Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

This Week I Learned -  * Skills Andrew Ng looks for while interviewing AI engineers: Use AI assistance to rapidly engineer software systems Use AI building blocks like prompting, RAG, evals, agentic workflows, and machine learning to build applications Prototype and iterate rapidly * The most productive programmers today are individuals who deeply understand computers, how to architect software, and how to make complex tradeoffs — and who additionally are familiar with cutting-edge AI tools.  * As users increasingly turn to chatbots as companions and counselors, they sometimes express a sycophantic attitude that may reinforce a user’s subjective perspective or even delusional perceptions. * Keeping track of very long inputs remains a challenge for most LLMs, and processing more than 2 million tokens — the current limit of Google Gemini 2.5 Pro — is a wild frontier. - The Batch   * Khanmigo, an AI-powered tutoring program developed by Khan Academy. Based on GPT-4, the prog...

This Week I Learned -  * Google has launched the Gemini mobile app in India, offering support in English and nine Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. The app enables users to type, speak, or upload an image for assistance. For instance, taking a photo of a flat tire can provide instructions on how to fix it. Android users can access Gemini by downloading the app or opting in via Google Assistant, and activate it by corner swiping, pressing the power button on certain phones, or by saying "Hey Google." * Gemini Advanced, featuring a one million token context window, boasts the most extensive context capability among consumer chatbots globally. This feature enables it to process and comprehend a massive range of information, including documents as long as 1,500 pages, extensive email threads, and, potentially in the near future, hours of video content and large codebases. * Gemini Advanced has the capabilit...

The BioDigital Human is an interactive 3D software platform for visualizing anatomy, disease, and treatment. Often referred to as “Google Maps for the Human Body,” the BioDigital Human platform is a medically accurate, virtual map of the human body—composed of over 8,000 individually selectable anatomical structures, 600 simulated health conditions, and a toolkit to map and visualize data.  Sign up for free to access As someone interested in facial anatomy for purpose of art & science appreciation, I'm finding this website a great resource for self-study. I find it truly amazing that this resource makes it possible to view internal parts in 3D without going to med school and dissecting a human body.  This educational resource masterfully combines animation with easy-to-understand explanations of intricate subjects, making it an invaluable tool for lay-people and science enthusiasts seeking to explore and understand the human body. It has quizzes too to test you...

This Week I Learned -  *  clipboard.js is a lightweight JavaScript library (3KB gzipped) that simplifies copying text to the clipboard without relying on Flash or any bulky frameworks. It's a handy tool for web developers who want to enhance user experience when dealing with clipboard operations.  Part of a full drawing from  Generative AI in a Nutshell - how to survive and thrive in the age of AI * Aya is a new open-source, state-of-the-art, massively multilingual, generative large language model (LLM) and dataset from Cohere. This model built by 3,000+ independent researchers both outperforms existing open-source models and covers more than double the number of languages of existing models – 101 different languages. The model significantly expands coverage to more than 50 previously under-supported languages.  *  O’Reilly has created a GenAI policy for its experts to follow when leveraging GenAI in the creation of their own works. It expects authors an...

This Week I Learned -  * Cloud Foundry is an open-source platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for building, deploying, and operating 12-factor applications developed in various languages and frameworks. There are two forms of Cloud Foundry available to run on Azure : open-source Cloud Foundry (OSS CF) and Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF). OSS CF is an entirely open-source version of Cloud Foundry managed by the Cloud Foundry Foundation. Pivotal Cloud Foundry is an enterprise distribution of Cloud Foundry from Pivotal Software Inc. which is now acquired by VMware. It is now called Tanzu Application Service (TAS). VMware is transitioning from Cloud Foundry to Tanzu tools and nomenclature. * Free ebook -  Azure SQL Revealed: A Guide to the Cloud for SQL Server Professionals ;519 pages, 2021 *  Terraform Workshop slides *  OpenStack began as a joint project between Rackspace and NASA .   *  OpenStack is an open source platform that uses pooled virtual resources t...

Bill Gates has posted an interesting video on his site about his thoughts on vaccines The video presents facts through entertaining comic art with voice-over by Bill Also see: Software industry related comics