Disruptive Library Technology Jester

Disruptive Library Technology Jester

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Peter E. Murray

Library technologist, open source advocate, striving to think globally while acting locally

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  • Issue 95: Updating ChatGPT, Cryptomining, and Website-for-Small-Libraries Threads

    This week we revisit threads from a month ago, a year ago, and 12 years ago.

    • ChatGPT references a non-existent book
    • AI generating news articles
    • Cryptocurrency miners in Texas forced to shut down due to electricity shortage
    • Lament for a future that could have been: A Web presence for every …
     Posted on  January 12, 2023
     and last updated January 25, 2023
     ·  9 minutes reading time
  • Issue 94: Controlled Digital Lending

    E-books are a prominent theme looking back at a couple of year-end issues of DLTJ Thursday Threads. In 2010, a writer in Boston Review wondered about "books after Amazon." In 2011, an author for O'Reilly Media's Radar blog wrote that "readers sure to like ebooks" and "DRM is full of …

     Posted on  December 29, 2022
     and last updated December 28, 2022
     ·  7 minutes reading time
  • Issue 93: Chat-bots Powered by Artificial Intelligence

    This week we jump into the world of chat-bots driven by new artificial intelligence language models. The pace of announcements about general-purpose tools driven by large training sets of texts or images has quickened, and the barrier to experimenting with these tools has dropped. There are now fully-functional websites where …

     Posted on  December 15, 2022
     and last updated January 25, 2023
     ·  10 minutes reading time
  • Issue 92: Privacy Stories From 2014 Still Echo Today

    Back again. Thanks for the comments on the return of the newsletter. I've heard that Microsoft Outlook isn't playing nice with my email theme. (It also isn't playing fair...someone forwarded the newsletter back to me, and when I replied that person said the view of the newsletter in the …

     Posted on  December 08, 2022
     and last updated December 07, 2022
     ·  8 minutes reading time
  • Issue 91: Bibliographic Records and Mastodon Migration

    Well, this newsletter was off the air longer than I anticipated. A lot has happened since issue 90 in late March: cryptocurrency value falling, Twitter spiraling (maybe a death-spiral...can't be too sure), and (in the U.S.) a whopper of a mid-term election season. All is well here in …

     Posted on  December 01, 2022
     and last updated November 30, 2022
     ·  5 minutes reading time
  • Issue 90: When Machine Learning Goes Wrong

    The People of Ukraine are not forgotten. The Tufts University newspaper published an article this week about a multinational effort to preserve the digital and digitized cultural heritage of the country. On the other side of the war, Russian citizens are downloading Wikipedia out of fear of more drastic network …

     Posted on  March 24, 2022
     and last updated March 24, 2022
     ·  6 minutes reading time
  • Issue 89: Ukraine's Libraries, Russia's Internet, and the Big Deal

    The first story below is one from National Public Radio on Ukraine libraries' efforts are undertaking. Let's not forget the terror they are facing, the people stepping up to meet their community's needs, and those who have lost their lives in the Russian war.

    The threads this week:

    • Ukraine Libraries …
     Posted on  March 17, 2022
     and last updated March 17, 2022
     ·  4 minutes reading time
  • Issue 88: Battling Censorship, Considering the Right to be Forgotten

    For this week's newsletter introduction, I searched the Flikr service for photographs of libraries in Ukraine. I thought that putting a picture here at the top of a grand reading room with dark wood shelves and neat rows of books would help us remember that a significant part of our …

     Posted on  March 10, 2022
     and last updated March 09, 2022
     ·  4 minutes reading time
  • Issue 87: Ukraine War, Artificial Intelligence Art

    We are one week into Russia's war against Ukraine. From here in America, it is hard to understand the reality of a country whose citizens seemed to be going about normal lives just a short time ago. I find it also hard to know what to say to people whose …

     Posted on  March 03, 2022
     and last updated March 02, 2022
     ·  4 minutes reading time
  • Issue 86: Tracking Media Provenance, Digital Classroom Surveillance, Don't Pixelate to Redact, Android In-App Advertising

    I've deleted what I originally had here as newsletter-opening-banter. These are serious times. I think the world has radically changed overnight, and roughly 7.9 billion of us are not in positions to do anything about it. To those that are in positions to do something about it and to …

     Posted on  February 24, 2022
     and last updated February 24, 2022
     ·  9 minutes reading time
  • Issue 85: Privacy-busting Journal Article Fingerprints, Fraud in NFTs, Improve Your Life

    The middle of February already. Time is flying; I hope you are having fun.

    The threads this week:

    • Privacy-busting Fingerprints in Journal Articles
    • Fraud in NFTs
    • Improve Your Life

    Feel free to send this newsletter to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you are not already …

     Posted on  February 17, 2022
     and last updated February 16, 2022
     ·  5 minutes reading time
  • Issue 83: Author's CDL Thoughts, WWE's Monopsony, Child's Library Book

    Greetings from the wintery mix that is central Ohio. The local school district called off school yesterday afternoon in preparation for what came today. Also yesterday: Ohio's own "Buckeye Chuck" predicted an early spring. Let's be grateful for snow days (and teenagers who shovel snow) and for predictions of early …

     Posted on  February 03, 2022
     and last updated February 02, 2022
     ·  5 minutes reading time
  • Issue 82: Personal Digital Library, Video Preservation, Selling Prayers, and Library Ebook Legislation

    Screen capture of a Twitter poll showing 80% of votes for 'Cats' and 20% of votes for 'Controlled Digital ILL' out of 5 votes total cast

    The People Have Spoken
    On a whim, last Thursday I put out a poll with the announcement of last week's issue. Out of the three threads, controlled digital lending, gamers and NFTs, and cats, the winner was cats. The sample size was small—five votes—so I'm not ready to …

     Posted on  January 27, 2022
     and last updated January 27, 2022
     ·  7 minutes reading time
  • Issue 81: Controlled Digital Interlibrary Lending, Gamers Revolt Against NFTs, and Cats

    Photograph of a white cat with black splotches laying across a lap
    Alan the cat
    Wednesday night with a cat on the lap, composing the next day's Thursday Threads. How could life get any better?

    Hey...I'm not above using cat pictures to satisfy readers. In fact, I'm going to do it one more time before this newsletter is finished. (Oh, and …

     Posted on  January 20, 2022
     and last updated January 20, 2022
     ·  7 minutes reading time
  • Issue 80: Cryptocurrency's Wasteful Energy Consumption and an Ode to Interlibrary Loan

    Welcome to issue 80 of Thursday Threads. I'm so happy many of you chose to stick around and greetings to all of the new subscribers. To those that received my email last Thursday giving you a heads-up that a new issue would be coming to your inbox but then didn't …

     Posted on  January 13, 2022
     and last updated January 13, 2022
     ·  5 minutes reading time
  • Router Behind a Uverse/Pace 5268ac Gateway Loses its Mind Every 10 Minutes

    Late last year, I had my AT&T Uverse residential gateway replaced. For reasons that truly baffle me, AT&T has decided that they are going to run unsupported equipment on their residential customer network. When the replacement was swapped in, my family noticed that video conference calls—Zoom and …

     Posted on  January 13, 2022
     and last updated January 13, 2022
     ·  4 minutes reading time
  • Issue 79: Educational Technology Futures, Social Media Legislation, Apollo 11 Launch at 50

    Welcome to the re-inaugural issue of DLTJ Thursday Threads. Counting backward, there were 78 previous issues (all by the most recent still need to be converted from the old WordPress style of formatting) with—all told—several hundred references and commentary. Here at the start of 2022, I'm making a …

     Posted on  January 06, 2022
     and last updated January 06, 2022
     ·  4 minutes reading time
  • Refactoring DLTJ, Winter 2021 Part 2: Adopt AWS Amplify

    Look at that! Progress is being made down the list of to-dos for this blog in order to start the new year on a fresh footing. As you might recall from the last blog post, I set out to do some upgrades across the calendar year boundary:

    • Ramp up automation …
     Posted on  December 30, 2021
     and last updated February 19, 2022
     ·  6 minutes reading time
  • Refactoring DLTJ, Winter 2021 Part 1: Picking up Obsidian

    As 2021 comes to a close, I've been thinking about this blog and my own "personal knowledge management" tools. It is time for some upgrades to both. The next few posts will be about the changes I'm making over this winter break. Right now I think the updating will look …

     Posted on  December 29, 2021
     and last updated January 06, 2022
     ·  6 minutes reading time
  • Issue 78: Battles over strong encryption, IPv4 addresses exhausted while IPv6 surges

    Two articles in each of two threads this week:

    • If Strong Encryption is Outlawed...
    • Allocations of IPv4 Internet Addresses Now Restricted; It's a Good Thing IPv6 is Finally Here

    Feel free to send this newsletter to others you think might be interested in the topics. If you are not already …

     Posted on  July 09, 2015
     and last updated January 15, 2018
     ·  5 minutes reading time