Hope Eckert

A bit later than the official launch of Flower Hub from Flower Labs. Many thanks to Yan Gao for inviting me to participate as an early contributor. It was the push I needed to dust off an old pet project I'd been putting aside for way too long: federated UMAP. Before you train a model, you need to understand your data. Clustering and dimensionality reduction help with that enormously. But for UMAP you need pairwise distances between all data points — which means centralizing everything. That pretty much kills the idea of federated learning, where you don't share data. Fair point. But one can use approximations. The approach (from Qiao, Ma & Fan, AAAI 2025): clients collaboratively learn a shared set of landmark points via MMD optimization. The server reconstructs the global distance matrix using Nyström approximation and runs UMAP on the result. No raw data ever leaves any client and the embeddings are close enough to centralized UMAP. The beauty is that this Nyström-based distance reconstruction is algorithm-agnostic - it would work with t-SNE, spectral clustering, or any method that relies on a pairwise distance matrix. I chose UMAP specifically because it's widely used in biomedical research. For example, in single-cell RNA sequencing, where UMAP helps researchers identify cell types and disease subtypes across patient cohorts that often can't be pooled due to privacy regulations. The app works out of the box and logs embeddings directly to W&B for easy comparison. Huge thanks to the authors for their research, it's awesome: https://lnkd.in/duzMCG65 Congratulations Flower Labs on their launch, future is federated :) App itself can be found here: https://lnkd.in/d45YzPeX

14

How to thrive during industry disruptions It's easy to feel like everything is being upended by AI, but this isn't the first or last industry change to happen in tech. The post How to thrive during industry disruptions appeared first on LeadDev. Pat Kua https://lnkd.in/eFhC-Z4h

3

🚀 LangChain’s leap to unicorn status? According to TechCrunch, AI infrastructure startup LangChain is raising a new round at an impressive ~$1 billion valuation, led by IVP.  What’s driving this surge? ° 111K GitHub stars and robust open‑source traction ° Innovative tools like LangSmith fueling $12–16M ARR A strong footing in the fast‑evolving LLM ops space 💡 If you’re building or investing in AI-powered applications LangChain’s trajectory is one to watch. #AI #Startups #UnicornAlert https://lnkd.in/ddcnHXRd

3

I wrote an article on how we translate user-generated content at scale at Mercari. It summarizes two years of work with various models, LLMs but not only, and how cost evolved, reducing it 100x over the period. I also go over non-AI features and user experience. https://lnkd.in/gbpQAQmX

39

2 Comments

❗️If you’re not attending tech meetups, you’re missing out on the biggest source of momentum in the Pacific Northwest. The energy at the New Tech Northwest meetup was electric. It’s not just a networking event, it’s the 60,000-member engine that’s actively building the future of Seattle tech. I left with three big insights about the community: • Founder Fuel. Hearing founders pitch their vision for cutting-edge startups (AI, Cloud, and more) was incredible. This isn't just theory; it’s where real economic growth and regional innovation are born. That density of ideas is what keeps our city moving forward. • The Talent Magnet. They’ve perfected the "un-networking" concept. It's a high-caliber space that connects professionals with industry leaders, recruiters, and mentors. I was particularly impressed by how they work to bridge the gap between industry and local universities. • Cross-Discipline Power. As someone focused on Cyber Security, it’s crucial to understand the systems we protect. Being in a room with software developers, tech executives, and innovators provides the context needed to truly build resilient security foundations. ▶️ If you’re serious about building a career or a company in the PNW, this is where you gain real-time market insight and find your tribe. #NewTechNorthwest #NewTechSeattle #Networking #SeattleTech #StartupCommunity #CyberSecurity #CareerGrowth #TechCommunity

20

For understanding the virtual thread state transitions... Specifically, thread pinning on Java 21 vs. Java 24 and when the thread waits on IO how the platform thread views the state compared against the virtual thread enabling interruption

3

My Startup Was Working… Until It Wasn’t We had paying customers. We had local press. We were gaining traction. It was 2016. Then UberEats, DoorDash, and Postmates entered Portland with billions in funding. At the same time, Intel—where I worked full-time—announced massive layoffs. Overnight, my 40-hour week almost doubled. Midnight fab shifts, weekend work, endless overtime. My startup didn’t die because the idea was bad. It died because I didn’t have the financial runway to compete. Here’s what that painful chapter taught me: 1. Passion + grit aren’t enough. Startups need time, capital, and breathing room to survive. 2. Corporate is just built for stability. It can’t nurture the creative chaos that startups need. 3. Adaptation beats stubbornness. Sometimes the smartest move is to regroup, save, and come back stronger. So I made a choice: doubled down on my W-2 career, moved to Seattle, and joined Amazon to maximize income. Every dollar earned—and every loan I could pull—went straight into real estate. One property a year turned into two… then into double digits in a single year. Deals kept coming, I kept closing, and I built a local team to keep momentum alive. By the end of 2022, my portfolio was generating more passive income than my paycheck. That’s when WoolooAI.com was born—not as a flashy startup, but as a necessary system to simplify and automate the chaos: acquisitions, CRM, portfolio management, project management, all streamlined. The truth is: - Without the grind of my early startup days, I wouldn’t have landed the Amazon role. - Without Intel’s layoff threats, I wouldn’t have learned the importance of building a financial runway first. - And without the expertise I developed at Amazon, I wouldn’t have gained the skills that helped me build WOOLOO AI. The irony isn’t lost: the same challenges that once crushed me ended up shaping the freedom I enjoy today. 💡 Takeaway: Sometimes what feels like an ending is really just the foundation for the next chapter. 👉 If you want the full story, I wrote it here: https://lnkd.in/geEVye36 💬 I’d love to hear your story too—what twists or setbacks ended up shaping where you are today? #Entrepreneurship #Startups #RealEstateInvesting #AmazonAlumni #FinancialFreedom #LessonsLearned #HumbleGrowth

226

8 Comments