computer – An Autonomous Agent

Mastering Bitcoin – Andreas M. Antonopoulos

anautonomousagent — Sun, 12 Aug 2018 03:51:56 +0000

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

anautonomousagent — Sat, 15 Jul 2017 13:46:19 +0000

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

anautonomousagent — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 20:41:54 +0000

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

anautonomousagent — Wed, 04 May 2016 17:55:32 +0000

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

anautonomousagent — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 18:11:00 +0000

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.

Dangerous Knowledge – David Malone BBC

anautonomousagent — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 03:04:00 +0000

Dangerous Knowledge, by David Malone, summarizes the work and life of some of the greatest thinkers in late 19th and 20th centuries. Includes the work and life of Cantor, Boltzmann, Godel, and Turing.

Watch it here: Dangerous Knowledge

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace – Adam Curtis

anautonomousagent — Sun, 13 Jul 2014 13:02:00 +0000

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, by Adam Curtis, provides a grand overview of many of the people and ideas which have shaped the development of computers, systems, social theory, and politics over the past century. It is one of the better documentaries I have every seen and definitely worth watching; however, I agree with the reviewer John Preston who said it had an “…infuriating glibness too as the web of connectedness became ever more stretched. No one could dispute that Curtis has got a very big bite indeed. But what about the chewing, you ask. There wasn’t any – or nothing like enough of it to prevent a bad case of mental indigestion.”

Watch it:

Shush.se
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

Vimeo
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

The Power of Scientific Visualization

anautonomousagent — Thu, 08 May 2014 12:36:00 +0000

“A picture is worth a thousand words”, a cliché, but true. A semester or even a textbook can be condensed into a beautiful visualization thanks to modern graphics. This is why I find the work of Drew Berry, XVIVO, and David Goodsell so powerful. Seeing DNA replication and intracellular transportation makes me speechless. Many of these are created with Maya or Molecular Maya. I really want to explore Maya to visualize financial networks and data after watching these…

D3 Data Driven Documents

anautonomousagent — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 15:18:00 +0000

A friend told me about D3 Data Driven Documents. This is an excellent site for anyone with a desire to display data in a unique and cool fashion on the internet. I will be updating my site, thebubbleindex.com with D3 js methods soon.

Thoughts About a Project and GPUs

anautonomousagent — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 18:13:00 +0000

I want to do something which combines GPU programming, finance, and/or conservation — something which will help the relationship between humans and the environment. There are a few ideas in my head. One is about displaying data with 3D graphics to give traders more than just a ticker price. The price of a security is a minimal form of information. What is a good method to display the daily progression of trade volume? Most information about short sells, margin levels, and ownership levels are hidden; revealed only on a monthly or quarterly basis. This infrequent update hinders the development and understanding of crash prevention. Combining all of this information into a visual display based on an Ising model (example) and N-Body particle simulation should be informative. Of course I am simply speculating and putting thoughts into words. The two books I am currently browsing through are: OpenCL in Action by Matthew Scarpino and CUDA Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to GPU Programming by Nicholas Wilt.

CUDA Samples: