The Future is Here – And It’s a Little Unsettling

Quantum Breakthroughs, AI Mavericks, and the Rise of Humanoid Robots

Hey Fellow Tinkerers!

I’m trialing a new format for the newsletter where I get the the top news and the latest developments in data (Science, Engineering, Analysis) in a weekly format. Do let me know what you think in the survey at the end of today’s newsletter or in comments. With that out of the way, let’s get to it!

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The Buzz 🐝

• Microsoft dropped a new quantum chip called Majorana 1 that has created a new state of matter (as in not solid, liquid or gas). The 4 min video gives a funny and interesting take on it

• Clone Robotics has unveiled the Protoclone, a humanoid robot designed to closely replicate human anatomy and movement. This faceless android features a polymer skeleton mirroring all 206 human bones, over 1,000 artificial muscle fibers known as Myofibers, and more than 500 sensors. (For even a more creepy experience, watch the demo video with sound)

Cue in the Terminator jokes

• Elon Musk's xAI has launched Grok-3, its latest AI chatbot with advanced reasoning and X platform integration. The major difference with some of the other existing AI models is it’s uncensored (for the most part) and will create images of celebrities if prompted ⬇️

  

  Tay-tay is not really in love with Elon

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Data Science & AI

• Google’s AI Co-Scientist
  Google has introduced an AI co-scientist, a multi-agent system built on Gemini 2.0, designed to function as a virtual collaborator for scientists. This AI assists in generating novel hypotheses and research proposals, aiming to accelerate scientific and biomedical discoveries.

Google AI Co-Scientist Overview (Source: Google)

• Reinforcement Learning (RL) Quickstart Guide
  This is a good guide for getting a basic understanding of RL and the key strategies to simplify it by Joseph Suarez.

• Optimizing a Bus Network with Operations Research
  How BlaBlaCar optimized its bus network using operations research by applying mathematical models to improve efficiency. This led to better route planning, cost savings, and enhanced service reliability.

BlaBlaCar Bus Network (Source: BlaBlaCar)

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Data & Analytics Engineering

• Why Your Data Infrastructure Migration Project Will Fail (And How to Succeed)
  

  SeattleDataGuy
  reviews the common issues in data infrastructure migrations, such as inadequate planning and underestimating complexity and offers strategies for solving them.

Lack of testing as one of the issues (Source: SeattleDataGuy)

• Delta Lake vs Apache Iceberg: The Lake House Squabble
  

  Daniel Beach
  provides a detailed comparison of the two open-source table format, focusing on their features, performance and ecosystem.

Source: Data Engineering Central

• Simplify Your Cassandra Database with UDTs
  Discover how Target leverages User UDTs in Cassandra to streamline complex, nested data structures, enhancing readability and maintainability.

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Data Analysis and Vizualisation

• Are Your Stats Betraying You? Simpson’s Paradox Explained
  Learn why only focusing on summaries can mislead and how data analysts can avoid it

Difference between the overall data and its subgroups

• When Everyone "Wins" But Nothing Changes: Will Rogers Phenomenon
  Learn how a simple shift can make both sides of the equation look better.

Before and after reclassification

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Happy Ending

If at first you don’t succeed, hit yourself again (aka reinforcement learning)

(Source: Twitter)

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