A quarter of the deep links in The New York Times articles are now rotten, leading to completely inaccessible pages, according to a team of researchers from Harvard Law School, who worked with the Times’ digital team. They found that this problem affected over half of the articles containing links in the NYT’s catalog going back to 1996, illustrating the problem of link rot and how difficult it is for context to survive on the web.
The study looked at over 550,000 articles, which contained over 2.2 million links to external websites. It found that 72 percent of those links were “deep,” or pointing to a specific page rather than a general website. Predictably, it found that, as time went on, links were more likely to be dead: 6 percent of links in 2018 articles were inaccessible, while a whopping 72 percent of links from 1998 were dead. For a recent, widespread example of link rot in practice, just look at what happened when Twitter banned Donald Trump: all of the articles that were embedded in his tweets were littered with gray boxes.
The team chose TheNew York Times in part because the paper is known for its archiving practices, but it’s not suggesting the Times is all that unusual in its link rot problems. Rather, it’s using the paper of record as an example of a phenomenon that happens all across the internet. As time goes by, the websites that once provided valuable insight, important context, or proof of contentious claims through links will be bought and sold, or simply just stop existing, leaving the link to lead to an empty page — or worse.
With the caye split into two and corals smashed into rubble, the underwater world at Laughing Bird Caye National Park off the coast of Belize looked nothing like the vibrant and colorful place that had thrived with life before Hurricane Iris swept across it in 2001. The storm left the water murky and muddy while rotting dead creatures washed ashore.
When Lisa Carne first visited the island in 1994, there were so many large, bright reddish-orange interlocking elkhorn corals that she could hardly swim through or around them. The reef was abundant in fish, corals, lobsters, crabs, sponges, and sea turtles. But after the hurricane, all of this was destroyed. With only a few surviving corals, the scene looked more like a graveyard.
It was not the first time Carne had seen a dead reef. In 1995, she moved full-time to Belize from California and volunteered as a research assistant at Carrie Bow Cay, a Smithsonian field station. She witnessed the effects of the first coral bleaching event in Belize, home to the second-longest barrier reef in the world. Bleaching events leave the structure of corals intact, but strip it of the algae that live in an endosymbiotic relationship with the coral polyps. Some coral recover from such events as the algae returns, although many die.
Shortages of semiconductors are battering automakers and tech giants, raising alarm bells from Washington to Brussels to Beijing. The crunch has raised a fundamental question for policymakers, customers, and investors: Why can’t we just make more chips?
There is both a simple answer and a complicated one. The simple version is that making chips is incredibly difficult—and getting tougher.
“It’s not rocket science—it’s much more difficult,” goes one of the industry’s inside jokes.
The more complicated answer is that it takes years to build semiconductor fabrication facilities and billions of dollars—and even then the economics are so brutal that you can lose out if your manufacturing expertise is a fraction behind the competition. Former Intel Corp. boss Craig Barrett called his company’s microprocessors the most complicated devices ever made by man.
This is why countries face such difficulty in achieving semiconductor self-sufficiency. China has called chip independence a top national priority in its latest five-year plan, while U.S. President Joe Biden has vowed to build a secure American supply chain by reviving domestic manufacturing. Even the European Union is mulling measures to make its own chips. But success is anything but assured.
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A robot arm feeds silicon wafers into a chipmaking machine. Video: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg
How much energy does an industry deserve to consume? Right now, organizations around the world are facing pressure to limit the consumption of non-renewable energy sources and the emission of carbon into the atmosphere. But figuring out how much consumption is too much is a complex question that’s intertwined with debates around our priorities as a society. The calculation of which goods and services are “worth” spending these resources on, after all, is really a question of values. As cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin, in particular, have grown in prominence, energy use has become the latest flashpoint in the larger conversation about what, and who, digital currencies are really good for.
On the face of it, the question about energy use is a fair one. According to the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance (CCAF), Bitcoin currently consumes around 110 Terawatt Hours per year — 0.55% of global electricity production, or roughly equivalent to the annual energy draw of small countries like Malaysia or Sweden. This certainly sounds like a lot of energy. But how much energy should a monetary system consume?
The full moon on Wednesday, May 26, will be the first total lunar eclipse since January 2019, according to EarthSky. It will take the moon just under three hours to cross through the Earth’s shadow, but the actual lunar eclipse will last for about 15 minutes.
A lunar eclipse happens when the sun, Earth and full moon align. During the eclipse, the moon will have a reddish hue from the sunlight filtering through Earth’s atmosphere, according to NASA. Many have labeled this a “blood moon.”
Depending on your location, you might be able to get a glimpse of part of the eclipse. Most of North and South America will be able to see it in the early morning hours while eastern Asia and Australia will see it in the evening.
In the United States, the total eclipse will begin at 7:11 a.m. ET and end at 7:26 a.m. ET, but will be partially visible from 5:45 a.m. ET to 8:52 a.m. ET. To check whether you’ll be able to see the eclipse where you live, go to timeanddate.com.
It’s also the “flower” supermoon, and it will be the closest moon to Earth in 2021, according to EarthSky. The moon will be 100% full at 7:14 a.m. ET.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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James' World 2 