Karl Horky - Blog

Cycles of Knowledge

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 11:41:00 +0000

Cristóbal Sciutto Rodríguez writes in The Inexact Sciences collective blog about Cycles of Knowledge, how various forms of knowledge are represented in different domains, and the agents of those domains who transform knowledge between the forms

POQA

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 10:59:00 +0000

POQA, a hierarchy of needs for dynamic action and revolutionary thinking

Progress: Movement, change of the status quo, creating new options

Optimism: Belief that things can change, openness to new ideas, avoidance of fear-based decisionmaking

Quality: As good as or better than state of the art, thoughtfulness

Abundance: Availability of every possible option, freedom of choice

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (and similar) still can apply as prerequisites. The needs above can be thought of as a version of Maslow's Self-Actualization.

Google's new campus design proposal

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 14:37:00 +0000

Google's new Mountain View campus: blurring the lines between the natural, the urban and the corporate.

Learn to Program

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 20:42:00 +0000

Starting out or polishing your skills as a web developer is easier than ever with the growing amount of resources available. However, it's not always easy to find these resources and harder to find high quality resources.

To do my part, I've started compiling a list of courses, books and guides for programmers of all skill levels. I hope this may be an aid to programmers and welcome any feedback or additions.

Methods of Control and Automation of Humans by Machines

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 08:36:00 +0000

Business models like Uber are replacing middle management with software.

This is leading, first of all, to a situation where humans are being told what to do by machines (an API). As techniques like machine learning become more and more prevalent, the decision-making as to what humans to dispatch and for which tasks will be made more and more by machines. This is why making sure our artificial intelligence is safe is exceedingly important in the mid-term future.

Secondly, when their workforce is already being controlled by an API, companies have the latitude to move that labor also to machines, making human jobs obsolete. This will also be a big topic in the near to mid future, as robots start to prepare our food, drive our cars, and even greet our hotel guests.

San Francisco, USA

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 20:50:00 +0000

San Francisco. City of fog, startups and good hospitality.

In early March Brad and Matt from sendwithus proposed a crazy idea - that I fly to San Francisco to more actively support company growth during the whirlwind Y Combinator program. I scrambled to book the flights and clear my schedule and I was on my way.

The flights were a long 14 hours, wearing me out by the time we touched down at SFO. An upbeat Matt was waiting for me at the baggage pick-up and we headed back to Fort SWU as it was called, the house in Sunnyvale where I would spend the next weeks. It turns out our awesome teammates had cooked us steaks in the meantime! I would soon find that this great hospitality was just par for the course for these guys.

The next day we started early, squeezing in a couple hours of climbing at Planet Granite before going to pick up Wes, our newest team member. Linley then proceeded to show us a bit of the city, starting with Red's Java House and the Bay Bridge and then making our way to the Golden Gate. Along the way we also stumbled upon the Mozilla offices and checked out the Yoda statue at the Lucasfilm headquarters.

The next few days were spent getting acquainted with the startup life in the suburbs. Coding the new template gallery during the day, cooking together in the evenings and then continuing coding into the night. We played sports, hit the beach and lifted weights together to stay active and got our drink on once or twice with the other startups in the YC batch. My visit coincided with Demo Day, the time for startups to pitch some of the most important investors in Silicon Valley, so we got to hear Matt's presentation evolve from the first musings to the final, polished delivery.

Sunnyvale is right in the middle of the valley so both Apple and Google are just a short drive away. We managed to hit both during my trip, with a tour sampling the excellent lunch at Google as well!

As if that wasn't enough, my mom and her partner took the opportunity of me being on the west coast to drive down for a visit. We did some sightseeing and tried the sharable plates at the Fog City Restaurant.

Overall, a mix of the city sights, great people and geekery all set on the backdrop of the hotbed of entrepreneurship that is the San Francisco Bay Area. My favorite vacation yet.

Chromecast

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 20:53:00 +0000

The Chromecast finally arrived!

Crowdfunding Nonprofit Watsi Tells First Success Story

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 18:06:00 +0000

Based on the idea that families in need of medical treatments in the developing world can be connected to donors elsewhere in the world, Watsi has just seen their first success: the first fully funded surgery on a girl in Nepal with rheumatic heart disease, who is now recovering.

Affordable medical care is an issue for everyone, with no clear solution in parts of the world. To be able to significantly help people in these areas with a relatively low cost to donors is a great interim step on the path to truly democratizing wellbeing.

Die Wehrpflicht Geht Weiter

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 18:53:00 +0000

Photo Credit: MATEUS_27:24&25

Österreich hat sich entschieden, dass die Wehrpflicht beibehaltet werden soll, anstatt die Einführung eines Berufsheeres. Das heißt, dass jeder männliche Staatsbürger vom 17. bis zum 35. Lebensjahr muss im Bundesheer (sechs Monate) oder Zivildienst (neun Monate) seine Pflicht erfüllen.

Ich habe an diesem Wahl teilgenommen, zu Gunsten des Berufsheeres. Schade aber Österreich ist noch nicht bereit, um sich zu wechseln.

Connecting with Others: Vulnerability

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 21:38:00 +0000

Photo Credit: ousooner44

When talking about getting together and connecting with others I think Seth has gotten it right on pretty much all his points here, but the one that stands out for me was about vulnerability.

When we get together with others, it either works or it doesn't. For me, it works if there's vulnerability and openness and connection. If it's likely you'll meet someone (or many someones) that will stick with you for years to come, who will share their dreams and their fears while they listen to and understand yours. (At most events, people are on high alert, clenched and protective. Like a cocktail party where no one is drinking.)

In any social situation it is all too easy to put up a wall of ice between you and another person. But to truly get anywhere you need to be able to expose yourself - to put your raw ideas out in the open, vulnerable to whatever the response may be. If you have found the right person the response will be respectful, caring and open, offering you the same intimacy of thought that you had first offered.

Nokia Offers Case Designs to Download for 3D Printers

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:39:00 +0000

Photo Credit: Nokia

Well, I didn't think this would happen so soon. Nokia, a major multinational manufacturer is backing the use of 3d printing technology to allow anyone to print their own cases for the Lumia 820 smartphone by offering the designs up for download on their website. SlashGear with the full story.

The start of the end of brick and mortar stores.

Neues Fahrrad

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 21:20:00 +0000

Endlich habe ich wieder ein Fahrrad! Jetzt erkunde ich eine neue Seite von Wien.

Anti-Aging Gene Therapy Extends Mouse Lifespan Up To 24%

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 21:02:00 +0000

Photo Credit: CNIO

Researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) have successfully tested a gene therapy method in mice that allows for an increase in average lifespan of up to 24%. More at Science Daily.

Don't Think About Making Art, Just Get It Done. (Quote)

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:46:00 +0000

“Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
-Andy Warhol

A Civilization Starter Kit Through Open Source Ecology

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 13:22:00 +0000

Marcin Jakubowski, formerly a nuclear physicist, woke up one day and realized that he was "useless" to the world. The world gave him options, but ultimately he was a cog in the machine of consumer society.

So he set out to do something about it. He bought a farm with his partner and set out to create a sustainable community. What he quickly found was that with the expensive repairs for machinery and equipment that his community could not achieve independence without better controlling the means of production.

This caused Jakubowski to come up with the idea of the Global Village Construction Kit, a set of open source blueprints that should allow construction of 50 modern machines necessary to start a civilization at an average cost of 1/8 of commercial alternatives. To date his team has created 15 out of the 50 devices, including a tractor, brick press, bread oven, and more technological devices such as a computer-controlled torch table that can cut intricate patterns out of large steel sheets.

The project has obvious implications for both the developing world and entrepreneurs in developed countries. Even with the amount of success that the team has seen so far, this is a great step forward towards sustainability and reducing reliance on consumer channels.

Self-learning Success: A box of tablets and no instructions

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 12:16:00 +0000

Photo Credit: One Laptop Per Child

The One Laptop Per Child organization proposes to use technology as a way to promote self-empowered learning in the developing world.

The One Laptop Per Child project started as a way of delivering technology and resources to schools in countries with little or no education infrastructure, using inexpensive computers to improve traditional curricula. What the OLPC Project has realized over the last five or six years, though, is that teaching kids stuff is really not that valuable. Yes, knowing all your state capitols how to spell "neighborhood" properly and whatnot isn't a bad thing, but memorizing facts and procedures isn't going to inspire kids to go out and learn by teaching themselves, which is the key to a good education. Instead, OLPC is trying to figure out a way to teach kids to learn, which is what this experiment is all about.

Dvice writes about a new strategy used in two villages in Ethiopia by the One Laptop Per Child organization where they delivered the tablet computers in taped-shut boxes, without as much as a single instruction or person to help. These are villages who have no contact with the printed word - no books, newspapers, street signs, or labels on packaged goods. And when they returned, they were in for a suprise of a success story:

"We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He'd never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android."

This just goes to show that learning doesn't have to be an activity that happens only in the classroom, around an accredited supervisor. Learning happens our whole life long, and the amazing potential in the younger generations just needs an interesting problem in order to be unlocked.

Cloud Atlas Theatrical Trailer (Video)

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 19:29:00 +0000

Directed by the Wachowski siblings (The Matrix) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) and with a story adapted from David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas, this looks to be an incredible film packed with both action and a plot that will make you once again question the fabric of reality.

Simple Solar Oven Turns Salt Water into Drinking Water

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 09:43:00 +0000

Fast Co. Design reports about a revolutionary new design for a solar oven intended for use in the developing world to make saltwater drinkable. It requires no electricity or maintenance costs, and provides 5 litres of water a day.

Norway: Restorative Justice

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 10:34:00 +0000

Norway recently sentenced Anders Behring Breivik to only 21 years in prison. To a North American sense of punitive justice, this can seem like inadequate punishment for the crime, but it is in keeping with the Scandinavian system of restorative justice:

Incarceration, in this thinking, is the treatment for whatever social or psychological disease led them to transgress. The criminals are not primarily wrongdoers to be punished, but broken people to be fixed.

In Norway, the families of the victims also got a chance to have a direct voice, with court time dedicated to each of the 77 victims — autopsies and how they died, but also biographies of the victims, including unfulfilled ambitions and dreams — in an effort to offer an outlet for the pain and suffering.

While this may subvert the retributive sense of justice that punitive systems promote, restorative justice is the moral high road, and appears to be the natural progression of criminal justice systems.

Don't Fear Failure (Quote)

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 06:21:00 +0000

“Don't fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
-Bruce Lee

Single-Level Folder Depth

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 23:36:00 +0000

Apple unveiled a new, single-folder-depth file system in the new Mountain Lion OS. At first, it seems like an unnecessary restriction, but after consideration I think the simplification is a step in the right direction.

Simplification of the complex digital paradigms taken for granted today is almost always an improvement, but being able to locate files later is key. With increasingly large datasets, files need some sort of meta-data to describe what kind of file it is. The trick that Apple pulls is to have app-specific file browsers. This is like having a base level of folder structure for different content types without the user having to create it. Once you've filtered to a particular content type, then you can use a single level of folders. Using these two organizational tools, I can imagine a single folder depth working with even complex file systems.

Of course, even better would be to do away with folders altogether and use tagging, such that a single file could be found by two or more different tags. Every file would have a filetype tag. From there on, it would be up to the user to decide what level of organization they want. For instance, a piece of music could be tagged both "classical" and "intellectual", and a movie tagged also as "intellectual". Then, if a user is in a particular mood and is looking for just any type of intellectual content, the "intellectual" tag would be the first place to go, without having to worry about what app needs to open it or what content type he was looking for. It would also save the user from having to create multiple folders of the same name in each of the apps.

But a good move forward, nonetheless.

Global Warming: Greenland Sees Massive Ice Thaw

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 22:52:00 +0000

NASA has just reported a large-scale ice thaw happening in Greenland. With climate patterns shifting almost certainly due to large amounts of greenhouse gases, this could be the start of a shift in the composition of the planet over the coming years:

"...If we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome."

Source

Udacity Offers Free University-Level Courses Online

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 20:17:00 +0000

Newcomer educational institution Udacity is now offering university-level courses for free online. The course mix has a main focus on computer science, which continues its explosion as an industry. While not completely unprecedented, with MIT's OpenCourseWare, Codecademy's guided coding lessons and the excellent, thousands-strong video library at Khan Academy (including computer science curriculum), it's always great to see more progress in the field of free education.

Recommended for young people as a good foundation to many common computer science and math problems. Or just anyone who wants to learn.

Source: Udacity

United Nations Declares Internet Access a Basic Human Right

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:42:00 +0000

Photo Credit: Ashitaka San

The United Nations' Human Rights council passed a resolution Thursday declaring access to the Internet as a basic human right. The resolution received nearly unanimous support among the 47 member states, even from countries that censor the Internet.

A truly great democratic step towards further openness, freedom, and learning.

Source

Cross-Browser Image Grayscale with CSS

noreply@blogger.com (Karl Horky) — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 14:11:00 +0000

Update: I've extended my blog post into a full GitHub project, with JavaScript polyfill that switches out <img> tags with the SVG goodness that IE 10 and 11 need: https://github.com/kununu-labs/gray

To apply a grayscale effect (color desaturation) to images across Firefox 10+, Firefox on Android, Internet Explorer 6 - 9, Chrome 19+ and Safari 6+ on desktop and iOS, use the following snippet below.

To disable the effect again, apply:

Check out a demo, which includes fading back to color on hover, Internet Explorer 10 support with inline SVG, and partial grayscale.

Note: If you're experiencing issues with blurry images in Firefox, you can try playing with the filterRes attribute, but this will tie your image resolution to the svg code.