All the videos have now appeared online for the talks at this year’s virtual EmacsConf 2020, “the conference about the joy of Emacs, Emacs Lisp, and memorizing key sequences.” And among them are an appearance by 67-year-old Richard Stallman, reminding the audience he’d created the first Emacs editor in 1976 “with some help from Guy Steele,” then created GNU Emacs in…
Tag: archive
Did the Wow! signal come from this star?
Where did the famous mystery Wow! signal, detected in 1977, come from? Astronomer Alberto Caballero might have pinpointed the host star. It’s a sunlike star 1,800 light-years away, in the direction to the center of our Milky Way. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/source-of-wow-signal-in-1977-sunlike-star-2mass-19281982-2640123…
Schedar shines brightly at the Queen’s heart
Orange-hued Schedar is the brightest star in the distinctive W-shaped northern constellation Cassiopeia the Queen. Source: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/schedar-short-life-of-burning-bright…
Flash Animations Live Forever At the Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is now emulating Flash animations, games and toys in our software collection. Jason Scott writes in a blog post: Utilizing an in-development Flash emulator called Ruffle, we have added Flash support to the Internet Archive’s Emularity system, letting a subset of Flash items play in the browser as if you had a Flash plugin installed. While Ruffle’s compatibility…
Aaron Swartz’s Memory Honored with Virtual Hackathon
Saturday saw 2020’s virtual observation of the annual Aaron Swartz Day and International Hackathon, which the EFF describes as “a day dedicated to celebrating the continuing legacy of activist, programmer, and entrepreneur Aaron Swartz.” Its official web site notes the wide-ranging event includes “projects and ideas that are still bearing fruit to this day, such as SecureDrop, Open Library, and the…
Scientists discover ancient lake bed deep beneath Greenland ice
The ancient lake bed, sealed more than a mile under Greenland ice, may be hundreds of thousands or millions of years old, and contain unique fossil and chemical traces of past climates and life. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/ancient-lake-bed-deep-beneath-greenland-ice…
Tips for watching N. Taurid meteors
The nominal peak of the North Taurid meteor shower is on the night of November 11-12, 2020. Source: https://earthsky.org/sky-archive/peak-night-for-n-taurid-meteor-shower-on-november-1112…
Proctoring Software Company Used DMCA To Take Down a Student’s Critical Tweets
A series of tweets by one Miami University student that were critical of a proctoring software company have been hidden by Twitter after the company filed a copyright takedown notice. TechCrunch reports: Erik Johnson, a student who works as a security researcher on the side, posted a lengthy tweet thread in early September about Proctorio, an Arizona-based software company that several…
Internet Archive Adds Fact Checks To Explain Web Page Takedowns
AmiMoJo writes: Fact checking is increasingly a mainstay of the modern internet, and that now includes “dead” web pages. The Internet Archive has started adding fact checks and context to Wayback Machine pages to explain just why they were removed. If a page was part of a disinformation campaign or pulled due to a policy violation, a conspicuous yellow banner will…
Mirach is guide star to 3 galaxies
Mirach, a bright star in the constellation Andromeda, is often used by stargazers to locate the Andromeda Galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy, and a galaxy known as Mirach’s Ghost (NGC 404). Source: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/mirach-guide-star-to-three-galaxies…