In WWII, researcher Abraham Wald was assigned the task of figuring out where to place more reinforcing armor on bombers. Since every extra pound meant reduced range and agility, optimizing these decisions was crucial. So he and his team looked at a ton of data from returning bombers, noting the […]
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I’ve just discovered an incredibly cool project on Github: DeOldify, which uses deep learning to automatically colorize old black & white photos. It’s not perfect, but what it’s able to do is pretty amazing, and improving rapidly. In addition to ninja-level coding, author Jason Antic (@citnaj on Twitter) does a […]
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Jupyter Notebooks are a great tool for data scientists, allowing you to work with languages like Python and R to analyze and visualize data. I was pleased to see that The Azure team has now made Jupyter Notebooks available for free at https://notebooks.azure.com. Here, in a simple “Hello World” application, […]
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“Based on my recent visit, I believe the problem is out of control.”
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I was there at that raucous council meeting to repeal the vote, I signed an Open Letter from Tech Leaders Opposed to the Proposed Head Tax, and I was a volunteer signature gatherer and small donor ($275) to the repeal referendum effort. Why did the council vote 7–2 to […]
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Brandi Kruse at Q13 calls out the “Public Input” hoax, wherein the City Council and mayor’s office claim to seek public input, but usually this is done long after they’ve decided what to do. This approach has absolutely been the pattern with respect to: The Head Tax The selection of the […]
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The “Head Tax” isn’t the only major controversy in Seattle politics these days. Seattle City Council is forging ahead with plans for a publicly funded “safe injection” facility. I’m just getting up to speed on the discussion here, and wanted to pull together a post that summarizes where we’ve come from, […]
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A vexing question at the center of the debate around homelessness policy is: where is the growth in Seattle’s homeless coming from? Specifically, to what extent is the growth due to locals losing their homes and being displaced vs. inbound growth from other regions of the US? Yes, I know […]
Read More It’s going on three years since Seattle declared a homelessness crisis, but the homeless population in Seattle continues to rise. The amalgam of programs we’ve tried since 2015 hasn’t stemmed the growth in Seattle’s homeless counts; in fact, the numbers have actually accelerated, particularly of those living in vehicles. There […]
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