How do fireworks get their colors?

The beautiful, vibrant colors we see in fireworks – so good at stirring our emotions – are created simply, by pure chemistry. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/how-do-fireworks-get-their-vibrant-colors…

Microsoft Dropped for Open Source Again in Germany: Hamburg Follows Munich’s Lead

“The trend towards open-source software on government computers is gathering pace in Germany,” reports ZDNet: In the latest development, during coalition negotiations in the city-state of Hamburg, politicians have declared they are ready to start moving its civil service software away from Microsoft and towards open-source alternatives. The declaration comes as part of a 200-page coalition agreement between the Social Democratic…

Facebook To Block Ads From State-Controlled Media Entities In the US

Facebook said Thursday it will begin blocking state-controlled media outlets from buying advertising in the U.S. this summer. It’s also rolling out a new set of labels to provide users with transparency around ads and posts from state-controlled outlets. Outlets that feel wrongly labeled can appeal the process. Axios reports: Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, says the company hasn’t…

Should Maintainers of Open Source Projects Be Paid?

Matt Asay, a former COO of Canonical now working at AWS, writes “Over the last few weeks I’ve interviewed a range of open source project maintainers, most of which don’t directly get paid for supporting their projects… Is this a bad thing?” It’s not completely clear. Linux Foundation executive Chris Aniszczyk has been an outspoken opponent of open source “tip jars”…

TikTok ‘Tried To Filter Out Videos From Ugly, Poor Or Disabled Users’

TikTok moderators were told to suppress videos from users who appeared too ugly, poor or disabled, as part of the company’s efforts to curate an aspirational air in the videos it promotes, according to new documents published by the Intercept. From a report: The documents detail how moderators for the social video app were instructed to select content for the influential…

Study Finds More Younger Adults are Being Diagnosed With Alzheimer’s

The five years between 2013 and 2017 saw a 200% increase in the number of commercially-insured Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or early-onset dementia between the ages of 30 to 64. “While the underlying cause is not clear, advances in technology are certainly allowing for earlier and more definitive diagnosis,” says a Blue Cross executive. The data was collected by the…

Reddit Has Become the Gospel of Personal Finance

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: If you look beyond the memes, cat videos, and quirky acronyms (TIL, OP, ELI5) you’ll find a treasure trove of resources that will help you quickly get acquainted with the topics that have long eluded you. For me, even though I worked on Wall Street for nearly 15 years, Reddit is the first…

‘Why I Voted To Sell .ORG’

Richard Barnes, Member of the Internet Society Board of Trustees, writes: I joined the board’s unanimous decision to, sell the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the registry for the .org top-level domain, to Ethos Capital. Since this transaction has gotten some attention, I’d like to speak a little about why, in my estimation, this deal is a good one for the Internet….