Wordle is not harder says The New York Times
18 February 2022
The New York Times, now the owner of Wordle, have confirmed they have not made the ever-popular word game more difficult. Anyone playing recently — game 242 anyone? — might’ve had cause to suspect as much though. No, apparently the game retains the same “solution set”, being some two thousand five hundred words, added by creator Josh Wardle last October. The New York Times has however confirmed the removal of “potentially offensive” words from the original solution set.
The main change that the Times made was to remove some words: the game’s new owners have removed some offensive language both from the list of valid guesses for the game (specifically, offensive language and slurs) and from Wardle’s solutions, in addition to removing some more difficult words from the original set (like “AGORA” and “PUPAL”).
If anything then, they’ve made the game easier, though Agora would not be too difficult for me, after seeing the 2009 film of the same name.
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Vale John Bryson Australian author
18 February 2022
Sydney based Australian author John Bryson died earlier this month, at the age of 86. Bryson, a former lawyer, wrote several books, including Evil Angels: The Case of Lindy Chamberlain in 1987, a title that proved instrumental in exonerating Lindy Chamberlain, who had been wrongly convicted of murdering her baby daughter in 1980.
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Australian literature, John Bryson
Will electronic book publishing kill libraries?
18 February 2022
Brewster Kahle, an American librarian, and founder of the Internet Archive, writing for Time, fears libraries may become a thing of the past, if commercial publishers have their way:
The libraries I grew up with would buy books, preserve them, and lend them for free to their patrons. If my library did not have a particular book, then it would borrow a copy from another library for me. In the shift from print to digital, many commercial publishers are declaring each of these activities illegal: they refuse libraries the right to buy ebooks, preserve ebooks, or lend ebooks. They demand that libraries license ebooks for a limited time or for limited uses at exorbitant prices, and some publishers refuse to license audiobooks or ebooks to libraries at all, making those digital works unavailable to hundreds of millions of library patrons.
In Australia we have the Lending Right Schemes, and I’m sure similar arrangements apply in other countries, whereby an author or publisher receives a royalty when one of their titles is borrowed from a library. While the arrangement doesn’t presently cover electronic books, changes are afoot. But it sounds like these sorts of payments may not be enough for some publishers going forward.
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The This, Adam Roberts
16 February 2022
This sounds convenient. Instead of hauling a smartphone around all the time, you could instead have a social media platform injected into the roof of your mouth. The implant would mesh with your brain, eventually taking the place of your phone. Blink twice to take a photo maybe, communicate brain to brain with friends who also have the app implant.
Welcome to The This, the futurist social media app, and novel of the same name, written by British science fiction author Adam Roberts, published by Hachette Australia. The app is popular with many, but there are those who do not like it. They do not want to be part of the so-called hive mind. They’ve seen Twitter, they’ve seen enough. But the storyline has all the hallmarks of a hive mind, a sprawling, surreal, neural network spanning space and time.
Adan is a journalist, sent to profile the CEO of The This. But after Adan’s mother unexpectedly leaves the country, he is forced to join the army as he is left without a home or any money. Adan is battling a robot invasion, in a reality far removed from the one he once knew. In later centuries a diminished humanity is fighting off another hive mind, one intent of the final destruction of humanity. And all because we wanted to try out a new social media app…
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Adam Roberts, fiction, TBR list, writing
Twitter users to get Oscars vote
16 February 2022
Twitter users have been given the opportunity to participate in the Oscars/Academy Awards voting process this year, though it looks more like a people’s choice vote, rather than a say in the regular award categories.
From February 14 to March 3, Twitter users will be able to vote up to 20 times a day for their favorite film and favorite film moment of 2021. The winning film and scene will then be featured during this year’s Oscars broadcast.
Talking of the Oscars, Regina Hall, Wanda Sykes, and Amy Schumer, look set to be named hosts of the awards ceremony.
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Francis Spufford, a writer once not a writer
16 February 2022
If you were a writer like British author Francis Spufford is, but didn’t want to call yourself a writer, as was once the case for Spufford, what title would you settle for instead?
It took me a long time to decide I wanted to be a writer. And then I felt that to call myself a writer, let alone a novelist, would be a kind of boast. I accepted it gradually, once I could see the objects I’d made.
If it were me, and we were talking about say works of fiction, I’d probably describe myself as a storyteller.
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2001: A Space Odyssey, a 2022 remake
14 February 2022
Related to my earlier post, can it be? George Lucas and Steven Spielberg collaborated on a remake of 2001: A Space Odyssey? How did I miss this? And even though the remake has a release date of 3 December 2022, it has already been appraised by the critics:
The film got mixed reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 89%, which is very close to the original films rating. People thought that it had good music (while the original barely had any music) since it was performed by John Williams, who makes great music, and they loved HAL 9000’s theme “Bad Programming Day”. Also, a lot of people thought that it was similar to the original film. Harrison Ford even got a reward for his excellent acting in this film, people even say that it was better than his performance as Han Solo.
In this… “remake” Harrison Ford voices HAL, Chris Pratt is David Bowman, Jason Bateman is Frank Poole, and Mark Hamill portrays Heywood Floyd, so it looks like the reboot fails the Bechdel Test. John Williams composed the soundtrack, which is awesome even if it means no Blue Danube this time around.
Can’t wait to see it though…
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What is your oblong doing to you?
14 February 2022
Your oblong (called a smartphone in the real world) allows you do all sorts of things: work, play, organise your finances, take and share photos, participate in word games, and read books. But this functionality and usefulness may come at a cost, particularly when it comes to reading: reduced comprehension. This according to research lead by Motoyasu Honma of the Showa University School of Medicine, in Japan.
We found that, compared to reading on a paper medium, reading on a smartphone elicits fewer sighs, promotes brain overactivity in the prefrontal cortex, and results in reduced comprehension.
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Words and Nerds podcast with Victoria Brookman
14 February 2022
Blue Mountains based Australian writer Victoria Brookman talks to Dani Vee on the Words and Nerds podcast, about her debut novel Burnt Out. It’s always great to hear how a first time author goes about getting their work published.
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TikTok, sharing your videos and your personal data?
14 February 2022
I thought of setting up a TikTok page for Oblong Obsession on Book-Tok, but with the Instagram and Twitter pages, plus a little used Facebook presence, another social media channel seemed liked it’d be too much work for now. It might have been the right call though, given the concerns some privacy advocates have with the popular video-sharing app.
The study found that YouTube, which is owned by Google, mostly collects your personal data for its own purposes — like tracking your online search history, or even your location, to serve you relevant ads. But TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, mostly allows third-party trackers to collect your data — and from there, it’s hard to say what happens with it.
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