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Kevin DiVico

The coming civil war over general purpose computing - Boing Boing - 0 views

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    I gave a talk in late 2011 at 28C3 in Berlin called "The Coming War on General Purpose Computing" In a nutshell, its hypothesis was this: * Computers and the Internet are everywhere and the world is increasingly made of them. * We used to have separate categories of device: washing machines, VCRs, phones, cars, but now we just have computers in different cases. For example, modern cars are computers we put our bodies in and Boeing 747s are flying Solaris boxes, whereas hearing aids and pacemakers are computers we put in our body. * This means that all of our sociopolitical problems in the future will have a computer inside them, too-and a would-be regulator saying stuff like this: "Make it so that self-driving cars can't be programmed to drag race" "Make it so that bioscale 3D printers can't make harmful organisms or restricted compounds" Which is to say: "Make me a general-purpose computer that runs all programs except for one program that freaks me out."
Kevin DiVico

Synthesis - 0 views

    • Kevin DiVico
       
      check out the communities page - philosophy 
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    Synthesis is a think-tank devoted to using the emerging paradigm of complex networks in the social sciences to tackle social and public policy concerns. Over the past 20 years or so, social scientists have increasingly made use of advances in the natural sciences to make better sense of social systems. Fields such as network theory, non-linear mathematics and systems theory, which we refer to as the study of complex networks, give us much greater insights that help us make sense of social systems. Armed with a greater understanding, this collection of paradigm-changing toolboxes can help us to make better policy decisions, in the public, private, and "third" sectors.
Kevin DiVico

Lies, Damned Lies and Big Data « Aid on the Edge of Chaos - 0 views

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    This is a guest post by David Hales, a fellow associate of the new complexity think-tank, Synthesis. David specialises in computational social science and here he provides a thought-provoking response to the rise in big data, and some of the more outlandish claims made about it. For a good example of the latter, see Chris Anderson's piece 'The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete'. He makes some really relevant points for development big data initiatives.
Kevin DiVico

Automatically Back Up Your Web Site Every Night | Smarterware - 0 views

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    If you pay for web hosting in order to run any kind of web-based application-from your WordPress blog to a nameplate site to a file-sharing service to a social media data archive-you need to back up your web server's data the same way you back up your computer's data. On database-driven web sites, there are two kinds of data you want to preserve and restore in case of disaster: the files that make up your site (the PHP/Perl/Python, JavaScript, CSS files, etc), and the contents of your database. Further, any good backup system should make both a local copy and a remote copy of the backed-up data.
Kevin DiVico

Make Calls from Within Google+ Hangouts - 0 views

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    The Google+ team continues to graduate features from its sandbox into prime time for its Hangouts product. Last week, the company announced the addition of Google Docs into Hangouts, and today the service has officially added the ability to make phone calls from within a Hangout as well.
Kevin DiVico

3D Printers, Laser Cutters, & Personal Manufacturing - Area 51 - Stack Exchange - 0 views

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    Proposed Q&A site for operators of 3D printers, heads of hacker spaces, hardware hackers, service bureau owners, MakerBot tinkerers, product entrepreneurs, MAKE magazine subscribers, and all others who want to make physical things with computers.
Kevin DiVico

How to Make Reading on Your Computer a Better Experience - 0 views

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    A lot of us stare at a computer monitor for the bulk of our day and reading long articles or books is rarely a comfortable experience. With that in mind, here's a few steps you can take to make you reading experience less terrible.
Kevin DiVico

Thwacke! - 0 views

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    Thwacke is a multidisciplinary think-tank of academics that will bridge the gap between video games and science in order to make their fiction creative, relevant, and immersing. As researchers at the forefront of new technology and science, we provide consultation that delivers fresh perspective that aim to make your games smarter.
Kevin DiVico

LEGO Turing Machine - 0 views

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    To honor Alan Turing, we built a simple LEGO Turing Machine, to show everyone how simple a computer actually is. Primary goals were to make every operation as visible as possible and to make it using just a single LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT set. The LEGO Turing Machine is part of the exhibition  Turing's Erfenis  at CWI.
Kevin DiVico

Video of real-time cyber-attack alert system looks like your favorite cyberpunk movie - 0 views

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    If you miss those great 1990s movies in which cyberspace runs amok, you'll get a kick out of this video of a real-life system for monitoring cyber-attacks. The new DAEDALUS (Direct Alert Environment for Darknet And Livenet Unified Security) cyber-alert system has been in the making for several years, but now the developer has posted a cute video, to show you what it looks like.If you miss those great 1990s movies in which cyberspace runs amok, you'll get a kick out of this video of a real-life system for monitoring cyber-attacks. The new DAEDALUS (Direct Alert Environment for Darknet And Livenet Unified Security) cyber-alert system has been in the making for several years, but now the developer has posted a cute video, to show you what it looks like.
Kevin DiVico

Making Sense of Big Data to Fight Crime « A Smarter Planet Blog - 0 views

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    There is no proverbial silver bullet to creating a safer city, but analytics technology is assisting law enforcement agencies all over the world to sort through information - part of the 2.5 quintillion bytes of data we create and consume every day - to get ahead of crime. Having access to all that information is an invaluable resource for law enforcement agencies, but it can also be pretty paralyzing. After all, only a fraction of the bits and bytes can actually be relevant, right? But how do you know and, more importantly, how do you find and act on it?
Kevin DiVico

MAKE | Homemade Satellites are Just Around the Corner - 0 views

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    As a child, I always looked up at the stars and wondered how I could make it into space. Hopefully, I will live to see that day, but for now, a homemade satellite will have to do. The Nanosatisfi team has made it their mission "to provide affordable space exploration for everyone!," and with ArduSat, they move one step closer to reality. ArduSat is a Arduino-controlled miniature 10cm cubic satellite, weighing 1 kg, which is roughly equivalent to half a store bought loaf of bread. Its size might not be impressive, but it packs over 25 sensors including: Myspectral's open source spectrometer, inertial measurement unit, magnetometer, along the standard set, and many others. This impressive little machine boasts a camera to take photographs, it could send messages back to earth, or it can run your space experiments. With the ability to upload code directly to the ArduSat while in space, the possibilities are virtually limitless.
Kevin DiVico

MAKE | PopFab, a Suitcase CNC Mill and 3D Printer - 0 views

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    PopFab is a multi-tool for the 21st century. At its heart is a computer-controlled motion platform and a means of attaching various toolheads. These enable PopFab to make objects from a digital plan in a variety of ways: current capabilities include 3D printing (as you are about to see), milling, vinyl cutting, and drawing - with more on the way. PopFab has traveled the world as a carry-on item of luggage to Saudi Arabia and Germany, and within the USA to Aspen in Colorado. We hope that this is only the beginning.
Kevin DiVico

Fluent - Making the future of email - 0 views

shared by Kevin DiVico on 27 Feb 12 - No Cached
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    Workflow your way to zero Fluent's inbox is a workflow-oriented stream. See email threads & replies at a glance, preview attachments, and make the decision to reply, archive or add to your to-do list with one click.
Kevin DiVico

Reasoning Is Sharper in a Foreign Language: Scientific American - 0 views

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    The language we use affects the decisions we make, according to a new study. Participants made more rational decisions when money-related choices were posed in a foreign language that they had learned in a classroom setting than when they were asked in a native tongue.
Kevin DiVico

The Best Dungeons & Dragons Character Alignments - 0 views

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    Did you know everything important about your personality, morality and worldview can be defined into one of nine categories? It's true… at least if you're a Dungeons & Dragons character from the first to third editions. Not every tabletop role-player has been a a fan of D&D's Alignment system, which help players define their characters' behavior, but now that Wizards of the Coast is hard at work on D&D's fifth edition, I'd like to make an earnest plea for them to bring it back in its original, nine-aspect glory by showcasing the Alignments from best to worst.
Kevin DiVico

BBC News - Virtual cash exchange becomes bank - 0 views

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    "Bitcoin-Central got the go-ahead thanks to a deal with French financial firms Aqoba and Credit Mutuel. The exchange is one of many that swaps bitcoins, computer generated cash, for real world currencies. The change in status makes it easier to use bitcoins and bestows national protections on balances held at the exchange."
Kevin DiVico

A Brain-to-Brain Interface for Real-Time Sharing of Sensorimotor Information : Scientif... - 0 views

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    "A brain-to-brain interface (BTBI) enabled a real-time transfer of behaviorally meaningful sensorimotor information between the brains of two rats. In this BTBI, an "encoder" rat performed sensorimotor tasks that required it to select from two choices of tactile or visual stimuli. While the encoder rat performed the task, samples of its cortical activity were transmitted to matching cortical areas of a "decoder" rat using intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). The decoder rat learned to make similar behavioral selections, guided solely by the information provided by the encoder rat's brain. These results demonstrated that a complex system was formed by coupling the animals' brains, suggesting that BTBIs can enable dyads or networks of animal's brains to exchange, process, and store information and, hence, serve as the basis for studies of novel types of social interaction and for biological computing devices."
Kevin DiVico

Young Scientists Encourage the Public to Demand Peer Review | Observations, Scientific ... - 0 views

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    It seems that more and more policy makers, advocacy groups, advertisers and media pundits are making claims based on science: this kind of potion is good for your health, that chemical is bad for the environment, this new technology can reduce crime. How is the public supposed to know what to believe?
Kevin DiVico

Hacking at Education: TED, Technology Entrepreneurship, Uncollege, and the Hole in the ... - 0 views

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    Last week as part of its glitzy annual conference in Long Beach, California, TED awarded its $1 million prize to Sugata Mitra to support his wish to build a "School in the Cloud," a self-organized learning environment based on his "Hole in the Wall" and "Granny Cloud" research. Next week Pearson, the largest and most powerful education company in the world, will publish Dale Stephens' book Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will, a personal experience narrative and guide about dropping out of college and making it in Silicon Valley.
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