Saying goodbye is easy. Finding new homes for your stuff is the challenge. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/02/28/a-guide-to-getting-rid-of-almost-everything-decluttering
The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has been knocked offline for more than a month
"That's a major problem in a nation where the population of around 320,000 people is distributed across dozens of islands north of New Zealand."
The makers of popular Twitter clients, including Aviary and Tweetbot, have recently set their sights on building similar clients for the growing Mastodon user base. https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/05/third-party-twitter-app-makers-turn-their-attention-to-mastodon/
The fight against measles is one of humanity's greatest achievements of the 21st century. Despite a brief resurgence in 2019, and a fall in vaccination rates during the pandemic, between 2000 and 2021 the annual number of measles deaths fell from 761,000 to 128,000; saving an estimated 56 million lives. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/364731/WER9747-eng-fre.pdf
The Bureau of Land Management gets the $7 entry fee from the 64 daily hikers who are lucky enough to visit Coyote Buttes. The $14,400 in lottery fees that the day’s hopeful hikers pay to Recreation.gov for a shot at a permit all go to Booz Allen. https://doctorow.medium.com/booz-allen-tickemastered-americas-public-lands-8edf4c0dddcc
The story of Louis Pasteur and the development of the rabies vaccine. https://sciencehistory.org/distillations/biting-back
A rigorous new study from Stanford has found no meaningful association between the age at which kids receive their first smartphones and their wellbeing, as measured by grades, sleep habits and depression symptoms. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/11/children-mobile-phone-age.html
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year 2022 is gaslighting, "the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one's own advantage."
...no it isn't.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-year
Peggy Whitson was the first woman to command the International Space Station. At 62, she is planning to return to space in May.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/130634896/the-first-female-space-station-commander-is-going-back-into-space-at-62
Twitter turns its back on open-source development https://zd.net/3Fpou0C#ftag=COS-05-10aaa0j by @sjvn
Twitter is based on #Linux and #opensource software, but no one is left to work on it under Musk.
Watching how ducks swim in a row is providing clues to shipping goods around the world in more energy efficient ways, and other cool stuff. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/23/velcro-bullet-trains-and-robotic-arms-nature-mother-of-invention-aoe
The Top Conferences for Developers to Attend in 2023
It’s that time of year: Ask the boss for the budget to attend a tech conference! Here are the events that should be on your short list.
https://redis.com/blog/database-developers-conferences-2023/
The Spooky Quest to Build a Google Maps for Graveyards
"Since November 2021, Atlantic Geomatics surveyors have been walking through graveyards, row by row, wearing a Leica Pegasus backpack that contains five 20-megapixel cameras, a GPS receiver, and two laser scanners that take 300,000 measurements a second."
https://www.wired.com/story/google-street-view-for-cemeteries/
"Look, I went through it myself. In the early days I insisted that sites shouldn’t do any moderation at all, including my own. But I learned." https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/
OpenStack cloud sees explosive growth https://zd.net/3ubTCtV#ftag=COS-05-10aaa0j by @sjvn
The #opensource OpenStack #cloud doesn't get the headlines of the hyperscale clouds, but it's used creatively by many big, and small, businesses.
Millions of Alzheimer’s patients have been given hope after a new drug has been shown to slow memory decline by 27% over 18 months. It's the biggest breakthrough in a generation. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63749586
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