Back in 1998 Google founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin have rented a garage from Susan Diane Wojcicki. She started her career in the tech world in the early 90s, and her journey eventually led her to Google, where she played a pivotal role in the company’s growth. In fact, she was the Google employee number 16 and even rented her own garage where Google began. In 2022 her net worth was estimated at $765 millions. After observing the success of YouTube, she suggested that Google should buy it; the deal was approved for $1.65 billion in 2006. She was appointed CEO of YouTube in 2014, serving until resigning in February 2023.

Susan was born in Santa Clara, California, on July 5, 1968, the daughter of Esther Wojcicki, an American journalist, and Stanley Wojcicki, a Polish physics professor at Stanford University. Her paternal grandfather, Franciszek Wójcicki, was a Polish politician who was elected MP during the 1947 Polish legislative election. Her paternal grandmother, Janina Wójcicka Hoskins, was a Polish-American librarian at the Library of Congress and was responsible for building the largest collection of Polish material in the United States.

As Google expanded, Susan moved from marketing to product management, and eventually became the CEO of YouTube. She was instrumental in shaping YouTube into the platform it is today. Throughout her journey, Susan remained a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion in tech, leaving a lasting legacy.

Her story is one of perseverance, vision, and a genuine passion for technology, which made her a key figure in the tech world. Susan Wojcicki died on August 9, 2024, at the age of 56, after living with non-small-cell lung cancer for two years.

Samuel Harris Altman is an American entrepreneur and business executive who has served as the chief executive officer of the artificial intelligence research organization OpenAI since 2019. In this role, he has played a central part in shaping the organization’s mission to develop advanced artificial intelligence systems that benefit society. Altman gained global prominence after overseeing the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, a breakthrough product that brought generative AI into mainstream public use and demonstrated the transformative potential of large language models.

Under his leadership, OpenAI has accelerated research, expanded strategic partnerships, and influenced how governments, businesses, and the public think about the opportunities and risks associated with artificial intelligence. As a result, Altman is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures of the modern AI boom, known both for advancing cutting-edge technology and for advocating discussions around AI safety, ethics, and long-term societal impact.

A chatbot is a software application that aims to mimic human conversation through text or voice interactions, mostly online. Modern chatbots are artificial intelligence (AI) systems that are capable of having a conversation with a user in natural language and simulating the way a human would behave as a conversational partner. Such technologies often utilize aspects of deep learning and natural language processing.

Recently this field has gained widespread attention due to the popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, followed by alternatives such as MSFT Bing Chat (which uses OpenAI’s GPT-4) and Google’s Bard. Such examples reflect the recent practice of such products being built based upon broad foundational large language models that get fine-tuned so as to target specific tasks or applications (i.e. simulating human conversation, in the case of chatbots). Chatbots can also be designed or customized to further target more specific situations and particular subject-matter domains.

Pros:

Potential for High Returns: Some NFTs have experienced rapid appreciation in value, leading to significant profits for early investors. High-profile sales have generated media attention and attracted more interest to the NFT market.

Ownership and Authenticity: NFTs provide a unique way to establish ownership and prove the authenticity of digital assets, which is crucial in the digital age where copying and piracy are rampant.

Diverse Investment Opportunities: NFTs cover a wide range of assets beyond just digital art, including music, virtual real estate, collectibles, virtual goods, and more. This diversity allows investors to choose from various niches that align with their interests.

Global Market Access: The NFT market is accessible to people around the world, allowing investors to engage with artists and creators from different cultures and backgrounds.

Cons:

Volatility and Speculation: The NFT market is highly speculative and can be extremely volatile. Prices can swing dramatically over short periods, leading to significant losses for investors who do not time their trades well.

Lack of Regulation: The NFT market is relatively new and lacks comprehensive regulation, which could expose investors to potential scams, fraud, or legal issues.

Bubble Risk: Some experts have raised concerns about a potential NFT bubble, where prices are driven more by hype and speculation rather than actual value. If the bubble bursts, many NFT investments could lose substantial value.

Digital Ownership Concerns: While NFTs provide proof of ownership for digital assets, the concept of owning a digital file can be challenging to grasp for some investors. Additionally, ownership of an NFT doesn’t necessarily translate to full copyright control over the underlying content.

Environmental Impact: Many NFTs are created and traded on blockchain networks that consume a significant amount of energy. This has raised environmental concerns and criticism about the carbon footprint of NFTs.

Liquidity and Market Fragmentation: While some NFTs are highly liquid, others may have limited trading volumes and lower demand, making it challenging to sell or exit positions quickly.

Market Saturation: The NFT market has seen explosive growth, resulting in a flood of new NFTs being minted. This saturation can make it difficult for individual NFTs to stand out and appreciate in value.

In conclusion, investing in NFTs can be a potentially lucrative endeavor, but it comes with significant risks due to the speculative nature of the market, lack of regulation, and other challenges. It’s important for investors to conduct thorough research, diversify their portfolio, and only invest funds they can afford to lose.

Thu 29 Sep 2022 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM AEST Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2000
DataEngBytes! is a community conference centred around real world data engineering problems and solutions. Run by data engineers, for data engineers. We will have two days of in-person conferences in Melbourne (on the 27th) and Sydney (on the 29th) of September!

Keynote

JOE REIS, “RECOVERING DATA SCIENTIST”, CO-FOUNDER/CEO OF TERNARY DATA
Joe Reis is a “recovering data scientist” who’s worked in a variety of data roles (analytics, machine learning, engineering, architecture, etc) since the early 2000s. Joe is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ternary Data, a data engineering/architecture consulting firm with a global client and partner base, and teaches data at the University of Utah. He’s also the co-founder of The Utah Data Engineering Meetup and SLC Python, the host of some popular podcasts (The Monday Morning Data Chat, The Data Nerd Herd, Let’s Talk Data Engineering), a blogger, speaker at global data conferences, and co-author of The Fundamentals of Data Engineering (O’Reilly, 2022).

Sydney talks

Lalit Pant, Data Privacy Engineering to power Responsible Enterprise AI
Zeph Yap, Building a Scalable, Reproducible Ontology System to Improve Deep Learning Data
Zachary Zeus, Engineering Trust in Data
Karen Davis, Data replication patterns 101
Duana Stanley, What is the MVP for Data Engineering projects?
Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Delta Lake: Turn your Data Lake into a Lakehouse
Lizzie Reid, Data Engineering for Social Good
Hilton Rosenfeld, AI as an API
Thiago Baldim, Data Incidents – When things go wrong
Xuanyi Chew, Change the way you write. Change the way you think.
Simon Aubury will host a panel discussion

Thanks to guest Jayson E. Street for sharing this incredible story. Jayson can be found on twitter as @jaysonstreet and his website is jaysonestreet.com.

https://twitter.com/jaysonstreet

The next story is about the hacker named “dawgyg” and how he makes $200,000 p.a. from hacking
Thomas DeVoss performs application and host level security assessments as a day job.

Thomas DeVoss (dawgyg) https://twitter.com/thedawgyg

Great British Railway Journeys is a BBC documentary series presented by Michael Portillo. It premiered in 2010 on BBC Two, and has returned each year for a total of nine series. The series features Portillo travelling around the railway networks of The United Kingdom and Ireland, referring to an 1840s copy of Bradshaw’s Guide, comparing how the various destinations have changed since Victorian and Edwardian times.

#Avalon2017 Orbital ATK promotes C-27J palletised ISR https://t.co/3eflN7kw3A @OrbitalATK pic.twitter.com/vLrXxXIBkY

— Shephard News (@ShephardNews) March 7, 2017

Check out this MH-60R “Romeo” at #Avalon2017 flying high with the @Australian_Navy https://t.co/Spfbtinit9 pic.twitter.com/P0QomWJQvE

— Sikorsky (@Sikorsky) March 6, 2017

Warsaw-Vilnius-Riga-Tallinn Eurolines LT #Setra #SetraCoach #Eurolines #EurolinesLT Warsaw-#Vilnius-#Riga-#Tallinn #coach #bus #autokar #autobus #Warsaw #Varšuva #spring #wiosna #sunnyday #Polska #Poland #Polen #Lenkija #l4l #f4f #like4like #awesome #voyage #polishboy #KeliaujuAutobusu #DworzecZachodni

A post shared by Transport Photos (@public_transport_photos) on Jun 13, 2017 at 9:02am PDT

PolskiBus.Com P7 Warszawa-Lublin. . . #PolskiBus #PolskiBusCom #RafTrans #Adl #Plaxton #Elite #PlaxtonElitei #Volvo #SetraCoach #coach #autokar #MetroWilanowska #journey #Lublin #bus #autobus #autobusas #publictransport #wiosna #spring #Warszawa #Warsaw #Varšuva #Polska #Poland #Lenkija #Polen #l4l #f4f @polskibuscom

A post shared by Transport Photos (@public_transport_photos) on Apr 14, 2017 at 8:02am PDT