What I read online #18
GLAAD Media Awards, Lego NASA Space Shuttle, London e-scooter pilot, scaling enablement, algorithmic bias detection, Diversity Equity & Inclusion, Deep Learning colouring B&W, Data Quality, home WiFi
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The 32nd annual GLAAD Media Awards
The 32nd Annual GLAAD Media Awards premiered on GLAAD's YouTube on April 8. The awards were hosted by Niecy Nash, with performances by Chika, Rebecca Black, Jessica Betts, and a reunion of the cast of Glee, for a special tribute to the legacy of the late Naya Rivera’s character Santana Lopez, introduced by Demi Lovato.
In addition to honouring media for fair, accurate, and inclusive representations of LGBTQ people and issues and celebrating the award recipients, the ceremony spotlighted pressing issues affecting the LGBTQ community, including the epidemic of violence facing trans women of colour, anti-trans legislation across the U.S., combating racial and ethnic violence and discrimination, the importance of passing the Equality Act, the impact of COVID-19 on the LGBTQ community, HIV awareness and education, and more.
New 2,354-piece NASA Space Shuttle set by Lego
Space exploration fans rejoice; Lego has a new NASA Space Shuttle set!
The Danish toymaker has had space-themed sets in the past, such as the NASA Apollo 11 Lunar Lander, the International Space Station (both hard to find) and the discontinued NASA Apollo Saturn V, but none as detailed as this. Featuring 2,354 pieces and measuring 21cm x 34cm x 54cm (H/W/D), this engaging new set lets you build not just a Shuttle, but the legendary Hubble Space Telescope as well!
Shared e-scooter pilots coming to London & New York City this Spring.
According to Tech Crunch, “a batch of job listings along with some Twitter whisperings suggests that scooter companies such as Lime and Superpedestrian are gearing up to operate in London and New York City — two of the last remaining frontiers of shared e-scooter services”.
Although already widely in use, privately-owned scooters remain illegal in public and thus unauthorised on London roads. After the Department for Transport gave the green light in the summer, TfL and London boroughs said they would start a trial of 60 to 150 e-scooters in each borough, and safety would be the first priority. Yet of London’s 33 boroughs only 11 have signed up to the TFL-operated rental scheme according to The Daily Telegraph.
Scaling enablement in hyper-growth mode
Enablement becomes increasingly critical and in-demand, as companies grow in size and business. To serve the needs of growth requirement, you have to scale rapidly and get your people up to speed as soon as possible.
Check Jackie Retig’s article describing how enablement scaled from 4 offices and 400 employees in 2017 to double size globally today at Sisense.
Algorithmic bias detection and mitigation: best practices and policies to reduce consumer harms
How often do people think about the role that algorithms and technology can play on diversity, equity & inclusion? Can bias actually be placed into discrete mathematical models?
Brooking Institute report Algorithmic bias detection and mitigation: Best practices and policies to reduce consumer harms, found series of algorithmic models that could be perceived as innocuous, and then examples that could become much more consequential when placed within a social context, and the socio-technical implications at the populations that will be affected.
Automatically colourize B&W photos using Deep Learning
Bring new life to old photos online and add colour to black & white photos easily!
Colourful Image Colorization demo by Algorithmia is as easy to use as pasting the URL or uploading a picture. The microservice uses cloud-hosted deep learning models and the algorithm behind it is trained on a million images from the Imagenet dataset. I used it on landscape pictures like the one shown above, and the results are amazing!
The Data Engineer’s guide to Root Cause Analysis
Data pipelines can break for a million different reasons, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to understanding how or why.
In his latest article, Francisco Alberini, Product Manager at Monte Carlo, describes five critical steps data engineers must take to conduct root cause analysis for data quality issues.
Here’s why your Wi-Fi drops and 7 tips to fix it
You’ve been browsing the web and streaming videos all day but when you join that important Zoom call, their video is frozen and they can’t listen to what you are saying. Sometimes the connection appears to be worse on one device or in a particular part of the house. You can't seem to get full and consistent internet speed through your router during all times of the day.
If you rely on Wi-Fi for your home network, it's essential to fix fluctuating internet speeds and overcome inconsistent Wi-Fi speeds. Make Use Of has some advice and guidance through the troubleshooting process to offer.