Travel company embroiled in overcharging scandal worth more than $100m
Corporate Travel Management helps arrange travel bookings for clients ranging from Wesfarmers to the Australian government. ⌘ Read more
Crease-Free iPhone Fold on Track for 2026 Launch as Development Advances
Apple is making progress on the development of the book-style foldable iPhone expected in 2026, according to a report from Chinese site UDN. The device has reportedly entered the engineering validation stage, and Apple is gearing up for mass production.
, one of the earliest 3rd-party zines (coming out during the initial run of OD&D). It’s filled with a bunch of unique ideas (some better than others), entirely too many charts, and is very much a product of its time, but there’s something about its “raw”-ness (and its variety) that I still find appealing.
Meta Is Killing Off the External Facebook Like Button
Meta is retiring Facebook’s external Like and Share buttons for third-party websites on February 10, 2026, officially closing the book on a once-dominant traffic driver as usage declines and Facebook’s role within Meta continues to shrink.Engadget reports: The blog post from Meta explains that site admins shouldn’t have to take any additional steps as a result of the … ⌘ Read more
The Algorithm Failed Music
An anonymous reader shares a report: Spotify is the most popular music streaming service in the world. While its algorithmic recommendations aren’t necessarily the reason, its reach has meant that hundreds of millions of people are being fed a steady diet of music curated by a machine. Spotify’s goal is to keep you listening no matter what. In her book Mood Machine, journalist Liz Pelly recounts a story told to … ⌘ Read more
Amazon is Testing an AI Tool That Automatically Translates Books Into Other Languages
An anonymous reader shares a report: Amazon just introduced an AI tool that will automatically translate books into other languages. The appropriately-named Kindle Translate is being advertised as a resource for authors that self publish on the platform.
The company says the tool can translate entire boo … ⌘ Read more
I finally have the Internet Phone Book as well. Ordered from Hyper Hypo in Greece because that was the only place with stock. Lots to explore for quiet moments! ⌘ Read more
Thematic Book Series: Too Much Combustion, Too Little Fire
Image: Book cover.
- Buy the print edition.
- Buy the epub edition.
For most of history … ⌘ Read more
The best new science fiction books of November 2025
From Claire North’s new novel Slow Gods to a 10th anniversary edition of a brilliant Adrian Tchaikovsky book, there’s lots to watch out for in November’s science fiction ⌘ Read more
Our verdict on Our Brains, Our Selves: A mix of praise and misgivings
The New Scientist Book Club has various issues with Masud Husain’s prize-winning popular science book about neurology ⌘ Read more
Book Club: Read an extract from Every Version of You by Grace Chan
In this passage from the opening of Grace Chan’s sci-fi novel, the November read for the New Scientist Book Club, we are introduced to her protagonists as they spend time in a virtual utopia which is becoming increasingly tempting in a dying world ⌘ Read more
If you could upload your mind to a virtual utopia, would you?
Grace Chan, author of Every Version of You, the November read for the New Scientist Book Club, explores the philosophical implications of the choices her characters make ⌘ Read more
Nvidia will build AI supercomputers for US Energy Department, announces total bookings of $500 billion ⌘ Read more
This was a great read, btw. 😃 If you liked Event Horizon, this is for you. I’m gonna get her other two scifi books as well, that’s for sure.
Study finds Airbnb safety reviews can turn off some but the increased transparency can mitigate that
A new peer-reviewed study in the journal Marketing Science sheds light on how online safety-related reviews from Airbnb guests influence booking decisions and how the platform itself balances consumer welfare against its own financial incentives. ⌘ Read more
What are you reading this week?
Also what were you reading? What are you planning to read next?
I was planning to read Mastery by Robert Greene, but instead was juggling with biography of Oliver Heaviside by Paul J. Nahin and Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle. Well, both books are about Mastery, and both are really good. Also re-read Kipling’s Kim, which is perfect balance of uneasiness and comfort of favorite story.
I’m planning to read The Mikado Method this week: I watched couple presentations about it … ⌘ Read more
Physics Insight
⌘ Read more
What are you reading this week?
Perhaps we may try to revive this genre of sharing book titles in order to find something out of usual interests? Anything that you have in your reading or listening queue: tech, non-tech, pulp or snob.
I’m planning to reread again Thinking Forth by Leo Brodie (he has published couple (mediocre) albums on Spotify BTW). Also Mastery by Robert Greene.
In audiobooks Strange Things Happen by Stewart Copeland (The Police drummer and VGM composer) ⌘ Read more
Finally, new books arrived. Let’s see if Dead Silence is as good as it sounds. 😃
** Read the Book **
There’s a whole lot going on, and I’ve been feeling myself develop bad habits concerning doom scrolling. I can’t reconfigure my life to not have a phone, so, instead, I made a thing to replace those things that invite me to doomy scroll. Meet Read the Book.
Read the book is a relatively simple website where you can read a book. The books are presented in short chunks so you’re never faced with a big scrolling wall of text. It has support for dark mode and light mode, and you can u … ⌘ Read more
Top 10 Songs That Tell Stories Better Than Books
Some songs are more than just a catchy hook or a beat you can nod along to. They’re stories—self-contained, vivid, and often more emotionally effective than the 400-page novels gathering dust on your nightstand. In just a few verses and a chorus, the right songwriter can conjure entire worlds: doomed lovers, forgotten heroes, apocalyptic visions, […]
The post [Top 10 Songs That Tell Stories Better Than Books](https://listverse.com/202 … ⌘ Read more
** Franconia Notch **
We went to the Franconia Notch, which is on objectively funny thing to name a region. It was beautiful and the weather was wildly clear. Even on top of Mount Washington, the highest peak in the entire north eastern United States, it was sunny and calm. We could see all the way back to Maine…supposedly…it all looks kinda like green lumpy blurs to me.
While there I started to read two books, Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang and The City and Its Uncertain Walls, by Haruki Murakami.
_Kata … ⌘ Read more
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Ten stories or more are already very tall in my books. Not sure at which height I would start calling high rise buildings sky scrapers, but Wikipedia suggests around 150 meters, depending on region.
Oh, I just found https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Pier_17_2018-03_jeh.jpg and this really does not look all that high. I thought that this would be at least 50 or 100 meters up. I was completely wrong. :-D
** A week notes to round out the summer **
I haven’t posted anything remotely resembling week notes since the middle of June! Since then many things have happened including, but not limited to: a trip to Minnesota to visit Isaac, a couple trips to New Hampshire for work, a family trip to Mount Desert Island to revisit our old stomping grounds, a whole heap of bicycle riding, I finished a couple great books, played some games, made some games, and wrote what is probably an unhealthy a … ⌘ Read more
@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz On the one hand, all these programs have a very long history and the technology behind manpages is actually very powerful – you can use it to write books:
https://www.troff.org/pubs.html
I have two books from that list, for example “The UNIX programming environment”:
https://movq.de/v/c3dab75c97/upe.jpg
It’s a bit older, of course, but it looks and feels like a normal book, and it uses the same tech as manpages – which I think is really cool. 😎
It’s comparable to LaTeX (just harder/different to use) but much faster than LaTeX. You can also do stuff like render manpages as a PDF (man -Tpdf cp >cp.pdf) or as an HTML file (man -Thtml cp >cp.html). I think I once made slides for a talk this way.
On the other hand, traditional manpages (i.e., ones that are not written in mandoc) do not use semantic markup. They literally say, “this text is bold, that text over here is italics”, and so on.
So when you run man foo, it has no other choice but to show it in black, white, bold, underline – showing it in color would be wrong, because that’s not what the source code of that manpage says.
Colorizing them is a hack, to be honest. You’re not meant to do this. (The devs actually broke this by accident recently. They themselves aren’t really aware that people use colors.)
If mandoc and semantic markup was more commonly used, I think it would be easier to convince the devs to add proper customizable colors.
HTTP referrers are quite broken, aren’t they?
Because of that recent storm on my blog, I had a peek at them. There’s a lot of garbage in there. For example, https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/disks-virtual.html is supposed to refer to one of my blog posts …
What’s going on here?
About ChatGPT rotting people’s brains, similarly could be said about search engines, and reference books. Oh, also doom scrolling, and mobile devices, and the Internet… :-P
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — First Woman — Dream to Reality https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/06/21/first-woman-1.html #freeculture #bookclub
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Tag Team https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/06/14/tag-team.html #freeculture #bookclub
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — The Pink and Black Album https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/06/07/pink-black.html #freeculture #bookclub
10 Movies That Missed the Point of Their Source Material
When adapting books and comics into movies, certain changes must be made to accommodate the new medium. While fans sometimes bristle at plotlines and characters being altered—or even cut out completely—there’s no way for adaptations to be entirely faithful. However, some film adaptations seem to entirely miss the point of their source material. That isn’t […]
The post [10 Movies That Missed the Point of Their Source Ma … ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Meteorite https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/31/meteorite.html #freeculture #bookclub
10 Secret Abilities of Well-Known Animals
As kids, we all learned about the world’s most famous animals from books, TV, video games, or the Rainforest Cafe and its incredibly biodiverse gift shop. However, Big Animal is keeping certain secrets from you, and the animals you’ve known and loved since childhood harbor some weird and obscure secret abilities, features, and effects. Read […]
The post [10 Secret Abilities of Well-Known Animals](https://listverse.com/2025/05/30/10-secret-abilities … ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Sówka w świecie dnia https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/24/owl-world.html #freeculture #bookclub
10 Groundbreaking & Historical “Firsts” We Witnessed in 2025–So Far!
While we typically perceive history as something we only read about in books, 2025 has already proven that history is happening right before our eyes. Despite economic, political, and social conflicts, this year has brought about incredible events and discoveries unlike anything the world has ever seen. Some leave us hopeful, others uneasy—but one thing […]
The post [10 Groundbreaking & Historical “Firsts” … ⌘ Read more
10 Times Governments Banned Colors for Bizarre Reasons
When we think of banned things, we tend to imagine books, political speech, or the occasional controversial cartoon. But throughout history, governments have cracked down on something far stranger: colors. Whether tied to class, ideology, or sheer paranoia, certain shades have been restricted, outlawed, or made dangerous to wear—all because they said too much without […]
The post [10 Times Governments Banned Colors for Biz … ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Pilogy, part 4 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/17/pilogy-4.html #freeculture #bookclub
** My not so pragmatic guide to running background services on macOS **
I self host a lot of stuff — these days, mostly weird little utility scripts and toys that run in the background, but also some web apps like plex, calibre, and a suite of irc things. For a long time I ran such things on a VPS, but being incredibly cheap, and hardly ever leaving my house for realsies, during the height of the pandemic I brought everything on to an aged mac mini I keep on a shelf behind some books.
I tr … ⌘ Read more
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Pilogy, part 3 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/05/10/pilogy-3.html #freeculture #bookclub
Business books are entertainment, not strategic tools
Article URL: https://theorthagonist.substack.com/p/why-reading-business-books-is-a-waste
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43940747
Points: 500
# Comments: 233 ⌘ Read more