Found This Week #65

Daryl Feehely
Jul 28, 2017 · 5 min read

Photo Of The Week

This week I was lucky enough to join The Swansea Laptop Orchestra backstage at Nozstock: The Hidden Valley music festival to take photos. The festival has an Electric Picnic before the crowds came vibe to it and is very enjoyable. Swanlork rocked the main stage on Sunday morning and played twice in The Cabinet Of Lost Secrets, which was fantastically intimate! I’m still working on the photos from the day, but the above shot of the huge main stage roof will give you an idea of the craziness of the festival :-)


In this week’s post: Music, multi-modal drones, machine learning USBs, robo-postcodes, the million dollar homepage, MS Paint & nuclear fusion!

Each Friday I share some of the best things I encounter, from the internet mostly but also from real life! Hopefully what I find interesting will also be interesting to you :-)


NAWR #8

Simon Kilshaw of The Swansea Laptop Orchestra

The evening before Nozstock, NAWR hosted its eight concert in Swansea at the BBC Hall at Swansea Studios UWTSD. Swn > Dial, Swansea Laptop Orchestra, Rhodri Davies & Berkhart Beins and Hannah Marshall all entertained us with their fantastic music. You can check out all the photos from the gig here. The next NAWR concert is on October 1.


THOR Drone

Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design have created a drone that can fly both as a fixed wing aircraft and as a rotary aircraft. Check it out in the video below, it’s incredible.


Movidius Deep Learning Stick

Movidius have launched a deep learning USB stick which contains a visual processing unit chip, allowing you to add deep learning processing power to any machine for $79.


Robocodes

The Facebook Research team have published a paper on using an automatic generative algorithm to label regions, roads and blocks of land from satellite imagery.


The Million Dollar Homepage

A Harvard blog has posted an article about the current state of the million dollar homepage. 19% of the links are now unreachable, 17% redirect to other domains than originally advertised and rest remain as they are, twelve years on.



Google & Nuclear Fusion

Google and Tri Alpha Energy are collaborating on creating algorithms to optimise nuclear fusion experiments. The Optometrist algorithm presents researchers with calculated choices of avenues of experimentation. This combines computational power with human judgement in an effort to break past the “first plasma” experiment successfully achieved in July. First plasma is when a fusion reactor first produces more energy than is input while firing a beam of hydrogen atoms at plasma.


Immigrants & GDP

A study by an independent economics firm called Moody Analytics has revealed that in the U.S., a 1% rise in immigration would result in a 1.15 percent rise in GDP. ProPublica have created a nice interactive graph to illustrate this.


Thought Of The Week: An Easy Theory, A Hard Practice

This great post by Seth Godin about the wasted energy of reciprocity hit home with me this week. It’s easy to commit to the aspiration of being calm, collected and reasoned, but it’s difficult to put that into practice.

For me, people who stand in the way and take up more than a “fair” share of a footpath or doorway engages some form of reciprocity engine deep down inside of me. It’s a pet hate of mine and my initial reaction is that the offenders should be educated on the fair usage of public spaces and respect for the flow of foot traffic. I have now come to realise that it’s a bad reaction of course and that, as Seth puts it;

Teaching someone a lesson is overrated.

The next time my righteous self gets his nose out of joint, I’ll try hard to remember that time and energy used this way is wasted :-)


See you next week :-)

P.S. If you liked this post, please recommend it, thanks! :-)P.S. If you liked this post, please recommend it, thanks! :-)


About Me

I’m a web consultant, contract web developer, technical project manager & photographer originally from Cork, now based in Swansea. 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

Daryl Feehely

Written by

Web Consultant, Contract Developer & Project Manager (available). Photographer (+MRSC), Munster Rugby Supporter. Corkman in Swansea. www.darylfeehely.com

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade