Check out how Anne Dattilo, a PhD student in astronomy and Astrophysics, collaborated with Google TensorFlow folks to use machine learning to discover new planets (!):

This is the story of the student who became a planet hunter. When Anne Dattilo attended a guest lecture at the University of Texas she had no idea it would be the start of a journey involving complex algorithms, a space telescope breaking down in orbit, a trip to an observatory in the Chihuahuan desert and, finally, the discovery of two new planets.

If you’re so motivated, you can download Chris’ AstroNet code for yourself. Happy hunting! 🪐🤘

[YouTube]

Hey gang—Happy New Year! Let’s start things on a positive note by looking at some of the heroism people sought out in 2019:

Oh, and apropos of nothing, here’s one of my young heroes enjoying the New Years lights train with me in Santa Cruz. 🥰

[YouTube]

Amidst all the frustrations that come along with working in any big company, I’ve always found that meeting amazing people at Google is far & away the best part of working here. In the last year I’ve gotten to collaborate a bit with Sasha Blair-Goldensohn, a Google Maps engineer who’s using his own life experience of needing a wheelchair to help others navigate the world more easily. Check out his story:

[T]he more I shared with colleagues, the more I found people who wanted to help solve real-world access needs. Using “20 percent time”—time spent outside day-to-day job descriptions—my colleagues like Rio Akasaka and Dianna Hu pitched in and we launched wheelchair-friendly transit directions. That initial work has now led to a full-time team dedicated to accessibility on Maps.

[YouTube 1 & 2]

Epic!

David Leitch, director of John Wick, shot this Verizon commercial featuring an epic snowball fight completely on the iPhone 11. Check it out.

Take a peek behind the scenes:

[YouTube 1 & 2] [Via]

With my little nephew zooming towards school in his electric wheelchair, I’ve been thinking more about ways to make learning environments more open to everyone, and grateful to see folks doing rad work like this:

[YouTube]

GANimals, man… GANimals. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

“Imagine your Labrador’s smile on a lion or your feline’s finicky smirk on a tiger,” NVIDIA writes. “A team of NVIDIA researchers has defined new AI techniques that give computers enough smarts to see a picture of one animal and recreate its expression and pose on the face of any other creature.”

[YouTube]

Happy Veterans’ Day, everyone. I’m proud of my first-responder brother (who volunteers his time to drive an ambulance in rural Illinois), and of my employer for helping vets & others better serve their communities:

A challenging, but often unrecognized, aspect of this work is the preparation required ahead of potential disasters. Therefore, Google.org is giving a $1 million grant to Team Rubicon to build out teams of volunteers, most of them military veterans, who will work alongside first responders to build out disaster preparedness operations.

[YouTube]

Oh my—impressive:

Barack Obama’s voice was provided by Stable Voices, synthesized using an AI model trained on his speech patterns.

[YouTube]

I’m so proud of Margot “Hollywood” Nack 😝🤘 and her team for helping make this happen! 🤖🔥 And if you’re a fellow Old, you might join me in marveling at Premiere Pro’s long journey from 90’-s has-been to industrial-strength collaborative platform.

Get an inside look from Director Tim Miller and the creators of Paramount’s Terminator: Dark Fate as they take you behind the scenes into their workflow & production for editing and creating visual effects using Premiere Pro, After Effects, and other tools inside the Adobe Creative Cloud suite.

[YouTube]

Racks on racks on racks o’ cloud GPUs mean we’re setting up to deliver some awesome experiences. Check out these PM gigs:

• Product Manager, Infrastructure, Stadia – Mountain View
• Product Manager, Graphics, Stadia – Waterloo or Munich

If you apply, please tell ‘em who sent ya. 😌