Code examples and illustrations exploring the ways that convolutional neural networks "learn" from the data they're trained on.
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Digital fabrication is a revolutionary advancement in the way we make things. By abstracting away the complexity of traditional fabrication, it promises to remake not only the economics of manufacturing, but also the sociology of manufacturing. Here's my talk from the Digital Factory conference at the MIT Media Lab.
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Seen from the United States, Kashmir is a complex web of dotted lines that describe more a century of political and military conflict between India, Pakistan, and China. Seen from India, that boundary is decidedly less nuanced: it's a solid line that puts the entire disputed territory inside India. From China, the boundary is different and, of course, it favors China. Google and Microsoft have found themselves embroiled in some awkward geopolitical disputes as they've...
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The empty reservoir is the iconic image of California’s severe four-year drought. California’s big reservoirs actually rise and fall every year, filling with rainfall and snowmelt in the winter and developing a “bathtub ring” in the summer as they supply farms and lawns through the dry season. For three winters, though, rain and snow failed to fill the reservoirs: from 2013 through 2015, Shasta Lake never reached capacity, entering the dry season already depleted.
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We tend to think that we're participants in an era of unprecedented busyness. The icon of our situation is the e-mail inbox, relentlessly full and irredeemably disordered. A few nights ago, I was flipping through a volume of Benjamin Franklin's writing and noticed that perhaps a quarter of his letters from the middle period of his life began with the sort of apology that's familiar to all of us: I'm really sorry for my late...
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