- PaGMO — Parallel Global Multiobjective Optimizer […] a generalization of the island model paradigm working for global and local optimization algorithms. Its main parallelization approach makes use of multiple threads, but MPI is also implemented and can be mixed in with multithreading. PaGMO can be used to solve in a parallel fashion, global optimization tasks.
- Avoiding the Tragedy of the Anticommons — Many people talk about “open source biology.” Mike Loukides pulls apart open source and biology to see what the relationship might be. I’m still chewing on what devops for bio would be. Modern software systems throw off gigabytes of data, and we have built tools to monitor those systems, archive their data, and automate much of the analysis. There are free and commercial packages for logging and monitoring, and it continues to be a very active area of software development, as anyone who’s attended O’Reilly’s Velocity conference knows.
- peppytides (Makezine) — 3d-printed super accurate, scaled 3D-model of a polypeptide chain that can be folded into all the basic protein structures, like α-helices, β-sheets, and β-turns. (via Lenore Edman)
- London Data Store — dashboard and open data catalogue for City of London’s data release efforts.
"3d printing" entries
Four short links: 24 October 2014
Parallel Algorithm, Open Source Bio, 3D Printed Peptides, and Open London Data
Four short links: 29 September 2014
Feedback Surprises, Ownership Changes, Teaching Lessons, and 3D Retail
- How Community Feedback Shapes Behaviour (PDF) — Not only do authors of negatively-evaluated content contribute more, but also their future posts are of lower quality, and are perceived by the community as such. Moreover, these authors are more likely to subsequently evaluate their fellow users negatively, percolating these effects through the community. In contrast, positive feedback does not carry similar effects, and neither encourages rewarded authors to write more, nor improves the quality of their posts. Interestingly, the authors that receive no feedback are most likely to leave a community. Furthermore, a structural analysis of the voter network reveals that evaluations polarize the community the most when positive and negative votes are equally split.
- When Everything Works Like Your Cell Phone (The Atlantic) — our relationship to ownership is about to undergo a wild transformation.
- Teaching Me Softly — article of anecdotes drawing parallels between case studies in machine learning and things we know about human learning.
- SuperAwesome Me (3D Print) — Walmart to install 3d scanning booths and 3d printers so you can put your own head on a Hasbro action figure. Hasbro have the religion: they also paired with Shapeways for superfanart.com. (via John Battelle)
Four short links: 14 August 2014
Ceramic 3D Printing, Robo Proofs, Microservice Fail, and Amazing Graphics Tweaks
- $700 Ceramic-Spitting 3D Printer (Make Magazine) — ceramic printing is super interesting, not least because it doesn’t fill the world with plastic glitchy bobbleheads.
- Mathematics in the Age of the Turing Machine (Arxiv) — a survey of mathematical proofs that rely on computer calculations and formal proofs. (via Victoria Stodden)
- Failing at Microservices — deconstructed a failed stab at microservices. Category three engineers also presented a significant problem to our implementation. In many cases, these engineers implemented services incorrectly; in one example, an engineer had literally wrapped and hosted one microservice within another because he didn’t understand how the services were supposed to communicate if they were in separate processes (or on separate machines). These engineers also had a tough time understanding how services should be tested, deployed, and monitored because they were so used to the traditional “throw the service over the fence”to an admin approach to deployment. This basically lead to huge amounts of churn and loss of productivity.
- Transient Attributes for High-Level Understanding and Editing of Outdoor Scenes — computer vision doing more amazing things: annotate scenes (e.g., sunsets, seasons), train, then be able to adjust images. Tweak how much sunset there is in your pic? Wow.
Jeremy Rifkin unveils a return to the local in an interconnected future
Internet of Things, local energy sources, and online collaboration underlie the Zero Marginal Cost Society.
Stratasys’ Education, R&D departments and MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab are researching 4D printing — manufacturing one-off objects that can change their shapes or other physical characteristics in response to their environment. (View the video.)
Read more…
Four short links: 20 May 2014
Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Sewing Machines & 3D Printers, and Smart Spoons
- Basics of Machine Learning Course Notes — slides and audio from university course. Watch along on YouTube.
- A Primer on Deep Learning — a very quick catch-up on WTF this is all about.
- 3D Printers Have a Lot to Learn from Sewing Machines — Sewing does not create more waste but, potentially, less, and the process of sewing is filled with opportunities for increasing one’s skills and doing it over as well as doing it yourself. What are quilts, after all, but a clever way to use every last scrap of precious fabric? (via Jenn Webb)
- Liftware — Parkinson’s-correcting spoons.
Podcast: automation and an abundance-oriented economy
Jim Stogdill, Jon Bruner and Jenn Webb discuss James Burke, ninja homes, IoT standards and robots.
What happens if emerging technology and automation result in a world of abundance, where anyone at anytime can produce anything they need and there’s no need for jobs? In his recent Strata keynote, James Burke warned that society is not prepared for scarcity (and the value it brings) to be a thing of the past — an eventuality Burke predicts will occur in the next 40 years or so. This topic kicks off a discussion between Jim Stogdill, Jon Bruner and myself that we recorded while at Strata.
Link fodder from our chat includes:
- James Burke.
- Roundtable with James Burke, which Alistair Croll aptly described as the “best coffee break ever.”
- Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano.
- Norbert Wiener’s The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society
- Ninja homes.
- Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built.
- Why Solid, why now?
- Solid: Local in Boston — and upcoming in San Francisco.
- MarkForged carbon fiber 3D printer.
- Rethink Robotics.
- Ryan Cunningham’s Strata session
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If you liked this article, you might be interested in a new report, “Building a Solid World,” that explores the key trends and developments that are accelerating the growth of a software-enhanced, networked physical world. (Download the free report.)
Four short links: 29 January 2014
Throwable Sensor, 3D Printer Patents, Internet Inequality, and Carbon Fiber Printing
- Bounce Explorer — throwable sensor (video, CO2, etc) for first responders.
- Sintering Patent Expires Today — key patent expires, though there are others in the field. Sintering is where the printer fuses powder with a laser, which produces smooth surfaces and works for ceramics and other materials beyond plastic. Hope is that sintering printers will see same massive growth that FDM (current tech) printers saw after the FDM patent expired 5 years ago.
- Internet is the Greatest Legal Facilitator of Inequality in Human History (The Atlantic) — hyperbole aside, this piece does a good job of outlining “why they hate us” and what the systemic challenges are.
- First Carbon Fiber 3D Printer Announced — $5000 price tag. Nice!
Four short links: 2 January 2014
3D Model-to-Printer, GCode Visualizer, AC Power Control, and Public Domain Sadness
- slic3r — converts a digital 3D model into printing instructions for your 3D printer. It cuts the model into horizontal slices (layers), generates toolpaths to fill them and calculates the amount of material to be extruded.
- gCodeViewer — GCode is the “numerical control language” for telling extruders, mills, polishers, etc. where to move to and when. This open source package is a visual GCode visualizer, viewer and analyzer in your own browser! It works on any OS in almost any modern browser (chrome, ff, safari 6, opera, ie10 should work too). All you need to do – is drag your *.gcode file to the designated zone.
- AC Power Control with Arduino — in the video video and the code, we take an in depth look at the hardware for using Arduino interrupts to control AC power through a triac. Using a zero-crossing detector Arduino will detect the pulse then calculate a delay to control the power output to a load.
- What Didn’t Enter the Public Domain Today — a reminder of what the public domain lost because of the Sonny Bono/Disney copyright term extension, timely given there are bad times ahead.
Democratizing technology and the road to empowerment
BIF9 storytellers share how their work and experiences enrich our world.
Advancements in technology are making what once was relegated only to highly educated scientists, engineers and developers accessible to — and affordable for — the mainstream. This democratization of technology and the empowerment it affords was an underlying thread through many of the stories at this year’s Business Innovation Factory (BIF) summit. From allowing hobbyists and makers to innovate and develop on an advanced level to enabling individuals to take control of their personal health data to using space suits to help children with cerebral palsy, technological advancements are beginning to empower — and enrich — at scale.
With the rise of quantified self, for example, people have begun amassing personal data based on their activities and behaviors. Some argue that QS doesn’t go quite far enough and that a more complete story can be told by incorporating emotional data, our sense of experience. While it’s empowering in many ways to be able to collect and control all this personal big data, what to do with this onslaught of information and how to process it remains a question for many.
Alexander Tsiaras, who founded theVisualMD, argued in his talk at BIF9 that “story gives a soul to the data,” and that it’s time to change the paradigm, to start using technology to create ecosystems to empower people to understand what’s going on inside their bodies as a result of their behaviors.
Four short links: 16 December 2013
Data Pipeline, Data Driven Education, Crowdsourced Proofreading, and 3D Printed Shoes
- Suro (Github) — Netflix data pipeline service for large volumes of event data. (via Ben Lorica)
- NIPS Workshop on Data Driven Education — lots of research papers around machine learning, MOOC data, etc.
- Proofist — crowdsourced proofreading game.
- 3D-Printed Shoes (YouTube) — LeWeb talk from founder of the company, Continuum Fashion). (via Brady Forrest)