"That Google is the dominant force in web and mobile search won't surprise you," write a columnist at Forbes. "What might, though, is that roughly two thirds of the searches on Google never leave the search results page." That is, the searchers get what they are looking for without leaving Google. These are called "no-click" or "zero-click" searches. The percentages vary a bit depending on device, geography, and the precise definition of "no-click," but it's clear that Google is retaining a large share of searchers within its domain. Search expert Rand Fishkin, who compiled much of this data, thinks that the percentage of no-click searches will continue to rise... Increasingly, Google tries to provide the information the searcher wants on the search results page. For example, if one clicks "weather" after typing "w," Google provides a large amount of weather data for the user's location at the top of the results: current conditions, plus hourly and daily forecasts. Most users probably find what they need without having to click through to weather.com, where the data is sourced... A no-click result seems like a win for users, and it almost always is. The loser, if there is one, is the website where Google found the information. Users who might have lingered, consumed other content, subscribed, bought something, or created ad impressions now never get to the website... Google itself disputes that third party websites are being harmed as described by Fishkin. They note that many searches don't result in a click because the searcher refines their query or uses a link like "related searches." They also point out that users can interact with a business directly without having to click. For example, a customer who viewed the address and operating hours of a local business could visit that business despite the lack of a click. Beyond effort-saving, an additional factor that ensures no-click searches are here to stay is the explosion in smart speaker use. If you ask your Google Assistant or Alexa a question, you don't want multiple options to get the information. You want the answer. I predict that Google will continue to use and expand its no-click results. Absent legislative or regulatory intervention, they have no reason to impair their user experience.

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Brandon Toner is setting up a PagePark server on Glitch. He wants to do a blog styled after the outline format of davewiner.com.

"In a bid to bolster its claims as a crime-fighting tool, Ring deployed a tactic popular in the business world: influencer marketing," reports the Los Angeles Times. "It selected a cadre of brand ambassadors, rewarded them with free gadgets and discount codes, and urged them to use their connections to promote the Santa Monica security camera startup via word of mouth. "In this case, the brand ambassadors were Los Angeles Police Department officers." "You are killing it, by the way. Your code has 14 uses, eleven more and I will be sending you every device that we sell," a Ring employee wrote to one officer in a 2016 email. "Do you have any community meetings or crime prevention fairs coming up?" Ring provided at least 100 LAPD officers with one or more free devices or discount codes and encouraged them to recommend the company's web-connected doorbells and security cameras, emails reviewed by The Times reveal. In more than 15 cases, emails show that officers who received free gadgets or discounts promoted Ring products to fellow police officers or members of the public... [P]articipating officers got tens of thousands of dollars' worth of free and discounted electronics and helped establish a network of personal surveillance cameras that the LAPD could tap into with much less red tape than the typical means of obtaining video. The practice, privacy and criminal justice experts warn, raises the question of whether LAPD officers were serving the public in their interactions with Ring, or if they were serving a private business and themselves... It's unclear whether LAPD officers disclosed their arrangements with Ring to the public or fellow officers.

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Bloomberg Businessweek describes what happened when an anonymous donor started "seeding" the tiny El Salvadoran surfing village of El Zonte (population: 3,000) with Bitcoin, turning it into the world's biggest Bitcoin experiment. Workers now receive their salaries and pay bills in Bitcoin, tourists can buy pupusas with a special Bitcoin payment app, and community projects are financed with Bitcoin donations. According to Jorge Valenzuela, an upbeat 32-year-old surfing aficionado who leads the volunteers, "it has changed my town...." [T]he most striking thing these days is the orange "B" — the international symbol for Bitcoin — splashed on garbage cans, near the entrance of the dirt-floor pizza joint, and hanging on the wall near the surf shack at the beachfront hotel. The town has never had a bank. Now the lone ATM buys and sells Bitcoin... In El Zonte, Bitcoin is a possible solution to an actual problem, as opposed to a solution in search of a problem, which is how critics describe its role in, say, the U.S... But it was the pandemic that ultimately jump-started the project. When El Salvador's tourism industry and El Zonte's economy collapsed, Michael Peterson started making monthly transfers of about $35 in Bitcoin to 500 families around town [on behalf of an anonymous donor]. He used Wallet of Satoshi, one of the many existing smartphone apps created for small transactions using Bitcoin, which is notoriously impractical — expensive and slow — for everyday purchases. As more stores began asking how they could accept Bitcoin, Peterson decided El Zonte needed its own app. The Bitcoin Beach Wallet, which launched in September, similarly uses technology that allows for small transactions. It shows users how much they hold in Bitcoin and greenbacks and where they can spend it. Shops in town price everything in dollars, whether the underlying transaction is in Bitcoin or not. A cappuccino always costs $3.50, even if Bitcoin's value has just jumped or dropped. In this way, it behaves more like a token than a currency... He says that 18 months after the project launched, roughly 90% of El Zonte's households are interacting with the currency regularly. "It's crazy how fast Bitcoin has caught on," he says. Businesses are using it on their own to pay bills and accept payments. Residents use transfers to the Strike app, the ATM, and peer-to-peer transactions to move money back and forth between Bitcoin and cash... Many business owners say it makes up just a small fraction of sales. Although some 85% of families have access to smartphones, many still live in cramped houses with dirt floors and tin roofs. But for others, it's clearly been life-altering. A construction crew chief pays his dozen or so employees in Bitcoin. He was sick of losing them for a half-day every month so they could travel to the nearest bank, an hourlong bus ride away, on payday... El Zonte is among the longest-running experiments of its kind, but it's still largely untested. "I'd be very interested in seeing what happens if we enter a bear market," says McCormack, the British podcaster. "If you're a shop owner and you have $50 a day in Bitcoin sales and all the sudden that goes up to $60, that's cool. But what happens when it starts going down to $40 or $30?"

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Why wikilinks work better than #hashtags.

I believe that my socket server will pick up this change. Let's see if it does. (Indeed it did.)

USA Today reports: Companies like Moderna and Pfizer's partner BioNTech, whose names are familiar from COVID-19 vaccines, are using mRNA to spur cancer patients' bodies to make vaccines that will — hopefully — prevent recurrences and treatments designed to fight off advanced tumors. If they prove effective, which won't be known for at least another year or two, they could be added to the arsenal of immune therapies designed to get the body to fight off its own tumors... Over the last decade, pharmaceutical companies around the world have been developing new ways to train the body's immune system to fight off tumors, particularly melanoma. They had learned how to remove a brake installed by tumors, unleashing the warriors of the immune system. Ten years ago, only about 5% of people with advanced melanoma survived for five years. Now, nearly half make it that long. Trials of mRNA cancer vaccines aim to boost that number even higher by adding soldiers to the fight... Once a tumor has been largely removed through surgery, a vaccine can help generate new immune soldiers known as T cells... A computer algorithm analyzes the mutations distinct to the cancer cells, looking for ones that trigger the production of T cells, said Melissa J. Moore, Moderna's chief scientific officer, of platform research. So far, she said, Moderna, working with partner Merck, has tested these personalized vaccines in about 100 patients. They aim eventually to make a personalized mRNA vaccine within about 45 days after the patient's cancer surgery, during their recovery... Mutated cancer cells have proteins on their surface that can be targeted by an mRNA vaccine. For a tumor that has, say, five common mutations, a patient could get a combination of five of these vaccines. On Friday, BioNTech announced it was launching a new trial for this approach, testing it in 120 melanoma patients Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and the U.S. The new treatment, given in connection with an antibody from Regeneron, is aimed at four tumor-associated antigens. More than 90% of melanoma tumors contain at least one of the four. The U.S. federal government now lists 29 studies underway or that will be soon investigating mRNA cancer vaccines, according to the article. And Dr. Stephen Hahn, who had a career as an oncologist before running the Food and Drug Administration from 2019 until early this year, "said he's more optimistic this time because of how much researchers have learned about the role the immune system plays in cancer. 'That gives us an edge to maybe finally get to the place where we need to be.'"

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CBS News reports: A mysterious and puzzling email with the subject line of "Integration Test Email #1" landed in the boxes of some HBO Max subscribers on Thursday. Just hours later, the company said that the message was intended to be an empty test email, and "yes, it was the intern." The unnamed intern quickly became the new star of HBO Max on social media, as hundreds of encouraging messages poured in to reassure the intern that mistakes happen, in all phases of careers... And instead of subscribers responding with angry messages about an inconvenience, they used the opportunity to tell their own stories of work snafus... One individual wrote about how they "once globally took down Spotify." It almost happened twice," they wrote. "...You managed to find something broken in the way integration tests are done. It's a good thing and will help improve things...." "When I was 25 I made a PDF assigning each employee to the Muppet they reminded me of the most," another wrote. "I meant to send it to my work friend, but I accidentally sent it to the entire company. My supervisor (Beaker) wanted to fire me, but the owners (Bert & Ernie) intervened." Dozens of news outlets, from the Huffington Post to media wire services, soon began covering the funny stories shared in support: "Don't feel bad Integration Test Email #1 intern...when I was an intern once I accidentally powered off every device during a complicated laser experiment at MIT.""In the first month of my new HR job with a major defense contractor, I sent out an email about shirt orders that included the division president and several corporate leaders. Title of email: Your Shit is in the HR Office..." But my favorite reply of all? "Dear intern, welcome to Systems Engineering." Share your own thoughts and stories of support in the comments...

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What's important is to remember what's important.

I dislike all the hooplah about Father's Day since I don't have one.

My father died in 2009. As they say "after a long illness." Cancer.

I called the day he died Father's Day. From that moment on I could remember my father the way I wanted to, and try to remember that the things I didn't like were given to him by his father and his father's father, all the way back to the beginning, which in our case was probably a shtetl somewhere in the Ukraine or Belarus or Russia.

The one thing we bonded on was outliners. My father loved ThinkTank. He was a huge evangelist for it, as a college professor in NY, and a consultant to large businesses on marketing and management, he preached the gospel of seeing what you think. I now realize he wanted me to do, then, what I see now that I need to do. I wish he was alive today to use the tools we're creating now.

He didn't understand what I was doing when I was developing it, but he loved it after it was done. This might give tech adventurers some hope. Your parents might not understand what you're doing today, but when it's ready to go, they might become believers.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low-earth orbit in 1990 with an even older computer. Over the next 13 years it received upgrades and repairs from astronauts on five different visits from America's Space Shuttle. But now in 2021, "NASA continues to work on resolving an issue with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope," reports SciTechDaily — though "The telescope itself and science instruments remain in good health." The operations team will be running tests and collecting more information on the system to further isolate the problem. The science instruments will remain in a safe mode state until the issue is resolved... The computer halted on Sunday, June 13. An attempt to restart the computer failed on Monday, June 14. Initial indications pointed to a degrading computer memory module as the source of the computer halt. When the operations team attempted to switch to a back-up memory module, however, the command to initiate the backup module failed to complete. Another attempt was conducted on both modules Thursday evening to obtain more diagnostic information while again trying to bring those memory modules online. However, those attempts were not successful.

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I say the difference between the Mets and other baseball teams is that the Mets have philosophy. Their philosophy is to have a philosophy, which is this: it ain't about winning. The Yankees, the other NYC baseball team, expect to win every year, which doesn't work most years, because despite how good the Yankees are, there are 29 other teams and in most seasons the Yankees, like all but one team, are losers. Their philosophy is not adaptable. The Mets philosophy only has upside. In the infrequent years they win, well, that's a bonus, an extra goodie. Like some rice to go with your red beans. Like a pack of rolling papers to go with your ounce of weed. Winning for the Mets is a nice thing, soon forgotten, when you revert back to the long-term philosophy of playing baseball, not winning at playing baseball.

People who think sports are trivial haven't really thought it through, imho. Sports teach you how to think about things that are confusing in everyday life in clear terms with almost immediate outcomes. Sports is a training ground for strategic and philosophical intelligence. I say the difference between the Mets and other baseball teams is that the Mets have philosophy. Their philosophy is to have a philosophy, which is this: it ain't about winning. The Yankees, the other NYC baseball team have that philosophy, which doesn't work most years, because despite how good the Yankees are, there are 29 other teams and in most seasons the Yankees, like all but one team, are losers. Their philosophy is not adaptable. The Mets philosophy only has upside. In the infrequent years they win, well, that's a bonus, an extra goodie. Like some rice to go with your red beans. Like a pack of rolling papers to go with your ounce of weed. Winning for the Mets is a nice thing, soon forgotten, when you revert back to the long-term philosophy of playing baseball, not winning at playing baseball.

The latest version of the basketballl Nets were formed by players who cared not a whit about anything other than winning. They probably need to be reminded what team they're playing for, that is the Brooklyn Nets. Kyrie is playing for the Durant team, as is Harden and the others. Durant, who has already won championships, was bored, is a sour person, who on coming to NYC thought it was okay to dis the team that everyone in NYC knows sucks horribly, epicly, a self-sabotaging monster of a basketball team that despite everything NY basketball fans love. Love. We love them KD. But we don't like it when players from Seattle, Oklahoma and "Golden State" (where ever that is) come to NY and tell us our team sucks. You suck you asshole, and the only NYers who are going to root for your Nets are the ones who root for the Yankees. This Nets team was founded to win. Having lost, do they have any reason to exist? So today Knicks fans breathe a sigh of relieve. There is a basketball god after all, and the Knicks still rule NY. When the Nets show some hubris, when they commit to a long-term relationship with NY basketball fans, then and only then will the deserve real NY fans, not the fake fairweather fans.

This outcome, losing in the second round, was perfectly predictable. Maybe there should be a rule, once you win two championships you should retire, because from that point on there are no more thrills available to you, and like LeBron, destroyer of humble franchises in Miami and Cleveland (twice!) would do less damage if he just invested in VC-backed tech companies and forgot about bringing his sourness to basketball.

Sports teaches those of us who will never achieve the height of a Kevin Durant to appreciate what we have. This year the Knicks rose off the energy KD fed the team and exceeded all expectations. Next year and the year after I'll root for the Knicks, god willing. But if they ever mortgage their future, as the Nets did, to get three vagabond superstars to try to win a title in one year, I'll be shaking my head and will look for another hopeless cause to identify with until the Knicks come back to earth.

Anyone who's played Quake remembers the railgun weapon. The U.S. Navy spent $500 million trying to build a real one, according to Popular Mechanics, "using electricity and magnetism instead of gunpowder and chemical energy to accelerate a projectile down a pair of rails." But now they've apparently given up: The service is ending funding for the railgun without having sent a single weapon to sea, while pushing technology derived from the program into existing weapons. The weapon is a victim of a change in the Navy's direction toward faster, longer-range weapons that are capable of striking ships and land targets in a major war. The Navy's budget request includes no funding for the railgun in 2022, The Drive reports... Railguns are theoretically safer than conventional guns, since they reduce the amount of volatile powder a ship stores deep within its bowels in the ammunition magazine. The projectiles are also faster. But despite those advantages, there are reasons why the Navy is canning the railgun, which has been in development since 2005. For one, there are currently only three ships the Navy could conceivably fit the railgun to... The railgun concept itself is also out of step with the Navy's reorientation toward great power conflict, particularly a possible war with China or Russia. As an offensive weapon, the railgun's range of 50 to 100 miles is relatively short, placing a railgun-equipped ship within range of longer-range weapons, including China's DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile. And while the railgun also has defensive potential since it can shoot down incoming aircraft, missiles, and drones, the Navy already has plenty of existing missiles and guns to deal with those threats.

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Long-time Slashdot reader cusco shares an interesting report from IEEE Spectrum: In 2017, we first wrote about the Chinese startup Unitree Robotics, which had the goal of "making legged robots as popular and affordable as smartphones and drones." Relative to the cost of other quadrupedal robots (like Boston Dynamics' $74,000 Spot), Unitree's quadrupeds are very affordable, with their A1 costing under $10,000 when it became available in 2020. This hasn't quite reached the point of consumer electronics that Unitree is aiming for, but they've just gotten a lot closer: now available is the Unitree Go1, a totally decent looking small size quadruped that can be yours for an astonishingly low $2700. Speedy, good looking gait, robust, and a nifty combination of autonomous human-following and obstacle avoidance... There are three versions of the Go1: the $2700 base model Go1 Air, the $3500 Go1, and the $8500 Go1 Edu... The top of the line Edu model offers higher end computing, 2kg more payload (up to 5kg), as well as foot-force sensors, lidar, and a hardware extension interface and API access... Battery life is a big question — the video seems to suggest that the Go1 is capable of a three-kilometer, 20-minute jog, and then some grocery shopping and a picnic, all while doing obstacle avoidance and person following and with an occasional payload. Unitree later provided the reporter more detailed specs: The battery life of the robot while jogging is about 1 hour It weighs 12kg The Super Sensory System includes five wide-angle stereo depth cameras, hypersonic distance sensors, and an integrated processing system It's running at 16 core CPU and a 1.5 tflop GPU

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