Posts

December 09, 2012

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8:34 PM | Nengo model – Low pass derivative filter

To just get the code you can copy / paste from below or get the code from my github: low_pass_derivative_filter.py. In the course of building models in Nengo, I recently came in to need for a neural implementation of a low pass derivative filter. I scripted up a sub-network in Nengo (www.nengo.ca) that does this, [...]

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4:02 PM | JSCamp Asia Links and Resources

http://jscamp.asia/https://gist.github.com/4167535

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3:45 PM | They did it with Maths

No summary available for this post.

December 05, 2012

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1:52 PM | The Robot App

The IEEE has published an ipad app about robotics. Of course I had to be one of the first people to buy it. I wasn’t disappointed. It presents app. 130 robots and so it’s a very good overview of current research and development. You will certainly know some of the robots. The most famous are Nao, Asimo, PackBot, Google Self Driving Car or Da Vinci. You can list the robots by type (Aerospace, Humanoid, Telepresence and so on), by date... Read more

December 01, 2012

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8:44 AM | WhatsApp (in)Security

WhatsApp Messenger is a proprietary, widely-used, cross-platform instant messaging application for smartphones. In addition to text messaging, users can send each other images, video and audio media messages. Moreover, from a security point of view, several issues have been raised since its launch:About user statuses:http://www.securitybydefault.com/2012/03/casi-10-millones-de-moviles-espanoles.html http://packetstormsecurity.org/files/108010/SA-20111219-1.txtAbout the encryption of local […]

November 27, 2012

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1:12 PM | Robots with a mind of their own

Divide and conquer is a common technique used by strategists in many fields. Comprehension usually involves understanding the details and it means usually better adaptation to the “environment”. I’ll try to explain myself with an example: When trying to face a problem in any science without understanding the main physics involving all the procedure. You [...]

November 25, 2012

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10:32 PM | Reinforcement learning: Q-learning and exploration

We’ve been running a reading group on Reinforcement Learning (RL) in my lab the last couple of months, and recently we’ve been looking at a very entertaining simulation for testing RL strategies, ye’ old cat vs mouse paradigm. There are a number of different RL methods you can use / play with in that tutorial, [...]

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9:49 PM | RSS Analysis and Automatic Post Categorisation

Just a small demo for RSS parsing with the Google Reader API and automatic post categorisation using a simple keyword-based approach. The first version was intended for newspaper analysis but later derived into this little PoC.Hackware as usual, you can play with it at: http://amsqr.github.com/misc.js/rsstool.html

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9:37 PM | Emotifinder bugfix

I've realised that the previous version is not longer working after bit.ly API change. I've uploaded a new version: http://amsqr.github.com/misc.js/emotifinder2.html

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9:39 AM | Creating Q*bertify effects with Paper.js

Paper.js (a.k.a The Swiss Army Knife of Vector Graphics Scripting) is an open source vector graphics scripting framework that runs on top of the HTML5 Canvas. It offers a clean Scene Graph / Document Object Model and a lot of powerful functionality to create and work with vector graphics and bezier curves, all neatly wrapped up in a well designed, consistent and clean programming interface.Live demo

November 24, 2012

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5:02 PM | Talk at Columbia University

Todd is giving a talk on some of our decision making work at the the Columbia University Marketing Department seminar series. (Tuesday Nov. 27th, 12:30-1:45 PM).

November 22, 2012

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7:44 AM | Smart Malware Analysis and Detection Tools

There are new tools for analising or detecting malware based on machine learning techniques:Rule-based learning (PART, Ridor, J48) for PE executable fileshttp://sourceforge.net/projects/malclassifier.adobe/files/Behavioural clusteringhttp://malvic.de/http://www.mlsec.org/malheur/Analysis frameworkhttp://razorbacktm.sourceforge.net/

November 21, 2012

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12:30 AM | Cognitive computers? A reality for IBM

Listening to Dharmendra Modha manager from IBM Cognitive Computing Systems, makes me wonder how far we are from really interacting with cognitive computers. IBM has been able to simulate about 500 billion neurons, 100 trillion synapses all running on a collection of ninety-six of the world’s fastest computers this year. The project code name is Compass [...]

November 19, 2012

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6:36 PM | Nengo scripting: absolute value

To just get the code you can copy / paste from below or get the code from my github: absolute_value.py This is a simple script for performing the absolute value function in Nengo. The most efficient way I’ve found to implement this is to use two separate populations for each dimension of the input signal, [...]

November 18, 2012

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9:53 AM | The tale of Daniel Tammet: The boy with the incredible brain

I remember a few years ago I came across with a documentary called something like “Incredible minds“. It was about a man called Daniel Tammet which was an autistic savant, able to work out great numerical problems in an incredible way. I was really impressed, not only of what the documentary showed he was capable [...]

November 10, 2012

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5:58 AM | Talk at Yale University

Todd is giving a talk on some of our self-directed learning work at the Yale University Cognitive Lunch series in New Haven, CT. (Tuesday Nov. 13, 11:35am).

November 09, 2012

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2:31 PM | Telepresence robots become inexpensive and … botiful

I work on a text about telepresence robots. These types of robots will be remotely controlled by someone via internet. They are currently used mainly in hospitals and in the military. And unfortunately the systems are still very expensive. But new developments show, that we can expect low-priced solutions soon. Several robots make it to the market – some are still prototypes such as iRobot’s AVA – that are controlled with tablets instead of an included “brain”. I don’t […]

November 07, 2012

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10:44 AM | #demoscene: Electronic Free Art

No summary available for this post.

November 05, 2012

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12:55 PM | Creating presentations with Awwation

A nice, free, simple SVG-based alternative to Prezi (Flash) By Aditya Bhatthttp://amsqr.github.com/awwation/Enjoy!

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12:58 AM | Lab in the Storm

Well, it has been an interesting week. The lab has mostly been offline for a week following a major power outage in lower Manhattan caused by Hurricane Sandy. Luckily, most of us were only modestly inconvenienced (no power or Internet for a few days forced some of us to resort to reading... gasp... books!). However, in the interest of documenting the history of the lab, we collected up a a couple photos of our experience of the storm.

October 30, 2012

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8:07 PM | The tale of the Parasitic Wasp

“I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.” Charles Darwin I’m mainly an evolutionist. I have always felt astonished about how Darwin was able to synthesise nature’s complexity into a pattern of laws which [...]

October 24, 2012

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1:00 PM | The Laws of Robotics

Have you recently met a robot? I mean, not one of those iRobot Roomba dust killing robots. I think about science-fiction humanoid robots, who talk to you as if they were a member of your family. Who maybe one day decide to tell you, that human beings have had their time but now a more intelligent species like his own should take over. No, most of you haven’t met this kind of robots. There is a huge gap between robot... Read more

October 23, 2012

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11:19 AM | Free top-level (.ws) domain provider

The guys at 1.ws offer free webpage hosting and top-level domain (.ws - Samoa).No fancy javascript or file upload allowed, but they are kind enough to at least do not put any ads.I could not help so here is my own .ws domain: http://alejandromosquera.ws/.

October 12, 2012

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4:08 PM | The role of phasic dopamine in the basal ganglia

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m reading a series of papers that presents a model of the basal ganglia, written mainly by Peter Redgrave, Kevin Gurney, and John Reynolds. Of particular interest throughout these articles is a re-examination of the role of the short-term phasic dopamine (DA) signal from the substantia nigra pars [...]

Redgrave P, Vautrelle N & Reynolds JN (2011). Functional properties of the basal ganglia's re-entrant loop architecture: selection and reinforcement., Neuroscience, 198 138-51. PMID: 21821101

Citation

October 09, 2012

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9:52 PM | The basal ganglia for action selection

Peter Redgrave, Kevin Gurney, and John Reynolds have a series of papers out where they detail a basal ganglia model, looking at its physiology and potential functional role in the brain. They address a number of different points in their papers, and I’m going to write up a couple of posts in hopes of making [...]

Redgrave P, Prescott TJ & Gurney K (1999). The basal ganglia: a vertebrate solution to the selection problem?, Neuroscience, 89 (4) 1009-23. PMID: 10362291

Citation

October 06, 2012

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9:53 PM | Possible list of topics for a Computer Security course

Introduction to security auditingWhite boxGray boxBlack boxPenetration testCollection of informationFootprintingFingerprintingGoogle Hacking and ShodanMetadata analysis.Fuzzing and CrawlingFuzzingCrawlingFuzzing DirectoryFuzzing parametersSniper Brute Force Attack with Burp SuiteBurp Suite CrawlingBrutus AET2WfuzzAnalysis of the SSL security layerChecksCommon ErrorsSafe procedureTypes of AttacksAdvanced ConceptsSSL StripAudit a CMSTools and AutomationAnalysis pluginsExploiting with […]

October 03, 2012

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7:51 PM | Obfuscating XSS payloads with Horrible.js

Source code: https://github.com/amsqr/horrible-horrible.jsLive demo: http://amsqr.github.com/misc.js/horrible.html

October 02, 2012

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5:25 PM | Using the same random number generator in C++ and Python

Anyone who has converted code from one language to another, where there is a random number generator involved, knows the pain of rigorously checking that both versions of code do the exact same thing. In the past I’ve done a write out to file from one of the language’s random number generators (RNGs), and then [...]

September 27, 2012

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1:03 PM | C++ debugging with GDB and Valgrind quickstart

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m coming into C++ from Python and Matlab. I’ve programmed C++ before, but it’s been a while, and handling the memory management myself and tracking down seg faults again is taking some getting used to. Here are two things that really helped me out. Program – GDB As the scale of [...]

September 25, 2012

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8:29 PM | Web Vulnerability Games (a.k.a hacking for fun)

Just some links from several hackathons and web security events that I've attended this year:http://google-gruyere.appspot.com/part1https://www.owasp.org/index.php/OWASP_Security_Shepherdhttps://www.hacking-lab.com/Remote_Sec_Lab/free-owasp-top10-lab.htmlhttps://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Vicnum_ProjectSome challenges are difficult, another are very easy...Have fun!