BioGen Micro Combined Heat and Power System. http://stirling-tech.com/biogen/

This thing turns biomass (wood pellets, chips, agricultural waste) into electricity and hot water with a combination of a gassifier and a Stirling Cycle engine. This is awesome if it works well enough to be cost-competitive. I know I want one.

Burning biomass as a power source is entirely carbon neutral. Think of it as stored solar energy.

#relaventtomyinterests #energy

A New, Experimental User Interface. https://emvi.com/blog/a-new-experimental-user-interface-QMZgmZG1L5

Keyboard-based. Somewhat similar to where some of the OSX popup launchers were going before Apple killed the entire category with Spotlight.

I like how simple it starts out. Allow for custom autocomplete handlers and a searchable history and you'd have something.

#relaventtomyinterests #UI

Coffeeland: One Man's Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/04/michael-pollan-coffee/606805/

How #caffeine enabled modern capitalism and engineering and vice versa.

#relaventtomyinterests #history

Why Adventure #Games Suck. https://grumpygamer.com/why_adventure_games_suck

Who Killed Adventure Games. http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html

#relaventtomyinterests #ToRead

The Theory of Narrative Selection. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/06/02/the-theory-of-narrative-selection/

Fascinating essay about memes and stories; delving not just their transmission between people, but how the process works.

"Here I will look at stories as if they were biological organisms. Stories can’t reproduce themselves; they rely on humans for their survival and reproduction. In that sense, stories are symbiotic (or perhaps parasitic) in their relationship with humans."

#relaventtomyinterests #writing #stories #HumanCondition

Pathogens and Politics: Further Evidence That Parasite Prevalence Predicts Authoritarianism. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0062275

#relaventtomyinterests #ToRead #HumanCondition

Write a rapid prototype first. https://terrytao.wordpress.com/advice-on-writing-papers/write-a-rapid-prototype-first/

Rapid prototyping as a #writing tool. It's not just for software dev anymore…

#relaventtomyinterests

Meshtastic – An opensource hiking, pilot, skiing, Signal-App-extending GPS mesh communicator. https://www.meshtastic.org/

This is a VERY interesting project. Moreover, it's something right out of one of my unpublished SF stories; so it's a case of the future catching up with my imagination.

#relaventtomyinterests #internet

MessagePack: like JSON, but fast and small. https://msgpack.org/

Not only smaller than JSON, it has a more complete schema/type system with a native byte array type and support for timestamps.

Only non-installed base advantage JSON has here is readability.

#relaventtomyinterests #programming

Tips for the depressed. https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/tips-for-the-depressed/

Worth a read. Just about everyone deals with depression in some way, even if it is only the depression of someone they love.

#relaventtomyinterests

Proving the Lottery Ticket Hypothesis: Pruning is All You Need. https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.00585

If you are fooling with #AI and #DeepLearning this could be a game changer for you.

Basically, they prove a sufficiently over-parameterized network will contain, "… a subnetwork with roughly the same accuracy as the target network, without any further training."

Just prune away the dead wood and Bob's your uncle.

#relaventtomyinterests

Two more 'teaching' Operating Systems, both targeted to #RISCV architectures:

* Xv6 (Unix like, #C?): https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2019/xv6.html

* Blog OS (#Rust): http://osblog.stephenmarz.com/

#relaventtomyinterests #OS

I was just reminded of said crazy idea by this: "Autonomous #Rust Unikernels in Google Cloud" https://nanovms.com/dev/tutorials/autonomous-rust-unikernels-in-gcloud

#relaventtomyinterests

Matrix: An open network for secure, decentralized communication. https://matrix.org/

"Matrix is an open source project that publishes the Matrix open standard for secure, decentralised, real-time communication, and its Apache licensed reference implementations."

This project seems pretty interesting. I like that they don't assume the only use case is chat. It looks like it support m2m messaging as well.

#relaventtomyinterests #messaging

CLUI: Building a Graphical Command Line. https://blog.repl.it/clui

A melding of an auto-complete CLI with some GUI functionality. This is something I've been noodling about for years and these guys are creating something almost exactly like what I envisioned.

They've open sourced the code they are using. https://github.com/replit/clui

#relaventtomyinterests #programming #GUI #CLI

An old #Japanese #FolkTale about a drunken fisherman and his wife: Shibahama https://sites.google.com/site/adhishproject/Home/stories/shibahama

(Found while looking for something else.)

#relaventtomyinterests

Over on the birdsite @SwiftOnSecurity is making a great point about how Google fucked up by trying to kill #RSS. https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1234152634975576064

#relaventtomyinterests

Doing some #hardware #hacks? https://github.com/ufrisk/pcileech/

"PCILeech uses PCIe hardware devices to read and write target system memory. This is achieved by using DMA over PCIe. No drivers are needed on the target system."

#relaventtomyinterests

Authors Guild releases grim 50-page report on “The Profession of the Author in the 21st Century” https://lithub.com/authors-guild-releases-grim-50-page-report-on-the-profession-of-the-author-in-the-21st-century/

"Half of full-time authors earn less than the federal poverty level of $12,488. Literary authors are the hardest hit, experiencing a 46% drop in their book-related income in just five years."

So … you want to be a writer, do you?

#relaventtomyinterests #writing

CAROL KAYE: THE BOSS OF THE BASS GUITAR. https://pleasekillme.com/carol-kaye/

Great interview with Carol Kaye; legendary bassist of the (also legendary) 'Wrecking Crew' studio musician co-op.

#relaventtomyinterests #music