This Week I Learned - Week #8 2024

This Week I Learned - 

* Intuit's own Gen AI operating system orchestrates the large language model (LLM) activity across the entire company. GenOS is a full-blown operating system to support the responsible development of GenAI-powered features across its technology platform.

* Good data creates good models. Evaluating models based on what they contain and what answers they provide is critical. Anytime we look to implement GenAI features, we have to balance the size of the model with the costs of deploying and querying it. The criteria for an LLM in production revolve around cost, speed, and accuracy. Response times decrease roughly in line with a model’s size (measured by number of parameters).

* Model drift—where an LLM becomes less accurate over time as concepts shift in the real world—will affect the accuracy of results. The sweet spot for updates is doing it in a way that won’t cost too much and limit duplication of efforts from one version to another. Removing or updating existing LLMs is an active area of research, sometimes referred to as machine unlearning or concept erasure.

* You can also combine custom LLMs with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to provide domain-aware GenAI that cites its sources. This approach offers the best of both worlds. 

* Gemma is Google’s new family of open models built from the same research and technology used to create Gemini. The 2B and 7B versions are available today.

* Azure OpenAI On Your Data is now Generally Available (GA)

* Sora from OpenAI and Lumiere from Google, enabling text-to-video conversion. These models simulate the physical world in motion to produce realistic videos based on short user prompts.

* Indic-OCR is a collection of open source tools to enable OCRs in Indic Scripts. Indic-OCR tools use Tesseract and Olena for layout detection.

* Tesseract is an optical character recognition engine for various operating systems. It is free software, released under the Apache License. Originally developed by Hewlett-Packard as proprietary software in the 1980s, it was released as open source in 2005 and development was sponsored by Google in 2006. From 2006 until November 2018 it was developed by Google. Tesseract has unicode (UTF-8) support, and can recognize more than 100 languages "out of the box". Tesseract supports various image formats including PNG, JPEG and TIFF. Tesseract supports various output formats: plain text, hOCR (HTML), PDF, invisible-text-only PDF, TSV and ALTO. In many cases, in order to get better OCR results, you'll need to improve the quality of the image you are giving Tesseract. Tesseract can be trained to recognize other languages. This project does not include a GUI application. If you need one, there are 3rd Party tools.

* In 2015, the MIT License was the most popular software license on GitHub followed by GPLv2 & Apache license.

* Vivaldi is a proprietary freeware, cross-platform web browser with a built-in email client developed by Vivaldi Technologies, a company founded by Tatsuki Tomita and Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, who was the co-founder and CEO of Opera Software. Vivaldi was initially released on 27 January 2015. In December 2021, Vivaldi became the first web browser to be available for the Android Automotive operating system used in the Swedish electric vehicle manufacturer Polestar's Polestar 2. For safety purposes, the browser can only be used when the car is parked.

* Microsoft Technical Quest introduces gamification of Microsoft technologies. It is valuable for anyone hoping to expand their learning, and it complements Azure administrator and Azure architect courses and certifications. 

* A subreddit is a community or forum within the Reddit platform that focuses on a specific topic or theme. Subreddits are created and moderated by Reddit users, who establish rules and guidelines for the community.Subreddits are identified by a unique name that starts with "/r/" followed by the name of the community. For example, "/r/science" is a subreddit where you can  ask and answer thought-provoking questions. The rules for posting are very detailed. Rule 5 states that you should not ask loaded questions. It provides a detailed explanation of what constitutes a loaded question in the view of moderators -

* Rhetorical and loaded questions (in which you are asserting an opinion, bias, or leading respondents towards expressing a specific opinion) will be removed. AskReddit is not your soapbox, personal army, or advertising platform. Posts attempting to promote a specific agenda, to gain publicity, promote a cause or charity drive, or to publicly shame a person or entity will be removed. Posts asking users to shame or call out specific people or groups will be removed because they lead to witch-hunting rather than discussion.

* This isn't a place to recruit members for a cause, highlight an individual or entity for positive or negative publicity, or toot your own horn. Attempting to gain support for a movement, rig a contest, or form a vote brigade to other posts or comments on Reddit 

* Namma Yatri is a Direct-to-Driver app. It is built on open mobility platform and is 100% Open-Source and open data. Juspay owns the app. It has built and is operating the app for the drivers. It is built following the beckn open protocol. The vision is to build a sustainable long-term mobility solution that enables the service providers (drivers). Namma Yatri is not affiliated to any specific union and caters to all drivers irrespective of the affiliations. Namma Yatri stats can be viewed in real-time.

* According to the Bengaluru Traffic Police, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the most congested in Bengaluru. Many techies prefer to work from the office from Tuesdays to Thursdays for extended weekends so they can visit their native places. Bengaluru Traffic Police, which has a calendar of Indian holidays for traffic planning, is considering incorporating a schedule for US holidays too. - MoneyControl

* A list of cities that currently provide all or some of its public transport for free. 

* Gun ownership in the United States is legally protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. 

* In the U.S., about 400 million guns are circulating in private hands - NYT

* In 2023, there are a projected 243.4 million licensed drivers in the United States, which includes 89% of US adults. 

* Extreme weather is forcing animal refuges across the country to relocate. - NYT

*  Niue, a South Pacific island, gave away its internet domain (.nu) to an American businessman in the 1990s in exchange for World Wide Web access. "Nu" means "now" in Nordic languages, making .nu valuable as thousands of Scandinavians registered websites.  Niue has been fighting for decades to reclaim it, calling it "digital colonialism" and crucial for their identity. 

* The phrase "some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall" suggests that success or failure in life can be influenced by both virtuous actions and sinful behavior. It implies that individuals may achieve success through unscrupulous means (sin) while others may face downfall despite their virtuous actions. This perspective highlights the complexity and unpredictability of life, where outcomes are not solely determined by morality.

* "Trying to be a man is a waste of a woman" - Kate Reddy (the character Sarah Jessica Parker plays), "I Don't Know How She Does It" (2011)

* "Revenge is never a straight line. It's a forest, And like a forest it's easy to lose your way... To get lost... To forget where you came in." - Hattori Hanzo, Kill Bill: Vol. 1