound to do” or be complicit. Which with his previous brush-ins with the SEC would be a very risky thing to do as they appear to be looking for any excuse to take a chunk out of him.

Bret Taylor probably thought he was being clever with the “poison pill” then flipping, but both sides are now haemorrhaging share holders and share value.

The best thing that could happen for all parties is that the shareholder vote “Says NO”… But there will be enough idiots voting yes to bring both sides down even further, then into a protracted legal fight that will probably be fatal to both sides.

Oh and I wonder if Bret Taylor has a suit that silver bracelets would accessorise with.

But there is the bigger question…

Many Silicon Valley Mega Corps in the Social Media domain, are mostly not making even percentage income. Thus their share value is entirely speculative, which is the usual state you would expect for a tech balloon market, where value is based on how fast you burn investment money (Burn Rate).

Thus as with all balloon markets if even one or two speculators get burned the “leming cascade” can start. And if it dors the only worth left will be IP in patents etc tied up in legal fights thus effectively useless for years to come.

And if the ballon does start to go down it’s effects will be first felt by the “tech boys” finding there services nolonger required, and as it could easily become “industry wide” no real chance of re-employment…

No doubt the first out will be due to “Covid restructuring” or such to try to maintain image at board level.

I guess we will just have to wait and see how it pans out but I realy do not see Bret Taylor having a good future and it’s not looking particularly good for Elon Musk either.

As for that much vaunted “trickle down effct” from tech billionaires politicians of a certain persuasion used to talk about, I would not be holding out any hopes for that either.

Clive Robinson • July 9, 2022 3:53 PM

@ John, ALL,

Re : “Green manure” or “cover crop”.

It’s not a new idea and used to be described as “leaving fallow”, and is very important in “dryland farming”.

Crudely “dryland farming” covers the use of soil exposed to the elements, specifically erosive forces such as wind and rain wash. So hill tops down into vallies but not the various forms of “wetland” farming such as in broad valley bottoms where water medows, and bogland etc are partialy cultivated (nor paddy fields and the like).

Basically the term leaving fallow refers to land that is plowed and tilled and taken out of production to “rest”. Many think this means the land is left unseeded or even barren during a growing season, but this is not true.

Leaving fallow comes in several forms, but they all start with “breaking the soil” or “aerating the soil” or both which is where you “plow and till”. Essentially plowing is a deep soil process where you lift the compacted lower layers and turn the “green sod” down thus adding organic material inti a lower layer. Tilling is a top soil process where you break up the “weathered clumps” to form a fine soil for seeding.

Plowing is usually done at the end of a growing season such as in autumn, tilling is done before seeding or planting out at the begining of a season. Such is basic “Dryland Managment” in agricultural technology techniques, that have been practiced for ten thousand or more years in various forms.

There are roughly four different forms of resting dryland by letting it go fallow.

The First and probably the easiest, is you you effectively “leave it to nature”. That is you leave it completely alone for the primary season.

Second, is to cover the area with fresh animal bedding and spoiled hay or straw, and then leave it alone for “useful bugs and worms” to pull it into the top soil. Being open it alows water to get quickly to the soil and forms a bio-active layer where the humidity is high and the soil temprature raised and has bacterial growth renewed which is essential for mineral and similar take up in most plants root systems.

Third is to again “top dress” the area, this time with two or more seasons aged compost. This is more compact compost and can contain harder mulch such as rotted woody material. This is often a “winter top” as it breaks the effect of heavy rain and limits the effects of freezing the top soil. Alowing top soil to freeze is a contentious subject in some parts. Basically some say “it kills the soil” others say “it kills the bad” of eggs and grubs of undesirable crop attacking creatures.

Forth is to plant a rapidly growing cover crop that will be used as a “green manure” to be plowed in at the begining not end of a season prior to seeding with a new production crop. This is called “green fallow”.

Often “green fallow” is actually a two stage process. The roots of certain plants are left in the soil and the “second greening” is ploughed in. This will be followed by another “rest crop” that complements what the roots and second greening provided.

But… You can use some of these fallowing processes to encorage growth and keep down undesirable pests.

In essence you prepare your soil and put a thick blanket of light organic material on it. You then press and water it in and plant seadlings through it. It can have an equivalent of adding between a month or two to your early growing season and holding the equivalent of four to eight inches of rainfall in place as well as keeping the weeds down fairly easily.

People who do this find not only does it enrich their soil, they don’t need to leave it fallow, and can get an extra crop or two in in the year.

Another technique is “banking to the sun” when you plough a field the furrows do not fall evenly. It is customary to plough with the land contours to trap and hold rain fall in and minimise run-off. However if you plough such that the long rise faces south, then the growing area in sunlight especially in spring and autumn is increased.

All of this sounds obvious once you’ve been told, but finding out yourself could take you a decade of lower yield.

Every hslf to decade or so, you should do a deep soil break and aerate. This is hard work and I’ve described it befor.

Simply you dig a deep trench upto half a meter deep down onto the clay. You then add a lot of high density organic material in the bottom and turn the next trench soil into it such the top soil goes down.

My dad used to save up a ton of newspaper and soak it and put that down on the clay, then 100mm to 300mm of two or three year rotted straw and animal manure befor turning the green down on top of it.

You have to be carefull what you grow on it in the first season as it’s “hot soil” and will burn some crops. It’s one reason that “horse manure” is better than bovine manure, and you should never add swine waste to soil directly as it’s full of ammonia that needs to rot-in to hard or corse organic material to turn it into nitrates (similar with all urine, human included).

Clive Robinson • July 10, 2022 6:29 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

I understand the concept, but looking at the PCB, I am not spotting where the magic happens.

That is because you do not intuitively understand what an FFT widget or butterfly also called a,

“Radix-2 ‘Decimation In Time'(DIT) transform”

realy is with respect to analogue circuitry (not surprising as it’s mostly not taught…).

So where to begin…

Lets start with the “Discrete Fourier Transform”(DFT), it takes two signals at the same frequencie at it’s input and multiplies them together.

In Analogue electronics this is known as a “mixer” and usually you are only looking to get one of several possible outputs…

Unfortunately the term “mixer” is used for two different types of circuit,

1, One that “sums” the amplitudes.
2, One that “squares” the sum of the amplitudes.

To make things worse over a certain “range” the expected outputs are broadly the same due to the envelope effect and the result is a good aproximation to “multiplying” the teo signals…

Now one type of mixer is realy two mixers and this is sometimes known as an IQ output mixer by some, and other fun names by others (I for “in phase” and Q for “quadrature phase”).

In esence you have an input signal S, a local oscilator LO both of which drive two mixers. The difference is one mixer gets driven by LO with zero phase shift, the other 90degrees, pi/2 or quadrature phase shift so that it is in “phase quadrature”. The outputs from the two mixers can be combined in different ways to get the RMS amplitude of S –by Pythag– or the phase of S or real fun “negative frequencies” (think in terms of a phase frequency plane, where one signal gives you the X axis the other the Y axis known as a “polar plot” and forms the basis of the Smith Chart amongst other things).

If you have fun manipulating trig formula you will realise that this type of dual mixer mixer is all that a DFT actually is.

How you go from the DFT or “channel bank receiver” to the FFT or “Butler matrix” is often dryly given in graduate physics and engineering texts or see the

“Cooley-Tukey FFT algorithm”

Explanation on Wikipedia,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooley–Tukey_FFT_algorithm

You will find that the only difference on those butterflys is that of “phase”. Now as even a high school kid should given a little time be able to say, the phase of a signal changes with distance and correlates with time or 1/f. It’s a fundemental notion of “Transmission line theory”…

But what does a “transmission line” look like, the answer is in this case “a length of PCB trace over a dialectric and ground plane” and those “hairpin bends” you see are “phase shifters” at some specified frequency.

But what do the FFT Butterfly mixers look like? In this case four lengths of trasmission line making a full wavelength circle with connections at the quadriphase points, it’s also called a circulator. Some also call it a “Rat Race Mixer” for arcane reasons.

So all the Butler Matrix is, is an FFT with every butterfly replaced by a circulator mixer, with the required phase shifts carried out by “hairpin loop” phase shifters.

But… The circuit is not “no power” it actually powered by the input signals, and has by the laws of physics “resistive loss” which also means it has 4KTBR noise added as well. So there are finite limits on just how many FFT Butterflies you can use.

Now the circuit is being used for beam-forming which in reality means there are two FFTs one DIT and one DIF and between them a set of “weighted” delay lines.

Anyway I hope that helps you understand what you are looking at.

But just one fun thing to note… Butler Matrix systems are seen as “a bit pants these days” with “the real cool kids” now using “fractal transforms” because they have much much greater usable bandwidth… And if you think I’m going to explain those I’ve three things to say,

1, You must be joking.
2, Intellectual Property(IP).
3, Non Disclosure Agreement(NDA).

N’ff said 😉

Clive Robinson • July 11, 2022 4:39 AM

@SpaceLifeForm, Ismar, JonKnowsNothing, Nick Levinson, Winter, ALL,

Re : LEO access to data.

If you look back far enough on this blog @Nick P myself and one or two others had discussions and proposed solutions, and Uber obviously did not read them.

So to senarios for you,

First, you are on the phone to your Shanghai Office talking to a coworker who is updating a database in their office. The police smash down the door attempt to grab the phone and demand the person in Shanghai reads out the entire database down the phone.

Do the authorities have the legal right to do so?
Does the person in the Shanghai office have to legaly comply?
Do the authorities have the right to prosecute you if the person in Shanghai does not do as demanded?

The answers are probably “No” for the first too and depends on your local compunction legislation for the third.

Now, Second case, replace the conversation with “remote access” by computer, and the coworker with a router, gateway, or middleware system that accesses the database. And the system stops alowing access to the database.

What is different between the “coworker” and the “system”?

Especially if the system is say an AI device for security?

Remember back in the 1980’s I was lucky because I dug my heals in, but two others despite being warned not to chose to cooperate with authorities and got dragged through the full UK legal process. Which then had the protection of the House of Lords, who kicked the case out as a misuse of legislation, hence the UK eventually got it’s first computer misuse act that has been abused by the authorities ever since.

In the UK the citizens nolonger have the protection of the House of Lords as the highest court in the realm. It’s been replaced with a system that is far less trustworthy and way more open to abuse and political preasure. Which the current political incumbrant choses to effectively ignore (hence part of the recent no-confidence and resignations).

Whilst Uber might be an unpleasant, rapacious and otherwise vile organisation, that should not be used to excuse unlawful “Jack-Boot-Tactics” by authorities, because once the precedence is set, it applies to all from then onwards, which might be you.

Clive Robinson • July 11, 2022 5:58 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

But now it appears from the leaked emails that she had already discussed the taxi company several times with the ministers involved.

Does that come under the 18month rules, they do have exceptions such as who initiated the communications, why, and for what purpose.

None of which has been indicated.

The issues around the changes in the taxi market are way greater than just a single company.

Most do not realise it but mobstets, criminals and many more use the “traditional” taxi market as a way of money laundering and paying people off for small things, as well as being a way to “run drugs” fairly easily. Also monopolies and cartells have been established and with cut backs in public services causing things like “Hospital transport” to be “out sourced” gives criminals direct access to tax resources.

Which is why some actually see the company as “benificial”.

When Crime and Politics are involved few situations are as they appear to the public.

Another aspect you might not have considered is who pays for a person to live?

If for “political mantra” you stop people earning money because they are XXX or YYY, then their choices are state handouts or crime. Whilst there is a lot to dislike about these large US Corporates, they tend to be “equal oportunity” when it comes to the “minimally waged”, such is the nature of “exploitation”. However it has the benifit of keeping violent, petty and similar socialy visable crime figures down as well as drive economic churn without having to use the tax take.

The fact is the company concerned went form being the heros braking up cartels and crime to being the vilains exploiting and destroying others rice bowls. What changed was not what they were doing but how they were perceived.

So there is a time line involved as well. That is say AAA at one point in time and you are a hero, say it at a diferent time and you are evil.

Whilst in reality notging has actually changed other than the way journalists and politicians want things seen by the public.

Oh and being a non believer in man made deities, I still see the funny side of the old saws of,

“Even the devil does gods work… better.”

“What would god be without the devil?”

Clive Robinson • July 11, 2022 9:56 AM

@ Winter,

Re : According to the News report

Be somewhat carefull about that, it is at best incompleate.

When the MSM gets around to it, you will discover that what went on was not done by Uber, but by Google.

Currently it would appear that Google is spreading disinformation about it’s very very deep involvment.

It was Google that “oened” not just the UK Priminister David Cameron through advisors, celebrity friends and other Ministers, they also owned French leader Macron via family, friends and advisors.

For some reason even though it was very very blatant, Google getting it’s hooks in the EU was to put it bluntly astounding.

What is coming out is shall we say “diversionary” and is originating from the Chocolate Factory with enough spin to turn it into almost candy-fluff that whilst having no real substance, very effectively obsucres with a very sticky mess what was actually going on at the heart of things.

I suspect that Alphabet/Googles aim is in effect “tar-pit tactics” to so bog down and exhaust those trying to get to the center of the mess they either never make it or nobody is interested when they do.

I guess time will tell but this “Uber-nonsense” is a side show the real “driver” was Google and they are trying to stay out of sight.

Clive Robinson • July 11, 2022 7:52 PM

@ vas pup, Ted, ALL,

Re : CIA tips

They were not thought up by the CIA, they are far older and predate most US Federal Agencies likr the FBI, CIA, NSW, NRO, uncle Tom Cobbly and the kitchen sink…

They are known in most other places as “fieldcraft” and some go back thousands of years.

One piece of advice, is never let metal touch your skin unless it has pased “clean through a flame”.

Whilst older than the Egyptians and may well have started with what some call “Chinese Alchemy” there is we now know a lot of science at the physics level behind it.

Firstly nearly all organic poisons break down in a flame, leaving inorganic poisons based around various minerals especially metals that change the colour of a flame very distinctively (see spectroscopy with candle and prism).

So sodium in salt makes a flame glow orange and so on Chinese “fireworks” worked on the principle of burning metal salts in the flame of gunpowder (found when searching for the essence of life).

Metal used for making blades produced known colours so anything on them like salts of mercury or arsnic would produce a different colour, as well as “burning off” (though don’t breath the fumes).

Once you had effectively cleansed the blade with fire tou kept it on your person and did not let it out of your sight.

Basically you used it for eating and grooming such as shaving.

Speaking of “eating” there is the saying,

“If you don’t cook it don’t eat it”

Oh and “burn the inside of the pan to clean it.

A lot but by no means all organic poisons break down in high tempratures and long slow cooking…

So searing then boiling then long slow cooking especially vegetables where some poison plants look almost exactly like the edible versions (see annual death toll from people making home made horse radish sauce, oh and “death by casava”)

Do not eat “fruit pits” or “nuts” as most contain either cyanide or -CN attached to organic molecules similar to sugars which get concerted to cyanide in the digestive system. Unfortunatly in either case it tends to not break down with cooking, but grating and soaking can reduce the content as the cyanide in such molecules tends to have a significant affinity for water, where as starch etc does not,

https://www.cassavaprocess.com/how-to-remove-toxicity-in-cassava/

But not all organic poisons can be prevented in the standard kitchen, rice for instance had a pathogen associated with it that survives the temprature of boiling water and higher such as found in preasure cookers. So cooking rice and letting it cool to “room temprature” or over night to make a breakfast with can prove fatal. It also survives freezing so… Heating to high steam heat tempratures then rapid chill is used by the processed food industry.

Basically never make home made cooked rice portions, it’s asking to get poisoned, as is making traditional fried rice…

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/73865

Ever wonder why Granny or Great Granny always used to peel root vegtables and cook untill almost turned to mush?

Well first of nearly all root vegtables and tubers have to contend with insects in the ground so the skins is where the poison is highest.

Cooking root vegtables almost to mush not only breaks down poisons, it also helps break down some more complex carbohydrates thus making startches much easier to digest easily and rapidly. It’s one of the reasons the “Glycemic index” is way higher in cooked foods like carrots than when you eat them raw.

Oh also the roots/tubers are way more suceptable to above soil insects etc as well… So where there is daylight poisons are formed to protect the plant. There are many plants such as potatoes, tomatoes, rhubarb, where it’s not safe to eat any part that is green

A pice of advice, those “master chefs” who do things like cook cherry tomatoes on the vine… Don’t do it the poison can easily get out and into the tomatoes where they split when cooking… As for green tomatoes themselves, yes they are poisonous, but unless you feel like eating a pound and a half of them in one go, a healthy adult individual will probably not notice the symptoms

https://gardeninguru.com/can-green-tomatoes-be-poisonous/

Then there are “peas & beans”… One of the deadliest toxins called ricin can be found in all sorts of them.

The usual recomendation is “vigourous boil for ten minutes”… However it does not work to well on some so aditional work is needed.

So “Knowing how to cook” is a little more than just a basic survival skill…

Other “fieldcraft” is,

“Bash the tin and boil untill the dent starts to come out”

Can stop most poisoning? except from the most deadly organic poison known to mankind, the botulism posion, that also gets injected into people at “botox parties” and the like…

I’ll let people look that one up, but don’t believe what you read in some “detective novels” 😉

Clive Robinson • July 11, 2022 11:20 PM

@ vas pup, Ted, ALL,

The CIA – Tips was actually 16 in an Ask Molly posting,

https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/ask-molly-travel-tips/

Unsuprisingly I think some are good, some incompleate and some bad if not actually dangerous…

For instance,

“Do you know what else can help keep a door closed? A door stop.”

Is bad advice as I indicated years ago.

To open a door held closed with a wedge door-stop is easy, all you need is a six inch plastic ruler in your pocket.

Slide it under the door at the hinge side and slid it along towards the opening side. When you hit the door stop pull the ruler back to you then having moved it about an inch further towards the opening side push it back. The ruler then pushes the wedge out from under the door.

When the wedge is free, then slide the ruler back and move it toward the hinge side, then slide it back under and push the door-stop sideways. Then when you open the door the door keeps pushing the door-stop out of the way.

The use of a door-stop wedge is one of those “false sense of security” pieces of advice, like leaving mortice keys part turned in locks. It realy does not take much thinking to defeat such things.

Another piece of bad advice because it’s incompleate,

“A knock at your hotel door? Don’t open it unless you know or can verify who’s on the other side.”

Mossad are known to use this against people because humans are to trusting.

You get a knock on the door you walk up behind the door and say “who’s there” well you are very vulnerable.

They can either shoot you through the door with a low caliber sub sonic pistol and moderator –a potato will do– and just walk away (which they have done in the past).

Or they can first quietlt unlock the door check it opens pull it back then knock. When you say “who’s there” they just kick or shove the door open and you get knocked off balance or onto the floor. They push through and “stomp you down” as they know where you are.

What you should do on entering a hotel is put the hotel reception direct dial phone number on single key press “redial” on your mobile phone and keep it within arms reach where ever you are in the room (this is something prostitutes/escorts do). Hang it from a lanyard around your neck works.

On entering your room and having closed the corridor door imediately open the adjacent bathroom door, so you have a place to dive into. Then immediately put the “do not disturb” on the outside of the corridor door, then put the desk chair up against the corridor door and put some weight like your luggage ontop of it.

If you get a knock quietly go into the bathroom and all but close that door then wait and see what happens, if they knock again or try turning the door handle then call out “who’s there”. If anything unexpected happens slam and lock the bathroom door and hit redial then handsfree.

Rather than use a wedge, take a couple of small screw in “eye-bolts” and screw them in the bottom of the door. Pull string or “boot-laces” through the bolts and tie them to the chair not at the back of the chair but the front just below or at the seat. This pulls the legs furthest away from the door down into the carpet. The “triangle of forces” then operates in your favour and very much against anyone on the other side of the door.

With regards copying your documents, photocopy everything passport, drivers licence front of credit cards (not back), travellers checks, tickets, contact details, medications list, alergies, etc.

Put one set in your wallet, one set in the room safe leave one in a sealed envelope in reception and have two or three spare sets in your luggage with atleast on set in every bag.

Don’t stay in tourist hotels, and preferably pick a hotel next to a bus or railway station. Then when taking a taxi from the airport ask not for the hotel but the bus or railway station then walk the last bit.

When doing “research” by all means look at the CIA world fact book, but lets be honest… Wikipedia and YouTube are the places to go for “location location location” details including how the locals dress and what they look like…

Nearly every place you are likely to want to goto as an ordinary traveler on holiday will have it’s own Wikipedia page, and several YouTube videos. Look at what people are wearing in the videos and work out who the locals and tourists are, then try to blend in.

If you are six foot six with ginger hair with a fifty inch or more chest, you are going to be different even in Edinburgh Scotland. Or are you? You’ld be surprised people even in Turkey where they would think you a devil will tend to ignore you if your body movments blend in and you don’t strut or big it up.

If you can not blend in then semi-smart business atire, or as I do “travel like a seaman” or other “low end working person”

Oh and don’t try to be a “Grey man” unless it’s semi-smart business attire. Best colours are dark blue or dark green as they disapear in shade or other less bright places.

As for “Know your escape route” you should do this every where as part of situational awarness unless you can see two or more ways out, don’t go in there, or down that road or alley etc.

Always try to stand not sit, if you are going to sit, make sure it’s a freestanding chair that’s light enough for you to kick out of the way or pick up and hit someone with. Likewise never sit at a table that is bolted down or too heavy to overturn with one hand. The last place you want to sit is against the wall on a bench in a booth with a fixed table like they have in MuckyD’s or other fast food places, you’ve effectively put on a straight jacket…

Learn how to eat… Way to many Americans eat with only one hand and the other in their lap it’s a dead giveaway you are a tourist. As used to be said in a prissy english voice “no elbows on the table” is a rule in a number of places. Oh and learn about you’ve eaten sufficient rules, yes the polite belch movment is still exprcted in some places, but more subtal are things like leaving food on the plate, how you put the knife and fork on the plate and how you put your napkin on the table. In some places putting it down as a loose “scrunch bundle” is if you are going to leave the table but come back. However folding the napkin in half can signify you’ve finished with that course. But… watch out for folding the napkin back up neatly, in some cultures this is insulting as you are effectively telling your host they are to poor to do the laundery. Also check and see what napkin use is acceptable. In some places you are alowed to touch it to your lips, others not. Likeeise only put it on your lap squared off if you are male and dimoned if you are a lady. In other places it’s OK to have it part way up your stomach, but to be honest I think puting it in the shirt collar is “so two centuries ago” every where these days.

I won’t go into the nightmare that is formal place settings and why you don’t use a fork as a shovel and even if you are left handed, why you have to be right handed for eating fish. Why you eat desert with the fork not the spoon and the fun that is eating soup.

Also either learn the local hand signals or do not use them. Some nations if saying “three” will hold up the thumb index and middle fingers, other nations will not just hold up the index middle and ring finger, they may touch the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger. Also find out if it’s a “plam out” or “back of the hand out”. Also remember in some countries a back of the hand out and the index and middle fingers up is considered very rude whilst palm out is not…

Remember many places have a “No left hand rule”, because the left hand is the dirty hand. Likewise many find seeing the soles of feet/shoes highly offensive.

In some places there are rules about how you walk down the pavement… And which side you walk of someone of the opposite sex.

Never hand-carry anything, use a satchel rather than a briefcase or a backpack with both waist and chest straps fastened.

Have a cheap wallet with no more than about twenty dollars in it. Put other money in low bills in all your pockets and some high denomination bills in a plastic bag inside your sock so it’s under your foot.

If you are going to wear a body “money” belt don’t put anything valuable or metalic in it… Criminals know that those realy cheap nail/pipe detectors you can buy at DIY stores will find valuables without having to touch you.

Have cheap earphones and put them in your ears, that way you either get left alone or a moment or twos thinking time.

Don’t shop in “human service” shops, go for super markets etc you stick stuff on the conveyour or next to the till and hand over sufficient low denomination notes.

In Europe you can usually find Chinese or Indian shops or takeaways, as they are run by “immigrants” or first or second generation they will very probably speak english reasonably well and actually be happy to practice it with you. They can be realy helpfull with “local knowledge”.

As for “Trust your instincts” most people do not have any instincts… And learning them can be a painful experience. You first have to learn to be alert and notice things, do this by practicing every day long before you travel anywhere, you only become vigilant when the hypervigilence has sunk in. It’s a bit like learning to drive, at first you consciously have to notice things but given time you notice them subconsciously and things get less stressful.

But it’s not just people it’s things, the way to avoid getting blown up by an IED is to know the environment better the back of your hand. Spot signs like parked vehicles designed to “funnel into the kill zone” street furniture or similar being moved. Learn what vehicles are “normal” and which are “new” in the area. Spot “fakes” surveillance and similar vehicles have oddities about them if you know the make and models any silhouette changes will scream out to you. But get used to “looking in” to cars, they almost always have some form of personalisation even if it’s just coins in the center console. To clean or to dirty inside or out can scream alarm signals.

Also people siting in vehicles usually do not look normal… This is because of the “my personal space” issue cyclists are used to passing busy traffic and seeing lots of “unguarded faces”. Where people just assume nobody looks in so they do not have their “I’m social face” mask on. People doing surveillance do have their “I’m social face on” because they assume the target is looking at them…

Clive Robinson • July 12, 2022 4:53 PM

@ Blake J.,

Made my “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably ain’t” warning bells at least buzz a bit…

Well two things to note,

1, It was more than a decade ago, which in the ICT world is about three life times ago.

2, You felt uncomfortable, maybe not that something was wrong, but something was not realy right.

I’d say that puts you in the upper 95 percentile, so there’s more thsn a bit of hope for you 😉

But seriously few are born with a fine tuned “sense of hinky” like muscles you have to work at getting the end result you want.

I was for various reasons both lucky and unlucky because I was almost insanely curious from before I could walk and like many physically large people realy quite mild mannered.

In the adults especially teachers see curiosity as a significant pluss point, and many sins get forgiven, because they give the adults “dining ouy stories”. But mild mannered behaviour is seen as “stupid” in a peer group and thus you get bullied not by individusls but by packs or as we call them gangs.

Unfortunately when I was young being bullied at school was seen as “character forming” by those who had bullied others when they were at school so you had two choices put up with it or fight back.

One day I snapped and beat a bully so hard his “friends” deserted him and I just carried on hitting him. Eventually I was draged off by some horrified teachers and the bully lay their like a thrown down rag doll in a puddle. My parents were called and I got taken home when I returned to school nothing was said the bully was nolonger there and I got left alone by every one, their backs were in effect turned.

Being “sent to Coventry” is a social torture technique deployed against individuals. The thing is like all torture you have to be susceptible in the first place for it to work.

To me it gave me peace to do what my curiosity wanted and I moved forward rapidly in certain educational areas but not others. So I developed an early interest in maths and science and the way things worked.

So I learnt to pick locks, cut keys from having just seen one for a couple of seconds and all sorts of other skills that you are not supposed to know.

The adults did not know what to make of me, I behaved like I was withdrawn when in groups of other children but with adults, they often forgot I was a child not an adolescent or older.

So at an early age before computers were anything more than “Dr Who” plot items I’d learnt skills that I still use daily.

The trick and it is a realy important one to learb, was to not as such “learn new skills”, but migrate existing fundemental skills into new areas…

It’s only now I’m getting old and crabby in the mirror (I still look out with the eyes of a twenty year old) that I realise our entire education system is to be honest wrong. It’s not the fault of the teachers but those who dictate to them. They are in effect bullies, and the harm to society they cause is immense.

Learning how to migrate the skills you have and therby not just broaden them but strengthen them is the way we should make ourselves of use.

You could learn parrot fashion all the Kings of England, all the Presidents of the USA, and endless reams of facts… But realy what use are they in your head?

They would be of more use in a well thumbed book in a well used library, or it’s modern equivalent.

Facts do not give understanding, neither mostly do methords or processes, we can all reorder a filing cabinate (I hope).

But to what benifit? That is where information becomes usefull knowledge. For instance few people can do it because of the “mechanics” but understanding why you might reindex a database nearly everyone can with a little help and an interest or need can pickup.

In turn you get a feel for when the current way you are indexing it is wrong or could be improved.

That is the first step on the path to what our host @Bruce has in the past called learning to “think hinky”.

In a way it’s just a skill like riding a bike, playing the guitar and with time writing music or other works of art. You learn not just how to use the tools at hand, but also take those tools on to do a new task, and in the process also take back new understanding to the old task.

Yes it all sounds “nebulous” and some locked in a cognative straight jacket of their own making will never see the benifit.

But hey we don’t pound nails into beams with our fists for a reason 😉

Realising that, then lets us realise why there are so many different types of “hammer” even though some might be called mallets…

Clive Robinson • July 12, 2022 6:20 PM

@ Ted,

“It looks so much like Queen Anne’s Lace that I’m horrified I didn’t know the difference before now.”

They are part of the same family and “Queen Anne’s lace” also known as wild carrot is poisonous in part…

A lot of “wild food sites” say you can eat the first year leaves and flowers in salads DON’T or even handle them.

Research in 2018 showed that the leaves even in the first year contain a range of phototoxic poisons in the furocoumarins family[1], which is much higher in the second year. It’s the same toxin familly as is found in the similar looking and rightly feared Hogweed that I’ve mentioned on this blog before. The furocoumarins cause what look like third degree burns, even years after touching Hogweed, by the way they interact with the dermal DNA.

So keep Queen Anne’s Lace away from humans and live stock as a precaution and always handle with appropriate “PPE” (gloves etc).

Oh the Queen Anne’s Lace tap root is often so sweet you can use it to make puddings with, without need of honey or beet.

Oh, it might appear I know a lot about such plants, whilst I do no more than many, trust me ehen I say,

“I don’t know enough”

Not even close, even with the many books in my dead tree cave.

Some years ago when doing some research on “sustainability” I went to South West London’s Kew Gardens to “consult an expert” who as friendly and jovial as she was scared the living daylights out of me, just on UK native plants that people use incorrectly…

[1] See refrences at the bottom of,

https://natoxaq.ku.dk/toxin-of-the-week/furanocoumarins/

Clive Robinson • July 12, 2022 7:03 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing, ALL,

Re : Joining dots.

I smiled when I read,

“’cause no one will ever ask you how to measure wine in an oak cask with just a stick and chalk since no one ever taught you how to do that anyway.”

Or by tapping it.

Something they do actually ask you to learn how to do in the medical profession, to detect how filled up yoir lungs may be with crud of various forms.

Sadly though they rarely give the history.

We’ve all heard of “fetal monitors” and know they are not just high tech but expensive.

Few in the west appear to know that putting a stethoscope “cheastpircr” head under an empty glass on a womans abdomen can produce very similar results to a Doppler and none of that messy “lubricating gell” needed either. It works as well if not better than a “Pinard horn”.

I was surprised by this when told by a nurse who had spent time in Africa where sometimes all that they have is a rolled up piece of cardboard to make what looks like an old fashioned ear trumpet…

Clive Robinson • July 13, 2022 8:39 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

Re : Silicon Turtles

Or as I named it “The Xmas gift that keeps on giving”…

This is a “Go Faster Stripes” problem that CPU manufacturers dug themselves into with their “Specmanship games”.

I can not remember how far back in time I first posted,

“Security -v- Efficiency”

To this blog, but I was certainly talking about the issues last century with “time based side channels” that are a natural side effect of making things run faster by trying to remove redundancy.

There are only two real solutions to being secure against these “Go Faster Stripe” attacks and the many more new ones to follow in their footsteps.

1, Turn off the “Go Faster Stripe” optimizations and take the above 50% performance hit.

2, Issolate the systems from attack by not having them connected to “at risk” communications.

Anything else is going to leave you vulnerable…

Which raises the question of how you effectively mitigate “Cloud Services” of all the “XasS” suppliers…

But then again back in the early days of “Cloud” servicess people were waving big red security warning flags about “The Cloud” the fact they get so frequently confirmed is well…

Oh as for the,

“Magically, Windows has already did the mitigation.”

Do not be entirely to sure on that I suspect there will be a new Go Faster Stripe in a very short while that will make them and more importantly their users wince.

Such is the nature of these CPU Go Faster Stripe issues…

Oh… And don’t forget some of those “mitigations” that come from the chip manufacturers, will fairly significantly shorten the life expectancy of the silicon…

Clive Robinson • July 16, 2022 10:34 AM

@ Winter,

Unlike Plato, modern humans do not require things to have perfect geometric forms.

I think you missed the joke, go read my last paragraph again.

Clive Robinson • July 17, 2022 11:39 AM

@ Winter, SpaceLifeForm,

Re : One of the first things a physics student is told

The first “law of physics” I was in effect told is,

“Physics is a series of lies, each more acurate than the previous accepted lie”.

I suspect @SpaceLifeForm got told the same as they were teaching him to feed turtles 😉

And it’s true, if you consider our universe is about forces acting on matter/energy. Physics has three parts,

The first are the good old experamentalists who actually do a bit more than get “white boards dirty” diging holes that span three countries to watch things and say what they saw. Expect beards and wooly jumpers on the more senior of this group.

Secondly there are the guys who take the results of the first group’s digging and watching and try to build mathmatical models that “fit the curve” as it were. Expect long hair and early male pattern baldness in this group along with a taste in shirts and ties that you won’t find on Wall St.

Then there is the third group that contain those who cogitate of Swiss Cheese and bubbles within bubbles and other minor anoying things such as an infinity of infinities happening every fractional infinity of a second. As long as they are drinking beer/wine or nibbling on snacks these appear as normal, then they say something and your head starts to hurt in ways you can not imagine.

But as for,

“but only about calculating how they behave”

That’s the ones the others call the “Shut up and calculate club”, that Quantum ojimy-flip-flops are known to hang out in 😉

If there are any physicists out there who feel they are not in one of these groups,

Please write in and tells us after, checking your reality and, that your feet are not on fire due to being burnt as a heritic by the others 😉

P.S. Smiles added for non physicists so they don’t think I am one 😉

Clive Robinson • July 19, 2022 6:59 PM

@ MarkH, SpaceLifeForm,

“I don’t make the laws, I just submit to them.”

Actually you do not, nobody does either.

People build mathmatical models of what they think is reality.

But the reality we actually live by cares very little or nothing for such models.

The sad reality of the situation is most “laws” are “curve fitting”.

As for constants they usually come in two basic types,

1, Multiplicative (scalling).
2, Addative (offsetting).

Change the units of measure and they change…

Constants though are often “ratios” not “absolutes”, trying to find fundemental constants that are absolutes is often very hard, and in some cases may not be possible.

There has been recebtly a revival of the,

“Continuous -v- Discrete”

Argument, maths favours the former but science tends to the latter, with Plank Distance/Time,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units

However another argument that comes forward is the limitation of measurment thus knowledge…

Back in 1931, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem killed off a lot of ambitions to make things “neat” in mathmatics. By showing in fact such attempts could not ever achieve the desired objective.

Or a little more formally that, for any set of axioms and inference rules proposed to encapsulate a system (mathematics). Either the system must be inconsistent, or there must be some “truths” of the system which could not be derived from knowledge of the system.

Some now are tending to believe that this is effectively a “universal truth” for all systems, not just mathmatics. That is there will always be things for which we can not find explanations.

It’s a bit of a “Bitter Pill” for many to swallow, but I look at it another way. We believe that our universe is finite, the implication of which is there has to be a limit on “what is known” (all arangments of matter or energy by which information could be stored are finite).

Clive Robinson • July 21, 2022 3:43 AM

@ Winter, SpaceLifeForm,

“Interesting results were found by Erik Verlinde. His theory does not replace GR, but extends it to scales where dark matter and dark energy rule.”

I think you might have that a bit backward.

Erik Verlinde is a theoretical physicist for who thinks that gravity it’s self does not exist.

His viewpoint being that gravity is like what we get taught at school about temprature and Brownian motion and later themodynamics.

That is he views what others think of as fundemental as an aggregate or sum of smaller more interesting things like a drunken crowd moves from the individual walks. Call it the “Average White Gausian Noise”(AWGN) effect of a myriad of signals.

As such it raises an interesring problem. Such averaging is a “Knapsack problem” that is “hard”[1] and is inherantly a one way function.

Thus we have the “Generator -v- Observer” problem. I can design a “black box” Generator the output of which appears “random” as an observer your job is to determin if the generator is in fact derived from a “True Random Source” or some “fully determanistic algorithm”, and if the latter what the determanistic algorithm is.

The problem for the observer is that by definition the observations are discrete not continuous thus when compared for analysis are “rational ratios” not “real ratios”…

As Rabbi Burns observed in his poem,

“The best-laid plans of mice and men, oft gang agley[2]”

And was observed as the caution,

“There is many a slip twix cup and lip”

Hence the best you can do is “curve fit” and chase after more discrimination tests none of which will prove Einstein right, just wrong.

[1] For instance take a ballon or other bounded container and put into it a composition of gasses with known properties and total known mass but unknown composition, and by measuring only the volume and temprature of the ballon determin,

1, The composition of gasses
2, The velocity and direction of individual gas molecules.

In theory both could be done, in practice even the first can not without applying initial constraints (such as gas ratios have to be rationals not reals).

[2] The Scottish word “agley” is broadly the equivalent of the English “astray” and “gang” the equivalent of “go”. Thus ” meaning in this case “go astray”, or more simply “go wrong”. This is due in almost all cases to the “gaps in plans” due to the unknown, which also gives us the Military expression “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy”. The same gaps however happen where every we look as it’s a measurment process.

Clive Robinson • July 22, 2022 4:41 AM

@ Winter, SpaceLifeForm,

Re : Dark Matter

“Until there is proof that there is no such matter, or a better explanation can be found, an empirical scientist has to conclude that there is indeed invisible matter present.”

No, they could and should in this case conclude that there is too little information.

Because it’s not just,

“… the stars in the galaxies and the galaxies themselves behave as if there is a lot of particulate invisible matter floating around the galaxies.”

Basically the “fudge factor” of “Dark Matter” whilst it “balances the scales” calls for,

1, A distribution
2, An interaction

That are not in keeping with the matter we do know and underatand.

When you start asking for things to have “special properties” you have never seen and can not rationally explain you should proceed with more than a degree of caution.

Which is possibly why increasingly “Dark Matter” is getting more and more skeptical treatment.

One fun argument you see is that the Newtonian model demands there be matter… Yet ignores the fact we know the Newtonian model is insufficient and why over a hundred years ago they went with Einstein, who’s model does or does not demand extras depending… Which is why he found his own model was insufficient thus a century ago in 1922 started out down another path…

Basically there is something between five and ten new papers a week on the subject, most are not coherent with each other and sometimes re-boil that which has already been discounted or even within limits disproved.

I guess one way to put it is we are like small children who know there is something better, but do not have any real idea what it is so we just reach out and grab at whatever catches our eye.

You can see a little of this from half a decade ago,

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/174732/why-dark-matter-and-general-relativity

Likewise from a decade and a half ago,

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/general-relativity-and-dark-matter.129962/

Note how much has changed but also not changed…

Clive Robinson • July 22, 2022 6:49 AM

@ Winter,

“Then science would have stopped with Galileo.”

Two points,

1, It’s a false assumption on your part.

2, If it was the case then it would have stopped kong before Galileo.

My statment of,

“No, they could and should in this case conclude that there is too little information.”

In no way indicates they should stop seaking out information, in fact the very opposite.

What it does caution against is building towers out of the fanciful. There is actually too little information to claim “matter” in fact orevious claims in that area have been repeatedl bern shown to be wrong.

I frequebtly caution about the non sciebtific method of forensics of going backwards from observed effect to claimed cause. Because it is not a reductionist approach.

If there is signs on the floor such as desicated mineral salts, there are many ways they could have got there… Claiming it must have been ancient Egyptian mumification methods, should be treated with skepticism unless there is evidence that rules out orher more probable causes.

We’ve actually had this nonsense with “pour patterns” where people made claims that marks found at the sights of fires looked similar to those you would get by pouring liquid accelerants and setting them on fire… Thus they lept to charges of “Arson” without any kind of rational investigation. Later research into something unrelated, showed the very same pour patterns… The cause, a simple fire creates enough heat to melt furnishings and the like. These form pools under the influance of gravity and burn. The pattern they leave behind is about as identical as you can get. However nobody poured accelerants and set fire to them, so not arson…

It was this that led onto the production of new test tecyniques to look for residual chemical signitures. But that too is fraught with failing issues…

Sometimes we have to accept the fact that there are numerous causes to a given effect, and that we don’t know or actually can not rule some or all of them out.

That is when we start sharpening the razors and go from theoretical science to statistics, and generally go with the “what requires the minimum of unsuported assertions” untill either the assertions become sufficiently probable to change the calculus or other compeating assertions are ruled out, again changing the calculus.

One of the downsides of the “Shut up and Calculate” club of certain areas of theoretical physics is there is great competition amongst club members, but darn little contact with reality.

So they run away with their curve fitting models…

Dark Matter is currently to improbable to be given serious concideration. Worse too many have jumped on the bandwaggon and nit questioned if it is even remotely heading in the right direction.

As I’ve pointed out GR is not very much use as a predictive tool part of this is it is not linear, which is always problematical. Whilst I can not prove I’ve got a red sock on the wrong foot with it, most of the predictions you can make with Einstein’s Field Equations not only sound way worse but in fact are.

What GR does, is say someting fits within a four dimensional manifold of a now known to be incorrect geometry…

The fact that it mostly works is also true of Isaac Newtons work…

As I’ve also said almost the first thing they caution you about studying physics is,

“It’s a succession of lies, each considered more accurate than the preceding lies”.

A little later a metrologist will tell you,

“There are ‘rational limits’ on what can be measured.”

The consequence of which is “real knowledge” is unobtainable.

Theoretical physics is about the infinities of the reals that fall between the rational measurments.

So it’s assumed for conveniance that the “laws of nature” are real or continuous, not as we observe rational and discrete.

It’s fairly easy to show that in a finite universe there has to be limits on what can actually be known…

Clive Robinson • July 23, 2022 1:45 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Re : Limits of Knowledge proof.

“I think the same thing about an infinite universe.”

I would not doubt it, but it is slightly harder –but not much– to prove to a reasonable level, and it’s all to do with “time cones”.

But simply, the fundemental assumptions currently are,

1, You can not travel in time.
2, You can not travel faster than C the speed of light.
3, Thermodynamics put a time limit on the existance of the universe.

Therefore even if the universe is infinite “time cones” lock parts of it off making any accessible region in which knowledge could be stored “finite”.

Which brings you back to the “Finite Universe” argument and proof.

Clive Robinson • July 23, 2022 12:44 PM

@ Winter,

The choice to use “correct” was yours not mine.

But your logic leaves a little to be desired.

There need not be “one” “correct theory” there can be several with the types of mathmatics being used. With Einstein’s field equations changing a constant so changes the result it might as well be a different theory, as has previously been demonstrated.

In practice the “one theory” is transitory anyway. It gets replaced or altered as other evidence arises. Thus,

“Each lie is successively more accurate”.

As I have pointed out such equations tend by necesity to be continuous in nature (as in real numbers) where as observations are discrete (both in time and value returned that is either a rational or natural number depending on the scaling constant).

Anyone who has sufficient knowledge of metrology will tell you it is impossible to make accurate measurments.

As was once said to me,

“You can not know how many carbon atoms there are in a sugar cube, and still have the same sugar cube”

The same is true for all human scale tangible objects.

And it’s not just the uncertainty principle or apparantly random noise or Doppler effects that apply.

Further there is no computer on earth that has the accuracy either.

Hence we are always without fail “curve fitting”, something you for some reason have previously taken exception to me pointing out.

Thus all theories are only testable within reason. Look up Boltzman’s little number and the Planck values to see what the limits ultimately are at the front end.

Which as I’ve previously noted begs a question,

“Is the Universe continuous or discrete?”

If the later then most theories will have to be “augmented” or replaced.

But does that actually matter?

Clive Robinson • July 26, 2022 2:23 AM

@ Winter,

Somehow, I am missing the point you want to make in this discussion.

I’m not surprised, because a lot is “missing” both your comments and mine…

But my point is the “succession of more accurate lies”, where we went from Newton that mostly works well in our solar system for orbits and the like to Einstein which does not work well was caused in part by a change to underlying geometry.

But the underlying geometry Einstein used was proved to be shall we say insufficient. Einstein also found his equations were not what he wanted, and spent the rest of his life trying to replace them.

The reality is we are not much further along the path of replacing Einstein’s equations nearly a century later. And for practical cases we still tend to use Newton or DFT’s. Einstein’s equations only get used as a sanity check. However the do account for certain discrepancies in time and frequency changes in communications systems where above normal precision may be required (the nearest most humans get is the Mobile Phone in their pocket, or the SatNav in their car).

As part of trying to replace Einstein’s equations, we have done two things,

1, Checked they are still valid in some respects.
2, Find they are wrong in other respects.

The result of the second currently is to try and somehow force the issue.

The result the claims of “Dark Energy” or “Dark Matter”. The “Dark” effectively meaning “we have not a clue”.

Currently there is a “bandwaggon” on which people have jumped called “Dark Matter” and all it appears to be doing is going in circles.

There are signs that some are climbing off the “Dark Matter” band waggon and I’m not realy surprised. Whilst it sounds like a good idea it’s not. That is there is way to much “twisting to fit” which means,

1, We do not understand reality as well as we need to.
2, The model we are using is not a good match to reality.

Others are quietly working away on alternatives to Dark Matter, including Dark Energy and replacing the model.

Dark energy requires fewer twists to match reality, especially when used in other models.

For various reasons I find energy is more likely the missing factor than some exotic property matter that we know absolutly nothing about and have not been able to find despite around a half century of looking.

I suspect that in the next few years the shift away from the Dark Matter bandwaggon will be quite noticable depending on how fast “venerable physicists fall off of their perches”.

Clive Robinson • July 27, 2022 2:55 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Re : they do not change their methodology

Yup, the reasoning expressed is very similar to my own.

The important thing to note is,

“Whilst correct theories can be seen as beautiful, that in no way means beautiful theories are correct.”

When physicists say things like “looking on the face of god” you know it’s time to leave the room for some clean air.

But the elephant in the room is,

1, Exponential rise of number of physicists.
2, Exponential rise of cost of fundemental experiments.

Means that the physicists are being starved of experimental results to work with.

The result, is thousands of fairly usless hypothesis that can not and in deed should not be attempted to be experimentally validated.

@ Winter,

The current models work to the last decimal.

So you do believe the universe is discrete rather than continuous then…

Clive Robinson • July 27, 2022 7:43 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Re : Sir Fred Hoyle

I do not recall reading any of his writings

I mentioned him on this blog a few months back which may have been the first time many readers here have heard of him (even though he was the originator of the term “big bang”).

You might have read some of his work without realising it, as he also wrote some fairly good science fiction that has stood the test of time.

However he was also a man out of his time, he did not have, nor did he believe in the “doctorate” system and in fact indicated it could be harmfull enforcing the “old boy” patronage system and discoraging all but approved research (which unsurprisingly it has turned out to be and do).

He was also “up against it” in that he supported women in research, and made a lot of noise about women who’s work had effectively been stolen by superiors and in a couple of cases their not getting Nobel prizes they thoroughly deserved. It’s been said that this cost him getting the Nobel prize over “stellar nucleosynthesis”…

He also had a reasonable grasp on what we now call AI and some of his thoughts in that area are more than interesting.

His idea on “stellar nucleosynthesis” is mostly right and the paper one of the most quoted in that field.

However the extension of the idea with the notion of “Panspermia” or “life hitching rides around the universe” is now seen as “fringe”.

That is we now know that viable biological samples and some organisms –tardigrades– can in fact survive in space for periods of time. However the probability of surviving from one solar system to another is I suspect minimal except at the lowest of chemical molecule forms which is now called “soft Panspermia”.

With regards,

yet we both had similar thought processes.

Present two able people with the same data and they are going to see similar patterns, these will lead on to thoughts that are going to be broadly the same.

Clive Robinson • July 28, 2022 6:03 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

Re : What happens when maths goes wrong/bad,

With respect to “wrong”, your quote of,

“You can find any pattern you want to any level of precision you want as long as you’re prepared to ignore enough data.”

And with respect to “bad”,

“There are lies, damn lies and statistics.”

The classic example of both is “death by sugar” foisted on the world by “Ancel Keys” the father of the nutritionaly poor K-Ration during WWII that hurt so many US soldiers, and make billions for the corn sugar industry by giving hundreds of millions life shortening diseases like type II diabetes.

Oh and we are very likely to see the same sort of scandle come out over mRNA vaccines.

Clive Robinson • July 28, 2022 5:10 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Re : Green, Green, Green.

There was a forth Green…

Prof Lucie Green.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucie_Green

Now for the coincidences…

You might remember I’ve mentioned Mullard House (Torrington Place), and UCL as places I’ve had involvment with. Oh and well I guess most here know I have an interest in satellite design/construction and Space Weather as well.

Well… As well there is a photograph that used to be on the wall at UCL in which both she and I are standing… Taken at a meeting we both happened to be attending.

Oh and you will possibly also remember I’ve also mentioned I’ve twice tossed a UK copper “two pence” coin and had it not just land but come to rest on it’s edge or rim. The first time was at school in “Mr Pearson’s” Maths class and we were doing probability…

I once actually sat down and worked out a formular for the probability of a coin landing –but not comming to rest– on the edge some years ago (it’s tedious and has a lot of assumptions). But… The round “one pound” coin he did 10,000 flips with should have landed on the edge, a lot more than the 14 times he mentioned. It works out around 1.3% or 130 times or say ten times his quote which suggests he was counting “at rests”.

As for that heads tails triplets game for gambling… A long time ago I mentioned on this blog I can toss a coin and have it land which ever way you call, irrespective of if you call before the toss, whilst it’s in the air or covered on the back of my hand… And no it’s not magic, but my son when he was around seven, thought it was. And his very nice maths teacher was quite impressed when I gave her ten correct calls followed by ten incorrect calls at the “show the parent” evening. She was even more surprised when I got my son to work out how one of the demonstrations worked.

So yes the world is full of coincidences…

But sometimes the odds of them are way smaller than you would expect. For instance on that “people in a photo” he should have mentioned the chain length. That is although you and I have never met, you probably know someone who knows someone, who…. Who knows me with around only five or six someones in a chain for something like 8 in ten people in the first world continents (scary thought when you consider how close that brings you to the last US President 😉