It's not monetizable, but I'm playing with reinforcement learning. It's incredible to watch a computer "learn" to play super mario using just input pictures.
Neural nets in general are much less complicated than I thought they would be, at least as a practitioner.
The stack is basic. I develop on an old lenovo laptop and test for a few dozen frames(you can learn a lot without a CUDA GPU) before pushing it to a desktop with a cheap nvidia card. It uses pytorch and pyboy, and the model is just a couple Conv2d expansions and compressions before hitting a Linear layer outputting predicted reward for certain keypresses(basically). The model training is based off of deep Q learning. I'm looking at a pytorch tutorial[1] when I get stuck, but I'm trying to fumble around and try it myself as much as possible before looking at it.
I have an idea to have variable Q training propagation based on the amplitude of the reward so that bigger rewards propagate more, but I haven't got there yet.
Here is a great video on reinforcement learning[2].
Almost all news and social media site structure is derived from research using the Skinner box[1, scroll down to A Man, a Plan, and a Rat in a Box]. Researching operant conditioning, they found that introducing randomness to some sort of dopamine release would cause habitual behavior of the action that caused dopamine release. This reaction to novelty was then successfully transferred to humans. This is most obvious on Reddit IMO, with "gems" interspersed between vapid, uninteresting posts.
I'm actually making an alternative to Facebook that shows posts chronologically in the feed instead of using machine learning algorithms to make them addictive. I also plan to not include a share button on posts. I think these two changes would make it far less addictive and better for users.
Not to be too spammy, but discovery of such sites is why I'm making Feldot, a social domain aggregation site. There are so many sites available out there like this to browse, but we never see them when using existing search engines.
I'm Luke Hackworth, developer of this site. It's really difficult to find new websites nowadays. The big players penalize posts that lower engagement outside of their own sites, meaning most people are only exposed to a tiny portion of the real web.
I created Feldot to enable the exact opposite behavior, pushing the user to explore new domains. Instead of a link aggregator like HN or Reddit, it's a domain aggregator, pointing to an entire website.
Because it's tough to find new sites, I also created a tool to help find new sites, Feldot Explore[1]. It's not just a list of domain names; each one was scanned to verify that a web server is running on it, and some basic scans were done to remove a majority(but not all) parked domains. The list was checked a year ago so it's not exactly fresh, but I think the signal-to-noise ratio is still good enough.
I posted this a year ago and it gained no traction, which isn't surprising considering its appearance. I revamped its UI, though it's still very much a work in progress. Any feedback, positive or negative, is very appreciated!
I'm a systems administrator for a small MSP. I've used Linux as my primary OS for 9 years, despise using Windows, and I can tell you with 100% confidence that nothing but Windows is ready for prime time, and for one major reason: _ease of administration_.
Think of the growth cycle of the vast majority of businesses. Almost all businesses are started and run by non-IT people. They buy Windows machines because they're simple(don't have to worry about OS installation, chosing a distro, etc), have Microsoft Office, and work with any and all enterprise software they use. This gives them a key advantage for small businesses. Like it or not, Linux is just relatively hard.
Where Windows _really_ shines, though, is when a small business transitions to being a big-small or medium-sized business. If you have a couple dozen computers and a couple dozen users to manage, do you think it would be worth it to have a linux admin spin up an LDAP server with kerberos and all the bells and whistles needed, then be hired to manage that infrastructure? No, they're going to contract someone to spin up a windows server to manage user logins, create a network share, and call it a day. The infrastructure is super-stable, and when the cost of labor is considered, it is considerably cheaper than letting the system be the plaything of a local Linux zealot.
It's only when you consider big and massive businesses that Linux can really be viable, and even then it ain't cheap. Most big businesses grew in a Windows environment, and switching the core of your IT infrastructure sure as hell better be worth it to warrant the massive labor costs, IT fire fighting, and drop in employee productivity that will result.
No, Linux infrastructure and desktops really only make sense for companies that are either highly technical, need absolute control of their hardware, are _extremely_ price sensitive, are (or hope to become) massive, or a combination of these.
FWIW, I mostly operate in the world of small businesses, and in tech and creative sectors.
Anecdotally, the majority of the small businesses I deal with don't fit your characterisation there. For example, MS Office is far from universal in this market now. Online collaboration and document editing tools are displacing applications like Word and Project. We're being forced to switch to online management and accounting systems because of issues with interoperability and government regulation, which makes Excel much less useful. Outlook/Exchange is giving way to Google Mail and similar services. I'm not saying any of these is necessarily an improvement or has no downsides, but it's clearly the way the industry has been moving. The specialists doing things like CAD or DCC still need the 800lb gorilla software in many cases, but those are niche markets.
The biggest problem with Linux on the desktop today is no longer application support, IMHO, but rather the lack of off-the-shelf PCs you can buy that way, with proper tech support and so on. We tried buying one of the Dell laptops that was sold with Ubuntu preinstalled, and it was one of the most disappointing and troublesome purchases we've ever made, largely due to the abysmal support when basic hardware failures occurred. (Also, the hardware itself appears to be pretty poor quality.)
If you could buy decent laptops with Linux preinstalled from the usual big name brands or off the shelf at your local bricks-and-mortar store, I suspect a lot of people would barely notice the difference any more, because so many of their software needs are either very basic or using online systems now.
Why do your employee's systems need to be "Administrated" in the first place?
Why do you need Active Directory or LDAP? Why do you need group policy or anything else? Why are your endpoints not as close to vanilla simple desktop/laptops as possible? Is it that employees can't handle using a computer?
I've worked in one of the largest businesses in the world for many years now, and I don't think we even have an IT department that manages desktop installations. I've certainly never interacted with them. You either figure out how to use the computer they give you, or you don't, in which case why should they employ you? Computers are a basic skill.
Primarily authentication, authorization, and accounting[0]. Setting up a new user account on every single computer that an employee may at some point sit at gets very expensive. Many businesses (if not immediately then eventually) have security concerns that require Administrators have the ability to immediately lock users out of the system or be able to audit recent activity. AD/LDAP facilitates this. It can also automate standard settings like network drives, screen lockout settings, homepages, and all sorts of other settings.
> You either figure out how to use the computer they give you, or you don't
Standardization of processes and training can reduce training time considerably. For industries with high turnover, this can make a difference. You've gotta remember, not everyone is a knowledge worker. Tons of people are more like cogs in the machine of the company, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
> Primarily authentication, authorization, and accounting[0]. Setting up a new user account on every single computer that an employee may at some point sit at gets very expensive
Why are people using more than one machine?
> Many businesses (if not immediately then eventually) have security concerns that require Administrators have the ability to immediately lock users out of the system or be able to audit recent activity.
Why are the network services tied to login sessions on my machine? I mean, login token invalidation is an interesting problem in general, but every place I’ve worked in the past 10 years, my desktop is not the place where secure things are stored, the services I access are. (And those services are increasingly SaaS and use something like SAML with the directory server for the company.) None of which needs a login token associated in any way with my desktop login.
Perhaps a better phrasing of the question is, why is the demarcation line between the untrusted world and the things you’re protecting on the desktop? And not at the services themselves?
> It can also automate standard settings like network drives, screen lockout settings, homepages, and all sorts of other settings.
Sounds like a bunch of solutions to problems you’re creating for yourselves. Why even do any of these things?
Perhaps an analogy would be helpful:
Say you required all your employees to have smart phones so they could (for instance) get email, log into the timecard/accounting service, etc. You’d need a pretty huge justification to require all of the phones to be managed centrally by your company. Why are desktops different?
(Or perhaps you’d defend even the central management of my iPhone too, in which case I think our perspectives are so far off, I don’t think there’s much convincing either of us can do at this point.)
I used to be an AD administrator for a university and had to manage hundreds of lab machines (maintaining a central hardware-independent image, group policy, tons of settings), so I’m aware of what tools are available for Administration, I’m just saying 9 times out of 10, the best way to administer lots of systems is to not administer them at all.
Ever been in a meeting room? Most companies have shared PCs for meeting rooms. Logging in gives you access to your documents so you can hold your meeting and take your notes back to your workstation.
I'm really surprised you worked in a large business and haven't experienced any of this or the need for standardisation. We use a bunch of systems that all work with AD, it's really a solved problem in a Windows based environment.
Are you sure that's not overgeneralising from your own experience? After all, most companies don't even have dedicated meeting rooms, because they aren't big enough. Of the ones that do, I have rarely seen a dedicated PC in there, and that spans the full range of businesses from five guys in a single office through 200+ person medium enterprises right up to some of the largest companies in the world. Most people just take their own laptops, IME. So while I don't doubt that you may have come across this often, it's not necessarily the way everyone else does it.
In any case, basic AAA for organisational user IDs is hardly rocket science, whether you're running on Windows or Linux.
The OP mentioned working in one of the largest companies in the world I find it hard to believe they have no conference and meeting rooms. I think you are over-generalizing using startups as a prototype; the enterprise world is a different beast.
As I wrote before, I've also worked in some of the largest companies in the world. Obviously those do have meeting rooms in their offices, but IME people typically just bring their own laptops/devices to a meeting. I can't remember the last time I saw a dedicated PC that stayed in a meeting room, other than maybe ones used to run projectors and such in a conference centre that was hired out.
Man you're practically one step away from saying "Why even have a business? It just creates more problems."
edit: I mean are you really asking why not have network shares or screen saver timeouts for your environment? It's a bit hard to take you seriously saying things like that.
I would agree with this if not for my recent experience with duckduckgo. While Google's search result quality has sharply deteriorated in recent months, duckduckgo's results have stayed flat for the most part, to the point where ddg's result quality is more often superior to Google. If it were a matter of SEO manipulation, wouldn't ddg's quality decline too?
And also, why doesn't DDG grow in market share if Google's results are worse?
My hypothesis is that Google's results aren't bad - they are actually serving a set of results which satisfies the laymen, and it's only the technical, highly niche users with whom the results don't align.
I don't think this fits the definition of spam. Many average Joe users happen to find those curated suggestions useful. Yes, user testing has been done.
> Defaults matter.
Yep. More advanced users also tend to be better positioned to opt out compared to average Joe opting in.
Spam: unsolicited usually commercial messages (such as e-mails, text messages, or Internet postings) sent to a large number of recipients or posted in a large number of places[1]. By that definition, it is spam.
> user testing has been done
User testing isn't flawless, and is what got us the ribbon in Microsoft Office for example, an incredibly unintuitive interface.
> got us the ribbon in Microsoft Office for example, an incredibly unintuitive interface.
On the contrary. The ribbon is a really excellent piece of UX work, much more discoverable and usable than the masses of menus that preceded it. It just isn't what people were used to. My favorite story is a friend of mine ranting about how he couldn't find anything with the ribbon in Word, and adding, "but at least they added styles to Word." I had to point out that styles had been in Word for a long, long time and the ribbon had just done its job very nicely.
So... I'm not sure what exactly we're talking about. Since the comment said "spam and self-promotion", I'm assuming spam doesn't mean the self-promotion but the recommended media articles. They're not commercial messages. Arguably the self-promotion could be called spam but it also occupies much less space on the page.
I work at a MSP and install Windows almost daily. On most systems, I install Windows Professional version 1903, the latest version. On all of those, Candy crush, Skype, One Drive, Office, and a myriad of other App Store apps autoinstall. Each of those are basically ads for paid products. This is on the small business-oriented "Professional" version of Windows, mind you.
Not only do they install, but they immediately fill the start menu tiles with this spam.
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure those autoinstalls are placeholders. If you go into add/remove programs, they're around ~120kb give or take. I think this goes along the lines of the "Office" install that would come with Windows 7 or 8 installs where you click it and it tries to rush you through the process of acquiring Office.
The parent (unless we mean further up chain) didn't call them advertisements, but stated that they are store apps that auto install. There is certainly a placeholder there so they are for sure advertisements, but I don't believe you could take this fresh install, take away internet access and click on Candy Crush and start playing it while on a flight. You'd need to download the actual app first.
I said "Each of those are basically ads for paid products." OneDrive and Office 365 do fully autoinstall, and if it's impossible for a layman to differentiate between an ad and a native app, I consider it at least partially autoinstalled.
OneDrive seems to be built into Windows 10 as far as I'm aware, but you must configure it to do much of anything. There was a proper OneDrive application at one time, but I don't know how much of a thing it has been since Windows 8 (10 it just seems part of Windows Explorer plus some hooks in 10 proper). It doesn't show as a tile for me on either my personal or work machine, but that might not be the case for everyone. If I click on it in the applications list on the left, it opens Windows Explorer to the OneDrive "folder".
Office 365 that is interesting because on a clean install, I still had to go to office.com to install it. I didn't have icons for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. and certainly not the GBs of data already consumed by it. I'm looking at my work machine at the moment and it has an "Office" tile that I can sign in and use the web versions, but it doesn't appear to be a full Office install.
Neural nets in general are much less complicated than I thought they would be, at least as a practitioner.