JoeDaDude

Not sure if this is just for fun or for research. Artificial Life is/was a field of ressearch for a while, papers were written, books were published, [1][2] etc. The field sought to study biology and the complexity of living things by experimenting with simulations of the real thing(s).

This reminds me of what IMHO is best use of artificial life in a game, Unnatural Selection. In the game you had to select and breed creatures to go against other enemy creatures. [3][4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_life

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-INSTITUTE-SCIENCES-COMPLEX...

[3] https://www.mobygames.com/game/unnatural-selection

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zteY_f9DrQA

TFA is from the now defunct magazine Monitoring Times which was about ham radio, shortwave listening and radio in general.

People interested in such topics may enjoy a successor magazine, Spectrum Monitor [1], which covers similar topics and has had some of the same writers as Monitoring Times (Note: I have no affiliation with either magazine).

[1] https://www.thespectrummonitor.com/

edit: Corrected name of Spectrum Monitor which I botched the first time.

There is an online course in audio signal processing, FWIW. Caveat: I have not taken this course.

https://online.stanford.edu/courses/sohs-ymusic0001-audio-si...

See also this book about computational music synthesis:

https://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/book/synthesis/

Claude Shannon was also an early pioneer in artificial intelligence, the minimax algorithm applied to game trees was one of his inventions. He built several machines to play games and demonstrate his ideas, some of which can be seen in the article photos.

I compiled a list of his game gadgets, most of which still exist in the care of the MIT museum.

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/143233/claude-shannon-man...

Your analogy doesn't sound far off from what information theory describes. Still, we need to be cautious of applying information theory to areas in which it might be over extended and may not be suitable. Claude Shannon himself was aware of this trend and wrote his essay "The Bandwagon" [1] urging caution and diligence in applying information theory to different fields.

[1]. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=1056774

Would love to try it. How can I get one?

Great little site! Having been in aviation for a while I was looking for some of the grass runway airports I'd visited in the past. My goal is to revisit them all, but this time in MS Flight Simulator. :)

Will be making a donation, my only gripe is that there is no search, either by name or zip code (or sectional map?), so it was not easy to find everything I was looking for

Thanks for the tips. Some of the books have links to the Amazon Kindle store and have previews which sometimes include ToCs.

The folks at DARPA want to investigate the use of Machine Learning math and tools to control and process antenna arrays. See the Tensors for Reprogrammable Intelligent Array Demonstrations (TRIAD) program, referenced here:

https://intelligencecommunitynews.com/darpa-releases-triad-a...

It looks cute and all, but... you can't beat sailing with real weather!

https://8bitbyte.ca/sailnavsim/

I am reminded of the case of Alex the Parrot [1]. We all know parrots can mimic human speech very well, but the case made for Alex is that he was using actual language to convey meaning and not just parroting (pun intended) what he heard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot)

In my wild imagination, I imagine parrots being taught to communicate with humans, being let loose into the jungle, and the passing on human language to their offspring. Some years hence, people would venture into the jungle and would be able to ask the parrots for directions. :)

For people unfamiliar, this video is a perfect intro to Don Norman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY96hTb8WgI

Not sure how the GPS NUDET system works but I suspect the downlink is something other than the navigation signal. Spoofing the navigation signal would not affect the GPS telemetry signal to dedicated NUDET ground stations.

BTW, the device you linked is used exactly for that purpose, to shut down electronics to prevent damage from EMP and other effects.

To your point, there are other means to detect nuclear explosions, used mostly to verify compliance with treaties, such this seismic one:

https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1582524

First they got rid of the music stores. Then bookstores disappeared. Without them, there is no fun in going to the mall, haven't been to one in ages.

There must be some demand for this book. You can read it online for free or buy a used copy on Amazon for >$300!!

I once met with Iridium [1] engineers not long after the collision of one of their satellites with a Russian weather satellite [2] in 2009. The meeting was for another purpose entirely, but since the collision was fresh news, it naturally came up in conversation. The Iridium folk told me that they would receive warnings from NORAD of imminent collisions, defined as two satellites coming with 500m. They were receiving warnings to the tune of 10 or 12 a day, so many that they basically started ignoring them.

[1] https://www.iridium.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision

Yes! A good, close-to-pro level Pi based laptop. Brownie points if it includes a SDR.

Missing from the list, and one of the best SF animes I've seen: Top wo Nerae! Gunbuster, or just Gunbuster. Mecha play a big role, but not the only role: there are alien invaders, spaceships approaching lightspeed, giant space battles, etc. etc. but all draped in hard SF:

https://myanimelist.net/anime/949/Top_wo_Nerae_Gunbuster

PS: Pay no attention to its sequel Gunbuster 2

The History Channel aired this documentary which summarizes multiple theories about the discovery of America, from either the Atlantic or Pacific. Ice age explorers, Vikings, Polynesians, etc., are all covered:

https://vimeo.com/288240659

The only reason I don't use my HP-15c scientific, which I got in college well before the turn of the century as an EE undergrad, is because it has been emulated on my phone. Well worth the price:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hp-15c-calculator/id503720774

And oh, BTW, I still have my 15c.

There is a debate that so called Anasazi people of the American southwest either ritually burned and abandoned their Kivas (ceremonial building) or that the burning is evidence of warfare.

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

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/hh/36/hh36c-2.h...

https://spot.colorado.edu/~laursen/southwest/chaco/chacoMain...

In addition to the "panic", there were apocryphal tales about local farmers getting their guns to fight the Martians. It was said that they shot at a water tower, which in the dark, they thought was one of the tripods. That story was debunked by Skeptical Inquirer some time ago:

https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsletter/shootout-with-marti...

Side note: I'd like to point out one of the very few science fiction novels about linguistics: The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance [1]. The novel is clearly inspired by the Sapir-Whorf concept that language shapes thought [0]. BTW: Another candidate would be 1984. Though not the main these, that novel introduces Newspeak, a language in which dissent cannot be expressed, thus becoming another tool of oppression.

Minor spoiler: In Vance's said novel, the different segments of the population of a planet are taught three separate languages in order to develop and specialize economically, industrially, and militarily.

[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

[1]. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Languages_of_Pao/ke...

FWIW: In one of my classes, the teacher taught us Prolog by making us write a text adventure using it. It turned out to be well suited to the task. Except for the "publish to the web part".

https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek/cis554-2015/Assignments/...

Some material for those that want to dig further:

1. Get Lamp, a documentary film on text adventures and Infocom, a legendary publisher of test adventure games.

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

2. Twisty Little Passages by By Nick Montfort. A book applying literary critique to text adventure games.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/twisty-little-passages

Obligatory xkcd, a minor tribute in these days of Artificial Intelligence buzz.

https://xkcd.com/1002/

LinkedIn has provided a treasure trove of comedy material. I especially enjoy Joshua Fluke's youtube channel [1] where he shows cringeworthy team building videos he culled from LinkedIn.

[1]. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-91UA-Xy2Cvb98deRXuggA

The complex at Tintagel, from where British tin exports took place, gets the archeological treatment in this Nova episode:

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/king-arthurs-lost-kingdom-f...

Interesting that the idea started as a game, and now the TV series has become a game. The kickstarter campaign was successful last year and you can now buy (if you can find it) and play the game.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1780208966/the-expanse-...

The past 9 months have been the best ones of my working life. No more long commutes, no more inane meetings, no more rude interruptions to talk about sports or GoT or whatever.

Online meetings have become very efficient as nobody tries to talk over each other. There are way fewer "immediate" deadlines as everybody accepts that e-mail replies will not be immediate.

I hope this becomes the norm for me for the rest of my career.