I spent the first era learning how to build models with tools like scikit-learn and TensorFlow, which was hard and took forever. I spent most of that time feeling insecure about all the things I didn’t know. The second era–after I kind of knew what I was doing – I spent wondering why building machine learning models was so damn hard. After my insecurity cleared, I took a critical look at the machine learning tools we used today and realized this stuff is a lot harder than it needs to be....

The company has already released two iOS betas to developers, but Monday’s release marks the public launch of the software for everyone. I have been using the iOS 13 developer beta for the past few weeks, and it doesn’t seem to be too buggy. But you should always expect odd bugs and crashes since this isn’t the final version of the software. A lot of third-party apps are yet to add support for system-wide dark mode, which is the headlining feature of iOS/iPadOS....

In the past couple of months, Facebook, Instagram, and other social networks have faced a lot of outages. But how can you make sure that if the site’s actually down or if it’s just your phone or network provider? There are multiple ways to do it. First, you can check the official source of each site. For Facebook, you can head to its developer dashboard. Twitter has a developer status board for its APIs....

I’ll be running or doing yoga and, out of nowhere, a disembodied voice will tell me how far I’ve gone or that I’ve closed my exercise ring. It’s haunting. Look, there’s nothing wrong this new feature per se — it’s just not for me. Voice Feedback (which is what it’s called) just takes me out the zone while I’m exercising. I much preferred it when you just got a little ‘ding’ notification that you could either ignore or check out....

Nissan has ditched the CHAdeMO connector, found on the Leaf, in favor of a Combined Charging System (CCS) plug. [Read: German court slams the brakes on Tesla’s bogus ‘Autopilot’ marketing] If you’re not up to speed on your EV charging, CHAdeMO and CCS do largely the same job, which is to provide a fast-charging connector for your electric car. Read more about CHAdeMO here, and CCS here. In practice, there’s no real benefit to one over the other — except their popularity and the availability of compatible charge points varies around the world....

Now, various reports confirm that a deal has been reached, and it will see Hyundai take over Boston Dynamics from its current owners, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, for $921 million. As Gizmodo reports, this is the third time in seven years that the unprofitable Boston Dynamics has changed hands. The company spun off from a research unit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1990s, and operated on its own until Google bought it in 2013....

Art and commerce don’t always mix. Even when armed with superior talent, highly creative people like writers, filmmakers, musicians, photographers, creative business owners and others, can often find themselves running into unique challenges when they head out into the business world. There are immovable deadlines. There are pressures based on practicality, the marketplace or even just the limited vision of others. Then there are also the internal challenges. Like procrastination....

Naturally, the company has been lambasted over these shortcomings – rightly so, many people would argue. I’ve been on that side of the debate too, having written about the platform’s mistakes over the past few years. That said, I began to wonder if we weren’t collectively being too harsh on a platform that does something impossibly remarkable. It lets more than two billion people around the world watch video that’s uploaded at a rate of 500 hours’ worth of content per minute, on demand....

Yet despite momentous innovations in telescope and satellite technology, it’s thought much of what’s out there in the cosmos lies beyond our line of sight — beyond the “observable universe”, as it’s called. It also means we don’t know with any certainty what shape the universe as a whole takes — whether it’s a closed cosmic “doughnut”, a flat plain that stretches out like an endless piece of paper, or a giant sphere in a state of constant expansion....

We all love our phones. And over the past decade, their functionality has exploded to the point that there’s now precious little your iPhone can’t do in a pinch. However, there are some tasks you face that immediately make you think, eww, I’m going to have to tackle that one back at the office. And these aren’t highly complicated tasks either. We’re talking about scanning documents, changing file types, simple processing, and other work-related business that just gets too hard to do with just a phone....

From challenging your mind to opening new professional opportunities to a deeper understanding of the world around us, there are few skills with more immediate returns than learning a foreign language. While it’s seldom simple, what skill worth having comes easy? That being said, there are always tips and tricks that can help a motivated student advance a little faster and learn a little more efficiently. Thankfully, after nearly 15 years as one of the premier online learning resources on the web, Babbel Language Learning thinks they’ve got some valuable insight on that....

There are a host of arguments we could make for learning JavaScript. It’s still the world’s most popular coding language. It’s used on nearly 95 percent of websites running today. It’s also found in servers, mobile apps and desktops. But how does that affect you, exactly? Well, JavaScript developers will make an average salary of $115,000 in 2020. That could affect you very, very deeply once you’ve mastered training like The 2020 JavaScript Beginners Bootcamp Course....

The L82 uses the same tweeter in the L100 Classic, but gets rid of the midwoofer and shrinks the bass driver from 12 inches to a more practical 8-inches. That still makes it much bigger than most bookshelf speakers – it measures roughly 19 x 11 x 12 inches – but there’s a chance this one might actually fit on a bookshelf. Maybe. Just kidding, please don’t put a pair of 28-pound speakers on a bookshelf....

City Power, one of the largest power suppliers in Johannesburg, said the attack encrypted all its databases, applications and network, leading to a blackout of its IT systems. We are hoping that if everything goes according to plan, everything should be restored by Friday. — @CityPowerJhb (@CityPowerJhb) July 26, 2019 The company said the attack impacted vendors, who couldn’t upload invoices or access its website, adding it was working to recover and restore the impacted applications....

Ever since Netflix came along, TV stations have become pretty much pointless, right? I mean why go through the excruciating process of waiting a week for a new episode of your favorite show when you can simply stream the entire season in one day? While that’s a solid argument, it still comes with an awful problem: choice. Now, you might think that “choice” isn’t much of a problem at all — but you’re wrong....

The clips show a nearly identical design for the Galaxy S21… …and S21+: We can see that the devices feature a flat display and a hole-punch front-facing camera and the expected minimal bezel. New to the series is a two-tone detailing surrounding the three cameras on the upper left corner of the device. I dig the look, which almost appears to extend the phone’s metallic frame onto the shallow camera bump....

— NX (@NXOnNetflix) July 21, 2020 For those unaware, Legend of Korra takes place roughly seventy years after the events of Avatar and featuring Aang’s successor to the role of Avatar, waterbender Korra and her own cadre of friends, supporters, and colorful enemies. It originally ran for four seasons, or “books,” on Nickelodeon from 2012 to 2014. It skews slightly older than Avatar, with Korra herself being a teenager when the series begins (other than the brief shot of her as an adorable ass-kicker you see in the tweet above)....

At the core, customer service is just what it sounds like — servicing your customers. If you consistently provide the kind of high-level service that leaves a mark on your customers, it’s going to build a sense of trust and drive brand loyalty with your audience. And if you don’t? Well, let’s just say your customers are going to be less than impressed — and more than likely to abandon your company in favor of one of your more customer-centric competitors....

To compensate for its losses in the smartphone market, the South Korean company will turn to the profitable EV industry. But don’t expect an G- or V- EV series. LG will focus on what it knows best: electronics, only this time for auto parts. To that end, also on July 31, the company will officially embark on a joint venture with Canada’s Magna International, one of the world’s leading auto parts suppliers....

In its latest example, a vacation scammer attempts to secure an upfront payment from a customer by warning of expiring “vacation credits” with a travel agent they’ve never contacted. From the YouTube description: Unfortunately for the telemarketer, she’s talking to a lifelike bot meant to waste her time. The bot, named “Ox-Gut McGee,” uses IBM’s Watson AI to process speech from the telemarketers. It starts hilariously, with the bot seemingly yelling at a child for bringing insects into the house, before randomly telling the telemarketer he wanted to be an olympic gymnast....