Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication. It shouldn't be surprising that my list of my favorite books of 2024 includes a number of works by older writers working out what it means to make art as a career--what their creative future might look like.

Peter Watts is the author of some of the darkest and most thoroughly researched science fiction novels ever written. One of his early fans was horror author Theresa DeLucci, who read his debut novel Starfish while working at Tor Books in the early 2000s. "I had never really read a lot of hard science fiction, but his concepts really intrigued me, and the editor at the time told me that it was really, really dark, and he thought that I would like it, and he was absolutely correct," DeLucci says in Episode 551 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Watts is best known for his 2006 novel Blindsight, about a crew of augmented humans who are sent to intercept an alien vessel. Science fiction author Sam J. Miller says that Blindsight features some of the best-written aliens in all of science fiction.

Loneliness and social isolation are serious and widespread problems among older people, affecting their physical and mental health, quality of life, and longevity. In this paper, we propose a ChatGPT-based conversational companion system for elderly people. The system is designed to provide companionship and help reduce feelings of loneliness and social isolation. The system was evaluated with a preliminary study. The results showed that the system was able to generate responses that were relevant to the created elderly personas. However, it is essential to acknowledge the limitations of ChatGPT, such as potential biases and misinformation, and to consider the ethical implications of using AI-based companionship for the elderly, including privacy concerns.

We may not have had quite as much unfettered reading time as we did in the lockdown days of the COVID pandemic, but Engadget's editors have still managed to pick out, peruse and ponder a broad variety of this year's most intriguing books. Whether we learned how to wield a wok, listened to life lessons from Hideo Kojima, or dove into the seedy underbelly of an alt-universe 1940's San Francisco, here are a few of our favorites from 2022. Classic noir cinema was a staple in my house growing up -- I mean, my first celebrity crush was on The Thin Man series co-star, Myrna Loy -- so any story from the days when mugs were mooks and gals were dames holds sway over my heart. But The Thin Man, like the rest of the media made at that time, only showed a very narrow, very male, very white view of life. Christopher Moore's latest novel, Razzmatazz, adds some much needed color to the otherwise black-and-white world of noir.

I receive questions on content that explains machine learning, statistics or data science on a daily basis. I usually learn from books, so I wanted to write a post about the resources I used, some of them e-books. I've finished some of the books, and some of them are in queue. I've categorized the books according to topic it covers, and it's important to note that each book suits you according to your background, e.g. Without further ado, let's review!

I did not have the fortune to take a quantum computing class in college. Not to speak of a class in quantum machine learning. At the time, it wouldn't have been much fun anyway. In the early 2000s, quantum computing was just about to take the step from a pure theory to be evaluated in research labs. It was a field for theoretical physicists and mathematicians. At the time, I haven't even heard about it.

Think Stats: Probability and Statistics for Programmers by Allen Downey.