PiSquared Blog
Blog about geeky stuff, computers, physics and life.
Tag English
The forbidden topic
Tags: English, politicsCreated on Wed, 14 Apr 2021
#BlackLivesMatter. #MeToo. #WomenInTech. #GenderPayGap.
I'm going to talk about something that may get me fired, dead or worse - canceled. It's the dogma of our time. We do not talk that there are differences between people that may influence their career. We try to fool nature but as Feynman said - "Nature cannot be fooled". As we tried not to care about O-rings that will break under certain temperature that have killed people we try so hard not to care that different people - men, women, gays, blacks and especially - people that have sharp noses vs people who don't - have different capabilities. We talk only about equalizing the playing field. And some parts of it are smart and we need less bias, more understanding of different perspectives that different people bring. But many initiatives are annoyingly stupid and completely detached from reality, trying to fool nature. I'm going to agree with my corp bullshit that I have to swallow everyday, attend brainwashing trainings, li
...moreThe Third World War is coming. What to do about it?
Tags: English, opinionsCreated on Thu, 28 Jul 2016
The Third World War is coming. Everything is set in place for the war to unlock at any moment now. ISIS are the most powerful and cunning terrorist organisation the world has ever seen. There is nothing that can stop it. The Islam religion is so powerful, they want to kill people and they will do it over and over, more and more often. Because they are promised salvation. It is always the Islam. It is the wrong religion. 9/11. And we now let them in our own lands because they want asylum? Ontario, France, Belgium and Germany. But they are different. They are not like us. We let them kill our children. How long? Who do you fight with? There are the lone wolves that are impossible to track. Or so they tell us. Maybe they know. The more powerful, the people at the top, they know. Putin has been the worst dictator humanity has known yet his country is not attacked by ISIS. Why? Because he is part of the plan. He will be more manipulative and hungry for more power until the war breaks out.
...moreFacebook (and the rest) - wait a minute - this way is wrong!
Tags: English, technology, opinionsCreated on Thu, 19 Jul 2018
This is not the way we wanted computers to work. We don't want people addicted to their phones all the time, looking like zombies, internally feeling depressed and anxious and always trying to outcompete everybody in the world; trying to show off to get a few more likes, to get a few more comments. We don't want this poisonous competition of individuals for meaningless virtual points. And all the while these same people are being exploited by Facebook to click on things so that advertisers can show them ads to things they probably don't even want. We don't want people reading shallow automatically generated articles of confirmation bias, which are being promoted by Facebook to get even more clicks for more ads for more things you don't want.
We wanted to connect with the people we care about. It's our intrinsic desire in this more and more isolated society. We wanted to know what is going on in the lives of the people we cared about but not to compete with them in this ugly jelaous
...moreAfterlife
Tags: English, essaysCreated on Tue, 01 Dec 2020
There is nothing more final than death; I had both my grandmas die within a year about a decade ago and it's really this terrible empty feeling and all the good memories just come every once in a while and wash you away unexpectedly - time is the only healer. People left behind who have spent a long time feel the miss the most and again, time is the only medicine, no substitute can be enough to fill the void but friends and family help.
I'm quite scientific minded and of course - I wonder a lot. Although science doesn't stop belief (it actually requires it in a certain way) my mind reasons about the experience about death in a way that tries to be consistent with what I know. And that means that since we have no idea what the internal experience of dying and death might be - all bets are off. Therefore if you tell me you feel like going to heaven - okay. If you tell me you feel like there is nothing - okay. It's unknowable at this stage so any hypothesis is probably equally valid.
...more"Catching" Panic Attacks
Tags: English, personalCreated on Thu, 26 Nov 2015
I am experiencing a panic attack right now. It's a second day in a row and I've promised to myself I will be observing closely as I know getting one is never the whole story. They come in bunches. It's a very irrational thing - my heart rate is elevated from seemingly unknown reason, you can actually hear it in your ears, I want to hide, isolate or run away somewhere. Fortunately I've experienced enough of those that I can deny the urge and explore...
Debugging
People don't come with debuggers. That would be a highly useful thing. Why?
When writing a computer program sometimes things go wrong. You have introduced a bug. Depending on the programming language and type of bug, the program might "throw an exception", i.e. understand that the program has run into an exceptional condition which is not the "normal flow". For example, when you see an error like this
it means that your Operating system enc
...moreWeek девет
Tags: English, universityCreated on Sun, 01 Dec 2013
The second sprint didn't go so well as the first one. Maybe because of the many assigments that are due really soon and (naturally) everyone does everything in the last possible or beyond last possible moment. Another reason may be because we had to learn a framework for a week in between all of that. Spring is not hard, in fact, it looks extremely nice framework (maybe except the fact that it relies a lot on Java annotations which IMHO make the already hard to follow nature of the Java code even more unreadable). But otherwise the tutorials on the webpage are easy enough the follow and I also attempted doing one of the long tutorials - really nice, easy as a song (as we like to say in my home country).
Anyway, we were able to finish the prototype and we didn't spend too much time on goldplating the code and making it look pretty. It was mentioned in the specifications that this is not an HCI so we didn't want to wrap it in bootstrap or whatever css library we stumbled upon. I perso
...moreWeek 90n
Tags: English, universityCreated on Tue, 11 Mar 2014
Formal Methods in Software Engineering. From what I got from the lecture, this is a mathematical way to describe requirements and the process of developing software.
Here are some links that completely taught me about formal methods:
- http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~fleck/181.html
- http://web.mit.edu/16.35/www/lecturenotes/FormalMethods.pdf
Of course, that's next to the brilliant lecture slides and note materials. [TODO: Pile of bricks]
This can be useful in safety critical systems and security systems. We were introduced to the idea of the Object Constraint Language. I was left with the impression that the proves can be so hard and tricky, generated from a computer, that it's hard to understand it as a human. However software tools are really not mature enough to work with. Therefore it's a good idea, but without much practical applications.
Other good ideas
...moreWeek 1^2 + 1^2 + 2^2 + 3^2
Tags: English, universityCreated on Sun, 16 Feb 2014
Behavior driven development is a new thing for me. It looks like an improved, revised and more human-oriented refinement of Test driven development. It describes the process as a human would like to see, not in terms of some artificial tests that while might be uselful, are sometimes hard to grasp. The workshop on JBehave is easy to follow and useful.
HOWEVER... I start feeling that PSD tries to introduce as many software frameworks as possible in it's given timeframe without actually giving us the time to explore it and really understand it. Starting with the Spring fiasco in the first semester, where we were already overloaded with work from other courses, this brought nothing new to my mind and as a team we strugled to understand exactly what is that and why we would need it to do our second sprint. We continue with Jenkins, OSGi (Apache Felix) and now JBehave. While it may be interesting to get a taste of the technology, I don't think it's too productive as it mostly wastes our
...moreWeek Mg
Tags: English, universityCreated on Tue, 21 Jan 2014
It took me the better part of the week to make my mind understand the difference between an object and component (of course, next to reading and writing about all my other courses) but I think I finally got it. A component is a group of objects that can live by itself and can connect via middleware to other components, providing ins and outs of the component.
It does resembe a lot an object, but an object while it's describing an entity, it usually cannot work by itself. The closest to a component in fact is actually a merge by a package and an object.
The workshop was interesting, having a glimpse of Apache Felix although I think it will take me some more time to really grasp the concept (maybe work proffesionally on it?).
I also rebooted the team project this week, after a very lazy winter vacation. We are having some minor troubles with python but otherwise the front end is almost done but the backend does need some more work especially on the algorithms and scoring part.
...moreThe Shape of the Universe
Tags: English, universityCreated on Wed, 19 Feb 2014
(Originally posted in useless Univerisity blog)
The shape of the universe is the local and global geometry of the universe, in terms of both curvature and topology (though, strictly speaking, it goes beyond both). (Wikipedia)
Astrophysicists have been trying for decades to identify the shape of the Universe through various observation techniques and tons of useless calculations. Most of them think now that it's flat. However yesterday, I have discovered the real shape - a revolutionary, never before thought of, groundbreaking and yet not so much surprising result that will change the way we are thinking about everyday stuff like butter.
Bear with me for the revelation of this unusual story. I will go with a step by step proof, with a methodology of the scientific method applied at every step. It is an interesting read that I believe will enlighten the 0.26 people that are reading this blog. Here we go!
- During the wee
Week NGC 6402
Tags: English, universityCreated on Fri, 07 Feb 2014
The consortium was a very interesting experience. 14 people who have hardly ever talked to each other, gathered in a room to discuss something we hadn’t had time to read or understand what exactly is required from us. 13 people kept silent some minutes. I started to speak.
“So... any ideas what to do? Anyone?”
Laugh from 12 people.
“Yeah, well, we were given this piece of paper. And I guess we need to do it.”
Good - I thought to myself. No one takes this seriously.
“Okay, so I see some user stories here. And there is cost and priority. Shall we start reading them one by one?”
11 people blushed and tried to hide as if I was going to pick them. But the others showed a bit of excitement - I guess they thought of me as someone who can lead them and they wanted to just follow. Pure old education - a person (with very, VERY questionable authority) stands in front and speaks and 10 other listen to him.
So we started reading them. And we started voting in the MoSCoW system
...moreWeek X
Tags: English, universityCreated on Mon, 09 Dec 2013
This week was very intensive for me. I worked on my TP every day for 8+ hours since I wanted to complete most of the implementation before I leave for my Christmas holidays. I learnt a lot, practiced a lot and played with design, Javascript, Django, Python, Postgres and the varios additional JS libraries out there that we need in order to visualiza the tweets. It is not my first encounter with any of these technologies but I definitely broadened by experience with them, feeling more secure when applying for jobs.
Tomorrow is the team presentation. I feel we made very good progres in the last 5-6 days and now feel much more secure in what is going on with the architecture, final design and technologies that we will be using. Of course, we still haven't had any user evaluations but we are busy building the system which we will fine tune with A/B testing and direct user observation. We have tons of features waiting on the MoSCoW queue and also reflected in the github issue tracker. We
...moreSummary entry II
Tags: English, universityCreated on Thu, 27 Mar 2014
If the first semester was balanced and happy with occasional hiccups, the second semester was quite a different story. Courses like Operating Systems, Network Systems and Databases were much more demanding both in theoretical knowledge and assignments. I enjoyed them and now I can say I get these areas much deeper thanks to both the material in the lectures and the assignments which also helped me solidify my knowledge in C. It was interesting (from an academic practice point) to build a web server, chat program and disk driver even though not many of us will have to do this in the future. However, it definitely made me get a better understanding of some of the inner processes. On the other hand, optimising database queries can actually be applied to the real world and I am happy we did that.
In addition to that, the team project had reached a phase beyond just mocks and requirements capture and implementation work needed to be done.
Another semester long project was the Distribu
...moreWeek Ans^wer
Tags: English, universityCreated on Wed, 19 Feb 2014
As far as refractoring goes, here are some links that I find really useful:
- http://refactoring.com/
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/719exd8s.aspx
- http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhatIsRefactoring
Of course, I have used the refractoring facilities of Eclipse, I learnt that during the Google's Android camp in 2012 which was structured in a hackatonish way. I find it really useful as it saves time and helps me write better code.
As far as software comprehension goes, I have had some experience during the summer reading other's people code. I used profilers as well. It helps to understand RAM and CPU in much deeper level. I actually asked them once to go to dinner. They refused. They said things are moving too quickly. Here are some links that I find us
...moreWeek floor(pi)
Tags: English, universityCreated on Sat, 19 Oct 2013
I can't be more confused about git. I'm using it for about two years, pretty regularly, I get the point, I know it's good. But somehow I always manage to screw things up.
Every time I discover something new about git, I love it and I think "NOW I got it!". And after few minutes, git slaps me like a lemon tied on a brick (H2G2 ref). I wish I could work better with it. I went through so many tutorials, I worked with it, I asked for help from more proffesional users. And I still manually copy the directory just in case. Version control is good, the idea is great, I love it to be able to undo things, to see how a project evolved with history, to branch and play on a new feature. But does it have to be so complicated? Can't it be ala Google Docs solution? Future will show.
In the meantime - I decided to write a poem about git. It's rephrased very epic poem we have in Bulgaria called "The Rebels on Shipka" and it describes one of the last battles we had with the Ottoman empire back in
...moreWeek ------rw-
Tags: English, universityCreated on Fri, 08 Nov 2013
The reason I love coding so much is that it's the immediate gratification of seeing something done so quickly after you learn it. Make the pixels move the way you want, when you want. Sometimes you are so excited of what you just learnt that you don't even read the whole documentation - just go and experiment... Sometimes? Well, usually.
And that brings us to prototyping. It involves experimenting with the technologies, trying to find the limits of the chosen framework, programming language or library and not caring how terribly things may break. It's like being an architect with infinite supply of free bricks and manpower. How good is that?
Of course, from serious SE point of view, it's lowering the risks as you go and try to experiment first before building the system. As Fred Brooks says in the Mythical Man Month, the first system never works. So here is the chance to throw away safely the first system and do the real work afterwards. Prototyping is cool, it brings you to thos
...moreWeek ^G
Tags: English, universityCreated on Fri, 15 Nov 2013
The first sprint week looks really good now that it's its last day. We did manage to comunicate everyday with the team and hold standups - either through Google+ or live. We identified problems, assigned tasks to people and implemented our original idea with slight modifications which resolved issues found in the process. The course work seems good enough to be tested with the new (in our minds) agile scrum method of doing things. In theory agile sounds good, in practice it's even better. There is no more weeks of wondering if anyone did something and the frustration when someone didn't - everyday you have the chance to see what happened and help if there are any associated problems.
We decided to implement the course work in Python with data stored in a MySQL database so that we can brush up that good language that we learnt in first year and revise our database knowledge. We'll definitely need it in the second semester. In the first year we didn't do object orientation but now tha
...moreWeek ?v=5FFRoYhTJQQ
Tags: English, universityCreated on Tue, 21 Jan 2014
I have been using Apache Ant and Ivy during my last summer internship and I must say it has a very nice easy learning curve. After about 10 minutes of simple tutorials and a bit of tweaking, you understand the basics of it and it solves hours of problems. You are ready to go in no time - automate lots of tasks when you want to recompile or deploy things quickly when the boss asks you that he wants a demo in 10 minutes. This is a website that helped me getting it.
I haven't used Jenkins though but I did have some experience with open source development. Launchpad does something similiar once you update your code and push it with bzr push. Now I understand what it does in the background and in my eyes, this is a step further from ant and ivy - even more efforts saved on mundane tasks, leaving the programmer worry about the more human problem aspects like algorithms, data structure, abstraction
Week Fatal
Tags: English, universityCreated on Tue, 28 Jan 2014
Architectural design patterns brought back memories from last year’s software design patterns in OOSE2. Even though most of them were known to me, it was good refresher and an easy topic to read about.
I remember that last year I finally got to know the model-view-controller (MVC) after practicing it in one of the other courses assessed exercises. Seems that these patterns are almost everywhere (duh) as we are discussing some of them (client-server, peer-to-peer) also this year in DIM3 and even OS3 (pipe and filter, message oriented).
While I was studying for the finals last year, I remember I found this guy on youtube who turns out is making very, very useful videos about many topics in computing science. Here is the playlist with his design patterns (code is also provided and thoughtfully commented):
{% rawhtml %}<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vNHpsC5ng_E?list=PLF206E906175C7E07" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-m
...moreSemester 1 Summary
Tags: English, universityCreated on Thu, 02 Jan 2014
Contribution and Achievements
This is not the first time that I worked in a team but it was the first time that the team wasn’t chosen by me but selected on random. So here is to what we’ve done during semester 1:
-
Create a team organization document. This was our first task as a team but we didn’t have much of an idea what organization should we describe - organization for the Team Project or the PSD assignments? I don’t think this was clearly understood. However we liked the agile methods so we tried to brainstorm about that.
-
Assign risks. Again, not clear in the beginning. We had no idea about the group assignments and what will this involve. And on the Team Project we were just getting started to understand the scope of the problem - too early to assign risks. So we tried to generalize them and later edit them and narrow them down as things became more clear (and after we got feedback) which was good.
-
Setup trac server and git repository. I think tha
Week Math.pow((this.Week\ 10), $(this.Week\ floor(pi)))
Tags: English, universityCreated on Sat, 23 Nov 2013
Quality assurance. Good. Now that we’ve done implementing in our first sprint, it’s good for fresh eyes to have a look at the code. We were pleased to hear the other group liked the code and the design decisions we had while implementing. We also received a great feedback as to what can be improved. For example - we will shorten the commands so that the user doesn’t need to type the whole long string but just one letter. We got several ideas in places where we got stuck. We didn’t discover any bugs that we didn’t already know about but we did mark them clearly in our trac system so that we can squash the ones we know about.
As to the lecture - standardization is a great idea. So great that not one but many organizations exist that do standardizations in different areas in our life. Sometimes however I am afraid this thing happens as noted by Mr. Randal Munroe (xkcd 927 Standards):
Tags: English, universityCreated on Thu, 24 Oct 2013
Requirements are better than planning. I know that probably I should embrace both as good strategy for work, but I just can't. I am more the strategy guy than tactics guy. I like to know that in chess the goal is to checkmate the opposite king. This is the requirement. Now how I'm going to do that - using pawns, bishops and knights - I want to have the flexibility to do that. I don't want to make my first move and define my whole game. I like the dynamics, dealing with unforeseen positions.
There is this big difference I see which makes me want to have good requirements but not necessary a strict plan to execute them (see rant about planning, pre-previous blog post). But the specifications are whole different world - I would like to know what is the final deliverable, what needs to be done.
Describing this with the help of the UML is best. One language to rule them all - standartization is good practice and it's of the rare case that UML was created. Drawing the diagrams, writing
...moreFirst week of lectures
Tags: English, universityCreated on Thu, 03 Oct 2013
My impressions of the first week of 3rd year at University is that this year it will be really busy. We already have assigment sheets and we are jumping straight into the difficult work - no more lazy introductions. Which is good.
Our team project was announced - TweetDesk. It's gonna help journalists mainly to find emerging topics in twitter. Twitter is great, but I also noticed from my ussage that it's not too good to follow too many entitites, since the noise overwhelms the useful information. With our project, we are going to try to fix that.
We also met our project supervisor and the 2 PhD guys who will be helping us. As far as we understood in this early stages, we will be mainly working on the front end. This is great news for me since I am already interested in beautiful and simple design and visualisations. Moreover, I worked on similiar tasks during my summer internship and I have some experience.
As far as the codebase goes, as far as I am concerned, we should have
...moreMy University Blog
Tags: English, universityCreated on Sun, 06 Jan 2019
During year 3 at University on one of the courses we had to write a blog post every week. I have written a blog before (this one) but 3rd year at University of Glasgow is crazy busy - almost everyone has developed a depression, panic attacks, disorders and has become a goat. I have discovered my old University blog on the interwebs and copied it over to this new/old blog of mine.
Few things of note:
- They are past, yes, but I stand by them - even if I don't agree with some of the things I said anymore - this was who I was and it was part of what made me - me and other new-agey sentences here.
- Yes, including the controversial, censored, SCANDALOUS post "The shape of the Universe" in which I explain how the world sucked at year 3. And had problems with high-minded people.
- The follow up The Dynamics of Ovis Aries which was written after I got told off that I need to pull down that blog
Week 10
Tags: English, universityCreated on Fri, 11 Oct 2013
This week - charts.
Almost. But not quite. We were talking about Gantt and PERT charts. Cool stuff that bussiness people talk all the time. They just love it - give them meetings, status reports, where is it going, how much is it gonna cost, who is working on what, what needs to be done in order to AAA! Just do IT!
To be honest - I hate planning (no way, you couldn't have guessed from the rant above). Not just the process of planing, the execution of it. I just can't work with a plan - it limits me or it pushes me - never with the right speed. The right speed depends on many factors including distance and time but in this context - my current mood, level of entropy in the Universe and amount of food around me. The bad thing is that it's a must do and not want to do - and that's all the difference for me. I'm the kind of person t
...moreWeek XX
Tags: English, universityCreated on Thu, 27 Mar 2014
As I said in the previous week post, OCL is great. Here is how I imagine my first meeting in a bank (that I will definately go to work for):
{% rawhtml %}{% endrawhtml %}
Did you know that the site http://omg.org is actually relevant to the topic? I mean, OMG... Is Object Management Group! OMG! So these guys are doing a good job creating formal language for development. Here is what I definately read:
- http://www.omg.org/spec/OCL/2.4/
- http://cs.ulb.ac.be/public/_media/teaching/infoh302/oclnotes.pdf?id=teaching%3Ainfoh302&cache=cache
Actually for a whole week now, when I message my buddies, I do it like this:
```
...moreWeek Least Random Number
Tags: English, universityCreated on Wed, 26 Feb 2014
Aspect Oriented development.
I loved it. I think it aspect oriented programming is really useful. I think it creates the abstraction needed for professional software development. I think the day that we spent using AspectJ was absolutely enough to grasp the main point. Maybe not understand it completely, but really get what's going on.
I didn't have any previous experience with that, so that didn't help me a lot. But I understand the idea. And that's important!
Here are some links which helped me while understanding deeply aspect oriented development - totally not result 1,2,3 of a search engine:
Also, I have b
...moreWeek Adult (in most European countries)
Tags: English, universityCreated on Tue, 04 Mar 2014
We did state machine diagrams in year 2, computer systems course. We dealt with finite state machines and explored their properties in semester 1 in Algorithmics 3. (Personal background experience noted) But until now, we had no idea how do draw state machine diagrams.
So now we know! Here are some links to support my thesis:
-
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/people/personal/gethin/alg3/2013/alg3_section6.pdf
-
http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/people/personal/gethin/alg3/2013/alg3_pushdown_automata.pdf
The second part of the lecture - Threads! We did that too in Advanced programming 3, semester 1. With the second assessed excersise being on Java threads. And refreshed it in Networking Systems, semester 2. And the assessed excercise in NS was with C Threads. And the OS assessed excersise requires knowledge of C Threads (wit
...moreAuto adapting signal to day-night scheme
Tags: English, hacksCreated on Mon, 02 Apr 2018
So I wanted to automatically change the day/night theme of my brand new Signal desktop app. The way that it is manually done is through the File -> Preferences... menu. Now that's not convinient for programatic person like me. Let's investigate!
.config folder
My first stab is looking into the mostly standard ~/.config folder in Linux for Signal if one actually exists. It turns out it does. Let's see. It even has a ~/.config/Signal/config.json file. Unfortunately, that file doesn't contain the settings for the theme, just window positions.
grep -ring in the folder for any of android or theme just returns the logfile that Signal is writing to.
...
./logs/log.log.1:{..."theme-setting changed to android-dark",...}
...
No luck.
Another stab is at /opt/Signal directory. Again - no luck. And the app is a binary ELF executable
$ file signal-desktop
signal-desktop: ELF 64-bit LSB executable,...
strace-ing
My next attempt
...moreMorse
Tags: English, learningCreated on Thu, 25 Feb 2021
Yesterday, out of nowhere, I decided to try to learn Morse code.
In general, I hate learning languages - I can express something already in one language and learning how to do that in another seems useless with very little added benefit.
But Morse is a different type of language - it's a different communication medium, an almost universal human-binary protocol that can be communicated through timings in different mediums including wires, light or sound.
It can be argued that is is actually a tertiary protocol because it actually uses 3 types of signals - Dots are short signals, dashes are longer ones (3 times as long by standard) but then you also put silence between the letters (which is by standard the length of a dash or 3 beats). However if we think in binary representations - i.e. high and low set of signal - then a dot is a 1, a dash is a 111 and silence depends on where it should be. A silence between individual dots and dashes is a single 0. So for example le
This blog is now written in Markdown and synced with OwnCloud
Tags: English, technology, hacksCreated on Sat, 30 Jun 2018
This has been an idea that has been brewing in my mind for a while - create a simple blog that I can write from anywhere, using standard Markdown syntax. Here's the repo of the project.
The blog itself is a Flask webapp with sqlite database that has a BlogPost table. The trick is that the table is acutally synced with flat files in a folder. Each file is a blog post entry. The folder itself is synced by owncloud client which is running as a daemon (currently behind a tmux but will do it as a systemd service soon).
The key of the syncer is in the flatfile_syncer.py file. The sync is currently one-directional - when a file is created/updated/deleted, a blog post is created/updated/deleted. As an admin, you can CUD blog posts from the web interface but these are currently not synced to the file system.
So whenever I start writing a (non-hidden) file in that fol
...moreIf you like being a pirate...
Tags: English, technology, essaysCreated on Wed, 09 May 2018
Keep on reading, I am not going to judge you - I (may) do this all the time. I just want to pose you an interesting question to think about…
Take a look (if you can and at your own risk) at the most seeded audiobooks on one of these sites where Johnny Depp might find himself if he was so inclined as to make an Internet movie 😉
At the time of writing (May 2018) titles include: * "12 Rules for life" [#1 with 396], * "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Rober Cialdini" [#3 with 226] * "Be Obsessed or Be Average" [#4 with 175] * "Anthony Tony Robbins - Awaken The Giant Within" [#8 with 126] * "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck" [#9 with 125] * "The Millionaire Booklet" [#10 with 121] * "The Five Elements of Effective Thinking" [#14 with 103] * "No Excuses - The Power of Self-Discipline" [#15 with 93] * "You are a Badass" [#17 with 93] * "Maps of Meaning" (#1's author's previous book) [#19 with 91]
The unmentioned books include "Harry Potter book series 1-7", "Th
...moreOde to professionals
Tags: English, technology, essaysCreated on Thu, 19 Apr 2018
A professional doesn't dress well to impress and fake his professionalism. He dresses well to feel professional.
A professional is not hack-y, quick or dirty. He is a thorough and precise.
A professional is not arrogant or know-it-all. He works together with his colleagues, learns from them and helps them.
A professional understands planned work, unplanned work and plans for the unplanned work.
A professional takes responsibility but never blames.
A professional always learns.
A professional uses the right tool for the job. Not the one that is most hyped at the moment, nor the one he is just most familiar with but too complex or too simple for this job.
A professional understands his human limitations. Thus he never overworks to show off or mistreats the rest of his life for his craft.
A professional always tells the truth, voices his opinions where they are relevant to the work and protects his craft and his colleagues.
A professional understands or tries to
...moreGoogle Duplex and the Struggle of the Moth
Tags: English, essays, lifeCreated on Thu, 10 May 2018
There is this one episode of the TV-Series LOST that I can’t seem to shake off my mind. It’s episode 7 of season 1 titled “The Moth”. I believe it’s one of the best hours of TV I have watched and the metaphor certainly comes to my mind quite often. One of the main characters (Locke) teaches another one (Charlie — who is struggling with withdrawal symptoms of heroin) that nature’s way of finding the best is through struggles. Locke demonstrates that by showing him a moth in its cocoon shortly before emerging from it. He says that he could help the moth — he has a knife and he can rip open the cocoon, helping the moth and letting him out. But the moth is not ready if it can’t break his own cocoon. The episode is worth watching as the two larger stories represented in the episode are also an expansion of the metaphor.
{% rawhtml %}<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oo7yIEAh65M" frameborder="0" allow="accele
...moreBuild a memory graph in linux terminal
Tags: English, technology, hacksCreated on Wed, 11 Jul 2018
I was searching for a terminal based graph of usage of memory but I couldn't find one, so I built it using simple bash and python.
First create a directory called mem and enter it with cd mem
Then run the daemon part of the monitor:
while true; do free -m | head -2 | tail -1 | awk '{print $3}' > `date +'%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z'`; sleep 1; done
To actually build the graph, use this:
watch -n1 'for f in `ls -r | head -30`; do num=`cat $f`; python -c "print(\"{} {}\".format(\"$f: $num\", \".\" * ($num/10)))"; done'
And the result is something like this:
``` 2018-07-11T11:26:36+0000: 330 ................................. 2018-07-11T11:26:35+0000: 316 ............................... 2018-07-11T11:26:34+0000: 285 ............................ 2018-07-11T11:26:33+0000: 236 ....................... 2018-07-11T11:26:32+0000: 235 ....................... 2018-07-11T11:26:31+0000: 236 ....................... 2018-07-11T11:26:30+0000: 236 ..............
...moreWeek sqrt(25) - We had the GUTS
Tags: English, universityCreated on Sun, 03 Nov 2013
What a week! I organized my first Hackathon, a dream I had for so many years. Our Tech Society board had the right motivation and the guts to do it. This post is to thank everybody who contributed and made it a reality.
We had an amazing array of sponsors such as SIE, InformaticsVentures, MetaSwitch, Barclays and JP Morgan some of which provided our awards at the end of the competition. Challenges were provided by Skyscanner, SAS, Dynamically Loaded, Future Cities and SUMGroup. Special thanks to Dr. Matthew Chalmers - generous contributor both financially and in terms of challenges.We partnered with Dominos and Naked soup who provided the main meals for the event. Amazon and GitHub provided help with AWS instances and private repositories during the event which helped people collaborate and put the programs in production environment, using the power of the cloud. Of course, many thanks to The University of Glasgow and the School of Computing Science that helped us get the venue and
...moreHere's how I got my music from Google Music (as of March 2018)
Tags: English, technology, hacksCreated on Sat, 31 Mar 2018
At some point I uploaded all my music on Google Music - they provided 20,000 songs upload for free. Then of course, they started pushing their paid service - fair enought. I tried the trial several times, I paid subscriptions several times over the years, but I never enjoyed the suggestions it was giving me and somehow the music I wanted, wasn't there. So eventually I always just went to YouTube to listen to music.
But now that I am trying to detach a little bit from the cloud and get my data back I wanted to try to download my music from Google Music.
Google Checkout
My first attempt was the assumption that I can get my music as a part of the standard Google Get Back My Data or whatever. It was fairly easy to get there - MyAccount from my profile image, then Takeout then click
...moreOn the difficulty of trying again
Tags: English, essays, lifeCreated on Mon, 02 Jul 2018
Chess
I don't even know how I ended up here. Something - was it an article, or a video - but something prompted me to watch some comentary on the chess matches between AlphaZero vs Stockfish. AlphaZero is Google's/Alphabet's AI machine - both the software of deep learning and through their proprietary TPUs hardware. Stockfish is (was) the best chess computer program in the world. Now, ever since 1997 match between the then world champion Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue, playing chess against computers has been useless in terms of actually beating them.
It's of course because computers are not like people - once you create great software, you can copy it, distribute it and improve it - even if it's illegal or whatever, you can do it if you want to. Humans not so much - once a human dies the best way he can (so far) transfer the knowledge of his lifetime experience is through the slow, inneficient and incomplete multi-level interface of brain-words-mouth-air-ear-words-brain. Or simi
...moreBullsh8t, Episode #1 - Astrology
Tags: English, opinionsCreated on Sat, 29 Sep 2018
This episode of bulls8t is sponsored by my own desire to limit some of the bullsh8t in the world
Horoscopes are the worst thing since the invention of God(s). The stupid idea that planets and stars somehow influence your day to day life is idiotic and should have died pretty much whenever it was conceived. Like most of humanity. Or at least ever since we know that it doesn't influence your life. Which in all practical terms has been forever.
Hey babeee, Which sign are you?
Astrology, a.k.a. horoscopes, a.k.a. these things in the websites you read "just for fun but you actually don't really believe" (but deep down you actually do believe them because you think there is a grand scheme of things, but deeper, deeper down you know you don't know anything) revolves around an idea called a sign. Signs are twelve words that sound funny in English so that's why we stick with much hipster Latin.
ACKCHYUALLY. Signs are constellat
...moreAFTER ENTER - Episode 2 - Pressing!
Tags: English, technology, projects, learningCreated on Fri, 20 Nov 2015
The story so far:
Hi again. Last time we spoke about what happens before a search engine like Google has to accomplish before doing a search through billions of documents that make the Internet. Today we are starting our journey by doing a real search.
Our particular search will be the age old question that every child asks and every adult is ashamed to not know the answer:
Why is the sky blue?
How many ways can you think of doing that search? If you are on a phone or have a smartwatch you can say “OK Google, (hear a small bleep) why is the sky blue?”. Or you can tap on your home screen box and type with the keyboard that appears on the screen. If you are at home and have a laptop on your… well, lap… you could type on your keyboard.
So which one was it for you? This interaction is called interfacing. The word interface is used frequently and interchangeab
...moreThis post starts normally talking about interviews and transitions into a life crisis
Tags: English, essays, personal, lifeCreated on Wed, 05 Oct 2016
Job Interviews
I will be having interviews these days. I guess I am giving up my dream of starting a startup, maybe few years down the road when I get more experience. Don’t judge me. It’s hard. So let’s do some standardized interviews, that is good and stable. Get a job that you will be happy.
Algorithms and data structures. Binary search trees, DFS, BFS, Heaps - the regular stuff. You know, the stuff that you do every day as a programmer. Not debugging or refactoring, not testing or googling. A hackerrank ™ online test which shows your capabilities best, implementing things you haven’t done in years but hey - ADS must be important. I can’t possibly have 3 good programmers around me at the time of the interview that google like crazy and help me to pass it.
If I was the only one complaining, I would consider myself just plain uncapable of my profession. And maybe I am. Maybe the actual coding stars out there don’t complain on HN and can just breeze the interviews about AD
...moreThe Great Asymmetry
Tags: English, lifeCreated on Tue, 18 May 2021
The Random (or destiny, God, Universe, luck) has crossed my life path these days with an unlikely person that makes me think outside of my box. It is possible of course that I make myself think outside of the box, or the box got smaller, or my thinking larger. It is also possible that I'm reinventing the wheel, getting more bored at work or COVID/knee injury isolation is making me nuts. But it's kind of romantic to think it's a person. And isn't it almost always a certain somebody that makes you think strange things and change your direction in life? Anyways.
I lose some sleep every once in a while thinking about a certain great asymmetry that science around me never seems to talk about (or I am not in those circles at least). Not physics, not biology or chemistry.
Why am I exp
...moreWhy I got vaccinated? (part 1)
Tags: English, opinions, essays, personal, learning, lifeCreated on Fri, 04 Jun 2021
Edit: see part 2: what is True and part 3 - what would convince me NOT to vaccinate for progress on opinions in this article.
TL;DR: Because I care about myself, my parents and friends and I believe vaccination is the best way to protect myself and them, in order to resume any kind of "normality". I believe the risk of vaccination outweights the risk of not vaccinating, I trust the process of vaccination approval and testing by the various national and supra-national organizations, I trust the scientists and (even though I don't have to) I understood the relative simplicity of the idea of the vaccine and immune response generated by it. I find it unlikely that there is a larger conspiratorial picture for control, even if the vaccine has not naturally occured but it turns out it has been produced artifically on purpose for some geo-game or by accident by l
...moreWhat is true? (part 2)
Tags: English, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Sun, 13 Jun 2021
Edit: see part 1 - Why I got vaccinated and part 3 - what would convince me NOT to vaccinate for progress on opinions in this article.
I want to continue talking in this blog about truth, facts, miss- and disinformation, propaganda. Today - a YouTube video from New York Times, talking about "Operation InfeKtion":
... which is NOT about the Corona (video is from 2018). It's rather about an operation back in the 80s sponsored by the Russian KGB aiming to spread a story that the HIV virus was secretly created by the US, starting at a single newspaper story in India.
The video is extremely worth watching in this day and age where misinformati
...moreWhat would convince me to NOT vaccinate? (part 3)
Tags: English, politics, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Thu, 17 Jun 2021
So, part 1 - Why I got vaccinated and part 2 - What is True are my attempts to figure out how to find truth in this day and age. My conclusion: it's hard.
Today, I play the devil's advocate. My usual conversation when someone presents me with a conspiracy theory is to ask "What would convince you otherwise?". So, let's play this game on me today - what would convince me that the vaccine is NOT safe?
My response is that first, I trust the World Health Organization (WHO), European Medicines Agency (EMA), the [US's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2
...moreGoogle that I used to love
Tags: English, opinionsCreated on Mon, 18 Mar 2013
For those who know me, they are used to the idea that I am one of the biggest Google-fan boys. Thus, this post will be long. It's my life. I use not only the trivial Google search which everybody uses, I write my reports on Google Drive/Docs, organise my schedule on Calendar, correspond with Gmail (I even redirect the University email, which uses some 50-year old MS mailbox) and listen to YouTube. Of course the list goes on - Blogger, Chrome, Picasa, News, Music, Maps, Plus... Basically almost every tab I open comes from Google (or its search).
The Reader is Dead
One of these services is Google Reader - many probably haven't even heard of it, but for me it was one of the daily tabs. It aggregates RSS feeds (mainly blogs) that I love to read if there is something new. That's because I don't want to visit everyday xkcd, the Oatmeal or the blogs of my [friends](https:
...moreCan YouTube be wrong?
Tags: English, technology, opinions, life, politicsCreated on Tue, 29 Jun 2021
No. This is simply, mathematically impossible.
YouTube (Google/Alphabet) is not made of people. It's made of omniscient gods. I am one of them, therefore it must be true.
So when YouTube puts this in their guidelines:
It is impossible that they (we) are wrong.
"OK, " - a mere mortal might ask - "Why are they (you) claiming this? Joe Rogan invited that guy that you talked about the other week and this new doctor dude to talk about some medicine. They seem calm, rational and calmly talking about evidence-based research, just look:"
Ah, so you are watching this outside of the exclusive deal [that Rogan
...moreI'm an average idiot
Tags: English, personal, lifeCreated on Wed, 30 Jun 2021
"What if YOU are wrong? What if you’re not a Galileo Galilei, but an Andrew Wakefield?".
(source)
This ^ woke me up. Andrew Wakefield is the dude that started the initial conspiracy of "vaccines cause autism" back in the 90s. This long (but deservedly so) video explains in more detail that you ever wanted to know:
On the other side, the argument about being "Galileo" (which I also referenced in my last post) is refering to this article by Heather Heying, who usu
...moreConspiracies
Tags: English, politics, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Thu, 19 Aug 2021
I've been listening to a lot of arguments lately about the "safety of the vaccine", "the lie about the Corona". My last five or so blog posts (since about 3 months ago) are all about me going as deep as I can tolerate into some conspiracies and questioning truth, reality and authority. Now, I am spending my summer vacation in the worst country in EU regarding vaccination rate (~15% fully vaccinated as of writing of this post in August 2021) but also one of most corrupt - 69th/180, and with least press freedom - 112th. Correlation doesn't imply causation of course. So let me causate it using my observations.
In my view there are three types of conspiracists. Take "The Earth is Flat" conspiracy:
- The first group might be schizophrenics and other categorically mentally ill people for whom is hard to discern reality. This is not a small group of pe
What I am learning these days
Tags: English, universityCreated on Sun, 13 Apr 2014
Hello, Dear Mr/Mrs Whoever it may concern!
So this is the deal: I am a third year student now. Serious stuff. Here is a random list of things I am learning while studying for the exams.
- You should have so much feedback with a client, it should be handled in a TCP rather than UDP way.
- C gives you enough rope to hang yourself. And 60% of the Internet.
- Implementing a round robin scheduler with no pre-emption will solve your time problems. * The no pre-emption is actually the key here.
- How to draw stick figures and call them "UML Diagrams".
- Waterfall is so XX century. Agile is new and good. Magical! It even makes lazy people, un-lazy!
- Slow start is actually quite exponential.
- Thombstone diagrams... who... who uses that?
- CGPGrey + Numberphile guy = Great, no... GREAT podcast!
- Gant and PERT charts, kanbana... all kinds of stuff to keep the boss happy.
- Draaaaaaaaaaaaaaw.
- Write blogs!
- How imp
A conversation with a wolf
Tags: English, universityCreated on Tue, 20 May 2014
Hello Mr Storer,
Thank you for the feedback. Allow me to address your comments.
We randomly allocate students to teams because it better reflects reality (believe it or not, you don't get to work with geniuses all the time, partly because they may not want to work with you :-) ).
Then these "real" companies should have a hard time to think how they employ people and match teams. If they match teams randomly and there happens to be such big difference of capabilities as it was this year in Uni, then this company is unproductive in the long term and I definitely would not like to work for it. (Maybe I should point that the difference is more geared towards laziness, rather than actual capability - if I see a person gives his best and as much time as possible to the project, I will never judge him how much they know or can as long as they are striving to compete and do their bests). Giving the hunger for good CS guys right now, I have too many options (from one-man-jo
...moreChallenge accepted!
Tags: English, лични, животCreated on Mon, 13 Oct 2014
Inspired by the Barney Stinson character from “How I met your mother” TV series, I decided to run a marathon today. This story came about during this weekend and, similarly to the show, I was bet against being able to run (thanks to the person for the bet). And as I said previously, I love the short plans thing, so I just followed the advice:
Step 1. - Start running.... there is no step 2.
And it worked! 42.195 km in 5 hours 5 minites.
Now, on another topic, I slightly derailed from my “deactivate my facebook for two weeks” experiment because of the hackathon that we were organizing this weekend. But I am not going to allow the broken window theory to complete
...moreWhat are ads (potentially) good for?
Tags: English, technology, opinionsCreated on Wed, 26 Nov 2014
When I was small, I've always hated the ads on TV that would interrupt my favorite movie or show. And they would do this 5 times in an hour, sometimes for so long that I would forget what I was watching. I didn't see the point of them at all. Well, unless I wanted to go pee - and I actually thought for quite a while that this is the reason for ads.
Then someone told me that this is how the channels are supporting themselves and that without the ads, TV would not exist. I thought this is stupid.
But as I grew up, I accepted the fact. I still hated them though and me and my family would have the desperate "Argh!" whenever we heard the famous jingle of the ad block beginning. And they would of course do it in the most interesting part of the movie. This is supposed to be entertaining?!
Are all ads evil though? Isn't there some value in them? I would like to spend some time to rethink the advertisement model in the world.
To start of, I believe the model is currently very corru
...moreDiscuss the argument that hackers do public service by finding and publicising computer security weaknesses
Tags: English, opinions, essays, universityCreated on Tue, 10 Feb 2015
context: We have to write an essay for a course at University. But first, we have to submit a draft, then be assigned to read drafts of other people and mark them. Which in the end doesn't matter at all.
BTW, Честит рожден ден, тати!
Number 1. Oh my Random, not another essay!
Of course they do. Is there really an argument for the other side?
Let's first define hacker – a highly controversial term for the regular dumb man/woman/unidentified (henceforth referred to as a “cuggle” – a computer muggle. Muggle, in the Harry Potter universe, is someone who lacks any magical abilities and was not born in the magical world, often denying the existence of magic itself [1]). Now, cuggles believe that a hacker is bad word. They see it as someone who does bad things with the aid of computers like stealing money, blackmailing or lunching rockets by getting hold of NASA computers. While this is not unseen in real life [2] (IRL [3]), it is rarely the case when the term is u
...moreThinking inside of a box
Tags: English, personalCreated on Sat, 14 Feb 2015
Yesterday I experienced what is it to be thinking inside of a box. I did that so that you never have to. I also spun a bit around which was okay for a while, but it gets tedious, boring and very hot, very soon. The real world is much cooler once you get out of it with a fresh mind.
KIDS (and adults), NEVER THINK INSIDE OF A BOX!
...moreBig Game - score 10 of a Murica movie
Tags: English, opinionsCreated on Fri, 08 May 2015
I fell victim to another brainwash called Big Game, an american movie featuring Samuel Jackson's face and the Bratislava Radio Orchestra (epic music guys, worth it!). At the time of writing the movie had 80% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Spoiler alert obviously, although I advise you to save your precious hours on this planet and skip the movie. Unless you have murican flag on your wall, murican pants and tatooed one or more presidents on any parts of your body. Then you will probably like it but just please, stay in your southern state.
The movie starts okay - a boy in some far away, wild country, is to become a man by proving he can hunt on his 13 birthday. The country we later understand is Finland - a country with un
...moreGetting back control of my digital life one bit at a time
Tags: English, technology, hacks, personalCreated on Thu, 29 Mar 2018
I have permanently deleted my Facebook account this week after the latest "scandals" around the "social" network. Of course I knew on some level what is happening with my data but I think it finally hit home. I've always hated Facebook, ever since I first made my account (post about it in Bulgarian) - and that hasn't changed for the 8 years that I used the service, it only got worse I think. It was not so much about the data that I have shared, it has been more about the mindset that it installed in me and in people around me. Being zombies, constantly scrolling useless content by people you barely know or not even know with pages you liked at some point, with no easy way to get out of it, a network hitting all weak spots in human psychology. So the latest revelations of which we were all well aware (in the hacker/techie community at least) got to me and crossed a threshold
...moreOn windows and software development
Tags: English, technology, opinionsCreated on Mon, 26 Mar 2018
There are worker guys now in the office just changing a window. And I am thinking... I so wish it was this way with software development - they have a task, there is a due time, it is clear and there are standard tools to do the job. And even if their clothing is dirty, because that's what their line of work is, they look oh so professional. They know what they do, how much time it is going to take them, what to use and the job is done perfectly and even integration tested it by opening closing the window and then stress tested it by hanging on it to see it holds.
If he was a software developer... You never know... They may have a very new incompatible window, so they will have to stick with duck tape where there are some holes, do a unit test of the handle and the glass and say it has 99% coverage but actually opening and closing it crashes the window next to it and the stability of the whole building is under question. Then they would explain that it worked when they tried it on t
...moreLearning through participation as the rule rather than the exception
Tags: English, opinions, essays, university, learningCreated on Wed, 18 Feb 2015
School has never been only about learning stuff.
For few years I believed it’s the things happening in the breaks that matter. Relationships, doing stupid things and talking about crazy ideas. But that’s not completely true. I believed that because just my last memories from school are that things in the break matter. But it didn’t use to be the case. I loved learning things when I was younger.
Oh my, I would read like crazy - Encyclopedias, science books, I would draw the planets of the cosmos and remember the map of Europe. For 16 years of education, school and later University were trying really, really hard to kill this in me. My love and passions, my curiosities. I (almost completely) stopped going to school in the last couple of years. I was having my own projects and I didn’t care about the things in the breaks so nothing could keep me there. There were a few subjects like Physics that were interesting to me but by the last couple of years I started slowly falling out of
...moreThe meaning of life
Tags: English, essays, lifeCreated on Thu, 12 May 2016
This is the stupidest question one can ask. Why?
Imagine you are given your first computer. You are told that you could pretty much do anything with it. You can play games, program, learn anything there is to be learnt about the Universe, you can watch videos or explore the filesystem. You can build stuff or entertain yourself. Or you could not turn it on at all. What do you do?
I know what I did when I got my first computer. Before I got it, I was excited - I thought I could do anything - animations or tell it to bake me a pie. All information I got was from watching "Dexter's laboratory" and imagining things. Alas, I still can't do many of these things, but I am getting better.
When I actually got it, on the 8th of February 2000, I was jumping like crazy. I was 8 then. We got it as a second hand from my father's colleague. Two guys came in to bring a bulky 15" CRT monitor, keyboard, something small like a joystick (a ball mouse), half-broken speakers, a mystery box and a bun
...moreI want to walk naked!
Tags: English, politics, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Fri, 24 Sep 2021
Walking naked is natural. Putting clothes on a person is a form of fascism. Today if I try to just walk naked, outside of my bathroom, my flat (if I live with roomates) or some very small beaches - I will be told off and potentially arrested. How come?
Clothes have an obvious primary purpose - the human body is not too well adapted to live in the extreme colds in some areas of the world. But for some complicated historical, theological, anthropological and/or societal reason almost all of the world's people and civilisations have decided that wearing clothes has at least the secondary purpose to cover mainly our primary and almost always - secondary reproductive organs.
It has reached a stage where not wearing clothes in public space is a sign of some sort of craziness or activism for some cause. Even though it can be argued that not wearing clothes is the more natural way of handling the human body, especially on the summer hot days. (I will ignore the issue with sunb
...morePrivacy is over: Everyone's chats on Facebook and Instagram have leaked online
Tags: English, technology, opinionsCreated on Thu, 14 Oct 2021
A massive trove of data has leaked online in one of the most exhaustive data dumps in the last decades. Facebook's chat application Messenger and image sharing service Instagram have been breached this Monday following multiple worldwide outages and controversies brought forward by whistleblowers in the past month.
More than 2.6 billion people's conversations, including the text, photos, videos and voice messages for the past two years are organized in a collection of torrents that are circling dark web forums such as 4chan and reddit.
The Guarrdian has verified that chat history seems to end a week before the accident - namely until 28 Septmber 2021. The leak data frame spawns between September 2019 and end of September 2021. Chats between journalists, political officials, celebretie
...moreOnline security
Tags: English, technology, hacksCreated on Wed, 20 Oct 2021
Last week I wrote about a hypothetical Facebook messenger and Whatsapp breach which would give the world access to everyone's chats - including yours, your friends', your parents, everyone you know or don't - indexable, searchable by everyone. A truly privacy is over type of situation. I argued that this is what people really cared about - a personal hit, not bombs and terrorists or some unknown John in a three-letter agency reading your chats. Someone you know - or everyone you know - reading your personal communications with other people.
Scale it down
Alright, maybe leaking all of Facebook's chat would require literal trucks and months of unmonitored leakage due to the sheer amount of data. Text is not so big - the whole of English Wikipedia is merely [20 GB](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikip
...moreI change my mind all the time
Tags: English, Български, политика, politics, мнения, opinions, лични, personal, life, животCreated on Thu, 21 Oct 2021
I believe you should have the freedom to change your mind as often as you would like, especially when new facts come your way. But also if you would like to experiment with something, even if you think it's bad or wrong. That's part of the reason I now have an instagram.
Yesterday I wrote a blog post in Bulgarian that I deleted less than an hour after publishing. It regarded the situation around the certificates of vaccination becoming a requirement for certain amenities in my home country. It was quite emotional and I decided that it's not worth it to put more fuel in the already fiery situation (although IRL I usually like doing that).
But I also removed it because I realized I disagree with my statements. More accurately - I was pointed out by a friend that my argument may require a bit more thought about some aspects that my monkey brain didn't remember when initially writing the post. I usually don't delet
...moreThe eyes of the Internet
Tags: English, technology, essaysCreated on Tue, 14 Dec 2021
Note: I'm not going to talk about these eyes today. I need more pandemic to get there.
We don't know what the Internet really is. Not really. We don't have the intuition or senses to recognize it anymore. It's not like how we know what a human is.
And we don't have laws and rights at the Internet. Not really. We don't really know what is where and what can and shouldn't be done. We don't know it like we know not to poke a human in the eyes.
So when one day someone discoveres the Internet has something like an eye, a weak, soft spot - we take all the toothpicks and nails, we take all the pins and needles, all the sharp sticks and every tool around us and we try to poke it.
And then the people making the Internet scramble to "patch it", to make glasses or lenses or more accurately - to put duct tape on the eyes in the hope it protects them.
...more1984
Tags: English, politics, technology, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Tue, 22 Mar 2022
Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
I think of this blog sometimes as Winston's diary. One day I will probably pay the price of having it and pouring my thoughts here. I can hide it but should I?
I censor myself to think thoughts that may matter. I don't talk about ideas with people around me, other than some very close circle of people that I trust are not the secret police. I'm not paranoid (yet). I enjoy and must be thankful of the freedoms I have in "THE WEST". I must feel the privilege of being a young white male. Some days I do actually feel it now.
I'm a member of the Outer party, working for one of the Biggest Brothers humanity has known. As such, I get almost daily reminder what I should support and what I should oppose. Today I must support Ukraine and hate Russia. Yesterday I shouted that people should get vaccines and raged that the ones who don't are why we still don't have our freedoms. It was so sad indeed
...moreWho wants to be conscious?
Tags: English, technology, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Tue, 05 Jul 2022
We don't have a device that measures consciousness. That's it. Until we figure out how to make a consciousness-scale, it's useless to argue whether something is or isn't conscious. A dog can be conscious. But so can a rock. A virus, a star, the rainbow can be conscious until we figure out what the F consciousness is and how we could measure it. All other arguments would be religion for me and I'm slowly starting to get used to saying that you are "free to believe in whatever you want" but as every religion goes - I may not agree with your conclusions.
Imagine it's the day before we figured out how to measure radiation. Our human senses can't detect radiation. Perhaps some radioactive elements glow or if you wait enough time, the long-term effects are that you get a nasty disease. But, without a Geiger counter or such similar device that amplifies the nano-scopic radiation, you would not be able to weed out the materials that exhibit some characteristics of radiation but are not rea
...moreState of AI
Tags: English, technology, opinions, essays, lifeCreated on Sun, 30 Apr 2023
Human in a box
It is NOT going to be an argument that AI is sentient or have emotions. Certainly not in its current form. I will go to that point later in the essay.
However, I will be putting a human in a box as a thought experiment in learning, not consciousness. It will remind some people of the Chinese room but this will be a more cruel version so that we take away any possible learning that the human has acquired in "the real world" before being put in the room.
The following description may be difficult and emotional to follow.
Imagine a human child is put in a latex suit in a dark box in space right after birth without a possibility to interact with the world in any way, other than the described below. The latex suit limits their touch perception, space removes orientation, it's dark so vision is impaired and there is no sound. The basic physiological needs are provided to them - clean air, food, and water are gi
...more