Suresh Babu

The "Good for Business" argument frequently offered for immigration obscures the more important consideration.

immigration is good for humanity, unconditionally, meaning that both opportunity and refuge are equally important goals for immigration.

I recently picked up my copy of Sean Carroll's interesting book published in 2016 with the lofty title "The Big Picture: The Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself" to re-read that for the concept of "poetic naturalism" that it discusses. It's the the kind of skepticism that is very appealing to me. For those unfamiliar with Sean Carroll, he is a well known theoretical physicist and popularizer of general relativity and cosmology.

A few chapters into the book, I re-read the… Show more

I recently picked up my copy of Sean Carroll's interesting book published in 2016 with the lofty title "The Big Picture: The Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself" to re-read that for the concept of "poetic naturalism" that it discusses. It's the the kind of skepticism that is very appealing to me. For those unfamiliar with Sean Carroll, he is a well known theoretical physicist and popularizer of general relativity and cosmology.

A few chapters into the book, I re-read the story of Lucia de Berk that Carroll adds to the chapter titled "Reasons Why," which tackles an age old philosophical idea given the name 'Principle of Sufficient Reason' by Gottfried Leibniz, who summarized it as "nothing happens without a reason".

This short write up is a synopsis of story of Lucia de Berk and it is a cautionary tale for our times. Her sad story takes on an even deeper meaning now in the age of AI. Show less

Are expert decisions better than the predictions made by algorithms? It is often argued that human expertise is not easily substituted. But such views ignore evidence that suggests otherwise. Two key factors -- cognitive bias and cognitive overload -- play a role in this.

A look at ride hailing and the gig economy.

By North in the title of this article, I refer to the San Francisco Bay Area aka Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley in Northern California and Hollywood in Southern California represent major and visible parts of the California economy (and by extension, the US and world economies as well).

Like the now visible East-to-West trend noticeable in the automotive space as Silicon Valley emerges as the New Detroit with the market shift to autonomous cars and electric vehicles, this northward… Show more

By North in the title of this article, I refer to the San Francisco Bay Area aka Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley in Northern California and Hollywood in Southern California represent major and visible parts of the California economy (and by extension, the US and world economies as well).

Like the now visible East-to-West trend noticeable in the automotive space as Silicon Valley emerges as the New Detroit with the market shift to autonomous cars and electric vehicles, this northward trend highlights the development of the New Hollywood with a digital edge in production, acquisition and distribution (the three key functions of studios). Show less

Three news items about genetic data and testing show the changes afoot on this front. And four recent developments on the privacy front show what lies ahead.

The political stage provided the ideal beginning to bring a number of ideas together that were brewing in my head into the plausible tale that “Fired Up” presents about being in the Red. Politics, science, technology, history, the human element — all get mingled in this brew.

“The Newt Affair” was inspired by the recent concerns expressed by Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and many others about artificial intelligence. Elon Musk termed AI the biggest existential threat.

"This is also a look at the human side of things that technology inevitably influences and impacts."

"The age of the Internet of Things is upon us. Today, a wide variety of devices, including sensor-enabled smart devices, connect to the Internet and power new connected applications and solutions. A confluence of factors, such as a significant drop in technology costs and the pervasiveness of connectivity in many forms, has helped the Internet of Things explode into our every day lives. In this article, I explore key concepts in the Internet of Things (IoT), and describe four main steps to get… Show more

"The age of the Internet of Things is upon us. Today, a wide variety of devices, including sensor-enabled smart devices, connect to the Internet and power new connected applications and solutions. A confluence of factors, such as a significant drop in technology costs and the pervasiveness of connectivity in many forms, has helped the Internet of Things explode into our every day lives. In this article, I explore key concepts in the Internet of Things (IoT), and describe four main steps to get you started in building IoT solutions." Show less

"As Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said, “an ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.” It’s a fitting statement to describe today’s hyper-competitive world, where sensing and responding to changing trends in real time – aka the “sentient” enterprise – dictates whether a business survives and thrives...."

"An incomplete set of noisy static force and displacement measurements is used for parameter identification of structures at the element level. Measurement locations and the level of accuracy in the measured data can drastically affect the accuracy of the identified parameters.

A heuristic method is presented to select a limited number of degrees of freedom to perform successful parameter identification and to reduce the impact of measurement errors on the identified parameters."