We don’t need to know all unix terminal commands and how they are invoked. If, like me, you are lazy like a cicada to read through the entire man page, this app is for you.

Geeks around the world thank the time saving of this and code faster in result. No more scratching our heads for that simple command. Just go to the Github TLDR page and install this companion app to man.

And here we go for another conference. Following the paper A Model For Foraging Ants, Controlled By Spiking Neural Networks And Double Pheromones another work on Designing Behaviour in Bio-inspired Robots Using Associative Topologies of Spiking-Neural-Networks with Cristian Jimenez-Romero and Jeffrey Johnson is going to be presented at the BICT 2015 conference (both a talk and a poster, not bad, not bad).

Meanwhile, I’ll be in Portugal at Covilhã chairing a session on riverfront research at the IECUBI 2015 conference and presenting a paper on the Random-Walk Connectivity of the plans for the reconstruction of Lisbon in the aftermath of the 1755 earthquake. Not my usual line of work this historical one, but probably one of the lines I enjoy the most.

Claro que esta viagem entre Vigo e Madrid em Espanha parece mais uma habilidade para jornalistas do que propriamente um programa continuado de desenvolvimento. Basta ver a quantidade de engravatados que o video mostra.

O que é interessante é que quase todas as companhias automóveis tem neste momento planos de desenvolvimento de automóveis de condução autónoma e esta concorrência será certamente o driver de novas soluções.

Há um detalhe que no entanto é de se considerar que estes sistemas precisam de milhões de kilometros para que as redes de deep learning possam funcionar bem. É por isso que acho que a forma de distribuir a aprendizagem da Tesla pode acelerar rapidamente os resultados — em benefício próprio é claro.

Outro aspecto que vai ser necessário ter em linha de conta é que para que estes veículos funcionem, alguns países vão ter que harmonizar a forma de construir estradas. É fácil encontrar em Portugal situações de estradas onde se fica a pensar quem terá sido o iluminado que desenhou tal solução e que são um perigo para a condução. Estes outliers serão certamente uma dor de cabeça para os sistemas autónomos.

You don’t need David Cameron to break encryption, or the feds, or any secret agency in the world. Computer companies are doing it gladly. Dell laptops have been found to be pre-installed with rogue SSL certificates that can allow attackers to impersonate as any HTTPS protected website. Want a backdoor? Dell will provide it quickly and for everyone with a few skills. The worrying part on this story is that this certificate is what has been found until now. Who knows what else has Dell (or other companies) done to break trust in and give access to their laptops?

With all the “apps” you can eat (install) mantra, smartphones represent one of the biggest threats to our privacy. MIT researchers found that most popular Android Apps are killing device’s batteries with constant background covert communications. 63 percent of the external communication has no effect on user-observable functionality. The authors concluded that the covert communications could impair transparency and undermine the users’ trust in the mobile application ecosystem. The top 500 apps in google play are full of phone-home crap. What information are they sending? Why are they sending? Smartphones are empowering a new generation of users but are also challenging our rights and privacy. How can we protect ourselves from these negative impacts?

Why is the west so alarmed with refugees? Well, science explains it but knowing our fears and the ways our primal brains work won’t we be forced — as rational beings that we think we are — to fight our prejudices and ease the boundaries between us and them? Or we might just need to teach people more math.

While some argue that the fact that ISIS is using encryption is a good reason to break encryption — it is a little like saying that because ISIS uses guns, then the West should ban guns too (hm, might not be a bad argument after all…) — the fact is that banning their channels from existing communication services will not be enough as they will certainly setup new channels. In any case it is a measure that can have some effect on the recruitment and propaganda. If we make ISIS propaganda expensive (both in terms of cost and in terms of man-hours to setup, a bit like making SPAM expensive by forcing them to buy more servers), and with limited reach, then we might start winning part of this war. On the other hand it might also create the illusion that they are under control. Don’t get into that delusion. Telegram shutting down ISIS sites and all the active monitoring and control of ISIS propaganda is just a small step. Their activities need to be stopped on a global level.

When dealing with Bibtex reference files sometimes they just grow BIGGER THAN LIFE and sometimes it is important to have a printed copy of all references for handing out to some colleagues. Well. Some people still make fire with flint.

Here is my trick to produce a printed version of all the references in my master bib file references-master.bib. together with the file I keep a references-master.tex file with the following content:

\documentclass[11pt, a4paper]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{references-master}
\end{document}

When I need to produce an updated print of all references I just typeset this small document. The document uses the \nocite command to output all references in the references-master file.

This is also a great way to check the bib file for errors in the entries as it forces you to correct them into proper format. One by one you can fix the entries and in the end you’ll get better bibliographies in Latex that are ready to use in any paper or publication.