Good morning, everyone!
I'm currently writing this newsletter from Marbella, Spain, so I apologise in advance for any Spanish links that may be present!
This week, there's been one story that has been dominating my Twitter feed, so let's get right into it!
What’s Been Cooking
First Potential Room Temperature Superconductor
Last week, a group of researchers from South Korea claimed that they have discovered the world's first superconductor that can operate at ambient temperature (20–22 °C) and pressure (101,325 Pa).
The material they created, named LK-99, is made of copper, lead, phosphorus, and oxygen. They said that this new substance exhibits no electrical resistance and displays the Meissner effect. Up until now, these properties have only been observed at extremely low temperatures, close to absolute zero (-273.15 °C).
However, other scientists have attempted to reproduce the results but have failed to do so, leading to a high skepticism among researchers. Nonetheless, the story has been intriguing to follow and we'll have to wait and see how the situation unfolds.
Alibaba Launches Open Source AI Model
Following in the footsteps of Meta, the Chinese e-commerce and tech company, Alibaba, is now making its 7 billion parameter model, Qwen-7, available to the public. This release comes as a continuation of their previous model, Tongyi Qianwen, another Large Language Model, which was released in April.
Alibaba states that the primary goal of this move is to help small businesses by allowing them to utilise AI. However, there's a catch: Companies with over 100 million monthly users will be required to obtain a license from Alibaba before they can use Qwen-7.
Side Dishes
Some more tasty stories this week:
Apple’s Revenue Forecast To Drop For The Fourth Successive Quarter
Amazon Shares Increased 8% On Friday Based On Positive Q2 Results
Insider Insights
Boosting Code Quality With Python Typing
This week, I wrote a post on how to handle typing functions and variables inside Python. When we talk about typing, we are not referring to physically typing on the keyboard, but rather specifying the data types of our Python variables. Explicitly declaring types helps prevent small bugs, like unintentionally adding two strings together instead of two numbers. Tools like mypy have become an industry standard, and they make the process of type checking a lot easier for Data Scientists.
Reading & Listening
Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data by Charles Wheelan
During my holiday, I have been reading Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan. This book uncovers how people can manipulate and lie using statistics, while also introducing fundamental concepts like hypothesis testing and the central limit theorem. Despite knowing much of the content theoretically, it was insightful to see real world examples of these concepts. Definitely recommend!