Talking Machines is a new machine learning podcast hosted by journalist Katherine Gorman and Havard computer science professor Ryan Adams. It's described as: [...] your window into the world of machine learning. Your hosts [...] bring you clear conversations with experts in the field, insightful discussions of industry news, and useful answers to your questions. Machine learning is changing … [Read more...]
R package for electricity forecasting released
Rob Hyndman and Shu Fan have released an R package for electricity demand forecasting. It's based on their paper "Density forecasting for long-term peak electricity demand", published in 2010. From the project's Github page: The package requires the following data as input: - half-hourly/hourly electricity demands - half-hourly/hourly temperatures at one or two locations - seasonal … [Read more...]
The hidden cost of settings
I was chatting to Sean Brady of Prism Decision Systems last week. He was using the Modern UI version of Skype on his new laptop and bemoaning the fact that software can be too minimalist. There's a recent trend for software to have minimal options. Design decisions are made for the users by the developers. iA Writer, a word processing application, typifies the genre. It famously doesn't allow … [Read more...]
Death by conservation
An article in last week's New Scientist reports that conservation policies are driving villagers to kill protected wildlife---including elephants and tigers. Government conservation policies restrict use of ancestral lands which causes resentment among villagers. In some cases this resentment manifests itself in the illegal killing of the very animals that the policies are designed to … [Read more...]
Computer says, “No.” (to snacks)
Big data creates opportunities for all sorts of new services---good, bad or just wacky. It's difficult to be sure which category the Luce X2 TouchTV from Rhea Vendors falls under. They have a snack-vending machine that could, in principle, access your medical records via facial recognition. Cross-referencing this with your purchase history would determine if you'd been naughty and, if so, no … [Read more...]