Featured Links - November 11, 2025

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

Model of the Edmund Fitzgerald at the Shipwreck Museum in Michigan

A Ghost Fleet of Tankers Is Keeping Russia’s War Machine Afloat. The West Can’t Stop It. "How Putin outsmarted the oil sanctions."

Still Haunted by the Edmund Fitzgerald. "50th Anniversary Tribute". Seems appropriate that we are getting our first winter storm on Sunday. 

 Google Docs Gets Smarter. "Audio narration, AI help, and 40 new templates." Many of the new features require an AI-enabled plan, but there are some, like document tabs, that could be quite useful for longer documents.

The Florentine Diamond Resurfaces After 100 Years in Hiding. "A legendary jewel of the Hapsburg dynasty — not seen since 1919 and thought lost, stolen or recut — has actually been safe in a Canadian bank for decades." This is quite a story. 

‘Frankenstein’: How Close Is Guillermo del Toro’s Film to the Original Novel? A Mary Shelley Expert Answers Our Burning Questions. "So, just how well does del Toro’s version stack up against Mary Shelley’s original novel? We asked Julie Carlson, an English professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and an expert on the British Romantic period and the Wollstonecraft-Godwin-Shelley family, for her thoughts." I enjoyed the movie, though I did find it hard to watch in places (many very dark scenes). 

Find cancer clinical trials in Canada. "Helping people living with cancer and healthcare professionals navigate cancer trial options." It's good that Canadians have an alternative to looking in the US for information. 

New laser treatment could stop blindness before it starts. "A new laser treatment may halt dry macular degeneration by using controlled warmth to trigger the eye’s self-repair mechanisms." Of course, it will be years before this becomes widespread, assuming it works. 

I’m never going back to Microsoft Word after mastering this open-source self-hosted tool. "Enter HedgeDoc, the open-source web-based collaborative markdown editor that has changed my writing setup. By running it on my server, I achieved true data independence that Word could never offer." Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have jumped on this, but at this point in my life, I just can't be bothered.

Featured Links - October 29, 2025

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

Autumn colours in the park

• Catalog of Dark Patterns. "Discover a variety of dark pattern examples, sorted by category, to better understand deceptive design practices."
• Electronic Eye Implant Restored Vision in Patients With Age-Related Macular Degeneration. '"The device could be a boon for millions with vision loss from advancing age." They still have a long way to go before this technology becomes widely available and effective. 
• I tried using NotebookLM as a personal journal (and it worked better than I expected). If you keep a personal journal, this might be worth looking at. 
• This free video editor replaced everything I used to pay for in Adobe Premiere. "Here’s why Lightworks is a solid Adobe contender…" I don't do enough video editing to need anything more than Clipchamp but I do need to find an alternative to Photoshop. 
• GlassWorm: First Self-Propagating Worm Using Invisible Code Hits OpenVSX Marketplace. " It's using stealth techniques we've never seen before in the wild - invisible Unicode characters that make malicious code literally disappear from code editors. Combine that with blockchain-based C2 infrastructure that can't be taken down, Google Calendar as a backup command server, and a full remote access trojan that turns every infected developer into a criminal proxy node." This is a security nightmare.
• OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws. "In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." 
• The Pivot. "I'm calling this the pivotal year of our times, just as 1968 was the pivotal year of the post-1945 system, for a number of reasons." A thought-provoking article from SF author, Charlie Stross. 
• 5 undeniable, truthful facts about dark matter. "Dark matter has never been directly detected, but the astronomical evidence for its existence is overwhelming. Here’s what to know." This is the most convincing article I've seen yet for the existence of dark matter as opposed to other theories. 

Featured Links - October 14, 2025

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

A grey Lake Ontario

• Toronto vs Chicago: Transit Moving Masses Through The Metropolises. On the map, it looks like Chicago has a more extensive transit network than Toronto, but the reality on the street is very different. 
• A digital dark age? The people rescuing forgotten knowledge trapped on old floppy disks. "From lectures by Stephen Hawking to the letters of British politician Neil Kinnock – it's a race against time to save the historical treasures locked away on old floppy disks." This was a real eye-opener and really interesting. 
• How can a blind photographer take such great photos? Find out here. As a photographer and a person with low vision, I found this both interesting and  inspiring.  
• The Village and the Stars. "Science Fiction, Greenwich Village, and the American Counterculture." An article by Robert Charles Wilson. 
• Regular Expressions, and AI. Using ChatGPT to help construct useful regex expressions is something that would have been a great timesaver in my last job. 
• Engineers create first artificial neurons that could directly communicate with living cells. "A team of engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has announced the creation of an artificial neuron with electrical functions that closely mirror those of biological ones."
• The Destruction in Gaza Is What the Future of AI Warfare Looks Like. "American tech companies have given highly consequential support to Israel's campaign."
• Another mid-M7 earthquake in the Drake Passage. "The third large earthquake to strike between South America and Antarctica this year." 
• Have We Reached a Space-Junk Tipping Point? "In some orbits, the Kessler syndrome is already underway." This is rather disquieting. 

Featured Links - March 10, 2025

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

Koerner Hall

• EFF creates a $20 device to detect cellular spying: Rayhunter. "Rayhunter monitors cell tower communications in real-time, alerting users when it spots suspicious activity like attempts to force phones onto less secure networks. When the device detects potential surveillance, it warns users to turn off their phones and saves detailed logs that can be analyzed by security experts."
• A new Android feature is scanning your photos for 'sensitive content' - how to stop it. "Google didn't tell Android users much about Android System SafetyCore before it hit their phones, and people are unhappy. Fortunately, you're not stuck with it." I can uninstall it, but it will probably come back with the next system update. Google should make use of this p
• New study reveals potential cause of a ‘drought’ in violent EF5 tornadoes. "A quirky aspect of the way we measure twisters helps explain why there hasn’t been a top-tier-rated tornado in 12 years." The article also discusses the impact of climate change on tornadoes. 
  
• 'In that moment, that was everything to me': Patient describes joy of regaining vision in 1 eye after new stem cell therapy. "A first-of-its-kind stem cell transplant has changed the life of a man who was left blind in one eye following a firework accident."
• Cory Doctorow writes science fiction to come to terms with his tech anxiety. "The Canadian journalist and writer discussed his latest novel Picks & Shovels on Bookends with Mattea Roach." If you haven't ready any of Cory's Martin Hench thrillers, you are in for a treat.
• Butter and Plant-Based Oils Intake and Mortality. "In this cohort study of 221 054 adults from 3 large cohorts, higher butter intake was associated with increased total and cancer mortality, while higher intake of plant-based oils was associated with lower total, cancer, and cardiovascular disease mortality."
• CyberPunk: How Black Women Are Hacking AI And Reprogramming The Future. "Artificial intelligence is running the world—whether we asked for it or not. It’s deciding who gets hired, who qualifies for a loan, even who gets flagged as a criminal. But let’s be real: AI has a bias problem, and that’s not by accident. When the people building the tech look the same, think the same, and move the same, the systems they create are just reflections of their worldviews. And that’s where Black women come in—not just to call it out, but to tear it down and rebuild it."
• Google AI Coding Tool Now Free, With 90x Copilot’s Output. "Google launches Gemini Code Assist for individuals, a free AI-coding assistant offering 90 times more code completions than GitHub Copilot."
• Long-term investors split with asset managers over climate risk. "Insurance groups and pension funds threaten to dump those ‘misaligned’ with retiree objectives."
  

Featured Links - March 3, 2025

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

A model train layout at the Ganarska Railway Modellers show

• Europe’s New AI Weather Model Is Faster, Smarter, and Free—Here’s What to Know. "The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has debuted its own forecast AI model on the heels of a cutting-edge Google model released in December."
• Serenity meow! "With the right love and understanding, cats and humans can live more happily together. New research is upending long-held behavioural theories about how to achieve that."
• Profound Architecture and Multidimensional Depth: Jorma Kaukonen on Phil Lesh. I'm reading Kaukonen's autobiography, Been So Long, now. I found it interesting that in the article he says the first time they played together was at the Grateful Dead's 11/20/1970 concert in Rochester, which was my first Grateful Dead concert. 
• Trump Is Letting Russell Vought Go Wild. "Vought's Project 2025 unitary executive theory has us headed toward a constitutional cliff." This is one of the scariest articles about the current situation that I've read recently, and I've read too many. Gilead rising, indeed. 
• Europe: Is the Force Awakening? "A potential superpower realizes that it can’t rely on America." I'm beginning to wonder if Canada should be seeking membership in the EU. We do have a common border with Denmark, after all. 
• Virology Mini-Review: Pandemic Risk Stemming From the Bovine H5N1 Outbreak: An account of the Knowns and Unknowns. "This is a lengthy, and well-written review and I highly recommend that you read it in its entirety.  While cattle-centric, it touches on other aspects, including spillover into cats, pigs, humans, and other species."
• Surgery implants tooth into eyeball to help blind patients see again. This souns completely bonkers but it works for certain types of corneal blindness.
• Now Introduced Right to Repair Legislation. "The legislation hasn't yet passed everywhere, but all 50 states introducing some form of right to repair legislation is a "tipping point” for the right to repair movement." This is good news.
• The biggest data breaches of 2025 — so far. "We’re barely a couple of months into 2025, but this year has already seen several data breaches affecting the personal information of millions of individuals, including everything from student records to phone data to sensitive health information."
• We Finally Know Why Ancient Roman Concrete Was So Durable. "The ancient Romans were masters of building and engineering, perhaps most famously represented by the aqueducts. And those still functional marvels rely on a unique construction material: pozzolanic concrete, a spectacularly durable concrete that gave Roman structures their incredible strength."
• Carl Zimmer: Air-Borne and the Big Miss With Covid. "One of the top science journalists of our time discusses his new book."
  
• Massive Supereruptions Might Not Trigger the Apocalypse, Just Decades of Chaos. "An ultra-powerful eruption 79,500 years ago may not have disrupted the climate as badly as feared, according to Earth scientists."

Smart Glasses for Macular Degneration

If you've read this blog for a while, you'll know that I am very nearsighted. One of the risks of high myopia is macular degeneration, which can result in losing your central field of vision. Since this has the highest resolution of any part of the eye, it results in losing the ability to read, watch television, or recognize faces.

At CES this year, BoingBoing reports that a small company called Solidddd demonstrated a new technology that might help to restore some vision to people suffering from macular degeneration. They are building smart glasses that project an array of 64 images onto the retina; your brain then combines them into a single, full field image. Initial trials seem to be promising and they hope to have a product release later this year.

I've embedded the video from the BoingBoing article below. It does seem promising, though still very preliminary.

It's possible that this might help with any kind of central vision loss. Given that the eye's peripheral vision is lower resolution than the macular area, it probably won't be as sharp as what you would see through an undamaged macula and  it will be limited by the resolution of the cameras they are using. 

I also don't know how computational requirements of their software. Will it run on glasses alone or will it require an attached unit for the computing and battery like Apple's VisionPro? (Which leads me to wonder if Apple could adapt the VisionPro to work like the Soliddd technology). 

Still, if it works, it will be a game change for people with central vision loss and I will be following this story closely. 

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 - 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 – February 20, 2023

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

Cat in a window

Cannabis Extract Shows "Remarkable" Ability To Kill Skin Cancer Cells. "The results are promising, but preliminary."

Jim Collins: Discovery of the First New Structural Class of Antibiotics in Decades, Using A.I. "Starting from >12,000 compounds to find, with explainability, new drugs effective vs methicillin-resistant Staph aureus (MRSA)"

Vaccine Confidence Falls as Belief in Health Misinformation Grows. "Americans have less confidence in vaccines to address a variety of illnesses than they did just a year or two ago, and more people accept misinformation about vaccines and Covid-19, according to the latest health survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania."

Truths, Untruths, and the Realm of Belief in Between: Misinformation & Propaganda in Science Fiction. "A science fiction author looks at how the genre examines the role of truth and mistruth in the genre."

Staring At A Red Light In The Morning Improves Worsening Eyesight, Study Shows. Staring at a deep red light for just three minutes can drastically restore declining eyesight, according to a new study in the journal Scientific Reports. Impressively, improvements from a single session of light exposure lasted for a whole week, although the treatment is only effective if administered in the morning.

Router Security. "This site focuses on the security of routers. This includes both configuration changes to make a router more secure, and, picking a router that is more secure out of the box. If you are interested in faster WiFi, there is one page on extending the range of a Wi-Fi network."

The real problem with Google's new Gemini Android assistant. "The real problem with Gemini as the Android assistant is that Google's forgotten why a phone assistant actually matters — and what we, as actual users in the real world, need from such a service." He's absolutely right and I'm not installing it on my phone until they fix it.

DOJ quietly removed Russian malware from routers in US homes and businesses. "Feds once again fix up compromised retail routers under court order."

Researchers reveal lost library of Charles Darwin for the first time. "For the first time since his death in 1882, Charles Darwin’s impressive library has been virtually reassembled to reveal the multitude of books, pamphlets and journals cited and read by the influential naturalist."

Featured Links – February 12, 2024

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

Ducks in the bay

• Do We Simply Not Care About Old People? In the last week of 2023 and the first two weeks of 2024 alone, 4,810 people 65 and older lost their lives to covid — a group that would fill more than 10 large airliners — according to data provided by the CDC. But the alarm that would attend plane crashes is notably absent. (During the same period, the flu killed an additional 1,201 seniors, and RSV killed 126.)
• 5 dark mode upgrades for your Windows 10 or 11 PC. "Microsoft is slowly making dark mode better on Windows, but these tips will give your dark mode a big upgrade today." I would have a hard time using my computer without dark mode. I second the recommendation in the article for using the Dark Reader extension. 
• Next-Generation Spaceplanes Are the Cutting-Edge Evolution of the Space Shuttle Dream. "Spaceplanes seemed out of favor when the Shuttle was retired in 2011. They now seem to be making a comeback."
• Moderately Advanced Aliens Could Easily Take Over A Milky Way-Like Galaxy, Simulations Show. "A new simulation has looked at how quickly a moderately advanced alien civilization would take to spread itself across a galaxy and the answer is not long at all, at least in relative cosmic terms. Even equipped with spaceships not much faster than our most advanced interplanetary probes, the whole ordeal could happen in just 1 billion years."
• Micromobility: An Urban Transportation Revolution. "E-bikes, E-motorcycles, E-scooters displacing oil use and improving urban living."
• Why physicists are rethinking the route to a theory of everything. "Physicists’ search for a theory that explains all reality in one framework appeared to have stalled. But now they are reinvigorating the hunt by exploring a wild landscape of abstract geometry."
• The Super Bowl will be watched by 100 million people. But not all of them will see the same game. "Two million Canadians and 13 million Americans live with colour blindness, and North American sports are behind on making their products accessible." Fortunately, I have normal colour vision, but I can understand how being colour blind would be a real problem for sports fans. 

Featured Links - December 4, 2023

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

A faded burning bush

• Towards an Optimal Diet. "In aggregate, several recent publications, two very popular books, and a new, large $189 million NIH clinical trial, may help to provide an objective basis for what we should eat to be and stay healthy."
• Google Rolls Out New Accessibility Features to Make Daily Tasks Easier. "New features in Maps, Search and Chrome are aimed at helping users with disabilities navigate their devices more easily."
• How ‘Skeuomorphism’ Is Making U.S. Roads More Deadly. "After you read this, you'll never look at a "frunk" the same way again." Trucks of that size should only be available for commercial use.
• Spirals inspire walking aids for people with disabilities. "Engineers design a special shoe that may improve gait and a skateboard that rocks and rolls." 
• The real AI fight. "Effective Accelerationists and Effective Altruists are both in vigorous agreement about something genuinely stupid."
• The Secret Language of Ships. "Signs and symbols on the sides of ships tell stories about an industry few outsiders understand."
• Our fragile moment: how lessons from Earth’s past can help us survive the climate crisis. "In this sweeping work of science and history, the renowned climate scientist and author of The New Climate War shows us the conditions on Earth that allowed humans not only to exist but thrive, and how they are imperiled if we veer off course."
• 'What I want are recovery narratives': CBC Radio host Gill Deacon on life with long COVID. "CBC Here & Now host is among the 10-15% of people who will get long COVID, research suggests." After suffering for months with long COVID symptoms, she had a blood test to confirm that she had had COVID-19 because her case was completely asymptomatic. 

The World's Myopia Epidemic

I've been nearsighted all my life so I tend to take it for granted. But I will agree that it's not a normal condition, in the sense that it's a departure from baseline health. And it is becoming more common, but until I read this article, I hadn't realized just how common. 

The article focuses (sorry, couldn't resist) on Taiwan, where more than half of children were myopic, and the efforts of one doctor to determine the cause and find a way to prevent it. It turns out that it's possible to reduce the incidence of myopia in children by having them spend more time outdoors and this has been determined to work. 

Myopia, or what we commonly call nearsightedness, happens when the eyeball gets too long—it deforms from soccer ball to American football—and then the eye focuses light not on the retina but slightly in front of it, making distant objects appear blurry. The longer the eyeball becomes, the worse vision gets. Ophthalmologists measure this distortion in diopters, which refer to the strength of the lens required to bring someone’s vision back to normal. Anything worse than minus 5 diopters is considered “high myopia”—somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of myopia diagnoses around the world are in this category. In China, up to 90 percent of teenagers and young adults are myopic. In the 1950s the figure was as low as 10 percent. A 2012 study in Seoul found that an astonishing 96.5 percent of 19-year-old men were nearsighted. Among high schoolers in Taiwan, it’s around 90 percent. In the US and Europe, myopia rates across all ages are well below 50 percent, but they’ve risen sharply in recent decades. It’s estimated that by 2050, half the world’s population will need glasses, contacts, or surgery to see across a room. High myopia is now the leading cause of blindness in Japan, China, and Taiwan.

If those trends continue, it’s likely that millions more people around the world will go blind much earlier in life than they—or the societies they live in—are prepared for. It’s a “ticking time bomb,” says Nicola Logan, an optometry professor at the UK’s Aston University. She wasn’t the only expert I talked to who used that phrase. Because so much of Taiwan’s population is already living life with myopia, the island nation has already glimpsed what could be coming for the rest of us. And in a rare confluence, the country may also be the best place to look for solutions.

Some Science Fictional Medical Advances

Reading medical news these days is becoming more and more like reading a science fiction novel. Here are some stories that definitely triggered my sensawunda*. 

• Hibernation for long space journeys has long been a trope of science fiction. Now, researchers have induced hibernation in rats, animals that do not normally hibernate. The technique uses non-invasive targeted ultrasound. 
• Man with paralysis walks naturally after brain, spine implants. "Dr. Grégoire Courtine and colleagues from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne developed and implanted a “brain-spine interface” that creates a direct neurological link between the brain and spinal cord. Implants in the brain track intentions for movement, which are wirelessly transferred to a processing unit that a person wears externally, like a backpack. The intentions are translated into commands that the processing unit sends back through the second implant to stimulate muscles. The research findings, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, outline successful outcomes for one study participant from the Netherlands."
• Scientists use AI to identify new antibiotic that could fight drug-resistant infections. "Using an artificial intelligence algorithm, researchers at MIT and McMaster University have identified a new antibiotic that can kill a type of bacteria that is responsible for many drug-resistant infections. If developed for use in patients, the drug could help to combat Acinetobacter baumannii, a species of bacteria that is often found in hospitals and can lead to pneumonia, meningitis, and other serious infections. The microbe is also a leading cause of infections in wounded soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan."
• Gene Therapy Gives Primates Young Eyes Again. "Last month, a team of scientists from Harvard Medical School and biotech company Life Biosciences announced preclinical data showing that a new approach was able to reprogram genetic markers to restore visual function in primates that had their eyes damaged with lasers. In essence, the team injected their eyes with special chemicals that can partially reprogram cells to have them return to a more youthful state."

*SFnal term meaning sense of wonder. 

Featured Links - May 8, 2023

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

Dragon boaters on the bay

• Starship II: A Reprise. A week after his original article, Lavie Ohana looks at the future of the Starship program and sees hard times ahead. 
• We May Finally Know How Our Eyesight Evolved, And It's Not From Our Branch of Life. "New research suggests some components of vertebrate vision may not have been shaped incrementally as their genes passed down family lines, but were 'stolen' from entirely different branches of life."
• Climate Change Is Making Baseball Worse. "Baseball players are hitting more home runs. Is it sheer talent, or warmer air?"
• Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart. "Tech companies have grown secretive about what they feed the AI. So The Washington Post set out to analyze one of these data sets to fully reveal the types of proprietary, personal, and often offensive websites that go into an AI’s training data." (Paywall free)
• News Minimalist uses ChatGPT to pick the five most significant news stories of the day. You can get a daily newsletter with article summaries. The choices appear to be reasonable.
• Ads, overlays and paywalls, oh my! How to get around the web’s worst annoyances (updated). "Dwight Silverman says: " During my brief stint at Forbes, I wrote a newsletter item and subsequent story on how to get around the web’s biggest annoyances – intrusive ads, overlays and paywalls. Since that May 2021 piece, I’ve found some new tools and strategies. This is an updated version. Content from the original Forbes article is included with permission.)"
• What Are Puberty Blockers, and How Do They Work? "Decades of data support the use and safety of puberty-pausing medications, which give transgender adolescents and their families time to weigh important medical decisions." Scientific American helping to fight transphobe disinformation.

Data Tools for Visually Impaired Scientists

Being visually impaired, I have a keen interest in tools that help people use computers in their work and daily life. I've been fortunate that so far I've been able to cope with just a magnifier and using a large monitor and the tools built into Windows. But what about people doing data analysis and having to cope with screens of data, often in graphic or tabular form?

Nature has published an article about tools to help visually impaired or blind scientists do data analysis that I found quite interesting. While I don't need anything more complex than bar graphs for my household accounts, I'm glad to see that people are thinking about this problem.

An online tool called SciA11y, developed by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) in Seattle, Washington, uses machine learning to extract the content and structure of a PDF (and other file formats, such as LaTeX) and re-render it in HTML, creating a table of contents containing links to tagged section headings that can be navigated with screen readers. AI2 has also built in functionality such as bidirectional navigation between in-line citations and their corresponding references in the bibliography, says Jonathan Bragg, who co-leads the project.

In a detailed survey3, six scientists with vision loss described how they frequently found themselves unable to access or read PDFs. One respondent mentioned that they encountered problems two-thirds of the time, and that they use at least six different approaches to read papers. “It was eye-opening to see the range of tools that people use when reading — and the struggles they have when those papers have not been formulated appropriately,” Bragg says.

Featured Links - January 9, 2023

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

Kayaking on the bay

• Our cell’s genes are rewired in MILD COVID. "Stunning data from Nature. White Cells (monocytes) switch gene expression from an established innate immune profile to a pro-clotting signature in COVID. We’re immunocompromised." This is scary and has huge implications for the long-term health of people who have been infected and the state of our healthcare systems.
• Leaked Jan. 6 Committee Report Exposes Twitter’s Post-Insurrection Chaos. "Company employees lashed out at leadership over an ad hoc content moderation policy that they blamed for enabling Donald Trump's insurrection."
• Life as a Lie. "Trump, Santos, and Putin." Good analysis with some disturbing conclusions.
• New Measurements of Galaxy Rotation Lean Towards Modified Gravity as an Explanation for Dark Matter. I've always had a problem with the idea of dark matter. Perhaps we can finally do away with the idea. 
• China to launch new station modules and collaborate with Europe on science missions in 2023. 2022 was a big year for China's space program and next year will be bigger. 
• Panasonic announces 'life changing' smart glasses. "Panasonic and Biel Glasses have announced a new pair of smart glasses to aid mobility for the visually impaired." Interesting technology, but I doubt that it will get widespread use, even in the disabled community, without making them much smaller and less obtrusive. 
• Londoner solves 20,000-year Ice Age drawings mystery. A London furniture conservator has been credited with a crucial discovery that has helped understand why Ice Age hunter-gatherers drew cave paintings."
• 'Hallowed space': Divers pull 275 artifacts from 2022 excavation of Franklin ship. I can't wait to see a museum exhibition or a documentary film about this. It is such a remarkable story. 

Featured Links - October 11, 2022

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

Frenchman's Bay Marina

• From BQ.1.1 to XBB and beyond: How the splintering of Omicron variants could shape Covid’s next phase. "What’s different, at least for now, is that there’s not one variant pushing the wave. Rather, scientists are tracking a bevy of new forms of Omicron, which are jockeying with each other as they compete to become the next dominant strain. Scientists are monitoring more than 300 sublineages of Omicron, World Health Organization officials said this week."
• Stick A Note — It’s life-changing! "No, really … life-changing." I have not tried this yet, but it does look like it could be useful.
• How does anorexia affect eyesight? "The eyes, like any other organ, need proper nutrients to function. People living with anorexia nervosa (AN) typically don’t consume enough food to fully nourish their bodies. This malnutrition leads to physical changes and complications, including to the eyes and vision."
• The Ultimate Guide to Wondrous Independent Bookstores. "We think book havens are heaven." Some of the bookstores shown in the article are truly awesome.
• The Chemin de Fer Glissant in Chicago. Unearthing a bit of lost transportation history.
• 2022 A Space Odyssey. "Turns out, yes, you can walk with Velcro shoes. Slowly, very very slowly." A cool video from Italian astronaut Samantha Critoforetti. 
• This Is Life in the Metaverse. "Every hour of the day and night with the gamers, parents, insomniacs, preteens and aspiring comedians who are the earliest adopters of the immersive, three-dimensional internet that Mark Zuckerberg has bet the future of his company on."

Featured Links - August 15, 2022

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

A flower basket in our backyard

• Welcome to assistive and adaptive technology. "The future of technology is in your hands, hands-free."  
• The Origins of Covid-19 Are More Complicated Than Once Thought. "Scientists used painstaking research, genomics, and clever statistics to definitively track two distinct strains of the virus back to a wet market in Wuhan."
• Provenance of 'deprecated' (in the programming sense). 'What are some early uses of "deprecation" in computer science? When did the word enter common usage in the field of programming? Are there any particularly well-known examples of early deprecations (perhaps in Unix or Linux?)'. It's interesting that the usage common in software development is still not in the OED, though it is in Merriam-Webster.
• If You Live on the East Coast, Your Mission Is to Squash These Bugs. "The invasion of the spotted lanternflies is intensifying, and if you haven't been doing your part to kill them, it's time to step up."
• Behind the Scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Strangest Blockbuster in Hollywood History. "Despite delays, maxed-out budgets, radical re-writes, and some early bad reviews, Stanley Kubrick’s outer-space epic went on to set records and propel a generation of cinema lovers—a big gamble of a movie that still resonates 50 years later."
• A Journey to the Center of Our Cells. "Biologists are discovering the true nature of cells—and learning to build their own."
• The Dangers of China’s Decline. "As China’s economic miracle fades, its leaders may become more inclined to take risks." This article seems particularly trenchant in light of the recent kerfuffle around Pelosi's visit to Taiwan.

Featured Links - August 8, 2022

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

Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies

• The U.S. Is Dry, Dry, Dry. "Most of the country is experiencing drought as of early August, and millions are under water use restrictions."
• How to properly clean your eyeglasses like they are delicate camera lenses. I should follow the tips in this article. 
• China could shift to fully reusable super heavy-launcher in wake of Starship. "China’s launch vehicle makers appear to be designing a fully reusable version of the Long March 9 super heavy-lift rocket needed for future megaprojects."
• JWST Shows Gas Around A Supermassive Black Hole Like Never Before. "An in-depth view of the core of one of the galaxies in Stephan’s Quintet has revealed the incredible capabilities of JWST."
• ‘Frankly it blew my mind’: how Tron changed cinema – and predicted the future of tech. "From cyberspace to AI, Steven Lisberger’s 1982 sci-fi classic was way ahead of its time. The team behind it explain how they made a game-changer."
• Default Windows 10 Settings You Should Change Right Now. "If you're not upgrading your computer to Windows 11, you can still improve your experience by changing these default settings."

Featured Links - April 11, 2022

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

• China’s $2.3 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Puts America’s to Shame.  "More than half the projects will directly support the manufacturing and service industries."
• You'll Go Blind If You Keep Doing That: Erectile Dysfunction Drugs Linked to Serious Eye Problems. "The risk of vision loss for users of medication like Viagra and Cialis appears to be small, but might prompt added warning labels."
• Pioneering Sci-Fi Writer Octavia Butler Joins a Pantheon of Futurists. "The author’s career is honored by a newly commissioned work by digital artist Nettrice Gaskins."
• This Man Does Not Make Poppers. "For decades, poppers have been the go-to sex drug for gay men. But where do they come from?"
• John Adams - An American Idol. "By combining East and West Coast ideals in his music, John Adams continues to create a sense of what it means to be alive today in America, writes Philip Kennicott."
• The Persistence of Errata. An author talks about how errors creep into a book before it's published.
• Antonov shortage threatens delivery delays for the biggest satellites. "A shortage of Ukrainian Antonov aircraft raises the prospect of more delays for satellite projects already bogged down by supply chain issues. Satellite manufacturers make heavy use of large cargo space on Antonovs to transport GEO spacecraft from factory to launch site."
• Why the WHO took two years to say COVID is airborne. "Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic."