Living on the Edge (of a Park Bench)



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Mercurial Grok AI Assistant Understands & Speaks Indian Languages

Image
Grok , the AI model developed by Elon Musk's xAI, can understand when you type Indian languages like Hindi, Telugu, Odia or other Indian regional languages using English letters (like when you type 'namaste' instead of 'नमस्ते'), and it can respond by mixing English with those languages. Grok doesn't necessarily need the native script of these languages. It has natural language processing abilities that extend to multiple languages. This is great innovation because many people in India, especially in online communication, use transliteration. Grok can generate responses that combine English words and phrases with words and phrases from the regional language you used in your input. For example, if you ask a question using a mix of English and Telugu transliteration, Grok might respond with a sentence that includes both English and Telugu words. Check these Hindi, Telugu, Odiya samples - Grok, ab Hindi mein Grōk, ippuḍu telugulō Grok, Oḍiā re This way Grok is more...
Read more

This Week I Learned - Week 25 2026

Image
This Week I Learned -  * Vertex AI has been rebranded and evolved. Google officially replaced and expanded it under the name Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.  This change marks a major structural shift for Google Cloud, moving away from a traditional MLOps platform (focused on training and deploying standalone models) toward an "Agentic AI" ecosystem.   * Turkey based HubX Studios used Gemma 4 to build BetterSpeak, an AI English tutoring platform that uses the Gemma 4 E2B model as the reasoning engine for its on-device pipeline — enabling private, low-latency tutoring without the need for an internet connection. HubX deployed the 4-bit quantized version of the model to handle tasks like grammar explanations and progress monitoring across languages. By using Gemma 4’s native audio input capabilities, HubX’s app is able to support direct speech-to-speech learning , while reducing costs and ensuring privacy. * Midjourney, the AI lab best known for image generation...
Read more

Word Salad Done Right: The Riddle, Mental Madhilo, and the Genius of Musical Nonsense

Image
Some of the most beloved tracks in pop history are built on lyrics that, on paper, should be complete gibberish. Yet they somehow feel profound, catchy, and emotionally true. It’s remarkably similar to how modern AI strings together convincing words — fluent, rhythmic, and evocative, even when there’s no deeper literal meaning behind them. Two perfect examples are Nik Kershaw’s 1984 synth-pop earworm “The Riddle” and A.R. Rahman’s infectious “Mental Madhilo” (Telugu) / “Mental Manadhil” (Tamil) from the 2015 film OK Bangaram / O Kadhal Kanmani . Both prove that sometimes the less the words mean, the more they resonate. Nik Kershaw has been refreshingly honest for decades: “The Riddle” is deliberate nonsense. He scribbled the cryptic, vivid lines (“Near a tree by a river, there’s a hole in the ground / Where an old man of Aran goes around and around”) as a temporary guide vocal and never replaced them. The band loved the flow, the public turned it into a massive hit, and generations ha...
Read more