Poplin’s Favourite Reads and other things in 2020
By: Chloe Sasson
Tags: Python, Best Of 2020, Lists, Podcast, Sql

Poplin’s Favourite Reads and other things in 2020

We got there! End of year holidays are nearly on our doorstep, and 2021 is just around the corner. Like many of you, the team at Poplin Data has had a year of ups and downs. Chloe Sasson Follow Dec 17, 2020 · 4 min read

To wrap up the year the team has shared their favourite pieces from around the online world.

Chloe Sasson — CEO: ‘Pivot’ Podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway.

Essential listening for me — and has kept me up to date with all of the latest updates in tech, politics and media. And what a year with everything from anti trust, Tik Tok buy outs, AirBnB’s IPO and the US election. Kara and Scott not only have incredible insights into what is happening in the space (and the ability to make scarily accurate predictions) they are both so full of attitude and humour that it’s addictive listening.

Mike Robins — CTO: A journey to the disappointment islands

In the 1760s Lord Byron named a paradisic looking island in the middle of the South Pacific the Islands of Disappointment. It’s a name that is still on maps today but it’s a far cry from what it was back then.

Narbeh Yousefian — Director: Matthew Ball’s Epic Games Primer

This is a 6 part series about The Epic Games Flywheel. Broadly, his essays address changes in media /content at a macro level and across a broader horizon.

Vinesh TV — Data Engineer: deconstructing-xkcd-com-1987

It’s funny because it’s true. (Good blog on all things Python). Also — Advent of Code 2020 — Because it’s not everyday that you can justify using your laptop as a space heater because your brute force algorithm took 14 hours to execute. WhatTheCommit — In case you aren’t really sure what your check-in message should be. Netgames.io — For social games during social distancing.

Peter Zhu — Data Engineer: Google Project Zero

This was both a terrifying and interesting blog post of how, in the author’s own words: “one person, working alone in their bedroom, was able to build a capability which would allow them to seriously compromise iPhone users they’d come into close contact with.”

Zoe Loffler — Data Engineer: When you browse Instagram and find former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s passport number

On a perhaps more lighthearted note, this was a favourite read of mine from the year. It’s a bit of a long one, but the kind of blog post where you start reading in the evening and look up from your computer when you’re done and you’re sitting in a dark room because you didn’t notice the sun had set. No spoilers, but the tldr is: don’t post your hashtag holiday boarding pass on social media. A good reminder, as it looks likely that travel on planes will be taking off again (pun absolutely intended) sometime next year.

Jethro Nederhof — Data Engineer: Simple Anomaly Detection Using Plain SQL

Once you’re collecting event data for analysis, one of the lower hanging fruits people think of for getting value from that data is alerts for anomaly detection. Easy to implement simple heuristics like deviation from the mean throw a lot of false positives, custom models might get tricky once you have seasonality or unique time window requirements; and usually the next step turns into reaching for specialised statistical tools and suddenly your simple solution turns into a rather more complicated system. In this post, Haki Benita filled in that gap, showing some of the simple changes you can make without leaving SQL but still getting more robust anomaly detection. The post provides a good understanding of the problems you might encounter, and resources on where to learn more. The examples use web server data, so if you already have Snowplow or GA data in BigQuery/Redshift the PostgreSQL-flavoured SQL is a good starting point for getting something in place to start getting visibility on oddities in your data.

Sidney Minassian — Advisor She’s Building a Robot

Australian tech entrepreneur Mick Liubinskas has just published a book called She’s Building A Robot, a fictional book, for teenage girls who love STEM. As part of his launch Mick has been interviewing women in tech from all over the world and recently interviewed Nare Gevorgyan co-founder and Chief Design Officer of Embry Tech. The company creates a premium smart insole with patent-pending technology that measures your bodyweight fluctuations without a scale. Nare shares her story as 27 year old entrepreneur, mother and builder of the Armenian tech ecosystem.

Amit Shah — vCFO and Advisor — SecondBody

This team has created a real life “Being John Malkovich” experience where you can communicate with someone in the body of someone else. Public beta tests are only $20 (per the website) so perfect experimental activity for the holidays. Can’t explain the benefit of this, but definitely interesting!

Catherine Alcock — Finance Manager ‘The Woman with the Handbag’

This captured my attention because it shows such strength and courage by an ordinary person standing up for what they believe in. I don’t condone violence but I can only imagine how she must have felt having had family in the concentration camps and then having to face Nazism again in the 80s. This article was the start of a wikipedia rabbithole for me that’s for sure!