Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

This Week I Learned - * The hottest new programming language is English -  Andrej Karpathy. Jan 25, 2023 * The  Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps  list by Andreessen Horowitz is updated every 6 months * Claude's Artifacts feature allows developers to make architecture diagrams from codebases * All the useful software architecture tools at one place. * All graphs are charts, but not all charts are graphs . While graphs focus on the mathematical relationship between variables, charts can present data in a more general way, such as through diagrams or tables. * Observable is a platform from the creators of D3 that simplifies building and deploying powerful data dashboards. Observable offers two ways of working: you can build data apps using the open-source Observable Framework to deploy to Observable, or you can work in notebooks. Framework combines the power of JavaScript on the front-end for interactive graphics, with any language on the back-end for data prep...

The 22-page free ebook " A Beginner's Guide to Data & Analytics " from Harvard Business School Online offers essential definitions and practical advice for those looking to learn more about the field. * Data science is the process of building, cleaning, and structuring datasets to analyze and extract meaning.  * Data analytics refers to the process and practice of analyzing data to answer questions, extract insights, and identify trends * Types of Analytics: Descriptive analytics looks at data to examine, understand, and describe something that’s already happened. Diagnostic analytics goes deeper than descriptive analytics by seeking to understand the “why” behind what happened. Predictive analytics relies on historical data, past trends, and assumptions to answer questions about what will happen in the future. Prescriptive analytics identifies specific actions an individual or organization should take to reach future targets or goals * Data literacy is the ability to...

Key takeaways from Episode #20 - Visualizations in Excel of Bill Shander's Data Visualization, Data Storytelling, and Information Design - Lesson and Listen Series : Excel has improved over time, particularly with default settings, but still requires customization for optimal data visualization. Excel tips from the episode: Use color sparingly.  Highlight key data with selective use of color. Customize fonts, colors, and chart types to move beyond Excel's defaults, making the visuals more impactful. Be familiar with Copy > Paste Special > Transpose. Utilize Power Query for data transformation.  In the interview section, Stephanie Evergreen , author of  Effective Data Visualization  & co-creator of the Data Visualization Checklist , shares her insights on Excel as a data viz tool. She showcases a breast cancer data visualization makeover , emphasizing the impact of thoughtful chart choices on storytelling. Overlapping bar chart is appropriate for graphing ...

The 18th-century British polymath, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), the discoverer of oxygen, pioneered the first timeline charts in 1765, using individual bars to visualize a person's lifespan and compare multiple lifespans. These timelines became commercially successful and widely popular, going through numerous editions. A Chart of Biography  (click for enlarged view or check higher resolutions ) The Chart of Biography covers a vast timespan, from 1200 BC to 1800 AD, and includes two thousand names. Priestley organized his list into six categories: Statesman and Warriors; Divines and Metaphysicians; Mathematicians and Physicians (natural philosophers were placed here); Poets and Artists; Orators and Critics (prose fiction authors were placed here); and Historians and Antiquarians (lawyers were placed here). Priestley's "principle of selection" was fame, not merit; therefore, as he mentions, the chart is a reflection of current opinion. The Chart of Biography & A ...

Key takeaways from Episode #24 - Visualizing Health and Healthcare Data  of Bill Shander's Data Visualization, Data Storytelling, and Information Design - Lesson and Listen Series : Data visualization principles apply across industries, but domain expertise is crucial for effective communication. Healthcare data requires domain knowledge to ensure accuracy and helpfulness. Domain expertise is essential in healthcare data visualization due to its complexity and nuances. There are no homogeneous audiences, and healthcare data often involves multiple groups with competing points of view. Healthcare data often has life-and-death consequences, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Proper scaling (linear vs. logarithmic) and clear communication of concepts (e.g., efficacy vs. effectiveness) are critical in healthcare data visualization. In the Listen section of the episode, Kathy Rowell, author of "Visualizing Health and Healthcare Data," shares insights on how to visualize hea...

This Week I Learned -   * DuckDB is a  fast in-process analytical database. Data stored in the DuckDB takes less memory than there file format equivalent (CSV, JSON, etc …) * Created in 2018,  DuckDB  supports various data formats and sources, offering a real analytics database with a SQL dialect. It simplifies and speeds up data analytics without the need for extensive infrastructure.  * The free Data Wrangler extension offers data viewing and cleaning directly in VS Code and the Jupyter extension. It provides a rich UI to view and analyze your data, show visualizations, automatically generate Pandas code. * Amazon hired most of the staff of agentic-AI specialist Adept AI in a move that echoes Microsoft’s absorption of Inflection. Google similarly has hired Character.AI’s co-founders and other employees and paid an undisclosed sum for nonexclusive rights to use Character.AI’s technology. * Character.AI builds chatbots that mimic personalities from his...

Mistral AI is a French research lab building open source models. It has released model weights under a range of licenses while exploring alternative architectures such as mixture-of-experts and mamba.  It also offers closed models that are larger and/or built for specialized tasks like code generation and image processing. It provides three types of models : generalist, specialized, and research Mistral AI APIs offer: Text generation with streaming capabilities Code generation, including fill-in-the-middle and completion Embeddings for RAG applications Function calling to connect models with external tools Fine-tuning for customized and specialized models JSON mode for structured output Guardrailing to enforce system-level policies To evaluate which Mistral AI model is right for your scenario, check their  features, performance, speed , and cost details.  Mistral AI API provides access to its Completion and Fine-tuning APIs through a Free Trial, with certain limitations...

Key takeaways from episode 23  Making Decisions with Data Visualization  of Bill Shander's Data Visualization, Data Storytelling, and Information Design - Lesson and Listen Series : Data visualization is crucial for enabling decision-making, as raw data can be boring and difficult to interpret. Understand the decision that needs to be made. Know what questions need answering Understand the data and its meaning in context . Know what your data is saying. The clearer you define questions, the more likely you'll gather and share data that helps your audience make the best decisions. Knowing the data and its relevance to the decision-making process is crucial, going beyond simply locating and calculating KPIs. Visualizations help to identify patterns and trends that may not be apparent in raw data, aiding in better decision-making. Creating visualizations is a consultative process The Listen part of the episode has an interview with Steve Wexler, an expert in data visualizati...

Choosing the right smartwatch isn't just about its features. Don't just look at the hardware. The app that controls it matters too!  If you're considering buying a (non-Apple) smartwatch, it's important to evaluate the quality of the app that controls it. Image source: Google Play Store In addition to the watch's features, it's crucial to understand how the supporting Android app handles your data. I've compiled key details from the smartwatch app profiles on the Google Play Store for the smartwatch brands available in India, as of 7th August 2024 . The chart I created showcases this data, highlighting the most downloaded app from each smartwatch brand. Note that some smartwatch brands produce multiple model series, each of which may have a corresponding app. Based on download numbers, Samsung Galaxy Wearable app , and by extension, Samsung Galaxy Watch , emerges as leading contender in the smartwatch market, reflecting its strong global brand recognition. G...

Author of "The Software Architect Elevator", Gregor Hohpe's reflections on what it actually means to be an architect : Architects aren't the smartest people in the team. They make everyone else smarter. Architects are IQ amplifiers Architects are like the elevator, connecting different levels of the organization "The value of a modern architect is measured by how many floors they can cover." Architects help bridge the disconnect between the people who build things and the folks who make the strategy Architects understand a lot about how organizations work. Architects create alignment across teams and stakeholders. Architects understand layering and its pros and cons Architects understand that the world is not slow-changing, and that layering works well if something is slow-moving Architects understand that the organizational system and the technical system have a lot of similarity Architects use metaphors to invite their audience into the thought process ...

This Week I Learned -  * Anthropic is introducing prompt caching in the application programming interface (API) to its Claude family of generative AI models, which will allow developers to save frequently used prompts between API calls. * Elon Musk’s xAI has released Grok-2 and Grok-2 mini, its latest large language models. * GPTs are specialized versions of ChatGPT, each designed to excel in a specific task.  * The Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence startup, Sarvam AI, founded by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, has launched Sarvam 2B. This open-source large language model, with two billion parameters, is specifically tailored for Indian languages. Sarvam 2B is a 2 Billion parameter Indian language open source LLM based on 4 Trillion tokens built from the ground up. At just a fraction of the size of models like GPT-4, and at a fraction of its cost, Sarvam 2B promises to deliver superior performance on Indian language tasks like translation, transliteration, and su...

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Bill Shander's Data Visualization, Data Storytelling, and Information Design - Lesson and Listen Series on LinkedIn Learning combines teaching with interviews to explore themes from various perspectives.  The series aims to make data storytelling accessible to everyone, especially those who don't consider themselves data experts.  Shander emphasizes the importance of improving data literacy, given the prevalence of misleading or poorly presented data. He critiques the current data visualization community for being too insular and highlights the need for more content that helps the general public understand and create effective data visualizations. It currently has the following episodes - Creative and Unique Visualizations Truth in Data Storytelling and Visualization Visualization in the Real World Data Storytelling for Regular Folks Historical Visualizations Visualizing Large Data Sets Unicorns Text Analysis and Visualization Maps Visualization for a Cause It's All in the...

This Week I Learned -  *  Learning Roadmap for Gen AI developers   * Jonathan Ross, the visionary behind Groq, was instrumental in the creation of Google’s groundbreaking Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). Initially a 20% side project with a single colleague, Ross’s work on the TPU eventually evolved into the core of this specialized machine learning accelerator. The power of this custom chip was on full display when Google’s AlphaGo AI sensationally defeated South Korean Go master Lee Se-dol. * "If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything." - Ronald Coase * "Part of storytelling and songs is to explore ideas and allow certain feelings or emotions to come to the forefront because they exist in all of us." - Vince Vaughn * Ads and digital content that mix words in Indian languages and English including transliterations in English are becoming a thing Interestingly, AI assistants can also understand some Indian languages when you type the native words ...

If you frequently use AI assistants and are amazed by the near-magical abilities of LLMs , you can take it a step further by exploring how to use them programmatically. Here's a beginner-friendly sample in Python that utilizes the AI21 API to generate responses from its Jamba Instruct model. AI21 Labs offers a Free Trial with $10 credits for 3 months. No credit card is needed . You don’t even need a local development setup to get started. You can use Google Colaboratory (Colab) , a hosted Jupyter Notebook service that requires no setup and offers free access to computing resources, including GPUs and TPUs. At a high level, we'll follow the below steps - Install AI21 Python SDK Obtain your API key by logging in and visiting  this link Initialize the AI21 client using your API key Send your query to the AI21 Jamba Instruct model Print the generated response To install the ai21 package to work with AI21 Studio models , use pip to install the ai21 library -  !pip install ai...

Firefox offers a way to download multiple images at once through the Tools menu option. Steps to follow in Firefox desktop browser in Windows: Use the Ctrl + I keyboard shortcut directly to bring up the Page Info dialog box or  use Alt+T to invoke the Tools menu and the select Page Info .  In the "Page Info" window, switch to the "Media" tab. Select the images you want to download by holding the Ctrl key while clicking or click on the Select All button. Hit the "Save As" button to download all images at once into a folder of your choice. Chrome and Edge lack a similar GUI option, but images can potentially be downloaded using JavaScript in the Developer Tools Console tab.

ASCI Academy and Parallel have identified 12 deceptive practices in leading Indian apps. Their 39-page report, " Study of Deceptive Patterns in Top Indian Apps [^PDF] " published in August 2024, presents a comprehensive analysis of the research on 53 popular Indian apps, offering key insights and detailing the methodology used. They have also created a website, Conscious Products , as a resource for makers to build digital products ethically.  The 12 Deceptive Patterns in brief with examples from the report -  Privacy Deception - Tricking users into oversharing personal data Interface Interference - Misleading users with selective interface information Nagging - Persistent pop-ups disrupting user tasks Drip Pricing - Gradually revealing additional costs during purchase Trick Question - Confusing language to misdirect user actions Forced Action - Requiring unwanted actions to proceed Basket Sneaking - Adding items to cart without consent False Urgency - Creating fake time or s...

This Week I Learned -  *  A list of free APIs * The Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub offers free access to top-tier AI models via Azure, such as OpenAI GPT-4, along with up to $150,000 in Azure credits. It also provides personalized guidance from Microsoft specialists and numerous other benefits. The program is accessible to anyone with an idea, without the necessity for funding. Perplexity AI is one of the benefactors of this program * Blackbox AI can generate summaries for up to one-hour-long videos using just a link.  * ChatGPT sports a 'thumbs down' feature for feedback, yet it seems to strut without a 'like' button, almost as if it's certain all its replies are applause-worthy. * ChatGPT is now more expressive about what it is doing while generating a response. The screenshot below seems to indicate that an interest in the Telugu language and culture has been noted, and future responses may be contextualized accordingly. * In FY24, Hyun Shik Park, the Chief...

Sridhar is a household name in the Telugu-speaking states and among the Telugu diaspora, renowned for his cartoons in the Eenadu Telugu daily newspaper, which he has been drawing for over 42 years. He has also written over 500 articles. Sridhar's iconic cartoon series "Idi Sangati" is often regarded as the Telugu counterpart to R.K. Laxman's legendary "You Said It" in The Times of India, sharing a similar wit, satire, and enduring popularity. He had a strong rapport with the publisher and media mogul Ramoji Rao, who made an exception for him regarding his retirement age and asked him to continue as long he liked. Sridhar is a very private person. In a rare interview following his retirement, he revealed that he worked for the first 13 years of his career without taking a single holiday. He started working in Eenadu from 1981.  Humble & soft-spoken yet strongly opinionated, Sridhar respectfully declined the Padma Shri award nomination from Chandrababu Nai...