Category: Tech Stuff
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How Electricity Actually Works
I remember when I studied electronics and electricity in high school I was able to do the math ( V = IR ). It was presented to me as something “very intuitive” but it didn’t feel intuitive to me … and I didn’t dare to ask, because if it was “obviously intuitive” and I wasn’t…
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Richard Feynman on How Computers Work
A beautiful explanation of how computers work for non-technical people that can be as useful today as it was almost 35 years ago. As the talk unfolded and approached the subject of intelligence in computers I began to wonder how his ideas have held up in light of AI … and (spoiler alert) damn did…
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Kumihimo: Japanese Braiding
A Japanese spirit seems to be upon me … Kumihimo is yet another beautiful example of a living-meditation: … and in this video … working with 68 braids … there is a glimpse of what I believe is a key to this art (and any art!?) … the instruction sheet that guides the maker ……
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Japanese Toolmakers
As I stand at the entrance to the space of Japanese Kumiko woodworking, I find myself also getting acquainted with the tools associated with the culture. And one of the fundamental functions in wood-working is cutting … which ultimately involves blades in many forms. A unique feature of many japanese tools is laminated metal ……
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3 Sources of Bias in AI
” … Math really is pure, has certain truth, it’s eternal, it would be the same without any particular sentient species looking at it. That’s because math is an abstraction that doesn’t exist in the real world. Computation is a physical process. … the first source of AI bias: unintentionally uploading the implicit human biases…
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Justin Searls: How to Program
I enjoyed this talk by Justin Searls who highlights what should be an obvious subject (for anyone who programs). There is a gap between knowing the semantics of a programming environment and being able to program with it to create something useful. Justin sheds some interesting light on this fundamental subject. Though I still live…
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The Notion of Time in Computing
Anyone who has done any programming that has elements of persistency (not just adding two numbers, but recording when that addition was performed) has experienced the challenge of time. It is a problem that exists on any scale, from human relevant scales (which online shopping order was placed first) to machine-relevant scales (which network packet…
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Being a part of … nothing
I started this video in a tech-mindset. I had already known about most of what is displayed in it, but the conclusions drawn in the last seconds gave me chills. Yes feeling a part of something, community, sharing, etc … are precious experiences that we are drawn to. But does it not matter what underlies…
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Google now listening in ALWAYS
First this as context: “Today some Google Home owners reported hearing something extra when they asked for a summary of the day ahead from the smart speaker: an advertisement for the opening of Beauty and the Beast … The ad was delivered using the regular Google Assistant voice, so it blended in seamlessly with the…
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Revisiting Trust in Bitcoin and Blockchain
I have mentioned before that I do not believe in bitcoin and blockchain technologies because of their attempt to circumvent trust. I believe in using technology to nourish trust relationships. This article (via the P2PFoundation) does a good job of demonsrating the issue of trust and how it has already manifested and challenged ongoing blockchain…
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On Intelligence – Human and Artificial
In some ways I feel that we have barely tapped into human intelligence (an experience that can go way beyond the narrow field of intellectual comprehension), yet it seems that the progress we have made, as expressed in AI, may undermine the possibility for many people to continue to evolve their human intelligence. “… artificial…
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Three Languages You Need to Take a Project from Dreams to Reality
A generally good reminder about speaking from and to context: “… By distinguishing these languages and the needs that they serve, certain kinds of confusion may be avoided. The Inward language is the way that those at the heart of a project make sense of what they are doing, the way of seeing the world…
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Software is Politics
Richard Pope, formerly of the UK GDS project, writes in Software is Politics: “It’s time to stop designing digital services to just be easy to use and start designing them to be understandable, accountable, trusted, and easy to use. 1. Accountability at the point of use Imagine if Uber made it clear exactly how much…
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What design sprints are good for
Though I have never participated in a week-long design spring I resonate with the ideas of this post. “Design sprints offer an apparently straightforward value proposition: get from idea to insight while skipping build and launch. High impact, risk reduction, and learning at minimal cost — all perfectly aligned with current trends … Particularly for stakeholders who…
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Vata in Software
Though I have moved away from the more hard-core environment of software development I still enjoyed this talk very much. It talks about something which can look inconsequential – software versions and its effect on software creation. The subject, though technical, is framed in this talk as a matter of relationship amongst developers. There are…
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Government as a Platform
This may seem slightly off-topic, but for me there is some valuable cross-over of ideas and domains that do relate to Oameni. This is a presentation by Tom Loosemore about his work in the UK Government Digital Strategy during the 2015 Code for America summit. In it he describes an architectural view of a government…
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Media Literacy
Another very good episode of Team Human. This time about media literacy … how to bring into our collective awareness that when we use digital platforms (both as consumers and creators of content) we are acting in a space that has been created and shaped by others. Others have made choices (conscious and less conscious)…
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Trust Disrupted: Bitcoin and the Blockchain
A good overview of some of the fascinating issues that the bitcoin and blockchain spaces are experiencing. An underlying assumption in this field, that is not explicitly mentioned, is that technology and mathematics can be used to generate trust where people (for different reasons) cannot. That is one of the main reasons I am a…