Category: 3-SometimeTechTalk

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PHPUgly - 171:RoughCut

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African Tech Roundup - African Fintech Signal Check 2019: Nigeria’s Killing It! (Part 1) feat. Wiza Jalakasi

The last couple of months or so have been rather eventful for Africa's fintech scene— particularly in Nigeria where Interswitch notably attained unicorn status in November following Visa acquiring 20% of the company for a reported $200 million. Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey's much-publicised visit to Africa last month also did much to put a global spotlight on the continent’s fintech arena, and the subsequent capital raises by OPay (backed by Opera) and PalmPay (backed by Transsion) drew attention to the on-going race for platform dominance in the space. In this instalment of the African Tech Roundup podcast, Andile Masuku and The Subtext’s Osarumen Osamuyi are joined by Malawian mobile tech entrepreneur, Wiza Jalakasi, to unpack some of the more pertinent fintech industry signals and discuss their implications for the continent’s tech and innovation ecosystem at large. (To skip the introductory niceties, head straight to [11:58].) Wiza is a passionate USSD proponent who formerly headed up business development and international expansion at Africa’s Talking. He is currently the head of strategy and business development at Hover. Questions discussed in this episode include: 1) Is the hype around Jack Dorsey’s recent Africa visit well-deserved? [12:38] 2) Why might PalmPay’s $40 million seed round be the most significant China-related fintech startup play of late? [25:47] 3) Are aspiring ‘banks’ like Google and Facebook well-positioned to dominate Africa’s fintech industry? [28:52] 4) Is there credence to Jack Dorsey’s citing of Bitcoin as a key part of the future of African fintech? [37:55] 5) How significant is the trend towards digital-first and digital-only banks? [50:46] 6) Could the Zimbabwean mobile telco NetOne spark a continental trend by making mobile money transactions free? [1:01:57] 7) How will Google’s new Play Store lending term restrictions for financial services apps impact microlenders on the continent? [1:07:34] To view resources referenced in this episode, visit https://www.africantechroundup.com/fintech-signal-check-2019-part-1/ Image credit: Namnso Ukpanah
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Python Bytes - #160 Your JSON shall be streamed

Topics covered in this episode:
See the full show notes for this episode on the website at pythonbytes.fm/160
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Lex Fridman Podcast - Judea Pearl: Causal Reasoning, Counterfactuals, Bayesian Networks, and the Path to AGI

Judea Pearl is a professor at UCLA and a winner of the Turing Award, that’s generally recognized as the Nobel Prize of computing. He is one of the seminal figures in the field of artificial intelligence, computer science, and statistics. He has developed and championed probabilistic approaches to AI, including Bayesian Networks and profound ideas in causality in general. These ideas are important not just for AI, but to our understanding and practice of science. But in the field of AI, the idea of causality, cause and effect, to many, lies at the core of what is currently missing and what must be developed in order to build truly intelligent systems. For this reason, and many others, his work is worth returning to often.

This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts or support it on Patreon.

This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it (App Store, Google Play), use code “LexPodcast”. 

Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

00:00 – Introduction
03:18 – Descartes and analytic geometry
06:25 – Good way to teach math
07:10 – From math to engineering
09:14 – Does God play dice?
10:47 – Free will
11:59 – Probability
22:21 – Machine learning
23:13 – Causal Networks
27:48 – Intelligent systems that reason with causation
29:29 – Do(x) operator
36:57 – Counterfactuals
44:12 – Reasoning by Metaphor
51:15 – Machine learning and causal reasoning
53:28 – Temporal aspect of causation
56:21 – Machine learning (continued)
59:15 – Human-level artificial intelligence
1:04:08 – Consciousness
1:04:31 – Concerns about AGI
1:09:53 – Religion and robotics
1:12:07 – Daniel Pearl
1:19:09 – Advice for students
1:21:00 – Legacy

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The Stack Overflow Podcast - Searching For The Next Frontier With Chris Dixon

You can check out the back story of Dixon’s first company, SiteAdvisor, here. It was built during a time when spyware was a booming business and browsers had few systems in place to combat bad actors. The company was acquired by McAfee in 2006. It's a great trip through the history of web security at the time.
 

Dixon next turned his attention to machine learning. He and his co-founders created Hunch, which worked to learn users’ tastes and recommend items they might enjoy. It was an early attempt to build the taste graph, a parallel to the social graph. It was acquired by eBay in 2011. Many of these techniques are now widely used across the biggest social networks in the world.


Dixon then moved into the world of venture capital. You can read more about the Crypto Fund he helps to lead and the new startup school a16Zz is launching to help educate a new generation of programmers and founders. Application are still open.

If you're interested in learning more about the background of Hashcash, which foreshadowed a lot of the ideas found in Bitcoin, there is some good info here.

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Code Story: Insights from Startup Tech Leaders - S1 E16: Aalok Shah, EnergyFunders

Tech has always been a part of Aalok Shah’s life. His father and mother influenced his tech interests and biomedical education. After working in nuclear medicine and supporting the special needs community, he found himself always drifting back towards tech and software development, hacking together websites and doing web consulting. Several years later, he was onboarded by the founders of EnergyFunders – a platform for investing in Oil & Gas – to help improve their technology feature set. The business took off, and they found themselves in need of a full time CTO – and Aalok was the best fit.


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Credits: Code Story is hosted and produced by Noah Labhart, Co-produced and edited by George Mocharko. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, Breaker, YouTube, or the podcasting app of your choice.



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Lex Fridman Podcast - Whitney Cummings: Comedy, Robotics, Neurology, and Love

Whitney Cummings is a stand-up comedian, actor, producer, writer, director, and the host of a new podcast called Good for You. Her most recent Netflix special called “Can I Touch It?” features in part a robot, she affectionately named Bearclaw, that is designed to be visually a replica of Whitney. It’s exciting for me to see one of my favorite comedians explore the social aspects of robotics and AI in our society. She also has some fascinating ideas about human behavior, psychology, and neurology, some of which she explores in her book called “I’m Fine…And Other Lies.”

This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts or support it on Patreon.

This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it (App Store, Google Play), use code “LexPodcast”. 

The episode is also supported by ZipRecruiter. Try it: http://ziprecruiter.com/lexpod

Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

00:00 – Introduction
03:51 – Eye contact
04:42 – Robot gender
08:49 – Whitney’s robot (Bearclaw)
12:17 – Human reaction to robots
14:09 – Fear of robots
25:15 – Surveillance
29:35 – Animals
35:01 – Compassion from people who own robots
37:55 – Passion
44:57 – Neurology
56:38 – Social media
1:04:35 – Love
1:13:40 – Mortality