Autoencoders and other deep neural networks with information bottlenecks have become fashionable. The heuristic idea is that the dimensionality of the hidden layers is reduced such that the network is forced to focus on the important part of the data. Experiments have also demonstrated that autoencoders are efficient in this…

Disclaimer 1: This is my attempt at understanding lattice quantization, which is something I’ve struggled with for years. I’m pretty confident that what I say is correct, but there is well-established theory about lattices (see references below), so I might be ignorant about important parts of that. Disclaimer 2: Conversion…

The magnitudes of time-frequency components of speech signals is often said to be normally distributed in the log-domain (such as decibel). Others claim that the components themselves follow the Laplace distribution. In my own previous work, I found that the distribution of the components are to a high degree dependent…

A classic observation is that the magnitude spectrum of speech decays with frequency, approximately 6dB per octave. The decibel scale is a logarithmic scale and the per-octave argument treats frequencies on a logarithmic scale. The observation thus translates to a claim that magnitude spectra are linear in the log-log domain. …

Lessons learned during the pandemic — Disruptions are opportunities. They change things, and for many of those things, we get to choose the new normal. The difficulty is that we should choose wisely, because the new normal might stay with us for a long time. In the academic world, the Covid-19 pandemic changed things just as…

A year later I got myself invited to a party of the old crew. I was just visiting in the city, but I knew they’d have a gig with an after-party and I tagged along just like in the old times. The parties were legendary, other-worldly experiences with friends and…

There has been a great deal of discussion in the public about the need for law enforcement agencies to actively pursue surveillance. The position of law enforcement has always been that they must have the ability to intercept communication to prevent terrorism, violent crime etc. While this argument is superficially…

In response to the podcast “A bit of optimism” by Simon Sinek — For those of you who don’t know Simon Sinek; his fame began with the TED talk (I am a big fan), I read Start with Why which made me see better what I already knew and the Infinite Game just solidified my appreciation of his work. Now he has been…

In response to “Owen Cotton-Barratt on epistemic systems and layers of defense against potential global catastrophes” on The 80,000 Hours Podcast by Rob Wiblin — On the recent “80,000 Hours Podcast” Rob Wiblin interviewed Owen Cotton-Barratt about their statistical analysis of existential threats, such as pandemics, nuclear war and super-human AI. It is a theme that I find exiting and their discussion was thought provoking.