Headworx

AI is all the buzz these days. We are stunned by AI software beating Go and chess human champions and promised self driving cars and self caring machines anytime soon. But one of the key problem with AI (and, actually, with any "I") is maturity. Intelligence must go through a learning curve to mature and become intelligent. For humans this takes years. Years of continuous feedback stream: both positive and negative. And while the chess-playing software can use all the power provided by GHz clocks and GBs of memory, this is simply not possible in a self-driving scenario. Feedback in a game of chess is straightforward: you either win or you don't. So the software can try all possible ways and strategies and improve on each iteration after winning (or losing) a game. Self-driving cars would do the same if we simply let them all loose and allow to crash on each other. But for practical reasons this sort of feedback is not possible. A car cannot crash and try again and...

I have been very proud of my Ultimate Portable Astro Setup . I has worked very well for may trips now and I somehow lost my vigilance. The most recent astro trip was almost a failure. Failure caused by an unattended software update that happened to the Huawei tablet that is used to polar-align the equatorial mount . The update somehow changed how the USB-C port on the tablet interfaces with applications, resulting in the Polemaster camera not being recognized by the mPolemaster app. IOW something that worked beautifully and flawlessly before, no longer does. Luckily I had my little Blackberry with me and could run the polar alignment procedure using the phone, although due to the small screen that was tedious and not as accurate as when using the tablet. Going back home I was thinking what to do next. Of course I could wait for Huawei to fix their Android distribution (the EMUI), but considering how things are going between Huawei and the US government, this may take some time. I...

California is specific. And so is almost the entire North American continent. Everything is the same there. Oh I mean there are mountains and desserts and lakes and there is even Canada in the north, a country that is a little bit different. But generally, once you learn the rules how the world works there, it works the same everywhere. I mean everywhere across America. North America, that is. Travel and meeting cultures is the biggest payback from my hectic business travel schedule. And I bless that work I've been doing partially because it offers this enormous opportunity to visit variety of places and meet variety of different people, religions, and cultures. And that gives me a really great perspective. Yes America is a big country and a big market. Probably big enough to support variety of products and services that are doing extremely well just serving that market. And then it is still surprising how many American products and services have conquered the world. In compu...

There are rather few things that irritate me. But among those that do, are news headlines about things that are delayed. News headlines are a category of their own, with the goal to manipulate readers or trick them to red a story that often has little substance.Actually, when it comes to sources of information, I've been on a continuous hunt for really good ones since the dawn of the Internet. But back to the delayed. As an example: search the net for "777x delayed" and you will see a bunch of headlines. So delayed against what? The journalists' or the public expectations? The company is developing the most advanced passenger aircraft. This is not a repeat of what has been done a number of times in the past. So how can there be a fixed date against which the delay is judged? It is ready when it is ready. Simple. The "delayed" term puts a kind of a blame on the hard working engineers. Do we really want them to rush? Speaking of things done repeatedly. I...