We recently “received” a recall notice from the North Pole. Apparently one of the toys that Santa gave to our child has a recall. After some research, we found that he had been outsourcing to a factory in China and that Santa himself personally decided to issue the recall after he discovered an issue with a few of the toys.

We must send it back to the North Pole ASAP! The child will surely be nonplussed, but most likely, given the amount of play it got in the past few weeks, this choice of gift will be missed for but a brief moment…

Anyways, wishing you guys the best post-holiday activities and keep that believe Santa Claus!

(Ps, when this came up, Amazon had this thing where everything you buy in Q4 can be returned by January 31st of next year. Thankfully we received this recall notice just before that day this year…)

Okay, it’s Christmas Eve and I’ve suddenly had a change of heart. I think the world is going to suck with out Chinese people.

Has anyone noticed that recently, the “new” products on Amazon are much more used, damaged or otherwise low in quality? I have gained the habit of ordering multiple items when it is cheap and returning the excess or broken, just to guarantee that I get even one whole and new item.

Circa September 2021, it was reported that Amazon kicked off some where from a few hundred to a few thousand Chinese companies. The reason cited was review fraud. The fact that they targeted Chinese companies only is a little bit racist. But dishonest Chinese should be punished IMHO, so I thought nothing of it. A couple billion dollars of sales on Amazon is like pocket change for Bezos, wouldn’t affect things at all.

But ever since then, we the customers, have been experiencing a barrage of bait and switch schemes. Essentially the merchant will put up a promotion on an ASIN with a set of very attractive descriptions. (The ASIN is like a SKU but renumbered and unified system used for all items sold on Amazon). After promotion event ends, the merchant will then take the same ASIN product and change texts and pictures. And promote the item for sale again.

For the poor fellow who bought the product the first time around, they cannot see what they thought they bought because the product page has changed. For the poor fellow buying the new item, he is seeing star-ratings and reviews for an entirely different item.

I literally had this happen to me many times this year. What came after Black Friday is simply not what the description says at Christmas time. A server first had a dedicated RAID adapter, but when I complained it didn’t work, that RAID disappeared from the product description.

The sad thing is that this “feature” in the grey area benefits Amazon merchants in a way that made the ecosystem work for many years. But during that time, there were a large number of Chinese suppliers that did not resort to this trick. They sold their stuff with woefully misspelled description never changing. probably because they lacked the English skill to even come up with a separate but elaborate description for another item. Probably, another reason, is that they just wanted to sell their product for some, any, money for a living wage.

But now that the Chinese are wiped from the planet and it’s future, what we experience is everything else. I would not dare name the origin of these dishonest merchants. Plus, most likely they will be pinned on Chinese people again. But honestly, I really feel life is worse after a certain population of vendors was wiped from Amazon. The sellers are simply lying and using bait-and-switch.

“But they’re just trying to make a living wage” you blurt out to me with an accusatory glare that says I am being biased in some way. But you will not find me defending these merchants, any of them, in any way. I will of course not rationalize what they have to do, I wouldn’t even ponder the fairness of bezos squeezing merchant margins so hard for his own gain, I mean the lot of it is all fun brain exercise on a Christmas Eve.

It is just so very interesting to see a layer of humanity when you have the power to peel away a layer by country of origin, you can experience another layer minus that country of origin.

Fascinating!

It seems a film about the murder of a Chinese-American and subsequent non-punishment sentencing of his two killers had made it into the National Film Registry. Here’s a snippet on YouTube.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the Return of The Jedi and Selena was on the list, this news might not have even popped up in my news feed.

You can read the details on Wikipedia, but basically two man, unprovoked, bludgeoned a Chinese-American to death, identifying him based on mistaken race (they had wanted to punish a Japanese person). They were fined $3000 and let off with probated jail sentence (didn’t go to jail at all) There’s some additional details about his murder succeeding shortly after his bachelors party, the white men hunted him for 30 minutes with baseball bat in hand, paying for information regarding his whereabouts along the way, as well as the sentencing judge zealously defending his decision. Apparently, lot of pretty nasty things happened in Michigan in 1982… wow that was just a few years before my family began to immigrate to the USA…

One is glad to say that with respect to racially based violent crimes have become less tolerable to society and maybe even the law enforcement and adjudication systems in recent decades.

There are still some aspects that kind of popped out at me. In the movie, the arresting police officers stated that they were not informed of the trial at all, much less where they given chances to testify to what happened. This mysterious way in which legal procedures work is definitely beyond the mortals who suffer it. The things these judges and lawyers are saying, the whitesplaining, sounds quite similar to what we see on TV today.

In fact, it seems the whitesplaining techniques are being actively promoted as desirable features of our legal systems. “Plea bargaining” frequently being a tool for good. Selecting judges who are favorable to race and cause seem to be the open non-secret, you can do that, find a judge who loves your race more than your murderers and robbers… The fact that there are such judges, can make for multiple prime-time TV shows to show everyone—It happens! These things are being promoted as good features of our society by TV media in America.

But really, for a person like myself, I cannot help but have deep deep suspicion about the legal system. That it works, I have no doubt about, that it is just and fair, I have to claim to be agnostic. In the grand scheme of the Bible that courts swear by, none of these little things matter. But to each person there, each person is responsible personally. Whatever people think they have personally in connection in the grander justice, that’s just fellow human being thinking.

I suppose it is a double edged sword if one to look at the question selfishly. The ability to find a path through the legal system favorable to oneself is desirable. But when it comes to the legal thoughts around making judgement considering maintenance of long term versus short term justice, as well as the immediate stability of society(eg riot prevention), I must admit naïveté—I don’t know what y’all thought you thought, but I sure as heck don’t trust it. Whatever produced a $3000 license to kill a chinaman, that’s just not just.

But if we were to apply our scientific and technological skills, would we actually arrive at a more trustworthy system? Present attempts to use data driven system has been met with challenges as soon as they were discovered. But, here too one has to feel just a bit suspicious that before Propublica broke the story, how many people in America even knew that the courts used AI to help sentencing?

(Sentencing being one of the problems in Chin’s case, even after plea bargaining at least one of the perps could have at least a decade of jail, but he didn’t get it. And team compass would be telling me hey look, the judge made the right call, he did not recidivate by bludgeoning another Chinaman)

We don’t know what is behind all this legal-smancy mumble jumbo. At least for a while there, there was an AI making predictions of probability of recividism in the mix. That feature was added to the legal system without any announcements. People are not even informed that things are changing under the hood.

One wonders if this part of our democracy is a problem? We seem to vote for both executive and legislative branches of the government, it the judicial branch is opaque and not democratically elected. The judicial branch doesn’t have any mandates to satisfy the will of the people. The judicial branch doesn’t even have mandates to make itself understandable to its subjects.

So I guess this is one of those perma-answers to some GCI questions:

• We can’t give it training data because training data we have is corrupt. All of us now do not all agree with all the results in the historical data.
• We can’t really generatively explain what the right thing is by programming it. And more importantly we cannot all agree to that single program.
• We can’t really tell if an original answer the GCI gives is correct or not because we don’t know or we think nobody really knows.
• We can tell the GCI what each individual feels and thinks. But many prospect domains of GCI do not operate democratically. (Both operations and sample-importance perspectives.)
• The new domain, new to GCI, exists partially because of its opacity to outside understanding. GCI may have to forsake it’s built in transparency(and other beneficial features) in order to be accepted into the new domain such as the judicial system.

So… had a moment of nightmare today. What happens when computers gets better at being us than us?

I understand that the advertised research results have been that AIs using deep learning have gained performance above those of humans. But here, in my head, I saw for a moment that a computer hooked up to my eyes seeing and performing tasks better than me.

What happens when that happens? What happens when our processing power is out done by a computer on our own turf? On the one hand, it might enable us to replace some of our human activities with machines. The biggest thing here being for example a machine that exercises our muscles optimally yo achieve a desired result. And similarly one might imagine a day inside the matrix when we can plug into our head and we can play the horn really well(without own lips and lungs). (This particular application may require several steps: computerized training of our muscles, some amount of fine tuning for those muscles and the instrument, maybe some fine tuning for reading music through our eyes, fine tuning for playing with other players, with a director, solo’ing, improvisation…)

What about caring for kids? Is there a brain app for that ? What about taking a dump, I’ll bet good money that an app can make that so much better an experience, using just our existing hardware. Maybe there will be several modes… for coitus, set “ludicrous” mode to optimize partner experience, but tune down to “comfort” mode for self gratification. Ooohooohhh, dating app, the flirt app, in-law app, SAT studying app, “learn to print your ABC’s” app,

Wow! Either I suck at life, or I really understand the future of technology.

Either way, a nightmare for you or your sidekick brain to mnmnnnmhmnmm over.

A solid famX1!

I want to comment on the improvement in production of discovery, but I suppose it is to be expected by season 4. The self-intertwining epic mythologic tale of the good versus the universe unravels itself in front of us. It might be my own stage of life but these episodes of endings of lives, endings of a whole planet, this story resonates with me. It could also just be that sound effects, editing and music has gotten a whole lot better, maybe by 900-some years, idk, the show is quite cinematic now.

The movements of Star Treks:

• TOS: getting there and back alive, the righteous way, with friends.
• TNG: getting there, making friends and making it a lot better for everyone
• DS9: getting there and staying there
• VOY: getting back alive
• ENT: getting somewhere in one piece
• DSC: break things, pick up pieces, die or not, and put everything back together with ever present anticipation of total loss.
• PIC: …
• PRD: wohooo!

The reference to ending of paths seems to have very strong roots in human mythologies. I’m not sure where these writers get their inspirations but the teachings sound quite vogue “… one must be radically candor with one’s self at the end of a path… “ and “…we’re just play the instruments, let’s hope director knows the orchestra…” I can definitely see a young child picking up on this and repeatedly thinking in all kinds of situations as I did with teachings like “the good of many outweigh the good of one,” and many sentiments like “I’m a doctor, not a…”, “you have always been and shall always remain my friends…”, “I want to be more human”, “…wanting is not as good as having”, …

The show is probably not for me. All but one Asian actors have character that remain 900 years later, and he is still a lieutenant… Capitan Lorca claims to have yellow-face ancestry related to fortune cookies, but he was as crooked as the mirror universe. Anyways, no biggie, I still learned a lot watching Trek even with few important Asian crew. The show still has lasting cultural and creative value not caring too much about Asians… I mean I don’t want to repeat the comment but they are about 35% of current human population right now. There must be a story some where that kills them off to <10% of Starfleet human population, a devastating decimation that will last into the next millennium.

So, overall withh huh FAMx1, I give

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

…with…

😣

Fell asleep during takeoff enroute home from Honolulu. Fussy child also mysteriously falls Al sleep for the entire trip. I wonder if there are any side effects to this “sleep machine” they like to use on airplanes ?

Visiting Honolulu for vacation, I chanced upon a view of the sun shinning on Pacific ocean waves. I see a certain pattern of light that shines only upon top part of waves. I think i finally understand what these japanese artists are trying to depict. Japanese painting of waves have a portion of white on top of the waves. Previously I had imagined that they were trying to draw foam produced by crashing waves. But now I see, the white parts are actually golden or silver colored reflection of the bright sun. They’re so bright that white probably is the closest color we can use to draw them in contrast to parts of the waves that do not receive the same amount of sun.

I have, around thanksgiving of 2021, posted a slew of very positive reviews on Amazon products. These products were all non-American brand products, obviously made in China or India. My review pointed out their many many faults, but also included positive aspects and 3 or 4 stars.

In one particular instance, I purchased a flugelhorn (that’s just German for the trumpet). It was clearly made in India based on seller name and many many comments complaining about its country of origin. This item’s name starts with “New…”, but it’s price is $160ish which is about half the price of the next flugelhorn more expensive than it. The next horn with higher price is plastic.

I happily ordered one, and then 3 more, after discovering the first “New..” horn stinks of saliva. The next 3 were also not new and all stinks. I can see white residue that could be mold or rust or mildew in the bell of the horn. But the horn makes a nice sound. So I kept the best looking one.

Needless to say, I had to do a lot of work to get it playable. First a warm soapy bath. Oil and grease everything. Buy a new mouthpiece since the one it came with is way too small. Then I appoint played on it for an hour or two before discovering that I couldn’t empty spit out of it. These horns make a crackling sound when there’s liquid inside. The water key spit outlets all look right, except after careful inspection I finally understand why these horns were all returned with saliva inside: their foremost water key closest to the bell have the external anatomies of a water key spit drain, but under the cap there is no hole.

That one is easy to fix, an eighth inch metal drill from the Home Depot did the trick. And honestly, I never realized drilling metal, even into the thin wall of a brass pipe, is much harder than drilling wood. It took a solid minute to make it through the wall of the tubing. I almost wonder if this horn is made of steel instead of brass. Because I’ve seen some light bumps dent brass instruments, I can’t imagine them being this hard. Anyways, it drains now. Another two baths, vinegar followed by baking soda, to remove white chunky mildew and de-acidify the inside of the horn. and the horn now plays and smells great.

After another week of play, I discover that the leadpipe leaks air. This is an unexpected bug for me as the trumpet I played in my pubescent years did not have a tuning leadpipe. This is a piece of popping that plugs into the horn before the mouthpiece. It is adjustable and you can pull it out for a longer horn. Anyways, this is a hard problem because the water keys also leaked air. I had to re-cork them by gluing two 4mm cork pads together to increase the spring tension. But after plugging those three hole, it still took too much air to play. Finally, I took my saliva soaked fingers and placed it next to the leadpipe and felt a leak. This particular problem was fixed by gingerly wrapping. The unthreaded sliding tuning pipe with plumbers thread seal tape, again from Home Depot. (This is the 2” white tape you put around a pipe before screwing on the bolt-end. The process can be aided by inserting a toothpick between the screw holders to temporarily widen the outer tubing) Alas, the horn plays again, and I can actually hold a high-C for more than a few seconds. But sadly the pipe seal tape has a slightly dampening effects that makes sounding out notes slightly harder for me.) anyways, it works now…

I write my experience on Amazon with a 4 star, because I feel the horn actually does play fine. I don’t care if it was Indian made or not. (There are, btw, Chinese made horns costing north of >$600. These obviously benefit from western productization and QA management thinking. Everything is beautifully packaged, completely clean, correctly sized mouthpiece, well made and easy to play in every sense. The improvement in experience from <$200 to >$600 makes me want to try all those European horns at >$3k price, but, alas, I cannot afford that experimentation.) Amazon flatly rejected the review and the 4-star review including some short instructions on how to make the cheaper horn work completely.

Later I repost a all negative review with 1 star and it is quickly accepted.

A few other flugelhorn horn replaced purchases like the mouthpiece all suffered similar fate. Positive reviews from me are invariably rejected due to non-compliance with posting guidelines. Completely negative reviews are accepted quickly with gratitude.

I know Amazon have been banishing many Chinese companies from their market place. But this kind of editorial intervention is very manipulative. I should be permitted to be encouraging to the seller if I want to be. By providing information I give value to the company by improving other customers shopping experience. I mean I review my posts very carefully, they probably have better spelling and grammar than this blog.

I guess this is partially to say that I feel I owe Amazon’s services a statement of gratitude. All this free next day shipping and free returns. I am pampered beyond my wildest dreams before Amazon. I mean, I believe a lot of human culture around frugality and acceptance of the present (you get what you get and you don’t complain) exists because we didn’t have Amazon all those millennia. We couldn’t try pants and socks and return without causing grotesque disruption to the sellers, makers and marketers of products. We had to build curbs to our enthusiastic desires in order for our society to be viable. No, Amazon is not evil and it is not making people evil by offending some common traditional personal ethical prescriptions. For these I am very grateful.

But, we must now contend with modern ethical dilemmas of fairness with liberty. It would be unethical for Amazon to deny positive reviews based on country of product origin. It would also be unfair to me if it restricts my reviews in a specific way to reduce the influence of opinions of people based on my protected attributes. It is also kind of disappointing for amazon to claim that it made the decision “after very careful review” without being able to expend just slightly more effort (either human or AI based) to justify the decisions to me. We can choose to prioritize this over flying to Moon and Mars, imho.

This another episode of friends don’t let friends commit bugs into main. I was reading a previous post here on the FAM blog. It gave me a flash back of the one time when I discovered hash tables.

…to bucket a String, s, say in the jvm, you might like writing “s.hashCode() % bucketCount”

Except that expression will produce, as you will quickly discover if you had the whole hash table, negative numbers half of the time for strings with just a few characters.

The ‘%’ operator returns a remainder that has the same sign as the dividend of the division in question, and in this case the dividend is the hash code which is negative sometime due to overflow of 32-but integer range. One replacement operator you probably can use is “math.floorMod(s.hashCode(), bucketCount)”. The floor modulo operator produces remainders that always has same sign as the divisor, in this case the bucket count. This behavior is well documented since C and backwards, so hopefully you will find this information corroborated by many webpages.

Python, (and other scripting languages like Perl and Ruby) on the other hand, has the opposite convention. ‘%’ operator is C/Java’s floorMod. In the python ecosystem, ‘numpy.mod’, ‘tf.math.mod’ and ‘torch.remainder’ all correspond to floor division and return remainder having same sign as the devisor. Confusingly, to get C/Java ‘%’ method in python, you have to call something these all call ‘fmod’.

Some websites suggest masking the number to take the lower bits then %, which may be slightly different from computing the hash in long integers followed by %. Another (stack) overflow post adds the module calculation inside the String.hashCode implementation so that only remainders accumulate, thus avoiding the negativity entirely.

In any case, if you had to write this, mostly likely the slight imbalance between positive and negative numbers would not bother you and floorMod is easiest method to call on any generic “hashCode()” implementation.

Friends don’t let friends drink and drive.

Friends don’t let friends err and merge.

A few years ago, I stopped being a W4 employee. I had a midlife crisis that I feel too much of me do not want to work in this economy and politics. (That was long before this post-Covid anti-Asian movement) I am sad about it, as we Chinese-Pennsylvanian Americans are steeped, doubly , in work ethics indoctrination. It is the modus operandi for generations and it is for me.

But the opposition in my mind was great, and for many varieties of reasons, and so I stopped working.

Recently, President Biden announced a second round of raising benefits for seniors. The first round already hit my parents monthly deposits. This is some serious money movement that people can see and feel. I feel it because my parents spends more on me, yes even when I’m fast on my way to my semi-centennial.

Today, I feel an ever so slight bump within, like that earthquake I felt sitting on the toilet, it shook me in a weird way: a sudden thought of, “wait, I want to do that.” stirs. I don’t resent taxes as much as before. (Don’t worry, I’m sure that will recover though) It feels good that this happened. It feels good that a suffering populous is treated with dignity and deserved priority.

The sad thing about this is that I can definitely see my own and many other peoples selfishness eventually push us all to vote against the next president who want to continue these elderly benefits.

Sad that it is good but will surely be both hated and terminated. Even sadder, is the fact that I actually like these increase in elderly benefit. Am I so old? Or am I dreading poverty in old age? Are my happiness mere faint echos of those of my parents? Why do I like it? Is it because I’m Chinese ?

So sad !

And I don’t even know why.