O Hell, O Kitty

 I recently traveled to South Korea, and thought I'd pick up a Hello Kitty themed gift for a good friend who is fond of Hello Kitty. Thus it began.

 

 My first sighting of Hello Kitty was shortly after I landed, and was also way outside my budget. Clearly, this wasn't going to fly.

 

It didn't take long for my second Hello Kitty sighting, in the airport! 

  

I asked this lady nicely if we could switch carry-on bags. I don't know if her confusion was due to not understanding English, or understanding it perfectly, but not what I was asking. Either way, she kept her suitcase.

 As I wandered the streets of Busan, I encountered several of these quaint shops with grabby claw machines where you can take a chance on winning various prizes, like these Hello Kitty card decks.

 

 

 Several thousand won later, I was busted with no cards! I moved on and came to the Hello Kitty Apple Cafe. This sign had the most English I'd seen on any storefront. Unfortunately, I couldn't get in (in a hurry to another destination).

 

 

 

 

After this store, I came across another grabby machine parlor, and took a shot at some Hello Kitty purse-like things. Thousands of won later, no bag.

 

 

 Shortly after that, I had the "third time's a charm, right?" mantra prove wrong. I think these are water bottles. Doesn't matter, after several thousand more won, I came up dry.

 

 

I did come across this nice sweater, but it's way to small for my friend.

 

 

Then my wife took me to Olive Young. We're in Hello Kitty territory now! 

 

 

 

The staff refused to sell me the motorcycle kitty. Just as well, I don't think I could have packed it. 

 

Olive Young is a cosmetics and skin care store that covers three to four stories (depending). In this store, the men's section filled two aisles at the back of the third floor or about six percent of the total shelf space, and there were NO Hello Kitty products offered in that section! Imagine my indignity!

Still, I persisted. I came across this:

 

I am not sure what Aqua Squalane is, but it doesn't sound like something I'd want anyone I like to be squirting onto themselves, so pass. Then I came across this item:

  

 

Which, if I understand what's going on, it makes your pits smell like peaches? This too does not feel like a good fit.

Growing desperate, I briefly considered this. I think it's edible? I'm not sure it'll survive the flight home. 

In the end, I did find a good gift, and I'll reveal it here after he's received it.

Things We'll Laugh At in 30 Years

Hanging with other parents of children who are between high school and college, a fellow dad was talking about the things our children take for granted today,that we didn't even dream about thirty years ago. He folded this into the question, what will their children look back on and consider primitive, out-dated or laughable thirty years from now? Here's my short list.

Facebook (Unless it Takes Over the World)

Though considered a juggernaut by many, Facebook is vulnerable on several fronts. It could easily be dropped en masse out of boredom or a sudden interest in personal mental health. Or supplanted by a better or completely different technology, unless they buy that technology and Take Over the World. In which case, we may be saluting the flag of Zuckerberg.

Game Consoles

The general notion of Couch Potato syndrome, and something as primitive as sitting in one place to play a game -- well that will seem totally crazy when augmented reality puts the game all around you.

Siri 1.0

When it first came out, many people were wow'ed by Siri, at least in principle. But the first three demos I got of it fell flat. Siri couldn't understand or misinterpreted what was being asked, sometimes in hilarious ways.

Car Chase Scenes

"In a world..." where all the cars are robotic and self-driving, the notion that people could chase each other up the wrong side of the 405 -- well the Back to the Future 2 hoverboard scenes will look more realistic by comparison.

Back to work!

My Windows PC is back to work at doing the three things it does best:

1. Install updates
2. Run AV software
3. Run Zero Day malware

Not much chance of wedging some game play in there.

Insider trading and the unlevel market

 Reading through Is the Stock Market Rigged? I get to the part about Mississippi College School of Law professor John Anderson. To my mind, his opinions smack of an academic who has been immersed in their field a little too long.

Of course, his opinions may be more nuanced than the article suggests. According to the article's author, Liam Vaughn, Prof. Anderson believes insider trading should largely be legal, because they are making the markets function better. Better for whom? Would they still have to disclose their trades? Where would we draw a distinction between "legal" insider trading and price manipulation? Given the wealth and the quantity of stock controlled by executives, price manipulation would be easy to implement. Or should that be legal as well, to release government from the burden of regulating it? I could see this becoming quite the side hustle for a lot of executives, actively shoving prices around to get another 20-30% annual return on their income, and improve "market efficiency".

Within the scope of the article, insider trading sounds like a near-victimless crime, with the person taking the other side of the trade out a few dollars per share, at most. But that's a very narrow focus. The perception that executives willfully take advantage of insider knowledge undermines confidence in the market as a whole. This undermining could, as article does point out, be driving interest in cryptocurrency, and is definitely a driver in the meme stock trend.

Anderson is also quoted as saying “The whole reason people come to the market is because they think they have better information, better understanding than their counterparties.” Which seems like a phenomenally shallow view of the average retail investor, who may be buying stocks on impulse, through a mutual fund in their IRA, a "hot tip" on Reddit, or by scouring a website like Morningstar, but who is definitely not going to the market thinking they have better information than everyone they're trading against. 

Personally I think the practice of paying executives in stock grants and options has a corrupting influence, and is detrimental to the long-term health of both the companies and the country. This focuses execs on increasing shareholder return at any cost. If we want executives to have skin in the game, let them get it like the majority of their employees -- have the stock go into a retirement fund and they can't draw on it without paying huge penalties prior to actual retirement. Nor should they be allowed to borrow against that fund without paying significant penalties or taxes. And in the meantime, they can earn a modest salary (at least modest by today's standards). 

Random thoughts

Nowzac, the drug that puts you in the moment, nicknamed "the Now Zone". Leaves you totally focuses in a Rain Man sort of way on what's immediately in front of you. Other pills for zapping short-term memory (forget that disaster date forever!) or for having an eidetic memory for a couple of days, the ideal college cram drug.

How stoopid izzat? He sticks his gum onna unnerside of a glass table.

The woman kept hooting and hollering through the entire concert. I hadn't heard a racket like that since the neighbor's great dane passed a kidney stone.

"Guysa" for the fellows who are smart enough to be in Mensa, but aren't stuck up about it.

To walk while talking
Yet no one is there -- insane?
No, just a cell phone.

Characters for the Novel "Not til Death Did We Part"
Felice -- Fluff romance novel writer
Roger -- Historical fiction writer, obsessed with Jimmy Hoffa
Sandy -- Writes hard sci-fi that never makes sense
Tom -- Writer of murder mysteries that are usually dead on arrival
Martha -- Writes poetry so bad, she can't find a poetry group that will admit her

Capitalism: an economic system that generates material wealth while causing catastrophic ecological damage.

Communism: an economic system that generates abject poverty while causing catastrophic ecological damage.

The "Maybe Good Enough Sort Algorithm" An algorithm that provides an approximate ordering, this algorithm getint about 90% of the elements into some sort (haha) of order. Has the dubious advantage of providing a "good enough" result quickly.

iPad Wands or Wii Sticks Small rods that give positional feedback. With five, there'd be one for each finger. Okay, K'nect may be a better answer.

http://all-story.com

http://www.pshares.org

There are few things you can't do in C++. Writing correct code is one of them.

 

Stupid product idea: a chamber into which a person inserts their hand and gains tactile feedback from a stream of small pellets that push against the skin with programmatically controlled forces and vectors. On the one hand, what could possibly go wrong? On the other hand, there may be no market for it, but it might make a cool art fixture.

 

Stupid product idea: for race cars, wheels that thread onto the axle in the reverse direction to the line of forward motion. The hope is that by simply reversing the direction with sudden torque, the wheel would pop off more rapidly than can be done with the traditional lugnut approach. You could even lock the wheels in place, put the car in reverse and "back up" a little bit to get them started. Once again, what could possibly go wrong?

Maybe not stupid product idea: a trash chute for apartment buildings that can identify items on the fly (haha) and bat them into an appropriate bin for recycling, composting or landfill.

Software and the Doggie Doo Effect

DDSM (Doggie-doo Software Management)

The unpleasant and unintended stickiness of legacy software.

Example:
Manager: "Jim, you were the last person to work on X. I'm assigning this bug to you."

Jim: "This stinks!"

Does Microsoft Exist in a World Without People?

 The Microsoft Windows lock screen features an ever-shifting series of landscapes, sometimes pastoral, sometimes of adventurous heights, or even famous landmarks (Stonehenge recently came up for me) but all of them have one thing in common: no people.

I don't know why. This could be intentional and they edit them out, perhaps worrying that people would be "disturbed" to see other people on their PC when they were logging in. It could be some massive self-selection process where early on, people just trained the AI serving these up that people-less pictures are preferable. Or perhaps that AI is sending the subtle message, "the world is better without you".