Tag: images

Land Lines

so fun

Start with a line, let the planet complete the picture. Land Lines lets you explore Google Earth satellite images through gesture. Machine learning and line detection algorithms were used to preprocess all images and identify the dominant lines. This enabled the analysis of brushstrokes and retrieval of the matching image efficiently without the need for a server.The project was made in collaboration by Zach Lieberman and the Data Arts Team.

Dressing for cold

The system is best used in varying combinations and is not meant to be layered sequentially, meaning one garment on top of another, on top of another, until you’re wearing all 7 levels. The conditions of your operating environment and the requirements of your mission will determine not only what you wear, but also what you stow in your pack for later use. The wind shirt (Level 4), in particular, is a very versatile garment meant to be sandwiched between your various layers. It allows for a more stable internal temperature to be managed, as well as reducing friction between insulation layers.

Moore’s Law over 120 Years

I updated the Kurzweil version of Moore’s Law to include the latest data points. Further UPDATE here, post Tesla AI Day. Of all of the variations of Moore’s Law, this is the one I find to be most useful, as it captures what customers actually value — computation per $ spent. Humanity’s capacity to compute has compounded for as long as we can measure it, starting long before Intel co-founder Gordon Moore noticed a refraction of the longer-term trend in the belly of the then fledgling semiconductor industry. But, Intel has ceded leadership for Moore’s Law. The 7 most recent data points are all NVIDIA GPUs, with CPU architectures dominating the prior 30 years. The fine-grained parallel compute architecture of a GPU maps better to the needs of deep learning than a CPU. There is a poetic beauty to the computational similarity of a processor optimized for graphics processing and the computational needs of a sensory cortex, as commonly seen in neural networks today.

Rampant illiteracy

the vast majority of people are illiterate. this doesn’t bode well for their future job prospects.

Researchers defined 4 levels of proficiency, based on the types of tasks users can complete successfully. For each level, here’s the percentage of the population (averaged across the OECD countries) who performed at that level, as well as the report’s definition of the ability of people within that level. Level 0: 14% of Adult Population. An example of task at this level is “Delete this email message” in an email app. Level 1: 29% of Adult Population. An example of level-1 task is “Find all emails from John Smith.”. Level 2: 26% of Adult Population. An example of level-2 task is “You want to find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year.”. Level 3: 5% of Adult Population. An example of level-3 task is “You want to know what percentage of the emails sent by John Smith last month were about sustainability.”. Can’t Use Computers: 26% of Adult Population

Cooperating with 1 Belt 1 Road?

The United States and Japan are the only G7 countries that have not signed up to be Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) members, a move viewed by Beijing as a sign of Washington’s mistrust of the Chinese government and its ambition to exert bigger regional influence. US membership of the AIIB and endorsing China’s efforts to revive trade routes along the ancient Silk Road, would be a big sign of goodwill from Washington to Beijing to pave the way for future agreements.