Fluffy

Image: Fluffy, this photo is available to licence on EyeEm.

#233

Friday, October 16, 2020

In This Edition:
Hum to search, strategic foresight & pandemic planning, travelling salesman improvement, RTÉ Illuminations, and David Attenborough's A Life On Our Planet

Hum To Search

Image: Google

The Google app now lets you hum a piece of a song into it to find out the name of the song. Die earworm, die!

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Strategic Foresight & Pandemic Planning

Image: MS Tech, Getty

Kristel Van der Elst has agreat post on the MIT Technology Review about using strategic foresight to plan for uncertain times. A handy skill in the pandemic we now find ourselves. She lays out a sequence of stels aimed at identifying as many explicit scenarios and opportunites as possible and taking the emotion out of planning for them.

Improvements To The Travelling Salesman Problem

Image: Islenia Mil, Quanta Magazine

The travelling salesman problem is a famous network optimisation problem that hasn't been improved upon in forty-four years, until now! Researchers Nathan Klein, Anna Karlin and Shayan Ovies Gharan at the University of Washington have created a new algorithm that improves on the general traveling salesman problem, by 0.2 billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent! The new approach uses random selection of optimised trees and geometry of polynomials to improve on Christofides algorithm.

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RTÉ Illuminations

Image: RTÉ

RTÉ launched Illuminations this week, a fantastic collection of commissioned Irish art exploring the complex shades of lockdown. A range of literature, poetry, film, photography and visual art pieces from a host of Irish artists are described and on display on the beautiful Illuminations website.

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David Attenborough's A Life On Our Planet

Image: Netflix

This week I watched David Attenborough's excellent documentary film A Life On Our Planet on Netflix. David himself describes the film as his witness statement of the destruction of the bio-sphere that he has witnessed in his lifetime. It is harrowing viewing but ends in an optimistic call to action about what needs to be done to stop ourselves from destroying the planet. It is mandatory viewing for everyone, especially for those with children or in positions of power or influence. It can't be said any clearer, either we change or we burn.

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How QR Codes Work

Image: Dan Hollick

Dan Hollick posted a great explainer on how QR codes are constructed and how information is encoded within them.

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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 Liverpool. 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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