July 2010
2 posts
Kilowatt hours
A lot of people don’t seem to understand the units for energy and power. Here’s a quick tutorial.
The metric system unit of energy is the joule. A joule is about a quarter of a calorie, which is defined as the energy required to heat one gram of water by one degree centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit). A joule is also about how much energy you expend by lifting an apple from the floor...
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Template of nanotechnology talks
Ralph Merkle’s “secret of giving nanotech talks in any field”:
[Field] is critically dependent on [products].
[Products] are made from atoms.
Nanotechnology will let us make [products] that are stronger, smarter, faster, lighter, cheaper, and just better.
This will have a huge impact on [field]; for example, we could even make products that are [astonishing parameter] and cost...
June 2010
6 posts
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I managed to squeeze in a bit of recording at...
Live from Singularity University →
I’ve been using Twitter to take notes of the lectures given at SU for the past couple of days. A lot of interesting ideas are being presented, and I’m doing my best to convey them in 140-character format (actually more like 110-character format including the hashtag and the speaker’s name). If you’re interested you should also do a search on Twitter for #SingularityU to get...
Machine Learning & AI
A fellow SU student asked me about the difference between machine learning and artificial intelligence last night, and I thought I would summarize my answer for the record, in case other people are wondering, or might wish to correct me.
Machine learning is about solving small problems to within reasonable tolerances. Artificial intelligence is about trying to solve big problems (or all...
A solution to videoconference gaze?
One of the common problems with videoconferencing today is that it’s impossible (with current technology) to make the camera and the display totally coaxial, so you get a somewhat disconcerting lack of eye contact. What if you put one camera on either side of the display and used an algorithm like this to synthesize the view from a “virtual camera” aligned with the display?
WatchStephen Fry is brilliant.
May 2010
13 posts
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Acapella, with reverb/EQ/mixing. No words this...
“James Clerk Maxwell might be spinning in his grave. But is he rotating around...”
– William Beaty, in a thought-provoking article about magnetic circuits
WatchHyperCard: arguably the greatest piece of software ever produced, for any platform.
“Many people with jobs have a fantasy about all the amazing things they would do...”
– Paul Buchheit (via wizardry)
Benford's Law →
is the observation that most “real-world” data is not uniformly distributed - in fact, the probability that the first digit is a “1” is almost one-third, rather than the expected one-ninth. The reason for this is that the *logarithm* of most real-world data is uniformly distributed. I find this mildly fascinating.
“On the airplane of science, nontrivial explanations are not the beverage cart or...”
– Scott Aaronson
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Jurassic Park →
It’s only a matter of time now.
Summarize Me
I may be designing a separate davidad.net from blog.davidad.net shortly, as a landing page for those who don’t already know me. However, I’m not exactly sure what I’d say. Thus, I turn to you, people who (presumably) are convinced that I’m interesting. How would you describe me to someone who clicked or Googled my name and doesn’t know anything else about me?
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Last night I recorded some unoriginal guitar...
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Today’s attempt at song! I still fail at...
Loop Perforation →
Martin Rinard’s group at MIT has achieved significant peformance gains in a huge variety of applications by a very simple optimization: simply skip every other iteration of certain loops. This is a brilliant idea, but it’s also a symptom of huge problems in computer science. We should always have the option be more flexible about how we process information in artificial systems....
“Says the frequentist, “You’re a Bayesian? I’m going to kick...”
– Dustin Smith
“Lincity can be won in two ways: reaching sustainable development, or evacuating...”
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincity (Note to civilization: this is also how you win at the world.)
April 2010
16 posts
“You only have to kill one person every few days to be a real nuisance.”
– Marvin Minsky, on the clumsiness of current robots for taking care of the elderly
“We actually have them in petri dishes and are exploring ways to kill them.”
– Ray Kurzweil,…on cancer stem cells
Mark Twain on Benjamin Franklin →
You can’t go wrong with that combination…
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Mom: What's that building?
Puerto Rican on bus: It's the art museum.
Mom: Are you familiar with it? Do you go there often?
Puerto Rican on bus: I was being born there.
Mom: Um...it used to be a hospital?
Puerto Rican on bus: Yes.
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Express
On rails, an express train is associated with the long haul, and would have the fastest, largest, most powerful locomotive. It would be contrasted with the slower “local” train. But in the air, “express” means “small” and “local” - for instance, US Airways Express is the regional-only division of US Airways. Occasionally the word crops up in other...
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Possibly the Best Pizza Ever
Notice: This is one of those sorts of blog posts that make people think blogs are boring and pointless. You have been warned.The good folks at Pizza Pie-er have changed my entire notion of what pizza should be. Here is an account of the pizza I ordered last night:
The crust: made from whole wheat, oats, rye, millet, flax, and sesame
The sauce: a paste of ground walnuts, olive oil, garlic and...
Translation party! Also, Batman!
http://translationparty.com is a web service for translating English phrases into Japanese and back again, over and over again until it reaches “equilibrium.” Feeding it sentences about Batman seems to produce the most hilarious results:
http://translationparty.com/#7113686
http://translationparty.com/#7113751
http://translationparty.com/#7113810
http://translationparty.com/#7113838
...
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How to Get Outside
This weekend promises beautiful weather, so I thought I’d post this little guide about how to get into a location where that weather can be enjoyed.
How to get Outside
Follow your local fire evacuation plan, assuming maximum fire severity.
As you migrate to the safe area, keep a sharp eye about for two things:
Alarmed doors. It is usually possible to find an alternate route that...
March 2010
22 posts
"Biannual" and "Semiannual"
There’s one simple secret to keeping these straight: just remember that you’re specifying a period, not a frequency. “Annual” means there is one year between each occurrence, so “Biannual” means two years between each occurrence, and “Semiannual” means half a year between each occurrence (or twice each year). Same goes for “biweekly,”...
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It’s been a while since I’ve posted a...
How do you see the mind-body problem?
I’ve identified 8 schools of thought, and developed this handy textual flowchart to guide you to deciding which to identify with! Just answer the questions according to your intuition and follow the numbers.
Is there any hope of ever understanding consciousness scientifically? If yes, go to 5. If no, go to 2.
Could a conscious mind exist without any physical embodiment (bored though it...
“I was thinking about my Scrabble days while driving today, and something dawned...”
– Richard Blankman
“This business has changed. There are no phones anymore. There are simply things...”
– Gizmodo’s critique of Sony
It's a real-life heist! →
Is it wrong that I think it’s kind of awesome that some people actually pulled this off? >_>
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“The Mad Hatter and the March Hare champion the mathematics of William Rowan...”
– an unorthdox interpretation of Alice in Wonderland as a metaphor for counterintuitive mathematics
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