Note: This is a rambling argument against ethical egoism; I’m saying that it doesn’t make sense to reject altruism, especially using evolution as an argument, and in fact, evolution can be used to explain how altruism can be evolved. I’m not talking about possible solutions or theories of socio-economic organization. Obviously, philosophy informs those ideologies…
Category: Science
Sci-Fi Fever Dreams
Yesterday when I finally fell asleep, I was running a fever of 102.5 (it broke last night and I feel much better today – I think I’m over whatever I got). I then had a dream I was in a TV show – something like Stranger Things. At least that’s how it started out. Something…
Akṣi: Handwritten-digit-recognizing neural-network
I’ve always been interested in Neural Networks (ever since I first found out about them around 10 years ago). However, I never got a chance to learn about them or write one of my own; this is something I’ve wanted to do for some time. I got the opportunity this semester when my professor in…
Navy Railgun and Shuttle Ascent video
I came across a cool video of the Navy’s Mach 8 Railgun. That’s right. Mach 8. The railgun uses 33Mj; the aim is to get it to 64Mj. The previous record (by the same lab) was 2 years ago at 10.64Mj. There are still a few issues to work out, namely power consumption and heat…
Rooting the G2
As some of you may already be aware, it appears that the G2 has some sort of “magic restore” (it’s not a rootkit) function that causes all changes to /system to be reverted. This means that you cannot remove any bundled bloatware. Even more troubling, it looks like the phone will perform the restore while…
Unboxing my new T-Mobile G2 Android Phone
My wife called me at work today and told me that my new phone just came in the mail :). It’s the new G2 by HTC, which is supposed to be the successor to the G1. The specs on this phone are: 3.7 inch WVGA capacitive touch screen 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash…
The Sun’s not going to blow up
In any science fiction story I’ve read (or science fiction movie or TV show that I’ve seen) that talks about death of the Sun. I’ve always heard references to Earth’s sun “going nova”. I’ve read about this even in Asimov’s stories. In most cases, they’re talking about a supernova. But here’s the thing. The Sun…
Artificial Life – some preliminary findings
I fnished my artificial life simulator over the weekend, and I have been running simulations on it. There were a few bugs initially that I quickly fixed. My initial simulations gave me some inexplicable “population explosion”. For example, in one cycle I would have 31 creatures and in the next cycle I would suddenly have…
Intel and Artificial Life
This is my fourth day at Intel. I think I will enjoy working here. I haven’t done much yet though, and I still don’t know exactly what it is I am supposed to be doing. I tested some 140 chips yesterday, but that wasn’t too much work. My supervisor is out until Tuesday, so until…
Wisdom Teeth
I have been living on Tylenol for the past two days. My wisdom teeth have started to emerge from my lower jaw. The upper ones have been no trouble. The lower left one was no trouble either. However, the lower right one refuses to behave like his brothers. It is an eruption of pain. Day…