Another day, another problem with Voyager 1, solved

20 September 2024

Data the nearly fifty-year old deep space probe was returning to Earth earlier this year, was getting all scrambled up. But dutiful mission controllers sorted that out. This despite Voyager 1 being so far away that it’d take a day to reach, assuming we had a vessel that could travel at the speed of light.

More recently, Voyager 1 has been having have trouble using correcting thrusters that keep the probe’s antenna pointed at Earth. Fuel pipes to the aging thrusters have begun to clog up, rendering them inoperative. Mission controllers, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, however have been able to re-activate another set of thrusters — unused in decades — and effect a fix.

As a result of its exceptionally long-lived mission, Voyager 1 experiences issues as its parts age in the frigid outer reaches beyond our solar system. When an issue crops up, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have to get creative while still being careful of how the spacecraft will react to any changes.

If you want a tricky problem solved, ask a mission controller from one of the automated space missions to help. And of course Apollo 13.

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astronomy, science, technology

LinkedIn is collecting user data for AI training

20 September 2024

Professional social network (assuming there’s such a thing) LinkedIn has started collecting user data to train its own AI bot.

No surprise there.

They’ve apparently auto opted all members in, whether they like it or not.

No surprise there.

Rachel Tobac, CEO of SocialProof Security, has posted instructions on how to opt-out, on X/Twitter.

I deactivated my LinkedIn account — after my then GP, of all people, invited me to join — well over ten years ago.

Accidentally Wes Anderson exhibition now on in Melbourne

20 September 2024

Photography exuding the aesthetic of American filmmaker Wes Anderson, is on show in Australia at the Accidentally Wes Anderson exhibition, in Melbourne, until early November 2024.

“Accidentally Wes Anderson: The Exhibition” is a journey through more than 200 of the most beautiful, idiosyncratic, and interesting places on Earth — all seemingly plucked from the whimsical world of Wes Anderson. 10 themed areas provide you a personal passport to visual inspiration and adventure with amazing photography and immersive moments throughout.

Surely a treat for Wes Anderson fans, and an excuse (for some of us) to visit the southern capital.

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film, photography, Wes Anderson

The disassociated podcast, web design in the wild west of 1997

20 September 2024

I’ve always thought setting up a podcast show would be fun. But, you know, I have no proper recording equipment, nor any idea what sort of subject matter such a “show” would feature. So the idea has sat dormant all these years.

But yesterday, I learned about NotebookLM, Google’s “personalized AI research assistant”, while reading a blog post by Robert Birming. Among NotebookLM’s features, is the ability to take some text, say a blog post, load said text into NotebookLM, and then apply the “Audio Overview” function.

Curious to try it, I took a post I wrote in 2022, about my early experiences of building websites, uploaded the text to NotebookLM, and waited for the result. This quite fun fireside chat, between the two “hosts”, a woman and a man, is what emerged. The “hosts” confused me with the author of a book I referenced in my post, Jay Hoffmann, but, some people call me Jay, so not all is lost.

And that’s where web standards come in. Hoffman [er, Lampard] talks about using HTML 3.2. Early on he was a rebel, but a structured one.

The audio file I’ve linked to is a WAV, but I think it’ll play on most platforms, if you want to listen in.

Update: thanks to long-time disassociated reader, and one-time collaborator CoffeeGirl (AKA Stephanie), for this version of the podcast (dare I call it a remix?) based on my post about web design in 1997. This is a little more on point. #DeepDiveNinetiesWeb

This little snippet is fantastic:

Back then, choosing a domain name was a statement. You were declaring your independence from traditional media.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. For the record, I didn’t get the disassociated domain name until 1998, and when I did, it was disassociated.com.au. I tried to obtain the . com extension, but someone else had it. They offered to sell it to me (at a premium), which I declined. Later, when the name became available in early 2003, I grabbed it.

Sweden wants to curb screen time for children under two

19 September 2024

Amelia Nierenberg, writing for The New York Times:

The intention of Sweden’s policy — and others like it — is to cut down on distractions, promote healthy development and help preserve the innocence of childhood. But some experts wonder if the guidance — however well-intentioned — may be too unrealistic and too judgmental to stick.

These are guidelines, not dictates, or bans, and Swedish health authorities are aiming for zero hours screen time for children under two years of age. I’m not sure what value, say, a one-year old child derives from any screen time at all, but the perspective of a parent of a child close to two years of age, may be different. Being able to temporarily distract a child with a game or cartoon show, may be a boon for any time-poor parent.

Australian high school allows students to study from home one day a week

19 September 2024

Chevalier College, an Australian high-school near the NSW town of Bowral, about a ninety-minute drive south of Sydney, will allow some senior students to study from home one day a week. The decision follows a year-long trial of the scheme.

The school argues the traditional five-day face-to-face learning model fails to adequately prepare students for the future. It said: “The world has changed, and education needs to move with it. This requires a more flexible, adaptable and personalised approach to education”.

It’s a smart move, given students may eventually find themselves working from home once they leave school. It’s also a great primer for university, where much study is self-directed, and the learning environment is structured a little differently. I wonder if other schools will follow suit, or are perhaps already doing something like this.

And bonus points for choosing Monday as the study from day (though that is of course the day most public/bank holidays fall).

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education, trends

Google no longer archives cache versions of webpages

18 September 2024

Thomas Germain, writing for Gizmodo:

Nostalgia for a button that a lot of people probably haven’t heard of might seem absurd, but Google’s cache function was a foundational solution to one of the web’s earliest problems. As the web transformed into a more stable infrastructure, cache was mostly abandoned by regular consumers, but it was still a useful tool. SEO workers used it to watch changes made by competitors. Journalists and researchers checked caches to keep an eye on the historical record. Some savvy internet users knew cache was a way to get around paywalls, or as a poor man’s VPN to load websites that were blocked in particular regions.

I’ve not been able to access this feature for some time, which used to accompany search results, and was beginning to wonder what had happened. Google cache, as many referred to it, was also a good way to look at posts or articles that were intended to be online only for short periods of time.

Checking Google cache was always a quick and easy way to look at these sorts of documents after they had been deleted.

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history, technology, trends

Meta Teen Accounts limit Instagram use for teenagers under sixteen

18 September 2024

Instagram (IG) owner Meta is moving to make the social media platform safer for users under the age of sixteen, and introducing a host of new parental controls:

Today, we’re introducing Instagram Teen Accounts, a new experience for teens, guided by parents. Teen Accounts have built-in protections which limit who can contact them and the content they see, and also provide new ways for teens to explore their interests. We’ll automatically place teens into Teen Accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of these settings to be less strict.

Among a raft of measures, teen accounts will be set to private by default (meaning only followers can view the account owner’s content), direct messages can only be sent by followers of a user, and content deemed sensitive will be blocked by default. Parents will have the facility to adjust numerous settings, and also place limits on how many hours a day their children can access IG. All teen accounts will be subject to a sleep-mode for eight hours overnight.

In addition, teen account holders will be required to verify their age. Meta says tools that can help identify incorrectly entered date of birth information will be rolled out in 2025. Where it is determined a user under the age of sixteen has supplied an “adult birthday”, their account will automatically be converted to a teen account.

Meta’s initiative is in response to growing concerns about the amount of time people under the age of sixteen are spending on social media, and the nature of their interactions and activities while using such platforms. Last week, the federal government announced it was considering banning social media access to Australians under the age of sixteen.

Apollo 13: Survival, a Netflix documentary

18 September 2024

Apollo 13: Survival, a Netflix produced documentary, trailer, recounts the story of what was meant to be the third Apollo crewed landing on the Moon, in 1970. An exploding oxygen tank in the body of the command module craft, on-route to the Moon, however spelt the end of the landing attempt.

Instead the flight became a desperate race against time to return the Apollo astronauts to Earth before they ran out of oxygen and fuel.

The Apollo 13 flight transcript is well worth listening to. Note how calmly Jack Swigert, followed a few seconds later by Jim Lovell speak, when informing mission controllers on Earth of the situation. “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Sounds more like someone saying they’ve missed the bus and will be ten minutes late for work.

American filmmaker Ron Howard’s 1995 docudrama, Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon, is also an excellent recounting of the story.

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documentary, film, history

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood on 2024 Booker Prize shortlist

18 September 2024

Sydney based Australian author Charlotte Wood has gone through to the shortlist of the 2024 Booker Prize, with her novel Stone Yard Devotional, which was announced on Monday 16 September 2024. If Wood were to win the Booker Prize this year, she would become the first Australian author to do so since Richard Flanagan in 2014, with his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

The 2024 winner will be named on Tuesday 12 November 2024.

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