Evan Sheehan, writing at The Darth Mall: I think Jeremy Keith is right, that all that really matters is having your own website. However big or small, however you make it, whatever you choose to put on it. I just don’t think that this is what the IndieWeb is actually focused on. … | Continue reading
Louis Menand, writing for The New Yorker. How familiar does this sound: Between 1998 and 2020, more than half of the independent bookstores in the United States went out of business. It was a similar story for personal websites and blogs, though definitely across different timefr … | Continue reading
This Halifax Examiner article, by Philip Moscovitch, which features a number of quotes by Matt Pearce, a Los Angeles Times journalist, recorded on a recent episode of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, has been doing the rounds. The upshot being hyperlinks, links from one webpage to … | Continue reading
Juice is the latest novel by Australian author Tim Winton, which was published yesterday. From this synopsis, Juice sounds like it blends elements of the Max Mad saga, with Winton’s own environmental and climate change concerns: Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night a … | Continue reading
I’m not very sporty as regular readers will have gathered. Of the approximate sixteen-hundred posts here at present, less than half a dozen are sport related. Of these, the majority relate to the Matildas, the Australian women’s football/soccer team, which I wrote during last yea … | Continue reading
I’m pretty sure the 1984 film, A Room with a View, made by James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, was my introduction to the work of British stage and screen actor Maggie Smith, who died last week, aged 89. I’d been trying to read the 1908 novel of the same name, by E.M. Forster, but w … | Continue reading
Google search does away with its cache, an archived copy of an earlier version of a webpage, but now links to the Internet Archive’s (IA) Wayback Machine copy instead. Try it on your own website, assuming it’s indexed by Google that is. On the search result, click the “more about … | Continue reading
Australian teachers in NSW, now have access to NSWEduChat, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool, intended to help educators get a grip on AI tools: The tool aims to provide additional support to staff in developing and delivering teaching experiences, easing workload de … | Continue reading
A few days ago, a group called the Social Web Foundation was launched. A coming together of “leaders of the open social networking movement“, the foundation aims to make “connections between social platforms with the open standard protocol ActivityPub.” Rather than me reinventing … | Continue reading
The iPhone 16, Apple’s latest smartphone, has arrived on shop shelves. There are four versions of the device: 16, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro Max. In time all will feature Apple Intelligence, Apple’s artificial intelligence (AI) offering, which will be “deeply integrated” into iO … | Continue reading
Amazon, the online retailer and tech company, has directed all employees to return to the office by early January 2025. Presently workers are required to be in the workplace at least three days a week. In a recent companywide announcement, CEO Andy Jassy says he wants to do away … | Continue reading
I’m guessing a few people had a sleepless night on Monday/Tuesday, after getting hold of the new Sally Rooney novel, Intermezzo, at one of the midnight release events earlier this week. Book reviewers, meanwhile, were probably lucky enough to score an advanced reader copy (ARC), … | Continue reading
Sara E. Teller, writing for Legal Reader: The research, published in BMC Medicine, focuses on the use of video games, particularly the well-known Tetris game that has been around for decades, to help reduce intrusive memories, a core and sometimes debilitating symptom of the cond … | Continue reading
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