Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

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

When folks think about where to take someone out for a date, they usually think about a nice restaurant, movie, show, outing etc. Some more adventurous would go for a hike or outing together. But apparently there is a group of men who think that taking their dates to their office is a good option for a first date. It boggles my mind that anyone would think that. Imagine being so one dimensional that you think taking a date to your office to show off the perks at work is a good idea.

Taking people to work on a date

The above popped up on my feed over at Mastodon and folks are rightly making fun of the folks who do this. What I take away from this is that these folks have almost no existence outside their work and their ‘achievements’ over there. What is especially interesting is that this guy is not the only one taking folks to their office for a date. I actually feel sorry for the folks they are dating because that is the only interesting thing/place these folks know.

Out of curiosity I checked out the posts by @VCBrags over on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) and they are as bad as expected. I especially liked the following:

You have hobbies and interests outside of startups and venture capital?

Redflag 🚩

Being a well rounded human is considered a red flag by these self defined geniuses. So it is a good idea to keep away from them, because they are literally incapable of having thoughts outside of work. I mean I am a workaholic, I love to geek out on things and have spent weeks of my free time writing code for personal projects but that is not all I am capable of. I travel, I write, read books, trek, listen to music, go out with friends and generally have a life.

The problem is that these folks are stuck in a sort of echo chamber with other such folks who encourage and promote such behavior and then they wonder why folks don’t want to date them. Then they blame the other sex for the lack of interest and call themselves ‘incels’ and demand that they be given sex because they deserve it. Basically they do everything other than take a look at themselves and don’t realize that they are absolutely uninteresting because they really don’t have anything to contribute to any conversation that is not related to work (or their very specific niche field of interest).

– Suramya

In my career I have heard the following way too many times:

Where is the Documentation? I am the documentation.
When asked how to perform a task people will tell you to talk to Person X

Sometimes things are not documented because people are busy, other times they don’t like writing documents, others feel that if they tell folks how to do something they are no longer the critical dependency and thus are in danger of being made redundant etc. Some others get a power boost to their ego when people have to come ask them how to get things done. This is especially true for the old style ‘neck-beard’ ‘gurus’ or the 10x developers.

Personally, I feel that unless I train people to replace me I can’t move up to the next interesting role or get promoted. In one of my previous companies when we would tell my manager that person X is the only one who knows how to do a task and they are working on it she used to respond asking “what if they get hit by a bus tomorrow and can’t come to work for a month. What are you going to do then?”. So We then started documenting everything and cross training on other systems in our department so that we could at least answer basic questions about it. If people were not giving us the information because they wanted to keep it to themselves, we were told to call them up whenever we needed the work done regardless of the time difference. Once folks got woken up at 3am a few times most of them were more than happy to train others. The couple of folks who still didn’t collaborate were warned and then ultimately let go.

I keep a running document of how I do things at work which is shared with others in the team. For personal projects and work I usually end up posting a blog entry about it so that I have a record of how something was configured/setup/fixed.

Moral of the story is that you should document everything, because otherwise 6 months or a year from now you will be looking back at a system wondering why something was done in a particular way. Or trying to figure out how to do something because you didn’t touch it for a while. Also, if things are documented then folks wont be bothering you answer questions about the same things and you can focus on more interesting problems/work.

– Suramya