Featured Links - January 20, 2024

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

Airless decorations

• A New Kind of Urban Firestorm (gift link). "The blazes that have consumed Altadena and the Los Angeles neighborhood of Pacific Palisades hark back to historic urban firestorms — a kind of disaster that was supposed to have been extinguished by the development of modern fire departments and strong building codes. But decades of development in fire-prone landscapes and rapid planetary warming have sparked another era of urban conflagration, experts say."
• Why we now think the myopia epidemic can be slowed – or even reversed (archive link). "Rates of near-sightedness are rising all over the world. But solutions to the epidemic are coming into focus and could be simpler than you think."
• MAME Devs Spent 628 Years Cracking Protection on 712 Retro Games. "A new study published by data scientists Kristofer Erickson and Felix Rodriguez Perez, in collaboration with the CREATe Centre at the University of Glasgow, considers the effect of Technological Protection Measures (TPM) on video game preservation. The researchers focused on MAME, which to date has successfully emulated over 14,377 legacy devices, including 3,783 arcade machines dating back to 1979."
• Reading the news. "A new report detailing allegations against Neil Gaiman is a good opportunity to better understand how news works and spreads." This is a good overview of how the story was covered going back to the podcasts that broke the story last summer. Note that you will have to subscribe to Transfer Orbit to read the whole article. It's free and worth the minute it will take you. 
• Dyson Trees could make a home for humans—and other things. The idea of trees in space as habitats isn't new (see Larry Niven's The Integral Trees), but this is the first time I've heard of them referred to as Dyson Trees. 
• Why Costco Isn’t Joining the Backlash Against DEI. (archive link) "Retail giant swats back at a conservative activist group, buoyed by loyal customers and staff." 
• 4 Signs Your Google Account Is Hacked – And What To Do. "Gmail is — and has been for years — one of the most popular free email services, with around two billion active users around the world. Access comes via a Google account, which also includes Google Ads, YouTube and Google Play. And because of this, a compromised Google account can give the hackers access to a wide range of data, including emails, documents, photos and even financial details. Using this information, they can scam your contacts with spam, phishing emails or malicious attachments or even extort you. But don't despair: if your Google account is hacked, it's possible to regain it and keep it secure in future."
• Imagining a US Army Drone Corps. The use of drones in the Ukraine war is getting attention in the US military.