Featured Links - April 29, 2026

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

A calm day on the lake

• A Tale of Two Countries. "Two superpowers, one behaving pathetically." The contrast between China and the U.S. is stark. 
• Comrade Trump. The unintended consequences of Trump's policies are not what he intended. 
• Certain Nap Patterns in Older Adults Could Be a Warning Sign, Study Find. "Taking a lot of daytime naps, especially in the morning, is associated with higher mortality rates for older adults, researchers in the US found. This "excessive" napping may signal underlying or developing health problems, they note, and could represent a trackable metric for early detection."
• The new iPhones have a problem turning back on after the battery runs out. If you have an iPhone 17, you should read this. 
• This pitching robot has been a ‘game changer’ for the Blue Jays and its inventors. It all started in a Toronto classroom (gift link). "Twenty-eight MLB teams and many more around the world lease the Trajekt Arc, a baseball training machine that recreates a pitcher’s delivery."
• This exotic particle could finally explain why matter has mass. "A newly spotted exotic particle state could finally expose how the universe gives matter its mass."
• Linus Inside a PDF. Really. Some people have too much time on their hands. 
• The MAHA-MAGA Breakup. "The political marriage brokered by RFK Jr. was doomed from the get-go. And Republicans may pay a steep electoral price in November."
• Where to get the 2026 Hugo finalists. Links to all of the 2026 Hugo Awards finalists. Most of the short fiction and some of the other categroies are free to read online. 
• Peptides, explained: Answers to your top questions. "Catching you up on the flood online information." Reiable information on the latest wellness buzz.
• More Surveillance Demands to Come?: Government Admits Bill C-22’s Lawful Access Provisions Could Be Expanded. Canadians should be aware of what the govrenment is doing here. 
• Galileo’s handwritten notes found in ancient astronomy text. "Discovery sheds new light on how famed astronomer came to lead a scientific revolution."
• The Slopaganda War. "The Iran war isn’t over yet, but on the online battlefield, Trump has lost decisively.."

Apple iPad Mini 7 After Six Months

Back in April, I finally gave up on my Amazon 8" tablet and bought an iPad Mini 7. Shortly after that, my sister gifted me with an iPad Air 3rd Generation (2018). At the time, I posted about my first impressions, and this post is an update to that. Most of the comments here will be based on the iPad Mini; I'll get to the iPad Air at the end of this post. 

Yesterday, I published a post about my first impressions of iPad OS 26.

Hardware

I have three main complaints about the iPad Mini hardware. 

• The screen's maximum brightness isn't bright enough. It can be difficult to use outside beause of that. 
• The battery life is not great. It's better than my Pixel phone, but I expected more. It seems to be somewhat worse under iPad OS 26, even with the Liquid Glass interface toned down.
• It doesn't have FaceID. I can unlock my phone by looking at it; that would be a nice capability to have on the iPad. (I think I knew about this going in, but I didn't realize how much it would bother me). 

It's a well-made tablet with a very good screen, especially considering that it's not an OLED panel. I did think about buying a pencil for it, but it seems that Apple changed the way pencils work with the Mini 7 and I can't find one that is compatible with the Mini 7 and my iPad Air 3. 

Reading

My main purpose for buying the iPad Mini was to use it as an ereader, and for that, it works quite well. I use both the Amazon Kindle app and Google Play Books for reading ebooks. 

The Kindle app doesn't get bright enough on the Mini, forcing me to use the system control for brightness. OTOH, the Play Books app doesn't always retain its brighness setting. The Kindle app will sync page count between the iPad and my phone in both directions; the Play Books app will sycn from the tablet to the phone but not the other way around. Given the font size issues I've had with the Kindle app on my phone, I prefer using Play Books, so that is annoying. Both have their strong points but overall, I prefer Play Books.

I also use Libby, primarily for reading magazines from the library that aren't available on News+. (Discover and Astronomy, for example) or that don't support the text mode in News+. 

A suggestion to Apple: Add the ability to adjust the brightness on an app-specific basis. This would work the same way the Font Size control works. It would be handy for apps, like the Kindle app that have their own brightness control but don't get bright enough, or that rely on the system brightness setting. 

News+

I got a three-month trial of News+ with the Mini and it didn't take long for me to realize that I was going to have to pay for it when the trial expired. It's now become my main source for browsing for news articles and reading magazines. I do wish that more magazines had the "read articles in text mode" feature, though I have been able to use Libby for some that don't support it.  (Both Libby and PressReader have a text-mode feature that works on all magazines). Even if something is available from the library, News+ often has content from their websites, which is one of the handiest features. 

When reading magazines, I usually use the iPad Air for News+; it's easier to use on the larger 11" screen. 

iPad Air

I won't be upgrading the iPad Air to iPad OS 26. I've seen too many comments online about performance problems. It's running iPadOS 18 just fine and I don't want to risk messing it up. It is still getting updates to IOS 18 and given my limited usage, it will probably be fine even after updates to that stop. 

Going Forward

I will probably start looking at some of the native iPad OS apps and maybe a few casual games (a chess game would be nice to have). I should also try Safari; so far I've been using Chrome for the little web browsing I do on the tablets. And I need to take a closer look at the accessibility features; my eyes are not getting any better.

First Impressions of iPad OS 26

This is the first of two posts about my Apple  tablets. Tomorrow's post will be about my experience with the iPad Mini. 

I put off upgrading my tablets to iPadOS 26 for a month, but finally decided that the Mini shouldn't have any problems running it. My main concern was the Liquid Glass interface, which looked to me like it could seriously compromise readability. The first thing I did after upgrading was to turn down the transparency and motion effects. Given that, I haven't noticed any readability issues that weren't also present before upgrading.

I did turn on the windowing interface, mainly so I could access app menus. I was worried about readability because they are very small at  the top of the window, but they expand to a reasonable size when triggered. One of my peeves about iPad OS in general is that the top-of-screen menus and icons are too small and there doesn't seem to be any way of making them bigger (unlike Windows). I did run into a problem in Play Books where the bottom controls (go to TOC, move the page slider) wouldn't' respond; I had pulled down the window a bit too far and switching back to the full-screen interface fixed it. (I haven't been able to reproduce that so it may have been a glitch). 

I was excited to hear that Apple had introduced the Accessible Reading feature.  Google's similar Reading Mode app is a lifesaver on my Pixel phone. Sadly, Apple's version is not up to the quality of the Google app. It's fussy to customize, it's not clear how to switch out of it to the standard interface, and sometimes it just hangs up. I'll have to experiment more with it and hope that Apple improves it in later OS updates. 

Battery life, which was not great to start with, seems to be a bit worse under iPad OS 26, even with the Liquid Glass junk turned down or off. 

I'm certainly not the only one who doesn't want to have anything to do with the Liquid Glass interface. N/g, founded by user interface experts Jakob Neilsen and Don Norman, have published an epic takedown of IOS 26 and Liquid Glass.

The interface is restless, needy, less predictable, less legible, and constantly pulling focus rather than supporting seamless access to content. Instead of smoothing the path for everyday tasks, iOS 26 makes users relearn basics while enduring a constant parade of visual stunts.

Apple may call it Liquid Glass. To many users, it feels more like a fogged‑up window: pretty from a distance, but frustrating when you try to see beyond it.

Apple seems to be feeling the heat. The latest IOS beta includes an option to turn off Liquid Glass, or at least reduce the transparency effects. (There are options that will do this under the Accessibility settings, but they are not prominent). 

 

Featured Links - June 23, 2025

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

Flowers in our backyard

The MAGA Debt Bomb. "How Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Turns America’s Fiscal Crisis Into a Weapon for Authoritarian Looting." The adults in the financial world are getting worried.

FEMA is unprepared for the next Hurricane Katrina, disaster experts warn. "Cuts, chaos, and climate change are converging to leave Americans more vulnerable to disaster than they were in 2005." 

How the Grateful Dead built the internet. "Before the the internet took over the world, psychedelic rock band The Grateful Dead were among the first – and most influential – forces at the dawn of online communication." Fascinating history showing how music an culture intersected with the early digital revolution, focusing mostly on The Well. I was never on The Well but made extensive use of rec.music.gdead on Usenet once I got onto the real internet in the early 90s. 

'They quit after a few hours': Farmers admit they can't find American workers. "In a deep dive focusing on one farmer who voted for Trump, 36-year-old J.J. Ficke of Kirk, Colorado, the Washington Post is reporting that he along with other farmers are facing possible ruination now that the round-up of immigrants have begun in earnest and promised helpis uncertain."

New study suggests Long COVID is now most common childhood chronic health problem. "In a summary of the study's findings geared to the general public and published on the JAMA Pediatrics Patient Page, three of the authors of the longer study state that Long COVID is common, and, based on the larger study's finding, estimate that up to 10 to 20 percent of children who have had COVID-19 — even "mild" or asymptomatic initial infections — develop Long COVID. This translates to about six million children with Long COVID, which, the authors explain, "is higher than the number of children with asthma, the most common chronic health problem in children."'

1 psychedelic psilocybin dose eases depression for years, study reveals. "Half a decade after receiving a psychedelic treatment for depression, two-thirds of patients in a new study remained in remission."

New theory proposes time has three dimensions, with space as a secondary effect. "Time, not space plus time, might be the single fundamental property in which all physical phenomena occur, according to a new theory by a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist. The theory also argues that time comes in three dimensions rather than just the single one we experience as continual forward progression. Space emerges as a secondary manifestation."

Interview: Craig Federighi Opens Up About iPadOS, Its Multitasking Journey, and the iPad’s Essence. As a new iPad user, I found this quite fascinating. 

How should we respond to people “doing their own research?”. "It’s become a punchline—but it points to something broken in how we share health information."

Narrative Theory for Science Communication by author Mary Robinette Kowal. "In this workshop, we learn how to use the foundations of storytelling to help you be more successful with science communication. Pretty much every story, fictional or nonfictional, can be explained through a fairly simple organizational theory. Together, we learn how to use these tools to connect more effectively with your audiences."

Featured Links - June 16, 2025

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

A bearded iris in our garden

Imperial ouroboros. "Andor's second season is a powerful look at the fragility of oppressive ideologies." This is the best article I've read about the series and reveals just how remarkable an achievement it was. There's a master's thesis waiting for someone who wants to explore the revolutionary themes in Andor, The Expanse, and Babylon 5. 

This 1999 email from a tech pioneer helped me think about Apple’s WWDC. "Jef Raskin instigated the Mac project in 1979. Twenty years later, he was dismayed with the state of personal computing. What would he think today?"

RIP to the almost future of computing: Apple just turned the iPad into a Mac. "We didn’t need 15 years to get back to where we started." I will probably not use the new interface on my iPad Mini, but may on the bigger iPad Air. 

Teachers Are Not OK. 'AI, ChatGPT, and LLMs "have absolutely blown up what I try to accomplish with my teaching."'

432 Chinese robots moved an entire 7,500-ton neighborhood before returning it to its original spot to build a subway. Metrolinx, are you paying attention to what's going on elsewhere in the world?

50 Rare Vintage Pictures Showing The Everyday Grit Of Working Class Americans Back In The Day. This is a fascinating collection. I wonder what an equivalent series of photos would show today.

Neanderthals Spread Across Asia With Surprising Speed—and Now We Know How. "A new study suggests our prehistoric cousins likely traveled through the Ural Mountains and southern Siberia."

The Core of Fermat’s Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered. "By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand unified theory” of math."

What It Took to Build the Death Star. "We know so much about the theft of its plans, and its final destruction over the Yavin system—but building the Death Star was a project decades in the making." Taking Star Wars seriously. 

20 hidden features in Apple’s upcoming 26-branded software. "Everything from iOS 26 to watchOS 26 is getting fun new features." I'm looking forward to trying out the new iPadOS later this year.

The semicolon defended by its advocates. I remember arguments about semicolons in my university English classes more than 50 years ago. 

Cart Cartoon Network Trolls Homophobes Hard For Melting Down Over Pride Month Fan Art. "The cable channel's Instagram account share oon Network Trolls Homophobes Hard For Melting Down Over Pride Month Fan Art. "The cable channel's Instagram account shared several pieces of fan art depicting characters from beloved shows to celebrate Pride Month—and trolled several homophobes who sounded off in the comments." Good. 

What the Fastest-Growing Christian Group Reveals About America. (archive link) "Instead of killing off faith, modernity has supercharged some of its most dramatic manifestations."

Featured Links - May 20, 2025

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

Spring flowers

Space United Us. Putin Tore Us Apart. "Former International Space Station commander. Watching my Russian cosmonaut friends turn to the dark side was a troubling lesson in how easily normal people can be bribed into supporting a tyrant."

World’s first personalized CRISPR therapy given to baby with genetic disease. "Treatment seems to have been effective, but it is not clear whether such bespoke therapies can be widely applied." Given that the US wants to ban MRNA technology, can banning CRISPR behind?

The First Human to Undergo In Vivo CRISPR 2.0 Personalized Genome Editing. "Potentially a lifesaving intervention with major implications."  This article goes into more detail than the article from Nature.

Not saying it's aliens: SETI survey reveals unexplained pulses from distant stars. "In a recent paper, veteran NASA scientist Richard H. Stanton describes the results of his multi-year survey of more than 1,300 sun-like stars for optical SETI signals. As he indicates, this survey revealed two fast identical pulses from a sun-like star about 100 light-years from Earth that match similar pulses from a different star observed four years ago."

There's a huge Cold War-era nuclear bunker in Ontario 600 feet underground. "Buried 600 feet beneath solid granite in Ontario lies a colossal relic of Cold War military engineering — the NORAD North Bay Underground Complex, better known simply as 'The Hole.' The massive underground fortress was Canada’s front line in the defence of North America at a time when the threat of nuclear war felt imminent. Built at the height of Cold War tensions, the complex stands as the most ambitious and heavily fortified military project in Canadian history." I went on a tour of the SAGE base in 1983; it was seriously impressive.

I Went to Rome to Understand What’s Happening in America. What I Found Was a Warning. "A pilgrimage to the ruins of empire reveals a terrifying truth: America’s democracy is at the tipping point—and Trump is no Marcus Aurelius."

Scientists have been studying remote work for four years and have reached a very clear conclusion: “Working from home makes us happier.” Absolutely. I much preferred it to having to spend 2-1/2 or 3 hours a day getting to and from the office. 

Ronnie Wood: ‘I was thinking, I want to be in the Rolling Stones. Then a car pulled up with Mick and Charlie’. "Galleries, gigs and grand old friends – the veteran rocker reflects on a life of lucky timing and grit."

For this CVS Health developer, making tech more accessible is personal. "Apple’s ‘Accessibility Nutrition Labels’ will put investments in inclusive design in the spotlight. But Cory Joseph says companies don’t need to be huge to embrace accessibility." These are a really good idea and I hope Google copies them. 

We Finally Know Why Ancient Roman Concrete Lasts Thousands of Years. They need to start using this on the Gardiner Expressway. 

JerryRigEverything says 'do not buy' the Pixel 9a despite it passing a stress test. Google has made a bad design decision here and it would keep me from buying it.

Beware SVG graphics used to Bypass Microsoft 365 Security Measures. "SVG and invisible Unicode is being increasingly used to hack Microsoft 365 and Google/Gmail users even with multi-factor authentication (MFA).  It’s possible because of significant enhancements in the Tycoon 2FA platform."

Apple iPad Mini: First Impressions

A couple of years ago, I bought an Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet to use as an ereader. It's a good size for that, with a size that's in between my aging Samsung Tab A tablet and my Pixel 8 Pro. (Due to my vision issues, I find reading on my Kindle Paperwhite harder on my eyes than reading on a device with dark mode). But it hasn't been a happy experience as Amazon's forked version of Android and the tablet's slow processor make it frustrating to use. 

There aren't a lot of good, small Android tablets. Samsung has one but they have a bad track record with updates and I don't like their One UI interface. I've read good things about Lenovo's new tablet but it seems to be aimed at gamers, which I am not. So I figured it was finally time to embrace the Dark Side and get an iPad Mini.

The Good

It's a quality machine, almost luxurious, Solid, good looking, and with a beautiful screen (even if it isn't OLED). It's fairly fast, though maybe not quite as quick as my Pixel 8 Pro, but certainly fast enough. 

Apple's IOS is functional and pretty, though as a long-time Android user, it is taking more than a little getting used to. I have the basics figured out. YouTube has been my friend here. 

Since I have a Windows PC and a Pixel phone, I am continuing to use Google's apps like Calendar, Messages, and Keep instead of the equivalent Apple apps. 

I am using Apple News+ since the iPad came with a three month free trial and so far, I love it. I've been using the Libby app to read magazines on my Fire tablet, but News+ is superior in almost every respect though it doesn't have all the magazines  that I like to read. But I like it enough that I will probably pay for the subscription when the trial runs out.  

Apple's Folio cases are very expensive. I bought this Oduio case instead. It's 1/3 of the cost, looks good, and lets me stand the iPad up in both portrait or landscape mode for viewing videos. The feature I really like is the strap on the back so I can hold it securely with one hand while reading.

The Bad

Control Center is a dog's breakfast and the customization process is annoying. I much prefer Android's Quick Settings. I had to watch a video to figure it out and ven then customizing it is fussy. The method used in IOS before version 18 (which I saw in a video) looks like it's much easier. A switch to revert to the old method would be nice.

Battery life is OK but not great. I am may be keeping the screen brightness up higher than need be and will fiddle with that. I enabled the 80 percent charging limit to preserve long-term battery life (I do the same on my phone). Also, I don't know what apps and processes are running in the background. I will have to look at this

As noted above, the screen looks good. I do wish they had enabled a higher refresh rate than 60 Hz. as I can see a bit of jitter in some apps. 

I was disappointed that the iPad Mini doesn't support FaceID. I'm used to opening my phone just by looking at it and miss this on the iPad.

As much as I like Apple News+, it's annoying that I can't set a default font. I much prefer sans serif fonts for reading. Some articles come up in sans serif, others in a serif font. Sizing of fonts is hit or miss between stories. I am going to try to load the Atkinson Hyperlegible font onto the iPad. I doubt that will help with Apple News+ but would be good for my ebooks. 

I really miss not having Google's Reading Mode app, which takes the current screen, strips out all of the extraneous stuff (including ads) and reformats it as plain text. Some searching has revealed that Safari has a reading mode and I may have to start using that, which will mean importing my bookmarks and passwords from Chrome. Google's Reading Mode app works on almost anything, not just web pages.

The Ugly

The inability to resize icon text and things like the system's date, time, and battery percentage at the top of the screen is more than just an annoyance. Come on Apple: you can give us more accessibility options here. 

Apps that don't support Apple's system font size setting are a problem (Google Keep, for example). I've had to set up the Magnifier to deal with that. In fairness to Apple, this may be Google's fault. 

Since I have an Apple Care subscription, I may book an appointment at the Apple Store's Genius Bar to get some help with this.

As has been commented on in almost every review I've read, the bezels are ridiculously large for a current device. 

Featured Links - April 22, 2025

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

I am surprised this shed lasted the winter. 

• Just one exo-Earth pixel can reveal continents, oceans, and more. "Even from a single pixel, multiwavelength data taken over time can reveal clouds, icecaps, oceans, continents, and even signs of life."
  
• Association of self-reported and accelerometer-based walking pace with incident cardiac arrhythmias: a prospective cohort study using UK Biobank. "Average and brisk self-reported walking pace and time spent walking at moderate and brisk pace were associated with a decreased risk of cardiac arrhythmias, in part mediated via metabolic and inflammatory pathways. Our findings suggest brisk walking may be a safe and effective exercise to reduce arrhythmias, especially for higher risk groups."
• The iPhone 16 Pro Max helped me see – with a little help from the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. "Specifically, the 5x telephoto cameras on both flagship phones came in very handy, letting me zoom in on details on the Reichstag or the myriad of street art sprayed onto the walls and buildings of the city. But both phones really helped me and my poor eyes when visiting the Berlin Zoo." 
• DOJ's menacing letter to med journals "a chill down the spine of scientists". It will take a generation to repair the damage that the Trump regime has already done to US science and medicine. 
• 5 services I disabled to improve Windows performance. There are certainly many more services that could be disabled but this is a good start. 
• 'Bad Omen': Ancient Pyramid in Mexico Collapsed Into A Pile of Rubble. Extreme weather events and rising seas are putting precious heritage sites around the world in harm's way. "A stunning example of this phenomenon in 2024 was a stone pyramid in Mexico succumbing to an increasingly chaotic global climate."
• A three-storey home built in just three days? Why this Toronto tear down may hold the key to Canada’s house building strategy (archive link). "Construction of a prefabricated home just off the Danforth shows how the building technique can combat climate change." It's about time and I hope we see more of this. 
• 5 takeaways about NPR's reporting on the whistleblower report about DOGE at the NLRB. The security nightmare continues. IT security people must be tearing their hair out.
• Breakthrough gravity discovery challenges the existence of dark matter. "Richard Lieu offers a theory that could challenge one of the biggest assumptions in astrophysics. His idea: gravity can exist without any mass at all." Yet another theory that aims to eliminate the need for dark matter. 
• No, astronomers almost certainly didn’t find biosignatures of life on another planet. "I’m not even convinced they found the molecules they claim to have found." Some skepticism on recent news from astronomer Phil Plait. 
• Aylmer - The Canadian Soup. A commercial that's now showing on Canadian TV. Take that, Trump!