phone, meet car

My car was upset that I had changed my phone, and insisted on an introduction protocol to recognise the new one.  It led me through the process, but then asked for my car keys.  I waved the electronic fob around for a while, but no dice.  I pushed a few buttons at random (the time-honoured way to get a machine to do what you want) and eventually I spotted some text that said it wanted both keys.  Hmm.  I wonder where the other fob is?  Hunting around, I found it in a cupboard drawer.  Back out to the car, which was now willing to admit that I was probably its owner.  Eventually, after more button pressing, car would speak unto phone, and connection was established.

Given how difficult it is for the registered owner to convince their car of this fact, I am surprised how easily criminals seem to manage...

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CLV

The latest batch

another Pixel

I've had my Pixel 4a for just over 4 years, and I had been thinking I needed to get a new one.  However, it was working fine, was a nice size and weight, and I had set it up how I wanted it, so why change?  But then the USB-C charging socket started getting dodgy, and sometimes the charger didn’t connect, and sometimes the cable fell out.  So I started thinking harder.  Then, at the ALife conference, the camera decided to stop showing me what I was trying to photograph.  Okay, definitely time to change!

Off to the local Vodafone shop, where I explained that I didn’t want anything fancy, or Apple, or large, but did want a reasonable camera.  That left the Pixel 9a or Pixel 10; I went for the latter.  

My new Pixel 10 is a little larger, thicker, and heavier than my old Pixel 4a, but not ridiculously so.

I asked about data transfer, but the helpful assistant said it was very easy for me to do myself, so I saved £25 there!  Indeed, it was very easy.  I powered on the Pixel 10, and it walked me through the process.  First of all, it did some transfer wirelessly.  Then it asked for a cable connection.  The end plugging in to the Pixel 4a needed a bit of finessing, but the other end plugged into the Pixel 10 with a satisfying click.  After a little while, my life had migrated to the new device, including all the apps, and even the same screen configurations.  Much easier than last time. (Although this means it also ported over all the apps I no longer use, and really should delete one day.)

Now I just have to get used to the different feel, and work out what, if anything, I should do with my old device.

book review: How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying

Django Wexler.
How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying.
Orbit. 2024

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Davi has been stuck in a time loop for centuries. Every time she dies, she wakes in a pond, and told she must save the kingdom from the Dark Lord. She has been getting better and better at doing so, but eventually the Dark Lord prevails, and Davi dies. This time, she wakes after a particularly painful death, and snaps. Rather than save the kingdom, she decides to become the Dark Lord herself! And with the power to learn that the time loop gives her, she sets out on her new quest.

Davi is a gloriously sarcastic, competent, and (mostly) moral character. Even while pursuing the goal of becoming Dark Lord, she has clearly read and follows the sensible rules in Peter Anspach’s list of The Top 100 Things I’d Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord, or, possibly more relevantly, Things I will do when I become Evil Empress, particularly in her (mostly) civilised behaviour to her minions and enemies.

After many thrilling adventures, some involving her death, Davi does finally achieve her goal (no spoiler: it’s in the title!), but what to do then? That’s for the sequel, which I am eagerly awaiting.

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For all my book reviews, see my main website

After ALife

My colleague and I travelled back to Tokyo on the bullet train this morning.  I had quite a bit of time before my flight, so he suggested we visit Electric Town.  We took a local train, then searched for some empty luggage lockers so we wouldn't have to wheel suitcases around.  All the coin-operated ones we found were full.  But we did find an alternative.

A very nice gentleman took our bags and gave us a ticket.

Divested of luggage, we walked around, marvelling at the sheer variety of stores selling everything electrical, electronic, technical, cutesy twee, and much that was unidentifiable.

A huuuge multistorey shop sold large expensive items, including mega-sized TVs, bicycles, telescopes, and sharks.

I've been to specialist telescope shops with fewer items on display.

Difficult to get a scale, but this was several feet tall.

At the other extreme, there were alleyways and arcades with tiny shops selling all kinds of electronics, from small boxes full of individual resistors and transistors, to crates full of old laptops.  Everything for the hobbyist.

One shop among hundreds.

It was lightly raining and getting dark: the combination of weather and goods made me feel like I was on the set of Bladerunner.  

After that, we retrieved our luggage, and I caught a train to the airport, to wait for my just after midnight flight home.  

I like the simplicity and clarity of the airport shop names.

The end of my third trip to Japan.

ALife 2025 day 5

The final day of the conference: it's been a great event.  The day yet again started with some parallel sessions of contributed papers, and I went to the session on Cellular Automata. I was chairing the session, so couldn't take a full set of notes, but I remember the talks being interesting.

Then the final keynote, by Anna Ciaunica, a philosopher, on the importance of embodiment: why we need our toes (and the rest of our body) to think.  We associate the mind with the brain; why not with the rest of the body? Why is the brain not a part of the body? Why do we have a "Brain and Body Institute", but not a "Liver and Body Institute"?  Why do we imagine Mary in her black and white world not understanding seeing red, rather than not understanding eating a red apple?  Why do we have an adult-centric neuro-centric bias, a male embodiment bias?  Think about pregnancy, not just from the mother's point of view, but from the point of view of the embryo: pregnancy is a universal experience, we have all been inside another person.  The opposite of death isn't life, it's birth.  We should think beyond autopoiesis to co-poiesis.  Currently our philosophical tools have been mostly invented by male philosophers.  Consider a parallel world, with a Renée Descartes, who is pregnant.

Well, after that mind-altering experience, it was time for the final boxed lunch.  And then the closing ceremony, bast paper awards, and thanks to everyone!

Next year, in Waterloo! 

ALife 2025 day 4

The day again started with some parallel sessions of contributed papers: this time I went to some interesting ones on cellular automata and related topics.  Then was the day's keynote, by Blaise Agüera y Arcas, who, with colleagues at Google, is working on in silico ALife ideas.  He related some of their results to ideas of symbiogenesis from biology, with a strong dash of physical processes and lots of tasty equations.

one of Blaise's denser slides

Then another efficient lunch box distribution was followed by two further contributed paper sessions.  Here I chose one on Evolution, followed by one on Morphological computation.  Lots of interesting ideas I need to assimilate.

These were followed by a Panel session, where I was the moderator. I got to interview Emily Dolson, Dominik Chen, and Hiro Iizuka about all things ALife.  I enjoyed it; I hope the panellists and audience did too.

Then a bunch of us went to dinner.

Shop name spotted on the way back from the eatery