The memory paradox: why our brains need knowledge in the age of AI

I have this aching feeling - which might sound familiar -  but I never saw any academic research on this: offloading too much thinking to AI and digital tools is weakening our cognitive abilities (in plain words - AI makes us dumber ...) . 

In the white paper "The memory paradox: why our brains need knowledge in the age of AI" - the lead author - Barbara Oakley points to changes in education and the rise of cognitive offloading to why IQ scores are declining in developed countries. 

If she is right, the outlook for companies in the near future does not look good ...

Understanding conda channels

 Conda channels are package source - locations where conda looks for software packages when you run conda install. Each channel can contain different package versions, build configurations, platform-specific binaries, etc ...

In the screenshot above, you will notice 4 different conda channels:

• defaults: the official Anaconda repository, has stable, curated with conservative updates
• microsoft: Microsoft maintains its own channel mainly for AzureML environment support or packages tuned for Windows performance.
• anaconda: similar to the defaults channel
• conda-forge: community driven, massive ecosystem with the latest versions. Receives updates within hours of upstream releases

You can add a channel using this command: conda config --add channels microsoft. Conda searches channels in order, from highest priority to lowest. So from my configuration, it first try to install from defaults. If not found, it falls back to microsoft, and so on ...

Quick tip: fix eID Viewer installation - a driver can't load on this device

I recently had to use the Belgian eID software and couldn't get it to work on the Windows 11 - it always failed with "A driver can't load on this device" - in the end I had to Turn off memory integrity setting (Microsoft support)

Since keeping the memory integrity setting is highly recommend - I would change the setting as soon as possible. Uninstall the Belgian eID software after you have used it and run pnputil to remove the faulty drivers so that you can enable the memory setting again.

Quick tip: retrieving raw, unprocessed files stored in Github

 The domain raw.githubusercontent.com serves raw, unprocessed files stored in Github repositories - think of it as GitHub's "direct file download" backend. Tools like curl, wget or Python scripts can fetch files directly using a specific url composed of the user name, repo, branch, folder and filename

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/[user]/[repo]/[branch]/[folder]/[filename] 

example: curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jorisp/tradingnotebooks/master/data/DJI.csv

You can also read these raw files form GitHub using pandas.read_csv

Quick tip: checking your Github Copilot settings

 Open https://github.com/settings/copilot/features

References:

• Best practices for using GitHub Copilot
• Asking GitHub Copilot questions in your IDE

Interactive Pandas dataframes with ITables 2.0

 ITables is a Python package available on Github (maintained by Marc Wouts) which changes how Pandas and Polars dataframes are rendered in Python notebooks and other Python applications. It works out of the box without any dependencies in Jupyter, Dash, Streamlit and Marimo. 

For more info see:

• Make your Pandas or Polars DataFrames Interactive with ITables 2.0
• ITables Quick Start

Enable and disable Data Wranger in VS Code for Pandas DataFrame and Series

To disable default rendering of Pandas DataFrames in VS Code Jupyter Notebook with Data Wrangler (after installing the extension) - follow these steps:

1. Open Command Palette : Preferences: Open Settings (UI)
2. Search for: Data Wrangler
3. Uncheck the Data Wrangler>Output Renderer: Enabled Types for Pandas Dataframe and Series to disable the rendering and check them again when needed

Related links:

• Getting started with Data Wrangler in VS Code

Datawrapper: enrich your stories with charts, maps and tables

 Datawrapper is designed to make professional-quality charts, maps and tables - even for those without coding or design skills. Also check out their blog which has excellent posts such as Fix my chart - turning donuts into bars (Part of the Data Visualization Do's & Don'ts). 

"Statistiek Vlaanderen" (government agency in Flanders) makes extensive use of Datawrapper - it has used it to create more than 2000 Datawrapper charts and maps on more than 300 webpages. (Statistics Flanders: "We want to reach everyone")

Source: International migration (July 2025) - Statistics Flanders