Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

The DataIsBeautiful SubReddit serves as a platform for users to share and exchange ideas on their data visualizations. The community actively engages in providing valuable feedback, which frequently offers fresh perspectives and stimulates critical thinking . To provide options for the question and related location related queries, Sophia Hodson  shared an interactive map she created using Plotly that provide data-driven responses . In order to address the query, " Where Should You Live and Travel Based on Your Ideal Weather? " along with other location-specific inquiries, Sophia Hodson developed an interactive Plotly-based map . This map offers data-backed recommendations. Some of the interesting points that came out of the discussions -  After members pointed out that considering plain average temperature is misleading, the Original Poster (OP) included options to consider average maximum temperatures and average minimum temperatures to provide a more accurate signal on t

This Week I Learned -  * AutoML tools not only empower people without machine learning expertise to build and use effective models but may also make ML methods available to everyone. *  Enterprise h2oGPTe is a language model that provides information retrieval on internal data, privately hosts LLMs, and secures data so it stays with you. * In case of Open Source h2oGPT , you own your models: generative and predictive.  * API keys for programmatic access are provided with usage limits * H2O LLM Studio provides organizations with a no-code fine-tuning framework to make their own custom state-of-the-art LLMs for enterprise applications. * H2O.ai created first Open Source AI for Enterprise, first .ai domain *  EvalGPT.ai  provides a customizable evaluation and validation framework that is model agnostic, allowing for the assessment of various AI models without being tied to a specific one. *  AI Comic Factory allows you to create comics using its AI Comic Generator. You can use AI Comi

As a self-taught nutrition enthusiast , I have been contributing to the crowdsourced India database of Open Food Facts - "the Wikipedia of food", by adding and editing products. The decentralized open source project has data on more than 3 million products (as of April 2024) from countries around the world. Open Food Facts (OFF) data is released as Open Data: it can be reused freely by anyone, under the Open Database License (ODBL).  I've been cleaning up & compiling the data by food categories to extract insights . There are multiple ways to get the data : CSV or Excel format using the advanced search feature MongoDB daily export - more than 30GB uncompressed! JSONL daily export CSV daily export API As I was interested in select product features and macronutrient details, I decided to use the OFF API. This is how the process for compiling data for each food category currently goes: 1. I construct the following URL with the fields I require to fetch the nutrition dat

In the TED talk, AI Is Turning into Something Totally New , Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman proposes that a more apt metaphor for AI is a new digital species .  I predict that we'll come to see them as digital companions, new partners in the journeys of all our lives. ...waves of history are clearly speeding up, as each one is amplified and accelerated by the last. And if you look back, it's clear that we are in the fastest and most consequential wave ever. The journeys of humanity and technology are now deeply intertwined.  ...today, the most advanced AIs consume more than eight trillion words in a single month of training. And all of this is set to continue.  ...just as the internet gave us the browser and the smartphone gave us apps, the cloud-based supercomputer is ushering in a new era of ubiquitous AIs. Everything will soon be represented by a conversational interface. Or, to put it another way, a personal AI. And these AIs will be infinitely knowledgeable, and soon the

This Week I Learned -  * Meta Llama 3 is out. Built on Meta Llama 3 is Meta AI , an intelligent assistant that is capable of complex reasoning, following instructions, visualizing ideas, and solving nuanced problems. *  How IBM trained Granite LLMs  (PDF, last updated April 4th, 2024, 19 pages) *  The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants  (PDF, April 2024, 274 pages) -  General-purpose foundation models are paving the way for increasingly advanced AI assistants. Capable of planning and performing a wide range of actions in line with a person’s aims, they could add immense value to people’s lives and to society, serving as creative partners, research analysts, educational tutors, life planners and more. * watsonx.ai supports Bring Your Own Model capability. *  There's An AI For That is an AI aggregator site (TAAFT) is the leading AI aggregator, with over 2 million monthly active users and the largest database of AI tools . *  Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis – A Case-Based

The AWS PartyRock app MindMap Party  by Mario M won first prize in the Freestyle Category of the AWS PartyRock Generative AI Hackathon that was hosted on DevPost. The app lets you visualize AI-generated content created in PartyRock. The LLM produces markdowns on a topic and simultaneously a link that renders the markdown as a mind map. A static HTML file  deployed separately, receives the payload in the link and uses JavaScript to create the mind map. It uses the open-source   Markmap  project to build mindmaps from text.  The app creates four mind maps with varying level of detail. Read more about it in the creator's article . I've highlighted the parts in the prompts targeting the Claude model that I found interesting - 1) As a renowned authority on <topic>[Topic] </topic>, your expertise and comprehensive knowledge of mind maps related to this area are unmatched. Your task is to craft a meticulously structured Markdown mind map that captures the essence of <

From record-breaking heatwaves to devastating hurricanes, extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common and intense. As the impacts of climate change become more pronounced, it's clear that our planet's weather patterns are undergoing significant shifts. These changes not only have profound implications for the natural world, but also for human societies. As we continue to grapple with the challenges of a changing climate, it's essential that we understand the interconnections between weather, ecology, and human society, and work towards sustainable solutions that prioritize the health and well-being of both people and the planet. Weather events in the news: April  2024 *  For the first time in the recorded history of Kerala, the India Meteorological Department has confirmed heatwaves in the State. Photo - The Hindu *  Extreme heatwaves in China follow floods in Pakistan because of an upper tropospheric pathway tied to the Asian summer monsoon system, according to

Over 7,600 registered on DevPost for the AWS PartyRock Generative AI Hackathon , a challenge for all builders to get hands-on making generative AI-powered apps with PartyRock, an Amazon Bedrock Playground. 1,446 projects were submitted under 5 categories during the period Jan 29 – Mar 11, 2024 that the contest was open. The winners - Overall Category 1st Place: Parable Rhythm - The Interactive Crime Thriller - $20,000 in AWS Credits 2nd Place: Faith - Manga Creation Tools - $10,000 in AWS Credits 3rd Place: Arghhhh! Zombie Interactive Learning Category 1st Place: DeBeat Coach - $4,000 USD in cash + $1,000 in AWS Credits 2nd Place: Asteroid Mining Assistant - $1,500 USD in cash + $1,000 in AWS Credits 3rd Place: Unlock Your Pet's Language - $500 USD in cash + $1,000 in AWS Credits Creative Assistants Category 1st Place: Faith - Manga Creation Tools - $4,000 USD in cash + $1,000 in AWS Credits 2nd Place: MovieCreator - $1,500 USD in cash + $1,000 in AWS Credits

This Week I Learned -  *  Anita is a private, no-server, powerful and fully customizable data management solution, open source and free of charge. Anita is a Progressive Web App (PWA). * Progressive Web App (PWA) combines some advantages of traditional web pages, such as easily loading on any platform, with the speed, reliability, and functionality of modern desktop and mobile apps. * The specific code needed to convert a web app to a PWA is often a built-in feature of frameworks and libraries. Angular has a specific package for PWAs (@angular/pwa), and so does Vue (@vue/cli-plugin-pwa) and the same can be achieved with React (for example with create-react-app). * Anita supports SQLite , which means you can save your data in a local database on your device from a Progressive Web App. This is achieved by using the FileSystemAccessAPI, so the user only needs to choose where to keep the database once, and then the PWA can perform all CRUD operations it needs, with some caveats. *  Y

Matt Turck and his team have identified 2,011 organizations that make up the 2024 "ML, AI & Data" (MAD) Landscape in their annual industry report. The report notes that  MAD (ML, AI & Data) ecosystem  has gone from niche and technical, to mainstream. Check the  PDF & interactive version of the 2024 MAD Landscape. The overall structure of the landscape has the following sections - Infrastructure Open Source Infrastructure Data Sources & APIs Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Analytics Applications - Enterprise Applications - Horizontal Applications - Industry Data & AI Consulting Also see -  Ecosystem Landscape Diagrams

  See more of my AI co-creations While starting to create this cartoon I asked my AI assistants if my one-liner was funny.  ChatGPT said - Yes, there's a hint of humor... Gemini: The humor depends on context and delivery, but it can be funny... Groq: Yes, this statement has the potential to be humorous... The joke relies on the unexpected twist of seeking validation from strangers and a machine, and it might not resonate with everyone. Pi: This statement can be humorous as it highlights the modern-day irony of seeking validation from online strangers, often at the expense of offline relationships. It pokes fun at the reliance on digital platforms and AI for social approval, a relatable phenomenon in today's world.

Paraphrased from an article by Karan Desai ( last Modified Feb 1, 2024 ) - If you are new to generative AI and want to learn the capabilities of what it can do, experiment with writing prompts and how it impacts the outputs generated by foundation models, all in a web UI without having to write any code - use AWS PartyRock If you want to build generative AI applications using various foundation models accessed via APIs, want the ability to enhance the results with your proprietary datasets, without doing the heavy-lifting of managing the underlying infrastructure - use Amazon Bedrock If you prefer to use your own foundation models, or models not offered on Amazon Bedrock, or want to control and customize the infrastructure such as type of compute and GPU for training and inference jobs of your generative AI applications - use Amazon SageMaker Source: AWS SageMaker documentation A bird's eye view of Gen AI products from the top Cloud providers -

This Week I Learned -  * The role adversity plays in tech innovation - "If IE6 had died faster, JavaScript would not be as big. We always had to patch things for it using JavaScript. CSS was held back by it and JavaScript was the way to get things working, instead of platform-native tech doing the job." -  Christian Heilmann   * Platform enabled Disaster recovery capabilities will no longer be available for Azure App Service web apps beginning 31 March 2025. Microsoft encourages subscribers to implement commonly used disaster recovery techniques to prevent loss of functionality or data for their web apps if there's a regional disaster. Backup and restore capabilities are included in Basic and higher pricing tiers. * " Chat With RTX " is a Windows-only application from NVIDIA that can scan local files the user points it to and provide the answer with context. Your private data stays on your PC. *  4-part video series for DP-600 exam prep from Microsoft Exam Read

SQLite is an in-process library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine.  SQLite is the  most widely deployed and used database engine . It is used by several of the top web browsers, operating systems, mobile phones, and other embedded systems. SQLite is an embedded SQL database engine. A complete SQL database with multiple tables, indices, triggers, and views, is contained in a single disk file. SQLite was designed to allow the program to be operated without installing a database management system or requiring a database administrator. SQLite database files are a recommended storage format by the US Library of Congress.  Richard Hipp  designed SQLite in the spring of 2000. He is the primary author of SQLite as well as the Fossil SCM . He continues to serve as the project architect for the SQLite project . SQLite implements most of the SQL-92 standard for SQL but lacks some features. SQLite is open-source, not open-contribu

As with the other Maven Analytics courses I have taken, the  Data Literacy Foundations  course offers a downloadable presentation deck for future reference and this one also had quizzes which I found very useful.  I especially liked how the instructor explained anti-patterns and how to progressively improve building a dashboard. Mistakes Fixed Key points from the 180-minute course: Data is one of the most valuable assets a business can own, but data literacy is what brings it to life Data literacy is about translating raw data into meaningful information, and using that information to inform data-driven decisions  Data analysis is about identifying actionable insights that can help inform decisions and impact real-world outcomes The goal of any analysis is to inspire action .  Data democratization describes the process of empowering employees throughout an organization with the access and resources they need to make data-driven decisions. Data democratization isn’t just about data