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SLB Launches 'Tela' Agentic AI Assistant to Drive Digital Sales in Energy

Introduction TL;DR: Global energy technology company SLB (formerly Schlumberger) announced the launch of Tela™, a new agentic AI assistant specifically designed to revolutionize the upstream energy sector, on 2025-11-03. This move underscores SLB’s aggressive focus on digital sales growth. Tela, leveraging SLB’s Lumi™ data and AI platform, is not a mere automation tool but a proactive collaborator capable of understanding goals, making autonomous decisions, and taking actions. The launch directly targets the industry’s critical need to overcome the dual challenges of a diminishing skilled workforce and escalating technical complexity in operations. SLB forecasts that this digital segment, now reported separately, will achieve double-digit year-on-year sales growth. SLB introduced Tela™, an agentic AI assistant for the upstream energy industry, on 2025-11-03. Built on the Lumi™ platform, Tela integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) and Domain Foundation Models (DFMs) to go beyond simple automation, performing complex tasks like interpreting well logs and optimizing equipment performance autonomously. This technology addresses the sector’s challenge of a smaller, aging workforce combined with greater technical complexity. The initiative is central to SLB’s strategy to significantly boost its digital sales, following an 11% QoQ revenue growth in that segment. ...

November 3, 2025 · 6 min · 1109 words · Roy

ChatGPT November 2025 Update: Inference Boost & Agent Mode Preview

Introduction TL;DR: As of November 2025, OpenAI implemented significant ChatGPT upgrades including GPT-5, stronger inference, reduced latency, and the launch of Agent Mode for autonomous automation and planning. Agent Mode lets premium users delegate multi-step real-world tasks (research, planning, automation) to AI, representing a turning point in enterprise and personal workflows. Updates focused on reasoning precision, efficiency, and data privacy enhancements. All information is strictly cross-referenced from official announcements and multiple reputable media sources. Core Updates: Fall 2025 ChatGPT Model Evolution & Performance In August 2025, GPT-5 became the default model for both free and paid users, integrating multi-phase reasoning selection (“Instant”, “Thinking”, “Pro”) depending on task complexity. The year introduced several new engines (o3, o4-mini, o3-mini-high) increasing logical reasoning and precision in advanced fields such as programming and science. Privacy update: As of October 2025, user chat deletion now removes records permanently for most use cases. Why it matters: Model evolution enables ChatGPT to better tackle industrial and scientific tasks, and stricter privacy practices fortify user trust. ...

November 2, 2025 · 3 min · 511 words · Roy

Understanding Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU): A Beginner's Guide to the AI Accelerator

Introduction TL;DR: The Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) is a specialized hardware chip developed by Google to accelerate the training and inference of its AI models. Unlike general-purpose CPUs and GPUs, the TPU is an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), highly optimized for the ‘matrix multiplication’ operations central to artificial intelligence. It utilizes a powerful systolic array architecture, enabling massive parallel processing of data to power services like Google Search and Gemini, and is available to external users via the Cloud TPU service on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) is a custom-developed AI accelerator designed by Google specifically for machine learning and deep learning workloads. The core function of AI models, particularly neural networks, involves immense amounts of tensor operations, which are essentially multi-dimensional array or matrix multiplications. Traditional Central Processing Units (CPUs) and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are designed for a wide range of tasks, but the TPU is a single-purpose processor, or ASIC, built to perform these matrix operations with extreme efficiency. The first-generation TPU was unveiled in May 2016, following its internal deployment since 2015, driven by the escalating computational demands of Google’s AI services. The Core Technology of TPU: The Systolic Array The secret to the TPU’s high performance lies in its specialized architecture, the Systolic Array. For a beginner, this can be visualized as a highly optimized ‘factory conveyor belt’ for calculations. ...

November 2, 2025 · 4 min · 814 words · Roy

Cursor 2.0: Composer and Parallel Multi-Agent AI for Developers

Introduction TL;DR: Cursor 2.0, released October 2025, features the proprietary Composer model and full parallel multi-agent orchestration. The upgrade makes coding, code review, and testing far faster and smarter than prior versions, especially on large, real-world projects. The Composer model is 4× faster than similar models and optimized for agentic workflows, enabling most tasks to complete in under 30 seconds. The overhaul includes a new interface focused on agents rather than files, browser-based test automation, and improved collaboration for engineering teams. Benchmarks and hands-on reviews confirm significant boosts in code quality, context tracking, reliability, and developer satisfaction in practical usage. What’s New in Cursor 2.0 Composer: The Agent-First Coding Model Content: ...

October 31, 2025 · 6 min · 1182 words · Roy

PyTorch for Deep Learning: Core Features and Production Deployment

Introduction TL;DR: PyTorch, developed by Meta, is a prominent deep learning framework utilizing a Define-by-Run (Dynamic Computation Graph) approach, which significantly aids intuitive model development and debugging. Its core strength lies in GPU acceleration via Tensor objects and automatic differentiation through Autograd. With the latest stable version being PyTorch 2.9.0 (as of October 2025), PyTorch continues to evolve its ecosystem, offering robust tools like TorchScript and ONNX for production deployment, making it a powerful, Python-centric platform for both research and industry applications. PyTorch is an open-source machine learning library designed to accelerate the path from research prototyping to production deployment. This article explores the core architectural features that make PyTorch a preferred choice for many developers and outlines its practical application in real-world environments. Core Architecture and Flexibility 1. Tensors and GPU Acceleration In PyTorch, a Tensor is the fundamental data structure, analogous to NumPy arrays but with crucial support for GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) acceleration. This capability is essential for handling the massive computational loads of modern deep learning models. By simply moving a Tensor to a CUDA device, complex matrix operations are parallelized, drastically reducing model training time. ...

October 31, 2025 · 5 min · 986 words · Roy

A Conservative Analysis of Entropy: Measuring Disorder and Uncertainty

Introduction TL;DR: Entropy is a core scientific concept defined in two major contexts: Thermodynamics and Information Theory. In thermodynamics, it quantifies the degree of disorder or unusable energy in an isolated system, always increasing according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In information theory, specifically Shannon Entropy, it measures the uncertainty of a random variable, acting as the expected value of the information content. Both concepts fundamentally relate to the number of possible states a system can occupy or the uniformity of a probability distribution. The concept of Entropy was first introduced by Rudolf Clausius in the 19th century to describe the direction of energy change in thermodynamic processes. It is a physical quantity representing the thermal state of a system, often popularized as the measure of ‘disorder’ or ‘randomness’. More precisely, it quantifies a system’s tendency towards equilibrium or the degree of reduction in energy available to do useful work. 1. Thermodynamic Entropy and the Second Law Thermodynamic entropy, denoted by $S$, is a fundamental property of a system in thermal physics. Ludwig Boltzmann related entropy to the number of microstates ($\Omega$) a system can attain, reflecting the system’s inherent randomness. ...

October 30, 2025 · 5 min · 923 words · Roy

IBM Granite 4.0 Nano: Enterprise-Ready Tiny Open-Source LLMs (Release Review)

Introduction TL;DR: IBM announced the Granite 4.0 Nano model family in October 2025. These open-source LLMs, ranging from 350M to 1.5B parameters, feature Hybrid-SSM and Transformer architecture for maximum efficiency, running locally or at the edge. All models are Apache 2.0 licensed and certified for ISO 42001 Responsible AI, enabling safe commercial and enterprise applications. Available via Hugging Face, Docker Hub, and major platforms, these models benchmark strongly versus larger LLMs, transforming modern inference strategy. This release marks a new era for scalable and responsible lightweight AI deployment. Nano Model Overview and Features Hybrid-SSM and Transformer leap IBM Granite 4.0 Nano achieves ultra-efficient local performance by blending the Mamba-2 Hybrid-SSM and Transformer approaches. Models are engineered to run on edge devices, laptops, and browsers — the smallest (350M) even locally in a web browser. Apache 2.0 open license, ISO 42001 certification, and full resource transparency meet enterprise security and governance needs. ...

October 30, 2025 · 3 min · 571 words · Roy

Open Notebook: The Privacy-First Open Source Disruptor to Google NotebookLM (2025 Comparative Guide)

Introduction TL;DR: Open Notebook is the leading open-source, self-hosted AI research platform that offers full data sovereignty and supports over 16 different LLM providers, positioning it as a powerful alternative to Google NotebookLM for practitioners concerned about privacy and customization. Free alternatives like Nut Studio also offer extensive model support and control, rapidly changing the landscape of AI-powered research in 2025. Open Notebook, released under the MIT License, tackles the core limitations of commercial cloud-based AI note-taking tools like Google NotebookLM: vendor lock-in and mandatory cloud data storage. Its design prioritizes flexibility and security for engineers and researchers dealing with sensitive information. The Architecture of Open Notebook: Sovereignty and Choice Data Control Through Self-Hosting Open Notebook is built around a privacy-first, self-hosted architecture. This means all research materials, notes, and vector embeddings are stored locally or on a user-chosen server (on-premises or private cloud), ensuring complete control over the data lifecycle. The common deployment method leverages Docker for a straightforward, containerized setup. ...

October 30, 2025 · 4 min · 699 words · Roy

Deep Dive into JEPA: Yann LeCun's Architecture for Autonomous AI and World Models

Introduction TL;DR: The Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (JEPA), championed by Meta AI’s Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun, represents a major architectural alternative to the dominant Large Language Models (LLMs). This analysis explores JEPA’s fundamental principles, its superiority over generative models for building robust World Models, and its latest application in V-JEPA2 as the foundation for future Autonomous AI systems. JEPA is a non-generative architecture designed to construct efficient World Models. It tackles the limitations of LLMs (lack of planning, uncontrollable error growth) by predicting only the abstract representation ($S_y$) of future states, rather than the raw data itself. This allows JEPA to learn the core dynamics and common sense of the world, ignoring uncertain details. With the release of V-JEPA2 in June 2025, Meta AI is leveraging JEPA to learn profound physical world understanding from multimodal sensory data, driving the next phase of AI development toward controllable and safe agents. 1. Defining JEPA: Predicting Abstract Representations JEPA is a core component of LeCun’s prescription for achieving human-level intelligence: learning predictive models of the world through Self-Supervised Learning (SSL). ...

October 29, 2025 · 5 min · 992 words · Roy

The Perceptron: Foundation of Artificial Neural Networks and the XOR Barrier

Introduction TL;DR: The Perceptron, invented by Frank Rosenblatt in 1957, is the simplest form of an artificial neural network, performing binary classification by calculating a weighted sum of inputs against a threshold. While the Single-Layer Perceptron could only solve linearly separable problems, its inherent limitation was exposed by the XOR problem in 1969. This led to the development of the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), incorporating hidden layers to solve complex, non-linear classification tasks, serving as the architectural blueprint for modern Deep Learning. This article details the operational principles of the Perceptron, its historical context, and how the evolution to Multi-Layer Perceptrons enabled the advancement of neural network capabilities. 1. The Single-Layer Perceptron’s Operation The Perceptron is fundamentally a supervised learning algorithm for binary classification, modeled after the structure of a biological neuron. It takes multiple binary or real-valued inputs and produces a single binary output (0 or 1). ...

October 29, 2025 · 5 min · 980 words · Roy