NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Boing Boing: New BB series! “Updating the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction”. “The HDSF — based on the OED Science Fiction Citations Project, a 2001 effort to crowdsource quotations for the Oxford English Dictionary — is a full-fledged dictionary of SF on historical principles, meaning that every entry is illustrated with contextual quotations showing exactly how a term has been used over time.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Chrome “Feed” is tantalizing, but it’s not the return of Google Reader. “Does Google enjoy teasing and sometimes outright torturing some of its products’ most devoted fans? It can seem that way. Tucked away inside a recent bleeding-edge Chrome build is a ‘Following feed’ that has some bloggers dreaming of the return of Google Reader. It’s unlikely, but never say never when it comes to Google product decisions.” NewsBlur and Feedly are both excellent RSS readers.

Engadget: TikTok adds an AI image generator, but it’s no DALL-E. “The Verge notes TikTok has introduced a rudimentary ‘AI greenscreen’ effect in its Android and iOS apps that turns your text descriptions into artwork. It’s much simpler than OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, producing abstract blobs rather than photorealistic depictions, but it might do the trick if you want an original background for your latest video.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: 6 Effective Ways to Use Explore in Google Sheets. “The Explore feature works differently in Google Sheets than in Google Docs. You can use it to get useful details about your data to help you analyze it. You can also use pieces that the tool provides in your spreadsheet. If you’re looking for a handy way to learn more about the data in your Google Sheet, here are various ways to use the Explore feature.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WPXI: University of Pittsburgh Library System receives $1M grant from the Hillman Foundation. “The $1 million grant, a gift of the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, will support the final preparations in the library’s efforts to open the August Wilson archives to the public. The library system acquired the archive in 2020 and has been working to process and share the archive with the public over the past two years. The archive will open in Jan. 2023, and a week-long celebration of the legacy of Pittsburgh-born playwright August Wilson, in collaboration with local cultural organizations, is slated for March 2023.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: How Frustration Over TikTok Has Mounted in Washington. “National security concerns over the Chinese-owned viral video app remain unresolved. Lawmakers and regulators are increasingly pushing for action.”

Australian Associated Press: High Court rules Google not a publisher. “Australia’s highest court has ruled Google is not legally responsible for defamatory news articles as it is not the publisher of such content. A majority of High Court justices on Wednesday found Google was not the publisher of a defamatory article by The Age about a Victorian lawyer, as it was a search engine that only provided hyperlinks to news stories.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Berkeley News: Machine translation could make English-only science accessible to all. “Machine learning using artificial intelligence has improved computer translation over the past decade, but scientific articles employing specialized jargon are still a challenge for machine translation. Nevertheless, scientists should prioritize translating articles into multiple languages to provide an equitable landscape for budding scientists worldwide, UC Berkeley researchers argue.”

The Guardian: Online cultural events can benefit lonely older people, study shows. “We remember it all too well from the first lockdown. The obligatory weekly Zoom quizzes and the stream of cultural events held online. While most of us can head down to the local pub again and delight in the return of good old Sunday quizzes, some people are still stuck at home. And research suggests online cultural activities such as museum tours can significantly improve the mental and physical health of elderly people who are homebound.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Sputtering Daguerreotypes, Batman!. “The earliest Daguerreotype plates were made physically, by rolling a copper-silver plate thinner and thinner until the silver layer was just right. Good luck finding a source of Daguerreotype plates made this way in 2022…. On the other hand, magnetron sputtering is a process of depositing pure metal in thin layers using plasma, high voltages, and serious magnets, and [Koji Tokura] is making his own sputtered Daguerreotype plates this way, giving him the best of both worlds: the surreal almost-holographic quality of the Daguerreotype with the most difficult film preparation procedure imaginable.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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