Maureen Nappi

Unfortunately, I just heard that Maureen Nappi has passed away.

 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-maureen-nappi-ph-d-2a1b0511/

Nutty Russian Conspiracy Theory

Russia used to be the home of nutty conspiracy theories. This one comes from a Russian observer who writes for DailyKOS. I think this one is pretty good. 

The idea is that Putin and Mr. Wagner are in cahoots and this is all about establishing Wagner (whose name I can neither pronounce nor spell) as a wildly impulsive nutty guy, who goes to Belarus, seizes the nuclear weapons, and threatens to nuke something unless the US/Nato stops supporting Ukraine. The idea suggests that Mr. Wagners rants were all backstory to this and that they needed to put someone who appears to be nutty into the loop because Putin is considered too rational to do this. 

Unlike many nutty theories, this one can easily be tested because of its predictive nature. Lets see what happens in the next week or two with the nukes in Belarus. 

I hope I have not wasted your time with this but have contributed to your day. 

Dystopian View of War with Russia and other Matters

 

I think that there are some scenarios we can generate about foreign affairs, current wars, future wars.  This is not about predicting what will happen, but I am pretty comfortable that things that are mentioned below are at least one plausible interpretation of the facts at hand.  Assigning a probability to any of these is hard, your judgment is advised.  

 

I think we can agree, btw, that I should be working on things more relevant to my life than this.  But whatever, its what I think about and its fun to put this on the blog to be reviewed in a decade or two. The topics include whether or not we are in or about to be in a war with Russia, whether we are or are about to be in a war with Iran, and a few predictions or suggestions about resolving the conflict in Taiwan without fighting a war.  

First, what is Europe (NATO) going to do about the rogue bully on their borders?   The sanctions against Russia and the support we are giving to Ukraine have not restrained Russia.  They could not care less about the rules of war, about the starvation of large parts of the world by interfering with shipping in the Black Sea.  Whenever a Russian senior official opens their mouth they say the most insane things.  People need to start taking notice.  The destruction of the Kakhovka dam proves they are indifferent to environmental disaster and human tragedy.  They threaten the use of nuclear weapons and no one doubts that they are ready to turn the Zaporizhia nuclear plant into another Chernobyl.  No one likes to be threatened and Russia has turned into a worst case threat out of a cold war fantasy. 

Second, we are on the cusp of a war with Iran.  They are within weeks of having nuclear weapons, our ability to restrain them has failed although it did probably slow them down a bit.  They routinely threaten to destroy their enemies with nuclear weapons and they are the primary sponsor of violence in the middle east.  Once they get nuclear weapons, can other nations in the region live with this?  Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey have the resources to have nuclear weapons but we have restrained them.  Unlike Israel, who has nuclear weapons but is not irrational, Iran could and threatens to use them.   Not acting is a tacit approval in whatever Iran does.  This was coming anyway but Trump made it much worse, of course.

Third, China will not stop until it incorporates Taiwan into their autocratic dictatorship.  They have the money, the manpower, the technology, the armed forces and the will to do this.  They have a home court advantage.  We cant stop them, the most we could do is make it expensive.  This is a war that we can not win, even if we have a credible presence in the area.  So this suggests two things if we want to help Taiwan.  Recent events have proven that only those nations with nuclear weapons can defend themselves.  Therefore we could give them weapons and the systems to deliver them.  The second approach is to evacuate anyone who wants to leave and take their technology with them.  Put them somewhere like an enclave on the coast in Oregon, for example.  Then destroy their technology and leave a scorched earth.  The Taiwan semiconductor industry is strategic for us and for them.

It doesnt matter what I think will happen with Russia, Iran or China/Taiwan.  These situations are real and I hope that people are taking these situations seriously.

 

Why People are so Angry

 

A certain number of people in this country have given up on the system ever being minimally functional at protecting our rights against gross abuse by the right.  I am not talking about transexual bathroom rights, we are talking about an attempt to overthrow the govt of the united states.  And of course it turns out what we have long believed, that the DOJ did not want to find the truth in the matter and see which laws were broken and by whom. 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/report-says-doj-resisted-investigating-trumps-role-in-jan-6-for-over-a-year

People need to understand that at this point all loving understanding is gone.  We have been abused by the right for not less than 23 years with extralegal attacks on our constitution and our government.

We want law enforcement to abide by and enforce the law.

 

The Computer Upgrade Dilemma in June 2023

 

 This is a draft.

Update Alert:  Apparently the next generation threadripper pro is months away from announcement and/or release.  It would make sense to wait a few months and see what happens.

This is a discussion of the issues one might consider when building/upgrading a home studio that is used for 3D rendering and some machine learning.  It has been over 4 years since I upgraded my computing here in Santa Barbara and the world has changed several times in that time period.  What I thought would be a straightforward review of existing technologies scaled to my budget has turned into a several month slog through all kinds of things I wish I did not have to think about.  I review some of the issues involved below.

There are two different goals.  

    1. Upgrade my main Linux workstation to improve rendering performance.  

    2. Buy a completely new, modern technology workstation which would be used for both rendering,     localized machine learning, and development.

The 1st goal was motivated by simplicity and cost.  I am using a 1st generation scalable Xeon, and bought an entry level CPU for it.  There are many more CPUs available, some of them of very modest cost (so it seemed). The second goal could take longer, and fixes a problem I had with limited PCIe bandwidth in the 1st generation of scalable Xeon, especially with the UP configuration or when you did not populate both sockets of a dual socket server.  The budget of the latter system would be more expensive, but would solve both problem sets at one time.  The budgets might be $1,000 and $5,000 respectively.

But there are many issues, some expected and some unexpected.  Issues include:

-- Is there a good difference between what is a server and what is a workstation?  The provisional answer is that a workstation has a higher base frequency, has features such as audio on the MB, and has a chipset to handle a bunch of small-change IO such as legacy USB. 

-- What are the limitations of the current configuration beyond raw processor power?  Am I memory bandwidth limited?  Cache limited?

-- What are the real costs of a better 1st or 2nd generation Xeon?  Why are there seemingly great deals from unknown vendors but the top vendors keep list prices which are seemingly high for 5 year old technology.

-- Why does Intel make so many different versions of each generation of Xeon.  Specialization varies as to the extent of the market?  Which ones would I want, or can afford?  Not all these processors seem to be equally available from the reputable vendors.  

-- What warranty do the "really good price" vendors of refurbished processors offer?  My experience with 1st generation Xeon says that you may go through several CPUs before you find one that works, but that once it works it just keeps on working.

-- The AMD threadripper pro is about to be updated.  Should I wait a few months for the update?  But the updated system will certainly take advantage of newer technology which means among other things a higher memory cost.   Do I really care between DDR4 and 5?  PCIe 4 vs 5?

-- All of these processors seem to have a "base speed" and a variable "turbo speed" which it automagically uses when it has to.  Well it will only do that if several important conditions are met, one of which is that the processor must be cool enough to allow this without exploding or melting.  The only way that could possibly work is if we are using liquid cooling for the CPU.

-- My experience in this area a few years ago said that you had to be able to return several non working components before you got one that worked.  Choose carefully.

- One issue has been whether or not I save $700 or more and reuse components from the current workstation.  Power supply, chassis and disk.  Do I really want to destroy a working system, however slow?  Hasnt that often been a mistake? 

-- As alluded to above, there are real differences between current generation AMD, next generation AMD, 4th generation scalable Xeon and their 5th generation coming out end of year.  Whatever you do youre fucked.

What fun.  All you need is cash and these issues go away.  Thats what the real people do and if you cant just spend you dont deserve anything good.

 

 

Note to Congressman 06032023

Dear Congressman Carbajal,

 

At the risk of being pushy, here are some issues it would be nice for you to address if not actually work on.  I mean you are being paid to do something, right?  And if you are powerless, then what does that make us? The only vote I get is to decide whether to continue to support an ineffective and essentially useless congressman, or vote for a republican who are without doubt worthless swine.

 

1. You still need to apologize and retract your support for that incredibly stupid "horrors of socialism" bill. That vote alone is enough to work for your opponent.  Did I mention how stupid and offensive that bill was?  Oh I did already.  

 

2. The supreme court vote on destroying unions.  What are you doing about that?  What are you doing about fixing the supreme court?  Whether term limits or increasing the number of justices.

 

3. Trump has still not been indicted for his obvious crimes.... classified documents and attempting to overthrow the government of the united states.  Why not?

 

4.  Why is the US Govt failing to provide Ukraine with long distance munitions?  Afraid of escalating the war with Russia?  Too bad, it cant get more escalated unless NATO goes directly to war.  We are not going to support a party that fails to support Ukraine.

 

I would get to work if I were you.  You have an opportunity to make a difference and I would like to see you take some action.  Even if its just waving your arms and issuing press releases.

 

Thank you.

 

Richard II Message to Peasants

 

When Richard II was asked by the peasants to fulfill his oath as made to Wat Tyler at the famous meeting in London, he replied: 

 

 “You will remain in bondage, not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live… we will strive with mind, strength and goods to suppress you so that the rigour of your servitude will be an example to posterity."

 

Our politicians have the same intent, but they are not as forthright and as eloquent as Richard II.

 

The death of Wat Tyler 1381