Items of Interest

MandalaGaba

#157
Mandalagaba is a web drawing site that allows you to draw mandalas, snowflakes, recursive lines and other symmetric patterns using a suite of apps. They are incredibly satisfying to use and you can switch modes using the link in the bottom right hand corner.
Design
Web Dev

The NASA Twins

#157
Scientists have published the results of the study of the NASA twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly in Science Magazine. The experiment studies the physiological, molecular and cognitive changes that can happen to a human during a prolonged space mission. Scott Kelly was in the International Space Station for one year while his twin Mark stayed on earth, which allowed scientists to compare the effects of the space mission between the two identical twins.
Innovation
Science
Space

NHS Icons

#157
Interaction designer Ben Cullimore describes how he reviewed, designed and decided upon which set of icons to use on the NHS site. Interestingly, he describes how the use of some icons, such as ! for important information, can be overlooked as not relevant depending on the context of the user, such as thinking the important information is emergency information and not relevant in everyday scenarios.
Design

Climate Change - The Facts

#156
This week Climate Change - The Facts with David Attenborough aired on BBC. The one hour documentary examines and explains the facts of climate change. The current effects, the causes, the predictions and the solutions are all presented. In order to halt climate change warming at 1.5 degrees, we need to halve CO2 emissions by 2030 and get to net zero emissions by 2050. The programme describes what needs to be done by governments, industries and by us individuals.
Environment
Life

Facial Recognition Boarding

#156
JetBlue Airways in the U.S. have rolled out a facial recognition boarding system called Biometric Exit that allows passengers to look at a camera at the boarding gate without having to present a boarding pass or passport. IFL Science have highlighted a twitter conversation between a privacy concerned passenger and Jet Blue about the system.
AI & ML

Software Estimation

#156
Erik Bernhardsson takes an interesting look at software estimation with some statistics. He looks at how estimating the median time of a task seems to be easier for developers than estimating the mean average, and he investigates plotting the blow-up factor (actual vs estimate time).  
Web Dev

Dadabots

#156
Want some endlessly streaming AI generated technical death metal? Then checkout Dadabots by CJ Carr and Zack Zuckowski, who work on creating recurrent neural networks trained on datasets from specific musical genres. Their latest project Relentless Doppleganger was trained on a dataset of Canadian technical death metal band Archspire and is streaming on YouTube.
AI & ML
Music

Brave Browser

#156
Brave is a new browser built on Chromium that claims 2x to 8x speed increases over regular browsers. It also focusses on ad tracking privacy by blocking all third party ad tracking. On top of this, using the Basic Attention Token, users can opt-in to Brave Rewards allowing for the collection and donation of BATs directly with content creators and publishers. You can earn yourself some BATs now on Coinbase Earn by watching a few videos about Brave.
Blockchain

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