Naked Data - All the data you can eat

Naked Data

All the data you can eat

Freespin – the demo that shouldn’t even be possible

I've seen some computer peripherals used for bonkers purposes over the years, including dot-matrix printers playing The Imperial March, The Floppotron playing all kinds of shit on old stiffy disk drives, and this misuse of this 3D printer. But in all time of dedicated nerd-watching, I have seen n...

Jason Norwood-Young

3 months ago

The best place to get the latest South African demographics: Twitter

Big props to Stats SA for brining the stats to the people, taking to Twitter to spool a thread of the latest South African demographics, and how the life expectancy has been knocked from 65.5 to 62, thanks to Covid. There's lots more in this info-packed thread (which includes some very good-looki...

Jason Norwood-Young

3 months ago

South Africa has a 4IR disaster slowly brewing … its maths and science matrics

Before I even tell you about this rather depressing investigation into South Africa's maths and science matriculation numbers, some good news: The Media Hack Collective (led by Alastair Otter and Laura Grant) have launched a new data stories publication called The Outlier. (A bit like The Pudding...

Jason Norwood-Young

3 months ago

Calling all journos battling climate change in South Africa

27 July, 29 July, 3 August, 5 August from 14:00 to 17:30 There's a brilliant four half-day conference brewing over the next couple of weeks for South African journalists who use the mighty pen to push for climate change action. The lineup of speakers is stellar, including the likes of Kevin Bloom...

Jason Norwood-Young

3 months ago

SAMIP is searching for Southern African stars

Are you working on the next big media innovation in the Southern Africa region? Want to join the likes of Volume News, Media Hack, Quote this Woman +, Food for Mzansi, Daily Maverick and... basically everyone who's doing something fun in news right now in South Africa? SAMIP is extending its geog...

3 months ago

70 years of running

Where do they come from, where do they go? We missed this back on World Refugee Day, but Al-Jazeera has some excellent visualisations showing the movement of displaced people over the last seven decades, and the flow of 30m people who have fled their homes today. It's pretty well established now ...

3 months ago

Anti-misinformation laws aren’t working in Africa

There's been much concern raised over the last few years about laws governing internet use which have been passed by some of the more draconian regimes on the African continent. Proponents often point to the scourge of "fake news" and say that "something must be done" (to ban other people's fake ...

3 months ago

Flying cars, just too late

It's finally happened, apparently: flying cars are here at last. Yet one can't help thinking - as wildfires destroy small towns in Canada - that they're not quite the exciting transport revolution we've long hoped for. Yes, you can Jetson your way to the shops, but you'll be the pillock with the ...

3 months ago

Datawrapper workflow at the Philly Inquirer

Journalist John Duchneskie from the Philadelphia Inquirer shares his mobile first charting workflow over on the Datawrapper blog, demonstrating that it is possible to use a tool designed for online to produce great print graphics too. There's some tips about optimising data layers for phone scree...

4 months ago

Umbilical Ruminations

The Decuplet Saga – SA media hits new low

When The Pretoria News ran an article that a South African woman had had ten babies, I was excited: just last month, a Malian woman had given birth to nine in Morocco, and one month later SA breaks the record. But there were warning flags already -- the woman claimed she had conceived naturally, ...

Jason Norwood-Young

4 months ago

How to pay 1% (or less) in tax

No-one enjoys paying tax, even if we do enjoy the benefits such tax brings -- roads, schools, parks, vaccinations, politicians... maybe not the last one. Still, if you're paying your fair share, it irks when you find out someone else isn't. It hurts even more when you discover the people paying 1...

Jason Norwood-Young

4 months ago

Smellicopter takes to (and tastes) the air

Forget man-machine hybrids, the latest research brings us the terrifying month-machine, a flying device capable of smelling a scent one part in a trillion. It's actually pretty simple - freeze an unlucky moth, chop off its antennae, and plug an antenna into a sensor on a drone. Program the thing ...

Jason Norwood-Young

4 months ago

The 13 emotions of music

Researchers at UC Berkley have visualised a fascinating map of how people emotionally respond to different music, identifying 13 distinct emotions that music can elicit. And they are (drum roll): Amusement, joy, eroticism, beauty, relaxation, sadness, dreaminess, triumph, anxiety, scariness, anno...

Jason Norwood-Young

4 months ago

Tooled up

Many words have been written about the various military capabilities of Israel and Palestine and how the imbalance of power in the Middle East has been reinforced by those much distant from the ongoing bloodshed. But as ever, a picture tells a thousand words and Al Jazeera nails it with a series ...

4 months ago

The ‘gale is back in town

Look who's got a new home: it's The Nightingale, the official publication of the worldwide Data Visualisation Society. Finally weaning itself off of the Medium teat, it means more stories are accessible to everyone without a subscription. There's some cracking stories too, including this Data Vis...

4 months ago

Visualising bias

Bias of the algorithmic kind is a problem, which usually takes a lot of words to explain and doesn't often leave you feeling like you knew more about the problem than when you started. Which is why we really like The Economist's recent take on the subject, which shows you exactly where the biases...

4 months ago

Teach yourself to echolocate like a bat

We'll never have a lair below Naked Data Towers full of gadgets and armoured vehicles (or will we?), but there is one thing we may become more chiropteran than handy-wingy-man himself. Researchers at Durham University have successfully taught a group of people to navigate their surroundings using...

4 months ago

We didn’t start the fire, but this guy did visualise it

Tom Lum's shower thought about Billy Joel's seminal We Didn't Start The Fire didn't result in a modern interpretation, as it does for most people. It launched a massive data project that saw him teaching himself D3.js to discover which lyrics still resonate today. He uses Wikipedia entry populari...

Jason Norwood-Young

4 months ago

Don't Miss, Stack

OpenUp Needs You!

Are you a visionary leader capable of inspiring a team of passionate, talented individuals? Do you want the work you do to make a difference every day? Do you want to empower society with the tools and knowledge to better their lives? Founder Adi Eyal has moved on to follow his passion of using t...

Jason Norwood-Young

4 months ago

Don't Miss, ROTM

Not Tom Cruise is back

Should the real Tom Cruise die in a tragic accident while filming one of his own stunts, or even just finally age, deep faker Chris Ume is standing in the wings, ready to take his place. We've reported on this deep fakes account before, but at that point the account had been taken private due to ...

Jason Norwood-Young

4 months ago