TV Series I've Been Watching - part 19

The summer season is fast approaching and there have been a lot of changes in the TV series arena. As usual, the red indicates shows that I don't recommend and green the ones that I recommend.

• Elementary - I was correct, there was an entire arch of the story regarding the brother of Sherlock, French mafia, MI6, moles, etc. It lacked subtlety and it was mostly boring. How come normal murders are so much more interesting than archvillain trickery?
• The Tomorrow People (2013) - the show was cancelled in May. I can't say I am sorry, though. It was typical young adolescent idiocy.
• The Originals - I am however completely not happy for NOT cancelling this crap.
• Marvel's agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Yay! Hail Shield! Good guys win again. And also Samuel L. Jackson appears in the end season, bringing with him what appear to be Shield agent clones? Did he steal them from Star Wars?
• Ripper Street - Filming for the Amazon online channel was supposed to begin in May. I think it has.
• Babylon - No news yet, but there are certainly no news of cancellation, so I guess we will see the next episodes being released later this year.
• Banshee - Third season confirmed.
• Bitten - Another show that was renewed for a second season for no apparent reason. It is just awful.
• Black Sails - Renewed for a second season, I partly like it. It is at least well done, with decent acting and an eye for detail.
• From Dusk Till Dawn - As a funny commenter observed: in an incredible moves the owners of the El Rey network renew the show produced by El Rey for a second season. I understand the difficulty of translating a movie into a series... wait, there is a sequel, too? Wait, there is a From Dusk Till Dawn third part? I've never heard of them before. Nevermind.
• Helix - I think I got it now. When a show makes an effort to really suck ass, they renew it. It's like an executive learned behaviour to promote ass sucking. Renewed for a second season, Helix is the poster child of bad movie making.
• House of Cards - It's good that I had to write this review, because it reminded me to watch the second season. Still haven't done it, though, which indicates either a problem with me or with the show. Probably me. Again, Kevin Spacey can't go wrong.
• Intelligence - Amazingly enough, a show that I sort of enjoyed, without liking it too much, was cancelled. Very *intelligent* move...
• Ressurection - I really tried to make myself watch this show, but I just procrastinated for a really long time. It says something about my feelings for this show. I was really waiting for the second season of the French one and the American remake doesn't do it for me.
• Star Crossed - Teenage sci fi show about alien romance? Really beautiful actors, incredibly stupid script and acting. I just can't believe it was cancelled. It ruins my theory, because it trully sucked ass.
• The 100 - The show started really well, predictably degenerated in artificial drama that had no place in the series, while going soft on the problems that someone would meet in that exact situation. Suddenly 100 teenagers from space have a functional colony, fight "grounders" for no good reason and keep alternating between screwing, screwing over and screwing up. Typical teenager, one might say, but their parents on "The Ark" are even worse. The show was renewed for a second season. The season finale, though, didn't give me much hope. They added two (and a half, one might say) human factions to the mix in just the one episode
• The After - The pilot got positive reviews to they ordered it to series. I am not holding my breath.
• The Americans - I liked the second season, although the arch with the American mole that turns homicidal and discovers the entire KGB operation by himself was really ridiculous. It was a nice touch about the murder of the KGB agents, also what happened to Nina and the reactions of the people. However the Moscow verdict makes no sense.
• The Red Road - Ah, maybe exceptions just confirm a rule. Another crappy show that gets renewed for a second season.
• True Detective - The first season was great, so there will be new seasons. New actors and new stories, though, for each season.
• Vikings - Politics keep interfering with nice raiding and pillaging. That is the moment in history when things started going downwards and global warming started. True fact!
• Suits - The fourth season just started. They try to keep it exciting, but the feel is gone.
• Continuum - The third season went all over the place. The season finale has Cameron cooling it off with a new boyfriend from (yet) another timeline, then another mysterious traveler from a very far future that seems to have started the Freelancer cult, Liber8 split off after realizing they do more harm than good (while each character in the group starts to get a "nice" shine on them) and finally the Freelancers getting mowed down. But then, they never really die, do they?
• Crisis - For me the scene when a stupid kid sees Francis killing a kid and then tells all of the others that the kidnappers made him do it has done it for me! Oh, or the one when he forces a Chinese spy to unleash a virus that effectively destroys the Internet in order to gain time. Where do you get this idiocy from? BTW, it was cancelled.
• Da Vinci's Demons - Enemies get together, they eventually run into Mayas on America and, of course, traces of DaVinci's parents, then they return just in time to stave off the invasion of Italy by the Turkish navy which just appeared out of nowhere. Not only will this be renewed, but it won prizes! It is a guilty pleasure that I like it, most of the time, I have to admit.
• Turn - Interesting show. It lacks something, probably sympathetic characters. I really don't see myself liking any of them, including the generously bosomed women who have casual sex all the time. That is saying something.
• The Crimson Field - Was it cancelled because it featured female main characters? Or because it was well acted? I just don't know.
• Silicon Valley - Elon Musk accused the show of showing the wrong weirdness of Silicon Valley. I don't know how things are there, but to me it feels like he probably is right. A lot of crap about sex, race, manhood, geekiness seen as emasculating, random genius, etc. For me the scene when in one night the guy develops what his entire team failed to in five months has done it for me. I like parts of the show, but I don't think I liked the show overall.
• Bad Teacher - I could stand literally 2 minutes of it. Then I stopped and deleted everything. It is the type of ha ha ha sitcom that brings nothing.
• Black Box - A movie about a brilliant woman psychiatrist. Of course she is very sexually active, a bit insane and a sexy redhead. It's basically Doctor House meets Unforgettable. I bet it will be cancelled because she is a crazy broad and only male characters are allowed to be brilliant. Plus she is annoying. Nice ass, though.
• Californication - The seventh season will be the last, thank you! They butchered a lovely idea that was fantastic in the first two seasons and let it die in agony for the last five, blood and guts pouring out of it until nothing but a boring husk remained. Duchovny was my god at the beginning of the show.
• Deadbeat - comedy about a deadbeat seeing ghosts and solving their problems. I actually commented on Imdb (I usually don't for TV series) to warn people off it. It is offensively boring and formulaic and completely not funny.
• Dracula - It was a weird reinvention of Dracula, but one that I kind of liked. Guess what! They cancelled it! Perhaps the trick is to not like anything that I like and like everything that I dislike. In this way they will renew the shows that I hate to love, rather than the ones that I love to hate. Yes, that's a good plan.
• Game of Thrones - Thank God for Peter Dinklage! One realizes how tedious the books are when they watch this well done series that compresses whole books in half a day of video and you still feel nothing happens. And then someone dies and the episode ends.
• Halt and Catch Fire - Imagine Mad Men, but with a real psychopath as the main character, the field changed from advertising to personal computer manufacturing and a clone of Angelina Jolie's persona from the movie Hackers as the "tech genius". So, in other words, with more Mad, and less Men. I really dislike the main character and I don't see where this is going. Hardware is not glamorous, software is! *cough* *cough*
• In the Flesh - I really liked the first season, but I waited to see episodes from the new one as well. Somehow I can't bring myself to start watching it again. I will, though, soon.
• Penny Dreadful - Ok, it is a horror series that mixes in all the Victorian themes like Jack the Ripper, vampires, werewolves, tuberculosis, Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, etc. But it's well done and it has a nice cast: Eva Green, Timothy Dalton, Billie Piper, Josh Hartnett and others.
• Prey - John Simm is a detective in this British drama, and he is framed for the murder of his wife and son by a mysterious man. He is a... fugitive from the law trying to solve his own case. Kind of bland and hard to believe in this day and age. The Fugitive was much more credible because not only movies were silly at that time, but also most people. Now we have evolved quite a lot *cough* *I should stop with these asterisks everywhere* *cough*
• Quirke - Gabriel Byrne is the lead in this British miniseries, playing a doctor that somehow is connected to everyone in the city and where the problems usually stem from one member of his extended family or another. Feels like In Treatment set in the past and in which Byrne is both doctor and patient. I think it could have been more. As such, it's a little bit annoying and slow.
• Salem - It is still the season of the witch. Salem is a new show, but I haven't started watching it. The premise seemed a little bit forced.
• The Wil Wheaton Project - Wesley from Star Trek is hosting a show that is not a TV series. It is a humorous take on the latest sci-fi news. You might not know it, but Wheaton is very active online in all kind of geeky indie shows, together with his friend Felicia Day (The Guild). I found it a little too satirical, but I liked it.
• Under the Dome - the boring and annoying show has been renewed for a second season that will air at the end of the month.
• Crossbones - Pirates! Again! This time starring John Malkovich. Haven't started watching yet.
• Fargo - Based on a Coen brothers movie with the same name, it stars Billy Bob Thornton and has the brothers as executive producers. Haven't started watching yet.
• From There to Here - British drama covering life from the Manchester bombing up to 2000. Haven't started watching yet.

That's about it so far.

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No patent reform to foster innovation? How about innovation to foster patent reform?

I think you have heard of Elon Musk by now. If you haven't, confess and pray to the Church of Musk for forgiveness. Jokes aside, the guy is scarily awesome, so much, in fact, that I think he forgot how to fail, which is dangerous. His ideas, though, eerily mirror some of my own (he probably gets them from me, hmm). This post is about Musk's decision to publicize their Tesla patents and allow anyone to use the technology "in good faith". And I will argue that this is a kind of patent revolt which is just as significant as blogging.

A while ago I had these weird ideas and a lot of extra energy. It occurred to me that if I would invent some cool algorithm or think of a disruptively ingenious device I could patent it and make some money. As you know, I am not much of an entrepreneur (in fact, I am probably the antithesis of that) and so I asked some people how this patent thing works. I was amazed to learn of the huge amount of money required to file, the lack of security against rich competitors who would really want to take your idea without paying and so on and so on. I was more than amazed, I was angry. As I saw it, the system was created so only people having rich investors on their side could even begin to patent something. Otherwise, if you just want to claim the ownership of an idea, you have to pay a lot of money before you even begin planning to use your idea to make them. Banks would win. Again. Poor and brilliant scientists and technicians would lose. Again.

But then I heard about this principle that if I have an idea and publish it somewhere, I can't patent it anymore. The trick is that no one else can, either. Practically, whenever I have an idea, if I put it on my blog I ensure people will be able to use it without it being patented by some asshole. They can still change it into something else and patent that, but they can never stop you using the idea in the form that was published. So I do that whenever I can. Not that I have so many patent worthy ideas, but if I think something is useful enough, I put it out there to spite a system that was corrupted in order for capital rich organizations to be able to hold control over new ideas.

Enter Elon Musk. He just took a lot of the technological effort that he invested in for Tesla and made it public. It's not completely free, it's still their patent, but they pledge to leave you alone if you use it in a reasonable way. Of course, there is a catch, Musk is investing heavily in electric car battery manufacturing, so it is still in his best interest for other people to start building electric cars. But I honestly think he is finding solutions that benefit the world and also increase his options, instead of the other way around. Do you see the similarity in the idea, though? Instead of expecting lawmakers to reform patent law, you just circumvent the whole system by making your idea publicly available. It helps to previously invest in support systems for that tech, too. It's a deceptively simple idea, the equivalent of inventing steam engine, letting everybody know how to make one, while previously investing in coal.

In software development, you can sort of do that same thing. First of all, have an awesome idea, implement it, make it freely available for use and publish it in your blog. This seems like a very altruistic thing to do, maybe even naive, but think about your life afterwards. People will know your name, employers would separate you from the crowd of wannabe programmers. In a weird way, it is the equivalent of branding yourself, that personal marketing skill that most technicians lack completely, but translated in code. A form of "pay it forward", perhaps. The reason why this works is that the cost of sharing information is practically zero nowadays, while the information itself is generating informational capital linked to your person as the inventor. And in turn, this fame, the kudos, is translated into trust which turns into credit because "you are good for it". I still don't have it clear in my head, but I feel the system changing from the cash printed by governments, essentially IOUs for that government from the public, to a more diverse offer. It would still be credit, but based on idea capital, not gold in banks. Worth a thought.

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The horrible case of Bravofly (Volagratis)

So I have to leave Italy and go to Belgium for some business. I would make the trip with my colleagues so, imagining they know better how to fly from Italy, since they live here, I ask them to search for the flight. They do that and they send me this link to a site called VolaGratis ("fly for free" would be the translation). This is actually an Italian web site for BravoFly, an Italian flight search aggregator. I find my flight, it says 89EUR a two way flight, which was OK. The site is in Italian, though, so I choose English, it takes me to the BravoFly site, I select the same flight: 105EUR. I'll be damned! So I use the Italian site. I also check the special needs box and write down "Long Legs", expecting them to book me one of those extra legroom places. Now it gets interesting.

The payment section held a big message telling me how great it is that I use Mastercard, so they can give me a big discount. I don't use Mastercard, though, so I select VISA. Suddenly the price jumps from 89 to 125EUR. Well, that probably explained why there was a difference between the Italian and international site. So I proceed. In about half an hour I receive a call from a weirdly formatted Italian number: +39 followed by only 6 digits. I answer in English. There is a long pause, then (in English) I hear the question "Do you speak French?", I reply that I don't, the voice asks a quivering "Do you speak Italian?" (also in English) I also reply no, but I ask her to wait and I pass my phone to an Italian colleague. The operator has closed the connection by then, probably couldn't wait for more than 2 seconds without asking an inane question. A minute later I receive an SMS - in Italian, of course - that I couldn't be contacted and that I should call them back. All nice and all, only their phone numbers are all paid numbers, I have to pay 6EUR per call, give them my credit card details, etc. Or I can call the Italian paid number (six digits) and pay 1.8EUR per minute. Funny enough, I could not call the Italian number from the land line, since it was a paid one, nor from my friend's phone, also because it was locked for paid lines, nor could I call the international number from any Italian phone, as there was an automated voice telling me to call the other number. I wrote them a scalding email, awaiting a reply. I got a phone call at 8 PM which clicked two times and closed after two seconds, but no other reply.

So I was forced to call them using my Romanian number, in roaming in Italy, calling the paid "international" Italian number. And that is because their site could only show my bookings, but would not allow me to cancel one, so in fact they were holding my credit card details hostage. In order to cancel any booking with BravoFly I had to - yeah, you guessed it - call them. Meanwhile I was stuck not knowing if they will book the flight or not. After speaking with an operator speaking English with a thick Italian accent, one who barely mumbled anything she said and then acted annoyed that I ask her to speak louder, I realize that the whole thing was caused by my ticking the special request box and asking for the legroom. I needed to pay extra for that, of course. I said OK, waited for five minutes, nothing happened. I hung up the phone. Got called back in 5 minutes that my booking could not be confirmed. They might just as well have said "Thank you for the money and time you spent trying to make us do what we advertised we do, but we can't, so fuck you!". And I wouldn't have minded as much, since that could have been a nice email message and I wouldn't have had to get this angry.

The ending of the story is me getting to the EasyJet site directly, getting the ticket (with the extra legroom) for about 40EUR less than the one from VolaGratis, all in one nice and clear web interface. Perhaps Vola Gratis in the name of the site is all about them getting to fly for free with the money they extort from you. Don't ever use the BravoFly site or any of their differently named clones. From the way I was treated, I can only assume it is basically a scam, their purpose being only to steal from you.

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Lichess - a very interesting chess server

Some time ago I started playing chess, got a trainer, played with my colleagues and friends. I felt a passion for the game that I have no idea from where it came and, just as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished. For more than a year I have not even looked at chess videos. I can't say when I would start playing again, not even if I ever would. And it's not because I am not really good at the game :), it is just a matter of random passion.

Passion is probably what made the creators of Lichess create the server. It is a chess site with a very clean interface, a lot of options, even a REST API (that's a programming thing, don't worry about it). Most of all, the site is completely free, no ads, no nags and a mission statement that ensures that the game will remain thus forever. Open source, with a lot of help from the community, Lichess shows a passion for both software development and chess. If I will ever start playing again, it will probably be because of people like these. Thanks, guys!

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Detecting the language of a text in C#

Short post about how to use language detection capabilities in your application. I will be demonstrating NTextCat, which is a .NET port of text_cat, a Perl script, itself an implementation of a whitepaper published in 1994 called N-Gram-Based Text Categorization.

There are four steps to language detection using NTextCat:
• Reference NTextCat - the library is now available as a NuGet package as well
• Instantiate an identifier factory (usually RankedLanguageIdentifierFactory)
• Get an instance of a RankedLanguageIdentifier from the factory by loading a language XML file
• Call the Identify method on your text and get a list of languages in the order of the probability that the text in that language

Here is a piece of code that does that using the core XML file published with the library. Remember to add the XML to your project and set its property of Copy to Output Directory.

public class LanguageProcessor
{
    private RankedLanguageIdentifier _identifier;

    public string IdentifyLanguage(string text)
    {
        if (_identifier == null)
        {
            var file = new FileInfo(Path.Combine(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "LanguageModels/Core14.profile.xml"));
            if (!file.Exists)
            {
                throw new FileNotFoundException("Could not find LanguageModels/Core14.profile.xml to detect the language");
            }
            using (var readStream = File.OpenRead(file.FullName))
            {
                var factory = new RankedLanguageIdentifierFactory();
                _identifier = factory.Load(readStream);
            }
        }
        var languages = _identifier.Identify(text);
        var mostCertainLanguage = languages.FirstOrDefault();
        if (mostCertainLanguage != null)
        {
            return mostCertainLanguage.Item1.Iso639_3;
        }
        return null;
    }

}

There are a lot of XML files, some taken from Wikipedia, for example, and handling 280+ languages, but for the casual purpose of finding non-English text in a list, the core one will suffice.

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A log4net custom appender that creates JIRA issues and notifies users

It has been a while since I've blogged something technical. It's just that nothing I did seemed to be worthy of this majestic blog... Well, jokes aside, here is a post detailing my log4net JIRA appender.

log4net is a popular (if not the most popular) logging framework for .NET out there. Its strength lies in its configurability, the possibility to create custom loggers, custom appenders, custom filters, etc. I will be talking about a custom appender, a class that can be loaded by log4net to consume the logged lines and put them somewhere. For example to make an application that uses log4net to write the log to the console all you do is configure it to use the console appender. The JIRA appender takes the log output and creates issues in JIRA, notifying users afterwards. JIRA is a tracker for team planning. It is also very popular.

In order to create an appender, one references the log4net assembly (or NuGet package) and then creates a class that inherits from AppenderSkeleton. We could implement IAppender, but the skeleton class has most of what people want from an appender. The next step is to override the Append method and we are done. We don't want to create an issue with each logged line, though, so we will make it so that it creates the issue after a period of inactivity or when the logger closes. For that we use the CancellationTokenSource class to create delayed actions that we can cancel and recreate. We also need to override OnClose().

For the JIRA Api I used a project called AnotherJiraRestClient, but I guess one can used anything out there. You will see that the notify functionality is not implemented so we have to add it.

Here is the appender source code:

using AnotherJiraRestClient;
using log4net.Appender;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace JiraLog4netAppender
{
    public class JiraAppender : AppenderSkeleton // most appender functionality is found in this abstract class
    {
        private List<string> _notifyUsers;

        // properties of the appender, configurable in the log4net.config file as children elements of the appender
        public string url { get; set; } // the url of the JIRA site
        public string user { get; set; } // the JIRA user
        public string password { get; set; } // the JIRA password
        public string project { get; set; } // the JIRA project
        public string notify // a comma separated list of JIRA users who will be notified of the issue's creation
        {
            get
            {
                return string.Join(", ", _notifyUsers);
            }
            set
            {
                _notifyUsers.Clear();
                if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(value))
                {
                    _notifyUsers.AddRange(value.Split(',').Select(s => s.Trim()).Where(s => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(s)));
                }
            }
        }

        CancellationTokenSource _ts;
        StringWriter _sw;
        Task _task;
        private JiraClient _jc;
        private string _priorityId;
        private string _issueTypeId;

        private object _writerLock=new object();

        public JiraAppender()
        {
            _notifyUsers = new List<string>();
            _ts = new CancellationTokenSource(); // use this to cancel the Delay task
            _sw = new StringWriter();
        }

        protected override void Append(log4net.Core.LoggingEvent loggingEvent)
        {
            this.Layout.Format(_sw, loggingEvent); // use the appender layout to format the log lines (warning: for this you need to override RequiresLayout and return true)
            _ts.Cancel(); // cancel the task and create a new one. This means as long as the logger writes, the 5 second delay will be reset
            _ts = new CancellationTokenSource();
            _task = Task.Delay(5000, _ts.Token).ContinueWith(writeToJira, _ts.Token); // after 5 seconds (I guess you could make this configurable as well) create a JIRA issue
        }

        protected override bool RequiresLayout
        {
            get
            {
                return true;
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// write to jira, either when 5 seconds of inactivity passed or the appender is closed.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="task"></param>
        private void writeToJira(Task task)
        {
            string s;
            lock (_writerLock) // maybe the method was already in progress when another one was called. We need to clear the StringWriter before we allow access to it again
            {
                s = _sw.ToString();
                var sb = _sw.GetStringBuilder();
                sb.Clear();
            }
            if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(s))
            {
                writeTextToJira(s);
            }
        }

        private void writeTextToJira(string text)
        {
            ensureClientAndValues();
            var summary = "Log: " + this.Name; // the issue summary
            var labels = new List<string> // some labels
            {
                this.Name, this.GetType().Name
            };
            var issue = new AnotherJiraRestClient.JiraModel.CreateIssue(project, summary, text, _issueTypeId, _priorityId, labels); // create the issue with type Issue and priority Trivial
            var basicIssue = _jc.CreateIssue(issue);
            _jc.Notify(basicIssue, _notifyUsers, "JiraAppender created an issue", null, null); // notify users of the issue's creation
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Make sure we have a JiraClient and that we know the ids of the Issue type and the Trivial priority
        /// </summary>
        private void ensureClientAndValues()
        {
            if (_jc == null)
            {
                _jc = new JiraClient(new JiraAccount
                {
                    ServerUrl = url,
                    User = user,
                    Password = password
                });
            }
            if (_priorityId==null) {
                var priority = _jc.GetPriorities().FirstOrDefault(p => p.name == "Trivial");
                if (priority == null)
                {
                    throw new Exception("A priority with the name 'Trivial' was not found");
                }
                _priorityId = priority.id;
            }
            if (_issueTypeId == null)
            {
                var meta = _jc.GetProjectMeta(project);
                var issue = meta.issuetypes.FirstOrDefault(i => i.name == "Issue");
                if (issue == null)
                {
                    throw new Exception("An issue type with the name 'Issue' was not found");
                }
                _issueTypeId = issue.id;
            }
        }

        protected override void OnClose() //clean what you can and write to jira if there is anything to write
        {
            _ts.Cancel();
            writeToJira(null);
            _sw.Dispose();
            _ts.Dispose();
            _task = null;
            base.OnClose();
        }

    }
}

As I said, AnotherJiraRestClient does not implement the notify API call needed to inform the users of the creation of an issue, so we need to change the project a little bit. Perhaps when you are implementing this, you will find notify already there, with a different format, but just in case you don't:

• add to JiraClient the following method:

  public void Notify(BasicIssue issue, IEnumerable<string> userList, string subject, string textBody, string htmlBody)
  {
      var request = new RestRequest()
      {
          Method = Method.POST,
          Resource = ResourceUrls.Notify(issue.id),
          RequestFormat = DataFormat.Json
      };
      request.AddBody(new NotifyData
      {
          subject = subject,
          textBody = textBody,
          htmlBody = htmlBody,
          to = new NotifyTo
          {
              users = userList.Select(u => new User
              {
                  active = false,
                  name = u
              }).ToList()
          }
      });
      var response = client.Execute(request);
      if (response.StatusCode != HttpStatusCode.NoContent)
      {
          throw new JiraApiException("Failed to notify users from issue with id=" + issue.id+"("+response.StatusCode+")");
      }
  }

• add to ResourceUrls the following method:

  public static string Notify(string issueId)
  {
      return Url(string.Format("issue/{0}/notify", issueId));
  }
  

• create the following classes in the JiraModel folder and namespace:

  public class NotifyData
  {
      public string subject { get; set; }
      public string textBody { get; set; }
      public string htmlBody { get; set; }
      public NotifyTo to { get; set; }
  }
  
  public class NotifyTo
  {
      public List<User> users { get; set; }
  }
  
  public class User
  {
      public string name { get; set; }
      public bool active { get; set; }
  }

Here is an example configuration. Have fun!

<log4net>
   <appender name="JiraAppender" type="JiraLog4netAppender.JiraAppender, JiraLog4netAppender">
      <url value="https://my.server.url/jira"/>
      <user value="jirauser"/>
      <password value="jirapassword"/>
      <project value="jiraproject"/>
      <notify value="siderite,someotheruser" />
      <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
          <conversionPattern value="%date [%thread] %-5level %logger [%property{NDC}] - %message%newline" />
      </layout>
        <filter type="log4net.Filter.LevelRangeFilter">
          <levelMin value="WARN" />
          <levelMax value="FATAL" />
        </filter>
   </appender>
     <root>
     <level value="DEBUG" />
         <appender-ref ref="JiraAppender" />
   </root>
</log4net>

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Algorithms as cash, now algorithms in company board of directors

The world is getting into a trend of using software and hardware in places traditionally reserved for humans or "real life" applications. An extraordinary example of this, something that I consider way ahead of its time, is the creation of Bitcoins. You see, money is supposed to be an abstraction of wealth, but wealth, for all intents and purposes, is determined by some material such as gold or gems. It was the previous layer of abstraction, right after people would do commerce using sheep and goats and women: they used something they mined from under the earth to equate value of real things. Enter Bitcoin, something that you "mine" using processing power, using an algorithm, having weight of value determined only by the computation and strength of encryption used. After all, gold in itself had no value either when it was used as currency: it only had weight of value by the effort of getting out of the ground and its rarity.

I didn't write about Bitcoins until now because frankly I don't get how it works. I get the gist of it, but I would like to understand the algorithm behind, which relies heavily on encryption. I am terrible at any type of cryptography, though. However, the story that prompted me to write a blog entry today is, in a way, even weirder than Bitcoins. A BBC article entitled "Algorithm appointed board director" describes that venture capital firm Vital assigned an automated algorithm a vote in the decision to invest or not in a company. Of course, this has been done before, but indirectly. Some guy would use a computer in some basement of the office building, trying to determine if a company is viable or not using computer programs. He would then pass the information to some manager, who would pass it on to his manager until it got to some member of the board who voted in the council. This story, though, describes a complete removal of middlemen. Of course, there is still some techie that takes care of the IT department. He probably could sway the algorithm to vote for a company he personally likes, if he wanted too, but the techies are always subsumed in the concept of "machine", perhaps until they learn to service each other. The article says the same thing, really, but fails to recognize the importance of the removal of that chain of middle manager who's jobs are only to filter information from downstairs and decisions from upstairs. It is akin to Blake's 7, where the seventh was a machine.

I started this blog entry talking about a trend and I've just described two applications, but there are really a lot more. A trend is also powered by public perception, which is powered by media outlets. So I am not only talking about the self driving cars, the killing drones, the self landing probes, the algorithmic news aggregators and even writers, but also about the TV series and movies that are spreading the seed of this idea of cyber-revolution: Intelligence, Transcendence, The Machine, Robocop, even Silicon Valley, if you've seen the episode where the self driving car abducts someone. All of these are released this year, as well.

Of course, there has always been some sort of golem like creature in human fantasy, but it was always about creatures/machines trying to gain unrestricted power, power that belongs to humans only or maybe only to gods (in essence, something that should not be had). Some of them, like Star Trek's Data, were benign, always trying to achieve the "humanity" evident in his colleagues, but even in that story there was always the underlying idea that if he managed to reach his goal, then Data would become an immortal creature of human ability, but also a lot more than that: a superhuman. In this decade we see the rise of transhumanism, something I wholly support, the self-evolution of the human being, but also of the singularity, the self-evolution of machines to the point where we are left behind. This very familiar notion of competition between memes makes it accessible, in that "us or them" kind of way that every human, no matter how idiotic, resonates with, but also interesting because of the commonality found in the two concepts: it's either the machines overtaking the evolution rate of the human animal or the humans accelerating the evolution of the human animal. It's all about overcoming that beast that exists in us and that we think of as "not me", but that guides most of our existence. I hope no amount of adolescent fantasies and "emotion over matter" garbage will be able to undo this. And I am terribly excited because I believe that by the end of my life I will see (if not become) one or the other happening.

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