Interesting Links: June 3, 2019

College libraries are replacing books with study areas; DeepMind beats humans at multiplayer games; The business risk of software as a service (SAAS); Amazon has its own ranking problem; and more...

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Business, News, Science, Technology, or whatever gets my attention.

Straight from my RSS feed:

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Ten links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

1. The Books of College Libraries Are Turning Into Wallpaper - University research libraries are seeing a decline in book loans, and even reshelving, by as much as 60%. This runs counter to an increase in use of online books and articles. The trend is true among undergrads, graduate students, and even faculty. On the other hand, print is still thriving in public libraries. As school libraries respond by moving books to secondary locations and adding areas for study and group work, the article suggests that the trend may represent a self-reinforcing "great sorting", where just the most popular books are located in convenient reach for students and researchers. h/t Daniel Lemire


2. DeepMind Can Now Beat Us at Multiplayer Games, Too - As part of an initiative to master a variety of complex multiplayer games, one of Google's DeepMind labs has published in Science about an AI that has mastered Capture the Flag. This requires human-domain skills like teamwork, navigation, and tactical decision making, and it may eventually provide machines with capabilities that will be useful in warehouses or shipping facilities. The article also mentions OpenAI's victory over humans at Dota 2, which was covered in my Interesting Links: April 17, 2019 post. h/t Communications of the ACM


3. The dangerous folly of “Software as a Service” - Open Source Software advocate Eric S. Raymond points out the business implications of the salesforce.com decision to refuse service to customers who sell, "military-style rifles". Noting that future companies will come up with new reasons to deny service, and that software as a service creates even more business risk than proprietary software, he argues that businesses must limit their software use to open source software.


4. Amazon's review star ratings aren't straight averages — here's how they're actually calculated - They use a machine learning algorithm that is weighted to give priority to recent reviews and to the ones that it identifies as being most helpful.


5. Block.One Is Launching a Social Media Platform on the EOS Blockchain - Launch video, here. For social media, the focus is on verifying identity and eliminating trolls and bots. I was underwhelmed, but they are well funded, so anything might happen. They also announced a partnership with coinbase earn, so go get your $10 in EOS.


6. Louis Pasteur: "The Father of Microbiology" Who Pioneered Vaccine Science - In addition to creating the widely known process that bears his name, pasteurization, Pasteur was also the first person to use artificially weakened viruses for vaccine safety. He also experimentally disproved the widely held belief of the time, spontaneous generation, the idea that life emerges spontaneously from non-living matter. It is believed that his work was motivated by the typhoid deaths of 3 of his 5 children, and his legacy persisted beyond his death until today through his fundraising and creation of the Pasteur Institute.


7. Another Step Toward the End of Moore’s Law - Two companies, Samsung and TSMC, are on the verge of reliably mass producing 5 nm chips, so Moore's Law isn't done yet, but as the process becomes increasingly expensive, other companies are dropping out of the chase. GlobalFoundries gave up at 14 nm, and Intel is late shipping 7 nm, and also thought to be exiting. h/t RealClear Science


8. STEEM Edvard Grieg - Peer Gynt (1875) - @nesmeliy posts about composer Edvard Grieg, writing about Grieg's life story and also describing some of his music, with links to embedded youtube videos, including a 1970s adaptation by ELO. (5% of the rewards from this post will go to @nesmeliy.)


9. STEEM Crazy - Patsy Cline (Willie Nelson original) - @silentscreamer sings Crazy, the Willie Nelson song that was made famous by Patsy Cline. (@silentscreamer will receive 5% of the rewards from this post.)


10. Anne Frank's Letters From Early World War II to Be Published in Full for the First Time - Anne Frank's diary, from her time as a young Jewish girl in hiding from the Nazi's during WWWII, has been widely read around the world, but her letters from the years before that have not been published. Now, Anne Frank: The Collected Works will include her letters from 1936 to 1941, along with diary entries, essays, and favorite quotes. The book will be available on June 25.

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