That’s what Nick calls them¹. This must be my imagination, but watching movies in Jeng is just agonizing. Typically, it’s common courtesy to shut up in a theater, but in class, the scenario is apparently different. For some reason, you feel obligated to let the world know your reactions—your awww’s and guffaws—as if your feelings were a second show playing simultaneously. It’s almost like a competition to see who is most emotionally vested in the wonders of modern cinematography. If mushy emotion isn’t your thing, you can just turn around and explain the plot to one of your friends. Then, you can amaze us with your accurate plot predictions and show off the comprehensive collection of movies you’ve seen². If post-testing films are more of a opportunistic social exhibition than an idle pastime, your outbursts sound forced and contrived. It always happens when you mix up your priorities. Man, this topic is so stereotypically hipster.

Also, I’ve made a development blog for the development of next year’s WalnutNHS website. It’s at walnutnhs.com/dev. It’s so much easier to just churn out long paragraphs when you have something concrete to write about.

Today in Sandoval, when we were jumping around among the lecture circles, I noticed an analogy to the US economy. See, at any given moment, a person can be dissatisfied because nobody is discussing essay outlines for a topic that he wants to study. To remedy this, he jumps around from group to group, surveying which group provides the best discussion, considering both the topic and the speakers involved, and makes a choice among them, even if he is not satisfied with any. Meanwhile, he contributes no input of his own¹. Maybe we need to stop focusing on finance and advertising, and start thinking productivity.

Hey, China likes to point out that the US system of debate and decision making is slow compared to a centralized system in which fewer people hold more power¹. But what if we had a form of legislation that wasn’t as serious as the law, but effective for quick solutions? Like a measure of contempt. Say the FCC is pissed at Sony for their neglect for security. They would declare, on some .gov site, that the FCC holds Sony in contempt. Underneath, there are 2 descriptors that must be filled out. First, the FCC explains the reasons for which it holds Sony in contempt, including any evidence they have. It’s assumed that if these violations were all corrected, Sony would not be in contempt. Second, they propose a solution. This may be a simple “fix everything”, or may not be. If the W3C² held Internet Explorer 6 in contempt, the solution would be for internet users and webmasters both to pretend it didn’t exist. But here’s the great part about this solution: Say the RIAA holds Mozilla in contempt for approving the MAFIAAFire plugin. On the website, citizens could vote³ to support or oppose the contempt ruling. This would then be an indicator of public support or lack thereof that could be used in news reports and statistics and all sorts of great things as an implementation of direct democracy. Of course, neither the contempt status nor the voting has any legal meaning, but they could be powerful systems for enacting quick change⁴.

Whenever you make a permanent change to the database in Rails, you’re supposed to make what they call a migration. It’s like versions for your database, so that whenever you screw up, you can always just backtrack to a version that still works. Until recently, these migrations would be numbered sequentially, like zero, then 1, then 2. But now they’ve decided to use the date and time as your migration number, so they end up looking like 20110507193526¹. So what happens now? When somebody looks at your code, they’ll notice all you do on Friday nights is work on your programming projects, and considering the common self-conscious, socially-inept programmer stereotype, this could be a problem.

What’s the deal here? These timestamps bring a personal touch to Rails projects. Instead of imaging some invisible omniscient entity that writes code from his watchtower in the clouds, these timestamps say something about the programmer. Thursday at 1PM: he must be slacking off at work, or perhaps he’s unemployed. Sunday night 11:30: it’s probably just a hobby for him. Maybe this is their way of telling programmers to get out of the house, once in a while.

Perhaps this is unique to China, where the sheer number of other persons drowns out your cries of individualism. But I sense that there exists a prevailing trend of anti-collaboration that has only recently subsided. I don’t say competition, because that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the generally-accepted notion that, if you go sharing your success secrets with others, you’ll be at a disadvantage, and because of this, you shouldn’t cooperate with anyone.

I mean, it does make sense. That is, if you dehumanize people into little nodes of information. But because of this reasoning, there is a lot of anti-collaborative hostility beneath the surface. It makes certain social situations very tense, especially the ones involving direct competition for some limited opportunity¹. Of course, it’s a big problem if everyone starts thinking this way.

Maybe it’s not our fault. Maybe we’re just raised this way². But the real problem is that we never stop to reconsider. If all cooperation is bad for the interests of the individual, how does anybody get anything done? Now, some people will consider that helping others indirectly helps yourself because you are “somebody else” to everybody else and some weird Marxist chain of bullshit. But instead, consider this: collaboration is a self-seeking, self-interested activity. Aside from the virtuous i-like-helping-people attitude, sharing your methods and opportunities puts you in a higher position with people. It’s like a moral-balance reserves thing, where people feel obligated to return the favor. It might sound evil that we’ll befriend people for self-gain, but it’s not like we befriend people so that they’ll hate us³. Overall, things typically turn out better when you’re not so averse to sharing.

www.seatyourself.biz/walnutchoir

I wish people would stop substituting “cum” for “come”.

On the club application form I created, there’s a place for you to put down a password so I don’t end up having to send a randomly generated “2foas2!v” to a million people. Being counterculture and all that, I don’t like passwords. Nobody does. I tried googling for an alternative way to identify yourself  or perhaps, I could come up with an alternative myself¹. But in the end, I just went with a normal password + salted hash.

Alright, well, underneath the place where you put your password, I write down “Your password is stored as a 512-bit hash. We do not know what you type”. I have to do this because, well, who would trust me with their password? It’s just too easy to harvest giant lists of email passwords. But still, including this bit is a bit troubling. Technically, it’s not untrue. The script is configured to create a salted hash and it throws out the original password so that it is cryptographically impossible for anyone to crack it within a few thousand years. But wait, what if Mr. curious-white-knight-hacker looks at the form submission and sees... woah! the password is sent as plain text. If you’re on public wifi, anybody can steal your password given the opportunity. Although the password is secure on the server, it’s wide open in-transit. So what’s the deal here? My intention is to get the user to trust me with his password, since I genuinely can’t see it. But of course, I still acknowledge that this sentence sort of gives a false sense of security. But it’s not like the FBI wants to know your club website password². Still, it begs the question: does this constitute lying? While the words are true, the statement clearly is deception. To the user, the sentence I typed looks like “Your password is secure”. He doesn’t know what the rest of the bit-hash junk means, so he picks out a few key words and misunderstands what it’s really saying. Would it be better to leave out the sentence completely? Sure! Let the user completely forget that using the same password for your GMail and freeipodnano.com isn’t a good idea!

I wonder if big companies hire people to ponder these moral dilemmas. That would certainly save a lot of time for the programmers. Of course, you could be like Facebook and just tell your employees to ignore their ethical concerns.

Ha, joking. Please I’m joking.

I’m planning to start a development blog for the ruby-based NHS application that I’m writing this summer. I’ll like make it walnutnhs.com/dev, and then use /dev/null for the 404 page, and a /dev/stderr/ for reporting bugs. Ha, ridiculous. And maybe  When I think about this idea, it sounds like a blog with a genuine purpose. Summer seems like a bottomless repository of free time, but it probably really isn’t. I will never have as much free time as I do now. But that’s ridiculous! I’ve got homework and AP tests coming up and I want to go outside, and look at summer: absolutely nothing planned. Ahh, but I’ve resolved to stop putting things off and start what I want, right now.

---

Followup: Since nobody did this for me last summer, here are some browser statistics about WHS’s student population, or at least the ones in NHS.

Chrome 40.88%
Firefox 33.00%
Safari 15.27%
IE 9.42%

I’m looking at the future of the WalnutNHS website and things have changed a bit. I’m supposed to choose a sophomore (not a freshman) who’ll take over the website after I graduate, and I just can’t make any sense of the situation right now. Let me explain: When I look at 2012, there are several people who definitely have the experience and know-how to work WalnutNHS. Of course, I can’t choose any of them because they’re graduating along with me. I need somebody who can inherit the website for future classes. Logically speaking, there must be about the same number of capable people in 2013, and in 2014 as well. But I’m very shaky on this point. I don’t know if I’m underestimating or overestimating the capabilities of 2013. Okay, that statement is wrong for 2 reasons: First, programming experience doesn’t translate to capability. Second, I’m not getting from the entire class. I’ve got a list of 82 club members in front of me. It just seems so unlikely that a genius is hiding within these names, but logic tells me otherwise. Well, I’m sending out the information soon. Maybe tomorrow. I’ve got to sleep on this.

What a first world problem: I’ve got to choose a mentee, but logic is conflicting with emotion!

I picked up a telemarketer call today.

[long pause.]

Telemarketer: Hello, can I speak to _____?
Me: He’s not interested. Please remove us from your list, please.
Telemarketer: [more casually] Yeah, um.
Telemarketer: Okay, thanks. Bye.
[More pause, then I hang up.]

Hey these guys have the worst job in the world, give em a break. Some people’ll go online to complain and look up do-not-call lists and some people will file in small claims court¹. Apparently, some telemarketing companies have a policy where they can’t hang up until you do, even if leave the phone. Of course, listening to whatever crud you might be playing is orders of magnitude better than harassing families at dinner. You think you’re doing them a favor, and you’re probably right. The world’s a lot less scary when you figure that people are people just like you.

I don’t care what kind of laboratory you have. Two objects with densities of 18000000 kg/m³ is absolutely unacceptable¹. You have pulleys that go the wrong way, electrons that move at the speed of light, photons that don’t, made-up equations. Apparently, you don’t know how to subtract numbers either².

Yeah, I get it. It takes a lot of work to write these. But please, proofread? 3rd edition my ass³.

I’ve been taking runs around my neighborhood in the morning for a couple of days. It’s absolutely exhilarating. I like the steep hills that ascend 10 or 12 feet so that you can’t see over the top from its base. It’s like you’re climbing up to something great thats waiting for you. And the sunrise on the horizon is something you don’t ever get to see unless you’re up at 6:30. Hey, people should do this more often.

But wait, they do. There are joggers that join track and field and do crosscountry and they must see magnificent sunrises all the time. I feel rather out of place talking about running when I really haven’t seen the sun for 6 months. If you think about it, it’s likewise socially unacceptable to discuss basketball unless you follow its teams and play weekly. There are usually two choices here: (1) you can devote your time and become an expert so you don’t feel out of place, or (2) you can choose not to join the conversation as to avoid being shunned. What’s more, I even don’t like talking about programming and computers with people who don’t have a definite history of affiliation with them. It’s like you’re expected to hold certain credentials before you can bring up a subject. To be friendly means to hold back your judgement in these awkward moments. But inside, this credential pressure makes people do some really stupid things.

Look: given the two options I mentioned, it follows that people will sometimes choose #1 and work to attain those valuable social credentials. When people ask you about your hobbies, you’ll put down jogging first. In class, you’ll awkwardly talk about the jogging you did over the weekend, and when people point out the high-level credentials offered by track and field, you’ll be inclined to run even more to make up for it. Of course, this kind of peer pressure may be just the thing you need to motivate yourself to go outside. Hey it’s not such a bad thing at all. But what if you wanted credentials for something else? I realize music, both playing and listening, is certainly a popular choice and this, in moderation, is not such a bad choice. But choosing credentials in gaming, or anime, or eating, or school: those will do horrible things to people. Hey, I know its comforting. It’s your excuse for everything: your hobbies, your music taste, your opinions, what you do with your free time. Society will reward you for having something that you’re obsessively interested in. When you hide behind your hard-earned credentials, you appear to be happy, satisfied, and never ever bored, because being busy doing something you “love” is the best feeling there is, from the outside.

One major implication of credential pressures, as I will call it, is its effect on blogging. Please take this lightly, I don’t mean to offend anyone. If you’re interested in gadgets and technology, you will blog to fit your credentials. Simply, you will regurgitate whatever you read from Gawker Media and add a few comments to your own. If you’re all about FUN, you’ll start a tumblr with all these FUNNY pictures because you know, obviously I have FUNNY pictures on my blog and you are laughing at my FUNNY pictures so that must mean I am a FUN person, because come on, look how FUNNY my blog is! Ooooh and the super-deep blog with your short aphorisms that have ultra-deep profound meanings about your life. Ooooooh, on the inside you HATE everybody but on the outside, you have to hide your messages in some obscure metaphor. Everyone will think you are so deep because look, nobody understands what you’re saying!

The way I see it, there are 2 false premises that cause this widespread disease on blogging, but they are both manifestations of credential pressures.

#1: Your stuff: yeah, it’s not up to par. If you’re making an image for yourself, well come on, you have to absolutely FLAUNT it. If something doesn’t fit in with how FUNNY, or deep, or sports-crazy, or techy you are, you can’t post that! Look, you have to keep your stuff high-quality and adherent to this narrow image that you want people to see you as. If you’re going to exploit the internet to improve your self-worth and confidence, you gotta do this right!

#2: Other people don’t care. This must be one of the most widespread myths ever, right behind potassium iodide. See typically, you can’t imagine that people will bother reading your blog, or deciphering your ultra-mega-deep hidden messages. That is, unless it’s super FUNNY or, you know, they don’t have to read it. I mean, just the fact that the background on my blog is url(/i_love_basketball.jpg) repeat; obviously tells you that I’m a crazy sports guy. So either you hide away and are discouraged from blogging anything that isn’t top-LOL quality, or you talk in jargon so complex that it serves the purpose without anyone even reading what you wrote.

It’s apparent that self-image is behind both of these problems. In fact, since this is such a golden opportunity, I will bring it up: these two premises are exactly why I disagree with Facebook.

See, Facebook is all about self-image. If I’m going to tell you something, why talk privately when I can publicize it for everyone to see? This way, everyone can see our FUNNY inside jokes and OH that FUN time that we had that other day. Ahh, we must be FUN to play with right? Oh wait, let me post the pictures of our pig-imitations in the mirror and we’ll really get this started. Simply, you put your opinion and forced laughter to the judgement of society. Ahh, look at my super-long list of friends. Theres 500 of them! Need a profile picture? Oh how about this one with me and my friends laughing and playing a game. Oh look how big our circle is! See, from my profile picture, you can tell that I have many friends and am very popular and cool. Wait, actually, I don’t think you can tell how buff I am from my normal pictures so I’ll take my shirt off and flex in the mirror.

Once you have left envy-inducing messages for everyone and have set your profile picture to match your desired self-image, there’s nothing left to do! Wait actually, you can blow some time exploiting your massive friend list in some antisocial games or even build up your empire by friending that one guy you talked to a couple weeks ago in the hallway. When there’s nothing left to do and your need for social recognition has not been satisfied, you’ll do the stupidest things to gather attention. It is awful what these social pressures will do to people.

Still, please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. Facebook is very successful and will probably be in the future as well. But I can’t agree with the immoral way they exploit your insecurities in order to lure people in. But hey, my integrity won’t hold up forever.

Facebook has accomplished what other websites couldn’t. It doesn’t advertise itself as “Build your self-image and improve your confidence!”. Of course not. They will tell everybody that Facebook is a communication tool. I mean come on, it’s like the only thing on their front page. People will of course, accept that Facebook is for communication, because they have an incentive to just follow along. I mean, who wants to tell people that they use a website to improve their self-esteem? It’s not like Facebook provides any kind of communication that IRC, IM, RFC822, and other protocols don’t. It’s just that email doesn’t give you an injection of dopamine every time you send a messag.... oooooh, that email felt great. It’s a great advancement in communication, but because of one reason only: virtually everybody has agreed to use it. It’s the only technology that combines deep social temptations with a top-tier communications system, and for that reason, it has successfully gathered everybody in one place. This is the critical thing that no other protocol, even email, has accomplished.