This Week I Learned - Week #21 2025
This Week I Learned -
* Hosting local AI models on the web, via existing solutions based on WebNN or WebGPU, may require domain-specific AI/ML expertise and lead to high model download costs for users and developers (since models aren’t shared across domains). Microsoft has introduced experimental web APIs in Microsoft Edge that make it possible for web developers to integrate AI into their web applications. The Prompt API and Writing Assistance APIs - now available as developer previews in Edge Canary and Dev channels - give you access to a powerful small language model, Phi-4-mini, that is built into the Edge browser. Whether you’re trying out prompt engineering, summarizing and modifying content, or generating text, these APIs are designed to help you bring AI to your web code with a few lines of JavaScript.
* Devstral, an agentic LLM for software engineering tasks developed by Mistral AI and All Hands AI, is now available on Kaggle Models. Devstral is open-sourced under the Apache 2.0 license and supports a range of software engineering tasks, including codebase navigation and multi-file editing. The model has 24 billion parameters and fine tuned from Mistral-Small-3.1, therefore it has a long context window of up to 128k tokens.
* ChatGPT (is) not just as a data analyst, but as a psephologist -- or a data analyst that is domain-aware in almost all domains!
* Technology-based health interventions - FaceAge, the machine learning tool created by researchers at Mass General Brigham, found that study subjects with cancer appeared five years older than their chronological age. The biological age of people without cancer was typically close to their actual age. And those who were categorised as older were more likely to die, either from cancer or other causes. While biological aging can be accelerated by a number of factors, like stress, pregnancy, smoking, drinking alcohol and even extreme heat, some of these changes can be reversible.
* Experts in medical ethics have concerns...whether the tool might be used to justify denying insurance coverage or medical treatment. - NYT
* A Scrollytelling example - Can one earthquake trigger another on the other side of the world? by Will Chase
* Similar in spirit to how SQL provides a language for expressing database queries, Vega provides a declarative language for describing visualizations. Vega is not intended as a “replacement” for D3. D3 is intentionally a lower-level library. In addition to custom design, D3 is intended as a supporting layer for higher-level visualization tools. Vega is one such tool, and Vega uses D3 heavily within its implementation.
* The Vega editor is a web application for authoring and testing Vega and Vega-Lite visualizations.
* Hugo Blox is a free, open source, no-code website builder
* Tata Group’s flagship software services company, TCS, is investigating whether it was the entry point for a cyberattack on UK retailer Marks and Spencer. TCS has worked with M&S for over ten years, aims to finish the probe by the end of the month. The attack caused serious problems for M&S. The company was forced to shut down its online store for more than three weeks. M&S states that the problem was caused by human error, not a flaw in their systems or cyber defences. During the attack, at least two TCS employees’ M&S login details were used in the breach. TCS employs more than 6 lakh people.
M&S is a key store on the UK high street. In India, M&S works with Reliance Retail as a 51:49 joint venture. India is its biggest market outside the UK, with over 100 stores opened in the last 15 years.
* English is an official language in at least 55 countries.
* A gene called SHOX is known to be associated with height.
* Thomas Midgley Jr. (1889 – 1944) was an American mechanical and chemical engineer. He played a major role in developing leaded gasoline (tetraethyl lead) and some of the first chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Both products were later banned from common use due to their harmful impact on human health and the environment. Time magazine included both leaded gasoline and CFCs on its list of "The 50 Worst Inventions". Midgley was a "one-man environmental disaster". In 1941, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted polio and was left severely disabled.
* Purposewashing – building and getting funding for a business only for personal and corporate wealth, never caring about its impact on the lives of real people, but sliding in a purpose in the pitch deck to make it seem like it is for a cause – it is solving a problem, as they love to say while looking at the zeros on the prospective term sheet.
* Mental disintegration - The term was coined and popularized by Steve Waugh, who captained one of the most aggressive and successful Aussie sides. It is a form of psychological warfare used by players - most notably by the dominant Australian cricket teams of the 1990s and early 2000s - to rattle opponents mentally before, during, and even after a match. The idea was to break the concentration, confidence, or composure of the opponent through verbal taunts, aggressive body language, and relentless pressure.
Unlike crude abuse, this was often strategic sledging, calculated to exploit an opponent's mental vulnerabilities - especially useful against teams that were less confident or playing away from home.
Sample -
Mark Waugh to James Ormond (England) –
Waugh: “Mate, what are you doing out here? You’re not good enough to play Test cricket.”
Ormond: “Maybe not, but at least I’m the best player in my family.”
(A legendary comeback — since Mark’s brother Steve Waugh was the captain!)
* The presence of em dash (—) or long dash may suggest that text was written by an AI chatbot. Other giveaways like:
- Overly balanced sentence structures
- Unusual formality or unnatural phrasing
- Lack of contractions (e.g., “do not” instead of “don’t”)
- Overuse of synonyms to avoid repetition unnecessarily
- Uniformly “neat” formatting or generic tone
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