Friday Squid Blogging: Chinese Squid Fishing

China claims that it is “engaging in responsible squid fishing”:

Chen Xinjun, dean of the College of Marine Sciences at Shanghai Ocean University, made the remarks in response to recent accusations by foreign reporters and actor Leonardo DiCaprio that China is depleting its own fish stock and that Chinese boats have sailed to other waters to continue deep-sea fishing, particularly near Ecuador, affecting local fish stocks in the South American nation.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Read my blog posting guidelines here.

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Posted on October 28, 2022 at 3:57 PM • 85 Comments

Comments

vas pup • October 29, 2022 3:07 PM

Israeli cyber intel firm shines bright light on new, shadowy cybercrime collective

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-cyber-intel-firm-shines-bright-light-on-new-shadowy-cybercrime-collective/

“There is a very thriving community of threat actors that are earning billions of dollars every year from cyberattacks — which is the new form of being a thief, a burglar, where you can take something that is not yours and try to make money off of it,” says Yochai Corem, CEO of Cyberint Technologies Ltd., an Israel-based company specializing in cyber-intelligence.

Many illicit enterprises only offer one or two services — things like distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which overload a webpage with traffic to take down servers, or hacking databases — but Atlas offered a full menu of services.

Its DDoS attacks were one of its most popular services, and it provided solid proof of execution for €20 ($19.52) per victim, Gihon found. Atlas also offered leaked databases from all over the world, and in different sectors like finance, government, education, manufacturing, and tech, starting at €15 ($14.64).

Most notably, the group appeared to be organized much like a spy agency unit: a top-down hierarchy where only its leader, Mr. Eagle, seemed to know the full scope of the operation at play, while the rest of the threat actors are essentially hired guns carrying out tasks based on specific capabilities but on a need-to-know basis.”

Clive Robinson • October 29, 2022 3:33 PM

@ pup vas / vas pup, ALL,

Re : Russian Federation claims at UN.

now RF claims in UN that UK did it or participate in it. US exonerated.

I guess you are refereing to this story,

‘https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/royal-navy-slams-russia-for-accusing-uk-of-blowing-up-nord-stream/

Let’s be honest the Russian Federation is frequently making claims, most of which have no actual evidence, circumstantial evidence, or even substance. Just as the US has done frequently with the gang of four, but only one at a time cyber attackers (China, Iran, North Korea, Russia). Even when we know that France, India and Pakistan have very definately cyber-attacked the US.

It’s why you need to do a “follow the money” type analysis. As I pointed out if you look at it from a rational actor perspective it was very unlikely to be Russia, with nothing to gain by it and a lot to loose by taking the pipe lines off of the table. If you analyze the UK we are overly dependent on natural gas as our primary energy source, and we are piping it in from Norway. The loss of the Nord Streams immediately has a significant effect on the price and availability of Norwegian gad thus for the UK it would be “shooting themselves in the foot”.

You can go around a whole list of nations including Iran and China, and you find that the US gains the most both politically abd economically by the destruction of both Nord Stream pipelines, also some other Eastern EU nations might benifit via “transit fees”.

But you also need to consider a basic “truth” that the UK and US have stratigic plans to destroy nearly all infrastructure in and around Africa, Australia, China, the EU, Middle East, Russia, UK, US and most other parts of the globe. That is infrastructure of potential friend or foe alike, it’s part of the nature of “statehood” and goes back long before “The Prince”, “Art of War”, etc.

Remember that “Great Britain and France” the respecive eaters of beef and frogs legs… Also harbingers of sexual disease and all sorts of other ills and pestilence have been fighting like “brother and sister” for centuries dragging the rest of the world in it’s wake. And… more recently have been pouring fresh fuel on what had become a smoldering pile of vanities, not a bonfire it might become again, in the very near future. Most nations have a rival nation they scrap against, but will gladly stand side by side against another foe. The secret to statehood success is knowing which way to turn the knife, and where the most mortal of wounds can be struck quickly and surely and knowing that your friends rather more than your foes know you know this as well, after all what else is diplomacy realy all about…

So my advice is keep an eye on the “money trail” and who is acting in their own best interests as rational or apparently irrational actors with respect to any given audience.

vas pup • October 29, 2022 4:36 PM

@Clive

There was gut feeling on my side on that. UK behave as young hooligan in the world politics sometimes on own initiative and discretion, then expecting that boss – big boy (US) – will protect anyway against any retaliation due to ally relationship.

I am proud President Reagan did not let US into UK war against Argentina. Good example for current administration in Washington. So, any caprice for your own money.

Yes, most US and UK interests are often on the same page, but not coincide 100%. That is why UK should take personal responsibility of own actions and not hide behind big shoulders of US.

By the way, Article 5 of NATO claims that attack on one is attack on all, but that means NATO member did NOT attack first, then hiding behind Article 5 for collective protection by all other members.

JonKnowsNothing • October 29, 2022 4:51 PM

@ Clive, @ pup vas / vas pup, ALL

re: Referring to nord stream or the new attack on RF Sevastopol naval base?

MSM reports there was an attack on Russian Navy ships in the Sevastopol naval base by air drones and sea drones.

Per the MSM, the Ukraine, has no navy of its own. The fingers are getting pointed at UK Royal Navy unit which working in UKR.

As a result of the attack, Russia has withdrawn support for shipping UKR grain via that seaway.

Millions of people are going to starve because someone wanted to field test high tech weaponry.

SpaceLifeForm • October 29, 2022 7:17 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing

I will go with False Flag op. Planned from long ago, just in time for Winter.

But, what do I know?

Weather • October 29, 2022 9:14 PM

@All
I saw awhile ago on a news feed that a virus was using Microsoft calculator for infection.
Looking at my parents computer to tighten it down, noticing another of strange things.
Does anyone have links or information on the virus that was using Microsoft calculator?
Cheers

SpaceLifeForm • October 29, 2022 9:55 PM

@ Twitter Staff

Do not panic, do not buy the NYT story.

It will not be a Halloween Massacre. It is logistically impossible.

JonKnowsNothing • October 29, 2022 11:23 PM

@SpaceLifeForm

re: I will go with False Flag op. Planned from long ago, just in time for Winter.

I’m not sure I am connecting the dots to the proper terminals.

a) False Flag – that the Brits did it or that Russia is destroying their own arsenals?

b) Planned Long Ago – War Games planned in advance – yes.

Blocking the grain shipping route from the start of UKR-RU as it causes more supply shocks which means prices are rising and more profit can be made in some areas – maybe Economic War Games?

c) Planned for winter – more Economic War Games or taking advantage of unprotected assets?

The drones blew up the Safe Grain Transport Agreement, they did not target the grain silos or the grain cargo ships.

aside: the exploded silos in Beirut caused a lot of nasty problems. Last I read, it was an avalanche of rats and vermin, mold and grain dust blowing all over the city and tons and tons of decaying material still there.

d) False Flag media reporting?

JonKnowsNothing • October 29, 2022 11:36 PM

@SpaceLifeForm

re: Corporate Holiday Layoff Gifts

It is not uncommon in Silicon Valley to use End of Year Holidays to lighten the corporate employee rolls. There are a number of schemes on how and why.

End of Year SEC and Wall$ number reporting always looks better if the employee ratio shifts to fewer employees which means lower EOY salaries and payroll numbers and when matched with the previous 3 quarters can make the % per worker numbers look better.

It’s fairly common to close down for several week sans pay. If you have PTO or Vacation time stacked up you can collect that, if not, well Not A Merry Holiday. Corporations are not people even if they are legally, they don’t care, they have no guilt and no remorse.

Contractors and Day Workers don’t get counted as Employees so corporations have those folks working instead. The Gig Worker costs come in a different line item in the Annual Reports if at all noted. Even acknowledging Gig Workers on a such reports could lend credence to them being Employees after the fact.

Twitter wouldn’t be the first or the last SV Company to have a Scheduled Holiday Shutdown.

Clive Robinson • October 30, 2022 5:29 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing, SpaceLifeForm,

Re : Putin False Flags.

“I’m not sure I am connecting the dots to the proper terminals.”

This “massive attack heroically repulsed…” is probably more “political warfare” by Putin than anything else and lacks evidence of claims…

First have a read of,

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/10/29/russia-accuses-british-experts-aiding-drone-attacks-black-sea/

It’s not my media source of choice at the best of times, as they are dependent on the currently failing UK executive, but it does give you information on the UK Governments position.

Also I’ve not seen any realistic evidence of “massive attack” or “heroic defence”, there “were” a few distant grainy videos relayed by

https://nitter.net/RALee85/

But you see similar from military training excercises. Russia only mentioned a “minesweeper” being hit and all I could see on the alleged photo of that were “scorch marks” you could make with a bag of “black powder and aluminium dust”. Then there were those pictures of distant fires being similar to those film sets get with barrels of oily rags and sawdust etc. Only after Russia was told to “wind it’s neck in” did it start talking about another capital vessel…

But do the Ukrainians need help “targeting” Russian capital ships and attacking them successfully with drones? No they’ve done that in the past with moving targets at sea, not tied up skulking away in harbour at easily known fixed positions. Think back to the sinking of the flag ship missile cruiser “Moskva” shortly after the invasion that was a major embarrassment for Putin which others payed the highest price for.

So lots of words from Russia about a “massive attack” that got “stopped” by “heroic Russians” lots of contradictory claims and so far no real evidence to support any of them…

Do what “forensic scientists” do and I usually advise against 😉 and,

“Go from effect to cause.”

First have a think about what you and many of your fellow citizens will be doing in just over a week, and ask yourself what effect that might have on the outcome and how Putin might benifit?

So “Fake News” to attack US politics is not exactly “news” but the timing is shall we say “very opportune”… Throw in that the UK unelected executive is in a compleate mess and as they say,

“Could not find it’s ass with both hands.”

Is almost a gift from the gods for Putin, when he realy needs it.

Thus the so far evidence less accusation which will no doubt over the next few days be talked of as the UK “dragging the US in”. So making life harder for what has been portrayed by many as the “MAGA Set” who are seeing increasing hardship by rising fuel and food prices Putin has quite deliberately created and whilst “easing off” during the summer had quite deliberately started again back in Sept,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63439760

Let’s be realistic here Putin needs barganing chips on the table, and the two he was very visibly playing with were,

1, Control of Russian exports.
2, Preventing Ukranian exports.

Thus Putin quite deliberately, and as they used to say “with malice a forethought”, started an “Economic War on the World”. Which Putin appeared to alow himself to be talked out of by the UN. But in reality it was nothing of the sort, but a failed attempt to try to get sanctions against Russia lifted.

The evidence is there that Putin had already started clamping down on Ukrain food exports again back in September long prior to this supppsed attack. But now Putin has “created” an excuse to start the blockade again at almost the best time for it to “hit hardest”…

With the effects of this economic world war falling just in time for winter in the Northern Hemisphere which many American’s and most European’s are already fealing the effects from. Which as can be seen from MSM reports has weakened many Western Governments in the eye’s of their voting citizens…

The Russia Federation’s or more correctly Putin’s aim since he got himself permanently in power has been “To make Russia Great Again”. By establishing a new Totalitarian Military Empire right across Eastern Europe and well past the Cold War and end of WWII positions. We were already seeing the rise of far-right and other Putin favouring extreamest politics in the West which alowed Putin to invade directly or indirectly non Russian nations to get control.

History tells us what such a Totalitarian Military Empire will be like and what has happened and is still happening in Belarus makes it even clearer.

The fact is that the Ukranian’s can see what Putin planed and executed in Belarus. And by far the majority of Ukranian’s including many of those who would be seen as “Rus” do not want it happening to them, which is why they are fighting every which way they can, and are making the Russian Military thus Putin look emasculated on the world stage.

What many have forgotten is that over and above any NATO agreements both the UK and US entered into agreements to protect the Ukraine from Russia in return for the Ukranian’s gaving up the nuclear weapons they had. The Ukranian’s have now found that those agreements were not a good idea[1] (and one of the reasons Turkey stedfastly refuses to give up the few aging nukes it has).

Worse for Putin than looking emasculated in front of the world is that he then had one of his major barganing chips by which he had hoped to keep US and UK out of the conflict taken away from him. By whom is unclear but as I’ve pointed out economically and strategically it is of significant advantage to the US.

Then there was the loss of the Crimean-Russian bridge, vital to Putin’s plans that will cause Putin problems not just this winter but for years to come.

Putin thus needs to set the stage for his other barganing chip. If he can convince people that the food shortages, starvation and needless deaths of old and young are not his fault but the US and UK committing acts of war against “his people” he can then more easily move forward on starving the rest of the world to the barganing table and putting preasure on the UK, US, and other nations supplying humanitarian aid etc which is stopping Putin’s plans and making him appear weak not just in the world view but importantly at home.

Look on Putin’s behaviour as the modern day equivalent of “siege tactics” where you basically starve the adversary into submission / surrender or force others to put preasure on them.

In terms of killing people siege tactics are a whole lot less expensive than making the high tech munitions etc, that do not realy show a return[2] militarily or politically (but do make certain “crooks” etc very rich).

Putin has tried to bring the Ukranian’s down by illegally attacking civillians and infrastructure on mass and it’s failed to work. The defenders have mittigated by falling back on “the old ways” of living off the land etc. It might be unimaginable to many in the West, but most of human history has been lived that way, and much of the current world human population still does.

Putin’s problem is the funnelling of aid by the UK, US and other Western Nations into the Ukraine. Because it gives real teeth to the asymetric warfare that Putin is loosing all credability over. Especially in the Crimea he has illegaly annexed. After all if he can not protect even that tiny part of his new empire from “A bunch of farmers led by a comedian” what is “great” about his new empire?

Putin’s credability is shot, cornered by his own lies, and like any cornered animal he’s desperate. Therefore he needs to divert the failings of him and his gang of crooks out from under the spotlight. Because as history shows leaders that are seen to be weak tend not to last long once the pretence is gone.

It’s not just because many other nations in the world have been funneling aid in weapons and humanitarian support into the Ukraine, it’s also the years of lies Putin has told about the UK and US to Russian citizens via his anti anglo-saxon etc rhetoric I’ve talked about before.

To “get a win” of even the most meager of kind for his home audiance thus try and avoid the fate of most failed dictators and tyrants Putin needs to crow in some Orwellian way. As well as stop the aid and humanitarian support being sent to the Ukraine by rather more countries than just the UK and US.

Having lost control of his “energy siege” barganing chip all Putin currently has on the table is the “food siege” barganing chip (though nuclear armageddon will be coming next as his and his cronies rhetoric is starting to make clear). Hence the siege tactics against the world via food and starvation is back on the table.

Will holding the world to ransom with “food siege tactics” be enough, for Putin? Probably not, but logically it was his next step, along with upping anti US sentiment in the world and trying to drive a “political wedge” between the UK and US.

I suspect some further anti UK rhetoric untill after the US elections, and unless Putin gets something to crow about to his home crowd we will see further escalation via up-talking of the nuclear and dirty-bomb, and biological weapons fears/opptions. Which are “terroristic weapons” in the original sense, used to create fear in civillian populations.

[1] Neither Russia nor the US want the European Union to succeed and they have both been covertly and sometimes overtly attacking it for decades just about every which way they can. The fact that the EU is very much “self destructive” for various reasons has started to come home to it’s citizens via rapidly rising inflation and forced suppression of incomes. This coming winter is going to be bleak to put it mildly and pensions are already not meeting needs, so further needless deaths are going to happen on top of any C19 HIP (which in it’s self turned into an economic disaster as was reasonably predicted by folks here).

[2] It’s one of the less talked about things with “asymetric warfare”, put simply an invading force expends it’s high value resources against “major targets” that have already been quickly mitigated by the defenders. Back in the 1970’s and 1980’s we saw how the two major Super Powers tried and failed to escalate this via the use of poisons aimed directly at civilian food and water sources, and it failed and the two Super Powers were ground down and ended up retreating ignobly.

Winter • October 30, 2022 7:14 AM

@JonKbowsNothing

Per the MSM, the Ukraine, has no navy of its own. The fingers are getting pointed at UK Royal Navy unit which working in UKR.

They blame the British as they can hardly admit that a small country without a navy attacks their main navy port and sets their flagship on fire (the new flagship that replaced the previous one that was sunk by Ukraine).

As a result of the attack, Russia has withdrawn support for shipping UKR grain via that seaway.

That has been in the works for some time. Russia wanted the deal to be able to trade again. It was never intended to allow Ukraine to trade. Russia blew up the Ukrainian harbor the day after they signed the treaty. Anyhow, Ukraine reportedly also uses Rumanian ships as they do not trust the Russians.

JonKnowsNothing • October 30, 2022 10:00 AM

@Clive, Winter, All

re: Long Term Global Economic Warfare

I’ve heard the following news claim before (W3), many times, however the MSM article interview with Nouriel Roubini had some interesting points, coinciding with many already discussed.

The Epidemiologist Jeremy Farrar on continuous global pandemics fits into the framework too.

  • a perpetual state of crisis
  • a perpetual state of pandemics

A Sci-Fi trilogy, even though it is a novel, incorporates some interesting takes on such endeavors. At first read, many aspects of the books are jarring “Say What?”, until you think a bit deeper and get the return reference point, “Yes, that is so..”.

In the story, there is no ending to the above cycles for which he provides some fundamental reasons. One take away is that it’s both Unnecessary at the same time it is Required.

As has been pointed out, parts of the problem is the Survival of the EU, RU, UK, USA and at the bottom of the list UKR which will end up sacrificed to the other four. The unnamed countries dependent on the outcome will also split into Survivors and Consumed.

In some military training camps there is a saying about competition:

  • 1st place = It pays to be a winner
  • 2nd place = First loser

===

Star Economist Nouriel Roubini on the Global Crises “World War III Has Already Effectively Begun”

ht tps:/ /www.spiegel. de/ international/business/star-economist-roubini-on-the-global-crises-world-war-iii-has-already-effectively-begun-a-fd3126eb-4dd4-42fc-889e-27e4165f6702

Epidemiologist Jeremy Farrar on the Next Viral Threat: “I Fear We Are at the Beginning of an Era of Pandemics”

ht tps:/ /www.spiegel. de/international/world/epidemiologist-jeremy-farrar-on-the-next-viral-threat-i-fear-we-are-at-the-beginning-of-an-era-of-pandemics-a-564b1dae-1c3d-4eb3-b76f-f3c5da6e8289

ht tps:/ /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past
ht tps:/ /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel)

Liu Cixin

(urls fractured)

Winter • October 30, 2022 10:44 AM

@JonKnowsNothing

In the story, there is no ending to the above cycles for which he provides some fundamental reasons.

Even a cursory look at human history since the invention of agriculture will show you war and pandemics have always been with us. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

The link is simple, in principle. Agriculture leads to population growth, higher population densities and a scarcely of resources and directly to war. Animal husbandry leads to zoonotic diseases and epidemics, pandemics.

Europe has been at war for all of its history. I believe there have been few years in European history where there was no war between Atlantic and Ural. Since the Romans, I believe there was no century where there was not an armed conflict involving at least 10% of Europe’s population nor a large epidemic of similar size.

Things were not better in other continents.

We still do not know how to stop this. But maybe, just maybe, at the end of this century human population will start to decline and there is less scarcity of resources to fight over (one can dream).

lurker • October 30, 2022 12:26 PM

@JonKnowsNothing re, a perpetual state of crisis

One suggested measure of the length of C19 involves

stress + cytokine + viral load

We don’t see long flu because we haven’t looked for it.

‘https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018864702/dr-richard-webby-the-latest-research-on-long-covid

Clive Robinson • October 30, 2022 1:07 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing, Winter,

Re : In some military training camps there is a saying about competition

I was not “grunt material” being,

1, Physically to large (assumed could not carry a “useful load”).
2, Not at all agressive (never stamped my boots on “shun”).
3, Tended to look like a “sack of sh1t tied loosely in the middle” (from chearfully doing all the crappy jobs).
4, Way to high on the ability to think and reason scale (to high to even be a “Rupert”).
5, Never gave orders, never had to just suggested or asked nicely (apparently in military thinking this means nobody respects you…).

Oh and with a long barrel I was sufficiently accurate to go in the regimental shooting team. Plus I could read a map in the dark and walk a course out of sight and had foot falls quieter than a snowflake landing and my ability to live off the land made many quite uncomfortable[1].

Apparently all this made me “special” for some reason so I got lots of odd training and ended up either behind a desk doing stuff few understood or out with the “awkward squad” keeping things quiet the old fashioned way…

The squad was full of a certain type of person and one of the sayings in full said in an emotionless voice was,

“There are no winners, only those still in the game.”

Which was often shortened to “There are no winners” as a closer befor action, or a question and reply in a quiet voice when watching for adversaries of,

Q : You winning?
A : Still playing…

Which when you think about it is the “Cliffs Notes” of life.

[1] Turning a sheep that was too stupid to not walk under a moving convoy truck into barbeque supper for more than thirty people with an 8″ chefs knife I carried in my “toolkit” for cutting insulation, is apparently not something most people have ever seen, or want to see again 😉

JonKnowsNothing • October 30, 2022 1:28 PM

@lurker @All

re: We don’t see long flu because we haven’t looked for it.

The good news is that a good number of “common complaints and illnesses” are now thought to be tied to a viral infection at some earlier point, even years earlier.

Conditions that were “poo-pooed” by MDs as imaginary, malingering, sloth, social services cheaters, psychosis, and other epithets, have a viral basis. (1)

A good outcome from COVID is there are more techniques known and accessible to hunt for these viral tracers. What’s not available are treatments and elimination of the conditions.

===

1) Lots of folks have run into MD Disdain when trying to get medical treatment. Stories are legion as are the number of untimely deaths.

JonKnowsNothing • October 30, 2022 1:48 PM

@Winter, Clive, All

re: Scarcity of Resources

If you consider, not your lifetime or 10 lifetimes or 1,000 lifetimes but the lifetime of the Universe, Scarcity of Resources takes on a different aspect.

The Resources in the Universe are Constant”. What’s here is here, until The End of Universe/Time. Energy is converted from one aspect to another.

What are scarce are specific resources to keep you alive for your lifetime and in theory the lifetime of your descendants. When humans focus on Scare Resources they often mean: resources used by Humans to the exclusion of all other uses.

When we extend our view a bit further, currently it’s Global Warming that takes front seat, we come to the extinction of everything “we know”. In the time scale of the Universe, it might be safe to say, Humans won’t make it to the of Time…

Why?

Because WE are also the consumed, just as we consume plants and animals, other things eat us. COVID is doing well. The resurgence of Polio, Cholera, Ebola, and a host of other bugs are just waiting for their next meal.

Once humans, animals and plants are gone, viruses will have a hard time finding a new niche. They may lay dormant for eons waiting.

We will be learning soon, how many of those bugs and ancient diseases have been waiting for us in the melting glaciers, ice caps and from other impacts of temperature change.

<

blockquote>
You cannot make nothing into something.

You cannot make something into nothing.

SpaceLifeForm • October 30, 2022 5:45 PM

@ fib

Hope you are well.

Is Bolsonaro going to pull out the Stolen Election playbook, ala, Trump?

‘https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-votes-heated-bolsonaro-vs-lula-presidential-runoff-2022-10-30/

The polling firm called the election with 95% of the votes counted in Latin America’s largest country. The official count stood at 50.7% of votes for Lula against 49.3% for Bolsonaro.

SpaceLifeForm • October 30, 2022 5:54 PM

@ ALL

FYI: nitter.net TLS Certificate expired minutes ago.

Be very careful using twitter these days.

vas pup • October 30, 2022 6:05 PM

@Moderator – thank you for not deleting my post. Looks like good waves are coming from Elon Musk (Tweeter) point on how posts should be treated – clear criteria set up and based on those criteria only post deleted. Moreover, Big Brother anyway collected all posts (by their “collective O’Brien – 1984” opinion) offensive regardless are they true or false. They do also collect IP addresses from where post was made. Yeah, as LEAs let the brothel/prostitute work rather than shut them down and use them as source of intelligence information.

@all
Inside a US military cyber team’s defense of Ukraine
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63328398

Interesting article in particular:
“Hunt Forward missions are classed as “defensive” but Gen Paul Nakasone, who leads both the military’s Cyber Command and the National Security Agency confirmed
==>offensive missions have also been undertaken against Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. But he and others declined to provide further detail.”

I have no further comment on this – just be sure boomerang could come back to us – US.

SpaceLifeForm • October 30, 2022 7:28 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing

re: Beirut

It has stayed under the radar, but the ammonium nitrate that exploded in Beirut came from Ukraine.

There are many bad russian operatives still to this day inside Ukraine. Z knows this.

‘https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/fbi-probe-shows-amount-chemicals-beirut-blast-was-fraction-original-shipment-2021-07-30/

Clive Robinson • October 31, 2022 4:41 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm, JonKnowsNothing,

Re : ammonium nitrate origin.

“… the ammonium nitrate that exploded in Beirut came from Ukraine.”

Not sure if that should be “from” or “through” and “via Georgian port”.

I can not find it now but I read shortly after the explosion that the “ANO” was where it was because of “judges arguing” over a ship run by Russian Operators who had “not payed creditors” and the cargo it carried[1].

The article discussed the “how it got there” and “Why we should change legislation” asspects to prevent a similar disaster happening again.

But from memory the article indicated that the ANO originated in Russia went through a port in Georgia and was destined for a war torn nation in Africa, where it was alledgadly going to be used for making fertilizer for use in farming… Apparently due to the lack of funds of the shipping company and other actions of it’s creditors the vessel had not sailed where it was originally expected to and ended up in Beirut where it got impounded…

I can’t find the original post I read but a NYT article confirms some of what I remember,

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/world/middleeast/lebanon-explosion-ship.html?auth=login-google

(note I’ve left the “?auth=login-google” on the end of the URL because it stops issues when you have javascript turned off).

[1] You might remember from a certain vessel getting stuck in a cannal not a million miles from there, that the ownership of cargo being shipped on a vessel is somewhat fluid from the time it goes into a customs zone, through international waters and back out another customs zone… Effectively a legal “schrodinger’s cat” issue where nobody want’s to take the lid off the box, or more correctly cross the line out of international waters so things get “Mary Celeste’d” in bonded storage… And as nobody wants to incure “unrecoverable costs” it would have been done at thr minimum expense.

Clive Robinson • October 31, 2022 5:21 AM

@ JonKnowsNothing, Winter,

Re : The clock counts down.

“The Resources in the Universe are Constant”.

Whilst true –as far as we can tell in our current primative state– for the duality of energy/matter, but it also remembers, so other things have to change with time.

Thus information content and volume of the Universe increases but it’s density decreases.

The fun thing though, is that we also believe that all non single body movment can be described by “harmonic movment”[1] and probability does not rule out the chance that everything returns to whence it came (ie “The point of origin”). It just makes it extreamly unlikely in any time scale the average person can comprehend.

But it also tells us a couple of other things… The Universe must have a natural frequency, and that it rings like a struck bell…

[1] What is called “noise” by scientists and engineers, is neither random or ireversable, just not measurable by any method we know so effectively a “One Way Function”. What it is is the vector sum of all intetactions on the energy/mass object. As such the vibrations or oscilations[2] that give us “temprature” wind down by “energy transport” to some value that will approach but not reach “absolute zero” (zero Kelvin).

[2] The thing about all signals, and noise is just another signal, is that we know that fundementally they are composed of more primative elements. One such set of elements are based on “rotations” / “oscilations” or “circular functions”. Draw a dot on the bottom of a can, and roll it along a flat surface and the dot will trace out a “sinewave”… But it won’t be perfect because it will have two other sets of signals added, the first is harmonics / subharmonics of the sinewave, the second is the sum of other signals and their harmonics not “directly” harmonically related to the sinewave. It turns out that these can also all be square waves that combine to make sequences that cross the x axis in regular effectively reflective patterns that look like harmonics… Hence we have Fourier and Walsh transforms of both the “discrete” and “fast” form, with the latter being obviously reflection point based.

Winter • October 31, 2022 10:13 AM

@SLF

The Resources in the Universe are Constant”. What’s here is here, until The End of Universe/Time. Energy is converted from one aspect to another.

Although this is true in principle, what is relevant to humans is what is accessible. Humans can access what is available in the outer few kilometers of the earth’s crust, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, and a little in the inner part of the solar system. All the rest is unavailable for use. The fact that the solar system contains more resources that humanity can exhaust in any conceivable future, almost all of it is unreachable in any conceivable future.

@Clive

Thus information content and volume of the Universe increases but it’s density decreases.

Quantum Mechanics tells us that physics is reversible, all transformations are unitary. That is, no quantum mechanical interaction changes the amount of information in the universe. Gravity could destroy information in black holes, but the consensus seems to be that this is just us not having a good theory of quantum gravity.

That said, thermodynamics tells us that the information available to do work, that is useful information, decreases due to the increase of intractable changes, ie, noise.

vas pup • October 31, 2022 6:11 PM

Old testament battles confirmed in new study

https://www.dw.com/en/old-testament-battles-confirmed-in-new-study/a-63586330

“The researchers facilitated a process called archaeomagnetic dating, a method using magnetism that they say offers more precise ways to date artifacts.

=>To explain how archaeomagnetic dating works, it’s first important to know that the Earth’s magnetic field changes over time. Second, when they are heated to hundreds of degrees Celsius, microscopic magnetic compounds in materials like clay align themselves with the Earth’s changing magnetic field.

“Cities at that time were built with sun-dried mud bricks. When they are heated up, like in a destructive fire, the ferromagnetic minerals inside the bricks align with a magnetic field like compass needles. When it cools, they become stuck – a time lock of when the fire took place,” Vaknin explained.

By examining these “time locks”, the researchers were able to better pinpoint when certain historical events happened.

In order to understand specific causes of destruction, historians and archeologists still have to supplement the knowledge acquired through archaeomagnetic dating with historical texts and archeological findings.”

Is there forensic potential for this method? Yes, its possible if results of forensic research is going first and investigative conclusion second, not vice versa. Happy Halloween!

vas pup • October 31, 2022 6:25 PM

Why lasers are being used to write inside diamonds

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62318016

“The laser can make atomic-scale changes to create circuitry inside the diamond. That could be useful for making instruments ==>for radiation detection, where a diamond’s durability is also an asset.

==>Potentially such circuitry could also be used in quantum computers – machines that can perform complex calculations in a fraction of the time taken by existing devices.

Quantum computers work by exploiting the weird quantum properties of individual particles. They are hard to build and are still in
their early stages, but diamonds offer a promising way to isolate and use the quantum properties of nitrogen [?] atoms.”

SpaceLifeForm • October 31, 2022 6:36 PM

@ ALL

nitter.net still has an expired TLS certificate after 24 hours. They have been informed.

Work-around: use nitter.ca domain.

SpaceLifeForm • November 1, 2022 4:55 PM

@ ALL

You have to wonder who is trolling whom.

Deflation in one day.

From $20 to $8

‘https://nitter.ca/Joelmpetlin/status/1587417968664752129#m

Clive Robinson • November 1, 2022 5:52 PM

@ Winter, SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

“thermodynamics tells us that the information available to do work, that is useful information, decreases due to the increase of intractable changes, ie, noise.”

The noise “is the signal” which we can not reverse as I said befor.

But information does go up with entropy and as density goes down because the freedom to store information all be it as noise we can not yet use goes up.

There is a belief I hold to be incorrect that “information” is subject to the laws of nature that effect the energy/matter duality therefore is subject to other laws such as the speed of light etc.

The simplistic reasoning is flawed. Information is neither energy or matter as canbe fairly simply reasoned.

Howrver for physical objects like human beings to use information they have to be able to interact with it in a way that uses the physical laws as pettain to physical objects.

To do this information is “impressed” or “modulated” in some manner onto matter or energy.

Take the example of a “book” it is a physical object consisting of pages and ink. You could have an enormous number of different books with exactly the same number of pages and atoms of ink. Because the book is a framework to hold the ink in as many different ways as possible, which in human terms is as close to infinity as makes no practical difference.

What differentiates those books and the information they hold, is not the number of pagrs or quantity of ink, but the patterns the ink is organised in.

The “pattern” is neither matter or energy but the information required to position the fixed quantity of ink in. We as physical object chose to use the pattern, not the matter or energy used in making the book to pass information on.

As information can be encoded to any precision you can measure between two points in space, as the size of the universe increases, it must logically follow that the space available to store information and the quantity of information must go up, irrespective of if the amount of energy or matter is fixed or not.

Less obvious is that as the density decreases the freed to move objects increases thus the type of information that can be stored must likewise increase to match that freedom.

This is the flip side of entropy. Which is moving from a highly ordered to highly disordered state.

My son understood this at a very early age with “lego bricks” as I’ve mentioned before. The only way to tightly pack lego bricks together is such that they are fixed in relation to each other thus are in reality just one object with it’s limited number of degrees of movment/motion. However as you break that one object down three things happen,

1, The density has to go down.
2, The volume has to incrrase.
3, Each object has it’s own degrees of freedom thus the potential to encode information goes up.

This increase in information storage goes up proportionately not just to the increase in volume, but the number of relationships between the individual objects and their freedoms.

SpaceLifeForm • November 1, 2022 7:27 PM

@ Clive, Winter, ALL

As information can be encoded to any precision you can measure between two points in space, as the size of the universe increases, it must logically follow that the space available to store information and the quantity of information must go up, irrespective of if the amount of energy or matter is fixed or not.

Planck and Hawking may disagree.

Do not buy Big Bang. It is an Illusion.
Space is Infinite, and there is no expansion. Tired Light and CMB has led many into a Black Hole of theory.

Energy and Matter may not be what you think. It may just be bits at Planck scale interacting in a 3 dimensional Conway Game of Life.

Gravity and Time are just emergent phenomena.

Think about this way: If nothing changed in the universe, would you be able to Observe a clock ticking?

Clive Robinson • November 1, 2022 8:55 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm, ALL,

Re : All a Twitter and blue.

So Musk has touted the notion that what are in effect “verified users” should pay not for the “verification” but a subscription to have a “blue check mark”.

Thus Musk is trying to make money not out of a real “service” to the users of the service but an “ego food” “Status Symbol” for some who consider themselves some how famous…

In the UK “The Banks” have in the past claimed that the “Know Your Customer” verification to the level the UK Govetnment wanted were “too onerous” and “too expensive” and indicated that the “one time cost” to check a customer was around the equivalent of $100 these days.

So… who Is right? Musk or King?

Personally I think they are both “barking up the wrong tree” (if not “barking mad”). But then I guess as a non-Twit my attitude has been previously “adjusted” by both the organisation and the personalities involved.

Twitter is clearly a thing of the past as it dropped the ball irretrievably quite some time ago, and has in effect become a con-trick. Also it’s new user base is not exactly setting any records you would be proud of, and so it will syeadily become “geriatrics anonymous” as people move to an alternative.

The way for King to make his point is not to leave Twitter but make it “second fiddle” to another service (which hardly matters). Those who wwnt King’s latest words or thoughts quickly will go to what ever the other service is.

If King guesses correctly, then within a few months he will be spreading the “King Effect” across two platforms, which will make advertisers ask Musk for a hefty rebate on what they pay…

Musk has to calculate what that would do to his “investment”, pwrsonally I suspect it will cost a lot more than $5million/month.

Musk needs to revisit this idea… He also needs to build real “user base” and making verified users go elsewhere even as just a share across multiple platforms won’t attract new users to be Twits…

P.S. The #m on the end of the Nitter URL appears to be redundant.

Clive Robinson • November 1, 2022 9:44 PM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Re : Planck and Hawking may disagree.

Well as neither are around to comment or be up on contemporary events…

With regards,

“Think about this way: If nothing changed in the universe, would you be able to Observe a clock ticking?”

Two points arise with regards “if nothing changed” both of which change the answer…

Firstly “if nothing changed” inside the box, if you are an observer inside the box, “Could you actually observe?”.

Secondly “if nothing changed” inside the box, and you are an observer outside the box, “Where is the clock?”

If the clock is inside the box in which nothing changes, then the clock does not tick. If the clock is outside the box, then by our understanfing it would be outside of the time bubble that prevents us “looking out of the box”. That is an outside clock would be fully independent of events inside the box.

So the only way an observer can observe a clock tick “if nothing changed” inside the box, is when both are outside of the box / time bubble that surrounds the Universe. With external time having no relevance to internal time…

As I’ve indicated before the fundemental properties of the time bubble prevents us “physically” looking out of the bubble[1]. Thus we can not “know” only at best infer what came before the big bang if anything. So it matters not a jot if the “Big Bang” was a “one off” or like a string of pearls one “big bang” after another. With some fundemental constants changing that effects the life of each universe created, could be “optimizing for longevity” or some other aspect, or the oscillations could form some steady state. Contrary to what some “Dark XXX” types imply we don’t yet have the knowledge to say much of anything beyond those two bubbles around us, the first being what we can observe within the earth’s “Time Cone” the second the time bubble we assume is around the Universe that is the ultimate curtain.

[1] As I’ve also mentioned before, the big bang if it happened, could be considered an infinitely small pin-hole camera. Through which neither the energy or matter of physical objects could pass but non physical information could. It’s a line of thinking that could make your head “not belong to you” anymore as did contemplating the infinite did to mathmeticians back in Cantor’s time.

Winter • November 2, 2022 1:36 AM

@Clive, SLF

But information does go up with entropy and as density goes down because the freedom to store information all be it as noise we can not yet use goes up.

Sorry, but this is wrong. By definition, Entropy is the lack of information about the state of a system. You need a certain amount of information to know the state of a system, eg, the position and momentum of every particle and photon in a certain space. Entropy is the amount of information you are missing about the state.

Over time, your information about a system cannot grow without external input. You cannot extract a signal/message from missing information.

There is a belief I hold to be incorrect that “information” is subject to the laws of nature that effect the energy/matter duality therefore is subject to other laws such as the speed of light etc.

Landauer showed that information needs a physical carrier and every transformation requires a minimal amount of energy. Therefore, information is subject to the laws of physics and empty space cannot store or transmit information, something has to pass through it for information to transmit.

An expanding universe has a few quirks. As there is more space, there is more room for uncertainty in where every particle is, so there is more room for entropy.

Expansion counters the heat death of the universe. But that is all bounded by the Hubble horizon which is the distance to the parts of the universe that speed away with the speed of light. Basically, an expanding universe will end up empty, the big freeze [1]

[1] ‘https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_an_expanding_universe

ResearcherZero • November 2, 2022 2:19 AM

“Click here if you have a question about the rights you may have.”
https://www.facebook.com/help/637205020878504

I would like to delete information you d__kheads collected without my consent?
https://www.facebook.com/contacts/removal

“You can ask us to confirm whether we have your phone number or email address. If we do, you can request that we delete it from our address book database. To prevent it from being uploaded to this database again through someone’s address book, we need to keep a copy in our block list.”

“Does this satisfy your concerns?”

No it does not! DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnDFvQRfGxw

ResearcherZero • November 2, 2022 2:28 AM

@Winter

Great explanation.

This is why wireless internet requires a carrier wave. It is also why ESP and remote viewing does not work, except for on television, which uses a carrier wave to deliver such fantasies for the human eyes.

The human brain will however be upgraded by the mighty Cybermen. DELETE! DELETE! DELETE!

ResearcherZero • November 2, 2022 2:58 AM

“MIT researchers have taken a step toward solving a longstanding challenge with wireless communication: direct data transmission between underwater and airborne devices.”
https://news.mit.edu/2018/wireless-communication-through-water-air-0822

Longwave

Because of their long wavelength, radio waves in this frequency range can diffract over obstacles like mountain ranges and travel beyond the horizon, following the contour of the Earth. This mode of propagation, called ground wave, is the main mode in the longwave band.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwave

Shortwave Radio (is a little more complex)

Transmitting at night is most effective for long-distance communication but the skip zone becomes significantly larger. The skip zone is a natural phenomenon that cannot be influenced by technical means.

A skip zone is an annular region between the farthest points at which the ground wave can be received and the nearest point at which the refracted sky waves can be received. Within this region, no signal can be received because, due to the conditions of the local ionosphere, the relevant sky waves are not reflected but penetrate the ionosphere.

Wave Propagation in the Ionosphere
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-94-017-3665-7

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425712001757

https://pharmaxchange.info/press/2011/08/introduction-to-the-electromagnetic-spectrum-and-spectroscopy/

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2022 4:28 AM

@ Winter,

“By definition, Entropy is the lack of information about the state of a system.”

Wrong.

The law of thermodynamics is about the inability of a system to do usefull work. That is energy has to be highly coherent and of very high density for thermal energy to move from hot to cold and in the process be used via one of the many heat cycles to do usefull work.

Information by definition is the “waste heat” of such “work”, don’t get the two confused.

“Landauer showed that information needs a physical carrier and every transformation requires a minimal amount of energy.”

Again wrong, Landauer showed that for information to be “processed” in a “physical system” there were certain minimums of matter/energy that were required “for the physical systems to work with” nothing more.

As I’ve pointed out repeatedly in the past there are only three things we can do with information in our current state of knowledge and physical systems,

1, Communicate it.
2, Store it.
3, Process it.

All being physical systems they need matter and or energy.

“As there is more space, there is more room for uncertainty in where every particle is, so there is more room for entropy.”

Correct in that increasing entropy IS INCREASING information, and it further has to be fully reversable it’s the most fundemental law of our micro understanding of the Universe. Read up on Fredkin and Toffoli gates and the notion of the billiard ball model computation and time-reversability in fundemental physical systems and why “entropy” is a “state condition” (information) –thus fully reversable– and not a physical process.

Further the fundemental rule in “Information Theory” is that which is called “redundancy” it’s actually directly equivalent to “uncertainty” without it it is impossible to transmit information…

Which brings us to,

“Basically, an expanding universe will end up empty, the big freeze [1]”

Cold yes, at absolute zero no, empty no, which means some quite important things with respect to information or it’s “state”.

But importantly, note the first to words of the Wikipedia article you link to, and the repeated use of “Dark Matter” they are prime indicators of what an academic friend who I’ve mentiond before and is now a proffessor calls “academic masturbation in progress”. Put simply “Dark Matter” is effectively a “dress-up” of the direct admission of,

“We have not a clue, so we are making it up as we go along”.

Why? Because increasing observations tell them the unwelcome truth that their earlier ideas were wrong in part or whole, so the whole edifice is in reality not as stable as a house of cards…

About the only verifiably correct thing in that Wikipedia artical appart from those first two words is,

“Ultimately, if the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium, a state in which the temperature approaches a uniform value, no further work will be possible, resulting in a final heat death of the universe.”

Note very carefully it says “no further work” and nothing about “absolute zero”, or “empty”. Or for that matter “information”. When the work stops no more noise from it’s inefficiency is generated from it by physical processes, therefore that source of information generation has reached a maximum value in the physical system the Universe is (note my carefull wording). Other more interesting things can then occure.

You need a better more factual set of arguments, which currently don’t exist, just failing hypotheses and muddle.

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2022 4:55 AM

@ ResearcherZero,

With regards “longwave” and “groundwave propogation” you also need to know about the D, E and F layers and the MUF. Also the rather annoying “Luxembourg Effect” that makes the increased MF and below propagation after “sunset” so problematical.

But also another strange effect where the radio horizon is larger than the optical horizon and helps make the strange “Beveridge antenna” both very quiet for it’s size and also unexpectedly directional (it’s actually a terminated “traveling wave” or “transmission line” antenna and cousin of the Rhombic and similar as well as the ephamistic G-Line single conductor transmission line,

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

Leon Theremin • November 2, 2022 5:50 AM

@ResearcherZero

ESP and remote viewing

Hypothesis: these phenomenon are nothing more than the result of Earth being under total electromagnetic surveillance and individual humans having their auditory apparatus interfered with to convey information to them in ways that other observers can’t see.

You don’t have to believe this at face value, but do consider that just because most skeptics have failed to consider this possibility and test for it, does not mean it has been ruled out.

The people responsible for this make cults and religions to extract money from others, but also resort to direct sabotage, theft and extortion.

Winter • November 2, 2022 5:52 AM

@Clive

The law of thermodynamics is about the inability of a system to do usefull work. That is energy has to be highly coherent and of very high density for thermal energy to move from hot to cold and in the process be used via one of the many heat cycles to do usefull work.

Since the steam machine went out of fashion, physics has been able to found thermodynamics on statistical mechanics. Currently, statistical mechanics and its extension to quantum mechanics are what is considered the best description of thermodynamics. And in statistical mechanics, it is the lack of knowledge about the state of the system that generates entropy.

Maxwell’s second demon did have all information about the sate of the system and with that knowledge, could let heat stream from cold to hot. Statistical Mechanics (&QM) could explain why this did not invalidate the second law of thermodynamics.

Winter • November 2, 2022 9:42 AM

@Leon Theremin

You don’t have to believe this at face value, but do consider that just because most skeptics have failed to consider this possibility and test for it, does not mean it has been ruled out.

The point is, information needs a physical carrier. If you get information about the world, some physical process has transmitted that information to you.

If you are able to receive electromagnetic radiation or magnetic fields directly from the air, that is a physical carrier. You can call that extra-sensory-perception, but that is only because we do not have yet recognized a sensory mode for that perception. Just like getting nauseous from high powered microwave radiation is esp as none of your senses are involved. That does not make it extra-physical.

Winter • November 2, 2022 11:12 AM

Continued…

@Clive

The law of thermodynamics is about the inability of a system to do usefull work. That is energy has to be highly coherent and of very high density for thermal energy to move from hot to cold and in the process be used via one of the many heat cycles to do usefull work.

Maxwell’s demon gives gives a perfect description of how this all works:
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon

In 1960, Rolf Landauer raised an exception to this argument.[7][9][12] He realized that some measuring processes need not increase thermodynamic entropy as long as they were thermodynamically reversible. He suggested these “reversible” measurements could be used to sort the molecules, violating the Second Law. However, due to the connection between thermodynamic entropy and information entropy, this also meant that the recorded measurement must not be erased. In other words, to determine whether to let a molecule through, the demon must acquire information about the state of the molecule and either discard it or store it. Discarding it leads to immediate increase in entropy but the demon cannot store it indefinitely. In 1982, Charles Bennett showed that, however well prepared, eventually the demon will run out of information storage space and must begin to erase the information it has previously gathered.[9][13] Erasing information is a thermodynamically irreversible process that increases the entropy of a system. Although Bennett had reached the same conclusion as Szilard’s 1929 paper, that a Maxwellian demon could not violate the second law because entropy would be created, he had reached it for different reasons. Regarding Landauer’s principle, the minimum energy dissipated by deleting information was experimentally measured by Eric Lutz et al. in 2012. Furthermore, Lutz et al. confirmed that in order to approach the Landauer’s limit, the system must asymptotically approach zero processing speed.[14]

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2022 11:17 AM

@ Winter, SpaceLifeForm,

“physics has been able to found thermodynamics on statistical mechanics.”

In some respects the move to “statistical mechanics” is like primates coming down from the trees,

“Regarded by many as a bad move”.

Statistics by definition “loses information” in two ways,

1, By averaging information out.
2, By lowpassing high frequency information out.

In some respects this makes statistical mechanics at best “a chocolate fire guard”.

What it definately does is “loose information. To see this consider the average of 1&9 is 5, but so is the average for 2&8, 3&7, 4&6, 5&5 which is not useful in more ways than most can imagine.

One such is it causes time based changes to be lost, thus the all important reversability needed to get information from noise is lost, and so is the bed rock of certain physical laws…

So,

“And in statistical mechanics, it is the lack of knowledge about the state of the system that generates entropy.”

Is not quite right as it’s actually the use of statistical mechanics that cause the loss of information that would otherwise give yoy the state of the system thus the information that is noise is rendered just random by syatistical mechanics.

As for “Maxwell’s second demon” there was an experiment some years ago using a laser that verified that it was posible to get low value heat to cross back across a thermal incline barrier. The problem is as always such things are not very udefull, because work is still being done so it comes with an inbuilt threshold.

But the laws of probabilt also show that it is possible for all the physical objects in a “gas” or “working fluid” to spontaniously move back up the thermal gradient. It’s just that it is very very very unlikely in terms of “human time scales” but “what the heck” probability says the odds incrrase on average every day that passes.

Having seen a manually “tossed coin land and come to rest on it’s edge twice” already in my lifetime, I’m a tads cautious when some one glibly tells me “that ain’t going to happen”[1]. Well it has for me, and it will continue to do so as people who have rather more frequently see a coin land on it’s edge and roll till some iregularity tips it over can confirm.

So yes one day the cooling end of the pipe will someday apparently inexplicably get hot again for a while…

[1] As it happens some physicists reasoned the coin toss landing probability and built a machine to test it… From memory the statistician Persi Diaconis found the odds of a US Nickel landing on edge was actually quite good at around 1:6000. But the machine was designed to get either all heads or all tails thus stayed well away from the “edge cases”…

Quantry • November 2, 2022 11:18 AM

G’dai @ Winter, @ ya’ll,

I wonder, if “a physical carrier” is required to receive info, is entanglement viewed as non-information bearing, or simply that we cant quantify characteristics of its carrier… or…?

AKA, is space really folded between [each pair of] entangled events? If so, can it really be thought of as expanding?

@ MarkH? Anything?

Winter • November 2, 2022 12:00 PM

@Clive

Statistics by definition “loses information” in two ways,
1, By averaging information out.
2, By lowpassing high frequency information out.
In some respects this makes statistical mechanics at best “a chocolate fire guard”.

Which is exactly the point of the whole exercise.

Statistical mechanics does not treat “information” as some divine property like ether. They actually do test their ideas and theories in actual experiments.

If you can conduct a test showing statistical mechanics is wrong, your Nobel Price is waiting for you. So, what is stopping you?

Winter • November 2, 2022 1:53 PM

@Quantry

I wonder, if “a physical carrier” is required to receive info, is entanglement viewed as non-information bearing, or simply that we cant quantify characteristics of its carrier… or…?

Difficult to say. Entanglement does represent energy as it takes energy to break the entanglement between two particles. Any information transfered by entangled particles will not trafel faster than light. So, entanglement is certainly a physical process.

I have seen theories of quantum/gravity that consider “space” following from entanglement. However, traveling via entanglement bridges, wormholes, is not possible as the equations show the internal distance between the endpoints grows with the speed of light. Do not ask what this means, I couldn’t tell.

Richard Feynman once said “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Maybe that has improved, but I am still in this state. I can only repeat what others wrote. I do not want to suggest that I fully (partly) understand it.

SpaceLifeForm • November 2, 2022 6:42 PM

@ Winter, Quantry

Entanglement does represent energy as it takes energy to break the entanglement between two particles.

It appears, upon testing and observation, it is Spooky.

We really do not understand what matter and energy really mean.

So, I have to say that energy (whatever that is) may not be a requirement at all, if one can not force break any entanglement.

We (collective we), really have no clue what is really happening in the quantum cosmic cloud. Because we are inside of it. And Observation creates Causation.

And, remember, Observation is Measurement. Yet it is Impossible for Simultaneous Measurement from two different Points in Space.

I really think it is a 3D Conway Game of Life, that ticks at Planck scale. And then throw in some Heisenberg cats, just for fun.

The Universe is math/logic. Nothing more. Space makes H.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-bells-theorem-proved-spooky-action-at-a-distance-is-real-20210720/

The “spooky action” that bothered Einstein involves a quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, in which two particles that we would normally think of as distinct entities lose their independence. Famously, in quantum mechanics a particle’s location, polarization and other properties can be indefinite until the moment they are measured. Yet measuring the properties of entangled particles yields results that are strongly correlated, even when the particles are far apart and measured nearly simultaneously. The unpredictable outcome of one measurement appears to instantly affect the outcome of the other, regardless of the distance between them — a gross violation of locality.

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2022 6:59 PM

@ Winter,

Re : Tests and results.

“If you can conduct a test showing statistical mechanics is wrong, your Nobel Price is waiting for you.”

I don’t need to conduct a “test” to demonstrate “statistical mechanics is wrong”.

What your statment shows is you are,

“Trying to shift the goal posts”.

Which is a naughty thing to do.

My statment is not that “statistical mechanics is wrong” so I do not need to demonstrate that. My statment is,

“Statistical mechanics destroys information”

Which is not just true but known to be true ever since a cold winters night in the mid 1920’s. When a young man took “a walk in the park” to help clear his mind as a significant problem he had come up against was baffeling him.

Like many the young man found that sometimes solutions come to our concious minds from our subconcious minds when we stop thinking conciously about the problem and just let the subconcious get on with things. It’s why so many people get “gut feelings” and similar in unexpected places and times. There are now that we know more about the theory of mind ways to help your mind and promote it to work more frequently in this way.

Anyway the young man realised that without any doubt that when you run a test or carry out an experiment it is destructive. That is the process of measurment, or being inside the experiment to gather data means you perturbe it and in order to get around this you are denied information because the measurment process you are trying to make more exact or accurate has to do work on the physical test object. The problem is “that work” destroyes other information.

In short,

“You can not have your cake and eat it twice”.

So as your physical test object gets smaller or more singular with regards the measurment you reach a point where there is a limit on what you can know.

If the physical object is singular then you can only carry out one test on it before some information is unrecoverable and subsequent tests only give information now hoplessly perturbed by the first measurment. We use this in communications security with regards “Quantum Key Distribution”(QKD) which you know I talk about –it’s ongoing “implementation” failings– from time to time.

Oh the young man’s idea became quite famous, and is still talked about in so many branches of testing physical objects. It’s even talked about in psychology and used as a fundemental warning about running experiments. Also it also now purturbs the most stuffy of professions, that is not just the theories of law professors, but judges, prosecutors and investigators in the practice of law with regards evidence. So the idea is very widely known and is oft called the “uncertainty pronciple” and the young man who took that walk was Werner Heisenberg.

It actually sets a very real limit on what can be known based on one of the basic physical properties of the energy/matter duality (where energy is considered “a wave” and matter a “particle”) with the properties of frequency, phase, rotation, size, mass and if not at rest a vector[1] of position direction and velocity.

However due in part to the way Werner Heisenberg explained the uncertainty principle it can get conflated with the “observer effect” which amongst many other places –less easy to explain– comes up in the “double slit experiment”. Where unfortunately many people believe incorrectly that it is the mind of the observer dictating the outcome of the test. Thus they falsly attribute what is “hand-waved” as “Extra Sensory Perception”(ESP) or “psy-powers” or things like “remote viewing” or other nonsense that has been refered to in the 1960’s through 80’s atleast as “Psychic Bl@wj@bs”. But actually go back before “science” established in the Victorian era and attempted to banish such beliefes, but still have people believe in deities… A number of well known names such as Charles Dickens and Henri Houdini attempted to show psychics and mind readers as the charletons, fakers and con-artists they were.

[1] The way vectors are defined, means you always loose information in one dimension, that is they “average it out”. Normally our measurments are in the physical world we inhabit, thus the level of uncertainty is too small a fraction to notice but it is there.

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2022 7:27 PM

@ Winter, SpaceLifeForm,

“Any information transfered by entangled particles will not trafel faster than light. So, entanglement is certainly a physical process.”

Ouch, you can not say that…

Information has not been shown to travel faster than the speed of light. But then we have no actual way of measuring close to, at, or beyond the speed of light…

So we use various forms of experimental techniques to try to drag things into a domain well below the speed of light where we can make experiments. But all such techniques of have problems (and why “experimental physicists” are some of the most “practically orientated” people on the world). These “problems” or trying to minimise them are what costs the big bucks in modern experiments.

But you are also committing a cardinal sin of moving from “assumed” by observational “effect”, to claimed “cause”… That is neither within the scientific method or or actually credible to those that stay within it as it breaks “times arrow” and causes all sorts of problems.

Many many years ago Issac Asimov described the problem in a story in effect as,

“Golfer hits ball and it lands on a tuft of grass. The golfer claims it is where he wanted the ball to land. If he claimed it before he hit the ball, that is prediction and testable, if after then it is nothing.”

Clive Robinson • November 2, 2022 8:09 PM

@ Winter, ALL,

To save other people “srarching for the crazy” a little history that will almost certainly raise an eyebrow,

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tinker-tailor-soldier-psi-1598203.html

It was very popular with scientifically illiterate politicians in the US and dictators etc in Russia, and has historic roots going back through Hitler and the Russian Tzar (via wife and “mad monk” Rasputin).

As a result it received a stupendous level of funding and may in different forms still do so today. Because there’s nothing like the mix of sex and a discredited idea for hanging around “Inteligence Agencies” with neither real oversight or rrsponsability, and charismatic individuals like Alistair Crowley were popular because of an assumped “alpha male” status.

Winter • November 3, 2022 3:28 AM

@Clive

Ouch, you can not say that…

It would require new physics. Current physics has no way to do this.

All kinds of crazy predictions in Quantum Mechanics have been experimentally verified. No way has been found to transfer information faster than light using current QM or General Relativity.

Unless there is some new physics that extends QM and GR, there is no way known to transfer information faster than light with or without using entanglement.

PS: Information traveling faster than light can do very strange things with all of physics, and the universe. Physicists would die to find such things.

Winter • November 3, 2022 5:19 AM

@Clive

“Statistical mechanics destroys information”

No, Statistical Mechanics ignores information you do not have. It tells you that a demon that knows the energy, position and momentum of all particles can let heat flow from cold to hot. You, who know only the average energy, volume, and pressure of the particles can only let heat flow from hot to cold.

Statistical Mechanics can tell you what you can do with the information you do have when you do not have all information.

That is a feature of statistics, not a bug, as, in practice, you never have all the information. And if your system is a bathtub of warm water, the idea that you ever will have all the information is rather ludicrous.

But you are also committing a cardinal sin of moving from “assumed” by observational “effect”, to claimed “cause”… That is neither within the scientific method or or actually credible to those that stay within it as it breaks “times arrow” and causes all sorts of problems.

I am not sure I understand what you want to say here. Statistical mechanics makes predictions on many body systems. A century of research has shown that these predictions are precise and that they cover a very large number of systems and interactions.

When you want to talk about causality in quantum mechanics, I suggest you read up on super-determinism. You are not the only one having troubles with causality.
‘https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism

So we use various forms of experimental techniques to try to drag things into a domain well below the speed of light where we can make experiments.

That said, there have been no observations that require super-luminal speeds.

Physics is about the observable world. So, until such super-luminal phenomena are confirmed, there is nothing to study. Current physics can predict phenomena up to some 20 decimal places without any super-luminal speeds. If faster-than-light communication is possible, it does not show up in any observable form.

Clive Robinson • November 3, 2022 5:33 AM

@ Winter,

“No way has been found to transfer information faster than light using current QM or General Relativity.”

But that does not mean that information is a physical object.

What you are trying is the,

“Loch Ness Monster Argument”

Which boild down to the fact that people could say Nessie was real because we could not measure the very large very deep loch in a way to definitely say nothing of that size was there.

We can show that information can be stored in a non physical way as I noted earlier about books and ink and the distances between objects, it’s why I always say “impressed or modulated” on to “matter and energy”.

There are also other tricks using “data shadows” which can demonstrate that information is independent of physical objects.

So we do not know what information is. Only that for us to use it it has to be attached to a physical object.

Yes those physical objects are constrained by energy matter and forces and the speed of light but that does not say the information is physical, only the interface to us using it is.

Consider this,

“We consider that large as it is the universe is finite, which does mean that the amount of information present in the universe that we can access at anyone time also has to be finite”.

But…

“We know from mathmatics information can be infinite in scope”

How do you go about reconciling those two views?

Winter • November 3, 2022 6:40 AM

@Clvie

But that does not mean that information is a physical object.

No one claims it is. What is claimed that information always needs a physical carrier. I would love to see a way to transmit or store information without the use of physical objects. Alas, no example has ever been found.

We can show that information can be stored in a non physical way as I noted earlier about books and ink and the distances between objects, it’s why I always say “impressed or modulated” on to “matter and energy”.

That is all physics. Information needs a physical carrier. That does not make it a physical object, only a subject of physics.

“We know from mathmatics information can be infinite in scope”

I have no idea what this means, “infinite in scope”. Mathematics considers objects of infinite scale, but that does not mean there are physical objects or phenomena that are of infinite scale. Nothing in physics requires numbers beyond 10^-100 and 10^100. Maybe String Theory, but that is more mathematics than physics and goes far beyond the observable universe.

Clive Robinson • November 3, 2022 7:19 AM

@ Winter,

“What is claimed that information always needs a physical carrier.”

Which is what I’ve been pointing out for the past few posts up the page, in response to your posts.

With regards,

“I have no idea what this means”

The bedrock of mathmatics is information to which we apply logic, have a look at set theory.

“Mathematics considers objects of infinite scale, but that does not mean there are physical objects or phenomena that are of infinite scale.”

Whilst we might not need physical objects of large scale, information objects of large scale are used every day.

A book for instance can be represented as a “bag of bits” that have the same properties as an integer expressed in base two or other radix. We know with cryptography we can do all sorts of work on such intergers.

All those intergers are real objects that have phenomena of many forms attached to them.

The fact that we only know the meaning of some of them is more our failing than the failing of reality.

Our knowledge of information is not required for it to be in existance. After all “objects have fallen” since the begining of time, it was not untill comparitively recently that Issac Newton gave us the knowledge of that.

It can be shown that there are X number of physical objects in the universe. Further it’s trivial by relationships to show that the number of relation ships exceeds X by quite a large amount. Further we can show that those relationships can be further augmented as permutations. But also by the work of Cantor we can show that there is still way more information capability. But it is still effectively finite and related to X at anyone point in time, hence the “scope of information”.

fib • November 3, 2022 11:03 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm

Re: Big Lie pt_BR version

Hello my friend. I’m fine, thank you very much.

The situation around here is very calm in general. Unfortunately, a minority of recalcitrant voters embarked on a lysergic trip of contesting the elections, led by Brazil’s self-employed truck drivers. They have caused logistical problems, but the movement is waning after Bolsonaro appeared yesterday asking protesters to clear the roads.

All institutions in society recognized Lula’s victory, including Bolsonaro’s party. There is enormous pressure from his allies for him to pull himself together and assume the role of leader of the opposition in a civilized and republican way.

I see that we have passed a deadly test, and I admit that I was pessimistic about the outcome. It was a pleasant surprise to see that the population retains rationality.

I have defended that there be some kind of legislation that prevents promiscuity in the interaction of constituted authorities with the populace on the networks. Much of the misinformation and mystification occurs when charismatic leaders instruct their subordinates from the top of an official position, such as the presidency of the republic. In this situation the public is completely at the mercy of the powerful entity. Interactions between the public and official authorities are always formal, and this formality cannot be dispensed with on the web.

Quantry • November 3, 2022 12:09 PM

@ Winter, SLF, Clive: Thanks

I feel morally obligated to assert that, an entangled particle which “instantly affects” a change in another [light-years] distant particle is capable of faster than light information transfer.

I realize thats a mix of words from disparate paradigms. (Such is my vernacular).

But I think this ties in with Clive’s “psychic spying” reference, where, in the Canadian funded version (that I believe to be active, and has been dubbed the “SOAR Pych Cl-Ops”), they have dispensed with the Einsteinian Hypothizing by virtue of the operation’s success: And hundreds of state-forced conscriptees are being exploited and “circumstance-groomed” without pay and mostly without even being aware.

AKA, what people call “ESP” is only a functionality that many obliviously accept to be as normal as breathing, IMO.

Fact-check THAT.

Winter • November 3, 2022 1:14 PM

@Quantry

I feel morally obligated to assert that, an entangled particle which “instantly affects” a change in another [light-years] distant particle is capable of faster than light information transfer.

The main problem here is that you try to fit a quantum state measurement in “common” words. That never works. As R Feynman already stated: Nobody understands QM.

The snag with these entanglement information ist that you need some classical information to read it out. This classical information is limited by the speed of light

vas pup • November 3, 2022 1:49 PM

Climate change: Hidden emissions in liquid gas imports threaten targets
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63457377

“But according to new analysis by Norwegian research firm Rystad Energy, shared with the BBC,
=>the making and shipping of liquid natural gas is extremely energy intensive.

To make it, fossil gas is cooled in giant fridges to -160C.

As the gas liquefies, it shrinks, and becomes six hundred times smaller, making it much easier to transport.

!!!!!While the emissions from burning the gas are the same whether it’s piped or in liquid form, the extra energy involved in making and transporting the liquid is significant.”

Read the article for more details if interested.

Clive Robinson • November 3, 2022 2:21 PM

@ Quantry, SpaceLifeForm, Winter, ALL,

Re : Experiments that give wrong impressions.

“I feel morally obligated to assert that, an entangled particle which “instantly affects” a change in another [light-years] distant particle is capable of faster than light information transfer.”

The problem you have is actually proving “affects a change in another”.

If I entangle two particles and shoot them off in different directions they remain within a “time cone” defined by the speed of light.

When you read them at the same time you would expect them to read the same no matter how far appart they are.

An example of this is the “hosepipe effect”. I’ve used analog test equipment such as an oscilloscope with a 10cm wide screen to display a songle cycle wide 10Ghz waveform that only has a 3cm wave length. At first sight you would think the only way that can happen is if the speed of light is somehow transgressed.

The answer is that the deflection system is a lot lot less than 3cm wide and the beam of electrons formed go down a comparitively long tube before hitting the tube phosphor. If you could see the beam from the side of the tube you would see the oscillation start well within the “time cone” and spread out as it goes down the tube, always staying within the speed of light.

In the real world we occupy you can see the same effect with a garden hose pipe (hence the name). If you adjust it to form a tight water stream at sufficient pressure you can wave the nozzle from side to side and see the stream of water form an expanding sinusoidal waveform in the air as it goes away from you.

This is one of quite a few effects that can cause problems with experiments.

As I said further up the high part of the cost of modern experiments is eliminating or accounting for such effects.

For instance, a coil of wire is an inductor or helical transmission line depending on how you view it. As an air core inductor you would not expect it’s orientation to have any effect. However as a helical transmission line that is unbalanced thus radiates / receives you would expecy differences due to the direction / orientation of the fields involved.

The list of things to consider can from time to time feel endless.

lurker • November 3, 2022 3:04 PM

@Quantry, Winter, Clive

While it might be nice to think that entanglement involves super-luminal transmission speed of something (information as we know it?) we can never know if this is so. We live in the physical classical universe. Minds from Einstein on down call QM “spooky” and boast of not understanding it. Maybe one day a Grand Unified Theory will help us understand, but in the meanwhile using Quantum and Classical in the same sentence smacks of blasphemy.

FA • November 3, 2022 3:58 PM

A few days ago I visited the renovated ‘Deutsches Museum’ in Munich.
They now have a very decent section on cryptography, and even two Enigmata (3 and 4 rotors resp.) in good condition.

Absolutely worth a visit, also for all the other departments.

Bought 5 decimal random number generators at the museum shop (1.35 Euro each).
🙂

MarkH • November 3, 2022 4:09 PM

@Quantry:

Morally obligated — that’s pretty strong stuff! Quantry’s quantum quandary?

Consider: particle interactions or decays can (for example) create a pair of particles which QM specifies must have opposite spin (by a conservation law).

In principle, one of these particles might be transported to a laboratory millions (or billions) of km distant.

In the probability wave function formalities of QM, neither particle has a spin value, until one of them is observed (measured). At the same instant, the other half of the pair also has a determinate spin, even though nobody has measured it yet.

If the spin of one particle is measured on Earth, the spin of its counterpart would (theoretically) be determined immediately, even though signals traveling not faster than c would need minutes, hours, or longer to cross the distance to the far laboratory.

MarkH • November 3, 2022 4:12 PM

continued:

If you can discover an observation which could be made in the remote laboratory capable of revealing any information the Earth laboratory chose to communicate (without waiting for ordinary signals to reach you sometime later), then you have solved the problem of superluminal signaling.

You will (AFAIK) be the first person ever to do so.

With very high probability, discussions of grand questions of philosophy on the comments thread get WAY ahead of our collective skis.

MarkH • November 3, 2022 4:16 PM

@FA:

Always a pleasure to see a contribution from you.

Did those museum-grade RNGs look anything like dice?

Clive Robinson • November 3, 2022 9:47 PM

@ FA,

“Bought 5 decimal random number generators at the museum shop”

Dicing with fate again 😉

SpaceLifeForm • November 3, 2022 11:35 PM

@ MarkH, lurker, FA, Quantry, Winter, Clive

re: GUT and grand questions of philosophy

If one does not think about them, one will not learn and devise ways to test or refute theories.

Did FA testing his pentagonal trapezohedron result in lurker being guilty of blasphemy? 🙂

BTW, I agree with lurker, I just found it ironic.

Pretty much at this point in time, I believe CERN and JWST are just going to refute more theories than that which will be confirmed, which is still good. I do not see many new theories evolving via additional experimental devices.

The Quantum Leap will have to involve crazy out of the box thinking, that only relies upon math and logic, and there will be no way to prove or disprove via Classical experiment. It will have to be logical, and yet, still fit existing evidence.

I had to do it lurker. It is a cosmic conspiracy I tell you!

FA and Einstein are playing a game.

SpaceLifeForm • November 4, 2022 1:05 AM

Twitter implosion

So, the layoffs have started already because employees have discovered that their email no longer works. It is still not Friday in Silicon Valley at this time.

A lawsuit has already been filed.

Genius management. Not.

Winter • November 4, 2022 2:23 AM

@MarkH, Clive, Quantry et ql.

If the spin of one particle is measured on Earth, the spin of its counterpart would (theoretically) be determined immediately, even though signals traveling not faster than c would need minutes, hours, or longer to cross the distance to the far laboratory.

There is an unmentioned snag. Spin measurements have a direction, up/down left/right, or front/back, and give +1/2 or -1/2 with equal probability for electrons along whatever direction you measure.

If you measure up/down, you get a result, say +1/2. If you repeat the measurement in the up/down direction, you will get the same +1/2 result every time.

If you then measure it in the left/right direction, you get +1/2 and -1/2 with equal probability, eg, -1/2. After that, every time you repeat the left/right measurement, you get the exact same -1/2 result again.

If you then switch back to up/down measurements, you again get +1/2 and -1/2 with equal probabilities the first time, and that same value is found henceforth when measuring in the up/down direction.

If you have an entangled pair with the state +/- 1/2, you will always get the result +1/2 for the one and -1/2 for the other (or vice versa). But only if you measure both in the same direction. If you measure the one in up/down direction and the other one in the left/right direction, the results are uncorrelated. You can get any combination of +/- 1/2.

The spooky action at a distance is that if Lab 1 on earth measures +1/2 in the up/down direction, then Lab 2 at alpha centaury will measure -1/2 in the up/down direction. If Lab 1 measure in the left/right direction and Lab 2 also in the left/right direction, they again find the same correlation. If they measure the spin in different directions, their results are uncorrelated.

So, entanglement seems to communicate the direction of measurement in Lab 1 with super-luminal speed to Lab 2.

But how can Lab 2 determine the direction of measurement used in Lab1? You can only measure a quantum state once [1]. The outcome of this spin measurement is always +/- 1/2. How does Lab 2 know what the measurement direction was in Lab 1?

No one has been able to come up with a way to do it other than just communicating the direction of measurement the classical way. That is, with the speed of light.

[1] After measurement, the entanglement is broken. This whole setup is used in quantum key exchange.

EvilKiru • November 4, 2022 12:19 PM

@vas pup: I initially read the description for your first video link to mean that a drone somehow managed to take out an armed robot dog. The actual video quickly disabused me of my misguided notion.

JPR • November 4, 2022 12:58 PM

Nice collection of squid links yesterday on Metafilter:
“A squid biologist takes to the streets — and Skype — to share scientific knowledge. Squid biologist Sarah Mcanulty (@sarahmackattack) runs the Squid Facts hotline and recently hosted #Squidtember (with lots of delightful illustrations by Natalie Metzger aka The Fuzzy Slug.) Want a squid fact? Text “OH YEAH!” to 1-833-SCI-TEXT”

https://www.metafilter.com/197058/Bobtail-squids-can-ooze-glue-from-their-skin

FA • November 6, 2022 4:34 PM

@MarkH

Always a pleasure to see a contribution from you.

Yours are much appreciated as well.

I’ve considerably scaled down the time invested in reading this blog, for the reasons I mentioned a month ago (the post with the John le Carré quote).

@Erika was absolutely right. We actually crossed paths a few times. She’s one of the brightest minds I know. And as usual, the only reaction she got was an veiled insult questioning her competence.

Did those museum-grade RNGs look anything like dice?

They did, and still do 🙂

Clive Robinson • November 6, 2022 10:23 PM

@ FA,

“And as usual, the only reaction she got was an veiled insult questioning her competence.”

Go back and read from her first post, which was a whine about how the blog is not how she wants it to be.

She, called other peoples competence and information sharing/giving to help others into question as her first action and so,

“She got treated the way she treated others”

As they say “All is fair in love and war” And she started the hostilities, rather than take many other approaches open to her…

But the fact is she did not even talk a good game she just blustered, which to others competent in the domains in question was a clear sign of “being not even brass”…

As you know from having previously attacked me on a number of occasions over the years in a similar way to her, I “trade punch for punch” if you don’t punch I have no reason to punch back, and I don’t lead with punches. Also I avoid being “personal” if I disagree with something technical then yes I say so but I avoid ad hominem and similar… As you also as know, if people stop punching at me, I alomost immediately treat them as though they had not ever punched out at me. I also appologise when wrong, or someone thinks I’ve been unfair and says why in a way that makes sense.

But I don’t always see similar behaviour from others, which I guess is down to their own personality type.

I guess it’s upto them to think about their aproach to life, thus how others see them.

SpaceLifeForm • November 7, 2022 3:22 AM

@ Clive, Winter, ALL

re: Spooky Lego bricks and overloading Entropy and Information

Two plus thoughts.

The word ‘Entropy’ is overloaded. You have the heat entropy, and then there is the uncertainty entropy, the latter which I have described as a shaker with an equal mixture of red and green balls. And there must be quantum entropy also (see radioactive decay and half-life). My gut feel is that the shaker entropy is more descriptive of quantum entropy than it is of heat entropy. Shaker entropy and quantum entropy may be the same thing at Planck scale, but we can not know that.

The word ‘Information’ is overloaded. You have the Classical definition that Humans use, such as written symbols, sounds, Cave Drawings, Hieroglyphs, and even today, Bits! But, information at the Quantum level does not have to match our Classical definition of information. Quantum Information may also be close to Shaker information, also close to Bits, but at Planck scale, we can not know that.

As Clive noted, this Classical definition of Information is Impressed or Modulated onto stuff that we can observe. EMF is likely not pure Quantum, but at a higher level. I doubt even quarks and gluons are fundamental, but are higher level constructs created by the quantum soup.

It may take many orders of magnitude of quantum bits at Planck scale just to define/create a quark. Many.

We should not presume that Quantum Information is even close to Classical Information in terms of meaning or behavior.

Remember, the contents of the shaker is only entropy. Until one ball shakes out, you have no information. You only get one Bit of information when a ball is observed. Well, you do get a bit more information about the remaining entropy, but if you put the ball back in the shaker, you have now reloaded the shaker to max entropy.

The contents of the shaker is not a RNG. The dumping of a ball is what creates a random bit. Assuming you actually shake it sufficiently.

So, what is shaking the cosmic quantum cloud? Heisenberg likely.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/10/friday-squid-blogging-chinese-squid-fishing.html/#comment-411726

Winter • November 7, 2022 4:06 AM

@SLF

The word ‘Entropy’ is overloaded. You have the heat entropy, and then there is the uncertainty entropy, the latter which I have described as a shaker with an equal mixture of red and green balls. And there must be quantum entropy also (see radioactive decay and half-life). My gut feel is that the shaker entropy is more descriptive of quantum entropy than it is of heat entropy. Shaker entropy and quantum entropy may be the same thing at Planck scale, but we can not know that.

That is “Entropy” in the popular press, and then in quasi esoteric writings.

tl;dr: Entropy is a physical quantity whose change can be unambiguously measured in any physical process.

In physics, there is no overloading. Basic entropy, S, is simply the solution of a differential equation:
TdS = dE

In statistical mechanics it was proven that S corresponds to the information needed to describe a system’s degrees of freedom. In quantum mechanics the very same quantities can be defined resulting in quantum entropy that has classical entropy as the classical limit.

Your “shaker entropy” is not well defined as it misses a definition of temperature and energy/heat. It has way too few degrees of freedom to allow a statistical mechanical treatment. A probability/statistical treatment is well defined, but calling it “entropy” has no advantages in my view.

Clive Robinson • November 7, 2022 8:18 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm, Winter, All,

Re : Entropy as a word is overloaded.

As a word entropy has many many meanings, that also get conflated.

Shannon did not originaly use the word in relation to information. The fault for that lies with a mathematician who on seeing Shannon’s equation remarked that apart from the base/radix –which is unimportant– it was the same equation used for thermodynamics (see @Winter’s comment above).

In a way the word “entropy” is like that of “multiplication” it can have domain and context specific meanings, but has a more nebulous common usage…

To make things worse untill towards the end of the last century such mathmatics was not just tedious but prone to error. Thus the use of “look-up tables” for high precision (5-7 digits) and “slides” or “scales” –also known as “bones”– for low precision (2-4 digits) were used. The tables were often incorrectly called “log tables” and the mechanical systems “slide rules” (they were not designed as rules for measuring or drawing straight lines, but as atleast one scale had to be linear… Then it was pitched as a rule).

Hence the simplifing names brought further confusion, that was back then atleast explainable because the tables and slides were “common”.

1974 was the sounding of the death knell of the tables and slides, due to the first “calculator” chips. Which unfortunately had the same problem as the making of tables which was errors and inacuracies (something the later Pentium Bug brought back…).

Such inaccuracy was well known to many including the British Empire “Admiralty” who indirectly ended up approaching Charles Babbage, who knew how to solve the problem (as we now know). But ended up solving a different more important foundation problem, the “Standardisation of mechanical parts” (see history of the “Whitworth thread”).

Babbage had another issue, one that a number of people suffer from, which is “the need to advance the art”. Basically rather than finish a project and collect the money, he would see improvments as he progressed and include them… The result he rarely finished what he was taking money for, and was spending the money he had on new ideas and improvments all the time. People lost patience, worse those that worked for him effectively stole his ideas (why the standard threads etc are not called “Babbage”). Worse they profited greatly by selling on not just Babbages ideas, but used the tools Babbage had designed and paid for, to sell product made on them…

It’s now generally accepted that Babbage put together the fundemental ideas that give us the modern programable “stored program computer” and that’s important.

The problem is that if a process no matter how simple or complex is built for a purpose, any error in the design can be extreamly costly if not impossible to fix. The use of a “stored program” however alows making changes to be effectively trivial. That is you just change “the deck of cards”.

1974 was the year when the first couple of chips came out that made the equivalent of Babbages Difference engine but in silicon, not brass and steel so electronic calculators could be cheaply and more important accurately made.

So now those tables and slides that were still common in schools in the early 1980’s were gone, almost erased from history by the electronic calculaters. But they left behind them an issue, that of the imprecise naming of things… Which lingers on in “multiplication”, “log”, “entropy” and several more words usage in ways so broad they make nebulous look fairly solid 😉

SpaceLifeForm • November 8, 2022 5:44 PM

@ Winter, Clive

Your “shaker entropy” is not well defined as it misses a definition of temperature and energy/heat.

Exactly. It is a Feature, not a Bug.

I do not care about the temperature of the shaker or the temperature of the contents inside.

This is why the word entropy is overloaded.

From a cryptologic standpoint, the temperature is meaningless, as long the shaker is not frozen up to the point where I can not dump a red or green ball.

Winter • November 9, 2022 12:33 AM

@SLF

This is why the word entropy is overloaded.

The fact that “crypto” does mean cryptocurrency does not mean that the word “cryptography” is overloaded. It means people use metaphors and pars pro toto. The same holds for “literally” [1], “entropy” and “quantum”.

If you mean randomness or hidden information, you can use “entropy” as a metaphor from physics. As Clive never tires to tell us, the “entropy” in a computer is not really hidden, just obfuscated.

Btw, if you record the sound of a fan blowing over a microphone, you probably get more “entropy” than you ever need. The sound of air turbulence is truly unpredictable. Even after you have accounted for all the predictable sounds, a lot of unpredictable bits remain.

[1] https://xkcd.com/725/

SpaceLifeForm • November 9, 2022 2:56 AM

@ Winter, Clive

word overloading

The fact that “crypto” does mean cryptocurrency does not mean that the word “cryptography” is overloaded.

Red Herring.

The word crypto is overloaded. I have specifically asked everyone here to not use the the word crypto unless the context was clear. Otherwise,
specifically use the words cryptocurrency or cryptography, as appropriate.

you can use “entropy” as a metaphor from physics

Maybe you can, but did you mean ‘for physics’?

As Clive never tires to tell us, the “entropy” in a computer is not really hidden, just obfuscated.

If there is no entropy, there is nothing to obfuscate.

Winter • November 9, 2022 3:41 AM

@SLF

If there is no entropy, there is nothing to obfuscate.

According to Merriam-Webster you are right. See ad 3)

‘https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entropy

entropy
noun
en·​tro·​py ˈen-trə-pē How to pronounce entropy (audio)
plural entropies

1 thermodynamics : a measure of the unavailable energy in a closed thermodynamic system that is also usually considered to be a measure of the system’s disorder, that is a property of the system’s state, and that varies directly with any reversible change in heat in the system and inversely with the temperature of the system
broadly : the degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system

2
a: the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity
Entropy is the general trend of the universe toward death and disorder. James R. Newman

b: a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder
The deterioration of copy editing and proof-reading, incidentally, is a token of the cultural entropy that has overtaken us in the postwar years. John Simon

3: chaos, disorganization, randomness

4 statistical mechanics : a factor or quantity that is a function of the physical state of a mechanical system and is equal to the logarithm of the probability for the occurrence of the particular molecular arrangement in that state

5 communication theory : a measure of the efficiency of a system (such as a code or a language) in transmitting information, being equal to the logarithm of the number of different messages that can be sent by selection from the same set of symbols and thus indicating the degree of initial uncertainty that can be resolved by any one message

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