🤖 Log in

Sciento: Welcome to Sciento

http://www.sciento.co.uk/

Organisms for Biological Sciences

nonbeard 2014-09-18 00:11:11

Molecular Psychiatry - Genetics and intelligence differences: five special findings

http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp2014105a.html

Assortative: relating to the preferential mating of animals with similar characteristics.

nonbeard 2014-09-17 14:54:17

Robust and maintainable testing with UiAutomator for Android | Info | theguardian.com

http://www.theguardian.com/info/developer-blog/2013/jul/31/robust-testing-uiautomator-android

Nice overview

nonbeard 2014-09-17 12:44:01

uiautomator | Android Developers

https://developer.android.com/tools/help/uiautomator/index.html

Android UI testing -- this is the successor to monkeyrunner and hierarchyviewer.

nonbeard 2014-09-17 11:24:51

Wireless Power Charger!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-Ipod-Charger/?ALLSTEPS

wireless charging is pretty simple: basically a long-distance transformer. On the receiving end you need a rectifier (ac->dc), regulator (->5v), and a capacitor to even out the charge. That's basically it.

nonbeard 2014-09-15 13:06:53

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hoffman-man.html

Erdös. He was twenty-one when he buttered his first piece of bread, his mother or a domestic servant having always done it for him. "I remember clearly," he said. "I had just gone to England to study. It was teatime, and bread was served. I was too embarrassed to admit that I had never buttered it. I tried. It wasn't so hard."

nonbeard 2014-09-15 00:12:46

Direct Driving of LCD Using General Purpose IO

http://www.atmel.com/images/doc8103.pdf

Quite neat. They give the backplanes VCC (IO output high), GND (IO output low), and VCC / 2 (IO input floating, pulled to VCC / 2 using an external voltage divider)

nonbeard 2014-09-14 03:01:08

Paris Review – The Future According to Stanisław Lem , Ezra Glinter

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/09/12/the-future-according-to-stanislaw-lem/

Should read Stanisław Lem

nonbeard 2014-09-13 14:41:15

images - Alternative for Graphviz with better automatic node placement for large graphs? - Software Recommendations Stack Exchange

http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/40/alternative-for-graphviz-with-better-automatic-node-placement-for-large-graphs

It's pretty hard and there are no good alternatives. But suggestions from a GraphViz dev: "If "large" means maybe hundreds of nodes, try neato -Goverlap=false (to avoid node text label overlap) and possibly -Gmodel=subset to try for better clustering."

nonbeard 2014-09-12 15:59:09

Using HM-10 BLE Modules as Low-Cost iBeacons

http://www.blueluminance.com/HM-10-as-iBeacon.pdf

Mostly useful for the AT commands given to keep the thing's power consumption low

nonbeard 2014-09-12 00:30:55

Microcontroller Projects: PIC MCU LCD Driver 4 commmon 7 Segmented LCD & PIC16F917

http://www.circuitvalley.com/2012/02/pic16f917pic16f1907-7segmentlcddriverex.html

Driving a multisegment LCD with a PIC

nonbeard 2014-09-11 22:35:05

Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics

http://msm.runhello.com/p/20

Multiple overlayed Marios is, suprisingly, a useful metaphor for the testing work I'm doing currently.

nonbeard 2014-09-10 13:43:16

New-agey interviews at the grocery startup - just another scala quant

http://www.jasq.org/just-another-scala-quant/new-agey-interviews-at-the-grocery-startup

nice data science story

nonbeard 2014-09-06 23:28:15

Viterbi algorithm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viterbi_algorithm

Find the most likely sequence of hidden states that results in a sequence of observed events. (Especially in the context of Markov information sources and hidden Markov models.)

nonbeard 2014-09-02 15:38:45

scrooloose/syntastic

https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic

Syntax / style checker for Vim, with multiple languages.

nonbeard 2014-09-01 15:01:00

Agon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agon

In general, the term refers to a struggle or contest.

nonbeard 2014-08-31 20:46:20

Um hey, Scientific American? Bird knees bend the same way as everyone else.

http://skeletaldrawing.blogspot.de/2011/09/um-hey-scientific-american-bird-knees.html

A daily-facts site was posted on Hacker News. The top comment was someone explaining why they day's fact was wrong, with a link to this site.

nonbeard 2014-08-30 21:04:13

Bypass Antivirus Dynamic Analysis

http://packetstorm.foofus.com/papers/virus/BypassAVDynamics.pdf

All pretty basic techniques. Interesting paper. My two favourites are: simply use a lot of resources, because AV dynamic analysis doesn't have much time to spare; and rely on an OS call failing (e.g. EEXIST for the mutex), because AV sandboxes are designed to emulate the system's "good case".

nonbeard 2014-08-27 12:16:54

Vincit qui se vincit | Latin D

http://latindiscussion.com/forum/latin/vincit-qui-se-vincit.7061/

Two interesting notes about my old high school's motto: 1) the full quote is "bis vincit qui se vincit in victoria", which completely changes the meaning ("He conquers twice, who conquers himself when he is victorious" -- i.e. first you conquer others, then you conquer yourself, rather than the reversed temporal ordering implied by the short form); 2) It could also mean "he who shackles himself wins".

nonbeard 2014-08-26 22:53:19

Blog: Writing a Garbage Collector in C

http://web.engr.illinois.edu/~maplant2/gc.html

Nicely-explained implementation of Boehm GC

nonbeard 2014-08-25 21:29:36

Wireless network configuration - ArchWiki

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_network_configuration

"Some users may encounter errors with powersave on this card. " - for rtl8723be in gigabyte brix

nonbeard 2014-08-23 22:44:19

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - Vintage 1912 Bioshock Infinite - Style Waltz Cover - YouTube

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5CPbg9ljE4M

video

nonbeard 2014-08-21 16:01:01

Why Genius may struggle to annotate the world | MASSOLIT

http://themassolit.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/why-genius-may-struggle-to-annotate-the-world/

"once you get to texts that don’t go out of their way to be clever and allusive – which is most of them, by the way – the appropriateness and usefulness of annotations declines rapidly." Basically, rap is highly intertextual, most other things are not; annotations therefore work for rap; annotations aren't so good for other genres. Also one of the co-founders is a dreadful person.

nonbeard 2014-08-19 16:44:31

John Sutton's page

http://www.johnsutton.net/

Mac Uni philosopher working on memory as featured on suchthatcast

nonbeard 2014-08-17 20:42:29

Welcome to the FUNcube Web Site

http://funcube.org.uk/

This is a microsatellite in polar orbit. I should be able to use my RTL-SDR to listen to it, but doing so from a Mac is tedious.

nonbeard 2014-08-15 22:49:04

Hackback!

http://data.langly.fr/blackhat

How FinFisher was hacked.

nonbeard 2014-08-12 14:04:21

How to optimize Raspberry Pi code using its GPU « Pete Warden's blog

http://petewarden.com/2014/08/07/how-to-optimize-raspberry-pi-code-using-its-gpu/

VideoCore 4

nonbeard 2014-08-09 00:01:58

My history with Forth & stack machines

http://yosefk.com/blog/my-history-with-forth-stack-machines.html

Forth looks really simple and interesting; forth is easy to write; forth is very clever; forth would be an ideal solution for my hardware configuration problem; forth isn't easy to adapt to the problem domain; forth would require me to rethink the problem; forth is about designing the entire system in a forth-like way; forth isn't for me. It's a very interesting and well-written article. Via HN.

nonbeard 2014-08-07 10:34:29

Calque - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque

skyscraper list is amazing

nonbeard 2014-08-03 11:12:31

AsciiDoc Home Page

http://asciidoc.org/

I keep using Markdown but ought to switch, probably

nonbeard 2014-08-01 14:15:02

Hearthstone dev invents stories that tell themselves | Polygon

http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/28/5929187/hearthstone-storybricks-storytelling-engine-ai-director-blizzard
nonbeard 2014-07-31 11:09:11

Mutual information - Scholarpedia

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Mutual_information
nonbeard 2014-07-31 11:00:39

Mutual information - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_information
nonbeard 2014-07-31 11:00:25

Your Brain Is On the Brink of Chaos - Issue 15: Turbulence - Nautilus

http://nautil.us/issue/15/turbulence/your-brain-is-on-the-brink-of-chaos

Another article on criticality (which doesn't mention Bak)

nonbeard 2014-07-29 10:46:47

Self-Organized Criticality: An Explanation of 1/f Noise

http://webber.physik.uni-freiburg.de/~jeti/studenten_seminar/stud_sem05/bak.pdf

Bak (et al)'s paper on minimally-stable states in pendula, sand, brains

nonbeard 2014-07-29 10:46:03

Toward a Theory of Self-Organized Criticality in the Brain | Simons Foundation

http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140403-a-fundamental-theory-to-model-the-mind/

Per Bak's self-organised criticality theory

nonbeard 2014-07-29 09:28:21

Lithium (medication) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_(medication)

7-Up used to have lithium in it. Not quite as glamorous as cocaine:"The product, originally named "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda", was launched two weeks before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.[67] It contained the mood stabilizer lithium citrate, and was one of a number of patent medicine products popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.[68] Its name was soon changed to 7 Up; all American beverage makers were forced to remove lithium in 1948."

nonbeard 2014-07-27 00:32:30

Mole Day - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mole_Day

"various activities often related to chemistry or moles". Often, but not necessarily?

nonbeard 2014-07-26 03:31:00

FAQ: What is “sexism”? | Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog

http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/sexism-definition/

A definition of sexism as "prejudice plus power". This isn't the dictionary definition of sexism (which is just about gender-based prejudice), but it describes a separate and important concept which is well illustrated by the historical discrimination against women in Western societies combined with an inherited power structure which allows the discrimination to continue. I wish there was a separate word for it, though, because now sexism has two definitions and they are different but similar enough to cause problems in debate. Via liedra

nonbeard 2014-07-25 14:00:57

Superrationality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superrationality

Current Wikipedia has some very non-NPOV snark at the end about superrationality and MAD.

nonbeard 2014-07-24 21:27:46

You’re probably using the wrong dictionary « the jsomers.net blog

http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary

Two ideas: 1) Find decent out-of-copyright *British* English dictionaries. 2) Do some kind of Google thing to produce a crowdsourced dictionary using whatever words and phrases turn up in common (uncommon? word + synonym? word + antonym?) searches.

nonbeard 2014-07-23 13:33:18

How to build and run your first deep learning network - O'Reilly Radar

http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/07/how-to-build-and-run-your-first-deep-learning-network.html
nonbeard 2014-07-23 13:32:11

First android performance analysis app for game developers

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gamebench.metricscollector
2014-07-18 12:33:31

Equation of time - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_time#Apparent_time_versus_mean_time
nonbeard 2014-07-16 23:34:29

Excepted items: Confectionery: The bounds of confectionery, sweets, chocolates, chocolate biscuits, cakes and biscuits: The borderline between cakes and biscuits

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/vfoodmanual/vfood6260.htm

Why HMRC considers Jaffa Cakes to be cakes.

nonbeard 2014-07-13 13:10:41

How to write a minimal WebKit browser in 30 lines of Swift

http://practicalswift.com/2014/06/27/a-minimal-webkit-browser-in-30-lines-of-swift/

I really liked this tutorial for its back-to-basics nature and avoidance of GUI toolkits, which are essentially magic. Explaining it all in terms of code is educational in a way that "drop this component in Interface Builder" would not be.

nonbeard 2014-07-13 00:09:01

De Broglie–Bohm theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory

pilot wave theory of quantum mechanics

nonbeard 2014-07-13 00:07:09

Pilot wave theory, Bohmian metaphysics, and the foundations of quantum mechanics

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/PWT/lectures/bohm7.pdf

Pilot wave theory of quantum mechanics. Why does nobody like it? Wikipedia: because it is non-local; explaining behaviours requires knowing state of entire universe

nonbeard 2014-07-13 00:06:45

Functors on hn

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7895764

This and a short explanation by wting explained it very nicely. ("A functor is a thing that can be mapped over. [...] Arrays are the simplest example, but it looks like an iterable. However functors retain shape whereas iterables don't.")

nonbeard 2014-06-15 22:07:22

Generics and protocols - Google Groups

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/swift-language/3PtydRXR0ao

"It wouldn’t make sense to have Generator<Int> and Generator<String> because then types that implemented one wouldn’t be implementing the same protocol as types that implemented another. So there’s only one Generator protocol, but the next() method in it varies in its return type based on which class is implementing it". Pretty interesting. Via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7895504

nonbeard 2014-06-15 20:09:02
📜 Boyfriend of Zelda