Technologist Ramblings

Experimenting with Replit and AI Code Generation – Part Deux

This is a follow-up to my previous Replit application. I was able to successfully migrate the Replit application onto my local development server, ironically with the help of Replit itself.

I am NOT a fan of TypeScript, but Replict was instrumental in helping sort out dependcies and setup database connections. For instance, Replit initially setup Websockets for my Postgres database. I struggled to get them to work and eventually just asked Replet to remove them. It took three seconds and Replit completely removed the websocket aspects of the code. Is this ideal for large production environment? No, but the goal was just to judge how complicated it would be to move outside of the Replit environment.

What I found interesting is that it was NOT shy about helping me fix things on my local workstation. I actually would have thought the developer would have put guardrails to KEEP me in their environment (more money). I hope they do NOT add them in the future.

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Google Merchant Security Woes

We were greeted the other morning by a forwarded Google email from a ecommerce merchant, with the subject “Suspension Warning of Your Merchant Center Account”.

It stated they were in violation of not having an available landing pages for products.  We checked the system and all of the landing pages were working and everything was working.

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Coronavirus Will Accelerate World Wide Adoption of Automation Technologies

As part of our new service offerings in regards to startup scouting and technology assessments (Tech Matchmaker), we continuously keep our eyes on technology trends and re-access our positions almost daily.

One trend we have been following closely for the while is with robotic automation of a variety of services ranging from burger flipping to warehouse fulfillment robots. We firmly believed that this trend will continue to accelerate with the onset of lower cost robotics and minimum wage pressures, but mother nature decided to intervene.

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Easy to Create Deep Fake Videos

UPDATE: 9/5/19 added the tutorial videos.
UPDATE: 9/6/19 added our new Harrison Ford deep fake.
UPDATE: 9/9/19 added our final Harrison Ford deep fake.

As part of our R&D background and shiny new technology appreciation, we came across an article about a new easy to use program that builds creates “Deep Fake” videos in minutes.

Anyone with a decent CUDA capable video card, can take multiple video data sets, strip out the characters faces, and swap the faces of the main video characters with another person.

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