Un indicatore pressoché perfetto della rapidità con cui i sistemi di intelligenza artificiale stanno crescendo è il consumo delle risorse di calcolo (usate per addestrare gli algoritmi, ad esempio). Studio molto interessante.

Money quote: "We’re releasing an analysis showing that since 2012, the amount of compute used in the largest AI training runs has been increasing exponentially with a 3.5 month-doubling time (by comparison, Moore’s Law had an 18-month doubling period). Since 2012, this metric has grown by more than 300,000x (an 18-month doubling period would yield only a 12x increase). Improvements in compute have been a key component of AI progress, so as long as this trend continues, it’s worth preparing for the implications of systems far outside today’s capabilities."

https://blog.openai.com/ai-and-compute/

La categoria-ombrello dell'intelligenza artificiale contiene tante cose diverse. In questo caso, il machine learning e le reti neurali. Una spiegazione ragionata ed esaustiva su come si proceda ad analizzare e risolvere una classe di problemi, in questo caso la classificazione di testi non strutturati (tweet, post su Facebook, email e altro) utili per delle cause legali.

Money quote: "Our goal was to address these two problems: a) deal with NLP problems where we don’t have masses of data and computational resources, and b) make NLP classification easier. As it turned out, we (Jeremy and Sebastian) had both been working on the exact field that would solve this: transfer learning. Transfer learning refers to the use of a model that has been trained to solve one problem (such as classifying images from Imagenet) as the basis to solve some other somewhat similar problem. One common way to do this is by fine-tuning the original model (such as classifying CT scans into cancerous or not—an application of transfer learning that Jeremy developed when he founded Enlitic). Because the fine-tuned model doesn’t have to learn from scratch, it can generally reach higher accuracy with much less data and computation time than models that don’t use transfer learning.

Very simple transfer learning using just a single layer of weights (known as embeddings) has been extremely popular for some years, such as the word2vec embeddings from Google. However, full neural networks in practice contain many layers, so only using transfer learning for a single layer was clearly just scratching the surface of what’s possible."

http://nlp.fast.ai/classification/2018/05/15/introducting-ulmfit.html

A New York ci sono le aste all’incanto di licenze per taxi andati in fallimento causa Uber.

Money quote: “A record 139 taxi medallions will be offered for sale in bankruptcy auction this month — the latest sign that a deluge of ride-sharing apps like Uber are squeezing cabbies out of business and deeper into debt, as well as pinching the incomes of for-hire drivers, according to analysts.

The medallions will be auctioned for a fraction of their original value — some likely having cost their owners as much as $1 million or more apiece”

https://nypost.com/2018/06/09/139-taxi-medallions-will-be-offered-at-bankruptcy-auction/

Un paio di cose da sapere sul ritmo circadiano. Non solo per chi viaggia nei fusi orari, ma per chi sta dentro un tempo sfalsato.

Money quote: “People who are used to having an evening coffee and then have a lot of bright light in the evening and more likely to sleep very late. And since they do it on a daily basis, they think it’s natural to them.

In the book, I talk about the example of my dear friend who is also a circadian biologist. He took his lab on a camping trip. Almost everybody in the lab thought they were night owls because they all go to bed after midnight. But when he took them camping and they had very little access to bright light, all of them became early birds. They went to bed three to four hours earlier and woke up very fresh, early in the morning. So some of the variance is definitely due to external habits.”

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/12/17453398/sleep-circadian-code-satchin-panda-clock-health-science

Salgari: il ritorno a fumetti è di lusso - il mio articolo per Fumettologica

http://www.fumettologica.it/2018/07/sandokan-fumetti-star-comics/

Effetto nostalgia: Apple non cambierà il primo Store inaugurato da Steve Jobs - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/07/23/tecnologia/effetto-nostalgia-apple-non-cambier-il-primo-store-inaugurato-da-steve-jobs-BzoAY5Qb6JwPHcmfltTbjP/pagina.html

Il sonno è una strana bestia. Perché ce n’è sempre troppo poco, soprattutto nel nostro mondo super stimolato e illuminato artificialmente. E la nostra percezione, in una economia del tempo libero (cioè fuori dall’orario di lavoro, quando diventiamo tutti consumatori e quindi è meglio se siamo svegli e spendiamo o guardiamo ma pubblicità) è enormemente falsata.

Money quote: “One 2014 study of more than 3,000 people in Finland found that the amount of sleep that correlated with the fewest sick days was 7.63 hours a night for women and 7.76 hours for men. So either that is the amount of sleep that keeps people well, or that’s the amount that makes them least likely to lie about being sick when they want to skip work. Or maybe people who were already sick with some chronic condition were sleeping more than that—or less—as a result of their illness. Statistics are tough to interpret. Isolated studies are tougher. “

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/how-to-sleep/508781/

Questo articolo è tornato a galla dopo un annetto o poco più che lo avevo citato. Lo riprendo per una seconda volta con piacere, perché il tema è forte: non tutti i big data sono tali. In particolare, qui si argomenta - con un interessante esperimento - l'idea che in molti casi si possa fare più e meglio con la riga di comando (perché la pipe parallelizza i calcoli su tutti i core) su un semplice laptop che non con i giganti del cloud con le soluzioni pensate per i big data. È anche una bella lezione su come ottimizzare una sequenza di comandi.

Money quote: "One especially under-used approach for data processing is using standard shell tools and commands. The benefits of this approach can be massive, since creating a data pipeline out of shell commands means that all the processing steps can be done in parallel. This is basically like having your own Storm cluster on your local machine. Even the concepts of Spouts, Bolts, and Sinks transfer to shell pipes and the commands between them. You can pretty easily construct a stream processing pipeline with basic commands that will have extremely good performance compared to many modern Big Data ™ tools."

https://adamdrake.com/command-line-tools-can-be-235x-faster-than-your-hadoop-cluster.html

Il futuro di Google non è più solo pubblicità. Le novità su cloud e Ai -il mio articolo per Il Sole 24 Ore

http://mobile.ilsole24ore.com/solemobile/main/art/tecnologie/2018-07-25/il-futuro-google-non-e-piu-solo-pubblicita-novita-cloud-e--083045.shtml?uuid=AEIY7uRF

Da anni, parlando con scienziati e ricercatori di tutto il mondo, tutti quanti sostengono che il principale problema delle energie rinnovabili che generano corrente elettrica è la conservazione: le batterie sono un problema enorme, mentre petrolio, carbone e legna sono forme naturali di accumulazione di energia. Beh, salta fuori che si può ricorrere anche a un altro sistema: l'aria compressa. Ed è un'idea molto, molto interessante.

Money quote: "Compressed air energy storage (CAES) is considered to be an important component of a renewable power grid, because it could store surplus power from wind turbines and solar panels on a large scale. However, in its present form, the technology suffers from large energy losses and depends on natural gas to operate."

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/ditch-the-batteries-off-the-grid-compressed-air-energy-storage.html

Marchionne-Jobs: gemelli diversi dell'innovazione industriale - il mio articolo di un sacco di anni fa Macity

https://www.macitynet.it/marchionne-jobs_gemelli_diversi_dellinnovazione_industriale_/

Makers all'opera: come rifare da zero il gatto della fortuna, quello che manda avanti e indietro la zampina. Per riuscirci, va prima smontato e guardato molto bene.

Money quote: "“What I can not create with an Arduino, I do not understand”, so we then proceed to recreate a lucky cat under Arduino digital control."

https://wp.josh.com/2018/05/07/deconstructing-kitty/

La drammatica e traumatica bellezza dei grandi monumenti e delle grandi opere mentre vengono costruite

Money quote: "The construction of great landmarks is often thought of in terms of statistics—how high, how big, how wide—or hyperbole: the tallest, the longest, the most amount of concrete. But there’s always more to the story than just figures. Many landmarks are built under clouds of controversy. In February 1887, just after construction began on the Eiffel Tower, a group of artists and writers published a letter in Le Temps newspaper, “Protest Against the Tower of Monsieur Eiffel,” proclaiming their distaste for what they called a “stupefying folly.” A more humorously cutting criticism came from the French writer Léon Bloy, who called the tower a “truly tragic street lamp.”"

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/landmarks-under-construction

Instapaper è tornata indipendente (è uscita da Pinterest e se la sono ricomprata i suoi creatori). E ha tagliato via l'Europa...

Money quote: "Today, we’re announcing that Pinterest has entered into an agreement to transfer ownership of Instapaper to Instant Paper, Inc., a new company owned and operated by the same people who’ve been working on Instapaper since it was sold to betaworks by Marco Arment in 2013. The ownership transfer will occur after a 21 day waiting period designed to give our users fair notice about the change of control with respect to their personal information."

https://9to5mac.com/2018/07/16/instapaper-unpinned/

Huawei: nel 2018 venderemo 200 milioni di telefonini e supereremo Apple - il mio articolo per La Stampa

http://www.lastampa.it/2018/07/26/tecnologia/huawei-nel-venderemo-milioni-di-telefonini-e-supereremo-apple-ZhM4Pzofek7YwOzMe3nUiK/pagina.html

Si può argomentare tutto, per carità. Ma sostenere che oggi la gente non risponda più al telefono, e farlo portando se stessi come esempio, mi sembra un po' eccessivo anche per uno spirito aperto al mondo.

Money quote: "No one picks up the phone anymore. Even many businesses do everything they can to avoid picking up the phone. Of the 50 or so calls I received in the last month, I might have picked up four or five times. The reflex of answering—built so deeply into people who grew up in 20th-century telephonic culture—is gone."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/ring-ring-ring-ring/561545/

Volete partecipare al programma di protezione super avanzata del vostro account con Google? Se rientrate nelle categorie giuste, potreste farcela (ma in generale, secondo me è possibile: casomai fatemi sapere). In pratica, vi danno il generatore di codici "fisico", la chiavetta della banca, e vi blindano le app.

Money quote: "Il programma di protezione avanzata tutela gli account Google personali di figure professionali come giornalisti, leader aziendali e candidati politici che sono ritenuti maggiormente a rischio di attacchi mirati."

https://landing.google.com/advancedprotection/

Sono praticamente degli Ape e degli Ape Poker a motore elettrico. Ma in Germania stanno diventando una cosa notevole. E ne producono sempre di più.

Money quote: "The WORK and WORK L StreetScooter models have been available to external customers since summer 2017. Industries that have a need for customized electric vans include - in addition to municipalities and craft workshops - energy suppliers, waste disposal companies, airports, facility management enterprises, and catering companies. StreetScooter will produce variants tailored to serve a variety of individual needs with such features as variable loading volumes that include power supply, refrigerated containers, and tilting load platforms.

StreetScooters have been being deployed successively in Deutsche Post DHL's delivery fleet since 2013. At present, the Group is already using around 6,000 of these electric vehicles, which have covered over 26 million kilometers and save around 20,000 tons of CO2 per year. With these vans and the 12,000 or so electric e-bikes and e-trikes, Deutsche Post DHL is operating the biggest electric fleet in Germany."

http://www.dpdhl.com/en/media_relations/press_releases/2018/streetscooter_opens_second_manufacturing_facility_dueren.html

Ritrovare e studiare i font che hanno fatto la storia: ecco "Chicago" del Macintosh originale

Money quote: "I’m a huge fan of Susan Kare’s Chicago bitmap typeface. If you’re older than about 25, you know it as the Macintosh system font from the 1980s into the 1990s, or from its encore run on the little screens of the early iPods. But its celebrity obscures solid craft. It’s hard for small bitmap letters to project a unique and coherent personality, but Chicago does it: a high-contrast sans serif with a handful of key flourishes creating a friendly affect. It looks like this:"

https://medium.com/@bzotto/hidden-sheep-and-mac-typography-archaeology-efce770da76c

Avete presente la pioggia di email che chiedevano il rinnovo esplicito o implicito del vostro consenso al trattamento dei vostri dati personali ai sensi della GDPR? Erano frutto dell'ignoranza, della paura o di cattivi suggerimenti legali. E potrebbero pure portare a multe perché denotano una condotta illegale.

Money quote: "Like Vitale, Wood emphasised that asking for marketing consent from people who had not given it initially could be illegal. “It’s also important to remember that in some cases it may not be appropriate to seek fresh consent if you are unsure how you collected the contact information in the first place, and the consent would not have met the standard under our existing Data Protection Act,” he said."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/21/gdpr-emails-mostly-unnecessary-and-in-some-cases-illegal-say-experts

Non poche polemiche per un bacio dato dal presidente delle Filippine Rodrigo Duterte a una elettrice sul palco di una conferenza di qualche tempo fa. La cosa è meno grafica di quel che più sembrare, ma la parte agghiacciante è la simbologia e il senso di quel che è successo.

Money quote: "Filipino Senator Risa Hontiveros also said President Rodrigo Duterte "acted like a feudal king" after he kissed a married woman in front of 3,000 people in Seoul, South Korea. The woman involved later said that there was "no malice" in the kiss."

https://twitter.com/i/moments/1003716098599084033