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AI fuels modern life — from the way we commute to how we order online, and how we find a date or a job. Billions of people use AI-powered applications every day, looking at just Facebook and Google users alone. This represents the tip of the iceberg when it comes to AI’s potential. OpenAI, which recently made headlines again for offering general availability to its models, uses labeled data to…
Artificial intelligence has been given new capabilities never seen before, computer scientists have claimed. Researchers were able to use AI to help prove and suggest new complex mathematical theorems. Scientists hailed the breakthrough as a major step towards giving major new capabilities to such systems. “Problems in mathematics are widely regarded as some of the most intellectually challenging…
Interaction with the world around us should be as easy as walking into your favorite bar and getting your favorite drink in hand before your butt hits the bar stool. The bartender knows you, knows exactly what drink you like and knows you just walked through the door. That’s a lot of interaction, without any “interaction.” We’re redefining how we interact with machines and how they interact with…
Big data is everywhere. Period. In the process of running a successful business in today’s day and age, you’re likely going to run into it whether you like it or not. Whether you’re a businessman trying to catch up to the times or a coding prodigy looking for their next project, this tutorial will give you a brief overview of what big data is. You will learn how it’s applicable to you, and how you…
In his recent article on statistics in a post truth world , John Pullinger, National Statistician, highlights the importance of a trustworthy understanding of where we are now He argues that the reliability of data is essential for informing decisions or gaining insights into society. The key point is that we don’t want to be and don’t have to be in a ‘post-truth’ world. When different ideas and…
User experience design (UXD or UED) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product. This nicely encapsulates what the design part is all about, but what about the other equally important facet of UX, the testing process? The former can be self-taught, at least to a degree. The latter…
Writing code once and using it on multiple platforms has been a dream of many software developers. Although this has been possible for some time now, it always came at the cost of maintainability, ease of testing, or even worse, poor user experience. Developing mobile applications using the native SDK is probably the starting point for all developers who have their roots in the realm of desktop…
In a twist that has inevitable written all over it, the database industry has at last begun to take heed of the power of consumerization. The once mighty RDBMS is now obliged to make room for an emerging and increasingly important partner in the data center: the graph database. Twitter’s doing it, Facebook’s doing it, even online dating sites are doing it; what they are doing is tracing…
During the course of my career, I’ve participated in multiple real life software projects and observed how things are done on all levels: decision making, practices adoption, team building, recruiting, skill distribution, etc. Obviously, different approaches yielded different results. Being an improvement-oriented type of person, I noticed and collected the most effective practices and best…
Stop following trends to achieve your conversion rates. When it comes to creating and designing a product, we are looking for the best solution to ensure we meet our goal. Ultimately, our goal will always be to convince the customer to buy our product or use our service; i.e., for converting leads into sales. But what can we do to ensure the highest conversion rate (i.e., of leads to sales)…
Collecting, sorting, and understanding data gathered during user research and usability testing is becoming an increasingly common task among UX practitioners—in fact, it’s becoming a critical UX skill. A usability test will tell you whether your target users can use your product. It helps identify problems people have with a specific UI, and reveals difficult-to-complete tasks and confusing…
In recent years, with the advent of concepts such as cloud computing and big data, distributed systems have gained popularity and relevance. One such type of system, distributed caches that power many high-traffic dynamic websites and web applications, typically consist of a particular case of distributed hashing. These take advantage of an algorithm known as consistent hashing . What is…
Internationalizing your app can make software development a painful experience, especially if you don’t start doing it from the very beginning or you take a willy-nilly approach toward it. Modern apps, where the front-end and the back-end are distinctly separate from one another, can be even trickier to deal with when it comes to internationalization. Suddenly you no longer have access to the…
Google wants to bring Android to everything from phones and watches, to cars and smart television sets. First off, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that I am somewhat biased when it comes to smart TV platforms, so let’s get that out of the way. I think most, if not all smart TV platforms on the market are downright terrible, but that’s just me. Google thinks it can do better and I…
Every Android developer, at one point or another, needs to deal with threads in their application. When an application is launched in Android, it creates the first thread of execution, known as the “main” thread. The main thread is responsible for dispatching events to the appropriate user interface widgets as well as communicating with components from the Android UI toolkit. To keep your…
Many of the C projects that exist today were started decades ago. The UNIX operating system’s development started in 1969, and its code was rewritten in C in 1972. The C language was actually created to move the UNIX kernel code from assembly to a higher level language, which would do the same tasks with fewer lines of code . Oracle database development started in 1977, and its code was rewritten…
I have a secret that saves my clients a ton of money, keeps their website secure, and has built-in backups. The secret: I make their website static. Then, I store and host it with GitHub, and use Cloudflare to serve it over HTTPS, and make it fast. My clients only ever pay for their domain name, yet they get a lot more than they ever bargained for. Why Static Content? Static sites are wonderfully…
Officials in California proposed new rules on Friday that would let companies test autonomous cars on public roads with no human driver present. The proposal is a significant update to the state's self-driving car regulations adopted in 2014, which allow testing on public roads only if a driver is inside the vehicle. With the new rules, companies that want to test cars without human drivers will…
Need to text in more than one language? Google added new multilingual features to the Android keyboard this week that make it easier to switch between tongues on the fly. The keyboard, which Google refers to as "Gboard," will now automatically detect the language you're typing in, without the need to tap on the globe icon to switch between the more than 120 languages the keyboard supports. As The…
Of all the US states, the residents of Hawaii suffer the highest prices for electricity, which are typically more than double the average. The majority of electricity in Hawaii is generated from fossil-fuel power stations, but there's now a new and cheaper option available thanks to Tesla. According to Bloomberg, Tesla through SolarCity created a solar system and battery storage facility on the…
The latest version of Firefox will enable games and other resource-hogging apps to "run faster than ever before in a web browser," Mozilla said Wednesday. Firefox 52, launched yesterday, supports a new Mozilla-developed standard called WebAssembly, which promises to bring the performance of native applications to the web in a secure way. The result is that complex apps, like games, will load and…
Satellite internet is speeding up, but alas, that doesn't mean it's getting cheaper. HughesNet announced its fifth-gen technology, with speeds of up to 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up. Hughes wouldn't tell us much about pricing and data caps, though, and that's where American ISPs fail. Satellite ISPs, especially, have insanely restrictive data caps that tend to cut subscribers off from streaming…
Android. What’s not to like about this platform? It’s free, it’s customizable, it’s rapidly growing and it’s available not just on your phone or tablet, but on your smartwatch, TV and car too. With the latest Lollipop update, Android programming continues to improve. The platform has matured quite a bit since the initial AOSP release, and set the user expectations bar quite high. Look how good the…
Social media streams this weekend overflowed with photos, videos, and commentary from global protesters of Donald Trump's presidency. But while hundreds of thousands of people sent a figurative message by marching in the nation's capital, their literal messages were thwarted by mobile network issues. According to CNET's Marguerite Reardon, who attended the Women's March in Washington, D.C., by 10…
The Raspberry Pi is by far and away the most popular single-board computer on the market today, helped by the fact it only costs $35. That hasn't stopped other manufacturers trying to compete with it, however, and the latest company to join the fray is Asus. The board you see above looks very similar to the Raspberry Pi, in fact, it's almost the same size, but this is the Asus Tinker Board. It…
