American writer and researcher, Gwern Branwen: But how can I not want to write a book? And I get it: writing a book is sacred and unquestionable, the ultimate achievement for Western intellectuals — better than being arrested in a protest (because you don’t have to get sweaty), b … | Continue reading
Applying for a job, going through the interview process and what not, is much like walking on eggshells. Take one wrong step, and all your efforts may be for nothing. Even something as seemingly innocuous as the way you like your cup of coffee prepared, could be your undoing: I w … | Continue reading
There’s the challenge. There’s the adventure, the pioneering spirit, of setting off to another planet. Not everything is, or should be, easy. But are those really the right reasons for wishing to establish a human colony on the fourth rock from the Sun, Mars? Mars does not have a … | Continue reading
Tomorrow, Tuesday 24 September 2024, is the day Sally Rooney fans have been waiting for. That’s when the Irish author’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, is published. And from what I (and everyone else) can gather, anticipation is at fever pitch. The good news, for some Australian fans … | Continue reading
Data the nearly fifty-year old deep space probe was returning to Earth earlier this year, was getting all scrambled up. But dutiful mission controllers sorted that out. This despite Voyager 1 being so far away that it’d take a day to reach, assuming we had a vessel that could tra … | Continue reading
Professional social network (assuming there’s such a thing) LinkedIn has started collecting user data to train its own AI bot. No surprise there. They’ve apparently auto opted all members in, whether they like it or not. No surprise there. Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Securit … | Continue reading
Photography exuding the aesthetic of American filmmaker Wes Anderson, is on show in Australia at the Accidentally Wes Anderson exhibition, in Melbourne, until early November 2024. “Accidentally Wes Anderson: The Exhibition” is a journey through more than 200 of the most beautiful … | Continue reading
I’ve always thought setting up a podcast show would be fun. But, you know, I have no proper recording equipment, nor any idea what sort of subject matter such a “show” would feature. So the idea has sat dormant all these years. But yesterday, I learned about NotebookLM, Google’s … | Continue reading
Amelia Nierenberg, writing for The New York Times: The intention of Sweden’s policy — and others like it — is to cut down on distractions, promote healthy development and help preserve the innocence of childhood. But some experts wonder if the guidance — however well-intentioned … | Continue reading
Chevalier College, an Australian high-school near the NSW town of Bowral, about a ninety-minute drive south of Sydney, will allow some senior students to study from home one day a week. The decision follows a year-long trial of the scheme. The school argues the traditional five-d … | Continue reading
Thomas Germain, writing for Gizmodo: Nostalgia for a button that a lot of people probably haven’t heard of might seem absurd, but Google’s cache function was a foundational solution to one of the web’s earliest problems. As the web transformed into a more stable infrastructure, c … | Continue reading
Instagram (IG) owner Meta is moving to make the social media platform safer for users under the age of sixteen, and introducing a host of new parental controls: Today, we’re introducing Instagram Teen Accounts, a new experience for teens, guided by parents. Teen Accounts have bui … | Continue reading
Apollo 13: Survival, a Netflix produced documentary, trailer, recounts the story of what was meant to be the third Apollo crewed landing on the Moon, in 1970. An exploding oxygen tank in the body of the command module craft, on-route to the Moon, however spelt the end of the land … | Continue reading
Sydney based Australian author Charlotte Wood has gone through to the shortlist of the 2024 Booker Prize, with her novel Stone Yard Devotional, which was announced on Monday 16 September 2024. If Wood were to win the Booker Prize this year, she would become the first Australian a … | Continue reading
Anam, by Melbourne based Australian author André Dao, has been named winner in the Fiction category of the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Anam was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin this year, and the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award in 2023. Winners in other … | Continue reading
Last week the Australian federal government announced its intention to restrict access to social media platforms to younger Australians. For now details remain scant. The government is yet to specify an exact age at which young Australians would be able to begin using social medi … | Continue reading
Gravitational waves have been helping scientists and astronomers answer some of the big questions of the universe. But gravitational waves may be able to do something else: detect the presence of vessels with Star Trek like warp drive engines, as they move through the cosmos. One … | Continue reading
Australian food critic Terry Durack, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald: Coffee’s changing. The cost of beans continues to rise, and everyone is on the lookout for alternatives. Old-fashioned espresso coffee is in danger of being shouldered aside, just as cow’s milk is making … | Continue reading
Jake Evans, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Facebook has admitted that it scrapes the public photos, posts and other data of Australian adult users to train its AI models and provides no opt-out option, even though it allows people in the European Union to re … | Continue reading
The Internet Archive (IA) has been fighting a number of legal proceedings recently, after making digitised copies of numerous books and novels freely available, through their website. At no point did the IA seek permission from any of the authors involved, nor did they offer them … | Continue reading
I’m no fan of horror movies, though I’ve sat through a few. The Birds, Psycho, The Changeling, Ghost Story, Triangle, Autopsy, to name a few most of them. I might make another exception though for Milk & Serial, a one hour long “found footage” horror film, directed by Curry Barke … | Continue reading
National Novel Writing Month, AKA NaNoWriMo, the popular, twenty-five year old, write a fifty-thousand word novel in thirty-days challenge, infuriated authors last week, after organisers appeared to support the use of AI tools by participants. While they didn’t specifically endor … | Continue reading
As if climate change, and the increasingly unstable weather it will bring, isn’t enough to worry about, parts of Australia may see an increase in volcanic activity. Not in the immediate future, thankfully, but at some point nonetheless: It is much less likely that a volcano that … | Continue reading
Mick Tsikas, writing for The Conversation: The severe weather rounds out a weird winter across Australia. The nation’s hottest ever winter temperature was recorded when Yampi Sound in Western Australia reached 41.6C on Tuesday. Elsewhere across Australia, winter temperatures have … | Continue reading
There’s been a bit of a surge in discussion recently about Indie Web, and seemingly what it means to be a true adherent. This time the focus appears to be about what I’m going to call technical proficiency. From what I can gather, having your own website, with your own domain nam … | Continue reading
Well, I’m sure pretty no AI is involved. What’s really incredible about this three minute video, made by Faruk Korkmaz, is that it was filmed entirely by a device, a smartphone, many of us carry in our pockets. The narration is fitting also. It comes from a speech given by Canadi … | Continue reading
Publication of Irish author Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, on 24 September 2024, nears. It promises to be quite the event. I don’t know about Australia, but in Ireland and the UK, some bookshops will open early on the day, so eager Rooney fans can get hold of her latest … | Continue reading
Brazilians are turning to Bluesky — the microblogging platform founded by then Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey — in droves, following a ban on X in the South American country. The surge in signups however has prompted warnings from Bluesky that the service may experience outages, … | Continue reading
Dusk, the new novel by Hobart based Australian author Robbie Arnott, is being published on Tuesday 8 October 2024. In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that … | Continue reading
Backbeat, the word is on the street, Oasis, the old nineties Britpop act — that was, in the words of co-founder Noel Gallagher — bigger than the Beatles, is set to play a series of reunion concerts. Honestly, I was more excited when in 2011, the Stone Roses, an even older act, an … | Continue reading
What we learned in our first year of 404 Media, by 404 Media. Has it really been a year? Here we are a year later, and we are very proud and humbled to report that, because of your support, 404 Media is working. Our business is sustainable, we are happy, and we aren’t going anywh … | Continue reading
Chris Welch, a writer for The Verge, on the new “reimagine” feature, that shipped with Google’s recently launched Pixel 9 smartphones. Long story short, “reimagine” allows someone to edit/enhance any photo, anyway they choose: With a simple prompt, you can add things to photos th … | Continue reading
Speaking in 1964, the late British author and futurist made numerous predictions, mainly relating to advances in technology, many of which were prescient. Clarke called artificial intelligence (no surprise there, coming from the co-writer of the 1968 movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey) … | Continue reading
One Minute Park by Elliott Cost, has been named winner of the main prize of the Tiny Awards 2024, while One Million Checkboxes by Nolen Royalty, took out the multiplayer player gong. One is your lucky number this year. Held annually since last year, 2023, the Tiny Awards recognis … | Continue reading
David Swan, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald: Rampant celebrity cryptocurrency scam ads are as Australian as Tim Tams, koalas or the Great Barrier Reef, according to American Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who says the tech giant’s lack of focus on Australia has let … | Continue reading
Matthew Ball, writing about the first six-months of Apple’s spatial computing, and — whether Apple likes it or not — virtual reality headset, Vision Pro: The Vision Pro is clearly the most ambitious of their product launches since the iPhone, the first to be wholly developed unde … | Continue reading
The asterism, ⁂, a typographic symbol made up three stars, is being proposed as the new symbol for the fediverse. If the fediverse needs a symbol, it’s not half bad. Does the web have a symbol? I’m not even sure. But for those who came in late, the fediverse can be defined thusly … | Continue reading
Ceridwen Dovey, writing for the New Yorker, in 2015: For all avid readers who have been self-medicating with great books their entire lives, it comes as no surprise that reading books can be good for your mental health and your relationships with others, but exactly why and how i … | Continue reading
Tooth decay. Entropy. Heat death of the universe. These are things to worry about, and we’ve known about them for a long time. But recently scientists have identified something else to lose sleep over: vacuum decay: Vacuum decay, a process that could end the universe as we know i … | Continue reading
About six years ago I decided I wasn’t reading enough novels. Books sat on the side table untouched, gathering dust, and inducing a pang of guilt whenever I took notice of them. I wondered what I could do to get more into reading. One thing I am good at is meeting deadlines, and … | Continue reading
Do Australian Prime Ministers have time to read books? They may not, but they do have a literary award for Australian publications, created in 2008, of which the 2024 shortlist was announced last week. Five titles, across the six award categories of fiction, non-fiction, Australi … | Continue reading
The Zone of Interest, trailer, the 2023 film by British director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Under the Skin), explores a slightly different aspect of the World War II Holocaust, which resulted in the deaths of six million European Jews at the hands of the Nazis. Rudolf Höss (Chr … | Continue reading
Coming soon to Threads on the website: the facility to save post drafts, and schedule posts. Post insights, similar I imagine, to those on Instagram, are also on the way, according to a recent thread by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Scheduling posts and saving drafts — at least if us … | Continue reading
Marie Le Conte, writing for New Humanist, in a provocatively titled article: the introverts are winning, seems to suggest introverts and extraverts are embroiled in some sort of global conflict. A quick explainer. People generally fall into one of two personality traits: extraver … | Continue reading
News sites seem to be the worst, but they’re not alone*. You want to read a news item, but are assailed by a plethora of interfering popups of some sort. But a new feature in the soon to be released iPhone operating system, iOS 18, for Apple’s Safari browser, is a step in the rig … | Continue reading
Since re-booting disassociated in May 2022, I’ve been slowly (incredibly slowly) restoring selected posts from the previous version of the blog that was online between 2007 and 2017. The restored posts are tagged legacy, and also include a few posts written prior to 2007, going b … | Continue reading
Maybe back in 2006, I was in a discussion with then Australian web designer Jen Leheny, on the then forums of the Australian INfront, a design community we had helped establish in the late 1990’s, about WordPress. I was still using static HTML files to run disassociated, but was … | Continue reading
A dedicated Firefox web browser fan had nearly seven thousand five hundred browser tabs open, all at the same time, at one point. And maybe still does. Seven thousand five hundred? I feel I’m lucky to have seventy-five tabs, no, half that number really, open, across the three bro … | Continue reading