Photo of the Week - April 30, 2023

This is a grab shot from my Pixel 4a while driving home from Scarborough. It's an accurate capture of just how dense the fog was. Fortunately for our nerves, it didn't stay that dense for long.

A foggy drive

 

Saturday Sounds - Great Lake Swimmers - Uncertain Country

Uncertain Country is the latest album from Great Lake Swimmers. I've been looking forward to it for a while since hearing the single, "When the Storm Has Passed", on the CBC a month ago. 

I've enjoyed the Great Lake Swimmers ever since hearing there first album about twenty years ago. Sometime around 2010, I saw them perform at Harbourfront and was completely blown away by their performance. Their live sound reminded me of the classic Byrds, with chiming twelve-strings and a rock-solid bottom.  Uncertain Country is very much in that vein with multiple guitars, a prominent rhythm section, all accented by keyboards and synths. I love it. Easily the best album of the year so far.

More on Northern Ontario Dialects

Last year I posted about dialects specific to Northern Ontario, where I grew up. Recently I came across a column from Soo Today that has more examples of some terms from Sault Ste. Marie. It's not a complete list (I can think of at least four terms that aren't included) but it does expand the number of words by quite a bit. 

It had started when someone allowed as how they had to go down the line the next day to their camp at Tunnel Lake.

“I’ve heard that Northerners call their cottages ‘camps’ and I imagine Tunnel Lake is a recreational body of water somewhere around here,” our guest blurted out, “but what the heck do you mean by down the line? And somebody also mentioned up the line and over the river. What line? What river?”

Having been born and raised in the Soo area, the rest of us burst out laughing at the consternation our “patois” was causing our visitor. It had never occurred to us until then that someone from “away” would find these expressions confusing. What ensued was a kind of parlour game where we decided to see how many local expressions we could come up with.

The result was a pretty fair starter list of words and phrases that could make life easier for visitors to and new residents of an area the Ojibwe – the indigenous Anishinaabe inhabitants of the region – originally called Baawitigong (Bawating), meaning "place of the rapids."

More Bad News About Long COVID

Getting COVID-19 is bad enough, but it's becoming clear that it can have long-term effects on the body, what's commonly known as long COVID. Some symptoms appear quickly after the initial infection; others may take years to become evident. 

This article from Salon suggests that we may be facing an epidemic of Parkinson's disease years from now, as there's evidence that many people suffering from long COVID have neurological changes that are considered as precursors to Parkinson's. 

Multiple studies published in the journal Nature Communications (one published last year and one published in February of this year) explain how COVID-19 has the ability to trigger the aggregation of proteins within the human body. The research suggests that SARS-CoV-2 can cause normal proteins to abnormally misfold. These misfolded proteins are known as "amyloids," which are toxic to cells when they build up.

Specifically, amyloids occur when proteins misfold into twisted clumps and form long fibers, hindering cellular function. These so-called clumps can start stacking excessively, creating harmful deposits in the body — sort of like cholesterol in the bloodstream but at the cellular level. When misfolding of a protein named "alpha-synuclein" in the nervous system occurs, the amyloid buildup this causes in a neuron can lead to the formation of what is known as a "Lewy body," which is resistant to breakdown and clearance. Think of it as plaque buildup in the nervous system. Lewy bodies spread as pieces of these amyloids break away and seed the formation of new Lewy bodies in neighboring neurons.

The scariest thing about this? Misfolded alpha-synuclein is a hallmark of Parkinson's disease, Lewy body dementia, multiple system atrophy, and pure autonomic failure — all neurodegenerative diseases collectively known as synucleinopathies. And what can cause alpha-synuclein misfolding? Genetic mutations, exposure to certain toxins, and infections. COVID-19 may be one such infection — and that means long COVID symptoms may be a reflection of a developing neurological disorder.

Houston, You Have a Problem

Houston has a problem. It has been badly flooded in the past (notably, by Hurricane Harvey) and likely will be flooded in the future by a hurricane that follows a path similar to Hurricane Ike. However, damage could be even worse if a major hurricane floods the shipping channel that leads to the major petrochemical processing plants near the city.

The US Army Corps of Engineers is planning a huge flood protection system to protect the city, but as this article points out, it may not be enough.

Despite the massive scale of the project, there’s one big problem: Experts say the Ike Dike won’t reliably protect Houston from major storms. The barriers may not actually be tall or strong enough to handle extreme storm surge, especially as climate change makes the rapid intensification of hurricanes more likely. And even if the barrier does hold, it won’t do anything to stop the kind of urban flooding that occurred when Hurricane Harvey dropped 30 inches of rain on Houston in 2017. The Corps has long preferred to fight hurricanes with large coastal engineering projects, but such projects only protect against one type of flood risk.

Though the Ike Dike would be one of the largest hurricane defense systems anywhere in the world, the Corps’ own designs suggest it might not be able to handle storm surge from Category 4 and 5 hurricanes. The original Ike Dike concept was the brainchild of a professor at Texas A&M University, who proposed a series of 17-foot-high barriers that would ring the entirety of Galveston Bay, sealing it off from the Gulf of Mexico. Another group of experts at Rice University later proposed a complementary project that would line the interior of the bay with levees and artificial islands, providing a second layer of defense for downtown Houston.

Featured Links - April 24, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Frenchman's Bay

• Sci fi author Lavie Tidhar: Using Midjourney to explore ethics of AI. "AI tools can explore the ethics of AI itself, says Lavie Tidhar.  His new dystopian film uses AI image-generation program Midjourney to tell the story of a well-meaning artificial intelligence trying to help the last surviving human." Do watch the video. It's quite good and very unsettling.
• Nearby Supernovas Pose An Extra Previously Unconsidered Threat To Life. "Having a star in our vicinity go supernova poses three threats to life, not two, and the worst one may be the one we haven’t been thinking about."
• Starship OFT Thoughts. An article about last week's Starship launch from someone who was there. He was overwhelmed by the launch but thinks that SpaceX is going to have major problems with the launch systems. 
• Users Claim the Latest Windows 10 Update Breaks Some Printers. "Microsoft’s most recent update was meant to fix Windows incorrectly labeling printers, but it appears to have introduced new problems." If you are using Windows and suddenly can't print, this may be the source of the problem.
• A New Kind of Symmetry Shakes Up Physics. "So-called “higher symmetries” are illuminating everything from particle decays to the behavior of complex quantum systems."
• The Bicycle Is Nothing. "Today the Netherlands has a reputation as a kind of bicycling paradise. Dutch people own more bicycles per capita than any other place in the world. The country has more than 20,000 miles of dedicated cycling paths. International policymakers make pilgrimages to the Netherlands to learn how to create good bike infrastructure. But none of that was inevitable. It wasn’t something that magically emerged from Dutch culture."
• Cracking the Chess Code: A Groundbreaking Study Reveals Hidden Patterns in Openings. "In a study analyzing millions of chess games, researchers identified ten distinct clusters of chess openings, developed a method to determine player skill and opening game difficulty, and found potential applications for their classification system in other strategy games."
• 2023 TV Update. A post from Tim Bray with much useful information about setting up and using a modern TV with a receiver and Google Chromecast (which is similar to my setup). 

Photo of the Week - April 23, 2023

Here are some of the boats, wrapped for winter, at the boatyard at the foot of Liverpool Road. 

Fujifilm X-S10 with 16-80 mm. F4 @ F8, 1/1000 second, ISO 320, Provia film simulation

Saturday Sounds - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - Live at the Fillmore 1997

This album came out late last year and somehow I missed it. The 72 tracks on the deluxe edition were recorded over the last six nights of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' twenty-show run at San Francisco's historic Fillmore Auditorium. From Pitchfork:

The 20 nights were a joyful, relaxed, and abundant journey through the musicians’ personal rock’n’roll history, mixing the beloved covers they’d started out playing alongside thoughtful revisitations of the songs that got them here. It was a Hall of Fame-level set by a band who still had a lot more history ahead of them. Petty and the band played the music they loved in front of a Fillmore audience that combined devoted fans (many who returned night after night) alongside everyday Bay Area rock’n’roll devotees. There were special guests, inside jokes (Petty referred to the band one night as “the Fillmore House Band” and the promoters quickly made up hats), live broadcasts, and given the history of the building, probably a few ghosts. The last six shows of the stand were recorded professionally, and it’s from there that Live at the Fillmore (1997) was assembled.

As is de rigueur these days, there are multiple configurations available, but it’s the 4xCD deluxe that’s most of interest, as it provides the essentials, the rarities, and the special guests—57 tracks in total, 35 of which are covers or guest performances. But those numbers don’t adequately convey the strength of the release. Live at the Fillmore sounds and feels vibrant and inviting, and it is curated with obvious attention and care. The first two discs present a version of the core set that evolved after the first few nights, the third disc showcases special guests the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn and John Lee Hooker, and the last disc presents the back half of the show, the energetic and emotional coast to the end. It feels like it all could have been one single performance, and it almost could have been, given the extent of the band’s output across those 20 nights. They played close to 30 songs almost every show, about a third of which were classic rock—including Little Richard (“Lucille” or “Rip It Up”), J.J. Cale (“Call Me the Breeze”), the Rolling Stones (“Satisfaction”), and even “You Are My Sunshine,” which Petty mentions he’d learned at summer camp.

I only saw Petty and the Heartbreakers once, in 1986 on their tour with Bob Dylan (with the Grateful Dead as an opening act) and they were great. They're even better on this wonderful compilation.  

More Useful Coding Tutorials for Technical Writers

Here's some more links to coding tutorials for technical writers who want to improve their technical skills.

• Learn HTML and CSS from the CEO of scrimba. "freeCodeCamp just published an HTML & CSS for Beginners course, where you learn by coding along at home and building 5 projects. It's taught by experienced software engineer and tech CEO Per Borgan. This course will teach you about Text Elements, the CSS Box Model, Chrome Devtools, Document Structure, and more. (5 hour YouTube course)"
• How to Select Elements to Style in CSS. " Selectors are one of the most powerful concepts in CSS. And this tutorial will show common ways of grabbing HTML elements from a website's DOM using Selectors. You can then style these elements or run JavaScript on them. You'll also learn about CSS IDs, Classes, and Pseudo-classes. You'll even learn about the mythical, magical Universal Selector. (12 minute read)"
• UX vs UI – What's the Difference? Definition and Meaning. "User Interface VS User Experience – what's the difference, you might ask? Well, User Interfaces have been around since the industrial revolution. Think the control room of a power station, or the cockpit of a plane. But User Experience – that's a more recent way of thinking about Human-Computer Interaction. The term was coined in the 1990s by a designer and cognitive psychologist at Apple. This tutorial by freeCodeCamp instructor Dionysia Lemonaki will explain the distinctions between the two and their shared history. She'll also walk you through the UX Design Process. (20 minute read)"
• HTTP Networking Protocol Course. "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the foundation of data communication on the World Wide Web. And this in-depth course will teach you how this massive network of computers really works. You'll learn about Domain Name Systems, URL paths, security, and more. If you're interested in networks and back end development, this course should be well worth your time. (5 hour YouTube course)"
• LOOKUP Functions in Google Sheets and Excel – VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, and More. "In my years as a developer, I've found that people greatly underestimate how powerful spreadsheets are for doing data analysis. You don't need to be a statistician to squeeze out meaningful insights from your spreadsheet. One of the most helpful spreadsheet functions is LOOKUP, and its descendants VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, and XLOOKUP. This in-depth tutorial will show you how to wield these powerful functions to slice and dice data just the way you need it. (14 minute read + video)"

Some Thoughts on the SpaceX Starship Launch - Update

SpaceX finally launched their Super Heavy/Starship rocket today. The good news is that it got off the ground and through MaxQ. The bad news is that it lost control and had to be destroyed shortly thereafter.

Here's a video of the launch.

 

It's clear from the video (and confirmed by watching the SpaceX feed) that five or six engines were out during the ascent. That's probably the reason the booster started spinning and tumbling. So they have some work to do on the Raptors.

There was also a lot of damage under the launch pad. On my Mastodon feed, someone posted a drone shot of the pad after the launch and you can see a substantial crater in the middle. It's also possible that flying debris may have caused some of the engine failures. They are likely going to have to install a flame diverter trench and water deluge before they can launch again. That may take months. 

So not a success, but not a total failure either. 

Now we wait for SpaceX to analyse the copious amounts of data they must now have and figure out their next steps. They have several Super Heavy boosters and Starships waiting in the wings once they figure out how to correct the problems from today's launch.

One final note: After reading through the many messages on my Mastodon feed about the launch, it's clear that Musk's reputation has suffered greatly from his takeover and near destruction of Twitter. 

Update: Over at Ars Technica, Eric Berger says what I was trying to say, but much more eloquently. 

After Thursday's test, the Internet was on fire. For many people, Elon Musk has done and said some hate-able things of late, and they were ready to hate on him and his rocket company for screwing the pooch. After all, how stupid could engineers be for celebrating a spectacular failure like this?

This is a totally understandable take. For a general audience who sees NASA at work, an agency that can't afford to fail, this looks like failure. NASA failures often involve the loss of human life or billion-dollar satellites. So yeah, government explosions are bad.

But this was not that. For those who know a bit more about the launch industry and the iterative design methodology, getting the Super Heavy rocket and Starship upper stage off the launch pad was a huge success.

Why? Because one could sit in meetings for ages and discuss everything that could go wrong with a rocket like this, with an unprecedented number of first stage engines and its colossal size. The alternative is simply to get the rocket into a "good enough" configuration and go fly. Flying is the ultimate test, providing the best data. There is no more worrying about theoretical failures. The company's engineers actually get to identify what is wrong and then go and fix it. But you have to accept some failure.

Adobe Lightroom Updates for 2023

Adobe has announced a set of updates for its Lightroom digital darkroom software. Among the most interesting are the AI-powered Denoise feature and the travel-related presets. There's also a feature that will help portrait photographers to colour greying beards, something that Gizomodo has a lot of fun with in this post. 

I'll have more to say about Lightroom in the future, after I get a new PC. Right now, my use is limited because my current and now rather ancient PC is just too slow to do much with it.

Are We Getting Close to Artificial General Intelligence?

The release of GPT-4 has sparked much discussion about the possibility of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). It's obvious that GPT-4 and similar large language models are not intelligent, and in fact, can be pretty stupid. But they are also capable of producing output that on the surface can appear to be similar to what a human might produce.

I just watched a video (embedded below) by Till Musshoff that discusses this topic in light of current research into artificial intelligence. My feeling, up until now, is that we are nowhere near AGI, but after watching the video, I'm not so sure. 

The video's description on YouTube includes links to the cited articles if you want to dig deeper. Watch it and let me know what you think. 

There have been 4 research papers and technological advancements over the last 4 weeks that in combination drastically changed my outlook on the AGI timeline.

GPT-4 can teach itself to become better through self reflection, learn tools with minimal demonstrations, it can act as a central brain and outsource tasks to other models (HuggingGPT) and it can behave as an autonomous agent that can pursue a multi-step goal without human intervention (Auto-GPT). It is not an overstatement that there are already Sparks of AGI.

 

Featured Links - April 17, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Spring flowers

• The Hacking of ChatGPT Is Just Getting Started. "Security researchers are jailbreaking large language models to get around safety rules. Things could get much worse."
• A Number System Invented by Inuit Schoolchildren Will Make Its Silicon Valley Debut. "Math is called the “universal language,” but a unique dialect is being reborn."
• Plastic-eating backyard fungi discovery boosts hopes for a solution to the recycling crisis. "Experiments conducted by researchers at the University of Sydney, published in science journal npj Materials Degradation, found that two types of fungi could be harnessed to attack small samples of polypropylene, which is used to make items like takeaway containers, ice-cream tubs and cling film." Before going too far with this, the researchers might want to read ILL WIND by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason.
• Hidden Sci-Fi Women of the OED. "There are a number of female science fiction authors cited in the OED; some have coined words and many have interesting backstories. The genre has attracted many female authors and readers over the years, although it is traditionally male-orientated. Many of these authors are elusive, hiding behind (often male) pen names. Here are just a few of those cited."
• GetHuman. "Fix Your Customer Service Issues Faster. Get a rep on the phone faster & get better help."
• Why Tokyo Works. "Understanding how urban design makes this city work."
• Got Pop-Up Ads on Android? How to Spot and Remove Them. "Are you seeing unwanted pop-up ads on Android? Here's how to stop pop-up ads on your Android phone home screen."

Photo of the Week - April 16, 2023

The trees are still bare but just beginning to bud. In a month, you won't be able to see the fractal structures created by the branches as they reach for sunlight.

Fujifilm X-S10 with 16-80 mm F4 WR at F5.6, 1/3000 second, ISO 320, Provia film simulation

 

Saturday Sounds - The Super, Super Blues Band

Here's an oldie but goodie from 1968. The Super, Super Blues Band album is a one-off album from 1968 that features blues superstars Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley and a strong cast of supporting musicians. Although it is a bit of a stylistic mess in places, I still enjoyed listening to it. Thanks to author John Shirley for pointing this one out. 

We're Toast 38

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. It is part of an ongoing series of posts.

Driving in the fog

• Antarctic ice melt could disrupt the world’s oceans: Study. "A major ocean circulation that forms around Antarctica could be headed for collapse, risking significant changes to the world’s weather, sea levels and the health of marine ecosystems, scientists say, offering a stark warning about the growing impacts of climate change."
• Ice sheets can collapse at 600 metres a day, far faster than feared, study finds. "Sediments from last ice age provide ‘warning from the past’ for Antarctica and sea level rise today, say scientists."
• He Wanted to Unclog Cities. Now He’s ‘Public Enemy No. 1.’ "Researchers like Carlos Moreno, the professor behind a popular urban planning concept, are struggling with conspiracy theories and death threats." (Gifted article, no paywall).
• Bubble trouble: Climate change is creating a huge and growing U.S. real estate bubble. "Rising seas, bigger floods, and other increasing climate hazards have created a dangerous instability in the U.S. financial system."
• ‘Headed off the charts’: world’s ocean surface temperature hits record high. "Scientists warn of more marine heatwaves, leading to increased risk of extreme weather."
• A new flu is spilling over from cows to people in the U.S. How worried should we be? "Now, no one knows yet if influenza D causes any symptoms in people. But altogether, these studies indicate influenza D is likely what's called an emerging virus, Leibler says. It's jumping into people who work with animals, such as dairy farmers, but it's not likely spreading much beyond that."
• Potential recombination between SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV: calls for the development of Pan-CoV vaccines. Such a recombination would be very bad news. 
• How Does COVID-19 Affect the Heart? "Imaging and epidemiologic studies of recovered COVID-19 patients suggest that even mild illness confers increased risks of cardiac inflammation, cardiovascular disorders, and cardiovascular death."
• 4chan users embrace AI voice clone tool to generate celebrity hatespeech. " Free AI voice cloning technology from startup ElevenLabs has been used by trolls to imitate the voices of celebrities. The generated audio ranges in content from memes and erotica to virulent hatespeech."

The True Cost of Bitcoin

Anyone who has tried to buy a high-end video card in the last few years knows first-hand one of the side effects of Bitcoin mining; the cost has skyrocketed because these cards are a core component of Bitcoin mines. But there are other costs, mostly related to the huge amounts of electricity used by these facilities.

The New York Times has a long and detailed investigative report* that looks at the 34 largest Bitcoin mines in the United States. In total, they use almost 4 gigawatts of power (which is more than that created by the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station near where I live), most of which is generated by fossil fuel plants. 

The mine has 33 employees and uses nearly 10 times as much electricity as all the homes in the 16,000-person town. It is one of three mines in the state that together consume nearly as much power as every home in North Dakota.

Few other states have been as welcoming to Bitcoin companies. In October 2021, Gov. Doug Burgum presented an economic development award to local officials and a power provider for bringing a mine to Grand Forks. Months later, he announced the development of a $1.9 billion Bitcoin operation in Williston. And last spring, he flipped a switch at the Jamestown mine’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The Bitcoin operations’ effect on the state’s economy is simple, said Josh Teigen, the commerce commissioner: “They are propping up our fossil fuel industry, and that’s exactly what we want.”

I knew that Bitcoin mining used a lot of power, but until I read this article, I had no idea of the scale of these operations. 

* Gifted article-no paywall

Featured Links - April 10, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Tea Sea enjoying the spring sunshine

Fungus Meat? Lab-Grown Halibut? Meet the Scientists Growing Your Next Meal. "Solving the climate crisis requires rethinking the way we eat. Is Petri-dish dining the answer?"

The Internet Archive’s Literary Civil War, "The beloved online athenaeum just lost a big court case. Librarians fear it’ll make ebooks less accessible. So why are some writers cheering?"

See How Different This Supernova Looks to Webb Versus Hubble. "Exploded stellar remnants 11,000 light-years away appear much more vivid in a new Webb telescope image." Both scientifically interesting and beautiful.

TREE(3) Is A Number Which Is Impossible To Contain. "It's finite, but you're going to have to trust us." This is probably the most esoteric piece of number theory I've run across. 

12 Sci-Fi Stories Written Before Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. "The Modern Prometheus is a bit too modern to have solely created science fiction, although it did revolutionize it." I've read three of these. How many have you read?

The evolution of SARS-CoV-2. "Our review on the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 is out, where we discuss the evolution of the virus so far and uncertainties and possible scenarios for the future." From Nature, so reputable and worth reading. It's moderately technical but clearly written.

The Road Dragon Paved for Starship. "Over at Supercluster, I have an exclusive interview with Stuart Keech, the senior director of Dragon Engineering at SpaceX, and man in charge of keeping America in the human spaceflight business. We talk about the future of Dragon, its first impending spacewalk, how it will save the Hubble Space Telescope, and how Dragon helped pave the way for Starship.

How Paris Kicked Out the Cars. "A city once remade for voitures has transformed itself into an unlikely utopia for cyclists and pedestrians. What can it teach us?"

Off for the Weekend

It's Easter weekend here in the (now sort of green) Great White North, and I'm taking the weekend off. Posting will resume on Monday or Tuesday, depending on how long my food coma lasts.

Gull in a puddle

Behind the Scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is arguably one of the greatest films ever made. IMHO it is still the best science fiction film of all time. I saw it several times in the original Cinerama format and have seen it in decent 70 mm. transfers several times since. It still holds up.

Here's an article about the film with several rare, behind-the-scenes photographs. I attended the Kubrick exhibition at TIFF Bell Lightbox a few years ago, and I don't remember seeing any of these, although there was a good selection of memorabilia from the film. Here's one from one of my favourite scenes in the film.

A Couple of Free Writing Tools

Although best known for its DITA-based editor, XMLmind produces other tools of use to technical writers.

• "XMLmind DITA Converter (ditac for short) is a serious alternative to the DITA Open Toolkit. Out of the box, ditac allows to convert the most complex DITA 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 documents to production-quality XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.01, (X)HTML 5, Web Help, Java™ Help, HTML Help, Eclipse Help, EPUB 2, EPUB 3, PDF, PostScript®, RTF, WordprocessingML (Word 2003+), Office Open XML (.docx, Word 2007+), OpenDocument (.odt, OpenOffice/LibreOffice."
• "XMLmind Ebook Compiler (ebookc for short) is a free, open source tool which can turn a set of HTML pages (Markdown supported too) into a self-contained ebook. This book could be a novel or a large, complex, reference manual. Ebookc is an authoring tool nearly as powerful as DITA or DocBook, but being based on HTML and on CSS, it is much easier to learn, use and customize. Moreover you can create with it ebooks which are more interactive (audio, video, slide shows, multiple-choice questions, etc) than those created using DITA or DocBook."

I don't have any use for the DITA converter at this point in my life (being retired and all), but I do have an ebook project in mind, and I will be trying out ebookc at some point. 

Data Tools for Visually Impaired Scientists

Being visually impaired, I have a keen interest in tools that help people use computers in their work and daily life. I've been fortunate that so far I've been able to cope with just a magnifier and using a large monitor and the tools built into Windows. But what about people doing data analysis and having to cope with screens of data, often in graphic or tabular form?

Nature has published an article about tools to help visually impaired or blind scientists do data analysis that I found quite interesting. While I don't need anything more complex than bar graphs for my household accounts, I'm glad to see that people are thinking about this problem.

An online tool called SciA11y, developed by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) in Seattle, Washington, uses machine learning to extract the content and structure of a PDF (and other file formats, such as LaTeX) and re-render it in HTML, creating a table of contents containing links to tagged section headings that can be navigated with screen readers. AI2 has also built in functionality such as bidirectional navigation between in-line citations and their corresponding references in the bibliography, says Jonathan Bragg, who co-leads the project.

In a detailed survey3, six scientists with vision loss described how they frequently found themselves unable to access or read PDFs. One respondent mentioned that they encountered problems two-thirds of the time, and that they use at least six different approaches to read papers. “It was eye-opening to see the range of tools that people use when reading — and the struggles they have when those papers have not been formulated appropriately,” Bragg says.

Featured Links - April 3, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

The first flowers of the spring

The Best Password Managers to Secure Your Digital Life. "Keep your logins locked down with our favorite apps for PC, Mac, Android, iPhone, and web browsers.

Blue Origin Works Out How to Turn Moon Dust Into Solar Power. "Although our vision is technically ambitious, our technology is real now, Blue Origin says.""

"Predicting significant weather events a growing challenge: Shields".  'I’ve talked to other forecasters, and they say if you can forecast for Sault Ste. Marie, you can forecast anywhere,' says SooToday meteorologist Jerry Shields." Last weekend, when I was up in the Sault for my mom's funeral, they forecast 20+ cm. and got 5. This weekend, they forecast 30 cm. and got maybe 40. I would not want the forecaster's job up there.

China To Overtake US In Key 21st-Century Tech In 10 Years, Says Harvard Report. "The authors looked at a number of core technologies that are set to define the 21st century — artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, quantum information science (QIS), semiconductors, biotechnology, and green energy — to see how the US is faring against China in these fields."

New documentary explores how one Ontario man started a patriotic ketchup war. This "war" was fought with bottles, not bullets. How Canadian, eh?

The dark web isn't for everyone, but some of it is worth exploring. "Here are the best dark web websites worth checking out.

How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps (printer companies hate this!). "I moved across the ocean and took my printer with me. Then I discovered it was region-locked. A wiser man would have bought a new one." After reading this,  I will never buy an HP printer, and I suggest you don't either.

A new flu is spilling over from cows to people in the U.S. "How worried should we be?" Answer: very.

Photo of the Week - April 2, 2023

This week's picture is from Highway 17, east of Thessalon, about an hour's drive out of Sault Ste Marie. I took it with my Pixel 4a (from the passenger seat, so no nags about using the phone while driving), and it's zoomed in a bit, so the quality isn't the greatest. But it is a pretty spot, with the North Channel of Georgian Bay in the background.

The road goes on forever

Saturday Sounds - Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen - Found in the Ozone

Today's sonic treat is a release from the ongoing series of recordings made by Owsley Stanley (aka Bear), the legendary sound engineer for the Grateful Dead. Found in the Ozone features the country-rock band, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. Although they were founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and were very popular in Detroit before they moved to California,  I never got to see them live, much to my regret.

From Wikipedia:

Jeff Tamarkin said in Relix, "The group was still finding its way, and the sound quality, while crisp and quite listenable, feels homemade. But don’t let any of that keep you away: This is the most significant Cody release in dozens of years, and its early vintage makes it an essential piece in charting the development of this ever-exciting outfit that tossed together rockabilly, blues, country, boogie-woogie, Western swing and whatever else came their way."[1]

In Tinnitist, Darryl Sterdan wrote, "Singer-pianist George (Commander Cody) Frayne and his crew were one of the more interesting bands of the hippie era, fusing country, rockabilly, western swing, jump blues and more into an infectious amalgam that set the table for outfits like NRBQ.... Admittedly, live Cody albums aren't hard to come by – there are probably at least a dozen on the market. But you won’t find one that sounds better than this."[2]