A team of authors at wndw.net created a terrific book about wireless networking. Wireless Networking in the Developing World contains everything you need to know to bootstrap a wireless network even in remote places. The book is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license and available as PDF or printed book. (link via boingboing.net)

When you start a new project or a new job, it helps to have a set of tools available that you can depend on. For me the most important tool is the notebook I keep about ongoing projects. This is where I write down new ideas, stuff I tried, approaches that failed, and successful solutions.

Keeping a laboratory notebook is standard procedure in every lab where stuff is invented and eventually has to be patented. To chemists, biochemists and phycicists the lab notebook is the most precious document in their labs, because it documents their procedures. It allows you to backtrack and to repeat a procedure. It catches and documents your errors.

As Howard M. Kanare writes in his book Writing the Laboratory Notebook:

Few, if any, working scientists writes notes as carefully and completely as they should. Often a seemingly unimportant detail turns out to be crucial. Much experimental work could be better understood, and much repetition of work avoided, if only researchers were more attentive in their notekeeping. The effectiveness of a working scientist can be increased by considering the important role that a notebook can play in experimental planning, observation, and analysis of data. [...] Finally, but perhaps most important, students who are beginning scientific research must be taught how to create a proper record of their work.

I've been a programmer for 25 years. Over the years I've seen many software projects fail and many times it wasn't an issue of failed technology or failed project management or crunch time stress, it was the result of poor leadership.

At the same time all successful software projects had one thing in common: a brilliant technical leader. Here's a quote from Warfighting:

Consequently, trust is an essential trait among leaders –trust by seniors in the abilities of their subordinates and by juniors in the competence and support of their seniors. Trust must be earned, and actions which undermine trust must meet with strict censure. Trust is a product of confidence and familiarity. Confidence among comrades results from demonstrated professional skill. Familiarity results from shared experience and a common professional philosophy.

How do you learn to be a technical leader? The same way you learn how to program: by watching the wizards to their magic and by reading the fine manual (RTFM).

Gerald M. Weinberg, the author of the seminal The Psychology of Computer Programming, wrote such a manual. Becoming a Technical Leader is a remarkably practical and profound book. Weinberg writes:

When we compared successful and unsuccessful systems, we quickly realized that almost all of the successes hinged on the performance of a small number of outstanding technical workers. Some of them were consistent sources of innovative technical ideas, some were interpreters of other people's ideas. Some were inventors, some were negotiators, some were teachers, some were team leaders. What distinguished them from their less successful colleagues was a rare combination of technical expertise and leadership skills. Today, we would say that they were high in innovation, but with sufficient motivational and organizational skills to use in making ideas effective.

These leaders were not the pure technicians produced by the engineering and science schools, nor were they the conventional leaders trained in the schools of management. They were a different breed, a hybrid. What they shared was a concern for the quality of ideas. [...] We called them technical leaders.

Recommended reading list:

• The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
• Peopleware by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister
• Warfighting by U.S. Marine Corps Staff
• Software Craftsmanship by Pete McBreen

Jürgen Schmidhuber, who is one of the directors of IDSIA, wrote an interesting paper titled Gödel Machines: Self-Referential Universal Problem Solvers Making Provably Optimal Self-Improvements.

Given is an arbitrary computational problem whose solution may require interaction with a possibly reactive environment. For example, the goal may be to maximize the future expected reward of a robot. While executing its initial (possibly sub-optimal) problem solving strategy, the Gödel machine simultaneously runs a proof searcher which systematically and repeatedly tests proof techniques. Proof techniques are programs that may read any part of the Gödel machine's storage, and write on a reserved part which may be reset for each new proof technique test. In our example Gödel machine this writable storage includes the variables proof and switchprog, where switchprog holds a potentially unrestricted program whose execution could completely rewrite any part of the Gödel machine's current software. Normally the current switchprog is not executed. However, proof techniques may invoke a special subroutine check() which tests whether proof currently holds a proof showing that the utility of stopping the systematic proof searcher and transferring control to the current switchprog at a precisely defined point in the near future exceeds the utility of continuing the search until some alternative switchprog is found. Such proofs are derivable from the proof searcher's axiom scheme which formally describes the utility function to be maximized (typically the expected future reward in the expected remaining lifetime of the Gödel machine), the computational costs of hardware instructions (from which all programs are composed), and the effects of hardware instructions on the Gödel machine's state. The axiom scheme also formalizes known probabilistic properties of the environment, and also the initial Gödel machine state and software, which includes the axiom scheme itself (no circular argument here). Thus proof techniques can reason about expected costs and results of all programs including the proof searcher.

Seems like Eliezer S. Yudkowsky isn't the only one working on a Seed AI after all.

(thanks Calypso!)

I've created a mirror of Wil McCarthy's Multimedia Edition of Hacking Matter, which was released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. I bought the hardcover edition when it came out in 2003 and still think it's the most breathtaking technology book since Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler. First you think "this guy is mad", then you realize programmable matter is indeed possible and you begin to dream. Highly recommended!

Sometimes things are connected in a strange way. While browsing through my copy of Out of Control by Kevin Kelly, I came upon an old printout of a WIRED article. It was Bordering on Chaos by Peter Kartel. He mentioned Fernando Flores which lead me to a FastCompany article titled The Power of Words. Flores managed the Cybersyn project while working as a minister of economics in the cabinet of Salvador Allende. Cybersyn was the first documented attempt at using cybernetics in controlling the ecomony of a whole country. The brain behind Cybersyn was Stafford Beer. A bit of googling resulted in a paper by Beer describing the Cybersyn project and I was amazed. They used Bayesian statistics in a closed loop to create a self learning control system. This is some really cool stuff. And then I stumbled upon a recording of a lecture Stafford gave titled Forty Years of Cybernetics. That just blew me away!

Links:

• Fanfare for Effective Freedom, The Third Richard Goodman. Memorial Lecture, Brighton Polytechnic, 14. Februar 1973
• "Forty Years of Cybernetics" Lecture of Stafford Beer (WMA format)
• Lessons of Stafford Beer
• Stafford Beer memorial website

Today I received an email regarding Richard Greenblatt and Bill Gosper. While googling for some background info, I found the Powerpoint slides of Greenblatt's presentation at ILC'02. I've created a Quicktime movie of his presentation. Lisp, the Ribosome and Panspermia, what a wild mix!

As far as I know there are no recordings of the presentations given at ILC'02. You can find recent papers by Richard Greenblatt at Source Signal Imaging Inc.

UPDATE: Joe Marshall send me a correction regarding Richard Greenblatt. Greenblatt seems to be working with Professor Lucia Vaina and is still located in Boston.

[Quicktime of Richard Greenblatt's presentation at ILC'02]

Guy gives a list of various phrases venture capitalists use to signal "no":

1. “I liked your company, but my partners didn't.”
2. “If you get a lead, we will follow.”
3. “Show us some traction, and we'll invest.”
4. “We love to co-invest with other venture capitalists.”
5. “We're investing in your team.”
6. “I have lots of bandwidth to dedicate to your company.”
7. “This is a vanilla term sheet.”
8. “We can open up doors for you at our client companies.”
9. “We like early-stage investing.”

Yeah, I've heard them all. [link]