Epistemology, Cognition, and the Future of Technology

  1. Transparency in Videos from After Effects on Mac for Wordpress

    I struggled to get transparent videos working on wordpress for both mobile Safari and Chrome. I was finally able to get it to work by: (1) exporting a full resolution Apple ProRes 4444 file from After Effects. (2) Use the Rotato tool to convert it: Alpha channel tool: Create transparent…
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  2. Empatica E4 Teardown

    Before I attempt to open up devices I always like to take a look at some pictures so I know what to expect; for the Empatica E4, there weren't any online anywhere.  I went ahead and took some in case anyone else wants to replace the battery without shipping it…
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  3. Handwriting OCR in Python

    I'm working on a project that requires handwriting recognition (sending texts by writing them), and I've been exploring off-the-shelf options to recognize my own writing.  Let's take a look at the contenders: EasyORCEasyOCR doesn't seem to be targeted at handwriting, so I wasn't expecting this to do particularly well.  It…
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  4. The Facebook Emotion Contagion Study

    I recently published an essay to help contextualize the data from the famous 2014 Facebook Emotion Contagion study– a study in which Facebook researchers removed between 10 and 90% of either positive or negative emotional content on user news feeds to see if it affected their emotions. The study sparked…
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  5. Pop-Science Psychology Books are Untrustworthy

    I recently wrote a post outlining how the popular book Glow Kids undermined its credibility with a fraudulent data.  I also examined an overstatement by New York Times best-selling author Robert Cialdini in his most recent book.   Pop-psychology needs to be approached with a high degree of skepticism. Poor statistical…
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  6. 'Glow Kids' Cites Bad Research

    I recently finished the pop-science book 'Glow Kids', which is a reasonably compelling look at the damage screen culture is having on children.  Unfortunately, the author was fooled by some fraudulent research.   The Cover of 'Glow Kids'Glow Kids and Screens ThemselvesI think about quite a bit is the separation of…
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