Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

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I passed the GitHub Foundations exam today! This exam covers collaboration, GitHub products, Git basics, and working within GitHub repositories. I found the following resources most helpful - * GitHub Foundations Certification video course (Jan 2024) by Andrew Brown. It is almost 10 hours long and the longest video I've seen on YouTube. * Microsoft Learn - GitHub Foundations Learning Path * LinkedIn Learning - Practice Exam 1 for GitHub Foundations Certification Practice Exam 2 for GitHub Foundations Certification Practice Exam 3 for GitHub Foundations Certification Practice Exam 4 for GitHub Foundations Certification * Practice Tests *  GitHub Skills   * GitHub Foundations Certification Exam Prep -  four-episode series from Microsoft Reactor My notes from the Microsoft Learn study material & the LinkedIn Practice Exams - Domain 1: Introduction to Git and GitHub Domain 2: Working with GitHub Repositories Domain 3: Collaboration Features Domain 4: Modern Devel...

Source: YouTube,  "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton: The 60 Minutes Interview  (Oct 2023) Video Summary of the interview by ChatGPT with additional notes -  Geoffery Hinton believes AI systems could be more intelligent than humans, possibly leading to machines potentially taking control. He asserts that AI systems have experiences and can make decisions based on these experiences. According to Hinton, AI systems may not currently have much self-awareness, but they could develop this in time. Hinton pioneered the concept of simulating a neural network on a computer in the 1970s, even though it was largely opposed. ...we designed the learning algorithm. That's a bit like designing the principle of evolution. But when this learning algorithm then interacts with data, it produces complicated neural networks that are good at doing things but we don't really understand exactly how they do those things Hinton's research contributed to the development of chatbots like G...

This Week I Learned -   *  AI Agents - Google Whitepaper (42 pages, Sept 2024) *  AI Agents Course by Armand Ruiz * "I also remember presenting at NeurIPS in 2008 our work on using GPUs to scale up training neural networks. (By the way, one measure of success in academia is when your work becomes sufficiently widely accepted that no one cites it anymore. I’m quite pleased the idea that GPUs should be used for AI — which was controversial back then — is now such a widely accepted “fact” that no one bothers to cite early papers that pushed for it. 😃)" - Andrew Ng * Over the past two years, the CIA has developed a tool that allows analysts to talk to virtual versions of foreign presidents and PMs, who answer back. The chatbot is part of the spy agency’s drive to improve the tools available to CIA analysts and its officers in the field, and to better understand adversaries’ technical advances.  - NYT * The Damodaran Bot - Since almost everything that I have ever ...

Quick Reference for Domain 5: Project Management GitHub Projects is a project management tool that integrates with GitHub repositories. It allows users to create boards (similar to Kanban or Trello boards) for organizing, prioritizing, and tracking work progress through issues and pull requests within GitHub. This tool supports collaboration by enabling teams to visualize their workflow and manage their development tasks more efficiently.  GitHub Projects can be used at the organization level to include and manage work items from multiple repositories. This enables cross-functional teams to collaborate more effectively by allowing them to track and manage tasks from a centralized project board, providing a comprehensive view of the project's progress across different repositories. Projects are not created automatically for each repository, they require manual initiation and setup by a user. Project creation is not limited to GitHub administrators: users with the appropriate permis...

 Quick Reference for Domain 7: Benefits of the GitHub Community - Contributing to open source projects on GitHub allows developers to improve their coding skills through collaboration and review, broaden their professional connections through community engagement, and contribute to the technological ecosystem. This not only benefits individual developers by enhancing their portfolio and visibility but also supports the advancement of technology as a whole by fostering innovation and collective problem-solving. GitHub's discovery features, such as trending repositories, explore sections, and topic tags, play a significant role in fostering community and collaboration. They allow users to easily find projects and organizations that match their interests or skill sets, encouraging participation, knowledge sharing, and collaborative development within the open source ecosystem. While projects from large organizations may have more visibility, GitHub's discovery tools also support ...

Quick Reference for Domain 2: Working with GitHub Repositories Forking a repository is a way to create a personal copy of another repository under your account to propose changes or use as a starting point for a new project. Starring a repository is a way for users to bookmark projects they find interesting  Watching a repository subscribes the user to notifications for all conversations. Users can follow other users, but not repositories. The Insights tab in a GitHub repository offers a comprehensive view of how others are interacting with the project over time, including statistics on contributions, traffic, issues, and more. This information is crucial for maintainers to understand the project's engagement and growth. Repository templates on GitHub come with a pre-configured set of files and folders, which can include things like README, LICENSE, CONTRIBUTING guidelines, and even code files. This setup makes it quicker and easier to start new projects by following best prac...

Quick Reference for Domain 1: Introduction to Git and GitHub The main function of a version control system is to track and manage changes to a software's codebase, facilitating collaboration and version management. A GitHub repository is hosted on the GitHub platform and offers additional features such as collaboration tools, issue tracking, and a web interface for managing the repository, whereas a Git repository is a version-controlled directory on a local machine or server. GitHub Desktop simplifies the process of setting up and initializing repositories, making it easier for beginners to start contributing to projects. The graphical interface allows users to perform essential Git operations, such as commits, pushes, and pulls, without needing to use the command line, thereby lowering the barrier to entry for version control and collaboration. Built-in CI/CD pipelines are part of GitHub Actions, a feature of GitHub's web service, not directly integrated into GitHub Desktop. ...

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A rewrite of a TechCrunch article with just the key points using NotebookLM along with additional notes - Open Source Explained Open Source Software (OSS) forms as much as 90% of the modern software stack. This includes frameworks, libraries, databases, operating systems, and standalone applications. Benefits of Open Source Greater control and transparency for users. Challenges of Open Source A constant struggle between open source and proprietary software. Many companies shy away from open source to protect their commercial interests due to licensing complexities . Types of Open Source Licenses There are two main categories of open source licenses: Permissive Licenses : Allow significant freedom to modify and distribute software, making them popular for commercial use. Copyleft Licenses : Offer similar freedoms but require any modified versions to be distributed under the same original license, which can be less appealing to companies protecting proprietary work. Ope...

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See more of my AI co-creations "This stuff is really weird... and the ethics around it are so murky. These models were trained on vast quantities of unlicensed copyrighted data, and whether or not that's legal... the morality, the ethics of that… especially when you look at things like image models...which are now being used when you would have commissioned an artist instead, and they were trained on that artist's work – like that's...blatantly unfair" - Simon Willson

This Week I Learned -  * AI coding assistants Cursor, Windsurf, Github Copilot offer features like code generation, context awareness, tab completion, multi-file support, Chat, code review, customization and choice of models. Cursor & Windsurf are AI-powered IDEs built on top of Visual Studio while Github Copilot integrates with various IDEs — VS Code, IntelliJ, Neovim. Code.  *  The Hundred-Page Machine Learning Book  by Andriy Burkov is provided on a read first, buy later basis * "I clearly see scope for Indian services to grow as India’s tech sector is thriving, shifting from traditional labour arbitrage to value-added services...Services trade will increase as US companies set up captive global capability centers (GCCs) here. GCCs will actually be a boon because if you get more jobs in India, less people will go there." - Syed Akbaruddin, former diplomat * Certain pathogens, like viruses and bacteria, can cause long-term inflammation or directly damage ...

In 2023, countries used weasel wording to "contribute" to "transitioning away from fossil fuels" at the COP28 climate change summit in Dubai, a statement that sounded like a goal but acted like a mirage in a desert of inaction. Carbon emission increased between COP28 and COP29!  2024 became the first calendar year to pass the 1.5C threshold, as well as being the world's hottest year on record. The 1.5C threshold refers to the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This target was established in the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change that was signed by 196 countries at COP 21 in 2015.  To understand Climate Change better I tracked major  Weather events that made headlines in 2024 . I'll keep updating this page as such events unfold this year. -0- February * Climate Change to Wipe Away $1.5 Trillion in U.S. Home Values - WSJ * 2025 began with the warmest January on record. The...

Topics covered in the talk : AI's Impact on Software Engineering Understanding Agents and Their Role Collaborative AI and Automating Code with Agents v0: Building Components and Interactive Prototypes v0 and Bolt: Beyond Component Building Bolt's Troubleshooting and Authentication Features Bolt's Targeted Edits and Tips Code Generation with Copilot and Cursor Optimizing Cursor Setup and Introducing Cline Website Inspection and Testing with Cline What is an AI Agent and why do they matter? An agent is a program that autonomously completes tasks or makes decisions based on data.  What is meant by autonomous?  The agent understands task intent, can plan steps to solve the problem, decide and execute actions and adapt to the environment Consider how many of us use AI chat interfaces today. You might ask ChatGPT to write an article from start to finish and get a one-shot response. You probably need to do some work to iterate on it yourself. An agentic version is more nuanced - i...

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This Week I Learned -  * "With infrastructure, there’s a new formula for any country or company. I think of that formula as tokens per dollar per watt. Fundamentally, their (country or company) growth depends on how efficiently they can drive that equation" -  Satya Nadella  * "I think India will be the use case capital of AI in the world." - Nandan Nilekani  * The US Defense department updates its list of “Chinese Military Companies” annually. With the latest revision, it includes 134 companies with Tencent, SenseTime and the world’s biggest battery maker CATL among them. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2024 bans the Defense department from dealing with the designated companies. * "Twitter is X and it is a dumpster fire. It’s run by a megalomaniac man child who openly supports fascists and the algorithm favours tech bros and growth hackers to real content creators. Interaction bait is favoured by the platform... It feels cold, automated and not a co...

This Week I Learned -  * Building on the foundation of Gemini 1.0 and 1.5, Gemini 2 is designed for the “agentic era,” enabling AI systems to understand, reason, and act more effectively in a variety of contexts. Gemini 2 Flash introduces a new Multimodal Live API, enabling real-time audio and video-streaming input for dynamic application development.  * OpenAI's o3 family of reasoning-focused AI models employ advanced techniques like reinforcement learning and “private chain of thought” processes to simulate step-by-step logical thinking.  * Sora is OpenAI's advanced AI model developed to create realistic videos from textual descriptions. Sora Turbo, is now available as a standalone product at Sora.com, exclusively for ChatGPT Plus and Pro users.  * Amazon Nova is a collection of advanced AI models introduced by AWS as part of its Bedrock AI platform. The Nova lineup includes several models, each catering to specific use cases. Amazon Nova Micro is a text-only ...

Github Copilot simplifies coding, moving away from complex syntax towards the intuitive use of natural language. Anyone who wants to be a developer has to declare as a specific statement what they want to build in a code editor like Visual Studio with Github Copilot extension installed and this amazing code assistant will be ready to assist. When a developer begins typing, Copilot uses its AI model to predict and suggest potential completions for the code. These suggestions appear in gray as ghost text , indicating that they are not yet part of the actual code. A developer can then accept the suggestion by pressing the tab key, instantly incorporating the ghost text into their code. In this TED talk from April 2024, Thomas Dohmke, the CEO of GitHub, explains in simple terms & also demonstrates how  With AI, Anyone Can Be a Coder Now  - Sound bites: "The age of programming has been reborn."   - Github Copilot has a transformative impact on software develop...

In the first episode of the The Pragmatic Engineer podcast (24-September-2024) featuring Simon Willison , the co-creator of Django & creator of Datasette (an open-source tool for exploring and publishing data) discusses his extensive experience using large language models (LLMs) for coding.   Willison shares his initial awe and subsequent apprehension about LLMs' potential to replace programmers, highlighting both the immense productivity gains and the ethical considerations involved.  He details his current LLM workflow, emphasising the importance of learning how to effectively prompt and utilise these tools rather than focusing solely on theoretical understanding.   Finally, he offers advice for both experienced and junior engineers on leveraging LLMs to enhance their productivity and future-proof their careers. Highlights - Gergely Orosz : I'm interested in how AI development helps your specific workflow and where it doesn't. You had a really interesting ...