Naked Data

All the data you can eat

Jason Norwood-Young

Journalist, developer, community builder, newsletter creator and international man of mystery.

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

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

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

Back Florence Nightingale on Kickstarter

The Information Graphic Visionaries series of three books celebrates our data science roots, publishing a collection of Florence Nightingale's data viz brilliance (including some unpublished sketches); Étienne-Jules Marey's La Méthode Graphique which started this whole data viz thing, translated ...

Jason Norwood-Young

4 months ago

Google’s new window to the other side

Yes, Google has launched yet another way for us to chat. But this one, dubbed Starline, is pretty impressive. By smashing together very good video, machine learning and AI, nifty compression and assumably serious internet connectivity, it's created a video screen that makes you feel like a person...

Jason Norwood-Young

5 months ago

Not all places are equal in the youth unemployment crisis

An investigation by OpenUp finds that while unemployment in South Africa is generally bad, it's shocking for the youth, and worse for women than for men. Thanks to census delays, we don't have an up-to-date picture of the unemployment figures, but working on 2011 stats, OpenUp discovers that the ...

Jason Norwood-Young

5 months ago

Understanding risk post-Covid vaccine

The New York Times has done a brilliant analysis of how US epidemiologists are behaving post-vaccine, because unlike random shouty guy on the internet, they actually know the risks of certain behaviours. The tl;dr: remain cautious; avoid large groups like concerts and sporting events; and try to ...

Jason Norwood-Young

5 months ago

Finding female voices for the media

Quote This Woman+ is a South African media NGO that publishes a fortnightly list of expert female media sources. They’ve just sent their latest edition, which focuses on vaccine experts, but previous topics include everything from blockchain to trans womens' rights. You'll need to subscribe to se...

Jason Norwood-Young

5 months ago

Travel the globe, in music

The latest offering from The Pudding is designed to take you out of your geographic musical bubble. It's pretty clever the way it starts by describing musical tastes in your area, and compares it popular songs in nearby areas, but what I learnt most is that I don't share musical taste with neighb...

Jason Norwood-Young

6 months ago

How Git works, in Javascript

I've seen some geeky stuff built in Javascript in my time, but this ode to the magic that is Git takes it to a new nerdgasm level. In 600 words plus Javascript code, Mary Rose Cook takes you on the inside tour of Git you didn't know you needed. If that's not enough for you, she's also got a 6,000...

Jason Norwood-Young

6 months ago

AI or human? You be the judge

I was very proud that I got barely above average for this test that asks you to identify whether photos, text, music and artworks are produced by a bot or a human. It's really hard, and I found music by far the toughest to distinguish a machine from a real composer. Regarding music, the evil scie...

Jason Norwood-Young

6 months ago