Google has built the world's fastest ML training supercomputer and was able to set new records in six out of eight MLPerf benchmarks.
For example, they trained ResNet50 in 0.47 seconds. What does this really mean? According to Import AI newsletter:
Multi-year progress: These results show the time it takes Google to train a ResNet50 network to convergence against ImageNet, giving us performance for a widely used, fairly standard AI task:
In a recent video posted by Lex Fridman, he talked about how the very hot GPT-3 compares to a human brain. Specifically, he told us that GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters and costs a whopping $4.6 million to train.
So here's what it means:
Only tech giants like FAANG, Microsoft, and alike can afford the hardware and money to train large networks like this, and small startups/players really don't stand a chance.
So anyway, while we celebrate the advancement of AI, we also have to be careful about the increased impact capital has on innovation. I really do not want this to turn into something like our legal system where big corporations always win even though they "lose" the case or have to settle.
A pandemic does not just go away no matter how much you ignore it, deny it, or wish it would just magically disappear. BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
If you are like me and love to leave lots of tabs open in my Chrome browser, here are some very useful keyboard shortcuts for you to control your tabs.
Note that these shortcuts work both on Windows and Mac machines.
Ctrl + Tab: Switch to the tab on the right.
Ctrl + Shift + Tab: Switch to the tab on the left.
⌘ + Shift + [: Also switch to the tab on the right.
⌘ + Shift + ]: Also switch to the tab on the left.
⌘ + Option + Left Arrow: Should also switch to the previous tab. This one doesn't work for me because I use Spectacles and BetterSnapTool, which also use these shortcuts.
⌘ + Option + Right Arrow: Should also switch to the next tab. Same as above.
Ctrl (⌘ on Mac) + Number: For example, Ctrl + 5 would switch to the 5th tab from the left.
Ctrl (⌘ on Mac) + W: Close the current tab.
Ctrl (⌘ on Mac) + Q: Close all tabs in the Chrome window. Chrome now asks you to confirm, in case you hit the shortcut by mistake, which I have done many times.
⌘ + Shift + W: Don't know if this is a bug, but this will close all tabs in the Chrome window without confirmation. So make sure you don't use this one.
By the way, the following shortcuts on Mac might be useful:
Ctrl + ⌘ + Q: Locks the screen and requires login next time.
Ctrl + Number: Switch to that Desktop/Space.
Ctrl + Up Arrow: Show all windows in current Desktop/Space and show all Desktops/Spaces at the top.
Ctrl + Down Arrow: Show all windows for the current application.
Ctrl + Left Arrow: Switch to the Desktop/Space to the left.
Ctrl + Right Arrow: Switch to the Desktop/Space to the right.
Hope you find these useful!
Video of the Day:
This is what I play once my code compiles with no errors!
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
When you try to use AirDrop to send files to a Mac computer from your iPhone, you might find that the Mac computer is not even an option on the AirDrop list on your iPhone. This is because AirDrop is disabled on your Mac by default. All you have to do is to enable it and you should be able to receive files via AirDrop as usual.
To enable AirDrop on your Mac computer, follow the steps below:
1. Open "Finder" from your launcher.
2. Click "Go" from the menu at the top of your screen.
3. Select AirDrop from the menu list and it opens the AirDrop window.
4. In the AirDrop window, you can specify whether you want to be discovered by everyone or only by your contacts.
5. Now AirDrop becomes an item on the left panel at the top.
6. Lastly, once the files are transferred from iPhone to your Mac, you can find them in the Download folder.
That's it. Hope you find this helpful!
Image of the Day:
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
Have you noticed that your Windows 10 computer keeps disconnecting from WiFi? So whenever you want to use your computer, you have to manually connect it back to your home WiFi network?
I had this problem with one of Philip's many physical existences. (Philip is my Smart Home Assistant that consists of a bunch of microservices running on a bunch of low-grade throwaway computers.) It was a laptop with a cracked screen (wife dropped it).
This gets a bit annoying because every time I want Philip to print something, I have to manually connect the computer to home WiFi. So I did a bit of research and found the solution.
Turned out Windows 10 automatically puts the WiFi network card in power-saving mode, which then disconnects it from my home WiFi, even though I leave the computer plugged in all the time.
So here's how you can resolve the problem:
First right-click on your WiFi icon in the taskbar at the bottom right corner of your screen and select Open Network and Sharing Center.
Once in Network and Sharing Center, select Change adapter settings on the left panel.
In the next screen, right-click on your home WiFi network and select Properties.
In the properties popup window, select the Power Management tab, and then make sure to uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power. Don't forget to click OK to apply your changes.
That's it. Your computer should stay connected to your WiFi network from now on. Hope this helps!
Picture of the Day:
Google AdSense sent me a violation report. Turned out my web page can not mention the word "Weapon." So what am I going to do with a web page showing my translation of the famous Chinese Martial Arts novel named "Seven Weapons" by Gu Long? These are swords, sabers, and spears. How ridiculous. What kind of world do we live in today?
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
When looking at a folder of MP3 files in Windows 10's File Explorer, it is super annoying that Windows 10 would choose to display all the files as if you are looking at an Audio CD, where you see info such as title and contributing artists, instead of seeing the file size and when the file was created.
There is a way to fix that. It's just not very obvious. Let me show you how:
In File Explorer, go to the parent folder containing all the MP3 files. Rightclick on the folder and select properties.
You should now see a window that looks like the one below. Go to the Customize tab and then click the dropdown box under Optimize this folder for. Select General items instead of Music.
You can also go up a few levels with your folders, do the same thing and then check the checkbox called "Also apply this template to all subfolders", so you don't have to do this once for each folder.
Then click OK to apply your changes.
Once you make this change, your folder content will look normal again like this:
Hope this helps! Moving on to the next battle!
Video of the Day:
Can you tell the difference between cheap and expensive pianos?
Make sure you read the comments!
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
Happy 4th of July, the Independence Day of America!
Since the pandemic is still going and has no trend of getting any better soon, I thought I just share some random nice things to boost the spirit up!
1. The Finch Story
A pair of finches made a nest next to our garage door window, so I put a Wyze camera there and recorded some clips. Finally put everything together into a nice little movie. So enjoy. The background music I used was from Night Coming (a great story by Maoni), composed by Roc Chen.
2. My Indoor Pepper
I planted a pepper plant in a flowerpot late last year. I had not expected to get anything out of it because people normally plant peppers after Memorial Day, so I was like half a year ahead of the time. But the plant actually produced a pepper! I'll be fine during the summer with respect to veggie supply now!
3. Mozart's Sonata
My daughter has been practicing this song for over 6-months. She finally got to a level minimally presentable. Very happy for her! So enjoy!
4. Around the World
I set a goal for my kids to be able to do Around the World by the end of summer. They asked me to also do it. So here it is (although this one is really the reverse around the world), the first time I've ever done anything so fancy. Feeling pretty good about it! Of course, I'll still have to master the real around the world by end of summer.
5. My Bookshelves
Someone on Twitter asked people to post photos of their bookshelves. So I snapped a picture of mine. I like my bookshelves (I also share the shelf space with kids), because I love books, in case you haven't noticed. See how many different collections you can spot from the photo.
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
I was trying to find something I retweeted on Twitter a while ago. Turned out this task is super hard on the Twitter website. First, you have to go to your own account page and then scroll and scroll and wait. Then at some time, the web page will stop loading any more tweets in history, so all your time has been wasted.
If you have run into the same kind of problem, here's good news for you! There's a web tool called All My Tweets, that will allow you to easily search through all your tweet history, especially the retweets.
To use the tool, first, go to the website at http://www.allmytweets.net and then log in using your Twitter credentials. You will be asked to authorize this web tool to access your Twitter account.
Once that's done, you will see all your tweet history in text format that looks like this:
Now you can simply use the browser's search function to find any old tweets/retweets easily. All the retweets would start with the text RT.
Why are humans smarter than other animals? Because we know how to use the right tools to get things done easier. BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
I have been following the COVID-19 situation very closely for the last 5 months. Thought to share with my readers some useful websites, so you can get up-to-date information on the Coronavirus.
Lanny's Predictive Model
First, let me shamelessly promote my own predictive models that I update daily when real official data gets in, and then tweet them to my Twitter account. I have two predictive models.
So for the entire United States, you can see that on July 2nd, we just had a new record of 52,981 new cases in one day, when my model predicted 50,972 new cases. Not too bad from the model perspective. Very bad from the virus containment perspective. Following this trend, we would exceed 4 million cases on July 20th if no extreme measures are enforced. That means over 183,000 in death toll by August 1st. I use numbers reported by CNN at midnight Eastern time each day (link in the section below.
For the Utah State, I predicted 668 new cases for July 2nd, and the official number was 554. Because the number of people tested each day can vary dramatically, the daily positive rate line is the more interesting indicator of how well Utah is doing.
CNN COVID-19 Live Feed
I don't want to search for COVID-19 related news every day, so I simply follow the news live feed from CNN. When new information becomes available, I get prompted to see the new updates automatically, which is nice. However, you do have to manually change the date in the URL manually to stay update to date. For example, replace the 07-02-20 in the URL below with today's date to get the latest info.
CNN also has a page showing more detailed information by each state with maps, tables, and graphs. They are doing a pretty good job updating total numbers using the Johns Hopkins website data. That's why I just use their numbers for my daily update to my US model.
This website is a great tool to compare different countries and different states. You can sort by total cases, daily new cases, total death, or daily new death. The numbers they report are always more than the ones reported by CNN and Johns Hopkins data feed. I don't know why. Maybe they track data more aggressively? But anyway, still great to see trends.
This website focuses on computing the Rt value, a metric on how fast the virus is spreading. It ranks different states based on the Rt value. You can also go into each state and get more detailed information.
I used to use this website a lot for up-to-date COVID-19 data. It is one of the most famous data-hub websites. However, the website is very buggy. It takes forever to load and tends to crash my Chrome browser frequently, so once CNN started using data from this website, I stopped visiting it. You can use this website to look at worldwide data, and can also drill down to one country or one state to get more information.
Hope these can be useful for you to get more information about the spread of the COVID-19 virus so you can be prepared accordingly. Best luck to all of us in this long fight, but we will prevail!
Video of the Day:
I will survive and you'll survive if we all wash our hands frequently!
BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://blog.lannyland.com
I am so thrilled to have survived the first half of Game 2020, and I am going to put it all in for the second half!! I am going to stay tough and fight it all the way with my teeth and nails. I swear that I'll be more efficient, more productive, healthier, and stronger when I look back at 2020. I'll be fighting like this little tough guy:
Join me to fight in the second half! Let's kick some ass!! And whenever you feel hurt, defeated, or feel the need to give up, look at this video, chill, and then get back into the fight! We can do this!!
StayFocusd is a free Chrome Extension I use to self-regulate how much time I spent on news and social media web sites every day so I can stay more focused and waste less time. It is a great tool I would recommend to everyone who wants to be more efficient and get more done each day.
However, I just found out today that the StayFocusd tool started blocking my Google Adsense dashboard page. I don't ever recall blocking this web site. And after I went into the extension settings page, I also don't see the Google website on the blocked list.
If you also experience similar problem where websites not on the blocked list gets blocked by StayFocusd, don't worry. Here's how you can take care of this extension bug.
If you are like me, most likely you enabled the Require Challenge option, which requires you to type this long paragraph of text (min 425 characters) without making any mistake (any mistake would reset the challenge). Don't bother! Because it is HARD! I failed the challenge twice today.
1. Go to the settings page of the StayFocusd extension and then click the tab that says Import/Export Settings on the left and then click Export Settings to save your settings to a JSON file.
2. In the address bar of your Chrome browser, type in chrome://extensions. Find StayFocusd and then click Remove.
3. Go to the Chrome Web Store and find StayFocusd (or click this link) and click Add to Chrome.
4. Go to the settings page of the StayFocusd extension and then go back to the tab that says Import/Export Settings on the left and then click Import Settings and load the JSON file you saved on your computer.
That's it. Now it should not block websites that are not on your blocked list anymore.
Tao of the Day:
If you get erased by the Mainstream Media, become the Mainstream Media! #LetYangSpeak BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com
