Féileacáin

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#172

Friday, August 16, 2019

In This Edition:
Latent knowledge discovery with ML, UK imports & exports, Suprema data breach, Chrome native image lazy loading, regex for noobs, Google to index podcast episodes and Ali Spagnola!

For anyone following the Irish Public Service Card scandal, there was a major breakthrough this morning. The Data Protection Commissioner's report was released and has found no legal bases for government departments other than The Department of Social Protection to require citizens to have a PSC card to access services. Great news in halting the rollout of this surreptitious national identity card in Ireland and majorly reducing the risk of the biometric data being held ineffectively or compromised.

Latent Knowledge Identificaiton Using ML

Image: Nature.com

Researchers used machine learning to analyse 3.3 million material science abstracts from 1922 to 2018. They found that the ML system captured fundamental knowledge within the field and also historically identified new materials and research to study before the new materials were discovered in real life. The research shows how machine learning can be used to identify latent knoweldge more quickly.

UK Imports & Exports

Image: The Guardian

The Guardian published a very informative interactive visualisation on UK exports and imports to and from Europe, with the hope of preparing people for changes in their post no-deal Brexit shop. The site highlights some top level items but also allows you to select any category of good to see that import and export flow. Turns out the UK exports £27m worth of potatoes to Ireland.

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Suprema Biometrics Data Breach

Image: supremainc.com

Suprema is a South Korean information securty company that supplies many companies and government agencies, such as the UK Metropolitan police, with their Biostar 2 web based biometrics lock system. The self proclaimed "Global Powerhouse in Biometric, Security and Identity Solutions" company have been found to have let fingerprint data, biometric and personal information of over 1 million people publicly accessible online. Israeli researchers Noam Rotem and Ran Locar working with vpnmentor found the database accessible and mostly unencrypted and said “We were able to find plain-text passwords of administrator accounts”! Powerhouse isn't the term I would use.

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Chrome Native Image Lazy Loading

Image: Medium.com

Andy Potts from the BBC has a short post on Medium about how using Chrome v76 new native image lazy loading can speed up site load time by 50%. Just add loading="lazy"

Regex For Noobs

Image: janmeppe.com

Jan Meppe has a nice tutorial on Regex for Noobs. Even if you are not a noob, a regex refresher is always handy! ;-)

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Google To Index Podcast Episodes

Image: Google

Google will now surface individual podcast episodes in search results. Will this lead to a new SEO industry and tactics for podcasts, like almost inaudible whispers of keywords during podcasts and jingles? :-p

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Ali Spagnola

Image: YouTube, Ali Spagnola

This week I discovered the amazing Ali Spagnola on YouTube. Among other wacky pursuits, Ali recreates popular songs in the style of a different popular music artists, from scratch! Plus she is abosultely mental, in the best way :-)
Check out her mashup of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in the style of Billie Eilish!

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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