Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

There is an ongoing thread on HackerNews talking about why Blogging is not as popular as it used to and asks why people no longer blog for the hell of it. The post itself is interesting but one of the comments on the page caught my eye and prompted this post:

I to some extent agree. A blog can be an attack surface for someone wishing to doxx you, a point of failure for potential employers, or perhaps an opportunity to open yourself up to criticism for the local equivalent of your knitting community when they’re having a purity spiral.

You could, of course, keep to the driest topics, the most tamed opinions, nothing spicier than an animal cracker, but for some this self-censorship of “your most honest, primitive, real thoughts” (to quote Naked Lunch) is tantamount to a sin, just one step up from lying to your diary.

If you are trying to keep it safe, are you truly communicating what is on your mind, or are you pasteurizing your output, homogenizing it, adding a touch of gamma radiation and a run through the freeze-drier, until the final result is palatable pablum, certainly inoffensive and low-residue, but ultimately unworth either consumption or production?

Blogging seems to have shifted on the risk/reward scale and people have responded as such. A pity.

I see that a lot of people agree with this idea that the only way people can blog without being ‘cancelled’ or being called out is to post bland ‘non-controversial’ posts instead of “your most honest, primitive, real thoughts”. In my experience most of the people who are complaining that they can’t write what they want without getting called out or getting into trouble are folks who want to post racist/misogynist/mean posts with impunity and are upset that they are being called out on their posts and are facing the consequence of their actions. In the past week I remember reading about 2 people who got fired because they posted racist crap on the web and got called out for it. These are some of the examples people quote when talking about not being able to post what they think.

Over the past 19 years, I have posted on a lot of topics that can be deemed controversial such as my thoughts on Vaccination, gender equality, race, misogyny etc etc and so far not much splash back has occurred. I have gotten a few folks you have reached out and yelled at me for stuff I posted that they didn’t like but overall that has been rare. (I do have the advantage of being a guy and not someone who is famous so I have managed to avoid the troll farms/targeted harassment campaigns).

I am not saying that I am not careful about what I post online especially when I am being sarcastic or being a smartass, as John Scalzi famously said “Failure mode of Clever is Asshole”, so I try to ensure I stay in the clever part of the equation :). I do run some of my posts past Jani when I think I need a second opinion on how they can be interpreted but that doesn’t mean that I censure what I say. I just ensure that posts come across as clear as possible while remaining non-inflammatory/rude/non-obnoxious. There have been times when I failed in this and there will be times I will fail in the future as well. I just need to ensure that I own up to any mistakes or issues caused by my posts, apologize and ensure that they are not repeated.

What some people call cancel culture, is basically people having to deal with the consequences of their actions and they don’t like that much…

– Suramya

Folks who know me (or read my blog) know that I love Doctor Who. I have bought pretty much every New Who book published and most of old Target ones as well. Rest are in the queue to purchase pending funding approval (from the wife 😉 ) This year is the 60th Anniversary of the show and it is supposed to be a big thing with a whole bunch of things planned to celebrate the show.

I recently re-watched the entire New Who (9th Doctor onwards) and I have to say it is a show that just keeps getting better. There have been some ups and downs over the years for example, I really didn’t like the 12th Doctor much. Though the stories he had were quite good the character was not something I liked much, the 13th on the other hand was phenomenal. Personal ranking would be 10th, 4th, 13th, 9th and 11th with the 10th being the best.

To celebrate this occasion BBC was planning on putting the entire backlog of all of the Old episodes going back to the 1st episode broadcast back in 1963 in one location on iPlayer. Unfortunately, thanks to one idiot it looks like the set will have all episodes except the one that started it all: The first-ever story arc and the introduction of William Hartnell’s first Doctor, which will be missing from the set because the son of the original story’s author is having a hissy fit over the casting decision for the 15th Doctor.

Mr Coburn’s son claims that the BBC has been in breach of copyright since his father’s death in 1977. He has demanded that the corporation either stop using the Tardis in the show or pay his family for its every use since then. Stef Coburn claims that upon his father’s death, any informal permission his father gave the BBC to use his work expired and the copyright of all of his ideas passed to his widow, Joan. Earlier this year she passed it on to him.

He said: “It is by no means my wish to deprive legions of Doctor Who fans (of whom I was never one) of any aspect of their favourite children’s programme. The only ends I wish to accomplish, by whatever lawful means present themselves, involve bringing about the public recognition that should by rights always have been his due, of my father James Anthony Coburn’s seminal contribution to Doctor Who, and proper lawful recompense to his surviving estate.”

But if you read through his Twitter feed (I read a few posts) you will see gems like the following:

Regarding the hysterical hatred coming my way from the entitled outraged ‘fans’ of Doctor Who, I should say that, in the event of my death, I have bequeathed ALL my father’s DW related copyrights, to an ENEMY of the BBC, possessing ALL the resources required to act against them.

By that he means Russia. If you want to read the hateful postings of a sad old man who has never accomplished anything in their life and is jealous of their father’s achievements you can go search for his posts on Twitter (I refuse to call it X). He is someone who openly supports Hitler, is a transphobic racist & frothing islamophobe who glorifies Russian violence against Ukraine.

In his own words he wants to destroy Doctor Who because… I don’t know.

Would you plead so with Davros?
Or beg mercy from The Master?
I am ‘The Undoctor’. I have resented the success of Tony’s bastard brainchild, while his REAL children were left bereaved & forgotten, by the BBC, ALL MY LIFE.
If I could ERADICATE DW & the BBC from existence, I would.

In response to someone who asked “What do you actually gain from doing this though?” Stef Coburn replied: “Vengeance.”. Vengeance for what is something I can’t figure out, unless he means having a Black doctor and gay/Trans characters in the show (Which it always had). Basically I think that Stef Coburn couldn’t see the joy folks feel when watching the show and decided to rain on everyone’s parade by being a petulant brat. Or he just saw an opportunity to make money and used this as the perfect time because of all the focus around the 60th anniversary celebrations. Otherwise not many would have realized how a small minded bigot trying to ruin an awesome show.

In the days since his ranting/posts started multiple folks have posted copies of the “Unearthly Child” on Twitter, YouTube and other filesharing systems to get the episode out there.

Hopefully this will get sorted soon and folks will be able to see the episode that started it all.

Source: Slashdot: First ‘Doctor Who’ Writer Honored. His Son Contests BBC’s Rights to ‘Unearthly Child’

– Suramya

Last week I was trying to find a software/site to generate a QR code that when scanned would download a VCF card on the scanner, the idea being that I would put it on a visiting card and then anyone could scan the card to get the details and save them instead of manually having to type them in.

When I had last tried this a couple of years ago I found a few sites that would do this and since those sites were down I searched for others and while I did find them they all were creating a QR code that had a URL for people to visit and then download the details from there. Basically it meant that if that site ever went down or decided to start charging for this all the visiting cards I had would end up being useless.

I was about to code something to generate this be then I half remembered that Android had the ability to generate QR codes as well. So I checked in my contacts and to my joy I found that Android has the built in ability to generate a QR code for a given contact entry. All I had to do was create an entry with my details and use the system to generate the QR code.

It is interesting that a lot of the functionality that we would get by downloading extra software (both on the phone & computer) is now baked into the OS itself. In a way it is good because I don’t have to download anything when I setup a new system but it does reduce the options available because whatever is the default system available is what people will use. Which is why Microsoft including Internet Explorer in Windows for free was a big issue in the early 2000’s.

That being said, I was happy that I didn’t have to code a QR -> vcf generator because I do have other work I need to look at…

– Suramya

We have always been told that the coin toss is a perfectly random event with a 50% probability of heads vs tails. Turns out that is not exactly true… Researchers at the University of Amsterdam did a study where they tossed coins over 350,000 times to see which side they land on and found that instead of being 50-50 probability there is a 51% chance that the coin would land on the same side they started on. This study has been published in the

Many people have flipped coins but few have stopped to ponder the statistical and physical intricacies of the process. In a preregistered study we collected 350,757 coin flips to test the counterintuitive prediction from a physics model of human coin tossing developed by Persi Diaconis. The model asserts that when people flip an ordinary coin, it tends to land on the same side it started — Diaconis estimated the probability of a same-side outcome to be about 51%. Our data lend strong support to this precise prediction: the coins landed on the same side more often than not, Pr(same side)=0.508, 95% credible interval (CI) [0.506, 0.509], BFsame-side bias=2364. Furthermore, the data revealed considerable between-people variation in the degree of this same-side bias. Our data also confirmed the generic prediction that when people flip an ordinary coin — with the initial side-up randomly determined — it is equally likely to land heads or tails: Pr(heads)=0.500, 95% CI [0.498, 0.502], BFheads-tails bias=0.183. Furthermore, this lack of heads-tails bias does not appear to vary across coins. Our data therefore provide strong evidence that when some (but not all) people flip a fair coin, it tends to land on the same side it started. Our data provide compelling statistical support for Diaconis’ physics model of coin tossing.

This means that we need to change the behavior of systems that depend on the coin toss to account for this slight bias. To give more context and the magnitude of the impact of this bias if it is not addressed the paper calculated the following:

Could future coin tossers use the same-side bias to their advantage? The magnitude of the observed bias can be illustrated using a betting scenario. If you bet a dollar on the outcome of a coin toss (i.e., paying 1 dollar to enter, and winning either 0 or 2 dollars depending on the outcome) and repeat the bet 1,000 times, knowing the starting position of the coin toss would earn you 19 dollars on average. This is more than the casino advantage for 6 deck blackjack against an optimal-strategy player, where the casino would make 5 dollars on a comparable bet, but less than the casino advantage for single-zero roulette, where the casino would make 27 dollars on average. These considerations lead us to suggest that when coin flips are used for high-stakes decision-making, the starting position of the coin is best concealed.

This is a fascinating study that kind of shows that nothing is ever random and that there is some implicit/explicit bias towards a particular outcome. Be it a coin toss or something else. Some people will take this example as more evidence that the universe we are in is actually a simulation, but I don’t agree with that. This is more of at a granular enough level nothing is chaotic/random.

Source: Boingboing: Coin toss not so random after all, says groundbreaking study

– Suramya

There is a reason that we tell companies to revoke access as soon as an employee leaves the company especially if they have been fired. If a person has been fired they can try to retaliate against the employer by damaging office systems, equipment, data etc or leak/corrupt data & intellectual property as well.

Which is why once a person leaves the company we should immediately lock them out of the system, change any passwords they had access to, remove their access from entering the facility etc. Some of you might ask if this is really required/needed so here’s the latest example of what can happen if you don’t revoke access. Two employees in Bangalore were fired and they decided to enter the office when no one was present and set valuables in the office on fire. Now obviously they will be caught and punished but that will not bring back the valuables that were burnt and if the company didn’t have a strong backup system (or copies of the stuff that was burnt) then the company can be in real trouble.

When you are let go it is quite natural to be upset and want payback. However, doing something like this is just going to ensure that you never get to work in that industry again. I covered a lot of this in my previous post that talked about not burning bridges by behaving unprofessionally when you leave a company and we can all agree that breaking into the office and setting things on fire is extremely unprofessional. So please don’t do things like this unless you enjoy sitting in jail and look forward to never working again.

– Suramya