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In the last few days I've read several articles that all seem to say the same thing: computer algorithms we use today are biased towards wealthy white men, because they are made by companies in wealthy countries and predominantly by white male developers. Therefore they are inherently racist, misogynistic and wasteful. Nice journalistic metaphors were used such as: "Sea of dudes", "discriminatory code", "green algorithms", etc. I call bullshit!

Computer algorithms need to be, most of all, money makers. If Facebook or Google tweak an algorithm one way or another, the result is immediately apparent in the bottom line because of their huge user count. It may be possible that somehow, by cosmic coincidence, wealthy white males would also be the ones making most purchases, moving the most money, and thus the algorithm may appear biased. But it's not. The algorithm performs as it was supposed to. If a face recognition algorithm classifies black people as gorillas, Asian people as blinking, etc, it's not because the algorithm is racist, but because the data it was provided pointed to that result. If looking for a movie title you get torrent links rather than the official web page of the movie it's because that is what people want more. It's not a glitch, it's the way a machine understands reality. An algorithm is no more racist than the Nazi ovens or the Hiroshima bomb.

What I am trying to say is that code, especially now when it is becoming more and more embedded with machine learning (which is a much better term than the terrible misleading "artificial intelligence"), represents an intersection point between specifications, people biases and data biases, to which you add horrible bugs. Algorithms, just like the way pieces of your brain work, are but elements in a puzzle.

"Well, of course, and to make the entire puzzle more socially responsible, we need to make all pieces socially responsible!" That's stupid. It's like working on the paint of the car to make it go faster. Sure, you can use some over engineered paint to reduce drag, but the engine and the wheels are still going to be more important. Male developers don't decide to tweak an algorithm to make it disregard women any more than a human resources female employee doesn't decide to hire developers based on how much they value women. Owners, managers, money ultimately are what lead to decisions.

Stop trying to appear politically correct when you don't know what you are talking about. If a complex computer algorithm that uses math as its underlying mechanism shows a bias, it's not because statistics are racist, but because the data it was fed was biased. The algorithm in question doesn't reveal the small mindedness of the white developer or of the male mathematician, but a characteristic of the world it sees. Even with people feeding them the wrong data, algorithms are more objective than humans - that is a fact - because often you start developing them before you know what you are looking for; a person always works the other way around. Why not use code to show us where we are wrong, or biased, or angry at how the world is, or plain stupid? We have such a wonderful tool to make judgements from formal principles that we can actually tweak and, instead of scrutinizing the principles, you go nitpicking against the developers and the algorithms. I find it especially humorous to see random data introduced into a generic algorithm producing results that are considered biased because you don't like what you see.

Bottom line: want to change the world and make it better? Here is an algorithm for you: take the world and make it better.

And BTW, I find that constantly accusing developers of being white and male is a form of sexist racism. What do you want me to do? Turn black? If you would truly be unbiased you wouldn't care what is the social structure of your IT department. It's only now when computers matter so much that you are bothered of how much the geeks are getting paid.

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It became obvious to me that one of the most popular and common ways of "winning" consists in changing the definition of what that means. See capitalism for example, boasting that a group will benefit if each of its members attempts to improve their lives. The "winners" will pull everything up and will expand while the "losers" will just fade gently into the background. Allegedly, the greatest demonstration of this is the victory of capitalism over socialism and communism. But it's all a fallacy, as their reasoning can be translated as follows: "We measure success in capital, others don't. In the end, we have more capital, so we win". It's not who is better, but how you ultimately define "better". I find it disturbing that an economic model that attempts to optimize happiness has not emerged at any point in history.

This not only happens at a macro level between countries or economic systems, it happens between people as well. "Successful people" proudly announce their recipe for success to people who wouldn't really consider that a good thing. See people that cheat and corrupt and kill to "get ahead". One might covet their resources or power status, but how many of the "losers" would actually condone their behavior, take the same risks or appreciate the situation you get when employing such tactics? Same applies to heroes. We want to save the world, but we are more afraid of trying and failing. Heroes go past it, maybe not because of courage, but because that is their set goal.

Yet competition is the engine of evolution. Doesn't that prove competition is the solution? I say not. Look at the successful animals in nature: they are perfect for their niche. Crocodiles spend huge amounts of time motionless just beneath the surface of the water only to jump and snatch their prey when coming to the watering hole; cheetahs are faster than anything with legs, catching their prey in a matter of minutes; sharks roam the water, peerless in their domain. And yet all of these creatures are far from perfect. They age, they get sick, they don't build anything lasting more than their own lives, their only legacy are offspring just as flawed as them. And guess what? All of these creatures are getting less and less because of humans: weak, pathetic, inoffensive hairless monkeys who can achieve more than any others just by banding together and sharing their resources and their results. If competition would be the ultimate solution, then there will be a creature strong, tough, intelligent and immortal. Yet there isn't one.

I submit that competition is great only if two elements are fulfilled: a) you have the ability to evolve, to improve. b) there is someone better or at least equal to compete against. If b is not available, complacency will turn competitivity towards the weak. Instead of getting better, you will stop others getting to where you are. It's a simple application of available force. If point a is missing, you will be the one that a stronger competitor will stifle. And yet, what I am describing is not competition, but having a purpose. Behind the appearance of competition, when you try to catch up with someone better, you actually set a goal for yourself, one that is clearly defined. It is irrelevant if the target is a person or if they even consider themselves in competition with you. One might just as well choose an arbitrary goal and improve themselves by reaching it.

Why am I writing about this? For several reasons.
One is to simply make evident that if you envy someone for their success it is either because you can't get possibly there or because you won't - you have determined that to take that path would take away something that you value more. For example comfort. People envy the position of others less so, but they basically are not prepared to make the effort required to get there. Yet laziness doesn't disappear. Why? Because one reaches a goal after many attempts and failures, not in a straight line. Only once someone got there, it is much easier to follow their path sans the potholes, the setbacks and the mistakes.
Another is to show that the purpose defines the path, not the other way around. Setting a goal defines both success and failure and that is why many people with responsibility prefer to not set one. However, without the goal, people just stagnate, go around in circles. Look at space exploration: each successive US administration comes with another idea, abandoning what their predecessors did, going nowhere. When did they do anything that mattered? When they had a clear goal of doing better than the Russians. If someone were to go and colonize Titan and start living there, they wouldn't find it so expensive and pointless to go to the Moon, asteroids and Mars. Without someone to do that, though, they don't do anything.

Laziness is in our nature. Evolution is lazy. Competition is ultimately lazy. You can get comfortable in your lead, while occasionally shooting other racers in the foot when they get close enough. The opposite of laziness is not work, but direction. Once you set a goal, you know how far you go and how fast you get there. A group benefits more when all its members work towards a common goal. Funny enough, in such group scenarios competition between members is often cancerous. I find it also amusing that there is always someone better or at least equal to compete against: yourself.

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When Bzolrlg was hungry, he was also angry. In fact, just as their names are incomprehensible and often change in time, troll emotions were out of whack as well, so if trolls had any interest in cataloging feelings they would have one called hanger, combining their two most natural states: hunger and anger. Blzorg did not have an interest in emotions, though, he just wanted to eat and the microwave oven was cooking the food too slowly. With typical troll logic, he decided to hurry up the process by bashing it with one giant harry hand. He called them both Harry and it doesn't really matter which one was it, anyway. The important part is that the device was smashed like the cheap orcish knockoff it was.
It so happens that the distorted shape of the oven serendipitously concentrated microwaves from one end to the other, creating enough force to generate thrust and pushing the entire wreck up in the air. Blzarg decided to hang on to his food, which meant hanging on the microwave, which meant going up as well. The force generated by the tiny magnetron should not have been enough to lift the entire oven and the giant creature holding it - not without propellant anyway - but the strength of the troll's blow didn't only deform the interior shape of the microwave, it also tore down a wire, thus generating enough computational error to allow not only for the force, but also for its conservation for after the power cable was torn from the wall socket.
Thus, Blozrg went through his hut's roof, up into the atmosphere, further up, reached space and continued up until up made no sense and further still, until up became down again and he crashed into the Moon. Bzorlg survived - trolls are sturdy like that - but his food didn't. His hanger overwhelmed him, causing wide spread devastating damage to the population of N'na'vi living there. In fact, he just continued to go into a straight line, punching and smashing until he reached the same spot where he had landed and then he continued on anyway. Meanwhile, the inhabitants, overly confused by the entire incident, decided to place food on the line the troll rampaged on, so that he doesn't feel the need to change direction. This, incidentally, explains why the Moon has a ring of dust when you look up at it.

The general council of the N'na'vi held an emergency meeting after the confusion turned into acceptance. They needed to understand what had happened, which was, by all their knowledge, impossible. First of all, the Earth could not sustain life. It was mostly blue and the N'na'vi, divided as they usually are, were united in hating the toxic color. It was one of the reasons why they lived on the other side of the Moon, so they didn't suffer all kinds of ailments having to look at the horror in their sky. Obviously, living on the surface would be impossible. But even if they could have conceived of creatures that would withstand the color blue, surely they would have been destroyed by the layer of corrosive atmosphere containing oxygen or drowned by the huge quantities of water in it or squashed by its enormous pressure. In the old days there was something called religion which posited that all bad N'na'vi would go there to suffer eternal blue torment, but reason had since triumphed and such preposterous beliefs were beneath even a child. It was as ridiculous as believing life was possible on Neptune!
The conclusion was obvious: the troll, if it even existed, was not alive but a natural phenomenon, akin to the cloud of disintegrating comets that was always changing the planet Earth. Once every few decades curiosity got the better of the N'na'vi and they sacrificed some of their scientists, forcing them to look at the planet with a telescope. The changes were always great, so great in fact, that the logical explanation seemed terribly improbable. However, using N'hair's black hole theorem, it was proven that it was the only one: cosmic impacts were continuously reshaping the Earth, probably helped by the corrosive atmosphere, causing not only the weird structured shapes they observed - some seeming to move for a long time before stopping due to the energy of the impact, but also the massive changes in atmospheric particulates and global temperature.
Even so, something had to be done regarding this land orbiting troll phenomenon, which meant scientists would need more data. They already had Small Data, Big Data, but in this case they needed more, as clearly what they had was not enough for the massive computational machines of the N'na'vi, so they decided on organizing an expedition to the planet Earth.
Clearly, it would have been too expensive - and blue - to send real N'na'vi on the planet, so they started constructing a fake N'na'vi, one that could withstand the air and the water and even be able to destroy pesky comet fragments threatening it. It wouldn't have worked on the troll, naturally, since as far as they knew, he might have been indestructible and they couldn't risk damaging the Moon. They christened the fake N'na'vi as N'N'na'vi, because even if it was, it wasn't. They worked as hard as they could, yet the N'N'na'vi still hated the color blue, so they had to dismantle its eyes. And therein was the problem: how could their machine tell them what was going on down there without images? In a rush, they decided to install two spectrometers instead of its eyes: a near Infrared one and an X-ray spectrometer. Thus, N'N'na'vi could determine the composition of items on Earth.

Leaving the Moon was relatively easy, all you had to do was jump high enough. Landing on Earth was a problem, but N'N'na'vi was sturdy. The inhabitants of the Moon had studied the troll and had built a skin analog for their explorer. The radiation belts around the planet were a much bigger issue, since they knew not if they would affect N'N'na'vi. Fortunately, science being so very advanced on the Moon, they had also studied the belts for a long time and they had discovered a way through: all they had to do was unbuckle the belt as they went through, making sure to buckle it back when safe. It was a very risky proposition, though, as any failure could leave the belts unbuckled, free to fall away from Earth and let the blue escape, hitting the Moon. It was such a large risk that the mission almost didn't go through. Yet a courageous N'na'vi scientist, only living survivor of previous Earth surveys, wearing a patch over the eye he had used to look onto the planet, spoke up. Only a dozen had ever gazed upon Earth and most had succumbed to the terrible color.
"How can we be sure that another troll won't arrive on our world? Maybe an even bigger, meaner one? One that could bring an end to the N'na'vi. You know why The Man on the Moon is gone? Because he couldn't make a bit of a difference, even if he had known of the terrible faith awaiting him. He didn't have a space N'N'na'vi, that is why! We need to find and catalog all the trolls, at least the big dangerous ones, before we end up like him!"
The speech was inspiring and so the project moved on to the launch phase. N'N'na'vi jumped and headed towards Earth. It would have taken around two days to get there, plenty of time to observe the planet as it approached, yet misfortune made it so that an Elven rocket stumbled on the same trajectory of the exploring machine. Mistaking it for a cometary fragment, the N'N'na'vi destroyed it, thus causing widespread panic on Earth.

Elondriel stood up in the council room and calmly, coolly, yet with an occasional weird nervous laughter that expressed the strongest elven emotion there was - slight annoyance, started speaking. He spoke to the people gathered hastily to address the issue of the invading space fleet that had destroyed a rocket, but started with a joke. He glided to the middle of the room, in that slightly lilting way elves use to declare the inner energy they choose to restrain out of politeness and civilized social responsibility, he looked at Bazos the dwarf and said the words "at first I thought the dwarves might have something to do with this". He laughed the small laugh and continued: "But they couldn't possibly have gone beyond geosynchronous orbit". The dwarves threw poisoned looks at the speaker while pretending to smile, as befitting their natural competition against elves in all things technical.
"However, it seems that the threat is, indeed, extraterrestrial. Therefore I believe it is obvious that the rocket was not destroyed as an attack against my company, but against the entire planet. So while I will certainly need to be compensated for the loss, the countermeasures should be taken by all of us, as a united front, for if we don't act now against this threat that apparently originated on the Moon we are all in danger. Elves, dwarfs, humans... even dark elves, " he said glancing toward to group of secretive dark haired people conferring in a corner, slanted eyes betraying their deep suspicion of the speaker, " we all must band together and fight back!".
"A preposterous idea," jumped the human representative. "There is no water on the Moon. How could anything but the most primitive life survive there... in that vast desolate gray desert?".
"I only said it appears to have originated on the Moon," continued the elf, "but surely it must have come from further away. Probably Mars. I believe we need to go there immediately! But first, let's decide how to manage the threat coming from this space machine"
The troll representative interjected in hanger: "Members of the council, the solution should be obvious to you all: we should nuke it!", causing everybody to speak at the same time, being either strongly for or strongly against it. It so happened that the crisis was unfolding at the same time when a very rare yet powerful mineral had been discovered, promising fission bombs that would dwarf in power - pun not intended - even fusion bombs. An unopinium nuclear explosion would certainly have been enough to destroy the alien invader, but the polarizing radiation emitted by the material made any consensus on the issue almost impossible.
An ent raised a branch, focusing attention on her large wooden body. She was an olive ent and the representative of CGI, the union of lesser races. Immediately she tried to suggest a diplomatic approach: "Perhaps instead of jumping to hasty reactions alternatives should be considered. Surely a committee of the Union races could appoint a group of highly specialized experts to a research center that would analyse the ... errr... entity and propose communication solutions to be then discussed in the Middle Earth Commission". This stopped everybody in their tracks, causing all to think hard upon the ent's words. It took them several minutes to understand what was actually said and some more to try to figure out what the words meant.
"You mean talk to it?", a vampire interrupted the silence. All present knew of the provincial directness of races living near the dark forests of Transylvania, but they all felt a bit offended at the curtness of the sentence. In civilized high council meetings, phrases needed not only weight and gravitas, but length as well. Otherwise, who would take them seriously? Yet vampires were known for their ability to find solutions where others did not. Hidden in dark places, away from the light of the sun, they devised ingenious things that profited many. And all they requested in return was blood, which was always enough and cheap to boot. "Yes, I did mention the word communication, didn't I?", replied the ent, olive branches all crossed over her trunk.
"You are so right, of course, madam representative," the human spoke again, "but we must consider the budget. Nuking the intruder is certainly cheaper than talking to it, not to mention faster. Communication with the alien is the responsibility of SETI - perhaps not even them, since their purview is searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, not actually communicating with them. Their budget is limited and we need to discuss in congress if we want to increase it. Defense, on the other hand, has enough budget and discretion - since from the Constitution everything is under their purview". "The Human Constitution," he added hastily when eyes suddenly turned dark towards him, making sure his words conveyed the big capital letters he meant. "Wait, what are you typing there?" he asked the vampire, alarmed.
"You said she was right, so I sent a ping to the alien craft using the protocols of the emergency radio broadcast system. Something like 'Hi!'", the vampire replied. Vampires were not considered a separate race, since originally they had started as humans, but not really human either. However, that meant that the human representative was responsible for what the hacker did. Red faced he asked in anger "How did you know the secret code required to activate the broadcast system?!"
"Oh, that wasn't an issue. Defense generals kept forgetting the password so they reset everything to eight zeroes. Even nuclear launch codes!". The troll made half a move to enter the conversation, but thought differently once everybody threw him severe looks. He shrugged, dejectedly.
Chaos ensued in the discussion, people trying to shift blame from one to the other. Meanwhile, N'N'na'vi heard the message loud and clear. It just didn't get it.

The N'na'vi machine had already carefully passed through the radiation belts, carefully buckling them back, and now headed towards the planet. Unfamiliar with atmosphere reentry, the Moon civilization had neglected to take into account the overheating of their machine, but the natural shape of the N'na'vi - also imparted on the explorer - accidentally eliminated the threat. The reentry heat just gave the amalgamation of thin tentacles a slight glow while slowing N'N'na'vi to a delicate float. All the residents of Earth could see it shine brightly while descending towards the surface, causing wide spread panic and despair, only exceptions being children too young to understand, geezers too old to care and Pastafarians, who actually got to rejoice.
In its descent, N'N'na'vi intercepted a clear radio message which it immediately ran through the complex translation machinery it was equipped with by the brilliant Moon scientists. "High!", the message said. "Yes, I am high!", it answered, unable to determine the source of the message, but assuming it came from its creators. Pastafarians rejoiced yet again, to everyone's chagrin. Communication stopped for a while, then another message arrived. First translation started with "We, the people of Earth...", which it immediately dismissed as incorrect, since there could be no people on Earth. The only people it knew of where the N'na'vi, whose name literally meant "Not those people", for reasons forgotten by history. Still, people. It got even more confusing when a dwarven rocket launched in order to get more information about the alien machine. N'N'na'vi did a spectral analysis of the rocket, as it didn't behave as a cometary fragment at all: it rose from the ground up in a way that orbital mechanics could not explain. The analysis determined that the surface of the object was stained with the color blue (translating mechanisms even suggested the shape of a word that could have meant blue). Terrified, N'N'na'vi destroyed the rocket.
Moving its tentacles, the machine learned to guide its descent, marginally avoiding hitting the water - which would have been disastrous - and instead crashing at night in the desert. N'N'na'vi had here the opportunity to calm down as everything looked - so to speak - as expected: sand everywhere, which its instruments analysed to be a safe yellowish white, the air relatively dry for the hellish planet, the surface even showing signs of cosmic impacts. Back home, scientists from the control room felt just as calm, maybe a little bored, as they had hoped some of their well established theories would be challenged, so that they would get to prove them all over again.
Chaos ensued as the first helicopter arrived, luckily a nice radar scattering black, as the fake N'na'vi had determined there was life on Earth, which pushed everybody in a frenzy to determine the likely method in which the programming had failed so severely. After a brief hope that the "safe mode" of the machine would somehow determine the flaw and fix it, communication was interrupted and the mission scrubbed. N'N'na'vi was clearly beyond salvation and a new mission needed planning.

It was lucky that the landing had been during night, as the international council has decided, in the hope that the machine would prove as violent and destructive as it had been that far, to send the Transylvanian vampire to continue efforts to pacify the alien. It would have been ridiculous to die of sun exposure before getting to see such an interesting thing. Humans called the vampire Nosferatu, unable to pronounce the name correctly. In reality, his name meant "annoying one" in the vampire native language and he had always, proudly, lived up to his name. Less brutal than most of his brethren, Nosferatu had always been motivated by interesting experiences, as far as it didn't require a lot of effort on his part. This, as far as he was concerned, was topping them all. An actual alien device: it was science fiction come true! He considered what the first words should be. "Hi!" didn't work so well, so he was cycling through alternatives: "Hello!", "Welcome!", maybe "Greetings and salutations!" which sounded oh-so very cool.
Nosferatu did not really fear destruction at the hand (tentacle?) of the alien, since he didn't fear death. Technically he had no life, of course, but it went deeper than that: he considered everything a game. When the game ended, it just ended. He never considered it as a threat or something to be afraid of. The only real fear was that of losing. Defined as such, the purpose of the game was to successfully establish communication with the alien and maybe convince it to not destroy the Earth. Although, he had to admit, seeing the world end was also interesting.
When the helicopter arrived, the large mass of moving tentacles moved frantically, menacingly even, like a bowl of furiously boiling pasta. Nosferatu instantly disliked the alien's appearance. As they approached and eventually landed close to the device, the frothing stopped, the alien froze, the tentacles stooped, then just collapsed. The vampire approached, touched the long slender appendages, he even kicked some in frustration. The alien visitor had died, just like from an insidious disease: it had been agitated, then had collapsed and finally had stopped reacting. The odds for that, Nosferatu thought, were so low that it made it all ridiculous, pathetic even. The world getting destroyed would have been better.
The newly created Department of Earth Defense got most of the machine, for it was determined that indeed it was a machine, even if it looked like a living creature. The energy source, the weapons, the method of locomotion, they would all be researched by carefully international teams, the knowledge shared freely and equally between the eight most powerful races. The only part they couldn't care less about was the brain of the machine. It was obviously flawed, causing the machine to fail, but also impossible to trust. The best possible solution for any alien intelligence was to dispose of it as soon as possible. Nosferatu was tasked with doing this, mostly because it was against his express advice and everybody hated his kind anyway. He obediently filled all the paperwork, talked to all the people, personally delivered a weird looking device to the Hazardous Devices department and witnessed its destruction. His direct supervisor accompanied him at every step verifying that it all went according to orders and enjoying every moment of the vampire's anguish.
Luckily, Nosferatu's boss didn't know an alien device from a geek garage project and so N'N'na'vi's brain was saved a fiery death. Back in his garage, the vampire would attempt to finish the game.

Back on the Moon, the N'na'vi had come up with a theory that explained everything that had happened. Clearly their glorious civilization was blindsided by someone as devious, if not more - scary thought, as them. Others have had the same idea as them, creating a fake that was able to explore the blue planet. Their obvious purpose had been to stage a covert attack on the Moon from the very location the N'na'vi would never assume an attack was even possible. Devious indeed, but not as clever as to fool them! They had learned a lot from creating the artificial N'na'vi, even if they had lost it in an obvious ruse. No matter, they could build others, and better.
The second model was larger, even more powerful, and designed as a hybrid of a N'na'vi and the (now they knew) alien machine that was still ravaging the narrow corridor around the Moon. It had limbs, like the alien, but it had tentacles like a Moon resident, some located around the "head" of the device while others closely knit together to form a programmable flexible sheet of material that would allow the machine to glide through atmospheres. This sheet was located on the back of the model, as to not hinder movement and obscure sensors. The first mission of this model, called the N3 as a clear reminder that it was not N'N'na'vi, was to grab Blozarg and throw him back to Earth, much to his hanger.
Various scientific workgroups were created in order to ascertain the origin location of the attackers. It was obvious, when you thought about it: there was no blue there. The sneak attack, probably just something to test their defenses, must have originated from Mars, or perhaps from a more habitable place, like one of the Martian moons. As soon as all the other theories were ridiculed into oblivion, a Martian offensive remained the only logical scientific theory explaining everything that had happened. A counter attack strategy was devised and plans were put in motion. The Mars moons were too insignificantly small to invade and there was the remote possibility that an extremophile form of life might even exist on the surface of the red planet. The simplest solution, as N'hair would have said himself, was to destroy the planet completely and for that they would need to upgrade the energy weapons on N3.

When DED was created, all the respective budgets of the other existing defensive departments were merged into one. When even the black budgets were added up, the resources allowed immediate research and development of space transportation and weaponry. The first ship, borrowing construction secrets from the Martian device valiantly captured by the Earth military forces, was christened Falas from the place where it was built. An elven name for sure, but simple enough that it wasn't obvious enough to cause anger with the other races. Military strategists developed plans to protect Earth from further attack, but then went further with devising a way to get to Mars itself. Equipped with five huge bombs, containing all the unopinium ever mined, Falas was redesigned as an attack vessel, capable of destroying the entire planet if need be or a huge space fleet if self destructing. Unexpectedly, having all the unopinium moved into orbit made Earth races much more amenable to compromise with each other. As such, and fueled by a most grievous action on the part of the enemy, they quickly reached an agreement on how to proceed.
Days after the launch of Falas, a troll came crashing on the planet, burning through the upper atmosphere, as an insult to the joined Earth defensive force. The trolls immediately decided the only possible reply was complete destruction of their enemy. Even Blorzgl, ravenously devouring a boar's roast while recovering from his ordeal, agreed with a hangry but dignified "Mmm-hmm" to the proposal to obliterate Mars since he never actually paid attention to where he was during his furious devastation. A quick analysis of the existing legal framework decided that obliterating Mars would not contaminate it, so international law not only allowed but actually supported the action, since also further contamination would become impossible after the mission.
Some protests came from cultural organizations claiming Mars as an important historical item. In the winter, a council of supporters met in Elrond and almost succeeded in derailing the plan, but for the subsequent assassination of the organizer, otherwise an honest and honorable man. "People like him always end up dead", the powers that be decided. Some concerns were raised that breaking up a planet would lead to asteroid bombardment of Earth, but thanks to the technology gleamed from the alien attacker, asteroids could be destroyed. Some astronomers complained about the knowledge that would be lost when tearing apart a planet we mostly know nothing about, but were mollified when given seats on the Falas, so they could observe the pieces when Mars broke up. "It's more efficient than drilling the surface", one of the scientists was heard saying. Elondriel committed suicide.

Meanwhile, Nosferatu had been working clandestinely and furiously on reactivating the alien machine processors. He had large quantities of blood stored in a special closet where he had chained but not killed a really fat man. As long as he fed him, the vampire always had a fresh supply of blood and, as the man was fat, he would survive quite a long time with water alone. At first, he determined several security vulnerabilities through which he could infiltrate the programming, but he had trouble going past the five time redundant antihacking mechanisms. Being an advanced civilization, the N'na'vi had long since cemented the practice of protecting their intellectual property first, no matter how little intellect had actually been used to create it. Even so, the vampire persevered and ultimately prevailed.
Turning the machine on was also a problem, since the power source had been taken by the defense department for reverse engineering. He ended up stealing as much power from his neighbors as possible, for fear of raising red flags with the power company.
The next problem he had to overcome, after he managed to interface Earth hardware with Moon hardware, was quite unexpected. He had linked all the inputs and outputs of the brain to a text console. However, in the interest of communication, he had also connected a video camera as an input. The problem? Nosferatu had a blue skin. It took some time to realize that the reason the alien machine was behaving so violently was his skin color. He had at first suspected wrong interface connections. When he had eliminated that, he believed the alien to be racist. By the time he figured out and installed a simple color filter on the camera, the N'na'vi electronic brain was partially insane. However, being an artificial brain, he was less sensitive as a real Moon inhabitant and more easy to fix by a hacker with the skills of Nosferatu.
In the end, communication was finally possible, while Nina (the vampire had decided N'N'na'vi was taking too long to type or pronounce) was by then a half and half Earth-Moon artificial intelligence.

Both civilizations independently decided to cloak their attack to the best of their abilities. After all, they only had one chance for it. Surely, generals on both sides thought, if we tardy too much or if we attack and fail, the next move of the enemy would be to totally destroy Earth. It would only make sense, coming from such a mindlessly aggressive opponent. Thus striking first was not only prudent, it was necessary, regardless of how it felt. History, in the end, would be the judge of their present decisions, they all said. With so much stealth and helped by orbital mechanics, the two fleets headed towards Mars at full speed, each oblivious of the existence of the other. Afraid of intelligence infiltration, they were also under strict radio silence. By the time Nosferatu busted several security firewalls to be able to stop the international council from ignoring his calls and messages, and by the time the communication Moon relay was convinced the disabled N'N'na'vi unit was not disabled, it was already too late. There was no stopping the destruction of Mars, even if either sides would have acknowledged the possibility that the other existed.
What actually happened was that Earth and Moon both decided they were under electronic and propagandist attack and actively protected themselves from any messages from the vampire. Nosferatu was considered compromised by DED and immediately an order for his arrest was issued. The N'na'vi knew him as Dracula, because the last audio communication they received repeated the word several times before they were able to block it. Luckily for the vampire, he had made sure the origin of his messages remained hidden.
Convinced that at any moment evil Martians might destroy them, Earth and Moon worked continuously on their defenses for the following six months, as well as space observatories focused on Mars. When the time came, the entire Earth system was watching the red planet, as the fleets prepared for attack. The light of the destructive forces pinned Mars as the brightest star on the firmament, yet no confirmation message came from either Falas or N3. Horrifyingly, Mars remained unscathed.

The Mars Hegemony ruled the Solar System for two centuries before an unfortunate solar event brought change to the situation. Seeing their most powerful attack being stopped with no effort whatsoever, Earth capitulated. After several weeks of deliberation a message from all the races in Middle Earth and the Dark Land, speaking as one, declared unconditional surrender to the forces of Mars. A similar message had been sent from the Moon almost immediately after the loss of contact with N3. When Mars responded, people breathed (or not breathed, depending on where they were) easier. The message was simple "From now one, you will service the Mars Hegemony. We will establish a base next to your planetary body to keep you in check. Any misstep and you will be destroyed. As a reward for your absolute obedience, we give you the Solar System. All these worlds are yours, except Mars. Attempt no landings there!".
It was hubris or maybe boredom that made Nosferatu risk the sun one day. He died two centuries after he had successfully formed the unknowing Earth-Moon alliance and no one will ever know why or how. He died in the sun and people never gave a second thought to it, other than dismiss the very old but still active warrant on his arrest. With the help of the alien brain he had hacked N3, managing to see what had happened. The people on Falas were terrified to see a huge ship in form of a troll with a heroic cape on its back. The most unsettling thing was the impossible blond curly hair it had on its ugly head. Without hesitation they fired unopinium bombs at it. As for the N3, it had been thoroughly programmed and tested to avoid past mistakes. In view of a giant space vessel of clear Earth origin, the machine could only surmise that its programming had become corrupted by the enemy. Life on Earth was hardcoded as impossible, so the only logical explanation was that Martians were tampering with its software. It immediately fired powerful beam weapons and then self destructed. On the completely disabled Falas, the artificial intelligence installed specifically for this purpose decided it was a no-win scenario and initiated self destruct. Both fleets were annihilated instantly.
The weird combination of Moon and Earth technology in Nosferatu's basement allowed him to receive both capitulation messages and also fake the origin of the reply. For two hundred years he manipulated the two civilizations towards exploring and later colonizing the Solar System, all while each thought they were working with and under the most powerful Martians. Nosferatu aka Dracula died, but it wasn't the end, only the beginning. With him gone, Nina continued to control the Mars Hegemony, in its own mechanical way, growing and becoming more and more at every step. The only reason why the most powerful intelligence in the existence of the Solar System didn't assimilate every living creature as a part of itself - the logical conclusion of its AI programming to optimize peace, exploration and the accumulation of knowledge - was its firm belief, fused somewhere in its basic circuitry where even a vampire hacker could not reach, that life on Earth and the Moon is ultimately... impossible.

When I was young I occasionally wrote short stories that were moderately well received by my friends, but I have never attempted to do anything "real"; I would just get some weird idea in my head and it would materialize after an afternoon of furious writing. There was nothing to it in terms of technique or studying the classics or anything, just telling a story. In fact, trying to rewrite it afterwards would ruin it, betraying the underlying lack of craft. After a while, I just stopped, but I held tight to the belief that some day I might actually do this well, like write a novel. Not for money and fame, but because I would like to "be that guy".

Recently I have revisited that belief and decided to take it further: actually plan the novel, write it, see what I am truly capable of. So far, it has not been going well, but I've learned a lot. Hopefully I will retain the level of interest required to carry it through. However, in this post I want to explain some of the things that I have become to understand about writing stories and one in particular: the shortcuts.

Many a time the story needs to go somewhere, but in real life terms getting there would be boring or be prohibitive in terms of time. In that case a shortcut is taken, either by some gimmick, by montage or, as is more often the case, through camera work. How many times didn't you watch an actor looking intensely for a threat, their face or person taking over the whole screen, only to be caught off guard by someone or something that suddenly comes out from outside the camera angle? And if you think just a little bit about it, it would have been impossible to be blindsided by someone coming from there because, even if we don't see them, the person the camera is pointed at would! In a typically evolutionary way, someone tried it, it worked, it caught on and now finding it irritating is seen as nitpicking. "Well they needed to make it happen, it doesn't have to make sense".

That thing, right there, when common sense is sacrificed for expediency, is killing - a tiny bit - the story. And while it works on camera, it is much more complicated in writing, because what you don't realize while going through the motions of empathizing with a character and joining them in their adventure is that the writer needs to know and understand everything that happens, not only what is "in the scene". If the murderer suddenly appears next to the victim and kills her, the writer might decide to not explain how he got there, but they need to know! If not, the story gets hurt.

To build my experience, I've decided to practice on writing something that seemed easy at the time: a Star-Trek novel. I love Star Trek, I've watched almost everything there is, including fan made videos, and most of the time I've felt like I would have made the story a little better. In fact, I was acting like a tester, considering that every single error the developer makes is an affront to common sense and anyone would have done better. I've decided to put my writing where my mouth was, at least give all those screenwriters a chance to get vindicated (and, boy, did they!). My thinking was that Star Trek has a constraining mythos that would force me to use already existing concepts - thus restricting me from thinking of so many things that I would never start and also allowing me to not need to reinvent or explain them - as well as a positive vibe, that would force me from writing depressing "everybody dies" stories. Well, guess what, in my story almost everybody dies anyway; take that, Star Trek!

My point is that trying to write that way revealed the many flaws in the Star Trek storytelling. Every time there is a "problem" someone comes up with a device or algorithm or alien power - usually termed somewhat like "problem remover", that just takes the pesky technical aspects away from the narrative and helps the viewer focus on the important part: the characters and the plot. I mean, while people still debate the limitation of phase cannons - that at least attempt to appear grounded in science - no one says anything about stuff like "inertial dampeners" which pretty much means "that thing that removes that kink that no one actually knows how to get rid of". This is just the beginning. Let's stick with Star Trek Enterprise for now, the one that put Star Trek back on the map and had the most compelling characters and storylines. Think of your favorite characters there: Picard, Data, Worf, maybe Deanna Troi. How did they get there? What was their childhood like? What are they doing when they are not on duty? The show has tried to touch on that, but just with the "whatever is needed for the story" approach. A more direct and obvious way to demonstrate this: there are no toilets in Star Trek. No one needs one, either - have you seen how the brig looks?

As characters go, everybody on that ship comes from the Starfleet Academy, but what do they learn there? What are the paths that they need to take in order to graduate? How do they reconcile vast differences in culture, language and learning speed for all the races in the Federation? I mean, they are all human with some stuff on their face and some extra makeup, but the background story, as something different from merely what you "see", needs all that information. The Star Trek universe survives in these loose network of stuff that taken separately and given some deeper context might make sense, but taken together they just contradict each other. And again comes the nitpicker label to stop you from ruining the experience for everybody else.

This brings me to the shortcut side effects. As a reader and especially as a viewer, you enjoy them because it takes you faster through the story. They remove what is not relevant to you. Well, emotionally relevant, but that's another can of worms altogether. As a writer, though, as a storyteller, these things are slow acting poison. After decades of watching Hollywood films, trying to write something feels like stepping barefooted on glass shards. You feel dumb, not only because it is impossible to write what characters do without a deeper understanding of who they are, not because you realize that even the smallest attempt at writing results in way to many questions to answer on paper - although you need to know the answers, but also because you start seeing how shallow was your interest in all those characters you actually loved watching on the screen. It's like that moment when you realize your lover has a secret life and it hurts because you know it's you who didn't notice or take interest in it, it's all you.

That's not bad. It makes it obvious that you casually ignore some layers of reality. It can lead to getting to appreciate them in the future. The difficulty I feel comes from not ever having trained for it. In fact, I have been taught to avoid it, by passively watching just the surface of everything, never attempting to infer what the depths hide. And when I try, at my age, to change the way I see the world, my way of ... being me, it's fucking difficult. Even simple stuff like mentally trying to describe a place or a person when you first see them, in terms of senses and emotions and comparisons with common concepts and - hardest of all - putting it in actual words... all of this is hard! It feels like an operating theater in which I perform while others watch me and judge. I feel anger and frustration because it conflicts with the original story, where I was good at writing.

There was a very stupid movie where Kate Beckinsale would be Adam Sandler's girlfriend (I mean, impossible to suspend disbelief, right?) and he would be annoyed with all the touchy-feely aspects of their relationship and instead use this "problem remover" remote that would fast forward past it. And then he comes to regret going through important bits of his life like a senseless robot and what it does to him. The movie might have been bad, but the underlying idea becomes very real when you attempt to write stories. Your characters are your lovers, your children, your spawn. Ignoring them is a crime to the story.

Think of the classical iceberg metaphor: just the tip is visible. It also applies to stories. The writer needs to have all that cool stuff hidden under the surface of the book, just in order to show to the reader the content. Characters need backstories that you will only hint at, but that you must know. Stuff that is excruciatingly boring to discuss in real life, like what the light in a room makes you think of - if you take the time to do it, which is never, you must put on paper because you know how it feels, but how do you translate that to another person, with another mind, culture, references, upbringing?

There is no real end to this post, I could write a lot on the subject - I am writing about how hard writing is, I know: ironic - but I will be stopping here. Probably readers have done that a while back, anyway. To the obstinate who got to this part, I salute you. Who knows, perhaps not taking the short path while reading this post has somehow enriched your story. I am not a writer, these insights have come to me just from attempting to do it. Perhaps that is the best reason to try new things, because besides feeling like a complete moron, you gain new valuable insight every time you do.

To be frank, I never intended this to last too much. I have been (and proudly, like a true hipster) avoiding creating a Facebook account and the Twitter one I only opened because I wanted to explore it as a machine to machine messaging system and never looked back after that idea bombed. So this year I went on Facebook and reactivated my interest in Twitter, now with a more social focus. The reason doesn't really matter, but I'll share it anyway: I had an asshole colleague that refused to talk to me on anything else other than Facebook Messenger. Now we barely talk to each other, anyway. So, what have I learned from this experience? Before I answer that question, I want to tell you about how I thought it would go when I went in.

What I thought going in


I have been keeping this blog since 2007, carefully sharing whatever I thought important, especially since I am a very forgetful person and I needed a place to store valuable tidbits of information. So when Facebook blew up I merely scoffed. Have other people use some sort of weird platform to share what they think; let them post cat videos and share whenever they go to the toilet: I am above this. I carefully study and solve the problem, read the book, research new stuff, link to everything in the information that I think relevant. I have my own template, I control the code on my blog, people can chat with me and others directly, comment on whatever I have done. I can also edit a post and update it with changes that I either learn as I evolve. My posts have permanent links that look like their title, suckers! I really don't need Facebook at all.

And Twitter. Phaw! 140 characters? What is this, SMSes online? If you really have something to say, say it in bulk. It's a completely useless platform. I might take a second look at it and use it as a chat system for the blog, at most (I actually did that for a while, a long time ago). I am not social, I am antisocial, suckers! I really don't need Twitter at all.

There you go. Superior as fuck, I entered the social media having a lot of smug preconceptions that I feel ashamed for. I apologize.

Facebook


So what did I learn from months on Facebook? Nothing. Hah! To be honest, I didn't disrespect Facebook that much to begin with. I had high hopes that once I connect with all my friends I would share of their interesting experiences and projects, we would communicate and collaborate better, we would organize more parties or gettogethers, meet up more frequently if we are in the same area. Be interesting, passionate; you know... social. Instead I got cute animal videos, big pointless images with texts plastered all over them - like this would give more gravitas to bland clichés, pictures of people on vacation or at parties - as if I care about their mugs more than the location, political opinion bile, sexist jokes, driving videos, random philosophical musings, and so on and so on. Oh, I learned a lot from Facebook, most of it being how many stupid and pointless things people do. Hell, I am probably friends with people I don't really know for a good reason, not just because I am an asshole who only thinks about himself!

Not everything is bad, clearly. The messenger is the only widespread method of online communication outside email. I know when people's birthdays are (and what day it is currently). People sometimes post their achievements, link to their blog posts, share some interesting information that they either stumbled upon on the Internet (most of the time) or thought about or did themselves, there are events that I learn about from other people going there, like concerts and software meetings and so on. Oh, and the Unfollow button is a gem, however cowardly it is! However, I am no longer "reading my Facebook", I am scrolling at warp speed. I've developed internal filters for spammy bullshit and most of the time, after going through three days worth of stuff, I have only five or six links that I opened for later, one of them being probably a music video on YouTube. It still takes a huge amount of time sifting through all the shit.

Twitter


What about Twitter? Huge fucking surprise there! Forced to distill the information they share, people on Twitter either share links to relevant content or small bits of their actual thoughts, real time, while they are thinking them. There is not a comfortable mechanism for long conversations, group conferences or complicated Like-like mechanism. You do have a button to like or retweet something, but it's more of a nod towards the author that what they shared is good, not some cog in an algorithm to tell someone what YOU need. More work stuff is being shared, books that have been read and enjoyed, real time reactions to TV or cinema shows, bits of relevant code, all kind of stuff. In fact, very few people that spam Facebook are even active on Twitter. Twitter is less about a person than about the moment; it's more Zen if you want to go that way. You are not friends with folks, you just appreciate what they share. It's less personal, yet more revealing, a side effect that I had not expected. And when you reply to a tweet, you are aware of how public it is and how disassociated from the post you reply to it is. There is no ego trip on posting the most sarcastic comment like on Facebook.

Not everything is rosy there, either. They have a similar Facebooky thing that shows the title and the image/video of a shared link so you can open them directly there. So if I want to emulate the same type of behaviour on Twitter, you can by endlessly posting links to stupid stuff and follow other people who do that. You can Follow whoever you want and that means that if you are exaggerating, you end up with a deluge of posts that you have no chance of getting out of. I still haven't gotten used to the hashtag thingie. I only follow people and I only use the default Twitter website, so I am not an "advanced user", but I can tell you that after three days worth of Twitter posts that I have missed, I open around 50 links that I intend to follow up on.

So?


Some of the mental filters developed apply to both situations. The same funny ha-ha video that spams the Facebook site can be ignored just as well on the Twitter page as well. Big font misspelled or untranslatable text smacked on top of a meaningless picture is ignored by tradition, since it looks like a big ad I already have a trained eye for from years of browsing the web before ad blockers were invented.

Some of the opinion pieces are really good and I wouldn't have had the opportunity to read them if all I was looking for was news sites and some RSS feed, yet because of the time it takes to find them, I get less time in which I can pay attention to them. I catch myself feeling annoyed with the length of a text or skipping paragraphs, even when I know that those paragraphs are well researched pieces of gold. I feel like I still need to train myself to focus on what is relevant, yet I am so fucking unwilling to let go of the things that are not.

With tweaking, both platforms may become useful. For example one can unfollow all his friends on Facebook, leaving only the messaging and the occasional event and birthday notification to go through. It's a bit radical, but you can do it. I haven't played with the "Hide post (show fewer posts like this)" functionality, it could be pretty cool if it works. Twitter doesn't have a good default filtering system, though, even if I get more useful information from it. That doesn't mean that specialized Twitter clients don't have all kinds of features I have not tried. There is also the software guy way: developing your own software to sift through the stuff. One idea I had, for example, was something that uses OCR to restore images and videos to text.

Bottom line: Facebook, in its raw form, it's almost useless to me. I remember some guy making fun of it and he was so right: "Facebook is not cool. Parents are on it!". You ask someone to connect with you, which is a two directional connection, even if they couldn't care less about you, then you need to make an effort to remove the stuff they just vomit online. The graphical features of the site make it susceptible to graphical spam - everything big and flashy and lacking substance. Twitter is less so and I have been surprised to see how much actual usable information is shared there. The unidirectional following system also leads to more complex data flow and structure, not just big blobs of similar people sharing base stuff that appeals to all.

But hey! "What about you, Siderite? What are you posting on Facebook and Twitter?" You'll just have to become friends and follow me to see, right? Nah, just kidding. My main content creation platform is still Blogger and I am using this system called If This Then That to share any new post on both social networks. Sometimes I read some news or I watch some video and I use the Facebook sharing buttons to express my appreciation for the content without actually writing anything about it and occasionally I retweet something that I find really spectacular on Twitter. Because of my feelings towards the two systems, even if I find an interesting link on Tweeter, I just like it then share it on Facebook if I don't feel it's really something. So, yeah, I am also spamming more on Facebook than on Twitter.

What else?


I haven't touched Google+, which I feel is a failed social platform and only collects various YouTube comments without accurately conveying my interests. I also haven't spoken about LinkedIn, which I think is a great networking platform, but I use it - as I believe it should be - exclusively for promoting my work and finding employment. I've used some strong language above, not because I am passionate about the subject but because I am not. I find it's appropriate though and won't apologize for it. I couldn't care less if people go or don't go on social networks and surely I am not an trendsetter so that Zuckerberg would worry. I only shared my own experience.

For the future I will probably continue to use both systems unless I finally implement one of the good ideas that would allow me to focus more on what matters, thus renouncing parts of my unhealthy habits. I am curious on how this will evolve in the near future and after I leave my current hiatus and go look for employment or start my own business.

I have been a professional in the IT business for a lot of years, less if you consider just software development, more if you count that my favorite activity since I was a kid was to mess with a computer or another. I think I know how to develop software, especially since I've kind of built my career on trying new places and new methods for doing that. And now people come to me and ask me: "Can I learn too? Can you teach me?". And the immediate answer is yes and no (heh! Learnt from the best politicians that line) Well, yes because I believe anyone who actually wants to learn can and no because I am a lousy teacher. But wait a minute... can't I become one?

You may think that it is easy to remember how it was when I was a code virgin, when I was writing Basic programs in a notebook in the hope that some day my father will buy me a computer, but it's not. My brain has picked up so many things that now they are applied automatically. I may not know what I know, but I know a lot and I am using it at all times. A few weeks ago I started thinking about these things and one of the first ideas that came to me was FizzBuzz! A program that allegedly people who can't program simple can't... err... program. Well, I thought, how would I write this best? How about worst? I even asked my wife and she gave me an idea that had never occurred to me, like not using the modulo function to determine divisibility.

And it dawned on me. To know if your code is good you need to know exactly what that code has to do. In other words, you can't program without having an idea on how to use or test it afterwards. You have to think about all the other people that would be stumbling unto your masterwork: other developers, for example, hired after you left the company, need to understand what they are looking at. You need to provide up to date and clear documentation to your users, as well. You need to handle all kinds of weird situations that your software might be subjected to. To sum it up: as a good developer you need to be a bit of all the people on the chain - users, testers, documenters, managers, marketers, colleagues - and to see the future as well. After all, you're an expert.

Of course, sketches like the one above are nothing but caricatures of people from the viewpoint of other people who don't understand them. After all, good managers need to be a little of everything as well. If you think about it, to be good at anything means you have to understand a little of everybody you work with and do your part well - exactly the opposite of specialization, the solution touted as solving every problem in the modern world. Anyway, enough philosophy. We were talking programming here.

What I mean to say is that for every bit of our craft, we developers are doing good things for other people. We code so that the computer does the job well, but we are telling it to do things that users need, we write concisely yet clear so that other developers can work from where we leave off, we write unit tests to make sure what we do is what we mean and ease the work of people who need to manually check that, we comment the code so that anyone can understand at a glance what a method does and maybe even automate the creation of documents explaining what the software does. And we draw lines in a form of a kitten so that marketers and managers sell the software - and we hate it, but we do it anyway.

So I ask, do we need to learn to write programs all over again? Because, to be frank, coders today write in TDD style because they think it's cutting edge, not that they are doing it for someone; they work in agile teams not because they know everybody will get a better understanding of what they are doing and prevent catastrophic crashes caused by lack of vision, but because they feel it takes managers off their backs and they can do their jobs; they don't write comments for the documentation team, but because they fear their small attention span might make them forget what the hell they were doing; they don't write several smaller methods instead of a large one because they believe in helping others read their code, but because some new gimmick tells them they have too much cyclomatic complexity. And so on and so on.

What if we would learn (and teach) that writing software is nothing but an abstraction layer thrown over helping all kinds of people in need and that even the least rockstar ninja superhero developer is still a hero if they do their job right? What if being a good cog in the machine is not such a bad thing?

While writing this I went all over the place, I know, and I didn't even touch what started me thinking about it: politics and laws. I was thinking that if we define the purpose of a law when we write it and package them together, anyone who can demonstrate that the effect is not the desired one can remove the law. How grand would that be? To know that something is applied upon you because no one could demonstrate that it is bad or wrong or ineffective.

We do that in software all the time, open software, for example, but also the internal processes in a programming shop designed to catch flaws early and to ensure people wrote things how they should have. Sometimes I feel so far removed from "the real world" because what I am doing seems to make more sense and in fact be more real than the crap I see all around me or on the media. What if we could apply this everywhere? Where people would take responsibility individually, not in social crowds? Where things would be working well not because a lot of people agree, but because no one can demonstrate they are working bad? What if the world is a big machine and we need to code for it?

Maybe learning to code is learning to live! Who wouldn't want to teach that?

Almost a month ago I got started being active on StackOverflow, a web site dedicated to answering computer related questions. It quickly got addictive, but the things that I found out there are many and subtle and I am happy with the experience.

The first thing you learn when you get into it is that you need to be fast. And I mean fast! Not your average typing-and-reading-and-going-back-to-fix-typos speed, but full on radioactive zombie attack typing. And without typos! If you don't, by the time you post your contribution the question would have been answered already. And that, in itself, is not bad, but when you have worked for minutes trying to get code working, looking good, being properly commented, taking care of all test cases, being effective, being efficient and you go there and you find someone else did the same thing, you feel cheated. And I know that my work is valid, too, and maybe even better than the answers already provided (otherwise I feel dumb), but to post it means I just reiterate what has been said before. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, I can only upvote the answer I feel is the best and eventually comment on what I think is missing. Now I realize that whenever I do post the answer first there are a lot of people feeling the same way I just described. Sorry about that, guys and gals!

The second thing you learn immediately after is that you need to not make mistakes. If you do, there will be people pointing them out to you immediately, and you get to fix them, which is not bad in itself, however, when you write something carelessly and you get told off or, worse, downvoted, you feel stupid. I am not the smartest guy in the world, but feeling stupid I don't like. True, sometimes I kind of cheat and post the answer as fast as possible and I edit it in the time I know the question poster will come check it out but before poor schmucks like me wanted to give their own answers. Hey, those are the rules! I feel bad about it, but what can you do?

Sometimes you see things that are not quite right. While you were busy explaining to the guy what he was doing wrong, somebody comes and posts the solution in code and gets the points for the good answer. Technically, he answered the question; educationally, not so much. And there are lot of people out there that ask the most silly of questions and only want quick cut-and-pastable answers. I pity them, but it's their job, somewhere in a remote software development sweat shop where they don't really want to work, but where the money is in their country. Luckily, for each question there are enough answers to get one thinking in the right direction, if that is what they meant to do.

The things you get afterwards become more and more subtle, yet more powerful as well. For example it is short term rewarding to give the answer to the question well and fast and first and to get the points for being best. But then you think it over and you realize that a silly question like that has probably been posted before. And I get best answer, get my five minutes of feeling smart for giving someone the code to add two values together, then the question gets marked as a duplicate. I learned that it is more satisfying and helpful to look first for the question before providing an answer. And not only it is the right thing to do, but then I get out of my head and see how other people solved the problem and I learn things. All the time.

The overall software development learning is also small, but steady. Soon enough you get to remember similar questions and just quickly google and mark new ones as duplicates. You don't get points for that, and I think that is a problem with StackOverflow: they should encourage this behavior more. Yet my point was that remembering similar questions makes you an expert on that field, however simple and narrow. If you go to work and you see the same problem there, the answer just comes off naturally, enforced by the confidence it is not only a good answer, but the answer voted best and improved upon by an army of passionate people.

Sometimes you work a lot to solve a complex problem, one that has been marked with a bounty and would give you in one shot maybe 30 times more points than getting best answer on a regular question. The situation is also more demanding, you have to not only do the work, but research novel ways of doing it, see how others have done it, explaining why you do things all the way. And yet, you don't get the bounty. Either it was not the best answer, or the poster doesn't even bother to assign the bounty to someone - asshole move, BTW, or maybe it is not yet a complete answer or even the poster snubs you for giving the answer to his question, but not what he was actually looking for. This is where you get your adrenaline pumping, but also the biggest reward. And I am not talking points here anymore. You actually work because you chose to, in the direction that you chose, with no restrictions on method of research or implementation and, at the end, you get to show off your work in an arena of your true peers that not only fight you, but also help you, improve on your results, point out inconsistencies or mistakes. So you don't get the points. Who cares? Doing great work is working great for me!

There is more. You can actually contribute not by answering questions, but by reviewing other people's questions, answers, comments, editing their content (then getting that edit approved by other reviewers) and so on. The quality of my understanding increases not only technically, but I also learn to communicate better. I learn to say things in a more concise way, so that people understand it quicker and better. I edit the words of people with less understanding of English and not only improve my own skills there, but help them avoid getting labelled "people in a remote software development sweat shop" just because their spelling is awful and their name sounds like John Jack or some other made up name that tries to hide their true origins. Yes, there is a lot of racism to go around and you learn to detect it, too.

I've found some interesting things while doing reviews, mostly that when I can't give the best edit, I usually prefer to leave the content as is, then before I know the content is subpar I can't really say it's OK or not OK, so I skip a lot of things. I just hope that people more courageous than me are not messing things up more than I would have. I understood how important it is for many people to do incremental improvements on something in order for it to better reach a larger audience, how important is that biases of language, race, sex, education, religion or psychology be eroded to nothing in order for a question to get the deserved answer.

What else? You realize that being "top 0.58% this week" or "top 0.0008% of all time" doesn't mean a lot when most of the people on StackOverflow are questioners only, but you feel a little better. Funny thing, I've never asked a question there yet. Does it mean that I never did anything cutting edge or that given the choice between asking and working on it myself I always chose the latter?

Most importantly, I think, I've learned a few things about myself. I know myself pretty well (I mean, I've lived with the guy for 39 years!) but sometimes I need to find out how I react in certain situations. For example I am pretty sure that given the text of a question with a large bounty, I gave the most efficient, most to the point, most usable answer. I didn't get the points, instead they went to a guy that gave a one liner answer that only worked in a subset of the context of the original question, which happened to be the one the poster was looking for. I fumed, I roared, I raged against the dying of the light, but in the end I held on to the joy of having found the answer, the pleasure of learning a new way of solving the same situation and the rightness of working for a few hours in the company of like-minded people on an interesting and challenging question. I've learned that I hate when people downvote me with no explanation even more than downvoting me with a good reason, that even if I am not always paying attention to detail, I do care a lot when people point out I missed something. And I also learned that given the choice between working on writing a book and doing what I already do best, I prefer doing the comfortable thing. Yeah, I suck!

It all started with a Tweet that claimed the best method of learning anything is to help people on StackOverflow who ask questions in the field. So far I've stayed in my comfort zone: C#, ASP.NET, WPF, Javascript, some CSS, but maybe later on I will get into some stuff that I've always planned on trying or even go all in. Why learn something when you can learn everything?!

On the 3rd and 9th of February I will be presenting a demo of Reactive Extension in action on a Windows Presentation Foundation app that I am going to be building as I speak, first without and then with Rx. The presentation should be about 30-45 minutes, in Romanian, but I am sure we can accommodate foreign speakers by doing it in English if you request it. These events are all free, but you must register in order to know how many people to prepare for. Here are the Meetup links:
ReactiveX in Action, Wednesday, February 3 2016, 19:00, Impact Hub, Strada Halelor 5, Bucharest
MsSql / Reactive Extensions, Tuesday, February 9 2016, 19:00, Electronic Arts - Afi Park 2, Bulevardul General Vasile Milea 4F, București 061344
See you there!

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Yesterday, a CBS original announcement was published stating that a new Star Trek series will be produced to be released in 2017! Yes! Finally! However, I am not all enthused about this. The news item is doing nothing more than promote a generic product. It's like saying "We are going to release the newest detergent brand in 2017" without saying what makes it special or what it is supposed to clean. The entire announcement is about the old Star Trek, the 50 year anniversary (or the 47th of it's cancellation, I guess... morons!) and how the people who wrote the worst Star Trek films yet are on board for it. At least J.J.Abrams is not in. They basically are advertising "Generic Star Trek series. Get you space ship high at the lowest cost in our store".

Yes, I do have a problem with the Kurtzman/Orci team. Take a look of the filthy trash made for the lowest common denominator that they have worked on: Hercules and Xena, Alias, Fringe, Sleepy Hollow, Scorpion; all shows that look interesting, but have no story, no substance, no end. You just watch them for watching's sake, on fast forward, hoping you will see a fun monster or to see how an episode ends. They also worked on the new Star Treks, which personally I disliked with a vengeance.

I mean, look at the announcement. A generic Star Fleet symbol in a shiny, misty light and a text saying nothing. You know what says something? The "Shop" section in the right, where you can already buy T-shirts and Spock ears.

Mr. Kurtzman, Mr. Orci, if you are reading this, please, pretty please, prove me wrong. Show me some light in the pit of cynicism that I fell into. Demonstrate to the world that you are still in it for the stories, for the emotion, for the fun, not just for the money. Make this great concept and then you can say "Ha, Siderite! You're just another moaning critic on the faceless web and you don't know what you are talking about!"

Rumors about a new Star Trek series have appeared and died many times, but the most recent and believable ones stem from March this year, where two pitches seem to be favored: a Michael Straczynski and Bryce Zabel complete reboot, which is highly unlikely, and a further in the future Federation story, where the entire quadrant is at peace and complacent and has to jolt back to action after a surprise new enemy attack. This one seems likely to me for many reasons: Picard is way too old to play any significant role, so is Kirk, while all other attempts at heroic leaders have misfired. CBS doesn't have the guts to make the captain or even the entire vessel alien, so the captain will be a human, like always, and they already went through the phases of black captain, female captain, young captain. Therefore they need a completely new human captain, one that is again a rebel white male and navigates the ship through the moral labyrinth created by alien concepts, which are veiled concepts from other non Western countries. Also, the complacent peaceful empire attacked from outside seems connected to the political reality of the present, which is a constant in the successful Star Trek series.

I don't know how I feel about this. I felt that Star Trek was best when there was no arch enemy in the mix. Next Generation was without question the best Star Trek series ever made and it wasn't based on the war of the Federation with anyone. There were new crises and skirmishes all the time and aliens with long term aggressive intent like the Borg, but the show was never about the war. Deep Space 9 was also like that, until they entered the Dominion War phase, and nobody cared about it much. Enterprise failed terribly with its ridiculous time war, while Voyager started well, then collapsed under the stupid idea that the show needed to be about a strong female character, and therefore they created strong male enemies for her to defeat. Ha, in a way, Voyager's end - the defeat of the Borg Queen - showed not only how stupid it is to try to put females in charge just for the sake of political correctness and no other plot related reasons, but it showed it twice, and then both died at the end, saving the Universe from the great PC threat :) The original series of Star Trek was also not about a specific war and people remember it fondly because of that, regardless of the silly budget and production values. However, that doesn't mean this Star Trek: Federation thing couldn't work. Because it would be anchored in the present, they would always have some ideas on how to go on without having to pull concepts out of their ass while stoned. People would empathize with one side or the other, which I believe to be crucial: paper villains always make bad shows.

There is, of course, the possibility that the new show would be a completely different idea. Perhaps the Star Trek: Star Fleet Academy series that I am expecting for so long, just because it is the last stage of a franchise: adolescent audience, adolescent actors. But the ideas could be fresh as well: think Star Trek meets Harry Potter via Ender's Game (or even better: Fisherman's Hope).

So here is my pitch: a well aged alien teacher is training a class of young cadets, too young to do anything, mind you, except learn. While on a training mission with a shitty training ship, they encounter an unexpected situation, one that requires study, for the survival of the Federation. Notice that I didn't define this as "an enemy", but just something that needs to not fall into adversary hands, perhaps, something that would help the Federation, but would threaten it in the hands of anyone else. Unable to communicate or return, the old teacher must become a captain to his students and solve the situation through ingenuity and hard work. Instead of Spock, Data, 7 of 9 as a counterpoint to the human captain, the captain is now utterly non human, the alien voice of reason, while the entire crew of kids would be a young virile emotional counterpoint to the cold calculation of their captain. It would be controversial because it would also put children in situations where children should not be put, making every experience in every episode a coming of age thing, changing all the characters as the show progresses. They would be the rebels, the bringers of new ideas, the brave bodies and minds that would employ unexpected tactics to achieve their task, but also the stupid kids that die needlessly, that put others in danger, that get physically and psychologically abused.

It would be also anchored in the reality of the moment, because it would touch subjects like teaching methods, the way adults often dismiss or discredit the young, the stupidity and beauty of said youth, the traps they fall for and the people who want to take advantage of their untrained minds and souls. It would also bring god damned sexuality in a show that always looked like made for people that are 50 years old. It would have a political side as well, since the reasons why a discovery cannot be shared because it is too powerful, but should not be destroyed because it is knowledge, will always be controversial.

Oh, dear, I knew that writing a Star Trek post would just never end. Perhaps I should start ST fiction and be done with it. I hope my Star Trek reader fans have enjoyed this and that the rest were not utterly bored. Can't wait for 2017! Perhaps if I would run really fast towards the sun...

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This is how reality stands right now: even if the danger of an asteroid hit is great, the risk of one hitting is small. That means that they hit (very) far apart and cause a lot of damage. Now, all governments in the world are run by politicians, who are by their very nature bureaucrats. They are reactive, not proactive, and they have insulated themselves from responsibility by manipulating laws and creating committees and departments that they can behead at any time, as they keep their fat asses on their chairs of power. This is not a rant, it's just the ugly truth, evolving, but never really changing since we were barely smarter than monkeys.

The logical conclusion of these facts is that politicians will not do anything about asteroids until we are hit by one. Even worse, since the probability that a really big one will hit without us knowing in advance has been reduced by space advances, the asteroid that will hit us will probably be small. The Tunguska and the Chelyabinsk events, real things that happened, changed nothing. The one that is going to change anything will be when something similar happens on top of a city.

This is not a doomsday prophecy, either. The probability that this will happen is extremely small. First of all the asteroid has to be small enough and/or fast enough so that we don't detect it in time. Then it has to hit at a certain angle to not be deflected by the atmosphere. Then it has to reach a populated area, which one would think is simple, since we can't seem to be able to fart without someone smelling it, but in truth, with the oceans and the human propensity of congregating for no good reason, it is less probable. However, with enough time, even a small probability becomes certainty.

So, the scenario goes like this: we all pretend to care, but we don't. We want less taxes, not asteroid protection. Politicians use our shortsightedness and our greed to enhance their own and do nothing. Then an asteroid hits, causing massive damage, death and loss of property. This is the moment when something happens. They implement new laws, launch asteroid defense programs, create new departments and committees. But, since the probability that an asteroid hits is small, the hype will fade, the budgets with it, politicians will rotate, people will forget. By the time the next asteroid hits, no one will be prepared for it any more than for the previous one.

In the end, the only things that ever made a dent in the probability that something will hurt us as a species or even as a larger group were technological. Not technology per se, just its price. Just more scientists with cheaper tech getting more done. When space launches become cheaper, satellites smaller, we can do more with them at the same relative price. That is why now we are discovering millions of asteroids in the Solar System, not because of some sort of scientific awakening. It's cheaper, probably as cheap as it was for amateur astronomers to buy telescopes in 1801, when Giuseppe Piazzi discovered the first asteroid, Ceres. I just hope this all gets cheap enough fast enough so we can do something by the time the big asteroid is coming. Well, if we don't destroy ourselves in some other way by then.

I know I'm a month late, but Happy Asteroid Day!

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As some of you know, I am watching a lot of TV series, including cop and lawyer stuff, childish fantasy and sci-fi series, pirate and musketeer crap, etc. So when I say that I couldn't watch something, you should heed me. There are also some shows that I actually can stand watching, but barely, usually using the fast forward to watch an episode in ten minutes or less.
Here is a list of just such shows:
  • Lost - I think it all started with Lost. After a brilliant pilot episode, it got into 1001 Arabian Nights territory and became ridiculously unwatchable. While it wasn't a truly bad show (some people actually enjoyed all 6 seasons) I couldn't watch it more than 2 seasons. Calm down, the rest of the shows will be more recent.
  • The Messengers - every once in a while the American Bible thumpers convince producers to create religion based TV series or movies. While every possible superstition has and will be used in films, the Christian ones are standalone - in their own cinematic universe, if you will - and take themselves seriously every time. Messengers is one of these, and I couldn't watch more than 2 episodes before I gave up. It's (again) about the upcoming apocalypse and end of days and these 8 idiots are given superpowers to convince God that we are still worth it, while Satan goes around doing silly things. It was not only about the most tabloid part of (a part of) the bible, but it was acted and scripted badly. Ugh!
  • Dig - This relates more to Hebrew religion and feels like a TV series take on the Da Vinci Code, with clones of Jesus (I think), FBI policemen running around in Israel doing whatever they feel like, shady cabals and shady opposing cabals. It could have been interesting and I admit that I was drawn into it by the acting and production values. Unfortunately the script was a convoluted mess that had no way of improving. They never learn to ease into it, present a little bit of the story, add another element later on, make people feel rewarded for continuing to watch the series. Anyway, four or five episodes in, I gave up.
  • iZombie - Oh, you have to love this: young blonde accidentally gets turned into a zombie and gets a job at the morgue in order to have access to a fresh supply of brains. While consuming said brains, she gets visions of what the brain's owner had lived and thus helps a police detective to find out who murdered them. It combines police procedurals with zombies, comedy, romance and drama. Talking of messes, this is as messy as they come. I watched a few episodes before I slapped myself "what the hell are you doing watching this swill?"
  • Eye Candy - A darker show about a girl using her hacker tech skills to try and catch the serial abductor and killer of young women, including her sister. Yet the killer is just as able and a game of cat and mouse ensues. It started well, then went into pop culture territory. Besides, she continues on only because the killer refuses to murder her and get on with his job. Something about the way the film was made or the main actress or the ridiculous plot made it impossible for me to get past the second episode.
  • Allegiance - It is strange to put this series here, as I watched all the episodes so far. However, it was hope that kept me going, not the quality of the show. While it is about Russian spies in the US, living as a family, while their unknowing son is recruited into the FBI, while the antagonists are interesting, the story goes so much over the top that it becomes overcheesy. That means it starts as cheesy, then it starts to smell. Just do yourself a favor and do not watch it.
  • Suits - Yet another flashy show that I kept watching for no good reason. It is about lawyers. Young, cocky, caught in personal intrigues and competing with one archnemesis after another, while occasionally engaging in some silly romance. It makes no sense, although I have to admit that I liked the feel of the show. It just goes nowhere. They get the mood right, the actors, the characters, then they make a joke of the storyline and script.
  • Helix - Helix is the new Lost! It starts with a subject close to my heart: killer viruses, and then it crashes into la-la-land. Viruses that make people immortal and strong so they form a world controlling organization, CDC teams that act like they are terrorist splinter cells with no support, no rules, no communication, strains of the virus that turns people into The Strain like vampires, religious cults that are also genetic scientists living on their own island, etc. It starts as something, goes into something else, switches back. It's like someone was undecided what to write about and they wrote about everything then they just drew lines between the unrelated subjects and wrote a script. It is a complete and utter waster of time.
  • Elementary - I watched two seasons of this until I admitted to myself that there is no point in continuing. I like both Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu, I love Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes character and so a modern Sherlock should have been something I would at least enjoy. Unfortunately, it shortly turns into another "gifted person helps the New York police" show and one can feel when the writers just completely stopped giving a damn, if they ever did before beyond pushing the pilot.
  • Scorpion - Talking about gifted persons helping the police, this had a promising concept: a genius young man creates a sort of a thinktank of gifted people then starts helping his FBI parent surrogate. While the characters were brilliant, the people writing their script obviously were not. It took a few episodes to completely fail and another ten for me to just give up hope.
  • The Librarians - God, what a complete and utter mess. A TV show spinoff of the ridiculous Librarian movies, it was completely stupid. I mean, the movies were masterpieces compared to the writing for this show. Stay away!
  • The Newsroom - This is a show that has ended and I watched all of its episodes. However, it was under duress. My wife liked it, but then I could see that she couldn't watch it anymore. I watched the last mini-season just in order to tell her it was not worth watching. It's about a news organisation that fights for its moral integrity. It would have been fun if not for the hyperactive writers that thought people could normally carry conversations like machineguns shoot bullets and the ridiculous romantic interludes that made no sense for anyone but a New Yorker raised on Woody Allen movies.
  • State of Affairs - I already ranted enough about this piece of propagandistic crap. The plot was stupid, the script was stupid, the actors couldn't give a damn. It's just bad!
  • The 100 - In theory I am still watching this young adult sci-fi TV show. In reality, I can't make myself start watching the second season. Why? Because the sci, as usual, gets completely negated by the fi. Add to this hormone induced behaviour of teenage kids and savage barbarians and you get a load of messy crap. It started really well, though. Too bad.
  • Extant - Another sci-fi show in which they dumped randomly whatever was hot at the moment: aliens, artificial intelligence, the Japanese guy from Helix, etc. Add to this the excruciating acting skills of Halle Berry and you get something unwatchable.
  • Stalker - This is one of the more interesting police procedurals. It involves a team that is tasked to handle stalkers. The new hire of the agency may be a stalker himself. The lead actors are people that I respect. However the story was so banal and lacking anything that showed any concern for the lives of the characters or victims, it was so formulaic that it ended up being something I regret having watched.
  • Arrow - OK, I am still watching The Arrow, but I do it on fast forward. It started as a fun comic book TV show with a vigilante dressed in green killing assholes with the use of arrows. It then started growing and expanding until it reached a full team of heroes, with impossible situations, history, skill learning curves, ridiculous villains. It culminated with John Barrowman having a line in the show in which he tells three other characters he is the better man for a job because he is the better at acting. Which is true, but it just shows that even the scriptwriters are tired of the mediocre talents in this mediocre show. I keep watching it because it is set in the same universe as The Flash, which is the better TV show, even if not by much.
  • Gracepoint - When Americans are redoing a show with the same script as the original show from a different country I snicker. Stoopeed Americaens, they can't read subtitles. But Gracepoint upped the ante: they redid Broadchurch, a British TV show. Not only that, they cast the same actor as the main character. I love David Tennant, but I can't possibly condone watching this. Anyway, it was cancelled after a season, and then Broadchurh continued for a second season, also starring Tennant.
  • Sleepy Hollow - An entire TV series based on the Legend of the Sleepy Hollow. Starring a colonial Mason that fought for and knew the forefathers of the United States, resurrected in our times and fighting along a black female police officer to stop the End of Times. What can possibly go wrong here? Yet it wasn't that clear cut. The comedy was fun, the original drama had impact, the romance was believable and John Noble, like in Fringe, was awesome. However the storyline, like in Fringe, descended into a chaotic mess that makes no sense and no one could ever care for. Too bad, since it wasn't a complete waste of time, especially at the beginning.
  • Madam Secretary - Just as with State of Affairs, I've ranted enough about it. It's a pure propaganda piece, with no artistic value whatsoever.
  • Haven - It started as a nice supernatural police procedural with a sexy FBI agent coming in a town where people get dangerous "troubles" which act like superpowers out of control. I kept waiting for it to get anywhere, instead it just went more and more overdramatic and adding storylines that made no sense and in the end turned into a supernatural 90120. Too bad, since it started well and has some actors that I really like.
  • Forever - Forever boring, this show is about a British doctor who never ages and, whenever gets killed, he finds himself alive and well in a nearby body of water, completely naked. And what does he do with that? He helps the police, as a forensic medic. Just as a general rule: avoid the gifted people helping the police catch bad guys shows. They never end well and they are as well propaganda pieces.
  • The Lottery - Badly made show. Bad casting, bad acting, bad scripting. The plot: people stop having children, embryos stop getting fertilized and a woman doctor finds a way. Obviously, the powers that be want to control this in a market of dwindling supplies. Could have been nice, probably, although shows about children and parently feelings never do well in the long run, but it was pure shit from the beginning.
  • Taxy Brooklyn - Someone tried to combine the French Taxi storyline with a police procedural. Sexy ass police detective, a Black French taxi driver, some intrigue and of course the obligatory connection with an old case involving a relative. But it was bad. The actors did what they could with lazy writing, but they couldn't save it.
  • The Witches of East End - Some of the most beautiful women in acting get together with ridiculously good looking men in order to act a really stupid Dynasty-like plot. Just like similarly afflicted The Originals, it is a complete waste of time, unless you are a hormonal teenager and you need something to jack off to.
  • The Leftovers - Trying to express the horrible anguish of being among the ones left on Earth after 2% of the population randomly disappears. Of course, it hints of another Bible concept: the Rapture. It felt to me overly dramatic, with people just doing stuff for no good reason and overly depressing as well for equally no good reason. It seemed to be well acted, but I just couldn't watch it.
  • Resurrection - an American remake after Les Revenants, it missed the point completely. Ended up being this drawn out mystery that led nowhere, with really unsympathetic characters and without any of the real tension from the French series.
  • Da Vinci's Demons - I know, I am still watching it, but not because it is worth watching. It is about a young Da Vinci who does everything from saving Florence to saving Italy and then going to the Americas (way before it was discovered) to look for clues about his mother, who was there previously. It is a fun to watch show, but it really goes nowhere. I liked the acting and the production values, though.
  • Crisis - An intriguing concept: some very resourceful people kidnap a lot of high profile adolescent kids, including the son of the president of the United States, then they use the parents to achieve their goals. While the show was well done, the story was just a lazy fantasy trying to surf the edge of suspension of disbelief. Again, it goes nowhere.
  • The Tomorrow People - An American take of an old British children's TV show that wasn't good to begin with, it only served to promote certain actors to better TV shows. It used the common tropes: child with mysterious father who dies doing something awesome, mother unknowing, uncle being involved somehow, evil organizations, rebellious teenagers fighting them, etc. It just collapses under the ridiculous ideas that they introduce to appease a boring viewership.
  • The Originals - Some spin-off from a vampire show that I never watched, it is about pompous asses acting even more pompous because they are the original vampires. Werewolves and witches are thrown in the mix, but the only worth mentioning attribute of the show is the pompousness. Which is annoying. So don't watch it.
  • Killer Women - Trying to get on the diversity bandwagon and get some easy money, it was supposed to be a police procedural with tough women. Didn't pan out. Was cancelled.
  • Bitten - One of the most beautiful actresses around is a werewolf. Instead of being about her biting more than she can chew (heh heh), it is about another clan/royalty obnoxiousness, while the world is blissfully unaware and rivals are trying to take power or kill them or whatever. Do you know why people don't officially acknowledge vampires and werewolves? Because they act all annoying and overbearing while being completely idiotic. Nobody wants to know these people!

OK, as an interesting experiment on my preferences vs the public preferences, I will tell you how many of the shows above were cancelled and how many were not. Ready?

Completed (meaning not cancelled, but finishing their story): 2
Cancelled: 16
Still Running or undecided: 15

So there you go, studios think 50% of the shows that I can't stand should be running and they are basing their decisions on public choice. What do you guys think?

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I often find a new thing that I haven't ever heard of, so I google it. A lot of the time, the first link returned is the Wikipedia article about that concept and I open it to get a general idea of what it is about. Most of the time I understand it immediately, but in some cases - mostly involving hard science like high level mathematics - that page is just a bunch of gibberish that means less to me than what I was looking to clarify in the first place. I mean, when I am searching for something, I usually use words, so there: much clearer.

However, that doesn't mean that I don't want to understand what is described on that page. One idea I had is that of "generational concepts", in other words the concepts that one needs to understand before tackling a new one. They are not "related concepts", they are not links to terms used in the description, they are the general concepts that you need to get first. I find it interesting and useful for several reasons:
  • I could open the links to those concepts and, if I understand them, I could come back and get the one that I wanted
  • If I don't understand the basic concepts, they would also have generational concepts to investigate
  • No one actually needs to create an entire chain of pages, like a teacher in a class, but just edit and existing page and link to the base concepts for it, yet the result is like a course that one can follow up and down
  • It would add context (and thus interest) to Wikipedia, which is now used as a collection of disparate tidbits
  • It would answer the question that I always ask myself when I open an incomprehensible page: what need I know in order to understand this crap?

So now I should put some time aside for fixing Wikipedia.

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I was reading this BBC article a few days ago on Philip Hammond, a British conservative politician, saying terror apologists must share the blame. This comes together nicely with all the recent changes in political stance that push otherwise modern democratic countries towards ideatic extremism. The UK is a prime example. After they invested immense resources into surveilling their own citizens, after they started blocking sites on the Internet, and after their media became more and more xenophobic, now they are moving towards this ... I don't even know how to call it... opinion control. In other words, you are allowed to speak your mind, but only if it is made up in a certain way. Akin to outlawing crazy people from denying the Holocaust, the political discourse is now pushing towards banning all kind of other opinions.

And I just had to write this article to say that this is completely idiotic. People do things not because they heard it somewhere, but because they have a drive to do it. If they are not sure about it, they start talking about it before they commit to action. Simple gagging a point of view - beyond being a very clear violation of the spirit of free speech - only pushes that opinion underground, where only like-minded people will engage in the conversation. Assuming you can quash an opinion just like that, through some legislative method, people who cannot discuss an idea will just implement it directly. The lone-wolf terrorist concept - one that has profusely been used by political media, but proven to be an unfounded myth - will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I remember when I was saying that outlawing types of philosophies, like the Nazi one for a classic example, is bad while other would argue using the same example to justify shutting people up. It is a bad thing that, writing these words, I feel vindicated. I shouldn't feel that way, instead I should be proven wrong. When an entire society chooses to close ears (and punish mouths) it should be for a good reason, not something that can predictably be abused later on and extended to ridiculous degrees.

One has to remember that when subscribing to some weird theory, one that is not generally accepted, people are just asking "what if?", an essential question for finding solutions for your problems, for thinking out of the box, for developing into a mature human being. If someone is asking "what if terrorism is good?" there should be a lot of people there to listen to them and argue back and forth until a conclusion is reached, one that in this case seems obvious, but still needs discussing. One could just as well ask "what if the Earth is not in the center of the universe?" - they punished people for that, too.

The principle of free speech as it is understood nowadays is less about freedom to speak and more about the principle of harm: you can say whatever you like, unless that is hurting someone. But we've exaggerated this idea so much, that everything is now considered harmful. This doesn't strengthen, but weakens us. Are we so fragile that we cannot take a few nutcases expressing their opinion? Are we children or are we adults that we must be protected from things we might hear for fear of somehow contaminating us. If you think about it, it is a ridiculous idea that an intelligent educated person would ever become a Nazi or a terrorist just because he stumbles upon some page on the Internet.

I just want to scream to these idiotic governments: "treat me like a human being, not like a mentally challenged child!". So yeah, rant over.

Just a few links from yesterday, all in the same edition of the BBC site:
EU plans new team to tackle cyber-terrorism
Access to blocked sites restored by Reporters Without Borders
UK ISPs block Pirate Bay proxy sites
Banning Tor unwise and infeasible, MPs told

In this post I want to talk to you about new stuff that links to the good old stuff of our own youth. You probably know what Kickstarter is, but just as an introduction, it is a place where people ask for money for future work. It's like a crowdsourced financing scheme for your public elevator pitch (just imagine a planet-sized elevator, though). And when I say Kickstarter, I mean the actual site and all the other similar things out there. Like... Kickstarter-like, like it?

First stop: Underworld Ascendant. The team that made Ultima Underworld, one of my all time favourite games, is doing a new one. As you can see on the Kickstarter page, it is two weeks from completing. If you loved the Ultima Underworld games (NOT the Ultima games), you could consider pitching in.

Second stop: Hero-U. Remember Quest for Glory? It was made by Sierra Games and the entire series was awesome! However the designers of the game are the Coles. They have been working on Hero-U, a modern version of the QG universe. They planned to release in the spring of 2014, but scope creep and public feedback turned the game from a simple little game to a complex and interesting concept that is planned for release in the autumn of 2015 and it is well on schedule. Check it out! They are at their second Kickstarter round.

Turning to movies and series, this time works made by and for Star Trek fans. And I am not even talking about random people doing really weird and low quality stuff, I mean real movie business people doing great stuff. Check out Star Trek Continues, a continuation of the original Star Trek series, as well as Star Trek Axanar, which seems to become a really cool movie! I can't wait for it to get out.

Update June 27th 2016:
The Axanar story has become a poster for corporate greed and stupidity. Soon after the trailers for Axanar were released, Paramount and CBS - the corporations owning the Star Trek franchise - sued the producers on copyright infringement. Funny enough, they did this before anything real was released. Their problem? The production was too big.

Having received more than 1.2 million US dollars from Kickstarter, the show was actually starting to look great. Top production qualities, professional actors, good CGI and - most of all - passionate people. Paramount and CBS alleged that this was already a commercial venture, having such budget, even if it was released freely on the Internet after production. To me, it feels as if Hollywood started to feel the heat. They realized that if this production and distribution model catches on, they will be left trying to combat piracy and hiring armies of lawyers to arrange and check distribution contracts when "the opposition" will just release free on the Internet once the budget for production is met. Consider the implications! This would be huge.

It felt like entrapment. First you let legions of people use the Star Trek moniker and universe, then you jump with a lawsuit on the people that make the most money. So the studios started to try to deflect the anger and consternation of fans and independent producers with dirty tricks like instructing J.J.Abrams to say in an interview that the lawsuit would go away, only for it to continue anyway and finally, with a set of guidelines for independent productions to which the studios would not object. The terms are ridiculous and pretty much break the entire concept of serialized Star Trek. More here, check this out: “The fan production must … not exceed 30 minutes total, with no additional seasons, episodes, parts, sequels or remakes.”



A long time ago I wrote a post about Vodo, what I thought was the future of cool little indie movies and series. Vodo didn't quite live to my expectations, but Kickstarter has taken its place and, since it is not only about movies, but all kinds of projects, it has a larger chance of surviving and changing the way the world works. Not all is rosy, though. There are voices that say that the Kickstarter ecosystem is more about promises than about delivery. Also some governmental and commercial agencies are really displeased with the way money are exchanged directly between customers and producers, bypassing borders, intermediaries like banks and tax collectors and so on. If you combine this with Bitcoin type currency, their job of overseeing all commercial transactions and taking their cut does become more difficult. I sympathise... not really.

I leave you with some videos of the projects above. Think about looking for others that are working on something you want to sponsor. You might be surprised not only by the ingenious ideas that are out there, but also about how it would make you feel to support people with the same passions as yourself.

Underworld Ascendant trailer:


Game play for Hero-U:


The full first episode of Star Trek Continues from the creators themselves:


Prelude to Axanar, a small mockumentary about the events that will be the context of Axanar:

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As you know, I have been watching a lot of TV series, some of them good, some of them bad, most of them complete waste of time. As a New Year resolution (yeah, I know, lame) I have decided to create a slot system for TV series. Thus, from now on soon I will switch to a 7/3 method, meaning that I will watch only seven TV shows regularly and reserve three slots for new series, just in order to determine if they are more worth watching than the current ones. If I find a series that needs to go into the magical seven, I have to bump out another. Thus, this is the last post about TV series in this format.



So here is what I have been watching lately:
  • The Legend of Korra - The fourth and final season ended recently. It was a nice ending of an otherwise boring or annoying series. I maintain my opinion that The Last Airbender series was levels of magnitude better.
  • The Good Wife - The story of the legal troubles of Cary Agos is in the foreground, while Alicia's juggling of family, politics and job reaches ridiculous levels. Some interesting moral conundrums are created, but for me this season is kind of unfulfilling.
  • Homeland - The fourth season is focusing on an Afghani terrorist who, with the help of Pakistani intelligence, is wreaking havoc for the Americans. Some interesting dynamics, but far away from the edge of the seat feeling you got from sergeant Brody's story arch.
  • Gotham - I really expected this show to suck. Instead we get solid performances and more or less believable plots. It is acceptably dark for events happening in Gotham, as well. The girlfriend part is really annoying me, but the rest is good.
  • The Honourable Woman - The show is really dark and depressing. So much, in fact, that I couldn't watch it as much as I probably should. I always have issues with stories that show indomitable and incorruptible heroes, but the alternative extreme, where everything is gloomy and hopeless, is not much better. Just as too much fantasy, if you can't affect reality, then it is just as unengaging.
  • The Witches of East End - The series was cancelled before a third season, leaving everything in limbo, with no closure. I think this kind of behavior should be made illegal. No matter how small, the investment of the viewer in a story needs to be repaid. What would you do if you went at the cinema, watched a movie, and it suddenly stopped before the ending, saying that the producers didn't have the money to finish it? Wouldn't you ask for your money back?
  • Tyrant - Weird story, kind of hard to swallow, but interesting in many respects. The show has been renewed for a second season.
  • Extant - The series will get a second season, but I will not watch it. The show is a clumsy cocktail of sci-fi cliches, all thrown together while expecting Halle Berry to hold them together.
  • The Bridge - The series has been cancelled after the second season, while I am still waiting to watch it. I love Diane Kruger, so I probably will watch it someday.
  • Ghost in the Shell - Arise - Solid reboot. Too bad it has only four episodes which pretty much retell the same story. Meanwhile, a GiTS movie is in the works, starring Scarlet Johansson
  • The Strain - the show is pretty good. I kind of dislike the main character, while I totally love Kevin Durand. The series has been renewed for a second season.
  • Longmire - Loved the first seasons, the last was kind of over the top and it showed. The show was cancelled.
  • The Lottery - I've decided, more or less by not feeling like watching it at any time, to stop watching it. I haven't really watched enough of it to make a rational impression, but the pilot totally threw me off. Besides, this show was also cancelled.
  • Manhattan - The show has been renewed for a second season. I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I like the story, but at the same time I am a bit put off by the fact that is complete fabrication.
  • Legends - The show's concept is a lot cooler than it's implementation. I like Sean Bean's interpretation, but the story is very similar to a zillion cop/government agency shows. They need to focus more on his character, rather than on pointless villains. The show has been renewed for a second season.
  • Outlander - They cancelled it! Good actors, wonderful scenery, an interesting story. A great shame.
  • The Divide - I've stopped watching it after a while, but I can't tell you why, exactly. I will remove it from my watch list. It had been cancelled, anyway.
  • The Knick - Renewed for a second season, this show is great. Good acting, nice depiction of the times, unapologetic critique of pharmaceutical companies and human nature in general. I love it!
  • Doctor Who - What are you doing, Capaldi?! I think this season of Doctor Who was the most boring and pointless of them all. Even the Christmas Special was bad. Something has to be done, if it goes like this, Doctor Who will take another decadal hiatus.
  • Forever - It is difficult to reject this series outright, because I really like the actors. However the story itself is completely boring. Other than this quirk of the main character that he cannot die, the show is a standard cop thing. You know who else cannot die? Deadpool! Isn't that slightly more interesting? Also the show is likely to get cancelled.
  • Hysteria and Hand of God - I love Ron Perlman, but that doesn't mean I liked the Hand of God pilot more than the one from Hysteria. Unfortunately Hand of God will probably get picked up for a series, while Hysteria does not.
  • Haven - It becomes increasingly difficult to give up series as you watch them for more and more time. Unfortunately for Haven, which was never good to begin with, the time has come for the "mother of Audrey/Mara" to appear. When family members appear in a story, it usually means they've run out of ideas. The fifth season will get some extra episodes in order to give viewers closure, afterwards it will probably get cancelled. See? This is how you do it when you know you are cancelling a show!
  • Z Nation - This SyFy clone of The Walking Dead should have sucked ass. Instead, it is a low budget yet fun show, with a lot of tongue in cheek and also original ideas. Who would have thought SyFy could do something entertaining? If you divide entertainment value to the show budget, Z Nation clearly wins over The Walking Dead.
  • Madam Secretary - Oh, the level of obnoxious American propaganda and overall stupidity of this show is off the charts. I refuse to watch this filth. And it appears it will get renewed as well. Ugh!
  • Sleepy Hollow - The second season has just started. This show will never be good, just admit it. Its value is purely guilty pleasure.
  • The Driver - A BBC One miniseries about a cab driver recruited by the mob, starring David Morrissey and Colm Meaney. The story is not new, the acting is good, but the show... just doesn't do it for me. Sorry.
  • Arrow - Oh, Marvel is doing something interesting. Their "phase 3" operation involves spamming the big and small screens with series and films about Marvel superheroes. Now, Arrow is not a great show, and everybody knows it, however they started doing crossover episodes with another new show, The Flash, and probably some of the story ideas will be found or hinted about in the films. Already some things that happened in Captain America movies are found and expanded upon in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Marvel's Agent Carter series. Standalone, Arrow went in the "friends and family" direction, which I despise and personally think it means they lack any original ideas. I know that there are some comics that need to be taken into consideration when creating the scripts, but still.
  • South Park - South Park sputtered lately, going from meh! to really funny from episode to episode. The Fremium episode, for example, was really cool. I remain a fan.
  • Stalker - Another police procedural with a twist. I kind of like it, but I wouldn't recommend it, if you know what I mean. The show focuses on stalkers, with the small twist that the main character (and member of the task force that fights them) seems to be one himself. Too bad that they broke the tension on that one. I think I like it because of the lead actors.
  • Marvel's Agents of Shield - Yes, I know it's an acronym, but I am tired of typing S.H.I.E.L.D. all the time. The show is pretty good! It does go into the whole "dad and mom" territory, but not too much. I will continue watching it.
  • Marvel's Agent Carter - Another Marvel TV show, this time about agent Carter, the girlfriend of Captain America. Set in the 1940's, it also has to deal with the sexism of the period. Sexy actress, some interesting characters, this shows promise.
  • Our Girl - This is an interesting series, concerning a young girl that joins the British army. She has to deal with a stupid and petty but well meaning family, fighting in the Middle East and also a love triangle (what else when a woman is concerned?). No, seriously, it's better than Twilight.
  • Tim and Eric's Bedtime Stories - In an era where big budget horror TV series abound, here is this minimalist standalone episode show. And it is fucking scary! The episodes are very short and involve usually similar worlds to ours. No special effects, monsters or whatever, but the subjects are really unsettling and powerful. A must see!
  • Black Dynamite - The second season doesn't seem as funny as the first, but still a lot of fun and makes me learn many things about the American 70's
  • The 100 - I couldn't make myself watch the second season. That probably means that I feel it sucks. However I still might watch it...
  • Constantine - A series based on the Constantine comics and film. Keanu Reeves has been replaced by a skinny British wanker with illusions of grandeur. Actually, the character is a bit more layered than that, but not by much. I had high hopes for the show, but I have to admit that it is subpar and I don't like it.
  • Star Wars Rebels - At first I really hated this animated series. I thought it was too childish. Then I realized that the entire Star Wars franchise is made for little children. Really, this settles the Star Wars/Trek debate for me: the intended audience ages are slightly different, in the sense that Star Trek contains elements that have meaning for adults, as well >:-D.
  • Ripper Street - Ripper Street got cancelled, then got revived by Amazon Prime, and it is now at season 3. I have to admit that the direction of the show feels strained right now. I hope it picks up pace, because I really loved the first two seasons
  • State of Affairs - Another series that tries to be apologetical to the US foreign policy, it portrays romantic comedy star Katherine Heigl as a CIA executive, married to the son of the US president, who is a black woman, and that has dark secrets threatening to get revealed. I couldn't watch more than two episodes. It is just as surreal as her romantic films: all nice and pink, unless it's about non-Americans. They are bad!
  • The Shadow Line - Dark British police/political thriller, it is a miniseries, meaning it ends without having "seasons" and it is pretty amazing. Good acting, interesting story. It came highly recommended and it didn't disappoint.
  • Babylon - The series had an interesting pilot a while ago. I liked it, now it got picked up as a series. I want to watch it, but I haven't started yet.
  • Marco Polo - a series about the explorer Marco Polo, left by his father at the court of Kublai Khan. I like the actors and the show. The story is also interesting, showing the Mongols as more than invading horseriding barbarians, instead a nation covering half of China and with expansion intentions covering the entire known world.
  • The Newsroom - The third season was short and it was meant to give some sort of closure to the ending of the show. However is was so horribly weak, especially the last episode which was made out of fragments of the first two seasons episodes, that I ended up hating it more than I was already hating it. Good riddance!
  • The Librarians - Horrible show, trying to serialize an obscure film that wasn't that good to begin with. Don't watch it!
  • Scorpion - Leaving aside the alleged basis in reality that the show has, it is another cop show, with "geniuses" helping the FBI. Unlike Numb3rs, which had the same idea, this show is not very good at all. Characters are difficult to empathize with and the whole "normal mom helping the helpers" thing is just... offensive.
  • The Musketeers - You will close your browser window in anger for wasting you the time to read so far, but... I like this show. It is silly, has little to do with Dumas' creation, but I enjoy watching it. It probably has to do with the generously endowed beauties that seem all to like D'Artagnan
  • Elementary - I really like both Lucy Liu and Johhny Lee Miller, but this show has gone to shit. Having nothing to do with deductive skills now, it turned into yet another police procedural, with brilliant people helping the police.
  • Broadchurch - Haven't yet started watching the second season - yes! there is a second season. One that is not the Gracepoint American redo starring David Tennant. I believe Tennant has to feel a bit Doctor Whoish when he is starring in both the American remake and the second season of the original... BTW, Gracepoint got cancelled!
  • Ascension - A SyFy miniseries, in the sense that it has only three episodes per season, it involves a ship that was clandestinely sent to another solar system by Kennedy! At first I was all "what?! How can anyone even think of it?", but then the reason for it all got revealed. It also features a *really annoying* little girl that has mental superpowers and, what else?, a government conspiracy. Once you get the hang of it, it is pretty nice and the human branching from a 1950's United States is a nice twist. I am awaiting the second season. Tricia Helfer is almost as cool as in BSG
  • Banshee - The third season started and it is just as satisfying as the first two. I don't know what sort of human button this show pushes, but I love it and have absolutely no idea why.

Now all I have to do is choose 7 series out of this list and implement my resolution. This list alone contains 50 series and I haven't been including new series that I haven't started watching and shows that continue in the summer season. It will be difficult, but necessary. If we consider an average of 10 episodes per season, one hour each, that means I use up around 10 hours of my time each season per series. If I remove 40 from my list, that means a staggering 400 hours of time freed per year, more than an hour per day. Of course, I will use this time to watch movies, which don't have an upper bound :) Let's see how it goes.