Gooooooood morning, Masses!!! Hey, this is not a test, this is a tech roundup. Time to rock it from the Delta to the DMZ.
AI, bots and robots
- Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning
Despite active learning being recognized as a superior method of instruction in the classroom, a major recent survey found that most college STEM instructors still choose traditional teaching methods. This article addresses the long-standing question of why students and faculty remain resistant to active learning. Comparing passive lectures with active learning using a randomized experimental approach and identical course materials, we find that students in the active classroom learn more, but they feel like they learn less. We show that this negative correlation is caused in part by the increased cognitive effort required during active learn - Deep Learning: Our Miraculous Year 1990-1991
In 2020, we will celebrate that many of the basic ideas behind the Deep Learning Revolution were published three decades ago within fewer than 12 months in our «Annus Mirabilis» 1990-1991 - Learning Haskell is no harder than learning any other programming language
- Writing Is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence
Learning to write is learning to think, because writing is thinking. They are two peas in a powerful pod. This article goes over my writing process, focused on minimizing the activation energy to get started. - Robots Are Catching Up to Humans in the Jobs Race
- Stupid Alexa Trick: Speaking French with a Horrible American Accent
- Learning How to Prove: From the Coq Proof Assistant to Textbook Style
- Global Warming, Market Opportunity – On the Lure of Climate Entrepreneurism
- U.S. widens trade blacklist to include some of China’s top AI startups
The U.S. government widened its trade blacklist to include some of China’s … - Applying deep learning to Airbnb search
- “Robots” Guarded Buddha’s Relics in Ancient India
- Robel: Robotics Benchmarks for Learning with Low-Cost Robots
- New method visualizes groups of neurons as they compute
- The State of Machine Learning Frameworks
Since deep learning regained prominence in 2012, many machine learning frameworks have clamored to become the new favorite among researchers and industry practitioners. From the early academic outputs Caffe and Theano to the massive industry-backed PyTorch and TensorFlow, this deluge of options makes it difficult to keep track of what - Twitter analysis: identifying a propaganda bot network
Conducting a Twitter network analysis uncovers a widespread bot network targeting West Papua with pro-Indonesian Government content on major social platforms. - Telepresence Robots Are the Future of Remote Work
Blockchain and decentralization
- VPN⁰: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed VPN
Distributed virtual private networks (dVPNs) are a new form of VPN with no central authority. In a dVPN, users are both VPN clients and relay/exit nodes as in a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network. While dVPNs make strong privacy claims, they also carry the risk that a user will inadvertently have their machine used to transmit potentially harmful or illegal network traffic. Several incidents have been reported [2] where unaware dVPN users have been (ab)used as exit nodes. - Mac software distributed outside the Mac App Store must be notarized by Apple
As a reminder, Mac software distributed outside the Mac App Store must be notarized by Apple in order to run on macOS Catalina. To make this transition easier and to protect users on macOS Catalina who continue to use older versions of software, we’ve adjusted the notarization prerequisites until January 2020. - Scribe: Transporting petabytes per hour via a distributed, buffered queueing
- IRS issues additional guidance on tax treatment for cryptocurrency
IR-2019-167, October 9, 2019
WASHINGTON — As part of a wider effort to assist taxpayers and to enforce the tax laws in a rapidly changing area, the Internal Revenue Service today issued two new pieces of guidance for taxpayers who engage in transactions involving virtual currency.
Woman computer scientist of the week
Jeannette Marie Wing is Avanessians Director of the Data Sciences Institute at Columbia University, where she is also a professor of computer science. Until June 30, 2017, she was Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Research with oversight of its core research laboratories around the world and Microsoft Research Connections. Prior to 2013, she was the President’s Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. She also served as assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the NSF from 2007 to 2010.
Cloud and architecture
- GitCF – A RawGit-Like Service Running on CloudFlare Workers
- Easy Serverless GraphQL APIs with Serverless Framework AppSync
- Morpheus: A Vulnerability-Tolerant Secure Architecture
- Court says FCC’s net neutrality repeal can’t stop state laws
- Adventures in parametric textile pattern design
- MVPs and $100k AWS Bills: Reflections on the Launch of Octopus Cloud 1.0
- Atari VCS Lead Architect Quits, Claims Six Months of Design Work Went Unpaid
- Amazon Workers May Be Watching Your Cloud Cam Home Footage
- Life Sciences Data Scientist/Engineer and Solution Architect
- AWS Elasticsearch: a fundamentally-flawed offering
I’m currently working on a logging project that was initially implemented using AWS Elasticsearch. Having worked with large-scale mainline Elasticsearch clusters for several years, I’m absolutely stunned at how poor Amazon’s implementation is and I can’t fathom why they’re unable to fix or at least
Development and languages
- Streamlit: Turn a Python script into an interactive data analysis tool
Introducing Streamlit, an app framework built for ML engineers - Block Storage Issues Across All Regions: Incident Report for DigitalOcean
- I built a syllable dictionary using Python and web scraping
- Monty Python at 50
- Transform Data Without Programming
- Windows Exploitation Tricks: Spoofing Named Pipe Client PID
- The privacy trade-offs of cheap Android smartphones
Billions of people worldwide access the internet only through their phones. But using a cheap smartphone comes with some serious trade-offs.
- Wazo Platform: build carrier-grade programmable IP communication infrastructures
- Millions of Android Phones Are Vulnerable to Israeli Surveillance Dealer Attack
Google warns that some of the world’s most popular Android phones are vulnerable, including its own Pixel 2. An Israeli spyware dealer, NSO Group, is believed to have developed the hack. - Building a constraint programming solver in Julia
- 99% of the Git commands you’ll need at work, demonstrated in a single script
- Timsort, the Python sorting algorithm
Timsort: A very fast , O(n log n), stable sorting algorithm built for the real world — not constructed in academia. - What the Formula? Managing State on Android
- GitHub renews $200k contract with ICE
- Defining Types in Shen
- DNA Digital Data Storage
- Salesforce: We Ditched Python for Google’s Go Language in Einstein Analytics
- Amazon EKS Windows Container Support Now Generally Available
- GitHub and US Government Developers
At GitHub, we believe in empowering developers around the world. We also believe in basic human rights and treating people with respect and dignity. Today, I wanted to share a message I sent to all employees yesterday that is related to this, as it is important that we share our views on immigration policy with the world and not just internally with employees. - Qt for Android better than ever before
- JavaScript Illustrated: Promises
- A news aggregator for the Python community written in Python/Django
- CI/CD Pipelines with Gitlab
- Convert Curl Syntax to Python Requests
- Git-remote-s3 – push and pull Git repos to/from s3, encrypted using GPG
- HamWAN: A modern, multi-megabit, IP-based, digital network for amateur radio use
Quote of the week
OAuth is the best that the wrong way of doing things can provide.
— Mike Stay
Enterprises
- See Google’s Data on Real User Site Performance for Any Site
- V8: Workaround for Intel Gemini Lake Processor Bug
- Tesla Acquires Canadian Battery Specialist, Hibar Systems
Ontario-based company brings specialist battery manufacturing expertise to global EV giant amid talk of “Tesla’s secret battery lab” - A Separate Kind of Intelligence
- Tesla Is Changing the Used Car Game
- Google, Xiaomi, and Huawei affected by zero-day flaw that unlocks root access
Researchers at Googleâs security group Project Zero have found an active vulnerability in Android that affects several popular devices including the Pixel 2, Huawei P20 Pro, and Xiaomi Redmi Note 5. A post from the security group suggests it found the bug last week, and attackers were exploiting it at that moment. The post notes … - The Netherlands Surpasses Wildest Predictions for Tesla Model 3 Sales
Normally Norway is the biggest Tesla market in Europe. When the Dutch market absorbs nearly three times the Norwegian number of Model 3s, that is crazy. - The Google SEO Bible: Everything a Startup Needs to Know
Over the past year, I’ve built and grown 3 marketplaces in the event sector, all with a 95% SEO acquisition strategy. - An Inside Look at Microsoft’s Newest Flight Simulator
- New Chips for Machine Intelligence
- Atlanta Asks Google Whether It Targeted Black Homeless People
- U.S. Supreme Court rejects Amazon warehouse worker wage appeal
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear Amazon.com’s bid to avoid… - Whistleblower: Google Boss’ Daughter Scrubbed from Guardian Exposé
- Many Experts Say We Shouldn’t Worry About Superintelligent AI. They’re Wrong
- The Modular PC: Intel’s New Element Brings Project Christine to Life
- Personal information and ads on Twitter
- Postmates’ new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley
Can you smell the doom and gloom? - Artificial Intelligence: What’s to Fear?
- Is Amazon Unstoppable?
- Google gets OK to siphon water for South Carolina plant
- Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram Restricted in Southern Turkey
Network data from the NetBlocks internet observatory confirm that Turkey has blocked access to social media and messaging platforms in the southern cities of Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa and Hatay, as the … - Microsoft open sources SandDance, a visual data exploration tool
- Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, and eBay exit Facebook’s Libra project
One week after PayPal left the project
Other news
- Scientists implant «memories» into bird brains to teach them songs
- Quantum computers: amazing progress, but probably false supremacy claims
A 2017 cartoon from this post. For my fellow combinatorialists here is the link to the previous post on Kahn-Park’s result, isoperimetry, Talagrand, nice figures and links. Quick update (Sep… - If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she’ll win $100k
Could you survive for an entire year without access to Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram or any other app? - Void Linux (Musl) on the Huawei MateBook X Pro
- Quantum gold rush: the private funding pouring into quantum startups
- CBP officer holds journalist’s passport until he agrees he writes ‘propaganda’
- A fast alternative to the modulo reduction
Suppose you want to pick an integer at random in a set of N elements. Your computer has functions to generate random 32-bit integers, how do you transform such numbers into indexes no larger than N? Suppose you have a hash table with a capacity N. Again, you need to transform your hash values (typically 32-bit … Continue reading A fast alternative to the modulo reduction - Tesla Model 3 = 24% of Small and Midsize Luxury Car Sales in USA
- World’s top banks pour $1.9T into fossil fuel financing since 2015
- The Rich Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You
The 400 wealthiest Americans now pay a lower rate than the middle class. - 150 successful machine learning models: 6 lessons learned at Booking.com
- Linus Torvalds Shares His Thoughts on Microsoft’s New-Found Love for Linux
- Evidence-Based Medicine Data Lab, University of Oxford
- Shackleton’s Medical Kit
- Guix Reduces Bootstrap Seed by Half
- Avoiding the Quantum Winter
- Hams Must Remove Repeaters from CA Mountaintops or Pay Huge Fees
- Giant Molecules Exist in Two Places at Once in Unprecedented Quantum Experiment
- Obesity Is Weighing on Education, Productivity and the Economy
- MIT Sloan Management Review drops its paywall today
- System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware
System76, the Denver-based Linux PC manufacturer and developer of Pop OS, has some stellar news for those of us who prefer our laptops a little more open. - The Rich Do Pay Higher Taxes Than You
- Re-Enact the Panama Papers Leak: How Mossack Fonseca Was Hacked
- I tried to hack my insomnia with technology
Fancy trackers and headbands are all part of a growing sleep-tech industry. I decided to put them to the test. - Back to Basics, Git Essentials Crash Course
