 | Technology, Computation and Data Analysis |
@DesignedWorld YouTube channel on existential questions and unsolved mysteries
October 3, 2024 Reading time: 2 minutes
To see mystery in everyday life, you need to be open to it. Some people find mystery in the ordinary things they encounter daily, while others require more evidence. But regardless of your perspective, curiosity about unusual observations is key to advancing progress.
As physicist Albert Einstein once said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." Years later, another famous physicist, Richard Feynman, echoed this sentiment: "After all, what would be the use of studying physics if mysteries weren't the most important things to investigate?"
Can you hold 70,000 books in one hand?
October 1, 2024 Reading time: 3 minutes
If you are reading this blog, you are a certifiable smart person and probably know about Project Gutenberg (PG). They have been collecting digital editions of public domain books since Michael S. Hart first typed in the Declaration of Independence and posted it online in 1971. Since then, the project has added free books at an increasing rate, passing the 70,000 mark this year. If they're online, why make these books available on a thumb drive?
With about 70,000 local copies of books, it's pretty darned cool to know that, as long as you have this drive, you will be able to access all those books, even in a nuclear Armageddon. The fact that you can search and read the books, and highlight and take notes on them, on any computer with the drive just makes it better.
The problem of missing people on the Internet
July 26, 2024 Reading time: 9 minutes
If you are a frequent Internet user, you may notice an interesting phenomenon: a mismatch between your expectations of how many people should be engaged in various issues, and the actual reality. This situation is especially common on social media. For example, I recently joined a Facebook group with about 5 million members, but when I looked at the group's activity, I saw only about 10 people asking questions and making comments.
The same was true for Reddit. Conduct a test: go to Reddit and examine discussions in communities with over 200,000 members, where more than 50 members are online. You will hardly see any comments, and the ones you do see are often generic, like "Aha!" Recently, I tested this by posting a message in the group "MeaningOfLife," which has about 4k members. I was thrilled to receive one comment, but the group seemed completely inactive otherwise.
Next, visit Reddit's main page. You'll likely notice that 100% of the most popular posts are mundane, and honestly, quite silly, such as, "My girlfriend got a terrible haircut and she's crying," which garner thousands of comments and upvotes. While I suspect many of these comments and upvotes are from bots, it still raises questions. Why does this happen? Who is steering our civilization into such a state of being? Programmable bots? But who programmed them?
Best search engines of 2024
July 2, 2024 Reading time: 6 minutes
In this article, we will review the most popular search engines of 2024. They differ in terms of implementation, privacy, and the quality of their search results. I have explored eight options, and I hope you can find the one that best suits your purpose.
Book Review: The Designed World of Information. Unveiling the Incredible Realm Beyond
June 23, 2024 Reading time: 3 minutes
This world is not what it seems? And the Universe - is not your true home? Surely, you've experienced coincidences that can't be logically explained? Do you not understand the meaning of life? A new book called "The Designed World of Information: Unveiling the Incredible Realm Beyond" [book link] is something special.
HandWiki - encyclopedia of general knowledge
April 19, 2024 Reading time: 3 minutes
HandWiki stands as a wiki-style encyclopedia specialized in science, technology, computing, and general knowledge. With a focus on fostering scholarly discourse, it serves as a platform for crafting and refining articles, provided one possesses external citations and a registered login account. Beyond mere article creation, HandWiki offers a content management ecosystem, facilitating collaborative editing of original scholarly works, including books, manuals, monographs, and tutorials. These documents seamlessly integrate with HandWiki's extensive repository, linking to thousands of existing articles.
How to write a book using Google Docs
February 21, 2024 Reading time: 2 minutes
Recently, I've posted some instructions about how to write a book using Google Docs. I just wanted to share my experience with this approach of creating large books. Now I'm writing a new book and I had to learn quite a lot about how to do this in Google Docs.
Can a human brain hold your life experience?
February 21, 2023 Reading time: 6 minutes
A human brain is an amazing instrument. It combines huge data storage with massive real-time processing. According to Scientific American [1], the memory capacity of the human brain was reported to have the equivalent of 2.5 petabytes (2500 TB) of memory capacity. This number was obtained by estimating how much information can be stored by 125 trillion synapses in the cerebral cortex.
(credits to pixabay.com)
Recent Java enhancements for numeric calculations
February 21, 2023 Reading time: 3 minutes
In the past, slow evaluation of mathematical functions and large memory footprint were the most significant drawbacks of Java compared to C++/C for numeric computations and scientific data analysis. However, recent enhancements in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) enabled faster and better numerical computing due to several enhancements in evaluating trigonometric functions.
The Era of Centralized Social Media Is Over
February 21, 2023 Reading time: 6 minutes
For too long, we have made what has amounted to a Faustian bargain. If you post your comments, your pictures, your videos, your essays, your reviews—your content—on Big Tech’s enormous centralized platforms, then Big Tech will give you free hosting, an audience if you compete well, and some content development tools. It seemed fair. At least, that is how they encourage you to think about this bargain.
New EncycloReader version 2.0
February 21, 2023 Reading time: ~1 minute
New EncycloReader version 2.0 is available (https://encycloreader.org):
Now it allows reading articles even when Wikipedia and other encyclopedias are blocked by some country/organization, or when they are down due to some technical reasons. This functionality works for 1.5 million most popular articles in the ZWI format.
This version includes automatic language detection using elements of artificial intelligence.
Currently EncycloReader serves 33 encyclopedias with different publication policies in 12 languages. Searches can be done in 30 million articles.
S.Chekanov (for KSF)
Statistics and simulation show that wealth is just pure luck
February 21, 2022 Reading time: ~1 minute
A recent article "Talent vs. Luck: The Role of Randomness in Success and Failure" published in Advances in Complex Systems Vol. 21, No. 03n04, 1850014 (2018) (arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068) shows that, according the a new computer model of wealth creation, the most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest. The developed computer model accurately reproduces the wealth distribution in the real world. One of the most important conclusions of this simulation is that the wealthiest individuals are not the most talented (although they must have a certain level of talent). They are the luckiest.
New version of EncycloReader
February 21, 2022 Reading time: 2 minutes
New version (1.6) of https://encycloreader.org for reading encyclopedias of the EncycloSphere project is released. This is another milestone to create a resource that allows searches in about 7.5 million articles from encyclopedias with different publication policies.
Encyclone search engine is launched
February 21, 2022 Reading time: 2 minutes
Encyclone (http://encyclone.org/) is a web application for crawling, indexing and searches of online encyclopedias. Search can be performed in more than 40 encyclopedias with different publication policies. English is the primary language of the included encyclopedias.
An encyclopedia for technicians
February 21, 2021 Reading time: ~1 minute
Software developers need to be knowledgeable, creative and innovative in order to succeed in the field, while data scientists use software technology to have insights into large amounts of data they collect. Here is a recent article that can be useful for those who are looking for encyclopedic references to be used in the tech sector (including software development). The article is called HandWiki – an encyclopedia for technicians posted to JobSearchUniverse.com (Career advice) (published on May 24, 2021).
Stunning 3D visualization with JavaView
February 21, 2021 Reading time: 3 minutes
JavaView (http://www.javaview.de/) is a 3D geometry viewer and a mathematical visualization software known since 90x. The program is written in Java, and enables a smooth integration into commercial software like Mathematica and Maple. JavaView can be used for 3D scientific visualization, geometric modeling, variational optimization, vector fields etc.
List of most popular scientific software written in Java
February 21, 2021 Reading time: 12 minutes
Love Java? Here is the most popular Java programs:
Largest online encyclopedia of physics, math and computing
February 21, 2020 Reading time: ~1 minute
In 2020, HandWiki (https://handwiki.org/) has become the largest online wiki encyclopedia of natural sciences and computing. It has more than 105,000 scholarly articles, incorporating the current Wikipedia articles on many research topics, scholarly articles submitted to the Wikipedia foundation, and various wiki books.
Wikipedia alternatives you should know about
February 21, 2020 Reading time: ~1 minute
Wikipedia remains the world"s biggest information resource used by communities of volunteers. Most of the other encyclopedic resources are smaller in size but, compared to Wikipedia, they are designed for specific areas of expertise and, typically, are maintained by non-for-profit organizations or persons with significant knowledge of specific topics. In many cases, they also have alternative publication policies for accepting online content, as well as the dispute resolution policies which have become increasingly important for the resources edited by large communities of experts.
Wikis for publishing scholarly articles on data science and software
February 21, 2019 Reading time: 4 minutes
By now you may already know that to add scholarly articles to the English version of Wikipedia is difficult due to the "notability" concept and tight control from anonymous editors (see this article). In recent years, entire Wikipedia topics and articles dedicated to software and data science have been wiped out by a few nameless characters without clearly-indicated scientific credentials. Their user pages are usually empty, and their login names tell nothing. That"s right - the "notability" of articles on Wikipedia is enforced by unnotable editors. This casts significant doubts on their ability to make correct decisions, and on the entire notability concept of wiki-style resources.