Just what i find

While at first Intel appears to be catching up in the race to develop chips optimised for AI, looking deeper reveals a broader, longer term strategy to develop open code allowing any competing or complimentary framework (Tendorflow, Caffe, MXNet, etc.) to run at optimum efficiency on their hardware. Back to those chips (and the dodgy Continue reading →

A practical example of the importance of appearance: “appearing tall … is linked to increased social status across cultures, which researchers hypothesize has an evolutionary origin: If you were a taller caveman, you were probably better at taking down megafauna.” https://www.inverse.com/article/43535-mark-zuckerberg-booster-seat-explanation Sitting tall gives him the confidence boost he needs. Continue reading →

Pouring resources in to Alexa, AWS and experiments like Amazon Go, Amazon invested nearly $23bn on R&D last year, nearly 1/3 of the total spend of the top 5 (next come Alphabet, Intel, Microsoft, and Apple). https://www.recode.net/2018/4/9/17204004/amazon-research-development-rd Tech companies claimed the top five spots again this year. Continue reading →

IBM's 5 properties of effective AI? 1 Managed (durable infrastructure, effective data pipelines, data and model governance) 2 Resilient (automatic alerts when model drift is excessive) 3 Performant (runs in reasonable time on cost effective infrastructure) 4 Measurable (model accuracy, data volume, value released) 5 Continuous (evaluate and retrain models as needed) https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/21/ibm-outlines-the-5-attributes-of-useful-ai/ A few Continue reading →

As the cost of AI drops, things which aren't currently thought to be solvable through prediction will suddenly be viable – and this will primarily be complimented with human judgement. Computers predict better than people can, but then these predictions will be "handed off" to a human to use judgement to determine the response (such Continue reading →

The demise of the retail store may have been (greatly) exaggerated. Yes, many big box stores are disappearing, being unable to compete on cost or selection with online vendors, many companies are turning to technology to survive the change by inviting themselves directly in to customers' homes, or optimising their supply chain and product ranges Continue reading →

“That some big-name apps have removed their Apple Watch apps isn’t a sign that the Apple Watch is failing as a platform: It’s a sign that the platform is evolving [as developers learn what the new form factor is truly useful for]” https://slate.com/technology/2018/04/apple-watch-popular-apps-are-leaving-the-platform-is-that-a-bad-sign.html It joined Twitter, Amazon, Google Maps, and Slack, among others. Continue reading →

An innovative saving product: “With myAgro’s Mobile Layaway platform, farmers save for seeds, fertiliser and specialised training via scratchcards – in the same way they might buy phone credit” https://www.theguardian.com/social-entrepreneurs-solving-problems-around-the-world/2018/apr/04/developing-mobile-technology-manage-funds-farmers-poverty-myagro-anushka-ratnayake-skoll-social-entrepreneurship-awards Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship winner: Anushka Ratnayake, myAgro Continue reading →

An interesting concept – obvious when explained, but of course, many of the good ones are: “While paradigms like imperative or functional programming characterize certain underlying aspects of our mental model of program, gradual programming describes a process by which a mental model is formed” http://willcrichton.net/notes/gradual-programming/ Programming is a fundamentally incremental (or gradual) process, and Continue reading →

A fascinating tool to support developers. I'm proud to say they had  only a few recommendations and findings from my code/repositories (although i have subscribed, so i'll get notifications for others in future too) – and i can see how a tool like this could really help developers to produce better, more supportable, more secure code. Continue reading →