Jacked About Jax

Like others, we’ve noted a recent uptick in research implemented using Jax. You might chalk it up as yet another ML platform, but Jax is emerging as the tool of choice for faster research iteration at DeepMind. After exploring for ourselves, we’re excited to find Jax is principally designed for fast differentiation. Excited because differentiation is foundational to gradient-based learning strategies supported in many ML algorithms. Moreover, the derivative is also ubiquitous in scientific computing, making Jax one powerful hammer!...

 · 4 min · Terry Rodriguez, Salma Mayorquin

Bitrate Optimization using Spark and FFmpeg

Check out this part 1 notebook and this part 2 notebook and part 3 notebook which accompany this post! Streaming video is quickly occupying the lion’s share of digital content consumed by users of many applications. At the same time more users are streaming from mobile devices, screen sizes are also increasing while consumers expect high-quality video without lag or distortion artifacts. This frames an engineering challenge to optimize the way video is streamed for consumers across a multitude of hardware platforms....

 · 5 min · Terry Rodriguez & Salma Mayorquin

Population Health Modeling

In a matter of months, the COVID-19 pandemic has besieged humanity and now the world wrestles to manage the population health challenges of a novel coronavirus with remarkable infectivity. Organizing an effective response to blunt the impact of such a large, complex challenge demands a principled and scientific approach. Better Planning by Forecasting Infections Reliable forecasting is crucial for planning and allocating limited resources efficiently and minimizing casualties....

 · 6 min · Terry Rodriguez & Salma Mayorquin