An Autonomous Agent

exploring the noosphere

Category: computer (Page 1 of 8)

Mastering Bitcoin – Andreas M. Antonopoulos

I’ve been following Bitcoin since 2011 but sadly never researched its technical foundations. A few weeks ago I decided to dive into the subject. Mastering Bitcoin, by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, clearly explains the fundamental designs of Bitcoin. The book is well written and an excellent entry point for developers new to the subject. Many sites and people recommend this book and rightly so, because after reading it, I feel that I have a new understanding and appreciation of everything blockchain related. While it is detailed and technical — geared towards an audience familiar with programming and Internet technologies, it can be a great resource for those wanting an intellectual challenge.

If you decide to purchase the book, make sure you do it on purse.io with Bitcoin. Purse is now where I make any purchases for books or things I would have bought directly from Amazon.

IPFS Firefox Companion

If you know about the IPFS project and wondered how to get the address requests to work seamlessly within your browser, there is a Firefox Add-on called IPFS Companion. From the add-on’s description:

This add-on enables everyone to access ipfs.io (or any other public gateway) urls the way they were meant: from locally running IPFS daemon 🙂

To get things running, all you have to do is start your IPFS daemon and then start the add-on. By default both attach to 127.0.0.1:8080. Make sure they both are using the same address. And that’s all! Now every time you visit a site pointing to an IPFS gateway, for instance: ipfs.io gateway.ipfs.io ipfs.pics, it will automatically send the request and receive the response via your IPFS daemon. Pretty awesome! I can’t thank the developers enough – Marcin Rataj and David Dias. You can try it with my own IPFS site: LPPL Market Watch

Free Software Foundation

Informative videos on free (Free as in Freedom) software and open source software. Richard Stallman is a great leader for software freedom and seems to be the source of the stereotype for computer programmer “looks”.

The difference between free and open-source software was not clear to me until after watching these videos and doing further research. See the Wikipedia article on the naming of GNU/Linux.

I personally encourage readers to consider switching to a GNU/Linux operating system or a distribution like Debian if they have not already. If you prefer having a hard copy of the OS or do not have the technical know-how to perform the image download-transfer-install process, OSDisc.com is a great site to order many different distributions.

Also, be sure to become a supporter of GNU by joining the Free Software Foundation.

If you prefer to support individual programmers or projects, check out some of these on Patreon:

 

 

 

And come on… we need to severely lower the percentage of desktops running Windows.

A Few Interesting Projects

This post is aimed at people who are perhaps unaware of some new technologies and platforms. I have listed the ones I think have great potential to benefit an open society.
If you have any others which are of similar scope, please let me know. Will add to these links as I continue to research.

Update (06-12-2016):

Sia – Will someone develop a MySQL version to run a database that exists on Sia? I imagine hosting a WordPress site on IPFS, and the database for the site will be on Sia, I think that is a correct way to view the future of WordPress…?

Steem

IPFSDroid – IPFS for Android, eventually I imagine it will support a full node on a cell phone!

Update (05-11-2016):

AKASHA PROJECT

IPFS:

InterPlanetary File System and IPFS Blog

Juan Batiz-Benet slide deck

Ethereum:

Ethereum and Ethereum Blog

Developing Dapps

Synereo:

Synereo and Synereo Blog

Others:

Follow My Vote

Kim Dotcom’s MegaNet (link and status pending…)

Videos:

Juan Batiz-Benet at DEVCON1:

Ethereum for Dummies – Dr. Gavin Wood at DEVCON1:

MegaNet Kim Dotcom on RT:

TEAC UD-501, Sennheiser HD 650, Audiophile Linux

UPDATE (2016-Feb-01):
Upgraded from HD 650 to HD 800. Now in audiophile heaven. Also, added SOtM internal USB port with SOtM SATA In-Line power filter.
I recently switched my computer’s audio system from the Objective2 Amplifier and ObjectiveDAC (a good low-cost set-up) to the TEAC USB AUDIO DAC UD-501. I connected the TEAC to a spare laptop running Audiophile Linux. Listening with Sennheiser’s HD 650 headphones, the system playing native DSD albums sounds remarkable. All instruments and vocals are crystal clear and superbly smooth. It’s the way music was meant to be heard.
DSD is the future of music — beautiful high quality audio. With a well produced DSD album, it sounds as if you are at the recording studio with the artist. Granted that a typical DSD album can be around 2-4 GB, it is rather disappointing that people seem to prefer poor quality MP3 recordings playing on low quality DAC chips in iPods and cell phones. NOTE: If you want a portable option, see the Geek Wave. An MP3 album is less than half the cost of a DSD album, but it is also less than half the quality IMO. I don’t think many people are aware of how amazing DSD quality music played back with professional quality electronics can sound. Since we live in a time where hard drives in the 2-4 TB range are rather cheap, I hope that consumers begin to demand that music producers focus on providing high fidelity music.

Page 1 of 8

Become a Friend of GNOME [ GNU Link] kde-user

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén