Featured Links - October 30, 2023

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

A Halloween display in our neighbourhood

• 2022 Sidewise Award Winners. These are awards for the best alternate history stories of 2022. 
• Catching Up With the Pixel 8 Pro: A Review, Mostly About the Camera. A review by SF author John Scalzi. His comments mostly mirror my own feelings about the phone.
• Google's Latest Updates Helps Root Out AI Deepfakes. "The ‘About this image’ feature in image search and AI app restrictions on Google Play are a few ways Google is trying to clap back against AI-generated fakes."
• Your ultimate guide to ultra-processed food – how bad is it really?  *archive.ph link) "Highly processed foods, from pizza to bread, are said to be seriously bad for your health. Here is a digestible guide to what the evidence says, to help you make sense of the conflicting claims."
• The Potentially High Risks of Alternative Health Care. "A new study suggests a large number of people across the country may be using unproven, and sometimes dangerous, treatments."
• AI Has Made the Israel-Hamas Misinformation Epidemic Much, Much Worse. "War propaganda is turbocharged with software that can pump out an endless supply of incendiary images."
• The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic. "Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 radio program did not touch off nationwide hysteria. Why does the legend persist?"
• The Science Fiction of the 1900s. From SF author and futurist, Karl Schroeder: "My latest Substack asks whether we're walking into 21st century crises and opportunities with 20th century expectations. Are we working to build our parents' future, not our own?"