Featured Links - November 25, 2025

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

Lifeguard station at Scarborough Bluffs

Reinventing the Subsistence Economy. "How Energy and Food Decoupling Rewrite the Map of Post-Growth Futures." An optimistic look at a possible future from Karl Schroeder.

The Terminator Future Has Arrived. "Gaza represents a future of warfare that will be repeated elsewhere as the algorithms are proving efficient, merciless and remorseless."

The Worst Part About Publishing a Book in 2025 Is The New Kind of Spam. Authors are getting buried in targetted AI-authored spam. 

Google’s New Gmail Upgrades—Why You Must Choose Carefully. Unless you live in the EU, Google may be opting you in to giving them access to your private data.

Russian Unreality and American Weakness. "Notes from a bizarre moment of diplomatic history." An absolutely devastating take down of the proposed "peace plan" to end the Ukranian war from historian Timothy Synder. 

Open the pod bay doors, HAL (Arguing with A.I.). A detailed post showing how AI can provide misleading results, with examples.

Bitcoin isn't anonymous — investigators can trace every transaction on the blockchain. Just in case you thought all those drug buys were safe. 

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."

Featured Links -- December 15, 2024

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

Birds on ice

The best science images of 2024 — Nature’s picks. "A breathtaking total eclipse, courageous penguins, volcanic smoke rings and more." There are some truly incredible images here. Best viewed on a large computer monitor. 

Google Timeline location purge causes collateral damage. "Privacy measure leaves some mourning lost memories." If you rely on Timeline data more than three months old, you should read this.

Miranda’s Last Gift (gift link). "When our daughter died suddenly, she left us with grief, memories—and Ringo." A beautiful and moving tribute by David Frum to his late daughter, and her dog. 

Debunking Every Myth You Hear Against Universal Healthcare. "Whether you are politically left or right, you should want Universal Healthcare as a human right—here are the receipts on why."

Powerful solar storms are a nightmare for farmers. 'Our tractors acted like they were demon possessed'. "When the sun's fury disrupts high-tech farming, precision turns to chaos." It does make me wonder if the universe really is out to get us. 

Alena Tensor—a new hope for unification in physics. "Our new article published in Physica Scripta brings new hope that such a theory exists. It demonstrates that the use of a certain mathematical object called Alena Tensor reconciles various physical theories, including general relativity, electrodynamics, quantum mechanics and continuum mechanics. Will this finally allow scientists to unify descriptions used in physics?" Some highly speculative new physics theorizing. 

Refinement of post-COVID condition core symptoms, subtypes, determinants, and health impacts: a cohort study integrating real-world data and patient-reported outcomes. "PCC can be categorized into four distinct subtypes based on ten core symptoms. These subtypes appeared to share a majority of pathogen and host-related risk factors, but their impact on health varied markedly by subtype. Our findings could help refine current guidelines for precise PCC diagnosis and progression, enhance the identification of PCC subgroups for targeted research, and inform evidence-based policy making to tackle this new and debilitating condition."

The latest in poker cheats: Tiny cameras that can see cards as they’re dealt. ""Several recent schemes were uncovered, so should players everywhere be concerned?" Only if you're playing $10,000 buy-in poker. 

Battery prices continue to drop, lowering the cost of electric vehicles. "The price of lithium-ion batteries in China has decreased by 51 percent in the past year. Lower battery prices make electric vehicles cheaper than fossil fuel cars in many segments, and large-scale battery solutions in energy systems become more profitable."

Featured Links - October 28, 2024

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

A burning bush in full flame

•  ‘Fandom has toxified the world’: Watchmen author Alan Moore on superheroes, Comicsgate and Trump. "Enthusiasm can be a productive force for good, but our culture has rapidly become a fan-based landscape that the rest of us are merely living in."
  
• Political Polarization and Health. "In addition to social determinants of health, such as economic resources, education, access to care and various environmental factors, there is growing evidence that political polarization poses a substantial risk to individual and collective well-being."
• Inside the Bungled Bird Flu Response, Where Profits Collide With Public Health. "When dairy cows in Texas began falling ill with H5N1, alarmed veterinarians expected a fierce response to contain an outbreak with pandemic-sparking potential. Then politics—and, critics say, a key agency’s mandate to protect dairy-industry revenues—intervened."
• Posse Comitatus and the Insurrection Act. "The limitations on Trump deploying the military in terrifying ways are almost non-existent."
• A Priceless Business Leadership Lesson From The Grateful Dead. "Phil Lesh, the Grateful Dead’s singularly iconic and beloved bassist, died last week at age 84. He was a beautiful musician, a wonderful man, a sweet soul. He also – through his identifiably unique approach to his instrument and how it becomes so integral to the band’s creative development – exemplified more than just music. And the lessons we learned from him – and the boys – are more applicable to business than ever before. "
• How a conspiracy-fueled group got a foothold in this hurricane-battered town. "Over the course of 11 days, a supermarket parking lot became a snapshot of the chaos that can unfold in some corners of post-disaster America." I hope this isn't a preview of coming chaos, but I am afraid it might be.
• How Google is Killing Bloggers and Small Publishers – And Why. "A couple of weeks ago, in a moment of caffeinated inspiration/despair, I sat down and wrote a long Facebook post as to why we were ditching Google and switching to DuckDuckGo. Today I want to dive even deeper into this topic, and give you a first-hand account of how Google is killing hundreds of thousands of blogs and small publishers. And maybe give you some insight as to why they are doing so."
• Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan. "Born poor in colonial India and dead at 32, Ramanujan had fantastical, out-of-nowhere visions that continue to shape the field today."

Featured Links - October 7, 2024

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

The Scarborough bluffs

• Prime's enshittified advertising. "Prime's gonna add more ads. They brought in ads in January, and people didn't cancel their Prime subscriptions, so Amazon figures that they can make Prime even worse and make more money." From Cory Doctorow. 
• ‘Everything is dead’: Ukraine rushes to stem ecocide after river poisoning. "Russia is suspected of deliberately leaking chemical waste into a river, with deadly consequences for wildlife."
• Escalating contest over South China Sea disrupts international cable system (gift link). "China’s effort to dominate the disputed waterway is taking a toll on the network of underwater cables that provide essential internet connectivity in Asia."
• College students used Meta’s smart glasses to dox people in real time. "The demo highlights the dark side of AR glasses."
• Mark Shapiro doesn’t even talk a good game. "The Blue Jays are a disaster. And the boss has to go (gift link)." As usual, Rosie DiMano doesn't pull any punches.
• License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars. "From Trump campaign signs to Planned Parenthood bumper stickers, license plate readers around the US are creating searchable databases that reveal Americans’ political leanings and more."
• The 1912 War On Fake Photos. "Concern about deceptively edited photos feels like a very modern anxiety, yet a century ago similar worries were being litigated."
• Enough, already: why humanity must get on board with the concept of ‘sufficiency’. "It’s a policy approach gaining momentum around the world. It aims to avoid demand for energy, materials, land and water, and ensure wellbeing for all humans, while staying within planetary boundaries."

Featured Links - April 29, 2024

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

The marina has yet to wake up

• How AI mathematicians might finally deliver human-level reasoning (archive.ph link). "Artificial intelligence is taking on some of the hardest problems in pure maths, arguably demonstrating sophisticated reasoning and creativity – and a big step forward for AI."
• Here's the latest on H5N1—avian flu—and some resources tracking the virus. You may want to bookmark some of the sites mentioned in this article.
• SpaceX making progress on Starship in-space refueling technologies. "NASA says SpaceX is on track to demonstrate in-space refueling of Starship next year, a critical technology for returning humans to the lunar surface using that vehicle."
• The unspoken obnoxiousness of Google’s Gemini improvements. "Google's Gemini chatbot is seeing all sorts of upgrades on Android this week, but those advancements reveal a darker underlying reality."
• ‘In the US they think we’re communists!’ The 70,000 workers showing the world another way to earn a living. "The Basque Country’s Mondragón Corporation is the globe’s largest industrial co-operative, with workers paying for the right to share in its profits – and its losses. In return for giving more to their employer, they expect more back."
• Urbanist draws attention to city's design monstrosity in local community: 'So tired of pedestrian-hostile areas'. "A corner of TikTok is having a field day over a video bemoaning low-effort city planning, making life dangerous for pedestrians. The online community, especially through hashtags like #cityplanning, has been paving new avenues of communication for unsatisfied urbanites, especially in the United States."
• Restoring sight is possible now with optogenetics (gift link). "People suffering from macular degeneration, along with other diseases that impair sight, may soon benefit from gene therapy." I will have to talk to my ophthalmologist the next time I see him. It's probably too far down the road to help me though. 
• Plato's Burial Place and Details of His Last Night Revealed in Carbonized Scroll From Herculaneum. "Scientists have deciphered a document lost in the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius, using AI to read ink invisible to the naked eye."

Featured Links - July 5, 2023

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

This week's post is a bit later than usual because of the Canada Day and Independence Day long weekends, so I've got a few more links than usual.

Soon to be a monster home

• A Stratospheric wind anomaly is developing over the Equator, expected to impact the Weather along the El Nino in the next Winter Season. "A large-scale atmospheric phenomenon is currently changing its phase high in the atmosphere. Called “the heartbeat of the atmosphere,” it has a known effect on the Winter weather and will combine its influence with the El Nino event to impact the weather patterns in the 2023/2024 Winter season." This is one of the best articles about climatology and weather that I've seen in quite a while.
• AI Is Writing Lots of Code—How Good Is It? "With so much excitement about the technology’s potential—and wild speculation about how it could take over the world—subtler and yet more substantive evidence of how AI deployments are working out could be overlooked. Just about everything in our future will be underpinned by software—and if we’re not careful, it might also be riddled with AI-generated bugs."
• The Space Race may already be won. "SpaceX is using Apple’s business model to assert its will on both commercial space and governments."
• Tonga Eruption Triggered A Record-Smashing 11-Hour Lightning Marathon. "The light show broke several records including the largest lightning rings ever observed."
• Welcome to Mars! Caltech’s Jaw-Dropping, 5.7 Terapixel Virtual Expedition Across the Red Planet. "Caltech has used data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to create the highest-resolution global image of Mars ever, a 5.7 terapixel mosaic. The mosaic is designed to be accessible to everyone, from scientists to schoolchildren and the general public, and captures cliffsides, impact craters, and dust devil tracks in stunning detail."
• Why the CDC’s New Mask Guideline Proposal May Actually Imperil Frontline Workers. "The decisions some of these public health people are making are not getting better. They’re getting worse." I cannot believe that health authorities are still not acknowledging the effectiveness of and need for N95 masks in healthcare settings. 
• Cosmography of the Local Universe. If you want a true understanding of just how insignificant we are in the cosmic scheme of things, look at Figure 8 in this article.
• How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City. "A visionary novelist and a revolutionary chronicler of gay life, he’s taken American letters to uncharted realms."
• Smelling Plastic? Millions Are In the Path of the Smoke Plumes. "No, there isn’t a pile of tires on fire nearby; what you smell is smoke from the wildfires."
• Who killed Google Reader? "Ten years after its untimely death, the team that built the much-beloved feed reader reflects on what went wrong and what could have been."

Cory Doctorow On How Platforms Die

I've just finished reading Cory Doctorow's essay on how platforms like TikTok evolve and die. It's one of the most insightful pieces of writing about the internet and modern technology that I've read in a long time. Also, Cory has coined a new term that I really like: "enshittification". 

If you've been noticing that your Google search results are full of crap, or you can't find anything useful on Amazon, you'll want to read this. 

HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

Featured Links - February 20, 2023

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

Late afternoon on the bay

• Futurepedia: The largest AI tools directory, updated daily. They claim just over  1,000 tools in the directory. It's a good thing you can search it. There's also a link to view news.
• How the North Bay Public Library is spicing things up. "The next time you pop by to pick up a new release, you could leave with cumin or paprika or cardamom, thanks to the library’s Spice Club."
• The Ohio Train Derailment Is a Disaster of Misinformation. "Amid a local news void and right-wing scaremongering, bad science is spreading around the toxic train derailment in East Palestine."
• People are trying to destroy automated speed cameras in and around Toronto. "A medley of cameras in and around the city have been trashed, tipped over, spray-painted and just generally destroyed by vandals, seemingly to spare themselves and other drivers from speeding tickets." I've seen this happen in my neighbourhood. I would like to see all cars outfitted with a black box that checks where the car is and won't let the driver exceed the speed limit. Driving is a privilege, not a right. 
• Internet Archive’s calculator emulators offer a nostalgic trip back to high school math class. "Sin Cos Tan to your heart’s delight as the Internet Archive launched a new collection of calculator emulators." This is cool, if like me, you were too early for the calculator era, but always wanted one. 
• The Asteroid Blast That Shook the World Is Still Making an Impact. "The Chelyabinsk asteroid slammed into Earth’s atmosphere 10 years ago, the largest impact in more than a century."
• The maze is in the mouse. "What ails Google. And how it can turn things around."
• SpaceX prioritizes Starship test flights, pauses plans for floating launch pads. "President and COO Gwynne Shotwell says that SpaceX has temporarily abandoned plans for floating Starship launch platforms to ensure it’s fully focused on gaining flight experience with the next-generation rocket." It's a good thing SpaceX has an adult in the room, unlike Twitter.

Featured Links - September 19, 2022

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

The marsh on a hot summer's morning

“Word Window” in trouble with Microsoft. "Microsoft has dropped down hard on a UK teacher with a little bit of plastic helping dyslexic students read.  It seems the company can’t learn from past mistakes."

Tolkien and the Horrors of the Great War. "The First World War left a lasting impression on Tolkien.

2022 Ig Nobel Prize Winners. "The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology."

Imagining COVID is ‘like the flu’ is cutting thousands of lives short. It’s time to wake up. "COVID is nothing at all like the flu. It is causing a vastly worse scale of damage. We must change our tactics to dramatically cut transmission. In addition to a more vigorous campaign to increase vaccine booster coverage, we need to invest in indoor ventilation and actively promote the benefits of wearing high-quality masks in crowded indoor settings."

‘We had to leave home for a better future’: Kate Beaton on the brutal, drug filled reality of life in an oil camp. "Before work like Hark! A Vagrant made her famous, the Canadian cartoonist spent two years in the Alberta wilderness, see-sawing between boredom and fear for her safety. Now she is finally ready to tell the story."

“It’s just what I did:” First woman to drive solo around Australia in a non-Tesla EV. "It’s a simple statement that belies some hard truths. One, that there have only been an estimated 20 people to date who are known to have completed the “Big Lap” in an EV – across remote expanses of the outback with little in the way of electric car chargers."

15 Reddit Acronyms Everyone Should Know. "Feel right at home while browsing Reddit by learning these popular acron yms that Redditors use.'  Having been on the internet for about 30 years, I knew some of these, but not all.

These Mormons Have Found a New Faith — in Magic Mushrooms. "Worshippers are leaving the Church of Latter-day Saints in record numbers, and some are finding solace with an apostate band of psilocybin-loving spiritual explorers looking for God — one trip at a time."

Reverting Facebook To the Classic Interface

I published a guest post yesterday by Jay Linden about how much he dislikes the new Facebook desktop interface. He raises some good points, but on the whole, I prefer the new interface. It did take a bit of getting used to but I find the organization more logical and consistent. Also, I prefer dark mode and the new interface supports that.  

However, your mileage may vary, and if you prefer the "classic" Facebook interface, there are ways to revert back to it, even though Facebook has removed that capability from users at the beginning of September.

One is RevertSite, which you can install as an extension or add-on in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox. I've tried it and it does work as advertised. The icon used to toggle it on or off doesn't appear in my Facebook, but you can turn it on or off (or uninstall it) in the Externsions menu. 

Another option is to log in to the mobile Facebook interface from your desktop. I think you'd have to be pretty desperate to try this as it's ugly and not very usable.

Also, Chrome users can use Old Layout for Facebook. I haven't tried this one.

Update: Jay points out that RevertSite may break audio and video chats. You can get around this by opening Messenger directly at www.messenger.com.

Cory Doctorow On IP

Intellectual property (IP) is a term that's come into more common usage in the last few years as different people and organizations fight to gain control over software, books, music, photos, and movies. 

Cory Doctorow, SF author and consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been fighting for the IP rights of individuals for many years. He's written a long column for Locus magazine about it, a deep dive into the murky world of intellectual property rights and how they're being lost to the control of faceless multinational corporations.

When you look at how “IP” is used by firms, a very precise – albeit colloquial – meaning emerges:

“IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.”

That is, in a world of uncertainty, where other people’s unpredictability can erode your profits, mire you in scandal, or even tank your business, “IP” is a means of forcing other people to arrange their affairs to suit your needs, even if that undermines their own needs.

There are some ways in which this is absolutely undeniable. Take DRM, “Digital Rights Manage­ment.” These are the digital locks in our devices that prevent us from using them in ways that the manufacturer dislikes. Your printer uses DRM to force you to buy ink that the manufacturer has ap­proved; your phone uses DRM to force you to buy apps that the manufacturer has approved. Ventilators from Medtronic and tractors from John Deere use DRM to force you to get them repaired by the manu­facturer – and to scrap them when the manufacturer decides it’s time for you to buy a new one.

Copyright laws – that is, “IP laws” – ban tamper­ing with DRM, making it a serious, jailable felony to provide others with tools to bypass DRM. From Section 1201 of the US Digital Millennium Copy­right Act to Canada’s Bill C-32 to Article 6 of the EU Copyright Directive, countries around the world have imposed indiscriminate bans on breaking DRM.

These are all copyright laws, but, tellingly, the ban on breaking DRM is not limited to copyright infringement. Bypassing DRM to get your printer to accept third-party ink is not a copyright violation: you’re not reproducing its code, nor are you duplicat­ing the traces etched into its chips. But even though you’re not breaking copyright when you jailbreak your phone, you’re still breaking copyright law. The law bans legal conduct, if you have to break DRM to engage in it. This isn’t copyright protection – it’s felony contempt of business-model.

It's a long article but important and worth reading. If you don't have the time, he's published the TL;DR summary on his Pluralistic blog.

Microsoft Teases Office Future

In a long blog post, Jon Friedman, the head of Microsoft Office design, has outlined some future changes to Office. Changes include de-emphasizing the role of the ribbon in favour of a floating toolbar, more contextual commands, enhanced search, and a common graphical and colour scheme across applications. 

We’ve been on a multi-year design journey to create more focused, immersive experiences, from the single-line ribbon, to Dark Mode, to Fluent. The next wave of Microsoft 365 UX changes will go even further by fading brand colors from app headers and exploring adaptive commanding. A flexible ribbon that progressively discloses contextually relevant commands at the right time just where you need them.

We’ll further advance our seamless, cross-suite Search to bring relevant information to your fingertips, and myriad forthcoming experiences will leverage Fluid Frameworks. Microsoft 365 will bring the power of Office to wherever you are, ensuring you won’t need to interrupt your creative process to open a different tool. 

Throughout, we’re grounding everything we build in deep research about the nuances of attention. We’re often presented with a false dichotomy — you’re either focused and in flow or distracted and unproductive — but we traverse a broad attentional spectrum while achieving our goals. Some moments call for lengthy, sustained concentration. Others, such as many mobile scenarios, are optimal for microtasking. By designing for multiple cognitive states, focused experiences throughout the Microsoft 365 ecosystem minimize external distractions, lessen self-interruptions, and jumpstart flow.

It's not clear when these changes will begin rolling out to end users and the pandemic may cause delays.

If you don't want to wade through screens of Friedman's corporate bafflegab, Mobile Syrup and The Verge have good summaries of his post. 

Amazon Tracks All Your Taps On Your Kindle

I was surprised to find out that Amazon tracks all of your taps on a Kindle. This was discovered by reporter Adrianne Jeffries and reported on Twitter.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised; there must be a mechanism for Amazon to be able sync your reading position between devices. The Verge discusses this in more detail.

It turns out that Amazon has a few answers to that, some more convincing than others. The main feature Amazon claims it needs the data for is the Kindle’s “Whispersync” functionality that allows for a reader to sync their exact place in a book between different devices, along with notes, highlights, and bookmarks. By tracking when you turn pages and which books you’re reading, Amazon says it can properly track where you are in a book and keep that data in sync. Amazon also says it uses the specific data here to power its “Reading Insights” features for tracking reading goals and celebrating milestones (sort of like fitness tracking, but for reading).

A more compelling answer is that Amazon uses insights from the data it collects to improve the Kindle software as a whole. “For example, we noticed that readers were tapping pages backwards and forwards in frequent succession, likely trying to flip back and forth between pages and reference different parts of a book. To address this, we have built several navigation features, including Page Flip and the ability for customers to continuously scroll through their book when reading.”

If this creeps you out, you can request that Amazon delete your personal data and then turn off Whispersync in your Kindle's settings, but you will lose the ability to keep your books or documents in sync between devices. 

Facebook Is Getting Formatting

Facebook has some new tricks. I just did a post in a group I'm in and saw a pilcrow (backwards paragraph mark) beside my text. I hovered over it and got a submenu that offered H1, H2, bullet and numbered list, and quote formatting. Selecting text gives a bold and italic menu.

It only worked in the group, not in my newsfeed. Perhaps that will be rolling out later.

Microsoft Working To Help People with Disabilities

Microsoft has announced seven new projects aimed at helping people with different disabilities. Out of the seven, I'm particularly interested in two that should help people with visual problems.

• Massachusetts Eye and Ear, located in Boston, is developing a vision assistance app to aid individuals who are blind or have decreased vision. The app will provide the users with heightened location and navigation assistance.

• Researchers at University of California Berkley are also creating an app for the visually impaired. The app will provide users with audio descriptions regarding their surroundings.

I'm curious about the first item, considering that Microsoft no longer has a mobile platform for apps. Presumably it will run on Android and possibly IOS.

Why Google+ Failed

Google is notorious for killing off services that it perceives as not performing well. Earlier this year, they shut down Google+, their attempt at establishing a social network. (It will still be available under different branding to commercial GSuite customers).

A software engineer who worked on Google+, identified only as Talin, has written an article about why Google+ failed. His reasons include some basic architectural choices made at the beginning of the project as well as some that were specifically internal to Google and the way it runs projects.

I used Google+ at the TMX and hated it. The interface was clunky, wasteful of screen space, and lacked basic features (being able to see the date of posts and sort them by criteria like date or user) that would have made managing large volumes of posts much easier. I used bulletin board services in the early 1990s that were easier to use and more sophisticated.

I'm not surprised it failed and this article gives some insight into why it was doomed from the start.

How to Automate Google Sheets with Macros

I've been using Google Sheets in preference to Microsoft Excel for some personal files. For what I need, the simplicity of Google Sheets compared to Excel makes it the better choice. But I have one spreadsheet that I was considering using Excel for. I want hide a bunch of columns in an export file from LibraryThing and I would have to do it every time I create a new export file. So I was going to try to write an Excel macro, which I have not done before. (I know how to write Word macros, but have never done it in Excel).

However, it turns out that Google Sheets has a macro recorder, which I didn't know before reading this article.

When you record a macro in Google Sheets, it automatically creates an Apps Script with all the code to replicate your actions for you. This means you can create complex macros without knowing how to write code. The next time you run it, Sheets will do everything you did when you recorded the macro. Essentially, you’re teaching Google Sheets how to manipulate a document to your liking with a single command.

If I needed to do anything complex with a spreadsheet macro, I probably would use Excel. I'm much more comfortable with Microsoft's VBA than Google's AppScript. But it's nice to have the recording capability in Sheets to automate simple tasks.

Now, if Google would give us that capability in Docs, I'd be much more inclined to use Docs instead of Word.

Useful Chrome Extensions for Web Developers

Google Chrome's extensions are one of its most useful features. If you are doing web development, there are a plethora of extensions that can make your life easier. Hongkiat.com has compiled a list of more than 30 extensions that you might want to take a look at.

More than a few of these should be useful to any technical writers producing online documentation with tools like RoboHelp or WebWorks ePublisher. I would look at Web Developer and CSS Viewer to start.

Build Your Own Hackintosh

It is possible to convert a Windows-based PC into a computer that can run Apple's MacOS, what people call a Hackintosh. However, it's not a process for the faint of heart or technically inexperienced.

On Motherboard, Ernie Smith has a (really) long and (really, really) technical article that explains what you'll need and what you have to do.

I can speak from experience here because I did all the hard work myself already. As frustrated by the keyboard and the price as by the fact that nothing was upgradeable on the current generation of MacBook Pros, I went on this journey myself a year ago—and made it out on the other side much more knowledgeable about why MacOS is a great, quite flexible operating system, often (and unfortunately) placed in a not-so-perfect machine. I put in the time, offered the occasional helping hand on the forums, did a bit of research on the culture of Hackintosh, and gained a great appreciation for the process.

I’ve been using a Hackintosh laptop as a daily driver for a year. Now, I’m sharing my insights here.

Why am I posting this, when there is no chance that I am ever going to try it? (I haven't even installed Linux on my PC). Because it's a very clear, well written piece of technical documentation.