In a blog post too obviously spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt regarding Iota, writer Nick Johnson declares, among other things: "Iota is a bad actor in the open source community." Here is his justification: Next, and in my mind most damningly, Sergey Ivancheglo, Iota’s cofounder, […]
Why voiceprint will be around for a long time to come
I've been researching voiceprints, Kaldi, and speech-recognition in general, and stumbled upon this gem. It's clear that voiceprint is going to be around for a long time to come, because it sits in a sort of "Goldilocks zone" of the ease-of-use vs. secure spectrum in several ways. Look at […]
Grammar and peering inside the black box of cybernetic intelligence
This is the first time I've heard we're able to see inside the famous "black box" of cybernetic intelligence. Maybe others have peered inside and I don't know about it, but I'm very intrigued by this line in the story. (He's talking about AND-OR-Grammar-nets): "AOGNets are also more […]
The Psychology of Uncertainty and Three-Valued Truth Tables
The best evidence I've encountered yet that the way we've learned to use binary logic is not our natural way of thinking comes out of psychology, where they have developed a trivalent way to evaluate truth values out of necessity, because people keep using logic this way, naturally: Psychological […]
"I want an agency that makes sure no important thing remains undone because it doesn’t fit somebody's mission"
Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy said: "I want an agency that makes sure no important thing remains undone because it doesn’t fit somebody's mission." And so IARPA was created. IARPA / DARPA was involved in creating Babel and Kaldi, among other things of course. Now I'm learning Kaldi. […]
Binary logic is actually ternary in structure
This is one of those things which thoroughly surprises me, because it seems so obvious, yet it has taken me more than a couple decades to learn how to see. I've written about the idea being revealed here from a number of directions, but never before have I seen it with the clarity that I now see. […]
Beautiful photos show how water can look when it's blasted with sound
Linden Gledhill, a pharmaceutical biochemist, builds custom gear that can record the beautiful, weird, and sometimes bizarre intersection of science, art, and nature. His latest photographs of cymatics, or standing waves in water, are breathtaking. Source: Trippy photos show how beautiful water […]
The role of division in mathematics
I've written about a certain little-known role of division in mathematics before, so when a friend recently posted an article I enjoyed (having posted a link to it here before), I was pleasantly surprised while re-reading to see that Cohl Furey is also intrigued by division... in a way that sorta […]
A simple Asterisk and Nexmo setup for a softphone with a remote virtual number
If you're new to Asterisk, you can spend many hours and even days figuring out how things work before you get something working. And then as soon as you have it working, you'll get slammed by hackers trying to break in. I recently spent those hours and days getting asterisk working. So I have […]
Getting Fail2ban and VoipBL working with Asterisk on Ubuntu 18.04
The information on installing and configuring Asterisk, fail2ban, and VoipBL is all over the map. It is hilariously not easy to find what actually works. Way more confusing typos and important pieces left out on numerous sites, like there is some sort of conspiracy to make it difficult to install […]
A fix for apt install asterisk on Ubuntu 18.04
After using "apt install asterisk" on Ubuntu 18.04.2, I noticed when running "service asterisk status" that there was a problem with the radius radcli configuration. It looked like this: radcli: rc_read_config: rc_read_config: can't open /etc/radiusclient-ng/radiusclient.conf: No […]
An inside-out way of thinking about math
This peculiar thought experiment captures the first time I've been able to completely flip the idea of counting, with a rather original approach. Other attempts have been more high-level, with fewer details, and couldn't be pursued very far. But this time I got to the bottom. Please be patient with […]
An elegant and concise summary of the Cloud of Unknowing
I found this brief summary of a well-known mystical work to be compelling. I found it while researching an obscure subject. I set aside the article, and went on with my day. The narrative was so compelling, though, it worked on my unconcious for many hours after I read it. My mind stayed on it […]
The Place of Humility in Science
Always nice to see someone talking about the place of humility in science, as it requires making connections which tend to deepen the general narrative. For example, the article points out where science is being abused by many of its own adherants. This is a thought-provoking perspective, and seems […]
More on the something and the nearly-nothing and structure
This thread has some very intriguing comments. I particularly like the following two insights, which give empirical evidence relavant to some ideas explored in this recent post by me. Penetrating to the origin of structure itself as related to the low entropy at the beginning of the universe The […]
A parsimonious and fairly logical contemplation on the nature of the beginning
It is utterly impossible for something to arise from true absolute nothing. This can be seen immediately by anyone imagining an infinite expanse of nothing... first comes the paradox of where this nothing exists. It has no dimension, size, shape, form, feature, nor attribute of any kind. It is pure, […]
On Graduating from Kabbalah
It is normal to encounter ideas which we entertain briefly and sincerely, but upon close inspection, later reject or lay aside one way or another. This happens so often that it's hardly a big deal when we reject an idea or even a constellation of ideas we once thought attractive, although it can be […]
Setting Up CMU Sphinx (PocketSphinx) on Ubuntu
The instructions in a blog post for Ubuntu 14.04 (linked below) worked for me on Ubuntu 18, with one extra step after you complete the following: I tried to run it after these steps and got this error: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory on pocketsphinx So I ran the following […]
Elm RealWorld frontend with .NET Core backend Step by Step
It was ironic, really, that I pretty much did exactly what the intro to the RealWorld project described as a frustrating path in its "this is what we're fixing" introductory post at Medium. Without going into detail, let's just say I spent the past few months doing a lot of stumbling while […]
Error TS6053 File '...node_modules/keycode/keycode.d.ts' not found.
What to do when you see the following in Visual Studio? "Error TS6053 File '...node_modules/keycode/keycode.d.ts' not found." I have learned that whenever I see this error, to simply restart Visual Studio and recompile. The error goes away. If anyone knows of an easier way to resolve this, […]