This is Alan Turing. The first time I ever heard his name was in a computer science class, where we studied different kinds of basic machines and how they work.
After millions of years of evolutionary trial and error, or natural selection as Charles Darwin put it, the homo sapiens proved to be the dominant species. Was this the case because humans were expert risk takers or fear conquerors? Quite the opposite actually.
My least favorite moment in all of cinema is a relatively common one. You will recognize it, I’m sure, from dozens of movies and TV shows that prominently feature scientists. You may even have laughed at it once or twice. It usually gets a quick chortle. The moment goes something like this:
For a while I had this security guide written for myself and finally decided to share it with everyone. This post will be a semi-detailed guide on what, why and how to secure your machine. Hope you enjoy it :)
I’ve worked with deploy systems in the past that have a prominent “rollback” button, or a console incantation with the same effect. The presence of one of these is reassuring, in that you can imagine that if something goes wrong you can quickly get back to safety by undoing your last change.
Google’s rollout of artificial intelligence has many in the search engine optimization (SEO) industry dumbfounded. Optimization tactics that have worked for years are quickly becoming obsolete or changing.
Today feels like the golden age of being Anti something. Anti Trump.
In a footnote in that post, I mentioned that Alexa also incorporates variable rewards as a way to engage users. For today’s post, I thought I’d explore how Alexa incorporates variable rewards and why they are effective.
A year and a half ago, I dropped out of one of the best computer science programs in Canada. I started creating my own data science master’s program using online resources. I realized that I could learn everything I needed through edX, Coursera, and Udacity instead.
Andy Grove was a Hungarian refugee who escaped communism, studied engineering, and ultimately led the personal computer revolution as the CEO of Intel. He died earlier this year in Silicon Valley after a long fight with Parkinson’s disease.
Estimated reading time: 12 minutes. I’m an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. That’s why I spent the last three years as a Design Ethicist at Google caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people’s minds from getting hijacked.
Seven months ago, I sat down at the small table in the kitchen of my 1960s apartment, nestled on the top floor of a building in a vibrant central neighbourhood of Tehran, and I did something I had done thousands of times previously. I opened my laptop and posted to my new blog.
Disclaimer: I’m not an expert in neural networks or machine learning. Since originally writing this article, many people with far more expertise in these fields than myself have indicated that, while impressive, what Google have achieved is evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Many consider Peter Drucker the most influential thinker in the history of management. His prolific writings — over 30 books — have gone on to sell millions of copies and inspire young managers all over the world.
Mad Men has now come to a close, we’re more than halfway through Season 5 of Game of Thrones, and the second installment of True Detective starts in just a few weeks.
It’s early and dark. The alarm sounds, and you reach over to switch it off. After a short pause, you sit up. You swing your legs off the bed, touch the floor with your feet, and reach for your phone. You sit quietly while your phone’s screen illuminates the dark bedroom.
The last couple of years I’ve spent a lot of time teaching myself web development and machine learning. While the subjects have differed a lot — from Javascript, Node and React to Python, Scikit Learn and neural networks — my approach to learning has stayed the same.
I’ve been working in software development for twenty-eight years. My current position is Senior Development Director at a software consulting company in Austin, Texas, a position I’ve held for just over six years.
The thing that has become the most clear to us this election year is that we don’t agree on the fundamental truths we thought we did. Over the last several weeks I have watched dozens of my friends on Facebook de-friend one another.
This is a follow up to an article I wrote last year, Machine Learning in a Week, on how I kickstarted my way into machine learning (ml) by devoting five days to the subject.
Eleven years ago, I joined a small design agency. I was 20, and it was my first full-time design job. I spent the first few years at the agency focused on visual design.
Most people don’t notice I’m polite, which is sort of the point. I don’t look polite. I am big and droopy and need a haircut. No soul would associate me with watercress sandwiches.
You know, thinking, worrying, stressing, freaking out — call it whatever you want. I call it a preoccupied mind. And with what? All my life I’ve been obsessed with practical things. Practical philosophy, practical knowledge, practical books, practical work, and practical advice.
Getting into machine learning (ml) can seem like an unachievable task from the outside. However, after dedicating one week to learning the basics of the subject, I found it to be much more accessible than I anticipated.
I love to write about face recognition, image recognition and all the other cool things you can build with machine learning. Whenever possible, I try to include code examples or even write libraries/APIs to make it as easy as possible for a developer to play around with these fun technologies.
Kindness: If you are giving back you’ve already taken too much. Evolve and grow: Life’s about progress, we can either move forward and relentlessly improve or be consumed and surpassed by the horde which stands in wait behind us. Standing still is proportionate to regression.
The computing industry progresses in two mostly independent cycles: financial and product cycles. There has been a lot of handwringing lately about where we are in the financial cycle. Financial markets get a lot of attention. They tend to fluctuate unpredictably and sometimes wildly.
In his backpack, Wouter Slotboom, 34, carries around a small black device, slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes, with an antenna on it. I meet Wouter by chance at a random cafe in the center of Amsterdam. It is a sunny day and almost all the tables are occupied.
For the next minute or so, I want you to forget about CSS. Forget about web development. Forget about digital user interfaces. And as you forget these things, I want you to allow your mind to wander. To wander back in time. Back to your youth. Back to your first day of school.
Andrés Sepúlveda rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. He tells his story for the first time.
Secretary to composer György Ligeti: “He is creative and, because of this, totally overworked. Therefore, the very reason you wish to study his creative process is also the reason why he (unfortunately) does not have time to help you in this study.
At Airbnb, we are always searching for ways to improve our data science workflow. A fair amount of our data science projects involve machine learning, and many parts of this workflow are repetitive. These repetitive tasks include, but are not limited to:
That quote kickstarted my own reading habits and helps me regularly read over 100 books a year. Charlie Munger is the billionaire business partner of Warren Buffett and the Vice Chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, one of the largest companies in the world.
It’s the first week of 2017, and Science of Us is exploring the science that explains how people make meaningful changes in their lives. Handy information for resolution season. Being a human is hard.
To become more more successful at everything you do in life, you need to do three things: reduce the amount of time you waste, be more organized, and get rid of the “mental clutter” that distracts you, preoccupies you, and stresses you out.
My framework for getting places, accomplishing things and living in a way that makes me happy. This isn’t a bullshit, head in the clouds, you can do it if you just *believe*post. There’s plenty of those out there. I’m not going to write another one.
Three weeks ago, the CMO of a San Francisco startup backed by A-list investors emailed me about her new sales deck. “It lacks oomph,” she said. “The information is there. The slides look great. But we’re not telling a compelling story. Can you help?”
One of the most challenging aspects of creative work is, well, sitting down to actually do it. There are so many different ways to cull out one’s creativity.
“We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism.
We all care about what others think of us and want to be liked (despite what rebellious 15-year-old you might have said). The basics of getting people to like you are obvious — be nice, be considerate, be a decent human being. Those things are all true.
My framework for getting places, accomplishing things and living in a way that makes me happy. This isn’t a bullshit, head in the clouds, you can do it if you just *believe* post. There’s plenty of those out there. I’m not going to write another one.
2015 is when web development went to shit. Web development used to be nice. You could fire up a text editor and start creating JS and CSS files. You can absolutely still do this. That has not changed. So yes, everything I’m about to say can be invalidated by saying that.
Are they crazy? How am I supposed to find the time to write out my thoughts every morning? I am not a writer. How could writing down my anxious ruminations help me overcome anxiety? That was my initial barrage of fears when I first heard about the power of journaling.
Out all the different ways to learn, books remain my favorite way to absorb knowledge. What I like about books is that I can read them by myself, in silence. It’s me and the author, one on one, having a conversation in my mind.
By François Petitjean, @LeDataMiner. Forget about the meaning of words, forget about grammar, forget about syntax, forget even the very concept of a word. Now let the machine learn everything by itself.
The results of a year-long experiment in 2016 where I’ve recorded all of my learnings (456 in total). One of the reasons why I love year-ends is because the “end” of anything always gives rise to opportunities for reflection.
Want to find out all the things Google knows about you? Here are 6 links that will show you some of the data Google has about you. In order to serve relevant ads, Google collects data about you and creates a profile. You can control and review the information Google has on you here:
Reading is a huge key to success and wealth, but how can you actually benefit from this habit as a busy adult? I’ve said it many times: reading books is a major key to success. The mega-rich and successful like Bill Gates and Elon Musk devote extraordinary amounts of their time to reading.
Here is the Italian and French translations. Life is busy. It can feel impossible to move toward your dreams. If you have a full-time job and kids, it’s even harder.
Americans are obsessed with celebrity chefs. We talk about them, tweet about them and try to eat like them. But could we learn something more from them than recipes and technique?
Distilling a generally-accepted definition of what qualifies as artificial intelligence (AI) has become a revived topic of debate in recent times. Some have rebranded AI as “cognitive computing” or “machine intelligence”, while others incorrectly interchange AI with “machine learning”.
I’d spent six years between 2004–2010 on getting two degrees. And after that, I immediately started a business. And during my first two years as an entrepreneur, I also learned a lot. But after a while, I thought: Who needs education? Just start a business or get a job and earn some money.
What can neuroscience teach us about the brains of software developers? A lot. Software development is among the fastest growing jobs in America — projected to grow 17% from 2014–2024 (much faster than the average job growth rate, a projected 7% change from 2014–2024).
Once upon a time, a friend of mine accidentally took over thousands of computers. He had found a vulnerability in a piece of software and started playing with it. In the process, he figured out how to get total administration access over a network.
Oliver Emberton said that. It’s profound and so true. Urgency wrecks productivity. Urgent but unimportant tasks are major distractions. Last-minute distractions are not necessarily priorities.
Little things become big things. When you justify and allow even little things into your life which your intuition warns you against, you permit a virus to enter your life. It spreads to other areas.
Take a look at the image below. It’s a collection of bugs and creepy-crawlies of different shapes and sizes. Take a moment to categorize them by similarity into a number of groups. This isn’t a trick question. Start with grouping the spiders together.
Machine learning is on the edge of revolutionizing those 12 sectors. Most leaders in those industries look at Machine Learning and see a non-stable, none viable technology in the short term. They are wrong. This will allow technological Entrepreneurs to disrupt them.
When you’re scaling quickly, you get a lot right, but you inevitably get some things wrong. The best companies — like Pinterest — are the ones that learn from those mistakes and adjust quickly.
According to new research, practice doesn’t make actually make perfect. Whether you’re trying to be pro at Photoshop, or step up your tennis game, or master a dueling banjo song, you’re probably dutifully following the age-old advice that practice makes perfect.
Lately, I needed to come up with some top level principles for the product I’m currently working on. I seek for some simple yet powerful concepts that will guide our team design decisions and break stalemates in discussions.
A few months ago, my friend Tim took a new sales job at a Series C tech company that had raised over $60 million from A-list investors. He’s one of the best salespeople I know, but soon after starting, he emailed me to say he was struggling.
For the last four years I have continued to design dashboards and applications and I have learnt how to deal with different departments, and utilise their knowledge in order to make product designs both better and more efficient.
This past week, I was in a Lyft. My driver was telling me about all of her ideas for side projects. She had ideas for a children’s book, an app that helps people find parking, and a more efficient way to package gifts. The problem was she was frozen by indecision.
On December 2nd, 1942, a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi came back from lunch and watched as humanity created the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction inside a pile of bricks and wood underneath a football field at the University of Chicago.
Cracking Wi-Fi passwords isn't a trivial process, but it doesn't take too long to learn—whether you're talking simple WEP passwords or the more complex WPA. Learn how it works so you can learn how to protect yourself.
The 8 Ivy League schools are among the most prestigious colleges in the world. They include Brown, Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Dartmouth, Yale, and Columbia universities, and the University of Pennsylvania. All eight schools place in the top fifteen of the U.S.
Most self-improvement “strategies” and even psychological interventions seek incremental progress. And although this approach, especially over a long period of time, will yield results, there are better approaches to change.
1. Have a firm handshake.2. Look people in the eye.3. Sing in the shower.4. Own a great stereo system.5. If in a fight, hit first and hit hard.6. Keep secrets.7. Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen everyday.8. Always accept an outstretched hand.9. Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be.
I’ve seen a few CS students fearful about the industry they’ll enter into when they graduate. And with all the recent tech news, who can blame them? Why am I even still here? This is my career retrospective — what has been great, what has been horrible, why I’m still here & fighting.
Explained in 10 sketchesAssigning TasksDelivering NewsConducting 1:1sGiving FeedbackDealing with TurbulenceFor more detailed reads of the sketches above:Managing with Martians — or, why frameworks are better than answersSo, You Think You Want to Manage — what is management? and why woul
Keep your head down and your nose to the grindstone. That’s what a lot of us were taught to believe about work. But is it really the best strategy? I’ve gathered up my top 10 lessons you should take to heart now, before it’s too late!
If there is one technology that promises to change the world more than any other over the next several decades, it is arguably machine learning.
I was listening to Liz Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things audiobook with my husband when I caught myself shifting nervously in my chair.
This is what I wish: that my daughters don’t go to school. I offered my oldest the very prestigious “Altucher Fellowship”. Never awarded before. Only awarded to her.
I am by no means the unicorn prophet, but here’s how I think about which companies have earned their unicorn status vs. which ones are playing a dangerous game of massive capital needs, sky high valuations, impossible expectations, and deferred judgement days.
I’ve gotten countless variations of this question over the past year. I can’t tell you everything I’ve learned at HBS, and no book would have prepared me for the experience. Instead, I’m going to give you a taste. Some of these literally blew my mind.
Research has found that having clarity about your goals is essential to having motivation to achieve those goals. If you’re not clear on what you’re doing, it’s hard to be motivated. Which is why seemingly easy tasks, like sending a fax, could end up taking months.
Not long ago, a friend asked me to read his book. He’d written a rough draft and wasn’t sure what to do after that. After reading it, I explained how writing a book involves not one, but five, different drafts. He was surprised to hear that. Most people are.
What habits, tactics and routines do the most successful people use to achieve their earth-shaking accomplishments? One guy wanted to know. So he talked to over 200 world-class achievers to learn from them.
30 day challenges are a great way to force yourself out of your comfort zone to take on new skills. You can learn new things, form lasting habits, and find out more about yourself in general. Plus, at just 30 days long, you don't have much to lose.
In this blog post I’ll explain how we’re making our sales process at Xeneta more effective by training a machine learning algorithm to predict the quality of our leads based upon their company descriptions.
It’s 3 AM on a warm Thursday night in December, a usually quiet street in the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona is bustling with activity, as a cohort of 200 artificial intelligence researchers leave in single-file out of a sprawling yellow mansion.
I had a friend who wanted to get better at painting. But she thought she had to be in Paris, with all the conditions right. She never made it to Paris. Now she sits in a cubicle under fluorescent lights, filling out paperwork all day. Someone stole $90 million from a company I was involved in.
Most of us never get a crash course in how to cook or find our way around the kitchen. We learn from others: friends, parents, cooking shows, or cookbooks.
It can be insanely hard to find high quality, high-res free stock photos for personal and commercial use. A growing number of websites have amazing photos you can use for your work. Some of them cost money. Not everybody can afford those high quality photos.
People often choose Redux before they need it. “What if our app doesn’t scale without it?” Later, developers frown at the indirection Redux introduced to their code. “Why do I have to touch three files to get a simple feature working?” Why indeed!
History is full of evil dictators, and while the had their share of bad qualities, it’s undeniable they were efficient at getting things done. Here’s what we can learn from them, despite their evil nature.
I’ve never been much of a collector. I have a few boxes of comic books in my basement, but they’ve all been read, and most aren’t bagged and boarded. I have exactly three pieces of sports memorabilia. All of the stamps I have are reserved for the snail mail I still have to send out.
Recently, on my YouTube show, my editor in chief Steve Unwin asked me a question that I thought was very poignant and interesting. Even more so than that, it felt daring. He wasn’t nervous to ask it. And it got me thinking about all the questions I’ve been asked as CEO of my company VaynerMedia.
Update: This article is part of a series. Check out the full series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7! You can also read this article in 普通话, Русский or Italiano.
Whether you're the household tech support or just an avid researcher who is always trying to teach friends what you learn, explaining complicated topics is tough. Here's how to do it so people can actually understand you.
We want to be successful. We want to be happy. We want to be free of worry, free of fear of missing out. Not being jealous of someone achieving more than me. Not run after the next shiny thing. So, I have decided to read up on this topic. From ancient philosophy to modern day version of it.