Submit all the college applications

Today I submitted the last five of my college applications. I proofread the essays - so many of them - one last time and copied them from Word into the appropriate text box. Then I finalized the applications through their respective portals (mostly Common App, fortunately) and sent SAT scores to the college.

It feels really good to have them all done. Results will arrive in a few months with the first one coming in February. Right now, I am really happy to finish out the year with these handled.

Student Hunger Drive 2016

Today was Loading Day, the final day of the Quad Cities Student Hunger Drive. Yesterday, I packed up and staged the last of the donated food so it could be easily moved into the truck.

When the moving truck arrived, we quickly discovered a problem: the food we purchased from Hy-Vee had already been loaded into it, and that moving the truck a little bit caused the packaging on the pallets to burst and release individual cans all over the place. We had to very carefully open the door a tiny bit so we could grab some without stacks of partially torn open, individually sealed 12-packs falling and crushing us.

Once that was dealt with (by having a few people crawl in through the slightly open door and stack the packs correctly), we loaded locally collected boxes from the staging area into the truck.

Then we all drove to the River Bend Food Bank to unload. That went well; they fortunately had a port with a lower height so they could forklift the non-toppled pallet away without us having to rip up the packaging.

After they weighed our submissions, we learned that the school raised over 11,000 pounds (including the +2,000 bonus for winning the skit competition). That will provide several thousand meals.

Don't wear a "volunteer" shirt to a different event

Many months ago, I volunteered for a FIRST Tech Challenge robotics event. They gave me a T-shirt that says "FIRST" on the front.

Last week, I attended a cultural event at the Figge art museum. That morning, I happened to put on that shirt. At first, since none of the people I knew had arrived yet, I was standing alone. One person came up to me and asked where a certain room was. I had no idea, and I had no idea why she asked me.

Only later did I realize that my shirt said "VOLUNTEER" in large letters on the back.

Oops.

You can't fault people for disobeying a rule you just invented

It seems that some people follow this process when they see behavior they dislike:

1. Think up a rule that disallows the behavior.
2. Assert the existence of that rule.
3. Chastise the people engaging in the behavior for violating the rule.

On Stack Exchange, some behaviors people sometimes complain about are downvoting posts without a comment and closing older questions as duplicates of newer ones. (There are plenty more, of course.)

Relevant Old New Thing article: Sometimes people don't like it when you enforce a standard. The last paragraph is the best part.

To be fair, sometimes the real rules are bad and should be changed. It's happened before. But declaring that reality is other than of how it really is does nothing other than display the complainer's ignorance. And indeed, such SE comments usually earn their poster a link to the relevant help center page or meta post.

Instead of denying reality, people who feel wronged by the system should do something like this:

1. Go look up the relevant rules to see who is mistaken.
2. Try to figure out reasons for the rules being how they are.
3. If desired, explain why you believe the rules should be changed.
4. Post your ideas for discussion.

That way, if your ideas do make sense, you stand a good chance of correcting the problem as opposed to just stirring up annoyance.

Oh, and if you're curious, the two behaviors mentioned above have been constructively discussed on Meta Stack Exchange:

• Encouraging people to explain downvotes
• Should I vote to close a duplicate question, even though it's much newer, and has more up to date answers?

Student Hunger Drive Kickoff 2016

The Quad Cities Student Hunger Drive (a six-week-long food drive from area high schools) kicked off tonight with the annual skit competition. As usual, my school performed a choreographed dance involving box movements to a parody of some song or another. After all nine entrants to the skit competition did their performances, there was - like last year - a tie, and it was the same tie as last year: us and a certain other school.

So both schools redid their respective skits. The tie was again to be broken by which skit received louder cheering. To be honest, I wasn't super optimistic: we lost last year because the competing school had brought a boatload of people to cheer. To my very happy surprise, two non-tied schools started cheering for us, quite loudly, and the referee announced that we won! That's two thousand pounds of food donated by Hy-Vee on behalf of us, giving us a good head start in the competition soon to come.

Don't blindly trust the TLD

I have seen two sources now suggesting that information on web sites that end with .gov, .edu, or .org is likely to be trustworthy. Those first two are virtually always legit - you have to actually prove yourself as an appropriate type of entity (US government department or higher education institution,respectively) to register them. .org web sites, on the other hand, can be registered by absolutely anyone, for a few dollars per year. For instance, see this satirical warning website about dihydrogen monoxide (water). They even have a DMOZ organization title in Google search results.

Even .edu web sites frequently have "home folders" where teachers and sometimes students can host static content of their choosing. Though the people writing that content are certainly very smart, the work isn't likely to be peer-reviewed.

Basically, looking at the web site's top-level domain isn't enough to verify the trustworthiness of an arbitrary document under it. More importantly, please don't spread the overgeneralization that all .org web sites are high-quality.

House on the Rock and Cave of the Mounds

Yesterday, my father and I drove up to Wisconsin to visit two attractions: the House on the Rock and Cave of the Mounds.

We first went to House on the Rock. It starts with a room containing information panels and videos about the history of the House and its creator. There is then a winding wooden path through the forest up onto the rock. The first section (the original construction) is composed of paths and stairs that navigate around outcroppings and trees. Along the walls, there are bookshelves, cooking implements, and Asian-like items. This section also has access to the Infinity Room, which overhangs the forest.

Along the way, several seating areas are visible but cordoned off. Through them, other parts of the path can be seen. It seems that the barriers could be rearranged to produce a different path through the rooms. There are one or two music-making machines around. Outside the house, there are lookouts toward the forest.

The second section is much larger. It starts with the "Streets of Yesterday" exhibit, which has arrangements of 19th-century buildings, like households, dentist offices, and shops. Those buildings have many interesting artifacts corresponding to their function. At the end of that entry hall is a massive music machine: the Gladiator.

The path then goes into a huge sea-themed area. There is an "octopus garden" statue/sculpture to the right, and the center of the very tall room is taken up by a statue of a whale-vs.-octopus battle. Along the walls are nautical artifacts and history on famous ships.

Past that, there are some interesting cars, like one completely covered in tiles. Nearby, there's a café, at which we got some pizza. Continuing on into "The Music of Yesterday", there are more automated music rooms.

The third section features a massive carousel, with all kinds of creatures. Several smaller carousels can be seen from later paths.

The path then enters another large area, this time full of unlabeled inert machinery. The color scheme here is really interesting: mostly gray from the metals, with some red splashed in from small displays reminiscent of the second section.

After the machine room, there's another relaxing break spot. The path then continues by some medieval-themed display cases and into a circus-themed area. There is a section with dolls and dollhouses, then the room opens up and the ramp circles another circus music machine. After a trip by the small carousels, visitors exit onto an outdoor path back toward the entry building.

We drove the half-hour or so to Cave of the Mounds and registered for an hourly cave tour. The first thing I noticed is that the climate is really nice inside the cave: cool and not humid. Most of the cave is very easy to navigate - there are high ceilings and fairly wide paths - while one part in particular is very narrow and short.

The cave has impressive formations, and also a small, beautiful river.

On the drive back home, we stopped at an A&W for a burger and root beer.

Visiting Chicago

Yesterday, my father and I visited Chicago, primarily to see the Museum of Science and Industry. Since we had all day, we got tickets for general admission and three timed-entry events.

Before the first such event started, we went to find the Omnimax theater so we would know where to go later. (The Museum is a big place!) While around there, we saw an exhibit on the history of the space program. There was a dramatic video about the moon landing, which was interesting because I didn't previously know about the issues encountered on the way down.

The first scheduled event was a tour of the captured German U-505 submarine. The entrance hall to the main room told of how the American military planned to capture a German sub rather than just sink it. That was an amazing feat, especially considering that the sub was continuing to sink as the Americans boarded and secured it. Its inside is very cramped, even after some objects were removed to make entrances for museum visitors.

We then went to look at the DARPA exhibit, which had a wall for the history of interesting modern technologies started there. In the rest of the room, videos and captioned pictures illustrated real-world applications for DARPA's research.

We then stopped by the food court for noodle bowls, which were delicious.

Continuing to explore the central area of the main floor, we walked through a section on genetics, which mentioned some applications of genetic engineering in dealing with genetic disorders.

In the Omnimax theater, we saw National Parks Adventure, which had absolutely amazing scenes of natural wonders. It followed the experiences of a small group of people taking trips to America's national parks. The movie also had a brief history of the national parks' conception (Theodore Roosevelt's trip with John Muir).

After the movie, we looked through "Fast Forward", a hall of ideas currently in development that have the potential to hugely impact life.



It was then time for the last timed-entry event: Future Energy Chicago, which had been described as a simulator for energy conservation strategies in a city. It consisted of five semi-competitive games. It seemed to be targeted at a younger age group, but with the competition it was still a good time. One of the games was about installing various kinds of public transportation to remove cars from the road, and the tutorial included the direction "Drag a train onto a busy road." At the end, my father and I won (which makes sense considering the age of the other players), but the scoreboard also included a "combined team" score, which was the average of the high scores from each game, and so was of course higher than any individual team's score. The moral of the story is that collaboration is key, see. (An individualistic game designer might rig the combined score as the minimum of the individual scores to reflect the more likely scenario that one poor performer holds everyone back.)

There were still several exhibits to see. We looked at a John Deere farming technology exhibit, saw a classic coal-powered train, went in a real decommissioned Boeing 727, checked out a sound reflecting room, and went through a mirror maze.

By this time, the museum was about to close. Back in the lobby, we looked at and heard the story of the Pioneer Zephyr, the first "streamlined" train.

Exiting the museum, we started driving toward the Willis Tower, but stopped on the way at the Berghoff's (a German restaurant) for dinner. We shared a plate that included several things served by the restaurant and finished out the meal with apple strudel.

That one plate was more than enough for both of us. It was very good, as was the root beer.

We then walked over to the Willis Tower and went up to the Skydeck.

After all that, we started the several-hour drive back home. It was definitely a very full day.

The Lab, day 3

While looking around town in West Covina, CA yesterday, I saw this:

Hope you're not in a rush!

Anyway, today was the third and final day of Reasons To Believe's "The Lab" conference. Before arriving at the RTB office, my father and I went to Flappy Jack's Pancake House on Route 66. The plates of pancakes have an absolutely massive amount of food; I had to box more than half of my banana nut pancakes. Those, and their Hawaiian ones, are delicious.

A street sign for Route 66

The conference's day opened with advice on college life: being intentional about time. After that, we got into some more interactive apologetics training. We considered challenges from headlines/excerpts of scientific news, developing responses from both science and theology.

There was then an amazing talk about how environment affects cell behavior, i.e. how genes don't determine everything. It also covered some ways that the raw base pairs are controlled and interpreted, like packing and separators.

One of the conference's most impactful talks was on a four-part argument for design. That argument first needs to critique the evolutionary model, which is most effectively done by considering whether the model's predictions are fulfilled. Three positive arguments for design can then be applied. There are the "watchmaker" argument (design requires a designer), the empirical argument (humans built some life, but only with great intelligence and modern tooling), and the bio-inspiration argument (humans are making technological gains by examining nature's mechanisms).

After the conference ended with commissioning, we said our goodbyes to all the other attendees and speakers. My father and I will be flying back home tomorrow morning.

The Lab, day 2

Today was the second day of Reasons To Believe's "The Lab" conference in West Covina, California.

Me with the RTB sign

In the morning, the presenters reviewed the three major destinations on the science-faith landscape: young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, and evolutionism. It lined up the six "days" of creation with biological events, noting how impressive it is that the author of Genesis managed to get the order right despite how a human living in that time might expect the world to be built.

We then all loaded up the vans and went to the Griffith Observatory for their "Center of the Universe" planetarium show. The observatory has a lovely campus. It's up on a hill with trails leading up to the actual building. From there, the Hollywood sign is visible.

With the Hollywood sign in the background

Outside the building, there was a noon detector:

"It's high noon..."

Inside, there was (among many other interesting exhibits) one of those devices that prove that the Earth rotates:

A swinging pendulum that knocks over pins as the day progresses

During the show itself, I was impressed by the quality of the animation. The narration was soothing yet interesting. The show covered humanity's exploration of the universe and how our understanding of the cosmos developed.

Once we arrived back, there was a session about the relationships between the numerous species of life. The presentation contrasted common design with common descent. It showed the difficulties involved in building a tree of genetic development that links all life.

We ended the day hearing about how to effectively engage in dialogue with those who may not be entirely receptive. This presentation was also notable for its use of webcomics (especially XKCD and Ph.D. Comics, which are both amazing).

The silhouette of the mountains at night

The Lab, day 1

Today was the first day of The Lab conference. Before my father and I went to the Reasons To Believe office, we looked around for a breakfast restaurant and found Marie Callender's, which I only knew from the soup. Their pancakes were very good, and the waffles were also fine.

When we arrived at RTB, we got a brief but impressive tour of the facility, which is very clean and modern.

A humorous caption for the restroom

The first hour or so of the actual conference established the basics of apologetics. The first session after lunch went into epistemology and the philosophy/axioms of science. Following that, there were small-group discussions about apologetics and personal experiences therewith.

The most detailed section was near the end. AJ Roberts gave a presentation de-equivocating "evolution", covering the five kinds: chemical evolution (abiogenesis), microevolution, microbial evolution (gene transfer among single-cell organisms), speciation, and macroevolution (introduction of completely new features). Of those, she found that only the middle three had sufficient scientific support.

After the day's events, the whole group went to dinner together at In-N-Out, which I hear is important to go to if one is visiting California.

The burger, prior to its being eaten

We finished the day off with laser tag in a park. Since I had never played before, I was not very adept, but I did have a great time.

The RTB office sign at night

Visiting California

Reasons To Believe's "The Lab" conference is happening this week, and I am attending with my father, so I am currently in California. I also am taking the opportunity to visit Caltech, since it's fairly close by.

This morning, we rode two flights to get to the Ontario airport after a stop in Dallas (Fort Worth). DFW has a really neat tram-like system to move people to the various gates very quickly. After landing in ONT, we picked up a rental car, which turned out to be a completely new Nissan because they didn't have the economy car that we ordered.

Following that, we attempted to visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but since we had not signed up for any public tour, we couldn't get in.

Found the way to space!

At the JPL sign

Since we hadn't eaten for a while, we went to look for food. I Googled "caltech cafe" and found mentions of a Red Door Café, so I had Google give me walking directions, but when we arrived at the destination, no café was in sight. So instead, we hurriedly bought burgers from a Jack-in-the-Box before checking in for the Caltech tour.

I am most struck by Caltech's academic rigor and the freedom/responsibility it gives students. The amount of resources it makes available is also exceptionally impressive. I'll definitely be applying there. (The tour included a stop outside the Red Door Café, and it was nowhere near where we had previously been led to.)

With the admissions counselor

Following the Caltech visit, I searched for attractions near Pasadena. Google mentioned a Strawberry Peak, so we put that in the Google Maps app and started going. It turns out that Strawberry Peak is a few miles into the Angeles National Forest, which covers a swath of mountains. The only way through is Highway 2, which winds up and down in elevation and around numerous mountains, which are breathtaking:

 

When Google Maps informed us that we had arrived, we saw nothing special - the actual peak point is not accessible from a road, so it took us to the closest place. Though I couldn't get cell service 3,000 feet above sea level, we continued on Highway 2, planning to travel the entire length of the Forest. It took us several hours, but we did it. The elevation reached almost 8,000 feet at some points.

At Cloud Burst Summit, >7K feet

The Forest is almost entirely devoid of civilization; we only ran across two places that might have running water, and both were closed at the time. Therefore, we were very pleased to run across the Grizzly Café in Wrightwood to the east of the Forest.

After a good meal there, we arrived at the hotel near RTB, where I have typed this post. The convention begins tomorrow morning.

Optics presentation

I just gave a brief (20 minute) presentation on optics as it related to astronomy. It just covers refraction, reflection, common kinds of aberration, binoculars, and touches on types of telescopes. I figured I'd upload my slides in case anybody wants to use them as an outline.

Download as PDF

Chinatown trip 2016

Today I went up to Chicago's Chinatown with the rest of my Chinese class, plus a few people who used to be in the class and one other student who is Chinese.

Upon arrival, we walked around the zone for a bit to get our bearings. We then went into the Phoenix Restaurant for dim sum. Previously, each person on the trip had given the guide a menu with the desired items checked. One student had checked everything that she thought looked good, and so we ended up ordering a huge amount of dishes. There was a constant stream of new things being delivered to the table as we ate. We did manage to eat almost all of it, and the guide only took home two or three small Styrofoam boxes of food.

After that, we went around town, looking into stores. I only bought a small bag of White Rabbit candies, which are delicious. We then visited a museum that had information about Chinatown's history and culture, including a brief film about it.

Finally, we went to Joy Yee for tea. I got a coconut milk tea with tapioca, which was delicious.

I didn't get to speak all that much Chinese, but I did hear some and understood a little.

AP exam week

Today concludes the first week of the two-week AP exam season, during which high school students take exams corresponding to courses authorized by the College Board.

It so happens that all my exams (Physics 1, English Literature and Composition, and Calculus BC) were this week, so I am finished for the year.

The College Board usually publishes the free-response questions two days after the exam, and since it's been about 57 hours from the end of the Physics 1 one, this year's are indeed available (PDF).

Microwaves do not cause cancer

Microwaves do not cause cancer.

Microwave ovens are able to cook food because they deliver so much energy via microwaves that the molecules of the food vibrate, producing heat. Standing right next to an old microwave oven is "only" dangerous because the microwaves could burn you. Temperature changes in certain parts of the body can lead to problems (like temporary infertility), but not cancer.

The only kinds of electromagnetic radiation that cause cancer are the ionizing ones, like gamma rays. Fortunately, microwaves are not ionizing - not even close. Normal visible light is closer to gamma rays on the EM spectrum than microwaves are. Similarly, the electric field from power lines is non-ionizing, and so cannot cause cancer.

"Let's see some reliable sources!" Sure:

• Microwaves, Radio Waves, and Other Types of Radiofrequency Radiation from the American Cancer Society
• Power Lines, Electrical Devices and Extremely Low Frequency Radiation likewise
• Cell Phones and Cancer Risk from the National Cancer Institute
• Electromagnetic Fields and Cancer likewise

Note that studies are still going on; there is yet some uncertainty. So far, the evidence for a causal relationship between microwaves/phones and cancer is not there.

Chocolate fountains require a good deal of work

My class planned/hosted the school prom this year, and we decided to get a chocolate fountain. That was all well and good in the beginning - it was assembled easily and started working, just as expected. 

The problems appeared at teardown time. You see, the largest dish of the fountain was fixed to the main part. Therefore, the only way to remove the chocolate from it was to very carefully place the whole assembly in a sink and direct the water to avoid the electrical parts.

Even after twenty of fiddling around, the device is still not completely chocolate-free, and will probably need to be left with water in the bowl to get the last pieces off.

What is the volume of a 2-liter bottle?

Many math courses provide a few helpful formulas that may be used on tests on a formula sheet. A certain online course provider's sheet includes an interesting "formula" after some common geometric ones:

Volume of a 2-liter bottle: 2 liters

I find it difficult to imagine the circumstances that led up to that being added to the sheet. Surely it couldn't have been there from the start - I hope the test writers had faith that their students would be able to determine the volume of a 2-liter bottle from the "2-liter" part. Though, in two years of mathematics through that provider, I never once was asked a question involving a 2-liter bottle, so maybe there was a confusing question that was retired.

Interestingly, "what is the volume of a 2 liter bottle" does get auto-completed in the Google Chrome search bar after I type the 2. In the results, Google renders in bold both "2 liters" and "500 milliliters."

Even smart people sometimes don't know what they're talking about

Today I was browsing the web site of someone who is very respected in a certain field when I came upon a writing on a completely different subject that is blatantly and objectively incorrect. That didn't make the writer's other accomplishments any less interesting, it just made me realize that like all humans, the writer can be off-base/uninformed.

Therefore, just because somebody is famous or accomplished in one discipline does not mean that everything said by that person is correct (or even close). Listening to someone smart does not provide an opportunity to turn off critical thinking.

Apple vs. FBI is over: Did cryptography lose?

Nope, cryptography is doing just fine; cryptography wins.

The FBI announced that it successfully got into the terrorist's iPhone and read all the data - without Apple's help. There are two major theories about how that happened. I'm getting a lot of my information about this from Zdziarski's blog post, which I highly recommend reading.

1. The FBI could have used a technique called NAND mirroring. That would allow them to copy the raw contents of the storage medium and rewrite it back every time it got erased by the controller. Such operations would be tricky with a high risk of physically destroying the data medium, but possible with sufficient funds and testing.
2. There might have been a flaw in the security of the controller's software. Just like how desktop computer software sometimes has vulnerabilities that can be exploited remotely (i.e. without modifying anything on the disk) to take over the system, a certain sequence of input could have been discovered that allowed the FBI to have the controller do what they wanted.

Good encryption would have defended against both attack methods. The terrorist used an exceptionally weak password: a four-digit PIN, for which there are only ten thousand possibilities. For contrast, there are many trillions of possible alphanumeric eight-character passwords, and even those aren't very good. Microsoft BitLocker, a common disk encryption method for Windows computers, is secure even when attackers have the raw data. It holds up because there are so many possible keys.

If you use strong passwords to key strong encryption, you'll have strong security that's virtually unbreakable.

Volunteering with WQPT

Yesterday, I volunteered at a WQPT event called Imagination Station, which is a day for young children to "meet" PBS Kids characters and engage in activities related to those shows.

My group was placed in the Cat room of the "Peg + Cat" show, which I have never seen and do not know anything about, beyond the fact that it involves a girl named Peg and her Cat. The three activities we managed were a pattern game, a maracas craft table, and a chicken toss game. I stayed with the chicken toss, which was not quite as popular as the maracas craft, but much more successful than the pattern game.

The chickens being tossed were fuzzy cotton-ish things, some of which were decorated with little features to look like chickens. The goal of the game was to toss those items into a row of eight plastic buckets on the floor. It was interesting to see the different strategies employed by different children: some went to the end of the row and threw into successive buckets, some stood back and threw into varying buckets (usually the one on the end labeled "8"), and some just walked up and dropped the chickens in. (That works.)

If I had a nickel for every time I said to a small child, "Do you want to try the chicken toss?", I would be in the top one percent. My job was to greet people, demonstrate the tossing, encourage the tossers, and pick up all the chickens. I'm not well-accustomed to dealing with kids, but there was a minimum of problematic behavior. I had a fine time, and hopefully my involvement made a little difference.

Sometimes people just don't know what they're talking about

There was recently something of a debacle on Stack Overflow in which one user included an exceptionally dangerous line of code in answer as an example of code that should never be run. Specifically, running the short program in the answer would result in the complete erasure of all writable files on the computer. Fortunately, the bad code was not obfuscated in any way, the section that included it was clearly marked as terrible, the question was not applicable to novice users, and the bad part was neutralized within minutes by a high-rep user. (The previous link was to the original revision, which hasn't been live for a while.) The person who posted the code apologized, and as far as I can tell, never intended to hurt anybody.

Nevertheless, a link to the situation with an editorialized title was posted on the programming section of Reddit, a forum-ish place whose users seem to think pretty highly of themselves. That post wasn't super special; people try to make sensational stories all the time. No, the appalling part came when people started talking about the debacle with zero understanding of Stack Overflow or what actually happened.

Commenters there evidently didn't read the meta post, didn't consider the fact that no newbie would be copy/pasting that answer (because of the toughness of the question), and assumed malice from the start. Accusations of psychopathy got thrown around, and there were calls for that user to be banned. Nobody seemed to understand how Stack Overflow works or what its moderation process is. Comments accusing the original poster of being unrepentant got lots of upvotes, while explanations of what actually went on were not so acknowledged.

The lesson to learn here is that people who come sailing in with passionate condemnations might have absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

Sopes de cecina

A Spanish class assignment has me creating a video of myself talking in Spanish while cooking something from a Spanish-speaking country. The trick is that I'd never cooked anything remotely challenging before. I picked (essentially at random) sopes de cecina. I could find neither sopes nor cecina, so I did some substitution - tortillas and pork, respectively.

The cooking part actually went pretty well; it was the camera management that was troublesome - the tripod I used couldn't rotate up and down, only right and left. Nevertheless, I got some decent shots of cutting the pork, salting it, frying it in a pan, and of building the final product. The food, surprisingly, turned out quite well despite the untested substitutions.

I now know one actual recipe.

Volunteering at the AEA

Over the past couple months, I have been volunteering at the Iowa Area Education Agency installation near my school. It's been an interesting experience, a blend of volunteering and job shadowing.

The task was to aid in the continued construction of their deployment systems. Deployment is, in essence, the process of taking a completely blank computer and installing an OS and programs on it over the network with a minimum of human assistance. The AEA already had a very nice system in place with the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, organized based on the makes and models of the target systems. I brought in my school's laptops so that the AEA could add appropriate configuration to their library and so that my school could benefit from the setup.

We ran into several challenges, most of which stemmed from the fact that the first laptop I brought had a bad hard drive. I did get to learn a lot about MDT troubleshooting and driver registration because of that, though. We'll next be moving on to Office installation; we've already made some progress on that.

What exactly the FBI wants Apple to do

There's a lot of talk and media attention on the FBI's request for Apple to help break into the phone of a terrorist. There's also a lot of confusion and misleading information surrounding that whole debacle, which I would like to clear up.

The phone's contents are encrypted on its storage medium. That makes the request different than a simple unlock - just moving the storage device to a different reader wouldn't help. There's no backdoor, and no "master key" that Apple can use to decrypt anybody's data. The encryption key is derived from a password, but guessing passwords really quickly wouldn't work because the storage controller would slow down the requests and eventually destroy the data after too many failed attempts. Picking apart the storage medium and circumventing the controller would likely result in the destruction of the data because the physical medium is so tiny and delicate.

Therefore, the FBI is asking Apple to create an alternate program ("firmware") for the storage controller that would allow rapid guessing and eventually decryption. The FBI can't make it themselves because they don't have Apple's firmware-signing key; the updated firmware wouldn't be accepted without a valid signature.

Apple doesn't want to give the FBI a signed alternate firmware because the FBI and the government could use it on other devices to invade the privacy of non-terrorists. So far, they've defied the court order.

Related reading: Cryptography wins

We allow only good questions, but not all good questions

On the Stack Exchange Q&A network, every site defines its scope as an "on-topic" page, sometimes augmented with community-written and -maintained documents ("meta posts"). There's also a snappy tagline for each site that describes it to Internet passersby, for example:

Super User is a question and answer site for computer enthusiasts and power users.

With notable frequency, I see people (who clearly didn't read the on-topic page, despite it being linked from the Ask Question page and the tour) ask about a topic that sounds like it would fit in the short description, but is not allowed by the actual on-topic guidelines. Such questions are closed or migrated to an appropriate site.

After an experienced user explains to the poster via comment why the question is off-topic (or when the question gets closed), the poster tends to defend the post, saying that it's about insert short topic summary here, clearly not having read the articles that usually get linked by the experienced users. Then follows a back-and-forth of about four rounds in which the experienced user explains that, despite the question possibly sounding on-topic from the summary, the community does not accept it.

The thing that the new users don't understand is that the community defined its topic and that said topic can't be fully delimited by a short tagline. Certain types of questions are disallowed (e.g. software recommendations and web app questions on Super User) because - even though useful information might come of them - they tend to attract problems, or are otherwise not well served by the Q&A format. To keep the quality of all posts high, it's necessary to reject some high-quality posts that are outside the defined topic.

Answer the question please

In anticipation of the Iowa student caucus, I just watched all the 2016 presidential candidates' video submissions to Caucus 101. A few candidates did a great job quickly explaining what they stand for, but many didn't say anything of substance. The latter just talked about the importance of the caucus and of young people's participation therein.

It is my understanding that the point of this whole caucus thing is do let people indicate what they want. Generic responses don't help that process. I am very pleased that the candidates I favor did use the video time as I believe it should be used.