Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

This Week I Learned -  *  Cursor is a fork of VS Code . As a standalone application (and not an extension), Cursor has more control over the UI of the editor, enabling greater AI integration. Regardless of whether you use the free, pro or business version of Cursor , all generated code is yours and free to be used however you like, including commercially.  * Llama 3.2 is Meta’s newest release of vision and text models that fit on edge devices, enabling developers to build more private and personalized AI experiences. It includes small and medium-sized vision LLMs (11B and 90B) and lightweight, text-only models (1B and 3B) that support image reasoning and on-device use cases. * OpenAI's new family of AI models titled o1-preview are being trained via reinforcement learning and 'chain of thought' in order to answer queries. o1-preview is optimized for solving math and science problems, writing code, and solving word problems, with its expert reasoning and analysis. It excels i

Key points for Episode #54.  Data Analytics of Data Storytelling, and Information Design - Lesson and Listen Series : Data analytics is like learning a language. To communicate effectively through data, one needs to understand both the "vocabulary" (data types and charts) and the "grammar" (how to interpret and present data visually). Data analytics is the vocabulary and grammar of data. Understanding data analytics is crucial for effective data communication.  Data analytics is a skill that can be learned and is accessible to everyone, regardless of their background. Data visualization is essential not just for reporting but for understanding data during the analytical process.  Creating visualizations while working with data helps identify trends, errors, and insights. According to Robin Hunt, a LinkedIn Learning instructor and co-founder of Think Data Solutions, essential skills for anyone working with data include: Advanced Excel Skills: Even regular users can

The Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MOSPI) uses Flourish Studio to create & publish its public data visualizations . Sample - A  Line chart race showing  Quarterly Gross Value Added by Different Economic Sectors (in Rs. Crore) (Current/Constant Prices) (Base Year: 2011-12)

This Week I Learned -  * AlloyDB is an object-relational database. It is a fully-managed database system that is a fork from PostgreSQL created by Google Cloud.  *  AlloyDB Omni is a downloadable database software package that lets you deploy a streamlined edition of AlloyDB for PostgreSQL in your own computing environment. The portability of AlloyDB Omni lets it run in a wide variety of environments, including the following: Data centers. Laptops. Cloud-based VM instances. AlloyDB Omni does not include AlloyDB features that rely on operation within Google Cloud.  * AlloyDB provides a function that lets you translate text into a vector embedding. You can then store that embedding in your database as vector data, and optionally use pgvector functions to base queries on it. * AlloyDB AI is a suite of features included with AlloyDB for PostgreSQL that let you apply the semantic and predictive power of machine learning (ML) models to your data. *  LLM's are often sycophantic toward th

Mainframes are fueling approximately 70% of the world's economy in terms of global transactions. The IBM System/360, the first modern mainframe, was introduced in April 1964, and despite the evolution of computers since then, mainframes remain the backbone of critical applications in banks, airlines, government, and retail. Mainframes are known for their resilience, security, uptime, and processing capacity, with 70-80% of the world's transaction data and 70-90% of credit card transactions still relying on them. IBM zSystems is a family name that's used by IBM for all of its z/Architecture mainframe computers, beginning with the z900 released in 2000 to the IBM z16 released in May 2022. (The "z" stands for "zero downtime," which reflects the reliability of the system.)  IBM Z mainframes run on z/OS, Linux and z/TPF, with multiple operating systems (OS) often running on a single mainframe. IBM z16 was launched in May 2022 They can process over 1 million t

In Episode #19 : Color of  Data Visualization, Data Storytelling, and Information Design - Lesson and Listen Series , insights on color in data visualization are shared, featuring  Rob Simmon , a senior data visualization engineer at Planet Labs, known for creating "Blue Marble 2012", the famous image of the western hemisphere used as the default iPhone wallpaper in 2007. Courtesy: NASA During his time at NASA's Earth Sciences division, his role was to turn satellite data into pictures that were both usable and in an understandable form. Episode Highlights - - Color is a complex and challenging aspect of data visualization, but it can be mastered with patience and practice. - Use as little color as possible to avoid distraction. Focus on one data point or cluster and use color to draw attention to it.  Often, it's better to use shades of gray and highlight key data points with color. - Stick to your brand colors, as they are likely a well-researched and effective comb

This Week I Learned - *  Val Town is a social platform for writing and deploying JavaScript directly from your browser. You can create APIs and schedule functions, email yourself, and persist data. It offers a free tier * The Brave Browser is built on the open-source Chromium Web core and its own client code is released under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. *  In the last few weeks, AI coding really took off . Cursor, Cody, Replit Agents are FAR better than GitHub Copilot. *  Enterprise use cases that Pixtral 12B, the first-ever multimodal Mistral model can handle : 1. Image captioning 2. Image-to-Text Transcription (OCR) including Transcription of scientific content 3. Data Extraction and Processing 4. Analysis of complex images 5. Personal Assistants (visual assistance) 6. Information Extraction 7. Reasoning over input images * Users everywhere can view archived versions of webpages directly through Google Search, with a simple link to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. To acce

Imagine a country with a population equivalent to the entire United States in 2024. That was India in 1947, with approximately 344.9 million people. Fast-forward to today, and India's population has ballooned to over 1.4 billion, surpassing China's in 2023. China introduced its one-child policy in September 1980. The policy led to an aging population and a skewed sex ratio (due to preference for male children), prompting China to shift to a two-child policy in 2016 and a three-child policy in 2021. Source -  Our World In Data While China's population was substantially greater than India's in 1980, India has experienced a remarkable population boom in the last decade. In a stunning demographic reversal, India has now surpassed China as the world's most populous nation. from a  Flourish  animated bar chart The urban population of India is expected to grow at a faster rate than other major countries, with a projected annual growth rate of 2.5%, compared to 1.5% in Chin

Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for crowd-sourced scientific research. It brings together research organizations and volunteers to drive impactful results. Many Zooniverse projects have led to published research papers and have contributed open-source datasets for broader use. The ClimateViz project , launched by the University of Oxford's Engineering Science Department on Zooniverse, aims to combat climate misinformation by translating complex climate science graphics into clear textual interpretations.  The project's goal is to extract information from climate graphics, transforming them into detailed descriptions to support scientific communication and foster informed public dialogue.  By involving participants, ClimateViz builds a robust dataset that enhances public knowledge and aids in developing an automated fact-checking system.  This initiative empowers the public to understand climate science, combats misinformation, and contributes to a

Highlights of Episode #27 - Chartjunk of Bill Shander's Data Visualization, Data Storytelling, and Information Design - Lesson and Listen Series : Edward Tufte, a prominent figure in data visualization, popularized the field for a business audience and coined terms like data-ink ratio, small multiples, and sparklines. He coined the term chartjunk to refer to unnecessary embellishments in charts that distract from the data. Tufte's data-ink ratio concept promoted minimalism in data visualization, which became a widely accepted best practice. There is a school of thought that believes reducing distraction boosts visual impact. Tufte identified three types of Chartjunk: unintentional optical art, excessive gridlines, and overly stylized designs that obscure data rather than enhance it. Nigel Holmes, a celebrated graphic designer, was criticized by Tufte for his work at Time Magazine, which featured embellishments. A 2010 study found that chart junk doesn't harm the integrity

In Episode #33 - Data Visualization Community of  Data Visualization, Data Storytelling, and Information Design - Lesson and Listen Series , Bill Shander highlights the importance of community in learning data visualization, acknowledging that while they didn't have formal training, they learned from the broader data visualization community. - Bill recommends various resources for data visualization, including: Books: There are many and Bill has shared a list of books that he has found useful and inspiring : Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan, 2014, 304 pages Factfulness by Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling, and Ola Rosling, 2018, 352 pages Now You See It by Stephen Few, 2021, 301 pages The Functional Art by Alberto Cairo, 2012, 384 pages Storytelling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, 2015, 288 pages Information Visualization: Perception for Design by Colin Ware, 2020, 560 pages Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations by Scott Berinato

Harsh Dattani's ~60-minute walkthrough of Google AI Studio during the workshop " Build AI Apps using Google AI Studio & Gemini AI " provides all the essentials you need to get started. Topics covered: Google AI Studio -browser-based IDE for prototyping with generative models Gemini AI - lets you access the latest generative models from Google API key - prerequisite for building apps with Gemini AI Prompt engineering Prompt Gallery  - examples of what's possible with Gemini models Fine tuning  - provides a mechanism for curating output when you have a small dataset of input/output examples System Instructions - for developers to manage prompts  idx.dev - cloud-based IDE for building Web, Android apps Focus of the workshop is on the inner loop of software development Google AI Studio provides several interfaces for prompts that are designed for different use cases Google AI Studio is a good starting point for beginners and small-scale projects, while Vertex AI St

Image generated by AI * "AI is comparable in scale to the Industrial Revolution or electricity, or even the wheel". - Geoffrey Hinton, Godfather of Deep Learning * "The hottest new programming language is English" -  Andrej Karpathy * "Treat AI assistants as a slightly-drunk knowledgeable friend" - Richard Seroter * "No matter how valuable your skills are in the market today, they may or may not be highly valued by the market over the course of your lifetime. With artificial intelligence (AI) threatening to devalue entire categories of human work, we need to be more purposeful in recognizing a key distinction: the market value of a set of skills is not the same as its human value.  ...the US has become a service economy.  Many people still don’t recognize caregiving, for example — whether for the very young or very old — as a particularly skilled profession. This is mistaken. Anyone who has ever had a teacher who changed the course of their life simpl

This Week I Learned -  *  Decision tree for Azure Compute Selection in 2018 & 2024 [Image Credit: Microsoft] *  I think EA (and in fact all computing since the very beginning of computing) has always been about “Digital Transformation”.  -  Gideon Slifkin *  How many EAs does it take to change a light bulb ?  None, that's implementation. "EA: We herd the cats to develop the plans."  *  AI is the coming together of two forces that have become more powerful over the last few decades. The first is increasing (and cheaper) computing power, often coming into smaller and smaller packages; our phones are now computationally more powerful than the very first personal computers. The second is the cumulation of data, both quantitative and qualitative, especially with social media accelerating personal data sharing. *  The threat to your job or profession, from AI, will be greater if your job is mostly mechanical, rule-based and objective, and less if it is intuitive, princip

Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming: With GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT  by Leo Porter and Daniel Zingaro is one of the best programming books I’ve read. Written by experienced educators, the book stands out for its unique structure and presentation, effectively guiding readers on how to learn programming with the help of AI assistants like GitHub Copilot. This groundbreaking book sets a new standard for tech books, showing how programming skills can be taught while leveraging AI tools.  I had the privilege of participating in the beta review of this book by Manning in 2023, and I’m thrilled to have now read the complete version and put it to use. As a web developer with experience in JavaScript and C#, I appreciated the book's fresh approach to leveraging an AI Assistant and recognizing the advantages of Generative AI for coding. The authors of the book state at the beginning that no prior programming experience is needed, and basic computer literacy is sufficient for readers to ge