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Porto Seguro Challenge - 2nd Place Solution

Predicting Reading Level of Texts - A Kaggle NLP Competition15 October, 2021

Introduction: One of the main fields of AI is Natural Language Processing and its applications in the real world. Here on Amalgam.ai we are building different models to solve some of the problems around the NLP world, and by consequence, trying to make the world a better place. The Competition: Can machine learning identify the appropriate reading level of a passage of text, and help inspire learning? Reading is an essential skill for academic success. When students have a

João Paulo Martins

Porto Seguro Challenge15 October, 2021

Introduction: In the modern world the competition for marketing space is fierce, nowadays every company that wants the slight advantage needs AI to select the best customers and increase the ROI of marketing campaigns. And of course, our team at Amalgam.ai is developing solutions to this field. The Challenge: In this competition we were challenged to build a model that predicts the probability of a customer purchasing a product. The score chosen to measure the quality of the prediction was the

João Paulo Martins

Exponential Hiring Process15 September, 2021

The hiring process is a fundamental part of any company, it is the first contact of the professional with the culture and a great display of how things work internally. Let me show you how it works for XNV!

Rodolfo Egarter

Exponential Ventures anuncia la adquisición de PyJobs, FrontJobs y RecrutaDev04 August, 2021

Fundada en 2017, PyJobs se convirtió en una de las bolsas de trabajo más populares de Brasil para la comunidad Python. A pesar de su crecimiento agresivo en el último año, PyJobs mantuvo su enfoque orientado para la comunidad que le otorgó su impresionante popularidad entre los desarrolladores brasileños. Y sigue siendo, hasta el día de hoy, la bolsa de trabajo para desarrolladores con el mayor retorno de inversión para los empleadores que buscan contratar Ingenieros de Software de primera categ

Adriano Marques

Exponential Ventures anuncia a aquisição do PyJobs, FrontJobs, e RecrutaDev04 August, 2021

Fundado em 2017, PyJobs se tornou uma das plataformas de divulgação de vagas mais populares na comunidade Python. Apesar de seu crescimento agressivo no último ano, PyJobs conseguiu manter seu foco na comunidade e garantir sua impressionante popularidade entre desenvolvedores Brasileiros. PyJobs continua, até hoje, sendo a plataforma de divulgação de vagas com o melhor retorno de investimento para empresas buscando contratar engenheiros de software de qualidade. Mas

Adriano Marques

Exponential Ventures annonce l'acquisition de PyJobs, FrontJobs et RecrutaDev04 August, 2021

Fondé en 2017, PyJobs est devenu l'un des sites d'emploi les plus populaires du Brésil pour la communauté Python. Malgré sa croissance agressive au cours de la dernière année, PyJobs a conservé son approche axée sur la communauté qui lui a valu sa popularité impressionnante parmi les développeurs brésiliens. Et il reste, à ce jour, le site d'emplois pour développeurs avec le retour sur investissement le plus élevé pour les employeurs qui cherchent à embaucher des ingé

Adriano Marques

Exponential Ventures announces the acquisition of PyJobs, FrontJobs, and RecrutaDev04 August, 2021

Founded in 2017, PyJobs has become one of Brazil's most popular job boards for the Python community. Despite its aggressive growth in the past year, PyJobs retained its community-oriented approach that granted its impressive popularity among Brazilian developers. And it remains, to this day, the developer job board with the highest return of investment for employers looking to hire top-notch Software Engineers. But that is not the whole story. PyJobs was initially fo

Adriano Marques

What is a Startup Studio?28 July, 2021

Most people confuse Startup Studio with Incubators and Accelerators, but Studios are a completely different animal.

Adriano Marques

Why your company should remain remote even after the pandemic19 July, 2021

When the pandemic started back in March 2020, we had no clue on its duration or how life would occur during the following months. But as things kept going and companies understood that they needed to be totally remote to remain doing business, everything went greater than expected. Now we are seeing a backward movement, companies are starting to ask employees to come back to their office twice or three times a week, and some of them moved across the United States to other states or countries. T

Hunting for Unicorns14 July, 2021

Everybody loves unicorns, right? But perhaps no one loves them more than tech companies. Learn how to find them!

Rodolfo Egarter

Power up your LinkedIn Game05 July, 2021

Learn how to improve your LinkedIn through simple tips.

Rodolfo Egarter

The Power of Helping28 June, 2021

Don’t wait until a spider bites your hand or you have a trauma with bats to exercise your power. Just share this with your friends and think with yourself “How can I help someone today?”

Rodolfo Egarter

XNV Book Club18 June, 2021

Here at XNV we are all about creating a healthy work place culture, a family like atmosphere and a place we all enjoy working! A very popular team building activity, that 99% of our company engages in, is our monthly Book Club. Each month one team member picks a book, we read it, and then gather on the first Monday of the following month to discuss the book. Our team engages in a very open robust conversation about each book. This allows for team building and learning. Together our team has l

How to change careers17 June, 2021

When you start to believe in yourself, other people starts to believe in you. Believe that you can and are capeble of train yourself for the area you want to work.

Vittoria Ardore

How to receive a Salary in Brazil while working for a company abroad14 June, 2021

Are you thinking about start a new career working abroad, but you have no idea about where to start? This might help you a lot.

How many Software Engineers does it take to launch a Startup?09 June, 2021

> The answer is 5. That’s it; you need a team with a minimum of five Software Engineers to launch a Startup. If you want to know how I got to that number, stick around. The practical answer to that question is also one. One qualified engineer is more than enough to write a good piece of code to launch a startup. The only factor playing against launching any company with a team of one is that everything moves slowly and when that one person is unavailable, there is nobody else to come to the res

Adriano Marques

Chinese Lab Build the World Largest Model and Challenges Google… and the western as a whole.08 June, 2021

The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI), AKA OpenAI of China, recently launched the latest version of Wudao, a pre-trained deep learning model that is called “the world largest model ever”. The model has an incredible 1.75, wait for it…. TRILLION parameters. But how big is it really? Well, the model is 10 times bigger than the OpenAI GPT-3 model which, until now, has the title of the best model for language generation tasks. Another feature of Wudao is that the model was built and

João Paulo Martins

VGGNets are back03 June, 2021

If you have studied the deep learning timeline history, you may know that the big moment was in 2012 when Alex Krizhevsky presented a deep convolutional architecture able to improve the state-of-the-art error on ImageNet dataset by 11%. After that, it was proved that deep learning era had come. Two years later a better architecture was proposed by Karen Simonyan and Andrew Zisserman from the University of Oxford. In this model, the main difference was the number of layers, where they have s

Consumer vs Server-Grade Hardware and why you can't do Business-Grade work with the former02 June, 2021

In any market or industry, quality work at scale requires purpose-built high-performance tools. In a previous article (The Eight Challenges You'll Face With On-Premise Artificial Intelligence ), we promised to cover this topic more in-depth in a separate post. Well, we like to keep our promises, so here we are. It turns out that 3 of the Challenges we listed (Servers, Networking, and Storage) ar

Adriano Marques

Our 5 Tips for A Better Pointing System31 May, 2021

Consistency in a pointing system is paramount to a usable system. One of the many reasons a company decides to follow an agile methodology is to avoid the excessive project management costs and time involved in precise estimates and task management. The problem is that most companies want to be agile while still having a pinpoint precision estimate for their launch date. These goals are incompatible. Either you devote a lot of effort to managing the project and estimating work to get a precise

Adriano Marques

Are you the driver or a passenger in your own career?21 May, 2021

People often think of their career as something that you develop inside a company. This is only partially true. It is indeed true that a professional’s career growth is more often than not determined by the company they work for, and to move up, specific required goals have to be achieved along the way. Suppose you define career growth solely as the salary, bonus, and benefit brackets that a professional acquires as the job title grows in seniority. In that case, it is 100% true that your caree

Adriano Marques

Why we do Performance Review Meetings every 30 to 45 days at Exponential Ventures11 May, 2021

> Performance Review Meetings: Dreaded by some, feared by others, loved by the greatest, and misunderstood by almost all. The scene seems to come straight out of a sitcom. A team member and his manager awkwardly enter into an empty conference room booked for an hour several months ago for the dreaded end of the year performance review. The manager dreads the conversation, but she is confident that the notes collected throughout the year in her notepad will help her get through the meeting. The f

Adriano Marques

Calculating Material Stress Using Deep Learning27 April, 2021

If you are an engineer or get some classes of its subjects in college, you know resistances of material can give you a huge headache! Determining the stress a material is under, for example, requires complex equations created by mathematicians, engineers, and physicists. Such difficult that most part of the time we need computers to solve it. However, it seems that MIT researchers discovered a new method to simplify our lives, and guess what, using AI of course! By applying some computer visio

Nvidia GTC 202112 April, 2021

Nvidia's annual GTC starts today and you don't want to lose this opportunity. Every year Nvidia comes to show their exciting advancements in GPU technology and as artificial intelligence is directly linked to GPUs, you should expect a lot of AI content there, becoming a paradise for data scientist, machine learning engineers, and AI enthusiasts. You can also watch content about automation, health care, and quantum computing, all for free. But if you have extra money, I will recommend doing a wor

Give Yourself a Good Hobby12 April, 2021

When I was young all I liked to do was spend day and night playing my good and old PlayStation One. It was incredible, I really enjoyed those hours playing Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Cross, Harvest Moon and many other great names that I won't spend you time with. Nowadays looking back I realize that I could have done better if I invested my time on different hobbies. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that playing video games are a bad thing, also because I started learning Eng

Potatoes Cluster: Training a Deep Learning Model Using a 100 Potatoes01 April, 2021

Have you ever heard about battery potatoes? Did you know that it is also possible to process information using potatoes? In this post we are going to show you how it’s possible to create a cluster of potatoes, that not only serves as a power supply but also processes data in a very cheap way. With that, we could achieve the performance of a Nvidia GTX 1060 using 100 potatoes connected with nails and clips. Building the Cluster In order to build our cluster, we are going to need some other item

Introduction to API with Django24 March, 2021

Let's setup a basic API with token security using Python and the Django Framework.

Our team is the best19 March, 2021

Last Friday as I was preparing to leave the office, I went down to our mailbox and found this awesome gift from our team. I'm so excited to have you guys onboard, and I'm looking forward to continue to build incredible things with you for years to come! Thanks for all the hard work and trust you guys put on Exponential Ventures and all our companies everyday.

Adriano Marques

Using IBIS as an organization method for your research12 March, 2021

When you ask a Product Designer what is the process of designing digital products the answer may vary depending on the context, but you'll likely find a common ground on phases like: Understand, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. This process is known as Design Thinking and its approach is based on user-centered research and ideation. Getting to know about users and the problem you're facing requires some inquiry involving important stakeholders, and this article is going to be about that. Whi

Creating a Kubernetes environment on AWS with kOPS05 March, 2021

Have you ever wondered about deploying a cluster controlled by Kubernetes on AWS (or any other Cloud Provider) without suffering? Well, this post is definitely to you. I won't compare tools or methods like Terraform , CloudFormation and many others. This is just a simple post about deploying a cluster, managed by Kubernetes, using the most basic commands and enabling Rolling Updates, with kOPS. In order to accomplish this

Understanding Car Insurance01 March, 2021

There is a lot of confusion out there as to whether your auto insurance follows you, the vehicle, or both. It turns out, that there is no clear-cut answer to this question as it largely depends on the type of coverage, the situation associated with the claim, and the specific language in your insurance policy. This article will give you a few good rules of thumb to understand when to expect coverage in various situations. Does Auto Insurance Follow The Car or The Person? | BankrateAuto insuranc

Make Time25 February, 2021

One of the many cool things about working here at XNV is that we have a book club! We each take a turn picking a book, we read it, and then once a month we meet via Zoom to talk about the book. The book we read in January was, Make Time by Jake and JZ. The main idea behind Make Time, is simply that making time for what really matters. The book really hit home for me, I am always running around with a 200 item to do list gett

The Importance of a Home Address22 February, 2021

When applying for an auto loan, lenders often request a whole lot of information such as residence history, income and work history. It’s obvious why they’d request some of these items, to make sure you are working and will be able to pay the loan. But why would they care about your residence history? It turns out that if you’ve been living in the same address for a while, especially if you are a homeowner, you are more likely to be approved for an auto loan. The article below will help you un

The Art of Hiring Data Scientists09 February, 2021

The amount of companies hiring out Data Scientists thinking that they're going to come in, wave a wand and solve all problems with AI is appalling. This is not good for the industry, the companies, or the Data Scientists. Disrupting an industry takes a lot more than hiring a couple of Data Scientists and handing them a wishlist. Solving real problems with Artificial Intelligence requires experience across several technical domains that start with the hardware and ends with the production model,

Adriano Marques

Adopting Quantum Computing in 202109 February, 2021

Interesting take on adopting Quantum Computing in 2021, but I still think that there is a lot to overcome before most companies can actually use Quantum Computing for problems that really matter. Most people don't know, but Quantum Computers are a thing already, the problem is that they're not as powerful right now as we need it to be, and it is very hard to program them and get good results out of it. More on this topic here: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/if-not-then-organizations-should

Adriano Marques

AI and Deep Learning to a Full-Size Camera09 February, 2021

Photography is an industry hard to disrupt these days. With phones that are ever more powerful, carrying multiple lenses, and connected to our multitude of apps, it has become increasingly hard to find a reason to buy a DSLR camera. Alice might be an exception, though. It is small, portable, connects to your phone, and is incredibly powerful. And yes... it uses Artificial Intelligence to compensate for our lack of photography skills. Here is a video describing it: Here is an article about

Adriano Marques

Car loans and building credit.08 February, 2021

COVID-19 has shaped our relationships with cars and to some people they are now more important than ever. Most people will take out a loan to be able to afford a new or used car. It turns out that that very loan can not only improve your credit score but also help you negotiate a better deal. In summary, experienced car buyers recommend visiting a car dealer with a pre-approved loan in order to get a better deal and speed up the process. This article goes into details of how this happens. [htt

Quantum Brain06 February, 2021

Just read a very interesting article on an intelligent material that re-arranges itself in response to a learning stimulus. This is very exciting, and I think, the way to go when it comes to embedding Artificial Intelligence to all things around us. It also shows how the concept of Artificial Intelligence is a lot more encompassing than the usual definitions can accommodate. Here is a cool article explaining how it works: https://scitechdaily.com/the-first-steps-toward-a-quantum-brain-an-inte

Adriano Marques

Distributed learning in an on-premise cluster - A Kaggle Reinforcement Learning case08 January, 2021

Have you tried any distributed learning algorithms? If you are just starting out in this area, I have my doubts, but if you have been on this path for a few years, you might have faced one of those models. The incredible development of the machine learning area in the last decade has not only brought a new state of the art to several problems but has also taken processing optimization and parallelization to another level. With increasingly larger models, any common machine or even a single sup

Internationalization in Angular 1030 December, 2020

Internationalization workflow in Angular 10.

Machine Learning Reproducibility: A Kaggle Competition Use-Case16 December, 2020

Even though Reproducibility in Machine Learning is a theme that people hear about now and then, we still see that people are practicing it only to a certain degree. Even between Kaggle competition winners, we still see a lot of hard-to-reproduce code in Notebooks. Our goal here is to outline some reproducibility elements and how we tackled them in a recent competition. First, what reproducibility stands for in Machine Learning? During a Machine Learning project, we hav

Fernando Camargo

Custom API access in AWS02 December, 2020

Here is a quick and easy introduction on the basics of custom access control for API's created using API gateway from AWS. Let's get started 🔐. To illustrate the topics we are going to discuss let's image a simple site for a real state agency. In the site you can view the available homes in the area, you can send feedback to the agency and you can also use their mortgage calculator to simulate the monthly payments. All those actions can be done without setting up an user account. Additionally,

The path to putting your ML model in production24 November, 2020

Suppose you are a Data Scientist or Machine Learning Engineer (or another role name of this kind). You took your time to analyze your dataset, clean it, and prepare it to train your model. You then prepared many model candidates using the most recent techniques and took your time to fine-tune them. After all this extensive work, you finally created a model to be proud of. You finally finished your job. Well, unfortunately, not. If your model never goes live and is actively used, delivering value

Fernando Camargo

Is it a good idea to run data centers underwater?24 November, 2020

There are major infrastructural challenges in running large scale data centers. One is providing sufficient electric power to keep the facility running. A datacenter running tens of thousands of servers consumes roughly 10 Megawatts of power. Servers not only consume vast amounts of energy, they also generate a lot of heat. The air inside a data center will become sweltering unless you cool it down. Servers cannot function reliably in high temperatures. The cooling solution needs to be both hi

Adriano Marques

Multi-task learning: Solving different computer vision problems with a single model12 November, 2020

In the last few years, significant improvements in computer vision were made, making it possible to obtain important information from images. Some of the challenges for a better understanding of a scene are the detection of people and the recognition of the activities they are performing. In this post, I'm going to show a method that I proposed to do a single end-to-end model able to detect people, estimate their pose, and recognize each one of their activities by their pose. Figure 1: Result

Deep Learning and the fear of frauds09 November, 2020

Soon we might live in a world where one can never be sure that video and voice recording is real, no matter how realistic it looks and sounds. Deep learning methods are used with artificial neural networks to create what is known as deepfakes – visual and audio content that, to the naked eye, looks absolutely real. The potential uses of deepfakes are limited only by the imagination of people who have access to the technology required to manufacture them. As technology advances, the tools for cr

Adriano Marques

Introduction to Serverless on AWS06 November, 2020

Brief introduction on the concepts of creating a basic API using a serverless approach hosted on AWS.

Overview on the current state of 3D Printing05 November, 2020

3D printing used to be mostly the realm of hobbyists. As the technology evolved, it became an essential manufacturing method for many industries. Several cars today have 3D printed parts. 3D printing has enabled many startups to bring their products to market. For example, in one of his interviews, George Hotz who started a company to produce a gadget that makes virtually any car self-driving, mentioned that the casings for the gadgets are 3D printed in the company’s office. The most widely use

Adriano Marques

Are you ready for your Neuralink Brain Implant?31 October, 2020

Human brain consumes incredibly low amounts of energy, has great longevity, and requires little maintenance. No man-made computing hardware comes even close to a human brain in these qualities. Right now, the brain is mostly a black box to us. We know verry little about how it works. As of yet, scientists have had a limited toolset to study the inner workings of a human brain. Devices that interface with the brain could help us better understand it, repair, and possibly improve it. The most pr

Adriano Marques

The Current State of Self-Driving Technology30 October, 2020

The advances of technology in our world have continued to increase and self-driving cars are the next logical step for our society. This poses a fundamental question: do we know how safe autonomous vehicles can be? SAE International is an organization who describes a categorization for "levels of driving automation". It defines six levels of automation for cars, ranging from Level 0 (no driving automation) to Level 5 (full automation), transitioning gradually from "driver support features" to "

Adriano Marques

I heard that you're playing with SEO27 October, 2020

Hey people, hello again, this time we're going to talk about SEO 📈📊 In this article I'll walk with you through the path I followed to improve the visibility of this blog you're accessing right now. A bit of context... This is a Gatsby + Ghost blog, and as you may know, it is a static site. Gatsby generates the bundle and we keep our posts on Ghost. Gatsby access these posts using the awesome Ghost Source Plugin and we deploy the bundle on

Mineral Mining and Blockchains - a good example of blockchain use outside of cryptocurrencies.26 October, 2020

Blockchain became a buzz word by 2017, made famous by the single-use case that for many people seemed almost synonymous with Blockchain –Bitcoin. The question on people's minds was: "What is blockchain, and how can I make money with it?" What really drew attention was the valuation of a single Bitcoin hitting an astonishing $20,000 in December 2017, a peak that it has not been able to climb again after rolling back down to $3,000 within a year. But the blockchain rush was on. Investors were fr

Adriano Marques

Ranking labs-of-origin for genetically engineered DNA using Metric Learning23 October, 2020

With the constant advancements of genetic engineering, a common concern is to be able to identify the lab-of-origin of genetically engineered DNA sequences. For that reason, AltLabs has hosted the Genetic Engineering Attribution Challenge to gather many teams to propose new tools to solve this problem. Here we show our proposed method that aims to rank the most likely labs-of-origin and generate embeddings for DNA sequences and labs. These embeddings can also be used to perform various other tas

Fernando Camargo

7 common mistakes of a machine learning beginner15 October, 2020

In recent years, the term Artificial Intelligence has gained strength and together with it have emerged some professions such as Data Scientist and Machine Learning Engineer. Knowing and applying machine learning is attractive and appears to be the path to success. However this path can be troubled and especially discouraging for those who are just starting out. Over the years working as a Data Scientist and Machine Learning Researcher, I have witnessed several common mistakes that made life di

AI Infrastructure Alternatives for your Business13 October, 2020

With cloud offerings becoming more abundant and diverse, cloud infrastructure seems to offer a much cheaper and simpler alternative to an on-premises data center. Many organizations, that need Artificial Intelligence to help with decision-making, problem-solving, etc. face a complicated decision: what is the best infrastructure deployment for AI workloads? Generally speaking, there are three possible deployment options. You can run your AI on-premises in your own datacenter, rent some space at

Adriano Marques

Angular Applications at Scale09 October, 2020

In this article, we'll look at how to build large Angular applications. I'll discuss techniques that will help you keep your project scalable, maintainable and robust.

What Kind of AI Infrastructure is Best for my Business?30 September, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about the various infrastructure alternatives available when it comes to training and deployment of Artificial Intelligence models. Between Cloud, Colocation, and On-Premise which one would you say is the best infrastructure for your AI needs? Come join us and participate by asking questions or giving your opinion in the live chat. - Adriano Marques is the founder and CEO of Exponen

Adriano Marques

Docker for beginners24 September, 2020

Hello you all, in this article I'll try to explain the concepts of Docker and how you can dockerize your app with no suffering, so leeeeeet's go 🤓 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Objective The objective of this article is to provide you the actions needed to get an up and running application with Docker and docker-compose. You'll also learn how to upload and download it from local registries and the almighty Dockerhub. Have fun. ------------

Are there any real-world application of Blockchains outside of Cryptocurrencies?23 September, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, we have a special guest discussing with us some real-world applications of Blockchains outside of Cryptocurrencies and whether those applications are really using and benefitting from this technology. Come join us and participate by asking questions or giving your opinion in the live chat. - Adriano Marques is the founder and CEO of Exponential Ventures. - Nathan Martins is a Machine Learning/DevOps Engineer at Exponential Ventures, where he works on projects t

Adriano Marques

The Eight Challenges You'll Face With On-Premise Artificial Intelligence18 September, 2020

As glamorous as it is to have your own Artificial Intelligence Optimized On-Premise Data Center, it doesn't come easy. It is absolutelly true that if done right it boasts much better performance and much lower costs than resorting to the cloud or even using co-location to perform your processing workload when creating AI driven solutions. However, most people are not aware of what really makes an AI Optimized Data Center and end up building an expensive half-baked solution that can't perform o

Adriano Marques

My journey so far17 September, 2020

My journey at Exponential Ventures started mid-2019 when I flew 7000 km to Exponential Venture’s headquarters in Chicago. During my first day of work at the HQ, I met the team members, saw their data center with several servers and XNV’s (that's how we abbreviate the company's name) lab where there is a laser cutter, 3D printers, and a CNC machine. Right at the beginning two of my beliefs changed: Machine Learning (ML) is easy and cheap and Python has a weird syntax that I will hate it forever.

Is the cloud moving to the sea?16 September, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about Microsoft's Project codenamed Natick which was an attempt of sustainably running a Data Center underwater. After 2 years of deployment, Microsoft is claiming that their servers were up to 8 times more reliable than their counterparts on land. Is that an indication that the cloud is actually moving to the sea? Come join us and participate by asking questions or giving your opini

Adriano Marques

How safe are self-driving cars?09 September, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about the safety of current self-driving technology. Despite the fact that there are very few cars on the road today capable of self-driving in all conditions, most new cars are already incorporating some of that technology and soon we'll be trusting our lives to it. Whether or not you're ready give up on your steering wheel we think that you'll enjoy this discussion. Come join us an

Adriano Marques

Should I start saving for my neuralink implant?02 September, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about the recently unveiled neuralink, a Brain-Machine interface developed by the company with the same name founded by Elon Musk.

Adriano Marques

When will I be able to 3D Print my products from home?20 August, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about the promises of 3D Printing, that are yet to be fulfilled, of a future in which we'll be able to download models of products and 3D Print.

Adriano Marques

Is the World going to be Deceived by Deepfakes?17 August, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat addressing a common concern about Deep Fakes deceiving the world with ultra realistic images, videos, and voice synthesis.

Adriano Marques

A few potential uses (and misuses) for GPT-311 August, 2020

GPT-3 is a 175 billion parameter autoregressive language model by OpenAI released in May 2020. It is a deep learning system that takes input in the form of human readable language and produces human readable output. The OpenAI team tested GPT-3 in Few-shot learning mode. The model is given a verbal description of the task and a few examples of context and completion at inference time. Then the machine is given another instance of context and expected to provide the completion. Two variations of

Adriano Marques

How can I differentiate Artificial Intelligence from everything else?07 August, 2020

In next week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about how Artificial Intelligence is defined with some practical examples and easy tips on how to distinguish AI from everything else.

Adriano Marques

GPT-3: Is this the beginning of Skynet?05 August, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about Open AI's recently announced language model GPT-3.

Adriano Marques

Top 6 Engineering Challenges for Machine Learning12 June, 2020

It is already 2020, and on top of a pandemic and civil unrest, our Machine Learning community still has to face challenges when working their way through creating models to solve the world's problems.

Adriano Marques

Survival of the Sickest: The Surprising Connections Between Disease and Longevity15 June, 2015

Disease is a word that carries such a visceral meaning: we've all had (or still have) one at some point, and have experienced the pains and challenges that come with it. They always reminds us of mortality and how fragile we all are and keeps us on our toes. Some diseases , however, are actually a design made to increase your longevity and this books points out several of them and goes deep in explaining the scien

Adriano Marques

Experiences with Fail Safer28 February, 2015

During the past couple weeks I have been slowly bringing www.failsafer.com to a temporary halt. The whole process is not over yet, but although this halt isn’t meant to be permanent. Fail Safer have been a great entrepreneurial and technological experience in my life, and it pains me to not have the time I wish I could have to get past the beta phase and actually launch and market it. Even though it was a beta release, Fail Safer was already fully functional and it was

Adriano Marques

The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity15 January, 2015

General Relativity have always been an intimidating topic for most people. The book makes it specially clear while recounting the story of the beginnings of the theory when almost all scientists showed strong resistance in accepting and even debating about the subject. Even to this day, the theory faces resistance from a small portion of the community. Although the book title calls it perfect, the extension of our understanding about it is rathe

Adriano Marques

The Innovators - How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution10 January, 2015

This is not the first Biography I've read that was written by Walter Isaacson . He is a phenomenal writer. The Innovators, I have to admit, didn't impress me as much. The book consists of micro biographies of dozens of personages involved in the advancement of technology since Ada Lovelace . It is an interesting read, but as a Computer Scientist I was already familiar with all of those personages to the leve

Adriano Marques

Thank You!28 June, 2014

As one of the finalists to be part of the Graduate Studies Program at Singularity University [http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.415229,-122.06265&spn=0.01,0.01&q=37.415229,-122.06265 (Singularity%20University)&t=h] I started a campaign to raise the funds to pay for my tuition. It was a tough sell, given that I was an alternate student and being admitted was depending on a class finalist dropping out before the program started

Adriano Marques

Life at The Speed of Light - From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life16 January, 2014

Quickly passing through the most important events in the history of biology and genetics , the author goes through his own endeavors pioneering the human genome sequencing and successfully creating the first form of life with a synthetic genome . It goes as deep as describing the procedures in details, so you've got to have some previous experience with the topic i

Adriano Marques

Mission to Mars - My Vision for Space Exploration16 January, 2014

Buzz Aldrin was not the first man to walk on the Moon , but wasn't short from Neil Armstrong in making history. This book is a collection of ideas he had gathered with the help of hundreds of specialists he discussed with throughout the years since he came back from the Moon. These ideas are focused on achieving and sustaining trips to Mars [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma

Adriano Marques

American Turnaround - Reinventing AT&T and GM and the Way We Do Business in the USA13 January, 2014

After working for AT&T for 44 years, the author found himself with an invitation from the White House to become the chairman of General Motors and help it turn away from his bankruptcy path. Notwithstanding the fact that he knew nothing about cars, he took on the challenge and left after it paid in full it's loans and right before its IPO. Very interesting story, shows how GM management was blind, thinking that the crisis was the only reason why they've got where they were. Nobody there though

Adriano Marques

Sending The Singularity University Shield to the Edge of Space06 January, 2014

Based at NASA Research Park in Moffett Field, California , Singularity University is a one of a kind. It was devised with the goal of teaching students about exponential technologies and how to use them to address humanity's greatest challenges. View of Hangar One, the huge dirigible hangar, with doors open at both ends. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Since I first hear

Adriano Marques

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth - What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything04 January, 2014

Most know for its Space Oddity performance on board of the International Space Station , Chris Hadfield wrote this book in a format that resembles more a memoir than a guide. Reading it, nevertheless, was both very entertaining and educational. Having a special interest in Space Exploration and Aviatio

Adriano Marques

Thinking Fast and Slow28 December, 2013

Outstanding work from Economics Nobel Prize Laureate Daniel Kahneman , on thinking process and how we miss the logic of things in our everyday decision making . The author uses the concept of two minds to explain how our brain makes decision, and how we're prone to succumb to bad decision making in situations ranging from being able to see the reality in optical ill

Adriano Marques

The Science of Fear - Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't -- and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger14 December, 2013

The terrorist attacks of 9/11/11 are the perfect example of how fear can put ourselves in greater danger. After seeing the airplanes hitting the World Trade Center on the TV, people decided that flying wasn't safe anymore. Instead, they took their cars and drove to their destinations, causing more traffic casualties than the terrorist attack itself, as statistics collected between 9/11/11 and 9/11/12 have show

Adriano Marques

How to Start a Career in Computer Science02 December, 2013

Which way? I still remember asking myself in front of all the possibilities in the field of computer science when I had to decide which one to pursue. So many variables, so many technologies, so many industries, and yet just one life time to pursue one or a few of the various possibilities available. That reminds me of a well known book - there is a line from Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland that relates perfectly to the feeling I had then. Amazed and puzzled in a whole new world, Alice tried to

Adriano Marques

Speaking at CEO National Conference 2013 - Technology and Startups08 November, 2013

Last Friday (November 1st) I spoke at the CEO National Conference about how to properly leverage technology in a startup. The event happened at the McCormick Place [http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.853101,-87.612137&spn=1.0,1.0&q=41.853101,-87.612137 (McCormick%20Place)&t=h], and it was pretty fun! I recorded my presentation, and created a quick video with the slides and the Q&A session at the end. Along with the video below, you'll find an abridge

Adriano Marques

Quick video for the 5th I.T. Symposium at the State University of Goias09 October, 2013

A couple months ago I was approached by a former classmate who is now a Teacher at the University I graduated and the current coordinator of the Information Systems course at the same University to record a video talking about my experience as a student and the things I recommend them to build their professional career to be presented in their 5th Symposium of Information Technology. The video is in Portuguese.

Adriano Marques

How to Create a Mind - The Secret of Human Thought Revealed05 October, 2013

Much like the Singularity is Near , and pretty much all other book from Ray Kurzweil , this one is certainly going to cause some stir in you. Ray tells you of how a mind can indeed be reproduced, and how A.I. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arti

Adriano Marques

Abundance - The Future is Better Than You Think30 September, 2013

We're used to hear about doomsday news every day, and we have literally become accustomed to the "fact" that we are a hopeless generation, that will soon become extinct by either famine, lack of water, a dreadful disease epidemic, terrorist attacks, or something worse. People just don't realize how much better off is the world we live in today than it was a few decades ago, for the most part. Reality is that positive and encouraging news do not sell as much as doomsday news. It is just how our b

Adriano Marques

Reality Check - The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition25 September, 2013

This book is surprisingly entertaining, and covers pretty much everything you need to deal with a startup. It covers pretty much all the way from inception of the idea, going through raising capital and marketing, and ending up important subjects like hiring and social responsibility . I like it that it is a very sincere book, and that it features several interviews Guy conducted with various professionals in the area. Also like the Fake Steve

Adriano Marques

The Wealth of Networks - How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom15 September, 2013

I've said that before , and I'll say it again: you know when a book is outdated when it keeps referencing MySpace and as a model for Social Networks . Unfortunately, this is not the only downside of this book. It is too tedious, full of long sentences that explains deeply everything that is being stated. It makes so many references th

Adriano Marques

The Innovator's Solution - Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth17 August, 2013

This book's message could be easily summarized by saying that there are only two kinds of companies: the ones that disrupts, and the ones that are being disrupted. There is no middle ground, and companies that have once disrupted, will soon going to be at the loosing side of the game. Christensen and Raynor do an impressive job in bringing up real world example of disruptions, and the common thinking behind the managers in both companies - the disruptor and the disrupted - that led them to ultim

Adriano Marques

The Post-American World - Release 2.012 August, 2013

The title may lead you to think that the author is going to picture a pretty chaotic picture for USA [http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=38.8833333333,-77.0166666667&spn=10.0,10.0&q=38.8833333333,-77.0166666667 (United%20States)&t=h] in the next decade. Not true. In fact, it talks a lot more about the balancing out of power and the rising of developing countries than anything else. Been raised and educated in a developing country , I tend to disagree

Adriano Marques

Parkinson's Law02 August, 2013

Quick and easy read. This book is short but full of pearls. Published in 1957, but still very much current when it comes to predicting, understanding, and managing human beings. One of this author's famous quotes is "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Full of interesting anecdotes, it is a very colorful and memorable book. It is not sophisticated, and show some outdated facts and data, but the substance will never be outdated. I recommend!

Adriano Marques

Decisive - How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work12 July, 2013

About 5 years ago, I had the chance of attending to one of the Heath brothers presentations, while at the Creativity World Forum 2008, in Antwerp [http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=51.2166666667,4.4&spn=0.1,0.1&q=51.2166666667,4.4 (Antwerp)&t=h]. I loved their simplified approach to hacking life issues and finding creative solutions to make a change in the world. Right there at the event, I bought their book "Made to Stick [http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/1400064287%3FSubsc

Adriano Marques

The Discoverers - A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself (Book One - Time)10 July, 2013

This book is a treasure chest full of memories on how we have gotten where we are today. Learning of the past mistakes and successes helps us avoid present pitfalls and flirt with a brighter future. The author, Daniel Boorstin - the Librarian of Congress from 1975 to 1987, did an amazing trip through man's most important discoveries revealing motivations, fortunes, and mis

Adriano Marques

The Long Tail - Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More06 July, 2013

Even if you don't plan to read it, you can't get away without understanding the phenomenon described by Chris Andersen in his book The Long Tail and expect to thrive in the age of the Internet . And this is no exaggeration - the long tail is a social phenomenon enabled by the internet and it extends beyond the realm offline retail stores, predicting customer behavior ac

Adriano Marques

Digital Disruption - Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation05 July, 2013

Short book, inspiring if you were born before 1980 and never been too much into the tech world or have never been an entrepreneur and want to understand the driver of today's digital disruptions. If you don't fit this description, it is still an ok book to learn some good examples of what have digital disruptors done out there and some cool concepts that the author have coined like disposable companies and adjacent technologies. I enjoyed the book, al

Adriano Marques

Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything10 June, 2013

You know when a book is outdated when it mentions MySpace as the leading Social Network , and makes short references to Facebook . This book was once very relevant, but now it is so outdated that I wouldn't recommend its read unless it undergoes a major review. Time has only made this subject even more relevant, and understanding it is a requirement for leveraging the giga

Adriano Marques

Reviewing The 21st Century Economy - A Beginner's Guide04 June, 2013

If you're that kind that often feels lost at lunch time when people begin talking about economy, the various indexes and acronyms, and economics theory this is the book to ease your pain. Although somewhat convoluted in describing some of the concepts, the books does a great job going through all the important pieces and factors that define our economy at the beginning of this century, being impressively current besides the fast paced changes we've witnessed in the past couple years. It goes fr

Adriano Marques

What Google Trends Has to Say About Censorship30 May, 2013

While studying about censorship and the term interest trends world wide, I decided to check on Google Trends and see how interest have been on the subject. The results are astonishing and reflects the actual opposite of what I thought they would look like. Tons of interesting conclusions could be drawn from Google trends 's charts. Let's take a peak: The dates on t

Adriano Marques

Lucky or Smart? Fifty Pages For The First-Time Entrepreneur28 May, 2013

Quick read, features some relevant lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs . I somewhat enjoyed the book, but wasn't much impressed by it. Maybe it would be more useful if I've never read any other entrepreneurship or business book before. One other negative detail, in my opinion, is that author tries to teach you lessons using examples from his experience as entrepreneur in the early 90's when internet wasn't anywhere near what it currently is today and use

Adriano Marques

Free - How Today's Smartest Businesses Profit27 May, 2013

We've all used free services, and we all love it when money doesn't seem to fly out of our pockets. Free high quality e-mail, web search , photo sharing , social network , open source software , etc. Yet, we rarely stop and think of how business who provides us free services make a living. If you think, you may

Adriano Marques

Start With Why - How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action25 May, 2013

If you've ever started a business, or tried to sell something, you'll certainly recognize the patterns described by Simon Sinek . We think of the what to describe a product or service. Same while trying to influence people to adopt a certain behavior. Thinking about the what, and explaining the what just feels natural, logical, rational. The why is implied, and you expect people to figure their own whys to make good use of your whats. The book teaches

Adriano Marques

Nanobots that will deliver insulin on demand in your bloodstream17 May, 2013

Talking about Singularity , and how some of Ray Kurzweil predictions are already coming true I found this research that developed a nanobot capable of mimicking the pancreatic activity and deliver insulin when glucose concentration increases in your blood. A shot of these nanobots could maintain your insulin in safe levels for up to 10 days. How awesom

Adriano Marques

Review - Presentation Zen Design and Super Apresentações (Super Presentations)17 May, 2013

I bought this book a few years ago, while I was preparing for a presentation but only had a chance to skim over quickly to look for some inspiration. At that time I also bought the book Super Apresentações (Super Presentations), in Portuguese, and decided to invest the reading time on it instead. After that, I have the opportunity of watching one of Garr's outstanding presentations when I went to present at the Creativity World Forum 2011 in Hasselt, Belgium. The inspiration from that presenta

Adriano Marques

New Scam from China, tries to force you to register your domain under other TLD through their site15 May, 2013

If you own a .com or .org domain, expect to receive one of these: > (Letter to Head of Brand Business or CEO, thanks) Dear Sir or Madam, This is a formal email. We are the department of Asian Domain Registration Service in China. Here I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on May 14, 2013 that a company claimed "Rolf Industrial Co. Ltd" were applying to register "umitproject" as their Brand Name and some umitproject Asian countries top-level domain names throu

Adriano Marques

Review: The Great Stagnation - How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better13 May, 2013

Short book, easy and quick to read, goes briskly through American history recollecting all the low hanging fruits it ate that made America this great economy. The subtitle of the book suggests that the author, Tyler Cowen, will make a case that the fruit was the reason why it got sick. Not the case - Cowen goes on to explain why the lack of the low hanging fruits made it sick, and why it is taking a while to recover. A technological plateau is the reason why we got sick - the pace of innovation

Adriano Marques

Reviewing Cognitive Surplus - How technology makes consumers into collaborators11 May, 2013

There is great effervescence out there as people talk about how internet is revolutionizing the way people interact, consume information, create content, share information and collaborate. Whether this revolution is good or bad, society is definitely never going to retreat to the old ways of a pre-internet world. We're left to deal with these changes, and this book does a great job in explaining the source and fundamentals of this revolution, going back in history a far as Johannes Gutenberg [h

Adriano Marques

Quick review of The Singularity is Near - When Humans Transcend Biology08 May, 2013

This is one of those complex big books, with lots and lots of technical details, hundreds of references and dozens of new words to your vocabulary. What some would call a book nightmare, this is certainly not the case. Albeit long, it was extremely well written, and once you get started you can't stop it until is over. Ray Kurzweil is a futurist who have been devoting his life predicting the future, and his work in this book consists of a thorough elaboration on what is currently on the works fo

Adriano Marques

Things I Learned About Life and Entrepreneurship While Learning How to Shoot with a Bow23 April, 2013

I've just begun practicing, and did some classes to learn proper bow handling, form, aiming and shooting. It may seem easy to shoot with a bow - after all, it is just a bow and an arrow! anyone could shoot with it - but it turns out that handling it properly isn't as easy as it seems. The Dominant Eye A dominant eye is the eye which is preferred by your brain for seeing things, in a similar way that you have a preferred arm and hand for dealing with

Adriano Marques

Review: Content Rules - How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, eBooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business.15 April, 2013

Creating a personal blog seems to be some sort of rite of passage that most internet users have gone through. Keeping up with it, is yet another rite that only a very small percentage of them manage to pass. I am still trying to keep that up, and I have to admit that it is challenging to create the habit to post relevant content often. This is where this book comes in handy - it takes you by the hand and gives awesome ideas on how to elaborate interesting content and keep up with your blog, pod

Adriano Marques

Review: Here Comes Everybody - The Power of Organizing Without Organizations06 April, 2013

Written with a content focus similar to The World is Flat 3.0 , this book does a great job at explaining the internet potential for leveraging outstanding feats through its users current un-organized social behavior. This subject isn't new, but it is far from irrelevant - we live in a world where change is promoted through inexpensive clicks, revolutions are started on social networks and businesses rises and fall with customer reactions on social

Adriano Marques

Outliers - The Story of Success26 March, 2013

The title and subtitle of the book may lead you into thinking that this is yet another book with a recipe on how to be successful through successful people's stories. Not so much the case. The book does recount the story of several successful people, but puts into perspective the uncontrolled and unforeseeable environmental factors that truly propelled them to success. One of the examples of the book is Bill Gates, who had free and unlimited access to advanced computers at walking distance f

Adriano Marques

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Business Don't Work and What to Do About It21 March, 2013

If I had to summarize the most important lesson learned while reading this book in one sentence it would be: A true Entrepreneur should not go to work in his business, but rather dedicate his effort working on his business. According to the author, the key to a ill fated business is an entrepreneur failing to act equally on the three key roles he has to play (technician, manager and entrepreneur) by focusing on the technician role and devoting all of his time doing the hands-on job of providing

Adriano Marques

The World is Flat 3.021 March, 2013

Quick and easy book about how flat the world have become through technology and how people can now interact with each other regardless of geographical distances for the benefit of society. Several heart warming recounting of people who gave up on their confort to make the world a better place using the internet and accompanying technologies, starting a social business or helping people in developing countries to find their way out of poverty. The book also talks about the bad consequences of a

Adriano Marques

Rare recount of escaping North Korea - TED Talk20 March, 2013

When you think you know anything about how hard life in North Korea must be, it is time for you to watch this TED presentation. Very inspiring to learn about the life of this North Korean that went through hell to escape North Korea and bring freedom to her family. Highly recommend.

Adriano Marques

Three Moves Ahead: What Chess Can Teach You about Business13 March, 2013

It is been a long while since last time I played chess, but I still remember how to play it! Chess players are well know as strategists, and the ability to make decisions during the game and be always prepared to change your strategy to cease an opportunity or to counter-attack an unseen move are core abilities of any entrepreneur. For starters, the book brings up one of the mistakes entrepreneurs usually commit by assuming that being the first at a given market is a reason for succeeding in t

Adriano Marques

Internet's Future, according to Mashable11 March, 2013

Although Internet is not exactly new, of one thing we're pretty sure: it is just at its beginning. In a few years, everything will be connected and able to interact in an ever more technological society. If Ray Kurzweil is right, this future is much closer than we predict. We tend to think of cool devices featuring the internet, but we often give little thought to internet's development and how it could be made better to further accelerate mankind's

Adriano Marques

Red Moon Rising08 March, 2013

Outstanding book for those who would like to learn more about the not so obvious and not so publicized backstage history on one of the most peculiar periods mankind have gone through in modern history. I have always had a special interest for Space Exploration and modern History, and this book is a perfect marriage of both subjects covering with minute and unbiased details about the beginning of the Arms race, Space race and Cold War covering the events that occurred right after Second World Wa

Adriano Marques

How to build your own Spaceship02 March, 2013

When I first read the title of this book I was sure it couldn't be real. Rocket Science is well known as a very complex endeavor and couldn't be covered in a how to, however long it could be. After reading some positive reviews, I decided that it was worth going through it, and now that I'm done couldn't be more pleased with all the spaceship building caveats and challenges I learned with it. This book won't prepare you for building a spaceship, but will definitely satisfy most of your curiosit

Adriano Marques

Insanely Simple25 February, 2013

Simplicity is currently one of the hottest subjects amongst entrepreneurs, developers and designers. Despite the name, simplicity isn't always obvious, easy or simple to implement, and this book does a good job pointing out several examples from experiences the author had while working closely with Steve Jobs at Apple. This is a fine book with good insights on Apple's case studies compared to other big players in the market like Intel and Dell, and for that reason it is worth reading. I felt,

Adriano Marques

Zero Dark Thirty13 February, 2013

Watching movies is one of my favorite activities, but I usually don't write reviews about them. In this case, though, I decided to invest the time and write a review comparing the movie to what I learned from the recounting of the navy seal who participated in the mission recounted in this movie . First thing to notice is that you should not compare the movie with the book, since the first was produced from the point of view of the CIA agent who found Bin Lade

Adriano Marques

Favorite pics from Chicago Skyline Photo Project19 January, 2013

These are my favorite pics from the small photo project I did to capture the Chicago skyline from the Office. If you'd like to know more or see a time lapse video that I compiled from the photos of this project, please refer to this other post .

Adriano Marques

The Willpower Instinct13 January, 2013

I love the way this book depicts all the characteristics of our willpower and how it is driven, making you profoundly aware of what motivates your decisions in a way that you never imagined. One example is how the author explains that our instinct if to see life as an account where the balance reflects all the good and evil you've done, and that we tend to justify our mistakes or conscious wrong doings by referring to our "positive" balance on that account. And how we're driven to do good, when

Adriano Marques

Chicago Skyline from the West Loop - a Time Lapse05 January, 2013

Watching the gorgeous skyline of Chicago from the office is definitely one of my favorite job benefits! The view includes the Willis Tower and some other famous icons of Chicago, and watching them through different seasons and times of the day guarantee a renewed experience every time you look at it. In one of those cold days of Chicago's winter I was looking through the window and watching the snow pour down and was amazed

Adriano Marques

The Risk of Trading20 December, 2012

With lessons that could be easily ported to other traits of life, the author makes an outstanding job pointing out how people often misinterpret risks because they lack the complete understanding of the peculiarities of the given trade. The unknown is a risk by itself, but when it is overestimated you risk not making a profit whereas when you underestimate you risk losing money. The author doesn't fantasize about a silver bullet for trading, or a set of techniques that will guarantee your succe

Adriano Marques

Rich Dad Poor Dad19 November, 2012

The author recounts his story from the viewpoint of having two fathers: one that was very well educated, but not financially wise and the other been of limited education but financially wise and successful. It gives a good insight on the main reasons why most people struggle to achieve financial success and how to break the cycle that he calls the rat race. I recommend this book, and it really helped me a lot in various aspect but I'd be cautious with some suggestions the author makes that are a

Adriano Marques

Review: The Power of Habit - Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business24 October, 2012

“We become what we repeatedly do.” Sean Covey at The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens Insightful analysis on how our brain develops habits using the most recent and intriguing cases studied in the field. The auth

Adriano Marques

Another group photo from the mentor Summit 201223 October, 2012

Another group photo from the mentor summit 2012.

Adriano Marques

Gift table near the end of Summit21 October, 2012

Gift table near the end of the mentor summit.

Adriano Marques

Another talk we're giving today at the mentor Summit 201221 October, 2012

Another talk we're giving today at the mentor summit 2012.

Adriano Marques

The Personal MBA23 September, 2012

Thinking that a book could cover 2 years of MBA studies would be silly, and I didn't get through this book expecting that, but it certainly surpassed what I thought it was going to deliver. The author makes a focused summary on all the subjects usually taught in an MBA and makes several references to other resources where you can dig further in any topic of interest, not being too shallow in his own job of teaching each subject and being careful not to spend much time in any specific topic.

Adriano Marques

Accidental Genius19 September, 2012

Although I somewhat enjoyed going through this book, I didn't try the writing method the author preaches and am not sure whether it is actually efficient. I'm not saying that I suspect it isn't efficient, but I'm sure it isn't suitable to all personalities, and it definitely isn't a green method as it will make you consume a lot of trees in the process. I think this is definitely a good read for other authors to help them improve their writing, but not really of great help for the casual write

Adriano Marques

No Easy Day09 September, 2012

Written by one of the Navy Seals that participated in the Osama Bin Laden capture, it is a very detailed recount of all the training and execution of the mission from his perspective, featuring a detailed narration of the helicopter accident and Osama's death. The majority of the book's content is devoted to explaining what the navy seals are, how they train and the kind of missions they execute. In the process, various other missions not related to Osama's pursuit are recounted, which can rea

Adriano Marques

Fascinate10 May, 2012

There are 7 attributes that can be associated to any story, brand or personality that triggers the human fascination: * Power * Passion * Mystique * Trust * Alarm * Rebellion * Prestige Not only the author does a great job describing each of these triggers, comparing brands, products and even celebrities, but she also teaches how to identify all your personal triggers, how enhance them and what are the effects each of these triggers causes in other people. Great read and definitely recommend f

Adriano Marques

Open Monitor and Google Summer of Code09 December, 2011

Talk at December's meeting of the Chipy community about Open Monitor and participating in the Google Summer of Code program.

Adriano Marques

The experience of giving a speech in a catwalk with a 360˚ screen18 November, 2011

After being invited to speak at the Creativity World Forum 2011 in Hasselt, Belgium, I was struck with the news that I was going to speak in a catwalk and that the presentation was going to be projected in a 360˚ screen, while the audience would be surrounding me from all sides. That felt like a great idea, and I was really excited to give it a try. When I got up there, I noticed that the catwalk had live grass throughout and it just summed up to the whole new experience of speaking in such a

Adriano Marques

Building an Internet Connectivity Monitor16 November, 2011

A short speech I gave at the Creativity World Forum 2011 in Hasselt , Belgium .

Adriano Marques

Steve Jobs09 November, 2011

A rebel who revolutionized the once boring, complex and expensive computer world. I read quite a few books and articles about Steve Jobs, but this book is by far the most sincere while describing his personality. It was impressive that a person with such a stubborn personality with an obsession for control would let his daemons out of his closet, as it is said in the book. Most people would ask that his biography should focus on his qualities and achievements, but according to the author, Walter

Adriano Marques

Criticism avoids you from seeing the good09 June, 2011

I'm just about to finish listening to the "Making Ideas Happen " audiobook, and wanted to share my review and a few nice ideas I can highlight from it. Though the title of this book could suggest that it's subject is related to procrastination, just like the other two books I reviewed last month (The Now Habit and Eat That Frog [https://www.xnv.io/posts/if-youve-got-t

Adriano Marques

Star Wars - Star Tours07 June, 2011

Though it is an ad for the Star Tours on Disneyland, this is pretty much how it would look like to see Darth Vader at Disneyland:

Adriano Marques

Exclusive Preview on iOS 507 June, 2011

Looking for a sneak peek on iOS 5 announced yesterday? Okay... not really what you'll get out of iOS 5, but still fun to watch ;-) Okay... not really what you'll get out of iOS 5, but still fun to watch ;-)

Adriano Marques

If you've got two frogs to eat, which one would you eat first?02 June, 2011

Just finished with listening to another audiobook a couple days ago while walking, and wanted to share my review and highlight two important concepts I learned from it. First concept: If you have two frogs in the pond to eat, which one would you eat first? The ugliest one. Once you've done with the ugliest o

Adriano Marques

You don't know the basics02 June, 2011

Everybody knows how to breath, and that is taken for granted because we all do it and we all seem to do it right, since we're not asphyxiating. Now, breathing right for proper oxygenation and prevention of side cramps or "stitches" is something totally different. Just came back from my daily walk, and today I tried to sustain proper breathing throughout the exercise. It is amazing how hard it is to get rid of your wrong breathing habits and substitute for a right one. I just ended up figuring t

Adriano Marques

Challenging Myself31 May, 2011

My idea While watching my weight go up due to long hours of work sitting in front of a computer and some health problems began to appear, I just decided that I had to undertake some sort of regular exercise so that I could keep up with my weight, shape and health. About 3 weeks ago, I began to go out with Noah first thing early in the morning to walk in a fast pace (not actually jogging yet) for about 3 Km (1.8 mi), and since Noah can't keep up with long conversations yet I'm using that time to

Adriano Marques

Done with "The Now Habit"31 May, 2011

Finished with listening to this audiobook last week, but only had the chance to write my final review now. I did a previous post about one thing I learned while listening to it, and thought I should conclude with a review. This book doesn't teach with straightforward techniques to fight procrastination. Rather, it tries to help you fight the root causes of it with psychiatric techniques through positive thinking and attitudes. I liked this book, though I

Adriano Marques

Chromebook14 May, 2011

Nice video from Google on their new Operating System, the Chromebook. They're just about to release, and Samsung is the vendor manufacturing their new chrome is embedded laptop. The video explains in an easy way the technology: Are you Ready?

Adriano Marques

Charlie Bit My Finger14 May, 2011

The original Charlie Bit My Finger video on YouTube is now with almost 320 million views, if you didn't watch it yet, take 1 minute of your life and do it now. A few directors just took the audio from that video, and created other three versions in the form of short movies with different genres: dark comedy, musical and horror. Their claim is that anyone can upload, but few can direct a movie. But I bet these directed short movies won't beat the original Charlie Bit My Finger! The Dark Comedy

Adriano Marques

The Now Habit14 May, 2011

I'm not even in the middle of this audiobook , but I just learned a comparison the author made that I really wanted to share before I finish with it. Imagine you're given the task of crossing a board about 30 feet long, 4 inches thick and 1 foot wide placed on the ground. Would you dare? Of course everybody would, and it actually seems a pretty easy and risk less task to undertake. Take that same board, and place it co

Adriano Marques

Ideas Hubs08 May, 2011

Want to spread your good idea? It could be easier than you think if you use the right HUBS... Check the video bellow (Warning... it is in Spanish) Cab drivers? Hairdressers? What other professional do you think could be considered an idea hub?

Adriano Marques

Work like you Sleep07 May, 2011

Ok, I'm not going to tell you to work like you sleep in the sense of how much work you get done out of your sleep time. Actually, there is a much more interesting perspective to that relation. After watching this TEDx Midwest talk, I just confirmed what I always believed to be true but in a very well explained manner: Interrupting work is just like interrupting your sleep. With a 4 months old baby boy, I just realized how bad it is to your attempt to get some rest when you are interrupted 3 or

Adriano Marques

Linked07 May, 2011

Just finished with listening to this Audiobook , and it was so amazing that I wanted to share it here in my blog. Drawn by my interest on Networks (no, I don't mean the computer networks here) and the science behind it, just decided to give a this book a try, and I was amazed on all the sorts of networks mentioned in this book and how they relate to each other. From Hollywood networks [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_D

Adriano Marques

Google Summer of Code 201125 April, 2011

As you may already know, Umit Project is in as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code 2011, and it happens that we just got through the selection process, and earlier today Google announced the winning students ! This year, Umit received 42 proposals, from 40 talented students from almost all continents in the world! We were absolutely astonished with so many talente

Adriano Marques

Open Source To The Rescue20 April, 2011

Open Source is the key to innovation. Innovation requires a lot of effort and while most companies rely on a limited amount of experts to develop the things they need, others open source whatever they develop and get a crowd of experts testing, using, debugging and contributing to their software in a scale that no company can afford to maintain. That's why Linux is the most advanced operating system in mos

Adriano Marques

Web Access is a Human Right15 April, 2011

Yesterday I read an article summarizing a speech from Tim Berners-Lee symposium comparing web access to water. His speech covered other topics on his perspective of the future of the web, but the thing that most caught my attention was his statement that web access should be considered a human right . Li

Adriano Marques

Irony: The major icon of USA space race found its rest at the week of the 50th anniversary of first man in space12 April, 2011

NASA just announced the final home for the space shuttles, and Endeavour will rest at the California Science Center , in Los Angeles. It is a bit ironic that this week we were celebrating the 50 years since first time man visited space, and we get the news on where the major icon of American's space 'endeavors' are going to rest forever, reminding us of the beginning of an era when USA is going to completely rely on Soyuz [

Adriano Marques

New hybrid engine to save up to 90% of auto emissions?09 April, 2011

A while ago, I had the chance of driving a hybrid car, at the time they have just arrived in Europe and people were beginning to draw interest for this sort of car. At that time, I was sure that hybrid cars would be the next auto revolution. I'm not saying it because I don't believe in fully electric cars, but that technology isn't ready yet. Hybrids are certainly going to be the next step before fully electric cars. Drive one, and you'll figure it. All the hassles of electric cars (recharging

Adriano Marques

Loyalty Mobile01 June, 2010

It looks like cell phones today have so many features that it is becoming less phone and more everything else. The new trend, when it comes to transforming your mobile phone into something else, is turning it into a Loyalty Card Collector. Startups like CardStar and CardBank already offer business a solution that uses barcodes to virtualize loyalty cards and store them in mobile phones. There are plenty of others, like Foursquare [htt

Adriano Marques

Readers' Social Network26 May, 2010

It is wonderful how powerful communication through social media is. If you simply start following the right people on Twitter , you'll get a clear glimpse of what is happening around the world, as well as local and worldwide trends. Just mentioned that, because I was reading some tweeks, and came across one that was sent by a Social Network for avid book readers, and that is ultra cool. Just took some time, and signed in to that social network (called Skoob [http

Adriano Marques

Rework23 May, 2010

Outstanding book for entrepreneurs looking into inspiration for addressing common development dilemmas like whether to reed to customer's suggestions or how to approach software development for maximizing profit and deliverability. Focused on startups whose main product is the software they develop, and wrote by the founders of 37 signals, this book breaks most of the old common sense understandings on how a company should be built and how software development should be managed based on their ow

Adriano Marques

Software Patents not worth the effort?08 April, 2010

This week I read an article from Erik J. Heels , where he states that patents are not always worth a try for startups, mainly when it comes to software patents. Well, it happens that I have being reading about this subject lately, and sometimes I do agree, sometimes I don't. Although being expensive and time consuming, patents do give its owner a reasonable advantage over competitors avoiding them from stealing the idea. Ok, I agree that it doesn't always avoid t

Adriano Marques

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People08 March, 2010

Not a quick read, but it is definitely well worth it. The 7 habits put your behavior into perspective, and helps you understand where you've being failing. Life doesn't come with a manual, and we all go on with continuing our habits, good or bad, the way we have always done, and the way we always believe was right. When you put your habits against those of people who are successful is when you learn what you've being doing wrong all along. Quick list of the 7 habits: 1. Be Proactive 2. Begi

Adriano Marques

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion13 January, 2010

I may have been the first person who bought Crush It! before knowing who Gary Vaynerchuk was and having never seen the Wine Library TV. The latter being of no surprise, since I don't drink. Instead of going for the book, I bought the audiobook at audible which is narrated by Gary Vaynerchuck himself. His energy and enthusiasm really got me excited right off the bat, and the way he narrates really shows his passion and love for what he does. Since I've never seen any of his videos before, that al

Adriano Marques

The Future of Management15 June, 2009

Using heavy examples of new management paradigms, using examples from internet focused companies like Google, Gary delivers his findings that the old school of management doesn't provide the ideal environment for nurturing creativity and engaging employees in the company's cause. This is a good book, and provides an alternative perspective, when compared to the myriad of books that deliver the same make your employee happy centered view, given that Gary is an acclaimed international management c

Adriano Marques

Saving the World at Work27 May, 2009

Social Responsibility is continually becoming a hotter and hotter topic as businesses find themselves serving a world wide community through the internet that is increasingly demanding on how careful the business is and its social consequences. The book brightly describes the successful moves several companies like Walmart, Patagonia and Timberland have done in this area and the amazingly positive consequences these socially responsible actions have brought upon these companies. It is filled w

Adriano Marques

Getting Things Done12 April, 2009

The "Getting Things Done" method, or GTD, is a great way to organize your activities and actually get your things done throughout the day making better use of the time you have available. It preaches the use of an inbox for keeping all your tasks ordered, and whenever you have time available, tackle the quick ones first. The author talks about the 2 minutes parameter to define whether a task is quick or not, but given the nature of some tasks it is hard to accurately estimate time, so I go by in

Adriano Marques

Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation27 February, 2009

Culture is a set of standard behaviors we can observe in a group of people. Each school, university and business is got its own set of standard behaviors defined by rules, environmental conditions, ethnicity of attending people, etc. Most cultures can be shaped for good, creating a standard set of behaviors that people will instinctively follow and ultimately further benefit the group. Culture shaping can be achieved inside any size group of people, in any company, and if done right can lay th

Adriano Marques

The Mormon Way of Doing Business17 January, 2009

"The true definition or true defining situation for a person is what they do when they are alone and don't have to do anything else" - Dell's CEO Kevin Rollins Isn't it right? Have you ever noticed what do you do whenever you find yourself idle? Start thinking of it. This book is based on interviews to prominent members of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints. Some of them are the CEOs of JetBlue Airways (former CEO and founder, actually), Dell Computers, Deloitte & Touché and Madis

Adriano Marques

Perhaps a Starting Point?20 November, 2008

Last post I wondered a little bit about how could a company give enough freedom to their employees so they can create their creative environment and do a better job. After posting, I began pondering some starting points, or directives, which could help a company walk in that direction. First, I would like to bold that in the creative process, there should be no deadlines or that will kill it from the root. But, I didn't forget that in the real world, we need to interact with other companies and

Adriano Marques

Creativity World Forum ( CWF ) 200819 November, 2008

After a few months in a rush, I finally started to settle down and had the time to return to my blog. Soon, there will be some changes around here, and I'm also moving to another domain which I'll be announcing pretty soon. The news is that I'm writing from the Lotto Arena , Antwerp, Belgium at the Creativity World Forum , 10 minutes away from watching a speaking of John Cleese [http://www.cr

Adriano Marques

First thoughts about the event...09 November, 2008

I went through the first morning of the event, and it was very inspiring. The speakers quality is very ok, and the event very well organized, but the catering service... Ok, we're surviving that and in the end, we came here for brain not stomach food. John Cleese mainly talked about ways of letting and incentivizing your creativity come out from your unconscious. Not a surprise to most of us, interrupting the cognitive process can be a disaster as he said. I believe that, and always tried to fi

Adriano Marques

Breakthrough: Stories and Strategies of Radical Innovation08 April, 2008

This book was in my Wishlist for almost a year before I had the opportunity to acquire and read it. As I couldn't find it here in Brazil I had to wait for an opportunity to acquire it abroad or buy it from a foreign website. I did the first, and bought this book while travelling to USA for the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit 2007. Unfortunately, even with the book in my hands, I wasn't able to read it by that time and had to wait a little bit to delight myself reading it. As a Scientist, I'

Adriano Marques

P2P: How Peer-to-Peer Technology Is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business29 March, 2008

Although it might not look like a must read book in a social network focused world, it was an interesting read for because of it's deep relation with my under graduation monography and the effort I've put studying that matter. Some may think that today, P2P is old fashioned while they relate the acronym with P2P networks of old days like Napster, Edonkey and Gnutella. Don't feel like that. P2P is not a acronym for file sharing. P2P is a acronym for new ways of making networks, sharing spare res

Adriano Marques

The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time (Book review)25 March, 2008

A few weeks ago I have read the book "The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time" (Portuguese version) and later I decided to share my thoughts about that reading experience. The first bit about this book is that it has an easy language, and thus the book fits non-high tech readers. The second bit is that although it is a more interesting book for those of us interested on Google and high tech, it might be a good reading for those interested on gett

Adriano Marques

Seeing What's Next25 January, 2008

This book features some in depth study of real world industry changes, and how they happened, explained from a point of view that most of us have never thought before. I found it very useful in several subjects of study. Seemingly "Crossing the Chasm", Geoffrey A. Moore, it's first chapter explains some qualities of consumers, and how to feed them with what they need. Actually, it takes a different approach when compared to Crossing the Chasm, because it preaches that some business have their ow

Adriano Marques

Umit at "The Bourne Ultimatum"15 December, 2007

Look mom! Umit has featured "The Bourne Ultimatum" movie! Movie Directors are going to love UmitMapper and the NetworkInventory for their high-tech movies when we get it integrated into Umit. And we're going to love to see them using it. ;-)

Adriano Marques

Google's Summer of Code Podcast and Umit@Nmap25 July, 2007

For those of you interested on taking a look (or should it be a "hear"?) on the podcast I had with my friend Leslie Hawthorn , here goes the link . Yeah... I was a bit nervous, and I missed some words... Also, we had a problem with skype at the time of the interview, and was kinda hard to come out with it. Anyway, hope you have good time with it! ;-) There is another post at Goo

Adriano Marques

Game Theory and Summer of Code16 July, 2007

During my last year at University, I spent about the whole year studying economics game theory, in order to make my thesis about friend-to-friend networks and best practices for overlay and sharing networks. Game theory is a very interesting topic, and can lead us to choose better strategies based on the problem environment, rules and possible odds (or rewards) you can get from each possible strategy. Unfortunately, some games doesn't have good odds for every player in the game, and when we ca

Adriano Marques

Software is not about code, but people and their desires10 July, 2007

Thinking that with a really optimized, organized and structured code you'll make your software the newest killer app ever? Been fast and stable is just a couple of the requisites users look for while choosing their software. Among all the requirements that users instinctively looks for in a software, usability is the most decisive of them. A software with poor usability makes user feel angry and disappointed about the software. Imagine that someone is trying to use your software in a low profil

Adriano Marques

The Secret?16 May, 2007

Yes... That's the name of that almost best seller book (I said best seller, but I didn't mean best book), and I used it as this post's title. Actually, I don't mean to talk much about that book, neither I mean to read it. Most part of those who look forward to read that book, do that with the hope of finding the answer of how to have a money tree in the backyard. First, I would like to state that I believe that money doesn't come without hard work. You can work hard, and make something that giv

Adriano Marques

Maemo25 April, 2007

So it came the time which I decided to dedicate my time on porting Umit to Maemo, and make a package for it. This is a long time history , which started about a year or so and which I want to see it concluded for two reasons: 1. I want to be able to run Umit on my Nokia770 (which is getting old now with the N800 release) 2. One of the Umit's mai

Adriano Marques

The Awaited Result12 April, 2007

Finally I could release the list of selected students for this Summer of Code. Unfortunately, I couldn't select everyone I wanted, and I had to let go many talented students. I hope that the selected students have conscience of this matter, and work hard to show the world that they really deserved that slot in the Summer of Code, returning really good and useful stuff to the community. I really believe they're going to rock this Summer, and that's why I chose them. BTW, the list of accepted st

Adriano Marques

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