Interesting Bits from the previous week
The power of the amateur genius on the internet - from Trump tweet to public learnings about US spy satellite capabilities
wferrell: I’m amazed by a few things:
The information hidden in this image
Even more, the abilities of clever people to use their technical skills and 10s or 100s of lines of code to to extract the hidden information and reveal to the world significant details about the US Military’s surveillance capabilities.
Read this incredible post that breaks down each step of the code in making sense this image: https://github.com/cbassa/satellite_analysis/blob/master/nahid1_launch_failure_analysis.ipynb.
For a more detailed written overview see this excellent overview: https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2019/09/image-from-trump-tweet-identified-as.html
To me this is an eye-opening post that highlights the power of basic math & science plus a little programming and data from the internet — and what it can produce. This should be doable by many high school graduates and certainly any college graduate that has taken some introductory Computer Science.
Making Deep Learning Easy in Computer Vision
wferrell: Computer Vision is more and more of deep interest to me - the next decade is full of CV opportunities and significant advancement. My personal interest is taking me down a few paths: Real Time License plate identification at 60 FPS, Crop Yield forecasting from aerial photography and text extraction and highlight generation from game play footage (Fortnite and Australian open Tennis) — I’ll have blog posts on each topic coming shortly.
In this vein, trying to apply deep learning to CV has long seemed like a significant undertaking but I’ve recently come across: Simple Python Package to Extract Deep Learning Features which, at first glance, seems enable us to stand on the shoulder of giants when trying to quickly and easily apply Deep Learning to CV. I’m excited to give it a try in the next few weeks on some of the License Plate footage.
Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America's Eyeballs
Great read. Would highly recommend.
wferrell takeaways:
Blockbuster Online existed — I had totally forgotten.
Blockbuster Online cloned the NETFLIX DVD by mail product and according to the author — took the lead over NETFLIX in terms of growth with an unbeatable offer of getting DVDs by mail and being able to return them for a new movie at your local Blockbuster.
Common lore is that Blockbuster totally failed — when the reality is, had Blockbuster Online stayed the course — we might all be watching movies at blockbuster.com
How did Blockbuster Online fail? It appears to be due to a Board/CEO battle between Carl Icahn and John F. Antioco (CEO)— and when Antioco was fired/stepped down, the new CEO came in and gutted Blockbuster Online in favor of focusing on reinvigorating the physical stores.
State of the art auto-complete / Auto-complete your thoughts
We’ve all seen the amazing GMail auto-complete and auto-reply functionality. Here is a look at the state of the art in auto-completion powered by neural networks
Tap one of the “Start Writing” buttons on the linked page: https://transformer.huggingface.co
You will be taken to a screen like this — I’d suggest playing with one of the examples:
Fire fighting Plane Dumps Fire Retardant
Song of the week
Paul Simon - Graceland (MK & KC Lights Remix)
Happy week ahead!
— Bill