Collaborative Negotiation

 The best training course that I ever attended, when working at Hewlett-Packard, in the 1980s, was a course called 'Collaborative Negotiation'.

It has helped me enormously, over the decades since!

The essence of Collaborative Negotiation is to understand that negotiation is not a 'zero-sum game', where the 'win' of one party comes only at a 'loss' to the other. This is not true, a good negotiation ought to be a win-win collaboration towards the best solution for both parties.

The first step to using Collaborative Negotiation is to understand that everything is a negotiation and everything is negotiable.

The main route to success is for both parties to do their best to understand the motivation, needs, both tangible, and emotional, and use that understanding to find novel, unexpected solutions that meet these needs for all parties.

This requires work, imagination, and emotional intelligence - practicing negotiation every day, whenever the opportunity arises, helps build these skills.

Whenever you are presented with a situation that doesn't seem ideal, realise it is a negotiation and try to understand the position of the person you are working with.

Then you, and the other party, can frame the situation in a way that makes more sense, and, from that, work towards a solution.

The practice of collaboration, and the importance of negotiation is the core of my book Collaborative Consulting: Service Management Scenarios.

If you are interested in having things work out better, but don't feel comfortable bullying others, or tricking them, or using confrontation to get your own way, I strongly recommend the book to you.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Collaborative-consulting-service-management-scenarios/dp/0113313918

TikTok ban - and the Tor Browser

There is a move for the US, and, now, US governnents to ban TikTok.

The claim is based on Sinophobia - claiming that it presents some sort of danger that Facebook, X(twitter), Instagram, and other platforms do not have.

This is bogus. All social media platforms 'spy' on users. If that is an issue, the argement could only be to ban all social media.

The actual reason, as is pretty well known, is that TikTok supports free speech. This access to free speech has led to lots of users, quite properly, discussing their horror at the genocide against Palestineans, being carried out by the Apartheid State of Isreal. They hope to suppress this discussion in order to continue their complicty with the war crime of collective punishment, by supplying arms and money to Isreal.

There is a solution, if this ban comes about.

Users of TikTok need to download the Tor browser:

https://www.torproject.org/download/

Then use this browser to create, and use, accounts on TikTok.

This will circumvent the ban, and allow free speech to continue - aiding the humanitarian effort to stop the genocide in Gaza.

Exploring the 'randomness' of /dev/urandom, and xored derivatives

 For quite a lot of cryptography, you need a good source of random numbers, particularly for one-time pads. It's difficult to get fast sources of natural event based numbers, so some sort of compromise is common.

Using /dev/urandom as found on linux and other Unix systems, like macOS, is generally considered quite a good source.

*** Update  - 19th March 2024 ***

The article stands, but more investigation has showed me that the major problem with /dev/urandom is that it is highly biased against repeated numbers. This is not representative of a good pseudo-random generator.

Compared to 𝛑, /dev/urandom gives very few repeated numbers ( 00, 66, 99 etc.), and hardly any occurences of multiple repeats (00000, 66666, 99999). This is a weakness to cryptanalysis.

So, if using /dev/urandom, it would be wise to process all sequences to add ('at random') repeats of numbers, allowing even long strings of repeats, maybe up to 8 repeated numbers, inserted at pseudo-random intervals.

*** End of Update ***

The initial statistics

To get a good characterisation of a sequence of 'random' numbers, you need quite a lot of them, so I generated 152,256,840,500 four digit hex numbers, like this:

od -x -An  </dev/urandom >fill_with_urandom

The 1.52 * 10^11, or just over a tenth of a billion, numbers take up 709Gb, and took 10 hours, 3 minutes and 59 seconds to generate on a Mac mini M2. 

To get an idea of the shape, I counted the number of times each hex number, from 0000 to ffff occurred. That's 65536 numbers. 

So the expected frequency would be 2323255 for each number, if they turned up equally often. The statistics give:

Min:              2316807  

Max:     2329592 

Mean:     2323255 

Standard Deviation:    1529.303 

Median:     2323255 

Fivenum:             2316807 2322219 2323255 2324284 2329592 

Skewness:     0.0004868033  

Kurtosis:             3.004057

As you can see, the mean is exactly that, and the standard deviation only 1529, which is only .0658%. The mean and median are the same, which also shows a very even spread of frequencies.

If the figures were distributed exactly in a normal distribution, the Skewness would be 0 and the Kurtosis 3. So it is extremely close.

Using XOR to produce a new sequence of numbers

In theory, if you xor one random sequence with another, you ought to get another, quite different random sequence. I thought it would be interesting to do just this.

First I produced a new sequence by xoring each number with its neighbour, doing it in groups of eight - making up the eighth number by xoring the first with the eighth. Using the same Mac mini M2, this took 34 hours, or  1 day, 10 hours, 13 minutes and 44 seconds.

The same statistics as above, gives:

Min: 2317159 

Max: 2330445 

Mean: 2323255 

Standard Deviation: 1530.588 

Median: 2323262 

Fivenum: 2317159 2322224 2323262 2324284 2330445 

Skewness: 0.001143814 

Kurtosis: 3.001915 

This is impressively different. The mean and median are different. However, the spread is almost exactly the same, 1530, instead of 1529 for the standard deviation.

What I found interesting were the last two.

The Skewness is   0.001143814  compared to 0.0004868033 the first being 2.35 times bigger! Though they are tiny numbers, that is a big difference.

The Kurtosis is 3.001915 compared to 3.004057, again, small, but the difference is about double.

Using XOR a second time

I now performed exactly the same operation as above, but using the new sequence as a starting point. This gave:

Min: 2316959 

Max: 2330963 

Mean: 2323255 

Standard Deviation: 1523.088 

Median: 2323254 

Fivenum: 2316959 2322234 2323254 2324272 2330963 

Skewness: 0.005033493 

Kurtosis: 3.03291 

The standard deviation at 1523 is similar to the previous two  1530, 1529 but different enough to show a different shape.

This is confirmed, with:

                       1st                         2nd                    3rd

Skewness:  0.001143814   0.0004868033.     0.005033493 

Kurtosis:    3.001915          3.004057            3.03291 

This time both are very different to the previous two - the skewness five times the first set, and the kurtosis difference ten times greater. All three showing very different shapes.

The final test - xoring the previous sequence

 Instead of over each set of eight numbers, taking five lines at a time, and xoring sets of 40 numbers at a time (with the 40th result being the 1st xored with the 40th). This gives:

Min: 2317132 

Max: 2330652 

Mean: 2323255 

Standard Deviation: 1523.587 

Median: 2323256 

Fivenum: 2317132 2322226 2323256 2324275 2330652 

Skewness: 0.00861003 

Kurtosis: 3.021 

The standard deviation is very similar to the previous run,  1523.587 vs  1523.088. The mean and median again differ by only one, but in the opposite direction.

Then: 

                       1st                         2nd                    3rd                4th

Skewness:  0.001143814   0.0004868033.     0.005033493.  0.00861003 

Kurtosis:    3.001915          3.004057            3.03291           3.021

Conclusions 

These results, using 152 milliard four digit hexadecimal numbers give /dev/urandom a fairly thorough test, showing it is, indeed, highly stochastic.

The experiments using xor, show that xoring a sequence of numbers, with itself, produces another random sequence that is significantly different, including having a different shape, but is still a good pseudo-random sequence.

The latter two sequences do show an increased skewness, and a greater distance from a standard deviation.  In a sense, suggesting they have become more stochastic.

It looks as if it would be interesting to try a final experiment, with, the 4th sequence, but, maybe, taking it in batches of 80 numbers.

 

Eulogy to my halogen air-fryer / oven

Our halogen oven / air-fryer is a delight, and amazing technological improvement from the, already wonderful, invention of the air-fryer itself.

Having just cleaned my halogen air-fryer for the third time, since getting it last November, I thought eulogise it here, rather than boring people on Facebook with all the detail, I'll just point here, so most people can ignore it.

Yes, it is so easy, and satisfying to clean that I've cleaned it to sparkling clarity three times - it took ten minutes this time, because I'd made the mistake of cooking pastry (salmon en croute) on the grill, rather than on a piece of foil, usually, after its 'self-clean', it takes a minute to wipe it down.

Meanwhile our conventional oven has probably been cleaned annually over the past few years, maybe a little more often, but always an unpleasant, tedious job, including lots of powerful, pongy chemicals and the need to wear gloves.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, an 'eulogy' (eu = good, logy = words) is not only for the dead, our air-fryer is still in robust good health being in use most days, often for the perfect toasted cheese snack.

Over Christmas, I remarked, when we'd just had loin of wild venison, with roast potatoes - all cooked in 25 minutes. The venison is, accounting for the recency effect, the best I've had. Pink in the middle, succulent, moist, and tasty beyond my imagining. 

In a conventional oven, it'd have taken much longer, and would certainly have been dryer (despite the bacon wrapping and sauce), with a less full flavour. I'm very deply impressed!

The versatility is hugely impressive. The only single thing I've had to cook in our conventional oven is the Christmas goose, simply because it was too huge to fit - it only just fitted in the oven. Everything else, including the goose pie, made from that goose, has been halogened - I think a verb form of 'halogen' is now required.

Being able, with no effort, to see the food as it cooks, is a huge benefit, and the lovely warm glow of the oven makes the kitchen, in Winter, seem even more welcoming than usual.

The have to be some things that are less than perfect. The main one is that, the top, being very hot after cooking, can't be put down, so you have to get things out one-handed. The solution will be to put a large, sturdy hook above the oven, where the lid can be hung when getting things out - I'm going to make sure it's high enough and properly positioned so it's difficult to burn your forearms whilst doing this.

Apart from that, it is is quite magnificent. 

TheT lhat halogen oven is quite something! We've just had loin of wild venison, with roast potatoes - all cooked in 25 minutes. The venison is, accounting for the recency effect, the best I've had. Pink in the middle, succulent, moist, and tasty beyond my imagining.

In a conventional oven, it'd have taken much longer, and would certainly have been dryer (despite the bacon wrapping and sauce), with a less full flavour. I'm very deeply impressed!