Links

The footage, captured directly by NASA’s Mars rovers - Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance - unveils the red planet’s intricate details. These rovers, acting as robotic geologists, have traversed varied terrains, from ancient lake beds to towering mountains, uncovering Mars’ complex geological history. As viewers enjoy these images, they will notice informal place names assigned by NASA’s team, providing context to the Martian features observed. Each rover’s unique journey is highlighted, showcasing their contributions to Martian exploration. ...

Brewster Kahle, at The Internet Archive Blogs: Ever try to read a physical book passed down in your family from 100 years ago? Probably worked well. Ever try reading an ebook you paid for 10 years ago? Probably a different experience. From the leasing business model of mega a publishers to physical device evolution to format obsolescence, digital books are fragile and threatened. […] Our paper books have lasted hundreds of years on our shelves and are still readable. Without active maintenance, we will be lucky if our digital books last a decade. ...

Dungeons & Dragons played an outsize role in popularizing fantasy literature, ideas, and themes, as well as inspiring many of its devotees to create their own. Roleplaying, as a formal activity, owes nearly its entire existence to the phenomenal success of D&D. Even more remarkable is the extent to which the computer and video game industry, which is bigger and more profitable than the music and movie industries combined, owes a huge debt to the example set by D&D. If you play any game with classes or levels or experience or hit points today, that’s because of Dungeons & Dragons. ...

Powerful and cautionary story. I wondered for many years, how all of this could have happened. How people like my grandpa turned into monsters and people around him watched or turned into monsters with him. The last years made this very clear. More here.

I think I like his take on the topic.

NTS Radio is a family of like-minded and passionate individuals, dedicated to supporting exciting music and culture through online radio and events. NTS uncovers the best of the musical past, celebrates the present and cultivates the future of the underground music scene, and prides itself on being open-minded and experimental. (source) I’m certainly a latecomer, but NTS Radio is the bomb. I have not opened Spotify (whose algorithm I find dull and repetitive) in the last week, not even once. I go straight to NTS to find the best and most diverse music from all genres, played by DJs and independent radio stations worldwide. Absolute banger. ...

Upon his death in 1543 in Frombork, Poland, Copernicus was buried in the local cathedral. Over the subsequent centuries, the location of his grave was lost to history. There were several unsuccessful attempts to locate Copernicus’s remains, dating as far back as the 16th and 17th centuries. Another failed attempt was made by the French emperor Napoleon after the 1807 Battle of Eylau. Napoleon held Copernicus in high regard as a polymath, mathematician and astronomer. In 2005, a group of Polish archaeologists took up the search. ...

The goal of the pg_rman project is to provide a method for online backup and PITR that is as easy as pg_dump. Also, it maintains a backup catalog per database cluster. Users can maintain old backups including archive logs with one command. We’ve always been doing our Postgres backups the rudimentary way via pg_dumpall, which works and is purely logical (one can restore across different Postgres versions), but pg_rman maintains a catalog and has point-in-time recovery. ...

Professor Ethan Mollick’s Signs and Portents analyzes what AI has achieved, what the effects have been so far, and what we might expect in 2024. To ground ourselves, we can start with two quotes that should inform any estimates about the future. The first is Amara’s Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” Social change is slower than technological change. We should not expect to see immediate global effects of AI in a major way, no matter how fast its adoption (and it is remarkably fast), yet we certainly will see it sooner than many people think. ...

Simon Wilson, who’s recently been my go-to person for all AI-related stuff, has an excellent 2023 AI round-up on his website. 2023 was the breakthrough year for Large Language Models (LLMs). I think it’s OK to call these AI—they’re the latest and (currently) most “interesting development in the academic field of Artificial Intelligence that dates back to the 1950s. Here’s my attempt to round up the highlights in one place! The links contained within the post are also valuable. You may know Simon’s website if you are interested in LLMs and AI. If you don’t, I suggest you start following him, preferably via his RSS feed like real hackers do. ...