Wingman

Image: Wingman, this photo is available to licence on EyeEm

#162

Friday, June 7, 2019

In This Edition:
Swanlork, music metadata, airline facial recognition, women in trades, pairing socks, software engineering fallacies, machine learning used car price prediction & Good Omens!

This week I finished up taking photos of The Swansea Laptop Orchestra on tour in Ireland. While in Ireland, we went to Aillwee Cave, which it turns out I've been mis-pronouncing as Ailiwee for years! I don't remember my trip there as a child during a school tour, but as an adult, the visit is great and well worth it if you are in the area. Don't forget to stop in the Farm shop on the way out, they have lots of fancy food, and by food I mean chocolate!

Swanlork in Dublin & Cork

Last week, The Swansea Laptop Orchestra finished up their Ireland Tour in Dublin and Cork. They played in Studio 10 in Dublin supported by The Line, Check out the photos from Dublin here.
They also played in the fantastic Guesthouse in Shandon in Cork, supported by The Quiet Club. Check out the photos from Cork here.

Music Meta Data

Image: The Verge

The Verge have an interesting piece on the lack of standardisation of meta data in the music industry. Royalty money is being left on the table because of data errors and/or mismatches between the many meta data databases used by the numerous streaming services, especially when dealing with collaboration tracks. It seems like an easy fix to implement from a technology point of view, the tech industry is powered by standards, however it probably isn't in the best interest of all parties in the music industry to have royalty transparancy unfortunately, especially for the ones paying the royalties. One possible solution to this issue is Imogen Heap's Mycelia.

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Avoiding Airline Facial Recognition

Image: airlineprivacy.com

Activist groups Fight For The Future, Demand Progress and Credo have launched the Airline Privacy website. The aim of the site is to help airline travellers book flights with airlines that don't use facial recognition (such as JetBlue). The groups are against the use of ubiquitous facial recognition which creates a world with no privacy.

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Women In Trades Network Ireland

Image: Totally Dublin

Totally Dublin have a really interesting feature on work wear for women in trade jobs. The feature follows 5 women working in traditionally male dominated trade roles, such as carpentry, decorating, welding and heavy mechanics. Highlighted with a cover shot on the magazine is Jen Kelly, an industrial abseiler who worked internationally but found it hard to find work upon returning to Ireland, with recruiters not believing her credentials. This spurned her on to found the Women In Trades Network Ireland (WITNI) to represent herself and fellow women working in the trades. WITNI have worked with Snickers workwear to help design and pilot work wear for women, that both fit properly and provide proper safety over wearing ill-fitting and unsafe workwear designed for men.

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Pairing Socks

Image: Stack Overflow

If ever you needed proof as to why Stack Overflow is just amazing, behold this question and solution about how to efficiently pair a pile of socks. (The answer is hashing!)

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Software Engineering Fallacies

Image: Artur Martsinkovskyi

Life On Marts describes some mental fallacies that can interfere with successful software engineering, and any other work for that matter. I'm sure we've all encountered or been guilty of succumbing to historian's fallacy or survivorship bias at some point in our working lives :-)

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Used Car Price Prediction ML Case Study

Image: Medium, The Launchpad

Google's The Launchpad have published a machine learning case study by The Frontier Car Group. The case study describes how the company, with the help of Lunchpad mentors, implemented a machine learning pipeline to predict the selling price of used cars month over month. The post is interesting in how it describes the issues they encountered with bad and mis-coded data, as well as how they tempered their expectations at the start of the project.

TV Review: Good Omens

Image: Amazon Prime

Following on from listening to the fantastic interview Tim Ferriss did with Neil Gaiman, I recently binge watched Good Omens on Amazon Prime and was not disappointed. The book is written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet, and the TV series is a co-production between Amazon and the BBC. The show follows the story of Crowley and Aziraphale, a demon and an angel played brilliantly by David Tennant and Michael Sheen, as they navigate the arrival of the anti-Christ on earth and the planned armageddon to follow, having spent thousands of years previous on earth living the high life. Filled with witty narration from God which would be at home in the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, the story does a great job at showing that even the oldest of organisations, heaven and hell, are not safe from bureacratic hiearchies and employees that can cleverly game the system :-)

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About Found This Week

Found This Week is a curated blog of interesting posts, articles, links and stories in the world of technology, science and life in general.
Each edition is curated by Daryl Feehely every Friday and highlights cool stuff found each week.
The first 104 editions were published on Medium before this site was created, check out the archive here.

Daryl Feehely

I’m a web consultant, contract web developer, technical project manager & photographer originally from Cork, now based in London. I offer my clients strategy, planning & technical delivery services, remotely & in person. I also offer freelance CTO services to companies in need of technical bootstrapping or reinvention. If you think I can help you in your business, check out my details on http://darylfeehely.com

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