In English

Link

2024-03-05 @ 12.54.46 ∈ In English

TL;DR: to allow users to make contacts without revealing their phone numbers, but avoiding creating new surfaces for harm (spam, abusive usernames) in the process (which also eliminates all the issues that username moderation would bring).

Why Signal ‘turned our architecture inside out’ for its latest privacy feature | TechCrunch
“The user name is not a handle. It’s not shown inside the app; it’s not something we have a directory for. But it replaces the phone number when you go to initiate contact.”
Link

2024-03-04 @ 18.31.53 ∈ In English

Counting butterflies reduces anxiety, study shows
New research by leading wildlife charity, Butterfly Conservation, in collaboration with the University of Derby, reveals that counting butterflies [reduced] anxiety by almost 10% [… among] people taking part in Butterfly Conservation's Big Butterfly Count in 2022.
Link

2024-02-28 @ 15.52.47 ∈ In English

Pythagoras was wrong: There are no universal musical harmonies, study finds
Their study, published in Nature Communications, shows that in normal listening contexts, we do not actually prefer chords to be perfectly in these mathematical ratios.
Link

2024-02-27 @ 18.38.20 ∈ In English

A 12 mm fish produces 140-decibel sound to communicate in turbid waters
An international research team, along with Senckenberg scientist Dr. Ralf Britz, has studied Danionella cerebrum, a small species of fish with a length of no more than 12 millimeters. Despite its diminutive size, the fish can produce sounds close to its body of over 140 decibels—comparable to a jet engine during take-off in 100 meter distance.
Link

2024-02-27 @ 13.17.41 ∈ In English

Ukraine war: Welsh miners in country to repay 1984 help
A convoy drives 2,000 miles from south Wales to Ukraine to repay a 40-year-old favour.
Link

2024-02-27 @ 13.02.33 ∈ In English

Center of the Universe
I read something on the internet one recent evening that made a brief and tangential reference to a serial killer preying on Marines in Southern California in the 1970s and early ’80s. Having been stationed at Camp Pendleton, I thought, “How come I never heard about this?”
Link

2024-02-22 @ 18.25.22 ∈ In English

The birth of our system for describing web content | Aeon Essays
Over a weekend in 1995, a small group gathered in Ohio to unleash the power of the internet by making it navigable
Link

2024-02-21 @ 18.56.02 ∈ In English

Analysis shows butterfly and moth genomes are mostly unchanged despite 250 million years of evolution
The team found not only were chromosomes incredibly stable, but the order of genes within them was too. […] However, researchers uncovered a rare subset of species such as the blue butterflies—Lysandra—and the group containing cabbage white butterflies—Pieris—that underwent extensive chromosome reshuffling[.]