Still relevant today.

Starring Lana Turner.

Inspired the song “Living in shame” by Diana Ross and the Supremes.

See https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007spxp

Time: 16:40

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. – Rob Siltanen

Flying in a plane recently I realised I’d never seen a bird outside the plane window.

I assumed it was because birds didn’t fly that high.

Turns out I was wrong. There are birds that fly at the altitude of commercial aircraft.

For one, the Rüppell’s griffon vulture which has been seen at 37,000 feet.

Even the common crane flies to 33,000 feet which it does when flying over the Himalayas to avoid eagles in the passes when migrating.

More info https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_by_flight_heights

So the reason you don’t seem them at this height is because they only do it where necessary. Or rarely. Eg there are very few Rüppell’s vultures remaining.

Really like this blog post on deliberate practice.

The Importance of Deep Work & The 30-Hour Method for Learning a New Skill

I cannot believe the column inches this article got. The title is:

Even algorithms are biased against black men

whereas it should have read:

Poorly designed algorithm incorrectly predicts bias but rather than getting a smack on the hand and getting some machine learning experts to do the job properly we’ll blame the problem on the software and create some confusion and mass hysteria by publishing it in the national press

Just because the authors of this algorithm were from ProPublica does not make the algorithm correct. The only sentence worth a modicum of merit in the entire piece is the first sentence of the last paragraph which reads:

The big puzzle is how the bias creeps into the algorithm.

However, it’s not a big puzzle. It’s simply a bad machine learning algorithm.

We might be able to understand how if we could examine it. But most of these algorithms are proprietary and secret, so they are effectively “black boxes” – virtual machines whose workings are opaque

And this is just scare-mongering. The solution is called validation data.

For those wanting to read this piece of claptrap go here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/26/algorithms-racial-bias-offenders-florida

John Naughton and the Guardian should be ashamed of themselves. This type of rubbish belongs in the Sun.