Brendan Wood

"Good things happen when we get together!" Couldn't agree more! Check out all the good stuff that's been happening in the Waterloo Tech Ecosystem when we've been getting together in the latest Tech News Roundup from Communitech.

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😵‍💫 I wonder if Canada is going to ban all the electronic in the world... ⚠️ They banned flipper Zero, they banned affordable EVs making sure Canadian remain poor, but now here it comes... 🫱 CapibaraZero Firmware With ESP32-S3 Hardware Enables Low Cost Flipper Zero alternative ⏩ This device can allow young ones to have fun and learn electronics, wireless and more, that's obviously certainly way too unacceptable for Canada. 📢 Yes I'm hell frustrated because the Chinese EV are $15K are a blast, and if we wanted to "decarbon" then we wouldn't ban affordable EVs.... Also banning flipper zero for car data theft is showing a high level of ... unwise or uneducated decision.... anyways, ESP32 power ! #technology #flipperzero https://lnkd.in/etKEUSqz

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Bitcoin miner Hive Digital Technologies invests $30M in NVIDIA GPUs to power AI and HPC in Quebec 🌱⚡. Big moves in sustainable tech and AI computing! - $30M spent on cutting-edge H100 and H200 GPU clusters. - Expected $35M annual revenue by mid-2025. - Operations powered by renewable energy in Quebec.

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💻 Software Improvements. 🖱️ AI integrations. 📱 Custom App Development. These are just a few of the projects we saw yesterday at the School of Advanced Digital Technology's CapCon event at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT)! See what Autumn Heinze has to say about their amazing student projects! 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀? Check out our blog post for 7 Reasons you should have student work on a project for your organization: https://lnkd.in/giqr848b

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I just released the April edition of my AI & the Web newsletter. Nathaniel Simard, founder & CEO of Tracel Technologies and inventor of the burn ML framework, spoke with me about how he got into ML, burn, Tracel and the future of AI. WebGPU, the successor of WebGL, will soon also be supported in Firefox and Safari. Small, powerful LLMs running right in the browser is not a distant future, but are the next big thing in cost-effective and privacy-friendly AI. Google is working hard on better WASM support in the browser that makes ML models running fast even on low-end devices without GPU. With Llama 3 by AI at Meta and Phi 3 by Microsoft AI we got some exciting new, small modells. Llama 3 was already ported to run in the browser and we'll see Phi 3 soon as well. MusicGen has been ported to the browser in transformers.js by Hugging Face engineers and developed an online Jukebox running right in the browser. #webgpu #webml #ai #ml #llama3 #wasm https://lnkd.in/drJCY7Ew

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🚀 Exciting news! Kitchener-Waterloo-based startup CoGuard has received funding from OpenAI’s Cybersecurity Grant Program! This innovative company is automating the identification of software misconfigurations to reduce the threat of cyberattacks. With OpenAI's support, CoGuard is using AI to enhance cybersecurity measures and protect sensitive data. 💻🔐 What are your thoughts on using AI for cybersecurity? Share your opinions and comments below! ⬇️💬 #Cybersecurity #AI #TechNews #StartupFunding

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🎓 Learn how you can supercharge your systems development process! In this blog series, we’re pulling back the curtains to give you a look at a few of Jama Connect’s powerful features… in under five minutes. In this Features in Five video 👉 https://ow.ly/CSES50UztMT 👈 Francis Trudeau, Product Manager at Jama Software, will introduce viewers to Jama Connect’s Live Trace Explorer™, which auto-detects risk by bringing comprehensive and detailed insights into your complex development processes. Please note that Live Trace Explorer is currently in beta and available for all Jama Connect Cloud customers to try.

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🔎ICYMI: We wanted to find out more about North America’s largest AI conference - Upper Bound! Read our blog post featuring the CEO of Alberta Machine Institute, Cam Linke. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/guHJ4En3 Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii) #UpperBound2024

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Deep Tech Canada Investor Series: De-risking Deep Tech Join us for an informative webinar that will address how the #deeptech ecosystem seeks to de-risk investments in deep tech. 📅 Tuesday, June 4th 🕚 9:00 am MT/ 11:00 am ET This webinar will inform deep tech #startups or #scaleups on where to go for funding, and what programs are available to accelerate the journey to #commercialization through facilities that provide rapid design-build-test cycles. It will also provide an investor’s perspective of what is required for investment readiness and partnership opportunities. Read more about the event and register for free here: https://lnkd.in/gaKaSbeT

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Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez says that #1 blocker for Enterprise GenAI use cases is data privacy and #2 blocker is the cost (implies ROI). He also explained what Canadian AI startup, Cohere does and how they make money. A must watch for anyone who is interested in Enterprise GenAI use cases. He also said that GenAI fear mongering is cheap ways to get attention (I am paraphrasing, he didn’t use the word cheap). Quite a bit commentary on Google Cloud AI developments as well. Other mentions Oracle and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Aidan comes across as a mature tech leader for his young age. He sounds more realistic and less me too, in GenAI hyped era. Aidan was talking to CNBC’s Steve Kovach. https://lnkd.in/g36SFYfn ____________________ Last month, Cohere has raised $450 million in funding from returning investors such as Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures, as well as new investors including Cisco and Canadian pension fund PSP Investments cc David Vellante David Linthicum John Furrier Ron Miller Shelly DeMotte Kramer Robert Hof

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Recently I interviewed Nathaniel Simard, founder & CEO of Tracel Technologies and inventor of the burn ML framework: Jan: Nathaniel, we're excited to have you as our guest today! To kick off our conversation, could you please introduce yourself and share a bit about your background and what got you into ML? Nathaniel: Sure, I'm the creator of Burn, a deep learning framework written in Rust, and the founder of Tracel AI. I started coding in the first year of university, where I was studying mechanical engineering, but I quickly switched to software engineering after, since I instantly fell in love with programming. Then I explored different facets of the field from backend to frontend development, and I decided to start my career as a consultant focused on software quality. After some time, I wanted to go deeper into AI, since I was always interested in the process of learning, so I enrolled for a master's degree at MILA. J: According to Github you started to work on burn in summer 2022. Since then has already earned over 7000 stars on GH. What was your initial motivation to develop a new ML framework? N: I always had a side project going on, for fun mostly and to learn new things. I wanted to explore asynchronous and sparse neural network architectures, where each sub-network can learn and interact with other sub-networks asynchronously and independently. I wasn't able to actually create something useful because I needed fine control over the gradients and the concurrency primitives, which is not easily done with Python and PyTorch. At the same time, I was working on machine translation models at my current job, and it was quite painful to put models into production. I decided to switch my side project to a new deep learning framework, with more flexibility regarding gradients and concurrency primitives as well as being more reliable and easier to deploy on any system. J: Amazing to see that this was born out of a side project! I feel the struggle with concurrency in Python and this is something where Rust really shines. What are some of the other key features that makes burn special? N: I think there are two things that really set Burn apart. First, almost all neural network structures are generic over the backend. The goal is that you can ship your model with almost no dependency, and anybody can run it on their hardware with the most appropriate backend, even embedded devices without an operating system. Second, Burn really tries to push the boundaries of what is possible in terms of performance and flexibility. It offers a fully eager API, but also operation fusion and other optimizations that are normally only found in static graph frameworks. The objective is that you don't have to choose between portability, flexibility, and performance; you can have it all! To read the rest of the interview with Nathaniel's plans for burn & trends in AI here: https://lnkd.in/dKv9ztMm #ml #ai

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What grows the skilled workforce in #AtlCan? A thriving innovation ecosystem helps! Spiri Robotics is pushing the boundaries of aerial intelligence with its fully programmable drones, bringing ideas and opportunities to Atlantic Canada. “The competition – both for customers and for talent – is fierce and global,” says Spiri CEO and founder Patrick Edwards-Daugherty. “ACOA is helping us bring talent and retain it here, and compete around the world.” What organizations do you see driving innovation in Atlantic Canada? Tell us in the comments. #InnovationHappensHere

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Checkout this demo by my co-founder Dov Amihod showing how he connected all his tools from Notion, Slack, Github, Calendar and more to AI agents in Datagrid AI to get stuff done!

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We don't mean to brag, but #DYK that Canada has the second-largest ecosystem of quantum computing startups in the world? It's no wonder we are a top destination for quantum sector business expansion and investment! 💻 Invest in Canada | Investir au Canada | Invest Ontario | Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario | Agence fédérale de ... | York Link | York Region Economic Development | Halton Business | Toronto Region Board of Trade | City of Toronto #Quantum #Technology #Investment #Business

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The Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentive is one of Canada's most powerful tools for fostering tech innovation - enabling businesses to recoup up to 65% of their R&D salary costs. Here's the troubling reality though: While this program distributes ~$4B annually to 20,000 businesses, an unnecessary "SR&ED consulting industry" has emerged that extracts $400M-800M from these funds. Why? These consultants capitalize on companies' fears about complex paperwork, despite the fact that 94% of SR&ED applications are approved. They charge 10-20% of the tax credit simply to complete forms. Let that sink in: Nearly a billion dollars meant for Canadian innovation is instead diverted to middlemen who add minimal value. At Publicus, we're passionate about streamlining government processes through automation. While SR&ED reform isn't our current focus, we believe in raising awareness about the systemic, government-related inefficiencies that hold back Canadian tech companies. #CanadaTech #GovTech #Grants #Innovation

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How does #Waterloo stack up against Silicon Valley? Let’s talk numbers: workforce size, payroll taxes, company costs and more—see why Waterloo is turning heads in the tech world. 🔗https://hubs.ly/Q02_gBX70 #TechEcosystem #Innovation #CostManagement

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🇨🇦 How far will management go to avoid considering their own practices for improvement? Allow the Government of Canada to demonstrate: They have leased an AI-powered robot for $40k over two years with a Google Street View like camera on it to snap photos of employees to see how comfortable they are and combine that with environmental data to adjust the thermostat. Reason? "The aim is to create a better work environment for humans — one that isn't too hot, humid or dim. Saad said that means more comfortable and productive employees." More importantly: To save on heating/cooling costs. Because what is management without their addiction to MBO/MBR? The Minister responsible thinks this is a whiz-bang idea and is so far defending it, and the co-developer of the bot says it is totally not there to spy on employees who will soon be mandated to return to the office. This is State of the Art management, here... #systemsthinking #leadership #deming https://lnkd.in/g9BNKdyD

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