Read Project Naptha (projectnaptha.com)
Project Naptha automatically applies state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms on every image you see while browsing the web. The result is a seamless and intuitive experience, where you can highlight as well as copy and paste and even edit and translate the text formerly trapped within an image. The Tyger

What the hand dare seize the fire? ❧

I find it so heartening that one can use Project Naptha to highlight, copy and paste, and even edit and translate text formerly trapped within an image.

I’m further impressed that it also works with Hypothes.is!
–December 01, 2019 at 09:40AM

Though upon revisiting, it seems like the text is temporarily highlighted on Hypothesis (which probably only works with Naptha installed), then disappears, and the annotation is shown as an orphan.

Apparently Naptha only acts as a middle layer to allow the OCR of the image and that without it, the fingerprinting process Hypothes.is uses can’t find it after the fact.

Perhaps Hypothes.is could recognize that the highlighted text is being supplied by a third-party layer and instead of orphaning the highlighted text, it could anchor the highlight to the associated image instead? ❧
–December 01, 2019 at 09:44AM

Naptha, its current name, is drawn from an even more tenuous association. See, it comes from the fact that “highlighter” kind of sounds like “lighter”, and that naptha is a type of fuel often used for lighters. It was in fact one of the earliest codenames of the project, and brought rise to a rather fun little easter egg which you can play with by quickly clicking about a dozen times over some block of text inside a picture. ❧

Now if only I could do this with my Hypothes.is annotations! Talk about highlighting!
–December 01, 2019 at 10:06AM

There is a class of algorithms for something called “Inpainting”, which is about reconstructing pictures or videos in spite of missing pieces. This is widely used for film restoration, and commonly found in Adobe Photoshop as the “Content-Aware Fill” feature. ❧

This reminds me of a tool called asciinema that allows highlighting text within a video.
–December 01, 2019 at 10:13AM

Replied to Stories in Unexpected Places by Alan Levine (CogDogBlog)
While the tech choruses croon on about scale and AI and datadatadata, I prefer the long tail. Looking in the corners of digital stuff I marvel when you find small signs of quirky human presence. Li…
Looks like he went on to build some other nice little web tools like ProjectNaptha!
Listened to History of the English Language, 2nd Edition, Lecture 6: The Beginnings of English by Seth LererSeth Lerer from The Great Courses

Delve into the linguistic relationships of Old English to its earlier German matrix. Look at key vocabulary terms—many of which are still in our own language—to trace patterns of migration, social contact, and intellectual change. Also, learn how Old English was written down and how it can help us reconstruct the worldview of the Anglo-Saxon peoples.

cover of The History of the English Language by Seth Lerer

Yesterday started off with a small family emergency. As a result Thanksgiving was postponed until today. I’ve been hard at work cleaning up, making an apple pie, a turkey, and green beans. Hopefully dinner this evening will be more memorable than last.

In a turn of good luck, the rain also seems to have finally passed and the sun has emerged!

Listened to Mindscape 72 | César Hidalgo on Information in Societies, Economies, and the Universe by Sean CarrollSean Carroll from preposterousuniverse.com

Maxwell’s Demon is a famous thought experiment in which a mischievous imp uses knowledge of the velocities of gas molecules in a box to decrease the entropy of the gas, which could then be used to do useful work such as pushing a piston. This is a classic example of converting information (what the gas molecules are doing) into work. But of course that kind of phenomenon is much more widespread — it happens any time a company or organization hires someone in order to take advantage of their know-how. César Hidalgo has become an expert in this relationship between information and work, both at the level of physics and how it bubbles up into economies and societies. Looking at the world through the lens of information brings new insights into how we learn things, how economies are structured, and how novel uses of data will transform how we live.

César Hidalgo received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Notre Dame. He currently holds an ANITI Chair at the University of Toulouse, an Honorary Professorship at the University of Manchester, and a Visiting Professorship at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. From 2010 to 2019, he led MIT’s Collective Learning group. He is the author of Why Information Grows and co-author of The Atlas of Economic Complexity. He is a co-founder of Datawheel, a data visualization company whose products include the Observatory of Economic Complexity.

Mindscape cover art

It was interesting to hear Cesar Hidalgo use the concept of “big history” a few times in this episode. I’m not 100% sure he meant it in the David Christian sense of the words, but it at least felt right.

I was also piqued at the mention of Lynne Kelly’s work, which I’m now knee deep into. I suspect it could dramatically expand on what we think of as the capacity of a personbyte, though the limit of knowledge there still exists. The idea of mnemotechniques within indigenous cultures certainly expands on the way knowledge worked in prehistory and what we classically think of and frame collective knowledge or collective learning.

I also think there are some interesting connections with Dr. Kelly’s mentions of social equity in prehistorical cultures and the work that Hidalgo mentions in the middle of the episode.

There are a small handful of references I’ll want to delve into after hearing this, though it may take time to pull them up unless they’re linked in the show notes.

 

hat-tip: Complexity Digest for the reminder that this is in my podcatcher. 🔖 November 22, 2019 at 03:28PM