Here's the YouTube video of a talk I recently gave at UIUC's Reflections | Projections conference. It was a great pleasure and honor to return to University of Illinois after graduating 15 years ago. As I mention in the talk, going to R | P was one of the things that inspired me to go into computer science in the first place while I was a physics student there. Being allowed to speak there years later was a real treat. My thanks to UIUC ACM.
“While that sounds compelling in theory, Assistant failed at responding fully to many requests made with natural language. When I asked, “What time is ‘Westworld’ on TV?” Assistant displayed a web search result containing the synopsis for the new sci-fi show. When I followed up with, “So what time is it on?” Assistant told me the current time, which was 9:35 p.m.”
The intelligent assistant is an undeveloped frontier. The Pixel's isn't that great (according to this review, anyway) - and this just speaks to the great difficulty of the problem.
“But this proved a minor stumbling block. When the authors mapped locations, dates, and prices of someone’s non-anonymous purchases against the whole database, it was usually easy to find a single, unique pattern. With three points or more, it was virtually a certainty. “You bought a coffee at that coffee shop, and you bought jeans at that shop, and then you bought a pizza,” says de Montjoye, by way of example. There’s a 94 percent chance that you’re the only person who did so. Taking away price altogether made these matches harder to find. But with four purchases, it was back up to 90 percent.”
"The horrors of that human trafficking left a scar for the sport that lingers even now, 12 years after the practice was officially banned in the U.A.E. Some owners said quietly that they still might prefer to have human jockeys — though none would say so publicly — but a majority, perhaps recognizing the troubling perception of having children ride animals that stand 6 feet tall and can run up to 40 miles per hour, unabashedly praised the technology now widely used instead: robots."
Full story AT New york times here.
Just take a look at the pictures in the article. The juxtaposition of the ancient sport of camel racing and the futuresque robotic camel jockeys is just striking.
"...Facebook and Twitter are treated as a goldmine where people’s thoughts are concerned. Scientists believe that the heaps of data that these social media platforms gather can correctly portray what users are thinking. What scientists overlook, however, is to correct inherent biases that datasets contain."
Full story here.
https://github.com/eBay/bayesian-belief-networks
"Allows creation of Bayesian Belief Networks and other Graphical Models with pure Python functions. Where tractable exact inference is used. Currently four different inference methods are supported with more to come."
Is it just me or does eBay seem like it's got its act together?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NzA4XLjRaM
Hi I'm up late working. What's happening internet.
Full story here.
Quite a triumph for iPython notebook. By publishing the notebook along with a paper, scientists give others the ability to reproduce their work immediately. This is quite...amazing.
'Next actions' is one of the most important things that you can say in any endeavor.
Amazing new interactive math editor for iPad, iPhone, and Mac (http://calca.io). The same guy also makes iCircuit (http://icircuitapp.com), a circuit simulator app for engineers and enthusiasts. Great great example of someone building a quality app, targeting a specific market, and making a viable app business out of it.
Green party politician Malte Spitz sued to have German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom hand over six months of his phone data that he then made available to ZEIT ONLINE. We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet.
By pushing the play button, you will set off on a trip through Malte Spitz's life. The speed controller allows you to adjust how fast you travel, the pause button will let you stop at interesting points. In addition, a calendar at the bottom shows when he was in a particular location and can be used to jump to a specific time period.
Turns out it's a lot. Full story here.
Amazing article on Obama's reelection big data operation over at the New York Times.
As the denizens of the cave were setting out to do that, the digital-analytics team, led by Rayid Ghani, a 35-year-old research scientist from Accenture Labs, developed an idea: Why not try sifting through self-described supporters’ Facebook pages in search of friends who might be on the campaign’s list of the most persuadable voters? Then the campaign could ask the self-identified supporters to bring their undecided friends along. The technique, as they saw it, could also get supporters to urge friends to register to vote, to vote early or to volunteer and donate.
Amazing pair of folks which I read about at The Verge here giving thoughtful examination to UIs from science fiction. Do check it out here.
"to our knowledge, this is the first time that a life may have been saved with the use of a sUAS (small Unmanned Aerial System) helicopter."
In preparation for the IAMA, we initially added 30 dedicated servers (20%~ increase) just for the comment thread. This turned out not to be enough, so we added another 30 dedicated servers to the mix. At peak, we were transferring 48 MB per second of reddit to the internet.
Sebastian Thrun, famed Artificial Intelligence professor at Carnegie Mellon, and now head of the Google Glass project (among other things) at Google, being interviewed on Charlie Rose. Topics include the state of Artificial Intelligence, what Google is getting at with the Glass project, and the future of education. Fascinating stuff.
"Access Main Computer File", a delightful site with stills of UIs appearing in movies over the years. Computer UI in film is almost always terrible, as it is inherently about how to make something not cinematic appear exciting to the viewer. Over the years, however, there are definite gems that inspire actual software engineers with the kernel of a great new idea.
And the minority report interface is a terrible user interface.
Interview with people on the street, from CNN Money.
Market research. Ain't no substitute.
Being able to use Skype on a holiday allows me to basically build a memory with my family that I couldn’t have otherwise.