hypothes.is

A sidebar annotating the web, like SideWiki should have been.

Social bookmarking, tagging, annotating and note sharing of the web in public or private groups, or just for yourself.

"Our efforts are based on the annotation standards for digital documents developed by the W3C Web Annotation Working Group. We are partnering broadly with developers, publishers, academic institutions, researchers, and individuals to develop a platform for the next generation of read-write web applications. You can follow our development progress on our roadmap. Many have contributed tools, plug-ins and integrations."

https://web.hypothes.is/
https://web.hypothes.is/about/

sourcecode and other projects at https://github.com/hypothesis

A Chrome extension. Firefox and other users will have to use the bookmarklet for now - which works very well
see web.hypothes.is/installing-the-bookmarklet/

run by a public foundation apparently. source code is open but not copyleft, alas.

our tools are broken

Regular Reminder - Our tools Are Broken: social networking tools and other information infrastructure that are not publicly owned (and by that I mean licensed under the General Public License or Copylefted -see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft) are fundamentally broken. Because anything less than public ownership severely limits the extent to which we can use, fix, experiment, and grow these into useful universal assets .. This is especially true in the long term.
---

The list of our broken tools include Facebook, Google search, Twitter, and the operating systems Windows, Mac-OSX, IOS, and bits of Android. Linux is completely ours. Most of Android and the software that serves up and browses the world wide web is also properly public property.

Distributed/Federated social software that could easily replace Facebook and Twitter already exists (see Diaspora and Identica). Publicly owned search engines won't have to start from scratch either.

Its just going to take us some time to realise that all the complaints that we have about our social software - about the abuses of power that extend from privacy violations to the manipulation of search results and manipulation of our social signalling - all of these cannot be fixed until we switch to Free (as in speech) Software.

principles of hierarchical-temporal-memory

HTMemory and Sparse Distributed Networks. Lots of progress in understanding the neocortex - how intelligence works in the brain - and modelling that for a cortical approach to machine intelligence

UPDATE: broken link: Video moved to http://numenta.com/learn/htm-videos-from-jeff-hawkins.html.

Direct link on youtube: https://youtu.be/6ufPpZDmPKA

Getting WikidPad running on Mac OS-X El Capitan

WikidPad, the excellent personal wiki tool and my knowledge-base of choice hasn't been working on my mac ever since my fresh install of El-Capitan, some time ago. There was some issue with the package installer for wxPython not running on El-Capitan, and just too much real work demanding my attention ... 

So I made do with the version on my Ubuntu desktop, and by accessing the sync'd plain text wiki files directly from my text editor - Sublime Text - on my mac. Good enough to survive with - but just barely so.

Today I decided that the time had come to end the pain, and so here is a brief log of the fix - to help anyone else that needs this, including quite possibly my future-self.

Instructions:

To start off with I chose to use an older version 2.8 of wxPython, because of numerous reports I'd seen on the WikidPad forums of errors while running under wxPython3

And as always, I use the latest release of Wikidpad - in this case version 2.3beta13_01.

1) Download wxPython from https://sourceforge.net/projects/wxpython/files/wxPython/2.8.12.0/ 

- I used wxPython2.8-osx-unicode-2.8.12.0-universal-py2.7.dmg

2) Change security on your mac to installs from all developers. You get a weird message saying that the package doesn't exist if you don't. 

3) The wxPython installer package now runs a little further before failing with another weird error to the same effect: 

The Installer could not install the software because there was no software found to install.

This apparently happens because wxPython is using a legacy script, and the bundled installers were deprecated and are (as of El Capitan release) unsupported. 

The solution was found on the following stack-overflow page: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34402303/install-wxpython-in-osx-10-11

I'll repeat the instructions here. Use the name of your wxPython file in place of wxPython-ABC below (for the file we chose above replace wxPython-ABC with wxPython2.8-osx-unicode-2.8.12.0-universal-py2.7)

3.0) Let's assume that you have already mounted the dmg and you have moved the pkg folder to a working folder ~/repack_wxpython.

cd ~/repack_wxpython
cp -r /Volumes/wxPython/wxPython-ABC.pkg .

3.1) Use the pax utility to extract the payload file (pax.gz) from Contents/Resources to a folder that will become the root of your new package.

mkdir pkg_root
cd pkg_root
pax -f ../wxPython-ABC.pkg/Contents/Resources/wxPython-ABC.pax.gz -z -r
cd ..

3.2) Rename the bundle's preflight/postflight scripts, to preinstall/postinstall scripts, as required for flat packages, in a scripts folder.

mkdir scripts
cp wxPython-ABC.pkg/Contents/Resources/preflight scripts/preinstall
cp wxPython-ABC.pkg/Contents/Resources/postflight scripts/postinstall

3.3) Create the flat package using the pkgbuild tool:

pkgbuild --root ./pkg_root --scripts ./scripts --identifier com.wxwidgets.wxpython wxPython-ABC-output.pkg

4) Once that is complete, install wxPython from the new output package. If you use the version I did, that will be wxPython2.8-osx-unicode-universal-py2.7-output.pkg. Finally, wxPython should install!

5) Now, download WikidPad source from http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/. The direct link for the version I used is http://downloads.sourceforge.net/wikidpad/WikidPad-2.3beta13_01-src.zip

6) Run WikidPad from source:

cd to directory where you unzipped the source - in my case:

cd ~/apps/wikidpad/WikidPad23 

then launch WikidPad with the following:

arch -i386 python2.7 WikidPad.py 

7) At this stage I got a python error from wxPython:

File "/usr/local/lib/wxPython-unicode-2.8.12.0/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wx-2.8-mac-unicode/wx/_core.py", line 3917, in Bind

    assert callable(handler)

AssertionError

8) Instead of tracking this down properly, I used a temporary fix by commenting out the assert: 

- open "/usr/local/lib/wxPython-unicode-2.8.12.0/lib/python2.7/site-packages/wx-2.8-mac-unicode/wx/_core.py", line 3917

- comment out line 3917

  assert callable(handler) 

9) Wikidpad opens and runs! .. but will only work on wikis using the Gadfly db - No SQLite wikis run. I saw the following error when trying to open my wiki:

ERROR: required data handler "original_sqlite" unknown to WikidPad

10) To fix this, I had to use homebrew to install sqlite3 with universal support:

brew install sqlite3 --universal

11) Then soft link the sqlite3 dynamic library into the WikidPad source folder

cd ~/apps/wikidpad/WikidPad23/

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libsqlite3.dylib libsqlite3.0.dylib

12) Try running again from source ....

cd ~/apps/wikidpad/WikidPad23

arch -i386 python2.7 WikidPad.py

... and WikidPad should launch fine now.

time to grow up

Synthetic biology and nanotech are just some of the first technologies that will make catastrophic destructive ability available to more that just the very powerful.

So the survival path for our species becomes more than just restraining the powerful from causing catastrophic destruction. It becomes eliminating the conditions that cause pathological behaviour for the rest of 'us' too.

And I think this means eliminating injustice in total - as well as the more visible pathological behaviours from the powerful.

So our best hope of surviving, once our tech begins delivering immense destructive power to ever smaller and smaller groups, will be a world that ensures a thriving and well adjusted population as a whole. One with no injustice and poverty,  the best education for all, and a global population that is productively engaged.

Luckily, I think that there is nothing in our nature or the nature of the world we live in, that rules out even such an optimistic vision. And as for how we start building toward it, like with all change in complex systems, a good idea would be robust experimentation with little constraint.

So bring on as much experimentation along the lines of truly sustainable and just societies as possible...

cinnamon 2.0.12 on ubuntu 13.10

Having in the past few days heard loads of praise of the Cinnamon 2 Linux desktop environment, from both friends and strangers, and now that installing Cinnamon 2 on Ubuntu no longer breaks Unity, I've decided to try it out on my primary Ubuntu desktop.

So, using the method below, I've started testing. A review of some sort should follow...

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon

UPDATE (several hours later):

So far, I'm happy enough with Cinnamon-2.0. It seems to run with a smaller footprint, more stability and more functionality and configuration options than you get with the latest Unity and Gnome-Shell.

I did get a few random lock-ups during early reckless tweaking, but I've seen no recurrences since I stopped messing around with extensions, desklets and applets (some of them still only properly tested with earlier versions of Cinnamon).

Now, after several hours of work, the impression I'm left with is all positive.

In terms of workflow, I did find myself missing a few features of Unity's Dash and HUD, but the old desktop metaphors still seem to work better for me overall. And though this might have more to do with my long term familiarity with those, I also think it has something to do with a general lack of maturity in the newer approaches to the desktop environment being worked on.

Its still early days, but if nothing major shows up, I could very easily stick with Cinnamon as the desktop option I choose most often at login - at least until the others grow up a bit.

NEXT UPDATE (... in the morning)

I think I'm changing my mind .. The new day has found me missing Unity's simplicity and that task orientated Dash and HUD..  Ah well, I'll decide later, but just now I felt crowded and in my own way - I'm writing this after logging back into Unity ... maybe for a long while...



LATEST UPDATE (... two weeks later)

I've settled in to using and liking them both - with Unity ahead in the number of times it gets chosen at login.

our tools are broken

Regular Reminder: Social networking tools and other information infrastructure that is not owned by us (copylefted) is almost by definition, fundamentally broken - because anything less, severely limits the extent to which we can use, experiment, and grow these into useful universal assets .. esp true in the long term.

the list of our broken tools include facebook, google search, and the operating systems windows, mac-osx, ios, and bits of android. (linux is completely ours)

grokking htm for ai

or .. Notes on Understanding Hierarchical Temporal Memory and its use in Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Representation.

A few years ago I blogged about a TedTalk by Jeff Hawkins on how brain science will change computing. To summarize, the idea was that intelligence was more about prediction than behaviour, that the neocortex evolved to to basically be a mechanism to predict the future, and that it could be simply modeled as vast networks of hierarchical elements that predict their future input sequences - a hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) system.
Importantly, rather than the much more difficult task of modeling the entire brain, including the ancient and incredibly complex areas below the neocortex that deal with things like emotions and behaviours, one could approximate intelligent behaviour by modeling the much simpler cortex as a HTM - with simple repeated structure and algorithm.

Here's an update with more from Jeff Hawkins, and HTM ..

The following links are for a 2008 talk given by him on AI.. give it a watch
Jeff Hawkins on Artificial Intelligence - Part 1/5
Jeff Hawkins on Artificial Intelligence - Part 2/5
Jeff Hawkins on Artificial Intelligence - Part 3/5
Jeff Hawkins on Artificial Intelligence - Part 4/5

Jeff Hawkins on Artificial Intelligence - Part 5/5

..some notes from the above:
- Work started by looking at what the structure of the brain could tell us about memory/knowledge storage.
- Memory - the bottom is close to the sensory system - retina for visual system, skin for touch, ears .. etc.
- Top nodes in the hierarchy get assigned to specific concepts/objects - like the individual neurons that fire every time you see or imagine Tupac and only Tupac (true story) 
- All nodes in the hierarchy are basically the same, and they all ..
    - look for temporal and spatial patterns/sequence
    - and pass the name of the recognized sequence up
    - pass the predictions they make down the hierarchy
- You get fast changing patterns at the bottom, slower changing as you move up the hierarchy.
- After training an HTM system (in silicon or neurons), you get something that learns hierarchical models of causes (statistical regularity) in the world - using bayesian techniques to build a belief propagation network.
- HTM's make the assumption that the world is hierarchical
- Predicting what can come from htm:
   - we cant, but ..
   - it could be much faster - neurons are slow
   - it could have other architectures - bigger bottom layers, fueled by big-data for example, or from large sensory arrays, etc. 

The latest thing I've come across from Hawkins' company Numenta, is their new Grok system (love the Heinlein reference). Grok is a cloud-based prediction engine that finds complex patterns in data streams and generates actionable predictions in real time. Check it out on Numenta's site, and their tech page
...
(more to follow.. soonish)

Steve Jobs died a few days ago and I wrote the following in a facebook comment thread

In response to all the idolatrous mourning in here, and surely bouncing around in mainstream media right now, (i havent yet poked my head around to see)

Nice design and innovation, but I could have done without most of his contribution toward making closed technical ecosystems and hardware more desired and desirable, and here's why. I fear that it might be us, the consumers of new technologies, that willingly hand over the gains made possible by these technologies, back to monopolies and empire, simply because we are driven by desire for the shinier toy, and the easier playground.

 (written on a mac)

rms on google

http://stallman.org/archives/2010-nov-feb.html#29 January 2011 (Investigating Google)

As for Google, it does some very good things but also some bad things. (For instance, many of its services distribute proprietary software to users.) I would not put Google at the head of the list of large companies that need to be broken up; however, if we start breaking up large companies (as we should), and get that far down the list, I would not say "stop here"

..
i agree

freedom in the cloud

"Everyone wants a piece of you these days: Google, Facebook, Flickr, Apple, AT&T, Bing. They’ll give you free e-mail, free photo storage, free web hosting, even a free date. They just want to listen in. And you can’t wait to let them. They’ll store your stuff, they’ll organize your photos, they’ll keep track of your appointments, as long as they can watch. It all goes into the “Cloud.”

How we got here is quite a scary story. But nowhere near as scary as getting out again. Eben Moglen, a Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia University and the founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center, warned you about privacy and the cloud before. At a public meeting of the Internet Society of New York on February 5, Moglen asked you to consider how much worse things have become since then and explain what you can do to reclaim your freedom in the era of Web 2.0."


got sent this way by the folks at diaspora. they cite it as one of their motivators.

eyeopening talk. nice bits about the choices that were (not) made about internet architectures - why client-server limits the internet peerage possibility - and some of the political aspects of those choices.

Technoliberation

It is not true that the map of freedom will be complete
with the erasure of the last invidious border
when it remains for us to chart the attractors of thunder
and delineate the arrhythmias of drought
to reveal the molecular dialects of forest and savanna
as rich as a thousand human tongues
and to comprehend the deepest history of our passions
ancient beyond mythology's reach

So I declare that no corporation holds a monopoly on numbers
no patent can encompass zero and one
no nation has sovereignty over adenine and guanine
no empire rules the quantum waves
And there must be room for all at the celebration of
understanding
for there is a truth which cannot be bought or sold
imposed by force, resisted or escaped.

From Technoliberation by Muteba Kazadi (Greg Egan)

this is how the novel Distress by Greg Egan opens.. bodes really well :)

Heres another work of technoliberation that bears repeating : the Declaration of Independance of CyberSpace, by the lyricist for the GratefulDead, John Barlow, February 8, 1996

geek rapture ?

ABC Radio National's All In The Mind podcast on the technical singularity. a nice warning about geek rapture :) , alongside a nice description of the idea.

audio here. short, well produced, easy to listen to.

adding it to my slowly growing mediachannel tag, of online media i think worth consuming.

synthetic genomics

Good video (another of the worthwhile from the tedtalks series) with plenty to think about in microbiology, genetics, the upcoming synthetic genomics, and its potential..


heres an audio npr interview with Venter with some additional info.

a basic delicious hack

a quicksearch shortcut to get to your del.icio.us tags:

1. In the firefox bookmark menu, choose Organise Bookmarks..
2. in the Bookmark Manager, click on 'New Bookmark'
3. name it something like delicious quicksearch
3. Enter http://del.icio.us/jaysen/%s in the location field (replacing jaysen with your delicious username),
4. Enter d in the keyword field.

Now, typing d tag1 in firefox's address bar will take you to your delicious pages tagged with tag1, and d tag1+tag2+tag3 will take you to your pages tagged with all of tag1, tag2, and tag3.

simple, i know, but i haven't seen it on any delicious-tool-list sites, and i use it a lot, so thought it was worth mentioning.

ubuntu's feisty fawn

so, ubuntu 7.04 feisty fawn has been released, and on both my machines for the last few days. not that different from 6.10, but mainly i'm liking.

things like one click to enable compositing desktop effects, and that it auto installs proprietary drivers and codecs when you need them - much better for the new linux user.

still need to try out the new (now stable) ntfs read/write access using ntfs-3G

UPDATE- ntfs read/write works well - see this ubuntuforum post describing ntfs-3g installation in detail, or the ntfs-3g section of this article covering useful installs on feisty

linux with the ubuntu philosophy

I spent the last week playing with ubuntu 6.06 and i think i might have gotten myself seriously hooked. it might finally be time for me to stick with linux. The install seemed much easier than the last ubuntu distro i tried, the latest gnome runs much smoother, it took just a bit of poking around to get my nvidia drivers working at full resolution (the forums enjoy excellent support),