Featured Links - July 29, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. This post is (mostly) politics-free.

A farm north of Oshawa

• I started using NotebookLM with Microsoft Word and I’m not going back. I could have used this in my last job. 
• The Painter of the Right. "Thomas Kinkade’s paintings show conservatives a world they have already won." Unfortunately, the documentary mentioned in the article doesn't appear to be available for streaming. 
• Remembering Descent, the once-popular, fully 3D 6DOF shooter. "Descent is a big part of gaming history, but not many people talk about it." 
• The death of the projection booth. "As movie theatres adapt new technology for screenings, the art of feeding film through a projector is fading to black."
• 12 Fresh Tomato Pasta Recipes We Can’t Stop Making. Our garden looks like it will produce a bumper crop of tomatoes this year, so I'm looking forward to trying some of these recipes.
• I took my e-book library back from Amazon with this self-hosted app. "BookLore turns ebook chaos into a modern, streamlined library you control completely." I might try this. I'm finding the Kindle app on my iPad Mini almost unusable for managing my books because the Collections view won't show a collection's contents in a list format. 
• Social media is dead – here’s what comes next. "A new information ecosystem is on the rise, featuring closer connections, cosy media and worker-owned websites, writes Annalee Newitz."
• Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97. "A mathematician by training, he acquired a devoted following with songs that set sardonic lyrics to music that was often maddeningly cheerful." Noted with sadness. 

Featured Links - June 9, 2025

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

Wildfire smoke in Toronto

• Some of the coolest ways Unreal Engine is being used in and outside of gaming. "Electric vehicles and performance-capture and Star Wars, oh my!"
• Inventing the Renaissance: Ada Palmer. "A fun conversation about history." A conversation between Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman and historian and author Ada Palmer.
• Scientists stunned by dramatic new behavior in Arctic predators: 'Neither he nor I had any idea of what was coming'. "The relationship between the snowshoe hare and the Canada lynx is a fascinating natural cycle that's been studied for decades. Now, advances in technology are revealing new passages in this ancient story. According to Mongabay, that story is also changing — and both human activity and our shifting environment may be playing a significant role."
• Why Bell Labs Worked. "Why Bell Labs worked so well, and could innovate so much, while today’s innovation, in spite of the huge private funding, goes in hype-and-fizzle cycles that leave relatively little behind, is a question I’ve been asking myself a lot in the past years. And I think that the author of this article has hit the nail on its head on most of the reasons - but he didn’t take the last step in identifying the root cause." And of course, the Bell Labs building is one of the key sets in Serverance.
• ‘My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six’: Alan Alda on childhood, marriage and 60 years of stardom. "Best known as Hawkeye in the TV series M*A*S*H, the 89-year-old actor, director and writer has another hit on his hands with a revamp of his 1981 movie The Four Seasons. He talks about his Parkinson’s disease, Woody Allen – and what he really thinks of Donald Trump."
• The Essential Terry Pratchett. "The prolific fantasy author, best known for his Discworld series, infused his writing with empathy and humor. Here’s where to start."
• What I’m learning from MAHA. "And why public health needs to catch up with the curiosity-driven movement." As a former technical writer, what I found interesting was the importance of good communication.
• You should use these 10 personal safety features on your Pixel phone (before it's too late). "Keep your data and physical safety protected with just a few taps on your Pixel phone. Here's how, and why they work." An important article if you have a Pixel phone.
• Breakthrough in search for HIV cure leaves researchers ‘overwhelmed’. "Exclusive: Melbourne team demonstrates way to make the virus visible within white blood cells, paving the way to fully clear it from the body."
• Expect a long summer of wildfire smoke for North America. "Fire danger is increasing as the climate warms, drying out forests." Toronto is seeing high levels of smoke already. See the picture on last Friday's post. 
• These stunning photos show how nature came back after the world’s largest dam removal project. "Four dams and three large reservoirs were removed from the Klamath River in a project that finished last year—and acres of native wildflowers are now in bloom along the river’s edge."
• On Tyranny free resources. "To use and to share, now or any time," From historian Timothy Synder. 
• Remembering the lost father of American science fiction – and his Scottish roots. "Robert Duncan Milne was an astonishingly prescient pioneer of science fiction who published over 60 stories in the late 19th century. Yet hardly anyone knows his name or how he influenced other leading lights in the early days of the genre." I had not heard of him until seeing this article.

Featured Links - May 12, 2025

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

Garlic growing at the Crooked Creek Garden Centre

• The New Pope: Who is "Pope Leo XIV" And Why A US Born Progressive Pope Matters in the Age of MAGA. "US Born Cardinal Robert Prevost is now Pope Leo XIV and he's no fan of Trump's America."
• Habemus Papam Americanum. "The elevation of an American-born cardinal to head the Catholic Church carries significant political meaning.."
• Ontario reports nearly 200 new measles cases as virus spreads across Canada. "Public Health Ontario reports 101 hospitalizations, including 75 children." This was entirely preventable. 
• Russia’s coming summer offensive could be deadliest of the entire war. "In the coming months, Russia is hoping to build on more than a year of gradual advances to achieve breakthroughs on the eastern front, while Ukraine aims to demonstrate to the country’s partners that it is capable of stopping Putin’s war machine and holding the line."
• Satellites Tracked a Volcano’s Secret Collapse for 12 Years – Then It Sparked a Killer Wave. "In 2018, the Anak Krakatau volcano in Indonesia collapsed catastrophically, generating a deadly tsunami. Now, researchers reveal that the volcano’s flank had been slowly slipping for years—an invisible danger detectable through satellite radar long before disaster struck."
• New theory suggests gravity is not a fundamental force. "A new theory proposes gravity isn’t a fundamental force but emerges from quantum electromagnetic interactions, potentially reshaping our view of spacetime itself."
• “Long COVID Mode”: Seeing the crisis through games. "Games are surprisingly useful communication tools in a world in denial about COVID-19 and Long COVID."
• Loss and Degradation of NOAA Sea Ice and Glacier data. "A very short post on breaking news that will almost certainly impact Alaska and Arctic Climate science and the lives, livelihoods and economics of people."

Featured Links - February 10, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. After last week's blast of political stories, this week's articles are mostly politics-free. 

A winter farm

• The Batbible. The series bible for DC's Batman comics, written by Dennis O'Neil and updated by Scott Petersen. 
• Why Kodak is ‘Cracking Down’ on Respooled Motion Picture Film. "This week, Reflx Lab announced that it would soon no longer be able to offer some of its respooled 35mm motion picture stock because Kodak is more strictly “crack[ing] down” on respoolers. So, why is Kodak forfeiting the extra money made by selling to brands like Reflx Lab?"
• When Doctors With A.I. Are Outperformed by A.I. Alone. "A series of recent studies compared the performance of doctors with A.I. versus A.I. alone, spanning medical scans, diagnostic accuracy, and management reasoning. Surprisingly, in many cases, A.I. systems working independently performed better than when combined with physician input." 
• The rise of ‘influencer voice’: Why this TikTok creator accent is taking over the internet and maybe the world. "Was that a question? Online platforms have long influenced how we speak. Now a new generation of TikTok creators are fueling the latest variant."
• Video Game History Foundation to release scans of 1,500 vintage gaming magazines. "The VGHF's digital archive will be fully searchable, allowing researchers and enthusiasts to track the first mentions of influential games, developers, and gaming concepts."
• An Exoplanet Menagerie for SciFi Writers. "What would it be like to stand on an alien planet? Here's a quick tour of recent discoveries."
• NASA’s Historic Asteroid Sample Holds Clues to Life’s Origins. "The discovery is a capstone achievement for NASA, which went to great lengths to secure and deliver asteroid samples from asteroid Bennu in 2020."
• In Seattle, a Convergence of 5,444 Mathematical Minds (gift link). "Participants at this year’s Joint Mathematics Meetings explored everything from the role of A.I. to the hyperbolic design of a patchwork denim skirt."
• SpaceX has reshaped the landscape around Boca Chica, Texas. "The Starbase rocket testing facility is permanently changing the landscape of southern Texas."
• Why North England is poor. Some of the reasons discussed in this article would also apply to Northern Ontario.
• American Medical Association YouTube channel. Now that the CDC isn't doing updates about infectious diseases, the AMA has stepped up. 

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. 

 

Featured Links - November 18, 2024

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

The marina waiting for winter

How to Stay Covid Safe When in Hospital. "A guide to navigating the risk of hospital acquired Covid - as well as how to manage overall risk of nosocomial infections and hospital derived complications." Reading this article may save your life.

Civil rights icon Ruby Bridges Hall discusses Norman Rockwell's famous painting. "Ruby Bridges became a civil rights icon when she was 6. Yet she didn't realize it for decades. The world knows her as the little girl in Norman Rockwell's famous 1963 painting, The Problem We All Live With, a black child being escorted to a white New Orleans school by federal marshals."

What Is RSS? If you aren't using an RSS reader, you're online life is a lot more complicated than it needs to be. I use Feedly and would have a hard time living without it.

In Memoriam: Thomas E. Kurtz, 1928–2024. Kurtz was the co-inventor of BASIC, arguably the most influential computer language. It was the second one I learned, after encountering FORTRAN in university.

Half-Life 2 remaster drops; no word on Half-Life 3. "Half-Life 2 RTX, a remaster of the original game featuring all kinds of fancy, cutting-edge graphics tech, has been revealed in full force and looks absolutely beautiful." I can't wait to play this! It's too bad there's no release date yet.

Trump Claims a Mandate, But He’s Wrong And It Will Cost Him. "Trump is already overreaching, giving Democrats a clear opening."

The Ghosts of John Tanton. "Today’s contentious immigration debate is the construct of one man’s effort to halt overpopulation, brace for climate change and preserve “European” culture. Now climate change is amplifying environmental concerns that have always run through the white supremacy and the anti-immigration movements. Experts warn that extremists who seize on global warming to justify violence are part of a far right trend to reclaim environmentalism as their own."

Featured Links - August 26, 2024

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

The east marina

• They don't make readers like they used to. Author Charles Stross on how culture, readers, and fandom, have changed over the last 50 years. (Charlie's blog may take a while to load but it's worth the wait). 
• Scientists Discover “Spatial Grammar” in DNA: Breakthrough Could Rewrite Genetics Textbooks. "The research could reshape scientists’ understanding of gene regulation and how genetic variations may influence gene expression in development or disease."
• Going Medieval. "Medieval History, Pop Culture, Swearing." A blog from author Elanor Janega. 
• The surprising science of coffee and its effect on both body and mind (archive.ph link). "The latest research on caffeine reveals why coffee and decaf can be so good for your health, but energy drinks can be lethal."
• Open Source Game Clones. "This site tries to gather open-source or source-available remakes of great old games in one place. "
• How Costco Hacked the American Shopping Psyche. "More than 100 million people visit the retailer for their groceries — and gas and TVs and gold bars and pet coffins — but saving money may not be the only motive." We shop at Costco and would find it very hard to do without it.
• That time Roosevelt vacationed in northern Ontario. "History enthusiast Jason Marcon brings us back to Roosevelt’s fishing trip in this part of the province at the height of WWII." Despite growing up in northern Ontario, I never heard of this. It would have made a wonderful history class in high school. 
• Inside Boeing’s factory lapses that led to the Alaska Air blowout. A major piece of journalism from the Seattle Times. Seriously good reporting on an important topic.

Featured Links - July 2, 2024

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

Summer flowers

•  How to trim a video on Windows 11 or Windows 10. "Windows has a hidden video editor that will let you trim videos — no Clipchamp necessary." I didn't know the Photos app could edit video. 
• Pollution From Epic Ohio Train Wreck Put 110 Million Americans at Risk. "A new study found traces of hazardous chemicals from the East Palestine disaster in 16 U.S. states." And probably a lot of Ontario, too. 
• Study: Scribes in ancient Egypt had really poor posture as they worked. "There were degenerative joint changes in the spines, shoulders, knees, hips, and ankles."
• New study reveals comet airburst evidence from 12,800 years ago. "Researchers continue to expand the case for the Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis. The idea proposes that a fragmented comet smashed into the Earth's atmosphere 12,800 years ago, causing a widespread climatic shift that, among other things, led to the abrupt reversal of the Earth's warming trend and into an anomalous near-glacial period called the Younger Dryas."
• The Insurance Apocalypse Conversation America Won't Have. "A predictable disaster unfolds apace."
• Last Dangerous Visions Table of Contents. As well as the TOC for the book to be published in October, the article shows which stories were in Ellison's planned version as of 1979. 
• Exploring the WordStar file format. "As an early entry in word processing, WordStar’s file format is quite simple." This article might be useful if you still have some WordStar files tucked away in the dark corners of your hard drive. It was the first word processor I used, but I switched to WordStar 2000 and then Microsoft Word for DOS. 
• What everyone gets wrong about the 2015 Ashley Madison scandal. "Nine years after hackers targeted Ashley Madison, the dating site for wannabe adulterers, many people still don't grasp what was truly chilling about the scandal, says Annalee Newitz." She reported on the original hack in 2015.
• Decades later, John Romero looks back at the birth of the first-person shooter. 'Id Software co-founder talks to Ars about everything from Catacomb 3-D to "boomer shooters."'
• To Ban or Not to Ban? When the Issue is Masks, There’s Really No Question. "Mask bans are ableist, racist, and likely unconstitutional. As enforced, they almost surely will violate the Americans with Disabilities Act on a regular basis; the text of the North Carolina ban bill that says, in effect, “not meaning to violate the ADA,” is ludicrous in the face of how the bill will surely be implemented."

Featured Links - June 10, 2024

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

The hydro marsh from Alex Robertson park

• 10 ways to turn off Windows’ worst ads. "Windows will let you use your PC in relative peace. You just have to flip the right switches." I would say that not using Edge is one of the best ways of beating the ads. Don't try to clean it up; just don't use it.
• High fidelity. "What makes an adaptation work well?" A good discussion of adaptations of both books and games.
• Here comes the sun(screen). "Nuances in effectiveness, safety, and more."
• Excel gets Regular Expression functions. "Excel 365 is getting new functions that bring the power of Regular Expressions (RegEx) into spreadsheets.  It’s HUGE news and a big step forward for Excel." I used regular expressions frequently when I was working in Word and they are indeed useful, especially for complex searches. 
• Scientists map one of Earth’s top hazards in the Pacific Northwest (gift link). "A catastrophic earthquake and tsunami will one day hit the Pacific Northwest as tectonic plates slip at the Cascadia subduction zone."
• Oliver Nelson: The Blues and the Abstract Truth. An appreciation of a jazz classic from a master composer and arranger. As much as I like this album, I think his arranging on the two Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith collaborations is his best work.
• I finally tried the Meta AI in my Ray-Ban smart glasses thanks to an accidental UK launch – and it's by far the best AI wearable. 'Look and Ask' is flawed, but surprisingly useful" If they keep improving these, I might consider it in a couple of years. It could be genuinely useful for people like me with low vision. 
• Colorado’s Bold New Approach to Highways — Not Building Them. "The state has made it harder to widen highways, and transportation officials are turning their eyes to transit." Ontario, and its highway-crazy premier, could learn something from Colorado.
• Smartphone Cameras Owe Their Power to Astronomy. "The next time you snap a selfie, consider thanking an astronomer for your phone’s camera."

Featued Links - December 18, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. It's a longer list than usual this week because I won't be posting next week. 

Birds in the hydro marsh

New Mind-Reading "BrainGPT" Turns Thoughts Into Text On Screen. "It offers new hope to people unable to communicate in other ways." I can see some dystopian uses for this technology: 'Strap him in and put the cap on his head. We'll find out what he really thinks.'

VIV Games Saves the World. "Win the game and save nature -- raise funds to save the Rainforest with VIV." An interesting approach to gaming and doing good things in the real world. See more about it from Karl Schroeder. 

Bill C-18 is Dead, Long Live Bill C-18: Government Rewrites Online News Act With Final Regulations. "The combined effect of this regulation should be obvious: excluding some smaller and ethnic outlets altogether while reserving most of the remaining money for larger entities such as Torstar or Postmedia who employ more journalist-adjacent personnel. I suspect many of the smaller players could see this coming, but they’ve been tossed under the bus in the effort to send more money to bigger outlets who stood to lose the most from Bill C-18 (and who incidentally lobbied the most for the legislation)." This will be a long-term disaster. 

When the New York Times lost its way. "America’s media should do more to equip readers to think for themselves." Meanwhile in the United States ..."

Doom’s creators reminisce about “as close to a perfect game as anything we made”. 'In 30th anniversary stream, Carmack and Romero recall a game dev "perfect storm."'

‘It’s all gone’: CAR-T therapy forces autoimmune diseases into remission. "Engineered immune cells, most commonly used to treat cancers, show their power against lupus and other immune disorders."

Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators,with Public Policy Recommendations. An examination of some of the limitations of the "gray goo problem" and how it could be combated.

55 Books Scientific American Recommends in 2023. "The best fiction, nonfiction, history and sci-fi books Scientific American staff read in 2023."

The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now. "As conservative states wage total culture war, college-educated workers—physicians, teachers, professors, and more—are packing their bags."

Diplomatic, geopolitical and economic consequences of an impending asteroid threat. "The Planetary Defense Conference 2023 addressed an asteroid threat scenario as difficult to confront. This article examines potential actions of relevant stakeholders, including States, the International Asteroid Warning Network, the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group, Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and the United Nations Security Council." 

Anti-LGBTQ+ Chill in Saskatchewan’s Unseasonably Warm Winter. "But hope still warms my heart." The poison from the south is seeping over the border. 

The harm caused by dehumanising language. "Sticks and stones famously break bones – but words can also hurt you. It is there in the charged rhetoric from both sides of the conflict unfolding in Israel and Gaza, just as it can be found in the language of clashes around the world: old tropes and name-calling that seek to paint whole groups of people as somehow less than human."

Canadian scientists are still being muzzled, and that risks undermining climate policy. 'Environmental scientists in Canada continue to be stifled in their ability to conduct and communicate their research. Interference in science, also referred to as “muzzling,” was a well-documented concern during the Conservative government of the early 2010’s, when it gripped the collective consciousness of Canadian federal public sector scientists. Our research sheds light on a broader understanding of the recent interference in environmental sciences in Canada.'

 

Sony Accessible Controller a Great Idea with One Flaw

I've never been a console gamer. I'm just too nearsighted and sitting on the floor three feet from the TV isn't my idea of fun. We've had consoles in the house for the kids, both Nintendo and X-Box, but I've never used them. 

I'm still interested in the technology though. My son plays games on his PC using an X-Box controller and that's something I could get into; depending on the game, it can make more sense than using a mouse and keyboard.

So I was interested to listen to the discussion of video game accessibility on the CBC last week. The associated article shows the new Sony accessibility controller for the PS5. It's highly customizable and is designed to handle a wide range of abilities. It's something that I'd consider using, but it won't work on a PC, even on games that have been designed for both the PS5 and PCs. I think that's a major an unfortunate oversight on Sony's part. 

Should I decide that I really want to try a controller on my PC, there's always the X-Box adaptive controller. 

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). 

Featured Links - March 6, 2023

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

McGee relaxing

• Yes, everything in physics is completely made up – that’s the whole point. "A physicist's task is to constantly create equations that keep up with our observations of physical phenomena."
• High-resolution image reconstruction with latent diffusion models from human brain activity. "We demonstrate that our simple framework can reconstruct high-resolution images from brain activity with high semantic fidelity, without the need for training or fine-tuning of complex deep generative models."
• The gray swan: model-based assessment of the risk of sudden failure of hybrid immunity to SARS-CoV-2. "Our findings suggest large jumps in viral evolution may cause failure of population immunity resulting in sudden increases in mortality. As a rise in mortality will only become apparent in the weeks following a wave of disease, reactive public health strategies will not be able to provide meaningful risk mitigation."
• Apparently the AI wants me dead. When science fiction writers are getting scared of AI, it's time to worry.
• We tested 43 old USB-C to USB-A cables. 1 was great. 10 were dangerous. "Here’s why you may want to destroy your entire collection of USB-C to USB-A cables."
• "The narrative had to be baked into the corridors": Marc Laidlaw on writing Half-Life. "Also yeah, he does regret posting that Episode 3 story."
• You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time. They aren't kidding; this is truly strange.
• Recent Submissions to the Oxford English Dictionary. A look about some terms used in printing and typography. My favourite word: "flong".

Featured Links - October 17, 2022

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

Fall colours

Building a better hurricane ‘cone of uncertainty’. "How can current ways of depicting uncertainty in hurricane forecasts be improved?"

Xbox’s Accessibility Showcase is such an important initiative. "Hosted by Canada's Steve Saylor, the second-annual event is an enlightening look at the importance of accessibility."

Firefox Relay gives you a burner phone number to give out online. "Relay's phone number masking can help protect your privacy."

The Ultimate Guide to Wondrous Independent Bookstores. "We think book havens are heaven." I would love to visit some of these.

Reading Freely. Yet another library caught in the sighs of the wacko right-wing Christian fascists. 

Space-Age Magus. " From beginning to end, experts saw through Buckminster Fuller’s ideas and theories. Why did so many people come under his spell?"

Microsoft takes AI image generation mainstream, strolling into ethics minefield. "Microsoft sidesteps AI-powered art debate, embraces image generation as a tool for creatives."

Featured Links - September 26, 2022

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

Fall flowers 

• The Big Bang should have made cracks in spacetime—why haven’t we found them? "Cosmic strings' greatest power? Their ability to confound physicists." Me too. I have never felt comfortable with string theory. Maybe we haven't found them because they're not there?
• GTA VI hack emphasizes how the video game industry is far too secretive. "Companies routinely treat game development like some nebulous process, and it only adds to the general lack of knowledge regarding how it all works."
• This miracle plant was eaten into extinction 2,000 years ago—or was it? "Silphion cured diseases and made food tasty, but Emperor Nero allegedly consumed the last stalk. Now, a Turkish researcher thinks he’s found a botanical survivor."
• Shock! Horror! It's a Shaggy Dog Story. "The September update to the OED features revised entries for SHOCK and related words, including an intriguing "group of words for dogs dating back to the early modern period."
• Astronomers unveil new—and puzzling—features of mysterious fast radio bursts. "Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long cosmic explosions that each produce the energy equivalent to the sun's annual output. More than 15 years after the deep-space pulses of electromagnetic radio waves were first discovered, their perplexing nature continues to surprise scientists—and newly published research only deepens the mystery surrounding them."
• Long COVID Experts and Advocates Say the Government Is Ignoring 'the Greatest Mass-Disabling Event in Human History'. I am seeing more articles about Long COVID, so maybe people are finally starting to take notice.
• Stick A Note — It’s life-changing! No, really … life-changing. A sticky note program that might actually be useful. 

Featured Links - April 19, 2022

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

• The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books. "Increasingly, books are something that libraries do not own but borrow from the corporations that do." I have recently reserved a couple of ebooks from the library and found that yes, I can read a book on my phone or tablet. Although I prefer reading on my Kindle, the Libby app doesn't work with Kindles in Canada.
• Why William Gibson Is a Literary Genius. 'Forty years after his breakout story, “Johnny Mnemonic,” the father of cyberpunk remains one of the best writers around.'
• Feds Face Tough Water Choices in Parched West. "The government is trying to decide whether or not to cut water deliveries to Lake Mead to keep Lake Powell's levels up."
• NASA to roll back its mega rocket after failing to complete countdown test. "NASA has options for what to do next, but all will involve schedule delays." The delay could stretch into the fall.
• Study ties solar variability to onset of decadal La Niña events. "Scientists use 22-year solar clock to find an elusive correlation."
• ‘It’s Super Spectacular.’ See How the Tonga Volcano Unleashed a Once-in-a-Century Shockwave. "A new simulation gives a detailed look at a shockwave that circled the planet for days."
• NFTs Are Here to Ruin D&D. "Gripnr wants to put Dungeons & Dragons on the blockchain. Players say real money will ruin the fun."
• 10 Amazon Kindle tips and tricks guaranteed to make you a pro user. I've had a Kindle for more than a decade and there were a few tips in this article I didn't know about.

Featured Links - March 14, 2022

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. No politics or COVID-19 this week. 

• The 50 Best Fantasy Books of All Time. "Fantasy is the oldest genre of literature, but its best release ever landed just six years ago." It's an interesting list, but it ignores many major works written before 1985.
• Ursula K. Le Guin in My Own Time. "How Amal El-Mohtar Fell Completely in Love."
• Netflix Has Hidden Streaming Settings You've Probably Never Tried. "Even if you stream TV on a daily basis, chances are you haven't discovered all the tricks Netflix has to offer."
• A History of Indie Folk in 45 Albums. There are very few albums on this list that I would consider "folk music", but there's still a lot of good music to check out.
• Mass Effect 3's Ending Changed Fandom Forever. "A decade later, the final 10 minutes of BioWare's space RPG have left a ripple throughout pop culture."
• Pixar Employees Make Stunning Accusation: Disney Censors The Studio’s Films. One of the many reasons I will not subscribe to Disney+. 

Featured Links - February 28, 2022

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

We Canadians Are Hardy Sorts

• ADL Finds 1,100 People Donated to Both Canada Freedom Convoy and Jan. 6 Demonstration. I am not surprised. Canada is in the sights of the US right wing.
• A supernova could light up the Milky Way at any time. Astronomers will be watching. "When a star from our Galactic neighbourhood explodes, it could outshine the Moon. Researchers are racing to get ready for the fireworks."
• Janis Ian continues making profound statements on final album, ‘The Light at the End of the Line’. "Janis Ian penned her first hit at age 14 with “Society’s Child,” a song about racial injustice, and has been creating poetic, well-crafted songs for more than five decades since then. In and out of the limelight, her creative spark has endured. And now she has shared her truths at 70 in her latest and, she says, last solo studio album, the bold and nuanced The Light at the End of the Line."
• Environmental consequences of nuclear war. "A regional war involving 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons would pose a worldwide threat due to ozone destruction and climate change. A superpower confrontation with a few thousand weapons would be catastrophic." Just a reminder.
• Spawn of Wordle: five of the best riffs on the hit word game. "Josh Wardle’s viral puzzle game has inspired a horde of imitators, based on anything from geography to Taylor Swift fandom."
• The Russian invasion of Ukraine will have myriad impacts on spaceflight. "If you block cooperation with us, who will save the ISS from an unguided de-orbit?"
• Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick's Abbey Road track-by-track interview: "For the first time, John and Paul knew that George had risen to their level". "A classic 2014 interview with the band's late chief engineer – The musical telepathy between them was mind-boggling."

Featured Links - February 14. 2022

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

• Microsoft’s Small Step to Disable Macros Is a Huge Win for Security. "Word and Excel files you download from the internet just got a whole lot safer."
• Enjoy this engineering analysis and speculation about San Francisco's ever more leaning Millennium Tower. "The analysis is presented in a very straightforward and easy-to-understand manner. The mistakes in judgment are believable."
• Scientists raise alarm over ‘dangerously fast’ growth in atmospheric methane. "As global methane concentrations soar over 1,900 parts per billion, some researchers fear that global warming itself is behind the rapid rise."
• The Best British Crime Drama Series. British crime dramas are our favourite TV shows.
• What's the Best Wordle Starting Word. If you are addicted to Wordle, you need to read this.
• Another launch tower built for the SLS rocket has “encountered some challenges”. "NASA has issued a "second letter of concern" to Bechtel."
• S.F.’s Hyde Street Studios, where the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane made rock history, granted legacy status. Some of my favourite music was recorded there. 
• Why Musk’s biggest space gamble is freaking out his competitors. "Starship is threatening NASA’s moon contractors, which are watching its progress with a mix of awe and horror." My reaction was awe and hope.

Happy 30th, Commander Keen

Today marks the 30th anniversary of one of the earliest computer games that I really got into, Commander Keen. I didn't really get into it until after my kids were born and I was looking for something that they could enjoy, but I definitely spent too much time jumping around in it. 

By modern standards, it's pretty primitive, but games like this still have their charms. If you want to play it, you can still get it on Steam and run it through an emulator.