Hacking the Good days…

Here is a Chinese story,

There were two brothers who lived on the 80th floor of a building.

They went out together for a party without noticing there’s no lift service on the day.  The brothers were very frustrated when they realised that they were kind of doomed, but they decided to slowly start climbing the stairs flight by flight.

By the 20th flight, they decided that they were going to drop their heavy knapsacks and planned to pick them up the next day.

By the 40th flight, they started to blame and yelled at one another for not being attentive and missed the notice.

By the 60th flight, they came to accept fate, slowly and peacefully they inch up and eventually reach to their door.

Only then, they realised they left their keys in the knapsacks…

If the keys are like our dream and passion and vision when we have in our 20s: With all the pressing needs in life, like paying off loans, getting a mortgage, finding a partner, raising children, many of us decide to set our dreams aside.  Eventually we work hard and move up, from the beginning till the end, in our 40s we start blaming one another for not having the vision and strength to carry forward.  And then we come to accept fate and become serene for the rest of our journeys in our 60s.  At the end, do you have the keys with you?

Where are you and your keys?

I read the story and something switched today, thought it’d be nice to share with you.  Thanks for swinging by.

The ‘World wide web’ is a romantic concept -

• World: belongs to everyone
• Wide: no boundary
• Web: links everyone together.

But my romantic interpretation has been interrupted by the not so romantic everlasting online abuse problem and hence the proposed CAPTCHA feature in a work meeting.  Now here’s my view (supported by some research)…

1. Captcha punishes a vast amount of people

…(and money they make) who deserve extra consideration on web accessibility

Isofarro has helped me dug out some useful stats:

Between 15% and 30% of the population have functional limitations that can affect their ability to use technology products (50 million in US, 750 million worldwide). It is estimated that people with disabilities control a discretionary income of over $175 billion annually in US alone.

US$175 billion discretionary income?? Now accessibility is not a fancy ‘feature’, it matters to your business and you can tell your boss that quoting CSUN, in case they have ‘no time’ for egalitarian beliefs :)

2. All in all - I just see that CAPTCHA should not be a feature requirement

…or at least clear warning should be given to the publisher before they decide to implement for two key reasons: (1) accessibility: it keeps good users away and (2) CAPTCHA is easily solvable by those who want to: it does not stop the evil spirite to contrary to most people’s belief.

(1) Accessibility:

Users hate CAPTCHA. In our user research many told us that they would not bother to comment if they have to go through CAPTCHA. So CAPTCHA essentially turns away the light contributors who are pivotal in enriching the community with a more general, diversified tone of voice, while retaining the more troll/spam-ish users who would do anything to make themselves heard. In all, CAPTCHA turns users away as an extra step to contribute when sometimes your product already requires a sign-in system to comment.

(2) CAPTCHA would NOT help the problem of spam:

Multiple research has demonstrated that CAPTCHA is known to not helping in deterring spam. I am citing two academic research to illustrate.

(I) Inaccessibility of CAPTCHA

http://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/

‘It is important to note that, like seemingly every security system that has preceded it, this system can be defeated by those who benefit most from doing so. For example, spammers can pay a programmer to aggregate these images and feed them one by one to a human operator, who could easily verify hundreds of them each hour. The efficacy of visual verification systems is low, and their usefulness is nullified once they are commonly exploited.’

I easily found something is hiring CAPTCHA solving team, http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/NET-Website-Design/fast-captcha-project.439814.html, for instance.

(II) A Low-cost Attack on a Microsoft CAPTCHA

http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/jeff.yan/msn_draft.pdf

‘It took on average ~80 ms for the attack to completely segment a challenge on a desktop computer with a 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 CPU and 2 GB RAM. As a result, we estimate that this Microsoft scheme can be broken with an overall (segmentation and then recognition) success rate of more than 60%. ‘

60% success rate in hacking the system is almost as same as success rate from average users, so again, CAPTCHA does not keep spammer away while making our sites inaccessible to.  My own sucess rate of CAPTCHA is probably 50% haha.  I’m worst than a bot you see.

But What are we gonna do without CAPTCHA??? Recommendations:

Why do we need CAPTCHA? It’s because we want to get rid of spam. With all the research I have put together and discussing with engineers from all cross of life, I’ve distill the following potential routes:

1. We’d need some sort of reputation system that will surface trusted users content (algorithm based, factoring in variables such as membership length, history of abuse/content removed, human-filters such as community manager assigning special reputation levels).  Askimet does this rather well and they offer both commercial and free to use API for private use.
2. Comments with similar syntax and semantics should be analysed with a variable confidence level for spam filtering

Of course this is a filtered version that I can share openly.  At work I have been documenting everything to a point where I am called the ‘abuse lady’.  How I love my job! :)

Okay finally I have noticed new strands of suspected Wordpress spam:

‘Dear there! how are you?
thanx for such opportunities to readers.They are with very appriciable advantage in changing readers mind and makes them wise-men.at the same time I want to appriciate for the one who gave comment in no3 above.I hope such persons stand to be globalistic and fully rational.
Thanx once again’

‘Hi there !how are you ? are you fine? I hope so .Here below is the comment I want to give for your advise shared me>these words of the wisemen shared to readers are realy valuable.They are just like daily shool room concepts like a good teacher giving you course in the class.I understand this in such a way that i am happily saying you are realy great men and make this your custom to share us as daily breakfast so that we can have global concepts.’

It took me a few serious moments to consider if they are actual comments or not, but my conclusion is that they look too much like machine generated text based on my blog content, similar to those generated by Dada Engine (created by Andrew C. Bulhak at the Monash University)* - an engine that randomise phrases to create post-modernist text.

Hmm.. now that get me into thinking how an open source, global, scalable solution would be like…. /headache

*Nassim Nicholas Taleb. (2004) Fooled by Randomness. p73. Penguin Press

Someone made me happy today, and I thought I was happier and I defined that as (1+x%)happy. And then I was asked ‘can you be more than 1 happy?’

Got me thinking,

Happiness is a 1/0 thing.
Imagine you are a happy person, you make someone happy, and that someone makes someone else happy, like butterfly effect it triggers down.

1/0 happiness seems like a probable notion. Sorry it does sound like an xkcd strip :).

But something said by a yogi inspired me the other day, ‘Have no fear. Not courage, because courage is a reaction to fear. Have no fear, and peace be with you. And that is beautiful’.

So it got me to conclude that ‘Be not sad. Not happy, because being happy is a reaction to sadness’.

Well doesn’t make too much sense, does it? I think it’s time for a good glass of wine.

A wonderful thoughtful exercise created by Erik on Flickr, beautiful.

I pledged to dedicate a blog post on today, the Ada Lovelace Day, and my tribute goes to Dr. Cheng Ha-Yan, Kate, who volunteered to help saved patients inflicted with SARS in Hong Kong and unfortunately contacted the disease and passed away at the age of 30.

Also I’d like to highlight the strength and leadership of Dr. Margaret Ng, another Hong Kong Chinese who led Hong Kong through a really weird period of SARS and continue to keep the world vigilant against aviation flu as the Director-General of the World Health Organisation.

Now to put this achievement in context, we are talking about fight this,

In a city like this,

Source from the legendary Michael Wolf’s protrait of Hong Kong’s density


Where everyone was patrified and did not know exactly what to do (and not to do),

SARS was a bossy, horrible epidemic - 296 people died of the disease and 1,755 became ill [BBC].

I also dedicate this post to everyone who has been through the tough time time - imagine everything holds still in a city and no one knows for certain whether you or your love one still be around the next day…  It is these women and men in the health care industry who work very hard to keep things in check.  People are now comparing the economic downturn with the impact of SARS, but hey, at least people don’t get killed (directly) by the recession… but that’s irrelevant.

What is important is this - Hats off to everyone.  Thank you so very much.

1. I hate not being able to keep up with my thoughts.
2. Not being able to keep up with my thoughts means that you think more than you will ever be able to share and articulate the signals among the noise
3. Too many ideas go wasted because of that
4. Wouldn’t it be great if we log all of ideas down as stubs and open it up so that other people with a different personality inclination (convergent versus divergent) can pick up and create something cool out of your ideas?

Was flicking TV channels and was stunned by an old man talking about life as a flow of energy, he asked us to think about this,

‘Try recalling your favourite childhood memory. Yes, try… Now you may even think that you are part of the memory. But I have shocking news to tell you. You are not. None of ‘you’ was. None of the atoms in your body today was from the 5-year old.’

We all have regenerated, we are all fresh start. We come to being, we vanish. How cool is that?

That reminded me of someone complaining what’s the point of being alive when we all going to die?

But the question should be, what’s the point of living if we all never cease to die?

*I really didn’t get the poem recited at Obama’s inauguration.  Was it me or was it the poet?

‘The water of the valley stream is always flowing.  It races on, not pausing for even an instant.  Its sound, to me, is the sound of time.

The water of time glistens on the riverbed of the universe.  Though theirs is a much slower flow, Human beings and all things that have life flow.  Thought and culture, too, flow.  That all these appear to be unchanging is but illusion.

We make every effort to keep things as they are, because human beings, alone, lament transience. Yet no matter how we grieve or protest, there is no way to impede the flow or anything.  If we but see things as they are and flow with them, we may find enjoyment in transience.  Because human life is transient, all manner of figures are woven into its fabric.

[...]

When we listen subconsciously to the sound of flowing water, does it not seem to create a rhythm?  Yet not a single drop of water passes over the same rock twice, and the murmur of water rushing over a rock is constantly changing.  Sameness is but an illusion of the human ears, eyes, mind.  Water has once flowed along a riverbed can never retrace its course. Human life is no different.  It is only our mundane eyes and minds that see yesterday as being the same as today.

Enlightened eyes and minds should recognise that each moment has a form different from that of any other moment.’

Shundo Aoyama. (2001).  Zen Seeds (pp 1-2). Tokyo: Kosei Publishing Limited.

Buddhism maintains that the source of suffering is our inability to accept impermanence.  In ’secular’ geek terms, you won’t wake up thinking that all the data of your unback-up hard disk can be all gone for no reasons.  Obviously I cannot articulate as beautifully as Aoyama in her book Zen Seeds, hence reading her book is like looking at flaking candle flame for the first time - so magical, but yet so natural and non-contrieved.  I wish we possess enlightened eyes and minds and recognise that each moment IS different, be peaceful, see that there is nothing we can do and enjoy it as just it is.

About a year ago I wrote this post, A few words from the Wisemen on how to survive and be sane in a corporate world.  A year from then I learnt a lot, not just from work, but from meeting different people, realising it’s important to just be and discovered that we all possess healing energy.  The importance of sharing and to let go - whether you’re my friend or you just happened to stumble upon my blog - it is all due to a trillion conincidences happening at the same time.  So bear with me on this slightly long post on revisiting the wiseman as my annual reflective piece.  I hope you like it and let me know if I miss something important!  Okay here we go!

1. Love yourself before you can love others

‘I love him(her), why doesn’t (s)he love me back?’

‘I want love’

I hear that a lot from people I come across, but sometimes we confuse the need to love and to be loved by someone with the notion of love.  If you have to mould someone into what you want him/her to be, you probably don’t love him/her, but the ideal image of something you invented.  Now this is interesting and critical.  Why do you want to project your love energy to this external ‘thing’?  What kind of void are you trying to fill in?

Do you love yourself?  The paradox is that, the more you try the seek love externally, the less loveable you become.  Only when you truly accept and love yourself as who you are, you will then attract the right kind of energy and people.  I know I sound crazy and new age, but this is one of the most important lessons I have learnt.  And that will require some practices, hence point 2:

2. The arts of just be
If there is a button in front of you, and once you press it you can become anyone else in this world other than you, what would you do?

[please pause and really think about it].

What’s your answer?  Are you ultimately contented to be you, or you feel that you are better off being someone else?  To those who are contented, you can skip the rest of this point.  To those who are tempted, why?  Why would you want to be someone else?  Why is not enough to just be you?

When you look at little happy and curious kids, sometimes you hear them aspiring to be an astronaut when they grow up.  It’s weird that as we grow older, we lose sight that we indeed can still become what we want to be, instead of who we want to be.  No, we will never be that 5′11 skinny model, but we can learn to love our body.  No, perhaps we will never make a billion dollars, but we can learn to enjoy what we have.  The media and the fast-pace society always prompt us to believe we are never adequate instead of believing in ourselves, and that we need to worry about our morgage, not getting married early enough, not earning the same money as our fellows…

Have we asked ourselves what we truly needs?  Do you remember to drink 2 litres of water everyday?  Are your shoulders strained?  When was the last time you gave your shoulders some nice stretches?  The answers are never external.  The more you seek externally, the more you lose yourself and your essense. 

3. We all possess healing energy

It hard to live the modern life when you are constantly reminded that you need to do better, but ultimately we all possess amazing healing power.  It’s amazing how much difference you make by just being someone who cares.  Think about people around you, how many of them care?  Care about themselves, care about their friends and family, care about the world around, a little toddler falls next to you.  Aren’t you drawn by them?  People who care are people that are in touch with their healing energy.  Ultimately they like to see others happy and the world’s a better place to be.  You are one of us.  Don’t forget that.

I learnt the most when I volunteered on the skills of listening.  Being listened by someone who cares is one of the most amazing priviledges that we easily forget.  For more information, I quite like this note on reflective listening.

4. Change is constant

For most of us who live and work in the city, 2008 is not a forgiving year.   Redundancy, reorganisation, resizing, £ falling behind all currencies, it’s tough, it’s stressful and sometimes it’s deflating.  But why is it so tough?  We definitely had our good time as well, but the challenge actually does not come from the outside but again, in ourselves.  Human beings are weird creatures - we are made to notice changes, but also to assume consistency.  For example we don’t really notice things in a room that doesn’t move (e.g. like books on shelves), but things that move (e.g. puppy running around).  Push this notion to the extreme, you wake up everyday you’d assume you still have everything you had from yesterday, such as your laptop still working, you sister still brewing her morning coffee, your mom and dad engaging in their small talks… but wait - this is actually a gift.  The chances is that, one day we wake up we MAY LOSE them (/touch wood).  Chinese we believe that it take millions of coincidences for you to happen to be having dinner with some new friends, and it take trillions of little coincidences for someone to become husband and wife.  It may come natural, but think of the odds for you to meet somene in a world where billions live, and to have a connection, and to engage in meaningful acts together… cherish it, but also (and particularly because) you know that anytime things can change.  Whether for the good or for the worse, change is the only constant in life.  Be ready to cherish, and be ready to let go.

5. Draw the right kind of energy

Go away, whiner!  I curse you!  Okay i may be kidding, and although I try to be kind, I have no patience for people who are not grateful and keep on complaining about life.  You can’t change life by complaining, and the more you delve into the down sides of things the more likely you fail to see the plus side, and draw in more negative energy into you.  So if you whine, I am afraid I’ll have to ignore you.  (note: to my dear friends, occassional whining is healthy - here I mean people who whine about *everything*).  I think you probably know some of those fellas…

6. Learn how to be with yourself

Who says holiday is easy?  I tend to get more stressed out right before and at the beginning of a holiday - what am I supposed to do?? Do I just read, lie around, eat and do nothing??  Initially the notion of holiday without family around stresses me, because I used to spend my holiday with my family and living abroad does not always allow the luxury to do so.  But come to think about it, the way I was raised as an Asian kid actually has not encouraged time to myself, such as just a week of camping (I never camped), or on holiday (no, never have a beach-side holiday either).  So this x’mas/new year is actually my first real holiday and I am learning how to be with myself.  On the first few days I did try to look up my friends, organised my schedule so that I was packed with everything (and consequentially *more* stressed out than working).  But then after my lovely yoga retreat (at Clare Island and will blog about it soon), I came home and I just want to chill, read, eat, run and sleep.  Finally, I think I started to get the hang of it.  So for those natural holiday-people, it’s an art man.  I think we need life-hack tips on how geeks ‘deal’ with their holidays…

7. To care, is the most powerful form of energy

One of those days at work, you see someone else done something and you think, ‘what the hack was that dude thinking??’ Does it sound familiar?  When we see bad codes, malpractices, or just pure negligence, apart from the importance of assuming good faith, it is also important to know that there are people WHO JUST DON’T CARE / GIVE A SH*T.  It’s okay.  Yes, it’s shocking, and annoying, when you take pride in yourself, in what you do, and care about people, or even the planet around you, but there are people who just don’t.  Now, on the plus side, remember that when you care, you can do *ANYTHING*.  No, not in a way of an obsessive-compulsive freak, but in a way you want things to be in place around you.  You care if your friends are upset, you are there for them.  You care about your work, you fix the bugs you see.  You care about your parents, you think of them and you call them.  People feel it, even dogs feel it (it’s debatable where your computer feels it, but I do believe my mac can feel it…).  It is the most profound energy God (or the universe whatever you believe) gave us.  Do use it with caution and DON’T WASTE it on THINGs/PEOPLE who are NOT WORTH it.  Really.  Life’s too short for those idiots.

8. The art of giving and receiving

Now this is the trickiest and to me the most fascinating point - the art of giving and receiving.  What do you find easier?  To do stuff for your friends, like cooking for them, grabbing them the book that they always want?  or to be the recipient, to be invited over by friends for home-cooked dinner, or to be surprised with the little book that you always want and be given by your friends?  You may agree that recieving is sometimes as hard as giving.  I very much so.  It is difficult to recieve gracefully because when someone is giving, there is an implicit social contractual terms that you are of certain degree of closeness or trust with someone.  Hmm if I have to translate this to human language (haha, pardon my nerdy side), when someone gives, they expect something in return.  Always.  Even for altruistic deeds like donating money to UNICEF, you expect the world’s to be a better place, for example.  Appreciation, joy, gratefulness… doesn’t have to be materialistic but it shocks me how many people fail to simply bloody REGISTER the fact that someone done something for you!  It is work, it is of certain level of thoughts and care that someone does something for you.

Now the trick is, on the other hand, if you are a natural giver, you don’t want to stress the recipient too much either - I tend to over-attend to my friends sometimes, say, I am known to introduce people whom already knew one another.  And when you do stuff and expect return, you are putting yourself into unnecessary stressful situations as well.  It is tricky.  Last but not least, when people receive too much and fail to register the kindness, the weirdest things happen - they demonise the giver, and treat them miserably because they can’t handle the cognitive dissonance. (i.e. I receive a lot from this lady.  I didn’t thank her the way I should.  Either I am rude/insensitive or she is an idiot in treating me so nicely.  She is an idiot, because probably I am not rude or insensitive.)  This topic is a book on it’s own, but here’s my little summary of thoughts..

9. Healthy body, healthy mind

Enough said from my last blog post, don’t want to bore your brains out.

10. Life is a journey, enjoy meeting not just people, but souls

Finally I dedicate this blog post to my lovely friend whom father just passed away.  I wish her well and her father enjoying some peace and tranquility at the other side of the universe.  Life is a journey.  Due to millions and trillions of coincidences we meet and leave people around us.  We come with bare hands and leave with bare hands… But what we can take away is our the learning and exert kindness around us that ripples off.  You never know when that extra glass of clean water saves someone, you never know what something you say click with someone and make that person feels love and care.  Hope in the year 2009 you will enjoy being yourself, meeting kind souls, continue learning and grow.

To all of my dear friends, happy new year.

Okay Staples tagged me on this meme on the five things that keep me in check, so get ready for my reflective post!

My five things:

1. Talking to friends and family - I need to *share* my life, whether it’s something ups or downs, news just random ephiphanies.  My friends make me happy and calm me down.  And I hope I have the same effects on them…

2. Exercise - Yoga, running and a bit of resistence training and random classes - anything that makes me move and sweat is good!  I am a keen believer that sweating once a day makes you happy.  And pushing your body a little further from its comfort zone also builds confidence.  Doesn’t seem to be that direct but once you start doing that, you can’t do any less!

3. Quality food - vegetables, fruits, lots of fibre and occassion freshly grilled salmon fillet with honey and mustard saurce or freshly steamed sea bass with ginger and spring onion… the list goes on!  Good, fresh food makes me super happy, and feel good too.  Sadly I have to confess that I need my occassional dose of McDonald’s fillet O’Fish.  Horrible, I know.  Sometimes I even get migrane the next day I have one, but it’s sooooo delicious.  Oh well.

4. Detox your skin - When I first came to London I get irritated by the low humidity and the lime-rich water.  It was only when I realised at a ski trip that by going to sauna and exercise crazy for 6 days, my skin restores itself!  Skin is definitely the largest organ in the body and when you treat it nicely but proper exercise (sweat), exfoliation and moisturisation, you get happier too!

5. Thinking about thinking - this is key.  Sometimes people call that meta-cognition, it’s the ability to analyse you own thinking critically.  I am chicken-little - super risk adverse and sensitive, so very little thing can make me very stressed out, obsessed for a while, or just down for a bit.  But sometimes if I think about, ‘hey if i were xxx in the same situation, or if it’s not me in the situation but xxx, how I would be feeling now?’.  Having this mind-floating experience helps calm me down and makes me realise the importance of not to sweat over small stuff.  And everything is small stuff.

Finally as my yoga teacher said yesterday during the meditation, ‘Think about what really you are, instead of the external pressure that try to tell you what you need to be.  What is it that you truly want?  Who are the real you?‘

What are your top 5?

One obsession/passion I have  is Yoga (they’re borderline shifting back and forth, depending on how much time and how lazy I feel). When I talk to my geek friends on yoga, I tend to get two distinct reactions:

1) Noooooooo way, I’m totally unfit and I am not flexible. Or in Codepo8 words, ‘I’m too competitive to not be competitive’. Haha.

2) Yeah I love to try /I’ve tried it and love it! So good for the spine and the joints.  But I probably should do more.

Now since this conversation has happened for numerous times, I decided to just blog about my responses here specifically addressing to my dear geek friends. (note: I followed 43folders definitions of geeks, check them out here).

Why Yoga is good for geeks:

1) Yoga is not about stretching or doing difficult positions.  Yoga is about looking inwards, listening to your own breathing, your body, and your heart. It involves (if you go to the right studio and have the right teachers) medication, warm-up and different positions and then follow-through with a bit more meditation.  For geeks we are by default slightly happily suffering from attention-deficit (just think of how may tabs you are browsing at the same time, or apps), and rarely have time devoted to just check how our bodies are doing, not unless something goes wrong…  Yoga is good because when you devote an hour to yoga, you are actually devoting an hour to listen to yourself and assess what’s working and what’s not.

2) Yoga is a complicated, multifaceted doctrine.  You can never be perfect, but you can be better than your yesterday’s self. Numerous opensource-related sociological research (e.g. this one and more here) has identified that top motivators for hackers include the strive to skill improvement.  Yoga is a great medium for one to improve internally, where it is on the awareness of how to breath, on how you move your muscles, and even ultimately how tune in you are with your internal emotional energy, that can heal and grow souls around you, and most importantly, yourself.

3) Geeks spend a lot of time in front of our computers, this means that we’re always crouching forward with our shoulders hinging forward, spine compressing, and we mostly suffer a bit of shoulder strain if not back pain.  Yoga releases your spine compression and ignite muscles, tendons, strength that you never know exists.  As simple as lying down on the floor facing up and grab hold of your knees in front of your chest can release much of the compression on your back!  If you want a bit of massage you can gently rock left to right, and front to the back.  Try it tonight, or after long hours of staring at the screen.  Then we are talking ;).

4) Yoga is inward-looking, but it is very challenging for geeks to not compete with others in a room full of people.  Hence, Yoga is a great emotional exercise for us to focus internally and let go of our egos.  No, we don’t need to prove ourselves in a room of yogis - it’s about doing what *feels right* for you.  Now that’s something not we can do for a full hour outside the distraction of the hustles and bustles!  Enjoy the ’self-indulgence’!

Okay for now I’m tired from my first Bikram [Hot] Yoga class (yes Yoga is like programming languages, there are many of them and it’s up to what to need to fit that into your life!).  So I’ll stop at these 4 points.  Do you have more to add?  Any questions on this?  I’m by no means experts but am happy to share thoughts on this.

Finally for someone who has never tried Yoga, it is indeed a bit daunting to identify what type, style, location, even clothing you should be considering.  All in all, I’ll recommend newbies to enroll in a 4-8 weeks (1 day per week) beginner course as you might risk hurting yourself going into a class without beginner-needed attention as a beginner.  I wish someone has told me that when I first started because I do a lot of position in correctly and it takes more time to fix than to learn.  Remember the key is breathing and internal focus, and try not to compare with anyone else.  Also, don’t rush yourself.  It took me a couple of years to distill point 1-4 and when i first started Yoga I hated how unflexible I am, blah blah blah - but hey, once you switch you just don’t care externally (how other people do better) aymore then that’s the fun begin… Hope you’ll enjoy yoga!