Brett Boston

GSB Emails Volume 0004

2017-09-21T00:00:00-07:00

More GSB emails from May to September! See the older ones here:

Laptop Ban

The Department of Homeland Security is thinking about banning laptops on international flights, so we at GSB have come up with a few ways to stay entertained and productive on your next flight, other than reading a book.

Renting movies on airplanes is expensive and the inflight wifi often wont let you stream video, so try the following next time you fly:
1. Buy your favorite movie on a film reel
2. Attach a weight to the start of the film
3. When no one is looking, cut a small hole into the side of your window and feed the weighted end through it.
4. Your movie will begin to spool out from the side of the plane and you can look through the film by holding it up to the light! This technique works best with silent films.
Print your emails out ahead of time and go through them on the plane. If you need to respond to one, handwrite your response on the back of the email. When you land, mail the responses to your email administrator with directions to type up the email and send it to the appropriate recipient. Slip in a crisp $20 bill for faster processing!
Preempt the garbage collecting flight attendants by asking your fellow passengers for their empty pretzel or peanut bags. At the bottom of these bags you’ll find food dust. Collect enough bags to fill a small cup with this fine powder, then ask the flight attendant for some water. Mix the water with the dust to create a mailable paste. Now you can build a sculpture on your tray table! After you’re done, hold the sculpture up to the reading light to heat it and make it it harden. Give your sculpture to the pilot at the end of the flight as a token of gratitude.

All Natural AWS

It was announced earlier today that Amazon is buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. We reached out to Amazon for comments and they shared the following changes to AWS with us.

Artisanal S3: Amazon S3 allows users to store large amounts of data in the cloud. Unfortunately, spinning disks aren’t very natural, which has been a point of contention among naturopathic computer scientists for years. Therefore, we’re introducing Artisanal S3, in which a hip employee types your data up on an old typewriter at a third wave coffee shop. Coffee stains can be added to your Artisinal S3 records for an extra fee.

Organic EC2: EC2 allows users to spin up on-demand compute instances at an hourly rate, but these instances may contain locked down silicon and non-free security patches. While these patches may reduce bugs, they also reduce your freedom! For an added fee you can get EC2 instances that surpass the criteria for FSF organic systems, including RISC-V processors and entirely free software stacks.

But it’s not just Whole Foods concepts flowing into AWS, Amazon will be making some changes to Whole Foods based on the success they’ve seen with AWS.

Spot Pricing: Spot pricing on AWS lets you pay well below on-demand rates for an S3 instance, with the stipulation that if the market rate rises above the maximum you’re willing to pay your instance is terminated. At Whole Foods you will be able to take any product that we have a surplus of and propose a price to the cashier. If the spot market price of the item later rises above the price you quoted, a Whole Foods Product Reclamation agent will be dispatched to your house to reclaim what remains uneaten of the product you purchased.

GSB ICO [1]

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are the hot new way to get rich with very little effort. To do an ICO all you need is an idea that runs on Ethereum. Then, you sell shares of your “company” in tokens to raise capital, similar to an IPO. From this you can compute the market valuation of your company. These valuations are absolutely insane given that most of these ICOs haven’t actually implemented or planned anything. In one case, an ICO led to a valuation of $300 million.

Given all that, we here at GSB are doing an ICO by following the conventional steps:

Come up with an idea. Deep learning is hot now, so maybe a distributed deep learning thing? Throw in some internet of things for good luck [2].
Pitch the idea. I’ve put the important bits between in italics:

“GSB is a distributed deep learning framework built on top of the Ethereum network. The internet of things can leverage our GSB layer to access the global supercomputer, enabling never before seen levels of interoperability. I’m an MIT student doing an ICO of 5% of GSB with a target valuation of $200 million so I can work full time on GSB.

Note that I’m only offering 5% of GSB. This is important because it means that your investors have essentially no say in how the thing runs. No one will notice this.
(Optional) Write a white paper with some technical details of how you’ll accomplish your goal. This used to be necessary but now a flashy website with no technical details will do just fine.
Pick a date for your ICO and hype it like crazy on Reddit. Retail investors with no understanding of computer science or Ethereum will buy your coins like crazy.
After you sell out of tokens, cash out everything. ICOs often perform worse than ether. Whether you can actually flood the market with your 95% share is yet to be seen, so you should probably do it slowly.
Don’t build anything. You already have the money. Kick back and relax!
Fight off the paranoia. This isn’t illegal, right? I mean, sure the SEC will probably make an example of a few people and send them to federal prison for securities fraud for a very long time, but come on, that won’t be YOU, right? Move to a country that doesn’t extradite to the US to be safe.

I really wanted to call this email, “How I Made $200 Million From Home,” but last week’s email (All Natural AWS) got caught in a lot of spam filters and this definitely would too.
I overheard some people in Kendall square the other day talking about how they wanted to do an ICO but they didn’t have any ideas. Their first mistake was thinking that they need an idea.

Depopulating GSB

We have reviewed Friday night grad student performance and found a shocking correlation between work output and GSB attendance! Work output on Fridays for the average grad student looks something like this:

|
| _____________
|              \
|               \
|                \
|                 \_____
|
-------------------------
^           time->
|
work

But for GSB attendees, the data looks more like this:

|
| _____________
|              |
|              |
|              |
|              |
|              |__________
-------------------------
^           time->
|
work

We are puzzled by this sudden drop off, so we will be using the same techniques the administration used with Senior House. That is, we will be depopulating GSB.

What does this mean for you? GSB will still go on but no two participants can be in the same room at the same time. Instead, we will have satellite GSBs around campus. You will be assigned a room to sit in alone with a single beverage of your choice, preferably with the lights off. We have booked the following exciting venues for reflection on why you aren’t being productive:

9th floor bathroom: This windowless cell will surely inspire dysphoric thoughts about your recent dissertation progress.
Dreyfus tower: This tower is very close to being like our home in the Gates tower but everything is subtly off. You’ll slowly go crazy trying to navigate it like normal! Depending on the floor you’re assigned you may even have to come to terms with the fact that hardware is physical stuff with real limitations and not just a magic box.
Atlas support center: This room initially looks very nice, but you’ll quickly discover that the waiting room couches have no backs! The sterile hospital smell will invoke images of disease as you try to fend off thoughts about your own health.

After extreme vetting some (but not all) grad students will be allowed to return to the normal GSB venue. We will be picking these students based on personality incompatibilities so that fun is limited and students will decide to just work instead.

Military Terms

In undergrad I lived with a few ROTC students, and when they were talking to each other they might as well have been speaking a different language. As far as I can tell, everything in the military has a unique term not used in civilian life, even though the same concepts also exist here. Adopting these terms to academia can make day-to-day life seem more interesting, so here’s the mapping I’ve come up with after thinking about this for way too long over the last couple years:

Desk -> Bunk
Stata Center -> Barracks
Doing a postdoc -> Re-enlisting
Advisor -> Commanding officer (CO)
Stata Cafe -> Mess hall
Going to a conference -> Deploying
Campus -> Base
Graduating -> Honorable discharge
Program Committee -> Draft board
Strong Accept -> 1-A
Strong Reject -> 4-F
Non-academic -> Civilian
Lab -> Squad
Department -> Platoon
Lunch -> Rations
Paper under review -> Draft card
Missing a deadline -> Burning your draft card
Publication -> Medal
Call for papers -> Draft lottery
ACM / {your subfield’s SIG here} -> Selective Service

And here are some real word examples:

“I just got my PhD and I’m going to start a postdoc” -> “I was honorably discharged but the civilian life isn’t for me so I’m re-enlisting”

“Did you get that sandwich on campus? Do they sell it at the cafe in Stata?” -> “Woah, did you get those rations on base? Do they have it at the mess hall in the barracks?”

“My advisor wanted me to submit to SIGTBD and I spent a ton of time in my office but I still missed the deadline. It probably would have been rejected anyway” -> “My CO want me to send my draft card to the draft board and I spent a ton of time in my bunk preparing but I burned my draft card instead. I probably would have come up 4-F anyway” [1].

“I forgot to register with SIGPLAN so now my conference dues are really high” -> “I forgot to register with the Selective Service so now I can’t file the FAFSA and my tuition is really high”

This admittedly makes no sense. Why would you have to go in front of the draft board if you’re already in the military? Maybe my mapping isn’t as robust as I initially thought.

New Offices

With CSAIL rapidly growing, the question of where to put new grad students remains unanswered. I propose the following locations:

That metal box thing:

This spacious office can fit 10 grad students if you pack them in tight enough. Moreover the lack of windows will keep them from wasting time looking outside.
9th floor stairs:

Frank Gehry foresaw our space problems and added a helpful shelf to the 9th floor stairwell. The spot is large enough to fit a desk and a couple grad students. Students lucky enough to be placed here can start their day with an exciting leap from the railing to their office. The adrenaline rush that comes with knowing that messing this up could result in serious injury or death serves as a free substitute for a cup of coffee!
Senior House. MIT is turning Senior House into a grad dorm, but what grad student wants to live in an undergrad style dorm with common bathrooms? CSAIL should metastasize across campus and seize Senior House for office space.

GSB’s computing infrastructure needs your support!

After selling half of our couch space, we’ve decided to put GSB behind a NAT. This means that from now on you may not communicate directly to other GSB participants, but must instead communicate through a guy named Nat. Nat has agreed to ferry messages between participants, so don’t be surprised if everyone you talk to this week looks like Nat!

If you wish to speak to people directly you must submit to us an application consisting of your:

Name
MIT ID
Date of birth
SSN
Mother’s maiden name
Blood sample

Open Studios

You may have heard that the CSAIL Open Studios event is coming up in October and you’re probably thinking, “this is really cool, but I don’t have the {time, skill} to make anything!” Fear not! Here are our helpful tips for participating in the upcoming event using only tools at the lab.

Graphics card art. If your office is anything like mine it’s littered with graphics cards from long gone grad students. However, you can turn this digital waste into a pretty flower. Imagine that all of the graphics cards are petals and glue them on an old conference poster from 10 years ago. Then, cut the cable from that PS/2 mouse sitting on your floor and make it a stem. Stick and old CD-ROM [1] in the middle and you’ve got a nice graphics card sunflower.
That sheet of paper you’ve been using as a coaster for two years [2] has enough coffee stains on it to look like a Jackson Pollock painting.
Csail-related found poem. A found poem is constructed by taking phrases exclusively from other sources and rearranging them. Using csail-related as a source you can write countless poems about apartments in Central Square, the MIT administration, and many other things unrelated to CSAIL.

Preferably another grad student’s mix tape
Your SM diploma

Announcing CSAIL OpenID Connect Cache

This week TIG rolled out OpenID Connect to replace client certificates. However, change is bad because it violates Satoshi’s vision [1] so we’re forking reality to construct a reality where CSAIL uses our implementation of OpenID Connect, called “OpenID Connect Cache.” On the day of the fork, please choose the reality you prefer and destroy yourself in the alternate reality.

Here’s how OpenID Connect Cache algorithm works:

Attempt to log in to a CSAIL service that requires credentials.
You’ll be provided with a location in Stata to tap your MIT ID.
You have 60 seconds to tap your card on the appropriate reader.

For example, if you’re at GSB and you’re told to authenticate yourself by tapping your card on the reader outside of the Dreyfoos tower you better book it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What if I want to authenticate while I’m off campus?
A: Wait, you can leave?

Q: What if the split happens when I’m off campus?
A: Unfortunately if the reality split happens while off campus you may not have access to yourself in the OpenID Connect Cache reality. Plan on moving yourself on campus before the fork.

Q: Can you explain the name?
A: Sure. You authenticate yourself by opening your wallet, taking out your ID, and connecting it to a card reader. Your authentication token is then cached for a few minutes so you don’t have to repeat the process too frequently.

Q: That’s a really long name, can I please call it ocache?
A: Absolutely not.

Q: You’re really stretching this silly analogy.
A: You’re banished from the OpenID Connect Cache reality.

Satoshi never envisioned a client certificate-less CSAIL.

Moving Compensation

September 1st is only a week away, which means that anyone who is moving apartments will have to navigate the hell that comes from everyone in Boston moving on the same day. Given this, many of you will likely have to lean on friends to help move everything through the chaos. It feels weird to pay your friends, but it is socially acceptable (and encouraged) to pay them in beer. With that in mind, here is the official GSB beer compensation table for various moving acts. I’ve calibrated this table based on 4 (high end) beers for storing a friend’s things at my place for a couple weeks, which felt fair to me.

Dropping a box, shattering everything inside: -6 beers
Moral support [1]: 1 beer
Carrying things: 6 beers
Borrowing a car: 6 beers
Furniture disassembly / reassembly: 12 beers
Piano moving: 24 beers / flight of stairs
Helping you get your rented truck unstuck from Storrow Drive: 2000 beers

This table assumes you are buying standard craft beers. Use the following conversion factors for other types of beer:

High end craft beers [2]: Multiply by 2/3
Domestic macro beers: Multiply by 2
Light beers: No

Standing off to the side saying “you can do it!” without actually helping yourself.
The ones sold in 4 packs instead 6 packs

GSB Emails Volume 0003

2017-06-08T00:00:00-07:00

My sister told my mom about these emails and she wants to read them now so I’m posting the emails from the end of April through May. Check out volume 0001 and volume 0002 for more.

Use of GSB logo / name while marching?

It appears that the csail-related gods have blessed us with another drama filled email thread! Whether or not this thread will grow to 50+ messages is yet to be seen but we at GSB would like to offer our input:

Not only are you free to make a fool of yourself, but you may attempt to make or imply that the rest of us at GSB are fools by identifying yourself with the organization.

That is, you may feel free to use the GSB logo [1] or name at tomorrow’s march [2].

I think there’s an old logo floating around somewhere.
Though I’m not sure it’ll add any weight to your statements

How to Program Like Brett

This week I found a great video series by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) describing (among other things) how to paint in the style of various abstract expressionists. Although I don’t paint, I began wondering what an episode would look like for me. Specifically, if there were a Museum of Modern Programs, what would they say about programming like me? Here are some probable excerpts from my future episode:

Brett allocated large swaths of memory haphazardly and almost never freed them. He justified this by saying, “no one will ever run this but me and I haven’t run out of memory yet, so why bother?”
Infrared analysis shows that Brett almost never planned his implementations ahead of time and definitely never wrote any sort of specification. This often led to large, unmaintainable blobs of code that he ultimately abandoned due to the significant challenge in implementing new features.
Brett often began his programs by using smart pointers but always switched to using raw pointers after getting tired of writing std::unique_ptr<T> everywhere. Similarly, Brett often found himself removing const across his entire code-base.
Brett never fully leveraged move semantics, often returning pointers to objects unnecessarily. It’s unclear whether he did this out of disagreement with the confusing semantics around when things are copied versus moved, or if he simply didn’t understand it himself.

MAJOR CHANGES

Friendos [1],

It is with a heavy heart that I announce that our good friend and GSB regular Envelopy the envelope has passed away. He died doing what he loved most, spilling his contents all over the floor and generally being frustrating. Unlike his previous spills, he couldn’t be stuffed again as he was no longer in one piece.

R I P
Envelopy
???? - 2017

I have replaced Envelopy with a new envelope that I like to call Envelopero. Envelopero has some incredible features that I think you’ll learn to love:

Security lines so you can’t see through him
No-lick strip
Generally intact

I know this is a big change that will take some getting used to, but we’ll get over it together.

I need a gender-neutral version of “guys” that doesn’t sound too formal (everyone/everybody/friends) or southern (yall). Until someone has a better suggestion I’m going with friendos.

Boosting Toots

As some of you may have seen, MIT now has a Mastodon instance. What is Mastodon? It’s basically just Twitter with the following changes:

Tweeting is called “tooting.” Is this a fart joke? Perhaps it’s a comment on the quality of most tweets? I’m still not sure, but I’m just going to assume the creators aren’t familiar with the American English definition of the word “toot.”
It’s federated, which is fancy computer science speak for “it doesn’t always work.”
It’s free software, which means that someone will respond to this email telling me that I should fix problem two myself instead of just complaining about it.
Retweeting is called boosting, probably because retooting sounds really strange.

Right now our local mastodon time line is full of undergrads complaining, but grad students love complaining too so what are you waiting for!

De-stress Test

Congratulations to all the students who finished courses this week! As you take a breath and relax, think about your computer who worked so hard along side you. Here are some tips to help you de-stress your computer and best friend:

Underclock the CPU. Give your computer a break by making it do a few billion fewer cycles per second.
Mineral oil bath. Apparently it’s safe to submerge computers in mineral oil. I imagine it’s pretty gross to use your laptop afterward though.
Staycation. You don’t have time to take your computer on a vacation, so give it a staycation by setting your wallpaper to something relaxing. Keep in mind that images that are relaxing to a human aren’t necessarily relaxing to a computer. A simple, repeating pattern will do!

Make Our Planet Uninhabitable Again!!!!

As the president has affirmed his commitment to destroying our planet, we here at GSB will be enacting new policies to help America keep its place among the top CO2 emitters per capita:

Since the Stata Center air conditioning is so intense, we will begin burning coal at GSB for warmth.
Carbon sinks are banned. Don’t even think about bringing a plant to GSB. The federal government is firm in its beliefs that carbon needs to be liberated from its earthly prison. Carbon should be free to roam our atmosphere and warm the planet and stuff.
Join us on our annual trip to the arctic where we will be melting as much ice as we can with butane torches.
We encourage as much mindless consumption as possible. Never think about the consequences of your purchases. If you ever start wondering why all that plastic junk you buy is so cheap, try not to think about the externalities that weren’t factored into the price, of which pollution is a major component. Just buy more fidget spinners and consume beyond your means like a good American.

Help us accelerate the end of the human experiment at this week’s GSB!

GSB Emails Volume 0002

2017-04-20T00:00:00-07:00

More silly emails from November through April. Check out volume 0001 for more.

Three Course Lunch

My fellow GSB Czar Thomas brought it to my attention this week that in France school children are given a 3 course lunch to eat over the period of 2 hours. Having gone to public school in the US with short lunch periods [1], this blew my mind. Of course, not only is their lunch period almost 4 times longer, the food is supposedly pretty good and relatively healthy. I tried to extrapolate my 35 minute lunch experience growing up to fill 2 hours and 3 courses.

1st course: Probably required to be some fruit or vegetable. Congress says pizza can count as a vegetable for the purpose of school lunch so it’s likely a gross pizza square.

2nd course: Mystery protein. Likely some meat that couldn’t be sold to anyone but a public school district. Large glass of soda [2].

In between 2nd and 3rd course: Picked on by slightly more popular kids for half an hour [3].

3rd course: One of those frosted brownies I’ve never seen outside of school lunch. These were actually pretty good though.

My high school lunch break was only 35 minutes!
My high school also had some exclusive deal with coca-cola. I’ve heard foreigners are often surprised to learn that we have soda vending machines in school cafeterias here.
On second thought maybe limiting lunch to 35 minutes was a good thing.

Return

After three long weeks without GSB we are finally returning! I know what you’re thinking, “but Brett, since you guys have carelessly canceled GSB three weeks in a row I haven’t spoken to anyone! How can I be sure that I can still speak at all?”

Fear not mute CSAILor! As Thomas and I have both seen the new documentary “Arrival,” we posses the necessary skills to teach you to speak from scratch [1].

After we’ve retaught you how to speak in thirty minutes you can follow us down to the mixer with BCS on the 4th floor at 6pm confident in your ability to converse again.

So long as you’re OK learning a language of circles with little fringes on the edges. Cool ink jets in your hand not included.

DRM Enabled

With the W3C considering the addition of DRM to open web standards GSB is considering adding it’s own DRM to the GSB experience. Here’s what you can expect from DRM enabled GSB:

Memory management: Memories are a serious copyright violation and people who can remember coming to GSB might not want to come back! Therefore, we will be employing memory wiping technology after each meeting.

Exclusion: When a non-GSB participant glances in our direction they are stealing our intellectual property. Therefore, GSB will now take place behind a large curtain with directional speakers blasting white noise in every other direction so non-participants cant steal our proprietary conversations.

Access Revocation: Just because you got into GSB doesn’t mean that you can stay. At any point we can revoke your access at which point the floor will open up and you’ll be ejected to the 8th floor.

We welcome all EME supporting W3C members to join us and have their dreams realized.

Shift/Reduce Conflict on “it”

Yesterday marijuana became officially legal for recreational use in Massachusetts. While at least one CSAILor was very happy about this, there is an unforeseen consequence that has gotten very little attention: the phrase “legalize it” is now ambiguous.

No longer can a band shout out “legalize it” at a concert and get instant cheers from the crowd. Now, they’ll be met nothing but confusion. Our kids will grow up hearing mediocre music about the legalization effort [1] and have no idea what hell “it” is. Therefore, I propose that we find a new “it” to push for next. I hereby cast my vote for the next “it” to be Kinder Surprise Eggs. I believe that if we follow the path of marijuana legalization effort we will, in a few decades, be able to enjoy chocolate eggs with little toys in them.

What we learned from the marijuana legalization effort is this: we must first legalize kinder eggs for medical use. Then, after public hysteria dies down we shoot for recreational kinder eggs. The medical benefits are clear, depression can be temporarily alleviated because:

Chocolate tastes good.
Toys are fun.

Moreover, although alcohol and tobacco kill millions of Americans, chocolate eggs with toys in them kill approximately zero Americans over the age of 21 [2].

Since the legalization effort will take a while, we’ll get a few more decades out of the phrase “legalize it” and our kids will still be able to relate to songs about marijuana prohibition.

Help us create NORCEL [3] at this week’s GSB.

It took us too long to take advantage of Peter Tosh’s promise to advertise marijuana for free.
Sorry kiddos, these things are gonna have to be adult only initially.
National Organization for the Reform of Chocolate Egg Laws

The Great Bitcoin Conspiracy

Anyone who has learned a bit about Bitcoin knows that the cryptocurrency was created under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto and the real identity of the developer(s) is unknown. However, I claim that the answer to this longstanding mystery is hidden in plain sight. Often, author’s names are written in <last name>, <first name> format. What happens when you arrange Satoshi Nakamoto this way? You get:

Nakamoto, SAtoshi.

That’s right, NSA [1]. Why would the NSA invent Bitcoin? Thanks to one redditor we know the answer. The NSA created Bitcoin to indirectly fund the development of ASICs specially designed to crack SHA256. Right now they’re mining bitcoins, but in the future they’ll be using these machines to reverse your password hashes!

Side note: the government loves these little tricks. Take Neil A for example, the first man to walk on the moon. If you reverse his name you get “Alien.” Undeniable proof that the moon landing was staged by aliens in Arizona.

Ham Radio

I bought a new shortwave radio this week and I discovered something while listening to the HF ham radio bands: ham radio operators only talk about radios. Ham radio is sold as something that can be used to talk to anyone around the world about anything but in practice these people don’t seem to have any shared experiences other than the fact that they like radios leading to conversations exclusively about power levels and new transmitters.

Can you imagine if other communication worked this way? Individuals talking on phones only have conversations about phones. People emailing each other only talk about email communications [1]. TV shows are exclusively about how televisions work [2].

I just got a new email client this week and my email has never been faster.
Jerry Seinfeld famously said, “have you ever noticed how a cathode ray paints the screen of a CRT monitor in successive passes?”

Laundry Tokens

One of the major downsides of paying with cash for something is that you’ll often get these metal disks back if what you’re buying doesn’t cost a whole dollar amount. While these disks technically have value, they’re effectively worthless. There’s no good way to carry them around and they’re a pain to count out and use. There is one exception however: quarters.

Quarters are still useless to most people, but for those of us who use coin-op laundry machines they feel like they’re worth more than 25 cents because they save you a trip to the bank. Therefore, I’ve started calling quarters “laundry tokens” to capture the rift in quarter value between those who use coin-op laundry machines and those who don’t [1]. If Coin Star can convert your change to cash for a fee [2], can I buy quarters for less than face value from those with laundry machines? After all, quarters are a burden to them and I would be doing them a favor by exchanging the quarters for money you can actually spend.

Sell me your quarters for 20 cents each at this week’s GSB.

The last time I moved to a place with free laundry I had a roll of quarters that went unused for 2 years! Where could I spend $10 in quarters without feeling like a jerk?
The existence of a business that just takes your money and gives you less money back and nothing else proves that coins should be abolished.

Email Tips for Busy People

Do you feel like emails are consuming your life? We at GSB have a few email tips to help you cut down on the time you spend staring at your inbox.

Don’t read them. You’re a grad student. You don’t get important emails.
Give all of your contacts a time range within which to send you emails. For example, 1015-1045. Delete any emails that arrive outside of that range; they probably came from a stranger and mom said not to talk to strangers [1].
Completely drop out of society. If you never interact with other people or services you’ll never get any email. Using tip 2 will put you well on your way achieving this tip.
Require proof of work on all emails. Everyone who write you an email should attach [2] a proof of work demonstrating that they spent a few seconds cracking some hashes. This will virtually eliminate spam! Unfortunately, making this change will take a bit of work (heh). First, you’ll need to add a proof of work field to the email standard. Then, you need to convince everyone to use your new standard. While completing these steps will take a significant amount of time and effort you will likely spend less time on this than a lifetime of reading emails.
Use the NSA. It’s time we got something in return for all that bulk data collection. If the NSA is already reading our emails, would it hurt them to delete some spam? Or maybe draft responses for us? Write a bill requiring the NSA to take email out of our hands completely.

Or even worse, it could have come from someone who doesn’t respect your arbitrary rules! Cut them out of your life.
My email client is freaking out that I used the ‘a’ word here and didn’t attach anything.

Late Policy

As professors employ more complex late policies of dubious usefulness [1] we here at GSB have invented a late policy that maximizes entertainment at the expense of usefulness.

We propose a lookup table based late policy where the table is not known at the start of the semester. The table should be at a minute granularity and the penalty need not be monotonically increasing. For example, an assignment turned in 3600 minutes late may result in a 10 point penalty while the same assignment turned in 3601 minutes late may result in a 2 point penalty.

A professor implementing this strategy should also make a forum available for penalty discussion. Students can slowly figure out the elements in the table using this forum. This gives students two choices whenever they turn in a late assignment:

Turn it in at a time with the lowest known penalty
Take a risk and turn it in at a time with an unknown penalty, which could be lower than any seen so far!

Add an entry with a negative penalty to incentivize students to fill out the lookup table! Let the students know this entry exists and watch them compete to find the extra credit. If a student finds it, lie that there is another entry that nets even more bonus points.

I’m looking at anyone who makes me evaluate a function [2] to determine how many points I’ll lose.
Preemptive note for the pedant who will respond to this email to tell me that many late policies are functions even if they aren’t formalized: You know what I mean here.

Proof of Engagement

With Bitcoin hitting all time highs and continuing to grow, many people are wondering: is this really a good use of energy? While there have been quite a few proposals to move to non proof of work systems to reduce energy usage, we here at GSB have solved the problem with our Proof of Engagement (PoE) system. This system is revolutionary because it is technically a proof of work system where a human being does the work manually. Here’s how it works:

You sit at your computer and start the mining program
The program shows you an advertisement. This could be a video, image, or even just text.
After you’ve seen the ad, the mining program quizzes you about the content of the ad.
If you answer all of the questions correctly you are given the right to publish the next block with probability p where p is set to achieve an average block time of 10 minutes.
The published block is sponsored by the company that created the ad from which the block was mined [1].

This process can be repeated as many times as the user likes! Although it may take months or even years to find a block, users will become very knowledgeable about the brands surrounding them every day.

If you’re noided that advertisers will somehow take advantage of our brilliant plan, consider this: abusing the PoE mechanism will cause the underlying currency to crash. This will reduce the consumer’s spending power and hamper their ability to purchase products.

Sprite presents: The genesis block.

Abstract Expressionism

Recently I had a conversation with a fellow grad student about how Vaporwave will be taught about in music history classes in a few decades. I likened it to abstract expressionism or avante-garde poetry and she rolled her eyes so hard that if she rolled them any harder they would have fallen out of her head. Although we disagreed, this conversation got me thinking back to the art history classes I took in undergrad.

As background for the rest of this email, here’s a quick and overly-simplified art history lesson:

People painted realistic paintings. They were painting objects or scenes and the fact that these were paintings was secondary to the content of the painting itself.
Cameras came out (and a bunch of other stuff happened too) and painting had a bit of an existential crisis. Why paint when you can take a picture? Artists started to think more about the medium they painted in (2 dimensional canvas) and their tools (paint) and began focusing more on the features of painting that are unique to painting than the actual subjects of their paintings.
This thinking continued and compounded for a few decades until we got abstract expressionism (Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, etc). Clement Greenberg (a controversial art critic) loved this stuff. He saw it as art without meaning [1]. It required the viewer to question what they were seeing and really think.
Some people continued painting realistic paintings. Greenberg called this “kitsch” and claimed it was for the uncultured masses as it required no thought to understand [2].

Right now I think email is in stage 1 in the art history time line. I’ve yet to see an email that embraces the form of the email medium over the content of the message itself. I don’t even know what this email would look like, but I plan to think about this for a week and send what I come up as a GSB email [3]. Here are some starting points:

I will be working in plain text email. HTML email feels like a different medium to me, more like a website.
csail-related sticks a footer at the bottom of every email. This is an unfortunate restriction on my artistic freedom and will have to be incorporated in some way.
Email is 2-dimesional, but the monitor it’s displayed on affects the dimensions. This can be somewhat remedied by using a narrow column width and ensuring the email isn’t too long. Or maybe scrolling IS an email specific feature to be highlighted.
It’s hard to find features that are email specific and not available to other text based computer mediums.
I encourage responses to this upcoming abstract email to be similarly abstract

After this email is sent all further email with clear meaning on csail-related will be kitsch, emails for the unenlightened masses. Meanwhile, I’ll be up in my ivory tower sending abstract emails to myself.

The abstract expressionists themselves often ascribed meaning to their work.
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch”
You’ll know it when you see it.

FWD: FWD: FWD: RE: GSB Tonight: ###########

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[[[ ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<  ]]]


>>>> %%%%$$$(()))))){{]]]]]]]]??
>>> !!!!!!!!!!!
>> $$$$$???$$$?[}}}}{[{{{]]]]!!!\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\?
> !@#$%^&*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@!@#$%^&*!!

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[$]:                                                            +
[^]: ____________________________________________________________


View in HTML in your browser | Unsubscribe

Sweep the Heap!

I was looking at the proposed changes for C++17 and was shocked to see that the C++ standards organization is removing trigraphs from the language specification.

This removal shows how out of touch bureaucrats at the ISO are with us everyday programmers. Who are they to limit our artistic expression??! Now my exciting program that prints the executable’s name

int main(int argc, const char* argv??(??)) ??<
  printf("%s??/n", argv??(0??));

  int* a = nullptr;
  // What's this?  A null pointer dereference????????/
  printf("%d??/n", *a);
  // nah

  return 0;
??>

has to be changed to this boring piece of junk

// Ugh, braces and brackets are so boring
int main(int argc, const char* argv[]) {
  // Who still uses the backslash character in 2017????
  printf("%s\n", argv[0]);

  int* a = nullptr;
  // What's this?  A null pointer dereference \
  printf("%d\n", *a);
  // nah, but you already knew that because getting rid of trigraphs
  // made this trick obvious

  return 0;
}

Join me and the powerful obfuscated C++ lobby to sweep the heap and put new leadership in the C++ standards organization. Together we can make C++17 great again.

Sometimes you come across a popular website feature that was ported to an unexpected place. For example, this week I discovered that Wolfram Alpha sometimes gives you queries they think are related to what you searched for. I can’t think of many cases where this would actually be useful, but it gives some insight into what other people use the service for. For example:

millionth digit of sqrt(0)

I often forget the millionth digit of 0 so it’s nice to be able to look that up when I need it. It’s too embarrassing to admit this though, so I look up up the millionth digit of sqrt(0) instead.

Am i too drunk to calculate?

If you have to ask, the answer is yes. Also, the user who asked this query didn’t specify what they were calculating. Could you measure drunkenness by ability to calculate? For example, I could be sober enough to do basic arithmetic but not sober enough to take an integral [1].

analyze Captain Marvel-like curve image

I have no idea what this user was going for.

Though it’s been 6 years since I took integral calculus so I’m not sure I could do this sober most of the time either.

GSB Emails Volume 0001

2016-10-31T00:00:00-07:00

GSB is a social event in CSAIL hosted every Friday. I am running it this year along with another grad student and one of our duties involves sending a humorous email before the event every week. I have collected some of my emails from August through October below, enjoy!

Contributing Back

There’s been a lot of talk this week on csail-related about getting undergrads to work on more open source projects, but why haven’t more people been talking about getting the open source projects to contribute undergrads back?

The Tor Project could send us three random students so we can communicate with each other without anyone knowing who we are talking to [1]. Google could send students who look over your shoulder when you’re reading and try to sell you junk based on what they think you like. Haskell would send a student who leaves all of their work to the last minute and attempts to finish it right before the deadline [2]. We can thank Mozilla for already sending a student to borrow a bunch of white board markers and never give them back [3]. Rumor has it they are also sending another student to invent a new language for every project they work on. Facebook is sending a student who runs everywhere and knocks things over [4].

Extra points if the third undergrad is kinda shady and impersonates the person you think you’re talking to.
Lazy assignment evaluation.
Firefox often “borrows” several gigs of ram on my machine.
“Move fast and break things.”

TV/VCR Repair

As many you probably know, ITT Tech was shut down by the federal government this week [1]. But what does the Department of Education have to say to people like me?!? I graduated ITT Tech with a degree in TV/VCR Repair and a minor in Laserdisc Studies. Now I sit here at MIT [2] pursuing a PhD in Cassette Tape Hiss Reduction.

I wonder if anyone else will have the experience of climbing to the forefront of technology through exploitation by a for-profit university! Who will fill all of those new slots opened up by the new MIT.floppy building [3]? Who will advance the exploding field of vinyl records [4]? Who will invent the next HD DVD?

I don’t know what the future holds, but I think things look rather bleak for revolutionary technologies like zip drives, minidiscs, CRTs, and wax cylinders.

ITT Educational Services, Inc. to Cease Operations at all ITT Technical Institutes Following Federal Actions
MIT shares two letters with ITT. Coincidence?
Building 5.25.
This one might only be a half joke.

A Transversal Imaginative Journey across the Realm of Mathematics

Have you ever wondered what a paper written from Atlantis looks like? Wonder no more.

If you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, check out the paraconsistency newsletter. A word of warning though, it might be the only math newsletter with a soundtrack so turn your volume down [1].

It’s pretty good though so you might want to turn your volume UP instead.

Elevator Coin

Are you tired of waiting for the elevators in the Stata Center? We’ve all been there, you call the elevator to go to class and by the time it arrives you’ve missed your midterm! There has been a surprising amount of research on elevator scheduling [1] but as far as I can tell no one has proposed a purely capitalist solution to elevator scheduling. Therefore, we propose Elevator Coin (EVC).

Here’s what you can expect from EVC:

Elevator reservations. Know you’re leaving the office at 6pm and don’t want to wait for an elevator? Schedule an elevator using EVC! The elevator can be reserved by whoever is willing to pay the most per second to hold an elevator at a certain time. 30 seconds at peak time might cost you but you can save money (load balancing!) by scheduling your elevator trips at off peak hours.
Elevator preempting. Have to be somewhere right now and don’t want to wait? You can preempt an elevator in transit by paying more than the sum of the people in the elevator. The elevator will instantly change direction to serve the highest bidder.
Anonymity. EVC uses zero knowledge proofs to facilitate transactions keeping your destinations and bids private. This also makes EVC perfectly fungible as elevator miners won’t be able to reject your transactions based on previous trips to shady destinations [2].
Elevator safety feature abuse prevention. EVC takes the abuse of elevator safety features to subvert the payment system very seriously. Holding the elevator door with your arm to allow a freeloader in will result in instant fines based on current elevator bid amounts.
EVC derivatives. Since we expect EVC to really take off we’ll be selling derivatives on the performance of EVC. Want EVC at today’s price a month from now? Buy EVC futures! Convinced that some elevator abusers wont pay their fines? Buy EVC credit default swaps!

But don’t just take our word about it, here’s what free market proponent Gary Johnson had to say about our revolutionary idea:

“What’s Elevator Coin?” –Gary Johnson.

“Elevator traffic handbook : theory and practice” by Gina Barney is a 400+ page book on elevator scheduling! It’s also available at the MIT library.
Like the G9 lounge at 5:30pm on a Friday.

Passwords

Remember when passwords were easy? You always knew your password was just “password” or your username. But now with all the increasingly complex requirements your passwords are quickly becoming too hard for everyone to know! While some might argue this has some benefits [1], it also makes your life harder. A new study showed that the average American wastes 5 years of their life filling out password reset forms and that number is only going up. Our presidential candidates are all unacceptably silent on this issue.

But fear not! We at GSB have found the solution. Everyone in the world should just use the same password. After much deliberation [2] we came up with the perfect canonical password to satisfy even the most obnoxious minimum password requirements. Here it is:

P@55w0Rd

The best part is, if everyone uses it you don’t even have to remember it. Forgot which parts are capitalized and which parts are numbers? Just Google, “what’s my password?” and you’ll get the answer in seconds.

If your favorite website [3] requires passwords longer than 8 characters, simply pad the end of the password with 1s to reach the minimum (but do not go over the minimum). So, a 12 character minimum password would be “P@55w0Rd1111”.

Finally, this change makes life easier for programmers. No longer do you have to worry about salting and hashing passwords to store in some big database. In fact, you don’t need to worry about passwords at all! Just hard code “P@55w0Rd” in your application as the only acceptable password.

Like keeping unauthorized users out
Roughly 5 minutes.
neopets.com

RIP Vine

As some of you may know, Vine is being discontinued. I must admit though, I never mastered the art of boiling something down to six se [1]

Insert endless loop here.

Abstract Art in the Early Digital Age

2016-02-07T00:00:00-08:00

Before the age of the personal computer, computers were primarily available only to research facilities and large businesses. As such, their user base was comprised of mathematicians, scientists, and business professionals. Many early mathematical computers were programmed using punch cards and outputted to mathematical plotters, large machines that draw on graph paper much like a human would. With these new devices filling research labs around the country, a subset of mathematicians attempted to create art with them. The resulting works were created primarily with mathematical plotters, but others were created with oscilloscopes. Although these artists were the first to use computers, mathematicians have had a fascination with art for thousands of years. Pythagoras influenced Greek artists as far back as the 6th century BC to use aesthetically pleasing ratios in their art. With more tools at their disposal 1960s mathematicians were able to explore the link between beauty and mathematics with much more nuance than ever before (Phillips 126). Early computer art was initially met with skepticism from the public who doubted whether something computer made could be called art to begin with. However, computer artists, such as Roman Verostko and Ben Laposky, created algorithmic art with many themes paralleling those found in the abstract expressionist and modernist movements. These artists created works that embrace the limitations of their mediums and are entirely self-referential. Moreover, early computer artists saw algorithmic art as a universal visual representation of mathematics going so far as to as to claim that their work indexes mathematics and computation. They explored profound content, such as the inherent dualities of the world around us. Lastly, they paved the way for modern computer graphics by inspiring computer scientists to explore the realm of computer art and to envision a future in which any artist may employ the use of a computer.

Figure 1: Verostko, Roman. “Epigenetic Painting: Software As Genotype.” Leonardo. 23.1 (1990): 17-23. Print.

Roman Verostko is known for his artwork created with a mathematical plotter. To create his art, Verostko modified brushes to fit where the plotter would normally hold its pen as seen in figure 1. Verostko, much like the abstract expressionists and the modernists, formalized plotter art to draw attention to its strengths, while acknowledging its weaknesses. He, “embraced the constructivist concept of a ‘new reality’ that could stand by itself as an art form without reference to other reality” (Verostko, “30 Years” 230). Historically, painting almost exclusively represented themes outside of itself. Even then, only a small subset of themes, such as religious scenes, were deemed acceptable for high art. The modernists abhorred this concept and gradually shifted toward paintings that were more self-referential in nature. That is, modernist paintings embraced the strengths and weaknesses of painting to create works that consisted of less conventional themes that were not painted to be realistic, but were stylized using line and color to emphasize qualities that are unique to painting. The abstract expressionists, much like Verostko, pushed this to its logical conclusion by creating paintings that entirely lacked reference to world outside of themselves. Verostko accomplished this by investigating forms that are unique to algorithmic drawing. He argues that these unique forms are created by form-generating power, variability and self-similarity of form, and tireless and extensive precision in drawing. Form-generating power is the idea that most algorithmic drawings require the use of functions that are too complex for any human to compute mentally. This factor means that setting parameters and programming the drawings is generally a trial and error process. Variability and self-similarity of form is the theory that changing a piece of code will have a unique effect on the algorithmic drawing, but the drawing will still be similar to the previous drawing. Thus, variability in a small part of the program can create a family of similar, but unique drawings. Tireless and extensive precision in drawing is the idea that the computer and plotter never get tired. They can draw with precision indefinitely, removing the unique artifacts created from drawing by hand (Verostko, “30 Years” 230-1). This conscious reflection on the forms that are unique to automatic drawing is the same attention to medium specificity that the abstract expressionists and the modernists valued.

In addition to medium specificity, Verostko was interested in the, “apparent polarities of the human experience” (Verostko, “Epigenetic Painting” 19). However, he was most intrigued by the polarity between order and chaos, a theme that pervades all of his works. Verostko believed that the human experience was dictated by balancing control (order) and uncontrol (chaos). For example, an (unordered) impulse may give rise to an (ordered) conscious response. He believed that order and chaos were in a constant dance, pushing and pulling each other around an equilibrium point like a tide ebbing and flowing. Moreover, Vertosko connected control to life and uncontrol to death. This interest in the duality of control and uncontrol parallels Mark Rothko’s interest in the duality of life and death, most notably seen in the Rothko chapel in which the viewer is faced with a painting representing an abstraction of life as they walk in and a painting representing an abstraction of death as they walk out. Rothko believed that all of our actions are motivated by a desire to avoid death. This idea is similar to Vertosko’s idea that conscious actions are examples of control, which in turn is connected to life. He captured this relationship between control and uncontrol in software through formalization of the process behind expressing an art concept. Given that computers are very rigid, controlled systems, Vertosko introduced uncontrol to his work by adding randomness to his algorithms. More than adding uncontrol, Vertosko saw this addition of randomness as parallel to the use of automatic drawing by the surrealists and abstract expressionist. Where surrealists drew from the id and abstract expressionists drew from the collective unconscious, Vertosko’s algorithmic art drew from the computer’s pseudorandom number generator. Since computers are inherently deterministic they can not generate true random numbers. Instead, they take many inputs, such as sensor readings, to a mathematical function whose output only appears random to a human. Vertosko saw this use of the computer’s pseudorandom number generator as a source of automatic drawing for the machine. He thought it, “yeilded insight into computerized automatic processes” (Verostko, “Epigenetic Painting” 20). In addition to randomly generating paintings, Verostko also randomly generated titles for his works such as Your Joyous Alarm and Instantly Frayed Whimsy (Verostko, “Epigenetic Painting”, 17-23).

Figure 2: Left: Simple two input figure. Right: Oscillon 263, 1960.
Laposky, Ben F. “Oscillons: Electronic Abstractions.” Leonardo. 2.4 (1969): 345-354. Print.

Like Verostko, Ben Laposky was interested in exploring the strengths and limitations of his medium, as well as identifying the meaning in his art. However, rather than using a mathematical plotter, Laposky made his algorithmic art using an oscilloscope. An oscilloscope is an instrument that takes an electrical signal as input and displays the signal’s waveform on a small screen. By attaching separate wave generators to the vertical and horizontal inputs of the oscilloscope Laposky was able to generate much more complex patterns than he could with a single wave generator. One such pattern is the left figure in figure 2. He called the figures he produced Oscillons or electronic abstractions. For even more complex figures, like Oscillon 263 on the right of figure 2, Laposky chained multiple wave generators together in series or combined the outputs from multiple generators in parallel. Due to the limitations of the oscilloscope screen the Oscillons, “may be kinetic–they may pulsate in their parts, expanding and contracting, or change back and forth between two shapes” (Laposky 350). This kinetic effect is an artifact of the way waveforms are drawn on an oscilloscope. An oscilloscope screen draws a point by aiming a beam of electrons at a material coating the inside of the glass screen. This material is excited when struck by the electrons and lights up in response. To draw a figure, the beam traces the figure repeatedly. Limitations of our eyes and the fact that the material takes some time to dim creates the illusion of a static image. However, the complexity of various Oscillons exceeds the oscilloscope’s capacity to draw a static image, thus resulting in a kinetic figure. Just as the abstract expressionists aimed for works that were medium specific, Laposky saw this kinetic quality of the Oscillons as benefit of the medium to be aimed for rather than a limitation to shy away from. In addition to the two dimentional screen, this kinetic factor adds time as a third dimension that is accentuated by the artifacts of tracing the Oscillon with an electron beam. In order for a figure to be an Oscillon, Laposky argues that it must have been composed by the conscious decision of an artist and may not be a naturally occurring form. That is to say, an Oscillon contains an imprint of the artist’s thought. Lastly, Oscillons are, “visual manifestations of some of the basic invisible aspects of nature, such as the movement of electrons and energy fields” (Laposky 353). Just as many abstracts expressionists painted indices of the collective unconscious that invisibly affect every person, Laposky’s Oscillons are indices of the powerful yet invisible forces of nature that compose the entire universe (Laposky 347-53).

Although Verostko and Laposky are very much major characters of the algorithmic art movement, they certainly were not the only algorithmic artists at the time. Algorithmic artists explored themes of randomness, medium specificity, and self-referentiality. One group of such artists collectively referred to themselves as the Algorists. The Algorists were primarily mathematicians and programmers, but also consisted of artists like Manfred Mohr who came to the digital art scene from abstract expressionism and was self taught in computer science (Dietrich 162). Much like the abstract expressionists, the Algorists were curious about the strengths and weaknesses of computing as an artistic medium. Most commonly, they explored the, “relationship between rule-based systems and randomness” (Phillips 126). This fascination with the contrast between the procedural and the random is very similar to Verostko’s artistic interests in the duality of control and uncontrol (Verostko, “Epigenetic Painting” 19-20).

Although themes of randomness and computer specific features are the most present in the algorithmic art movement, other less popular themes can be found. Some artists, such as Charles Csuri, saw algorithmic art as enabling the artist to explore the consequences of creating a universe with physical laws different from the laws of our own universe. In doing so, these artists considered their work to be an exercise in science fiction. Other artists, such as Vera Molnar, embraced the nonhumanness of the computer. Molnar credited the computer with allowing her to, “go beyond the bounds of learning, cultural heritage, environment – in short, of the social thing, which we must consider to be our second nature” (Dietrich 162). By removing all social influences, Molnar’s works are in line with Greenberg’s beliefs that painting should be entirely self referential. Molnar’s works are unable to refer outside of themselves because they lack external inputs altogether. Some artists, such as Hiroshi Kawano went so far as to claim that, “human standards of aesthetics are not applicable to computer art” (Dietrich 162), and therefore, humans must be careful to not impose their own sense of beauty on the computer. The programmer in this scenario plays the role of the teacher, or “meta-artist” and the computer becomes the artist. Harold Cohen similarly claimed that the programmer, “like a child, can only get in the way” (Dietrich 162). This act of stepping aside to allow the computer to express itself parallels Jackson Pollock acting as a channel for the collective unconscious without imposing himself on his works. Regardless of their motivations, all of these artists explored themes that were specific to their medium in a way similar to the abstract expressionists. Where the abstract expressionists deconstructed painting to its strengths and weaknesses, algorithmic artists similarly deconstructed computer art.

Although algorithmic art was never popular by any means, it did draw the attention of some art critics. In an early showing of plotter art by Georg Nees, the audience questioned whether or not the drawings could be considered art, and if so, whether the artist was in fact Georg Nees or the computer he used. In response to this, the arranger of the exhibit labeled the pieces as artificial art. In his essay, “Art in the Time of the Artificial,” Frierder Nake claims that this label is absurd as all art, human-made or otherwise, is artificial. That is, art is a purely man-made construct that does not exist in nature and is therefore, by definition, artificial. To address the fact that the art is virtual, Nake offers that, “virtuality is not the opposite of reality. It is part of reality! Virtual reality is the semiotic domain of reality” (Nake 164). That is, virtual reality, and therefore algorithmic art, exists as signs referring to real objects or concepts. To further define the process of creating computer art, Nake employs semiotic theory. First, an artist translates the referent to a sign. Then, the signifier is pulled apart from the sign as a detailed description of the referent. This signifier can then be translated to a computable structure. It is through combining and manipulating these structures that algorithmic art is created. Depending on the type of structures used, the result falls into two main categories. If the structures are derived from the real world, then the algorithmic transformation produces a new sign that is an abstraction of the inputs. However, if the structures are derived from the artist’s imagination, the transformation produces a new sign that is a concretization of the inputs. Regardless of where the input structures came from, the output is an entirely new aesthetic sign consisting not of a signifier and signified, but of a calculating and calculated. Since these signs are produced computationally they do not refer to any physical object. In this sense, the computational signs are indices of the processes that created them. Therefore, any computer art that significantly manipulates its input signs is entirely self-referential, a property that is essential to abstract expressionism and modernism (Nake 163-4).

Though algorithmic art failed to achieve any popular appeal, it had profound impacts on the future of computer art and the young field of computer graphics. One such example of this was an early emulation of grey scale printing invented by engineers at Bell Laboratories. While plotters worked well for painting, they lacked to ability to print images due to the fact that they could only print in strict black and white with no shades of grey in-between. That is, one could not vary the amount of black ink used in a mark. However, Ken Knowlton and Leon Harmon of Bell Labs discovered that by superimposing characters plotted on microfilm, they could trick the eye into seeing various shades of grey. By filling a small unit area with some amount of black while leaving the rest white, the eye will perceive that unit as grey. The ratio of black to white determines how light or dark the area is. This process allowed artists to create more complex forms entirely on the computer and simply print them out (Knowlton, Harmon 1-19).

Another example of the impact of early computer art can be found in Oskar Beckmann's studio computers. Beckmann began creating art using storage oscilloscopes but quickly became frustrated with the process and built a specialised computer for artists with his son. In the process, Beckmann theorised about what a computer for artistic design should accomplish and came up with a set of requirements for a "studio computer". These requirements included, "a computer for the artist's studio must be operated by the artist, without the 'detour' of programming" (Oberquelle, Beckmann 24). In short, the computer was designed to remove the technical background required to create computer art thus opening the field to non-programmers and non-mathematicians. (Oberquelle, Beckmann 20-30).

With the added abilities of these new technologies, computer art moved away from abstractions. This demonstrates that much of the abstract art created on the computer was done out of necessity as the limitations of the medium were too great to print forms that were representational of real objects. Moreover, the extremely primitive technology required the early algorithmic artists to philosophize about the strengths of their medium in a way similar to the modernists and abstract expressionists. Where many early algorithmic artists saw the unique forms produced by computers as essential, later artists like Beckmann found them to be annoying artifacts that limited their artistic expression. Modern computers have mostly followed Beckmann’s vision of assisting artists rather than imposing their own “personality” onto the artwork.

Regardless, the plotter art of Verostko balancing control and uncontrol, as well as the kinetic, pulsating Oscillons of Laposky and many more contributions from this small art movement exist as the culmination of an unlikely pairing of abstract art and mathematics. These artists explored themes that paralleled those of the abstract expressionists. They achieved a universal visual representation of mathematics by imaging waveforms, and incorporating pseudorandom number generators into their artwork. This universal representation was leveraged to explore profound content such as the duality of control and uncontrol. Lastly, these works were unquestionably medium specific as the algorithmic artists philosophized about why some computer outputs can be called art, and how to achieve these aesthetic forms. Though this artwork has been mostly forgotten, it paved the way for modern computer graphics in a time before the existence of digital displays.

References

Dietrich, Frank. “Visual Intelligence: the First Decade of Computer Art (1965-1975).” Ieee Computer Graphics and Applications. 5.7 (n.d.): 33-45. Print.
Knowlton, Ken, and Leon Harmon. “Computer-produced Grey Scales.” Computer Graphics and Image Processing. 1.1 (1972): 1-20. Print.
Laposky, Ben F. “Oscillons: Electronic Abstractions.” Leonardo. 2.4 (1969): 345-354. Print.
Nake, Frieder. “Art in the Time of the Artificial.” Leonardo. 31.3 (1998). Print.
Oberquelle, Horst, and Oskar Beckmann. “Beckmann’s Studio Computers Specified for Early Computer Art.” Ieee Annals of the History of Computing. 30.3 (2008): 20-31. Print
Phillips, Ann L. “The Algorists.” American Scientist. 99.2 (2011). Print.
Verostko, Roman. “Epigenetic Painting: Software As Genotype.” Leonardo. 23.1 (1990): 17-23. Print.
Verostko, Roman. “Form, Grace and Stark Logic: 30 Years of Algorithmic Drawing.” Leonardo. 43.3 (2010): 230-231. Print.

The Internet is Ephemeral

2015-11-15T00:00:00-08:00

Well, not the internet itself, but rather the content within. I spent some time today at a local zine library that provided an awesome opportunity to explore various subcultures through independent publications. By the nature of zines, most of these publications had extremely limited distribution with just a few printed copies. However, as they are physical objects, print materials are easily collectable. That is to say, they cannot be removed from the library by the creator arbitrarily¹.

Although new zines are still being created, many subcultures now have a predominately online presence. While it is easy today to find antiwar pamphlets, joke Harvard newspapers, and anarchist guides from decades ago, it is unclear how much of the content produced today will still exist online 30, 50 or 100 years from now. Websites disappear frequently and with them their content is lost. This is entirely different from the print world where a publisher going out of business has no impact on their publications already in circulation. Although the loss of publishers or limited circulation can make some content hard to find, it does not completely destroy it.

Of course, I’m not the first person to think of this. The Internet Archive catalogs web content like a library to preserve content long after it is removed from its original location². However, the web is so large that many interesting works will still slip through the cracks. It is not obvious where effort should be focused to capture as much interesting information as possible. Moreover, it is impossible to know what we will find interesting about 2015 in the future.

Rather than casting a wide net, some have begun archiving smaller portions of the internet. One of the best examples of this is textfiles.com which catalogs text files from old bulletin board systems. Like physical zines, these files offer interesting insights into various subcultures from the mid-1980’s.

So, what should we do, and how can you help? Saving everything is impossible, but I recommend saving some things you come across on the web that you really enjoy. Blog posts, videos, music, even insightful forum posts and comments can be saved with little space on any modern computer. Then, if that content is removed for some reason you can always re-upload it to an archival site like the Internet Archive. It may be small, but it is better than nothing and future generations will thank you for it.

That’s not to say that physical medium doesn’t have it’s own problems. A fire could completely wipe out the library’s collection, permanently erasing a lot of content. As a side note, if you know of an online archive of zines (or want to help me create one) please drop me a line. ↩
Unfortunately, a copyright claim could wipe the information from the internet altogether. ↩