This Week I Learned - Week #13 2024

This Week I Learned - 

* DevDocs combines multiple API documentations in a fast, organized, and searchable interface. DevDocs works offline, on mobile, and can be installed as web app. DevDocs is free and open source.

* Playwright is a framework for Web Testing and Automation. It allows testing Chromium, Firefox and WebKit with a single API.

* Little guide to building Large Language Models in 2024 by Thomas Wolf 

* The development of advanced prompt engineering techniques and patterns has resulted in longer prompts for large language models (LLMs). These extended prompts can lead to increased API response latency, surpass the context window limits, and potentially cause higher API costs. LLMLingua utilizes a compact, well-trained language model (e.g., GPT2-small, LLaMA-7B) to identify and remove non-essential tokens in prompts. This approach enables efficient inference with large language models (LLMs), achieving up to 20x compression with minimal performance loss.

* Forrester evaluated 12 vendors against pre-defined criteria, assessing them on their current offerings and strategy. In addition to being named a Leader, Google received the highest possible score in 17 different evaluation criteria, including, but not limited to, Architecture, Ecosystem, Vision, Innovation, and Roadmap. Besides Google, AWS, Azure, NVIDIA & Dell are featured as Leaders in The Forrester Wave™: AI Infrastructure Solutions, Q1 2024 evaluation.

* OpenAI's Sora can generate cinema quality video with a text prompt.

* New safety features are being built into Azure AI Studio, a service powered by OpenAI that lets developers build customized AI assistants using their own data. The tools include “prompt shields,” which are designed to detect and block deliberate attempts — also known as prompt injection attacks or jailbreaks  — to make an AI model behave in an unintended way. Microsoft is also addressing “indirect prompt injections,” when hackers insert malicious instructions into the data a model is trained on and trick it into performing such unauthorized actions as stealing user information or hijacking a system. The new defenses are designed to spot suspicious inputs and block them in real time. Tell-tale signs of such attacks include asking a chatbot a question multiple times or prompts that describe role-playing. 

* Udacity will become part of Accenture.

* LTIMindtree currently company boasts revenues in excess of $4 billion, serving more than 700 clients in 30 countries, with a team of over 82,000 employees. 

* Florida Law bans social media for minors under 14. The legislation prohibits social-media accounts for some teens regardless of parental consent.

* A humorous take on popular industry terms -

"Technical debt": Move fast and don't fix things

"Agile development": Admitting you have no plan

"TDD": Guessing the future, one test at a time

"Open source": Asking someone else to fix it

"CI/CD": Automating your mistakes into production

"API": Asking someone else to do it

"DevOps": The belief that more tools fix any problem

"Microservices": Creating enough small problems to avoid one big one

"Cybersecurity": Playing hide and seek with hackers

"Serverless": Pretending servers don't exist until the bill comes

"Scrum": Group therapy for being behind schedule

* BlackBerry was a brand of smartphones and other related mobile services and devices. The line was originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company BlackBerry Limited (formerly known as Research In Motion, or RIM) from 1999 to 2016, after which it was licensed to various companies. BlackBerry was once well known for the keyboards on most of its devices and software services that ran through its own servers. At its peak in September 2011, there were 85 million BlackBerry subscribers worldwide. However, BlackBerry lost its dominant position in the market due to the success of the Android and iOS platforms. BlackBerry devices used a proprietary operating system—known as BlackBerry OS. In 2015, BlackBerry began releasing Android-based smartphones. The name BlackBerry was chosen out of about 40 potential names, because of the resemblance of the keyboard's buttons to that of the drupelets that compose the blackberry fruit. It gained the nickname "Crackberry" due to its seemingly addictive nature. Former United States president Barack Obama became known for his dependence on a BlackBerry device for communication during his 2008 Presidential campaign. Despite the security issues, he insisted on using it even after inauguration. This was seen by some as akin to a "celebrity endorsement", which marketing experts have estimated to be worth between $25 million and $50 million. At various stages of the company's history it suffered occasional service outages that have been referred to in the media as "embarrassing". Research in Motion agreed to give access to private communications to the governments of United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in 2010, and India in 2012. The Saudi and UAE governments had threatened to ban certain services because their law enforcement agencies could not decrypt messages between people of interest.  The docudrama film BlackBerry about the history of the BlackBerry brand was adapted from the book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry.

* In 1984, Doug Fregin and Mike Lazaridis founded Research In Motion. In 1992, after initially making overtures to buy the company, Jim Balsillie invested CA$125,000 (equivalent to $0.2 million in 2021) in Research In Motion (RIM) and joined as co-CEO with founder Mike Lazaridis. Both men prospered from the partnership: Lazaridis looked after the technological side and Balsillie looked after the sales, business and accounting side. Doug Fregin sold all his stock (valued at $1.3 billion) in Research In Motion around the same time Apple released the first iPhone. Many people considered that Balsillie infused RIM with "institutional arrogance". Balsillie commercialised 44,000 patents during his career at RIM, and claims he is "the largest commercial IP protagonist in the history of [Canada]." 

* Dr. Michael Talagrand is the winner of the Abel Prize - the Nobel for mathematicians for his work on "making random processes more predictable". From his biography on the Abel Prize website - "Talagrand’s mathematical style is atypical. He does not mind studying small problems as stepping stones to further significant discoveries. His playful approach to both life and science is also clear to be seen in the first statement on his web page: “Mathematics gives you wings”. Given this attitude, where hard work and pleasure seem to merge, it is hardly surprising that Talagrand is also a marathon runner and has travelled to more than a hundred countries with his family. At age five he lost an eye due to a genetic illness. Ten years later his other eye was at risk, and he missed school for six months. Because of his fear of going blind, he studied hard during this period, and thus discovered his talent for mathematics and physics.

* Researchers are witnessing more nighttime activity among numerous animals across the globe – alpine ibex in Europe, cheetahs in Africa and the white-lipped peccary (a cute pig-like creature) in South America – to escape extreme heat associated with climate change.  “Shifting activity towards nighttime may be a common strategy adopted by diurnal endotherms in response to global warming.” Who else is a diurnal endotherm? (meaning a warm-blooded animal active during daylight hours) You, me and the rest of humanity. For humans, giving up the daylight would also likely cause us some issues. Our internal body clocks are heavily influenced by light, regulating everything from sleep, temperature and hormones. Numerous studies have shown that working night shifts — permanently or on a rotating schedule — comes with a host of health problems, increasing the risk of diabetes, heart disease and even cancer. - Bloomberg

* Autism is a spectrum condition. This means it affects people in different ways with varying symptoms, level of functioning and challenges. Every autistic person has a different personality and set of abilities. Autistic people can experience increased sensitivity to light, touch, sound and taste. It is thought that around 1 in 100 people in the UK are autistic.

* Wound closure strips or butterfly strips are often referred to using the genericized trademark Steri-Strips, the brand name used by 3M's Nexcare. 

* Kelp forests are large underwater forests that cover about 25% of the earth’s coastline. As our climate changes, so do they.

* Acquihire means a company is acquired with the aim of acquiring its skilled personnel rather than its products or IP.

* In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. The concept is named after ultrasonic dog whistles, which are audible to dogs but not humans. In her 2006 book Voting for Jesus: Christianity and Politics in Australia, Amanda Lohrey writes that the goal of the dog-whistle is to appeal to the greatest possible number of electors while alienating the smallest possible number. She uses as an example politician choosing broadly appealing words such as "family values", which have extra resonance for Christians, while avoiding overt Christian moralizing that might be a turn-off for non-Christian voters.

* "You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." - Naguib Mahfouz