Richard Djarbeng's Blog
About Me
I am a Computer Engineer and Machine Learning Enthusiast with a passion for Internet of Things (IoT) and AI applications. I specialize in building data-driven solutions and deploying alternative low-cost Machine Learning technologies. Currently, I am expanding my expertise in Deep Learning and building on AWS. Feel free to reach out via the contact form.
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Why Flight Tickets in Africa Are So Expensive, From First Principles
When you search for a flight between two African cities, the result can look wrong: a neighboring capital costs more than a trip to Europe, the cheapest option connects through...
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PHP2Shell: The Two PHP Bugs That Took Government Websites Offline, and What to Do
On Wednesday 21 October 2026, PHP released emergency fixes for two bugs that let an attacker take over a web server without logging in. PHP runs a large part of...
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What can you do? Testing AI Agents, Gemini Argon and Claude
I have a benchmark prompt that I use to evaluate AI agent capabilities. The GitHub repository for the benchmark prompt is here. Every time a new model or agent drops,...
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Level 4 Autonomous Driving: How Robotaxis and Driverless Buses Work Today
Robotaxis with nobody in the driver's seat now carry paying passengers in several cities, and full-size electric buses run timetabled routes without a driver at the wheel. Both are SAE...
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The Six Levels of Autonomous Driving: From Driver Assist to the Level 3 Handover
When car companies advertise driver-assist software, they often blur the line between convenient driver aids and true driverless autonomy. Marketing terms like "Autopilot," "Full Self-Driving," and "hands-free assist" make it...
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When LLMs Become Scientific Instruments: Groundsource Flash Flood Research Report
A deep dive into Google's 2.6-million-event flood dataset: what the data shows, what claims hold up, and why the methodology matters more than the dataset itself. Resources: Enriched Dataset |...
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Why Flight Tickets in Africa Are So Expensive, From First Principles
When you search for a flight between two African cities, the result can look wrong: a neighboring capital costs more than a trip to Europe, the cheapest option connects through...
PHP2Shell: The Two PHP Bugs That Took Government Websites Offline, and What to Do
On Wednesday 21 October 2026, PHP released emergency fixes for two bugs that let an attacker take over a web server without logging in. PHP runs a large part of...
What can you do? Testing AI Agents, Gemini Argon and Claude
I have a benchmark prompt that I use to evaluate AI agent capabilities. The GitHub repository for the benchmark prompt is here. Every time a new model or agent drops,...
Level 4 Autonomous Driving: How Robotaxis and Driverless Buses Work Today
Robotaxis with nobody in the driver's seat now carry paying passengers in several cities, and full-size electric buses run timetabled routes without a driver at the wheel. Both are SAE...
The Six Levels of Autonomous Driving: From Driver Assist to the Level 3 Handover
When car companies advertise driver-assist software, they often blur the line between convenient driver aids and true driverless autonomy. Marketing terms like "Autopilot," "Full Self-Driving," and "hands-free assist" make it...
When LLMs Become Scientific Instruments: Groundsource Flash Flood Research Report
A deep dive into Google's 2.6-million-event flood dataset: what the data shows, what claims hold up, and why the methodology matters more than the dataset itself. Resources: Enriched Dataset |...
Series
Self-Driving, Explained
How the six SAE levels of driving automation work, where the line between driver assistance and real self-driving sits, and where driverless vehicles already carry passengers today.
Getting Started with Machine Learning
A path into machine learning using free resources: where to start, which courses to take, a first look at how models learn, where to find data, projects and competitions to practise on, and people worth following.
Building This Blog
A build log of rdjarbeng.com: starting on Jekyll and GitHub Pages, adding a CMS, automating uploads with a Telegram bot, and moving to Eleventy.
Featured Posts
AI: What It Is, How It’s Seen, and How to Stay Informed
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is driving innovation and sparking curiosity, but the hype can make it hard to see clearly. Whether you want just enough knowledge to follow AI news and...
HumekaFL: CMU-Africa's App That Detects Birth Asphyxia From a Baby's Cry
Birth asphyxia is when a baby does not get enough oxygen during delivery. It is one of the main causes of newborn deaths, and sub-Saharan Africa has some of the...
SpaceX's 'Mechazilla' Catches Super Heavy Booster: A Giant Leap for Rocket Reusability
On my X feed, I shared a moment that perfectly captures the revolutionary work being done at SpaceX. In a stunning display of engineering, they successfully caught the Super Heavy...
How Carnegie Mellon Sent Missions to the Moon Without an Aerospace Department
Visitors to Carnegie Mellon's labs expect artificial intelligence, big software systems, and robotics. In the university's planetary robotics space they also find flight-ready moon rovers being prepared for lunar deployment....
Ambient Air Quality Standards in West Africa From WHO: The Current State (2025)
In the rapidly urbanizing region of West Africa, ambient air quality has become a pressing concern. With cities expanding and industrialization on the rise, the air we breathe is increasingly...
Dense Haze Over Kigali - Weather Report - 29th January, 2026
Today, Kigali is shrouded in a dense haze that has significantly reduced visibility across the city. The atmosphere feels heavy, with the usual crisp views of the surrounding hills obscured...
The Good Kind of Tired: Why “Happily Exhausted” Deserves Its Own Word
You know the feeling. Your legs are jelly after the final whistle, your eyes burn after the last line of code compiles, your arms ache from carrying a laughing kid...
Agentic Object Detection and Document Extraction with Landing.ai
This week, I dive into agentic object detection and document extraction using tools from Landing.ai, one of Andrew Ng's innovative startups Inspired by Andrew Ng's recent post on X about...
Guest Authors
Posts contributed by guest authors
Africa Has the ML Talent But Missing the GPUs.
One challenge I have noticed throughout my academic journey and as a TA is that access to computing resources, especially GPUs, has become a major bottleneck for many students especially...
Why Your Monthly AI Bill Might Soon Rival Your Headcount Costs From A Personal Experience
The $280 Overnight Surprise A friend pinged me last week, half-laughing, half-panicking 😅 . He'd been running a couple of AI coding agents overnight, just background refactoring and test generation....
How To Invest On The Ghana Stock Exchange
The Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) represents a unique opportunity for Ghanaian investors to participate in the growth of the country's economy. As Ghana's primary stock market, the GSE provides access...
Personal Posts
A Message From Alan Becker Animation vs channel on Youtube
A message from Alan Becker. Celebrating 20 years of Animation. Twenty years ago today, on June 3, 2006, I uploaded the very first Animator vs. Animation. What started as a...
Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda Ban Cash Bouquets
As Valentine's Day approaches, lovers across East Africa will have to rethink their gift ideas as Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda have all taken a firm stance against the popular trend...
Africa mindset Reset Forum - Reported by RDjarbeng
Africa Mindset Reset Forum: A Live Log Reporting from the Africa Mindset Reset Forum. This post will serve as my log of events as they happen. Since yesterday, August 25th,...
He Made $2,000 in One Week With AI... Then TikTok Froze It
First came the win: $2,200 in profit in just one week. Then came the loss: $3,722 in earnings , frozen and inaccessible. This is the high-stakes reality of one creator's...
CMMRS in Saarbrucken, Germany for pre-doctoral researchers
In late July, 2025 I attended the Cornell, Maryland, Max Planck Pre-doctoral Research School in Computer Science (CMMRS) in Saarbrucken, Germany. We had group panel discussions that were helpful because...
Hilarious Spam Email from Elon Musk Allegedly
Usually I delete spam/phishing emails, but this one was so blatantly fake and hilarious that I had to make a post about it. Here is the full unedited email I...
📚 Project Enlighten
Curated, legal, and free tech books onlineA hand-picked collection of genuinely great books on machine learning, deep learning, Python, and computer vision that authors and publishers have made permanently free to read online.
Automate the Boring Stuff with Python
Practical Python for absolute beginners - automate spreadsheets, files, web scraping, emails and other tedious tasks.
Confessions of an IT Manager
Anarchic humour wrapped around hard-won wisdom about software projects, hiring, firing and surviving life in IT. Free...
Crafting Interpreters
Build two complete interpreters from scratch and finally understand how programming languages actually work. Beautifu...
