About two thousand years from now, Gamma Cephei, an inconspicuous star in the constellation Cepheus, will become our North Star. Source: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/star-errai-future-north-star…
Tag: archive
Twitch Suddenly Mass-Deletes Thousands of Videos, Citing Music Copyright Claims
“It’s finally happening: Twitch is taking action against copyrighted music — long a norm among streamers — in response to music industry pressure,” reports Kotaku. But the Verge reports “there’s some funny stuff going on here.”
First, Twitch is telling streamers that some of their content has been identified as violating copyright and that instead of letting streamers file counterclaims, it’s deleting…
Facebook Demands Shutdown of Research Project Into Its Targeting of Political Ads
“Facebook Inc. is demanding that a New York University research project cease collecting data about its political-ad targeting practices,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “setting up a fight with academics seeking to study the platform without the company’s permission.” The dispute involves the NYU Ad Observatory, a project launched last month by the university’s engineering school that has recruited more than…
Alpheratz belongs to Andromeda, but is part of the Great Square
Alpheratz, the brightest star in the constellation Andromeda, can help you locate the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large spiral galaxy to our Milky Way home galaxy. Source: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/alpheratz-belongs-to-andromeda-but-pegasus-can-claim-it…
Group Files ‘Largest FOIA of All Time’
Reclaim the Records — a group of activist genealogists, historians, journalists, teachers — has filed what may be the largest Freedom Of Information Act Request of all time. The group wants the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to release billions of digital images and their associated metadata to the public. From a report: NARA is a government agency that preserves…
Astronomers identify 24 possible superhabitable worlds
Are there worlds out there – orbiting distant stars – even better suited for life than Earth? Might they be older, larger, warmer, wetter and with longer-living stars? Now astronomers have identified 24 possible superhabitable worlds. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/superhabitable-exoplanets-better-suited-for-life-than-earth…
Cloudflare and the Wayback Machine, Joining Forces For a More Reliable Web
Cloudflare and the Internet Archive are now working together to help make the web more reliable. Websites that enable Cloudflare’s Always Online service will now have their content automatically archived, and if by chance the original host is not available to Cloudflare, then the Internet Archive will step in to make sure the pages get through to users. From a report:…
Boardwatch/EVTV Founder Jack Rickard Dies at Age 65
I’ve only paid for a magazine subscription once in my life — to Jack Rickard’s Boardwatch magazine, which through the late 1990s was the geekiest read in town. You can still read 70 issues of the magazine from more than 25 years ago at Archive.org. But this week the small Southeast Missourian newspaper reported that the magazine’s original editor/publisher Jack Rickard…
Happy Birthday to Debian, CPAN, and Mutt
27 years ago today, in 1993, Debian first appeared in the world. August 16th has since been recognized as “DebianDay,” celebrated shortly before the annual Debian Conference — with lots of ways to get involved, according to Debian.org:
Today is also an opportunity for you to start or resume your contributions to Debian. For example, you can scratch your creative itch and…
Google Sets Timeline For Deprecating ‘Classic’ Google Sites
Google has announced that its structured wiki- and webpage-creation tool “Google Sites,” which it launched in 2008 after acquiring JotSpot, will be shutting down in 2021. 9to5Google reports: This morning an email was dispatched to “active” users of classic Sites detailing its retirement, which will take place over the next year. The email, which had the subject line “Migrate your classic…