The Changelog – August 2022
August was my summer vacation month. Therefore I had more time on my hand, some of which had been utterly wasted. In general, though, I think I had a good month of new activities, a weekend in Tuscany, friendly human interactions, and a good chunk of consumed media (I put a big dent in my extra-large-neverending watch/read/playlist). I’ve also finally updated this blog with an extensive article. The funny thing is that it was not any of my “currently in draft” articles.
The Freakout-Free Guide to Generative AI
I saw a bit of a heated debate around generative AI and AI art. So this is my “guide” for the general public, where I try to answer some common questions. What is generative AI? How does it work? What are its problems? What are their advantages? Do we all die because of it? (no).
The Changelog – July 2022
Every time a new month begins, I start looking for something different to do. Something that would create a memorable milestone in the journey of life. Unfortunately, when I reach the end of the month, I realize that I often fail at this simple goal. It is not easy to break the routine and create something memorable every 30 days. But July was not one of those months. In fact, when it started, I was sitting at a beach bar in Attica, Greece, looking at the moon reflecting on the nigh sea after the first day of the company retreat (to be precise, the first retreat after the pandemic pause).
The Changelog – June 2022
This issue came a bit earlier. In fact, tomorrow I’ll be traveling to Athens for work (and fun, I hope), and I’ll be back on July 3rd. So I think it is better to release earlier than late and leave the traveling part for next month. But let’s come back to the chase: June. June started as May ended: in an emotional disaster. Fortunately, though, things got better along the way.
The Changelog – May 2022
Why am I starting again with the monthly changelogs? I constantly have the burning desire to have a place to write something completely free. My blog is mostly about technology, and my Medium publication is about political philosophy, but what about everything else? In the last two years, my interests shifted, and while I am definitively still working in tech fields, and I will still write about it, I missed having a small place where to explore different things that are not big enough to be worth an entire article or, even worse, a separate blog.
Unity Artificial Intelligence Programming – Fifth Edition
Hey, everyone. As you know, I am not particularly present recently (I need to find out how to handle this blog while my interests spread out on non-technical stuff, but this is something for another time). However, I am back with an announcement: I have recently published the fifth edition of Unity Artificial Intelligence Programming. Not only have I updated the book for Unity 2022, but the book is also a massive improvement over the last edition in terms of code quality and consistency (and I really need to thank Kazimieras Mikelis for the extensive and detailed review).
Julia Revisited
Years ago, I wrote that Julia failed to reach any reasonable expectation. At the time, development was struggling, and the language had many problems trying to achieve any meaningful momentum. Fortunately, time proved me wrong. And I am delighted I was. I am not sure what happened (as I said, I stopped following it), but the language had significant acceleration, and it finally got enough adoption and interest that it finally popped up a lot under my radar.
The books I read in 2021
Last year was an excellent year for reading. I’ve read 31 books, totaling almost 10,000 pages: 17 fiction books (way more than last year), 13 non-fiction (as a surprise, because I usually read non-fiction faster), and one graphic novel. Some books were unbelievable literary mistakes. Others were absolute gems that I’ll keep in my mind and heart (it is wise for the Chinese to have a single word for both: 心).
Machine Consciousness is Inevitable
Can a robot become self-conscious? It looks like an interesting question, but it is not: machine consciousness is just inevitable. The true interesting questions are hidden in the details of how such consciousness will emerge and how it will look like.
The Problem with Mastodon and the Fediverse
I tried to jump on the Mastodon train several times; however, I was never really convinced by it. To be honest, I was never really interested in any open-source clone of popular commercial social networks. And like me, 99% of the non-technical people I know. Why? A quick answer for a bloody hot August.