Fixing

Unread texts and emails piled up. Apps pinged me so frequently that I began to feel phantom vibrations in my pocket. I’d turn on Do Not Disturb, only to be met with a long list of alerts once I was ready to be disturbed. I wanted to throw my phone into the sea and go off the grid. That all changed after I decided which notifications I really needed and tried a few key settings to restore my phone-life balance. Apps ask permission to send push notifications and we oblige because, sure, it’d be nice to know…

Three techniques can help companies build fundamentals that create foundations for data-based competitive advantagePhoto by Mike Kononov on UnsplashFrom Business Intelligence to Big Data to Machine Learning to AI, the world of data has made blinding progress in the last two decades. Yet, ever so often researchers keep pointing to sobering numbers on the failure of companies to leverage data. Oftentimes lack of executive support, data teams not focussing on real business problems, company not having the right skill sets,…

Practical case study with code that you can runImage by Dimitris Vetsikas from PixabayIntroductionIf you have been working in Data Science and ML for a while you know that the models you have trained can perform very unexpectedly in a production environment. This is because the production data tends to be different from the closed train dataset you used to create the model. Additionally, the production data keeps changing over time so even models that initially perform well will degrade over time.Image by the AuthorWhat…

When I began reporting on autism about 15 years ago, therapists would talk about achieving the “optimal outcome” for children on the autism spectrum. What they meant was changing the classic behaviors associated with the condition—suppressing repetitive actions such as hand flapping, drilling young kids to make eye contact, rehearsing speech and social interactions—so that ultimately the children would no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for autism. It was an elusive goal that only a tiny percentage could reach. Today…

ChatGPT appears to address some of these problems, but it is far from a full fix—as I found when I got to try it out. This suggests that GPT-4 won’t be either. In particular, ChatGPT—like Galactica, Meta’s large language model for science, which the company took offline earlier this month after just three days—still makes stuff up. There’s a lot more to do, says John Shulman, a scientist at OpenAI: “We've made some progress on that problem, but it's far from solved.” All large language models spit out nonsense. The…

Image: Bartlomiej Wroblewski/Getty ImagesLike most tech sectors, quantum computing has a skills shortage.According to a September 2022 report by the World Economic Forum (WEF), more than half of quantum computer companies are currently hiring.This poses a challenge for the industry. Governments and businesses are funnelling tens of billions of dollars into quantum computing, and yet progress in the industry will remain elusive unless the industry can recruit the people to make that happen.One of the issues is that…

But some airports perform objectively worse than others, according to the WSJ airport rankings, which tracked performance at the 50 busiest in the U.S. Newark Liberty International was the worst-ranked among the 20 busiest airports, while New York’s LaGuardia took the bottom spot for the midsize group.  Other airports had their lowlights. Dallas Love Field posted the worst record for flights that depart on time, with 66% leaving on schedule. Denver International Airport had the longest wait to get through…

Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed that Mei will make a return to Overwatch 2 as a playable character later this week, following a bug fix. Last month (October 31), Mei was removed from the game due to a bug with her Ice Wall ability, which allowed players using Mei to teleport a character like Kiriko into the map geometry. From there, Kiriko could swap to a different hero and attack players from underneath the map. Yesterday’s (November 15) mid-season patch for Overwatch 2 was then delayed, with Blizzard trying to…

Earlier this year, NASA announced that it was investigating issues with James Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). This instrument plays a key role in Webb’s observations, and as such, it put some of the telescope’s scientific missions on hold. Now, NASA has announced that the glitch is fixed, and James Webb is preparing to observe Saturn. The problem with Webb’s MIRI instrument was a grinding on the mechanism that controls how the tool switches between its different observational modes, something very…

Airbnb has taken user feedback to heart and is adding a more transparent way for app users to see how much a stay in a rental property actually costs. For years, users have been hit with additional hidden fees and checkout requirements, but with the addition of a single slider to the Airbnb app, the company will be giving users all of the information they need in order to make much more informed bookings. On Twitter, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky showed off how the slider works in a short video announcement. Essentially,…