The Internet Archive will suspend its waiting lists for digital copies of books, as part of its National Emergency Library, the organization said. From a report: "Users will be able to borrow books from the National Emergency Library without joining a waitlist, ensuring that students will have access to assigned readings and library materials that the Internet Archive has digitized," according to a blog post. The move comes as schools around the country are shut down in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and as it's become more difficult to get goods of all kinds. The post noted that many people can't physically go to their local libraries these days. The waiting lists apply to more than 1.4 million books. The Internet Archive said it would keep the waiting list suspended until June 30, 2020, or "the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later."

The ongoing coronavirus crisis has thrown the release schedule of cultural products into chaos, as now is an exceptionally bad time to drop anything that isn't a government check for lost wages. Jeremy Gordon, writing for The Outline: Our cultural producers -- movie studios, publishing houses, television networks, and so forth -- must decide whether to go ahead with previously made plans, or wait until all of this is over. The new Fast and Furious movie, for example, has been pushed back from its May 2020 release date to April 2021, in hopes that mass gatherings will be back on the table by then (maybe!) and we'll all be in a better mood to watch some big cars go boom. But as more people are driven inside for the time being, it's also true that everyone is looking for something to do at home. As a result, unconventional solutions have emerged: Last week, Universal Pictures announced it'll make several of its current film releases available to stream on-demand at home, as movie theaters around the world are being closed. Beginning Friday, movies like The Invisible Man, Emma, and The Hunt will be rentable for $19.99 apiece, with Trolls: World Tour set for a similar release.

Emma and The Invisible Man were finished products already in theaters, so Universal just had to skip the typical waiting period between when a movie is released, and when it's available for purchase. But there are so many more finished products waiting to be released in the coming weeks, which publishers may now consider delaying until a time when everyone can go back outside. While they may be reticent to promote anything in the current climate, I would submit an opposite suggestion: Release that shit. While everyone is sitting at home stewing in anxiety, people have never been more desperate for distraction. We have all become a captive audience with the free time to give that show or game a try.

An anonymous reader shares some free streaming media options: There's over 10,000 public domain audiobooks at LibriVox.org, created by volunteers reading public domain works. (If you've got time, why not record yourself reading your own favorite public domain poem or novel?) And there's also a lot of free audiobooks (and ebooks) available through Hoopla, a free "digital media" service that's partnering with many public libraries across North America. They're not just offering books; there's also movies, music, TV shows, and even comic books.

As always, Amazon's audiobook service Audible offers a free one-month trial. But they've now also announced a new free service for "as long as the schools are closed... Kids everywhere can instantly stream an incredible collection of stories..."
You can also stream over 6,500 full-length movies over at archive.org, including Night of the Living Dead and The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz.

They've even got a collection of classic cartoons, like Tom and Jerry, Betty Boop, the Pink Panther, and lots of Popeye (including one where Popeye runs for president against Bluto.)

And an archive.org blog post explains that that's just the beginning: If gaming is more your speed, then check out the MS-DOS Games in our Software Library. This collection includes dozens of classic favorites such as Pac-Man, Sim City, The Oregon Trail, Doom, Prince of Persia, Donkey Kong, and Tetris, as well as many more lesser-known titles such as Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter! and Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist. Enjoy simulations of popular board and card games such as Monopoly [press F1 to begin], Stratego, Hearts, or Mah Jong, as well as flight simulators, sports games, and this treat for Monty Python fans.
They also have recordings of old-time radio shows -- as well as an archive of live music. ("Our most popular collection by far is The Grateful Dead, but you could also explore Smashing Pumpkins, Robert Randolph (and the Family Band), Disco Biscuits, Death Cab for Cutie, John Mayer, or Grace Potter and the Nocturnals...")

And then there's this: Relive the 80's and 90's (and learn how to style your scarf) with the Ephemeral VHS collection, or roam the cosmos with the NASA Image of the Day gallery. Learn about the history of advertising with this collection of retro TV ads or enjoy some psychedelic screensavers. No matter how long you're stuck indoors, the Internet Archive will have something new to offer you — so happy hunting!
Share your reactions -- and your own finds and suggestions -- in the comments! And in these days of social distancing, what are the best free entertain sites that you've found?

Reading subscription service Scribd is offering free access to its library of over one million ebooks, audiobooks, magazines and more for the next 30 days (no commitment or credit card information required). From a report: Scribd told Good e-Reader that "with the spread of COVID-19 and new regulations put into effect, we know many people are staying close to home, yet still looking for information, distractions and perhaps a mental escape. Scribd wants to support the community by giving people access to the world's largest library during this global health crisis, and do our small part in helping consumers through times of uncertainty."

Apple on Wednesday announced the Magic Keyboard, featuring a trackpad, that will work with newly unveiled iPad Pro models and some previous generation iPads. Is this the "convergence" everyone had been waiting for? A "2 in 1" or a tablet or a toaster-refrigerator? Did Apple capitulate? Some context on the evolution of devices, from Steven Sinofsky, former President of the Windows Division at Microsoft. He writes: Hardware evolves just like software but we don't often see it the same way. We're used to talking about the cycle software bundling and unbundling, but hardware does the same thing. Every new generation of hardware begins this cycle anew. Certainly we're used to hardware adding ports or absorbing new technologies over time. Where things get really interesting with hardware is when a new "form" is introduced, often the first step is jettisoning many features from the leader. With the introduction of a form, the debate immediately begins over whether the new form can take over or whether it is a substitute for the old one. Tech dialog is rather divisive over these questions (dodged by marketing). "It can never work" or "It will eventually work." The industry works hard to create these dividing lines. The way it does this is first because usually there are new manufacturers that make the new form.

Second, pundits attach labels to form factors and begin a process of very specific definitions (dimensions, peripherals.) The first one of these transitions I remember is the introduction of portable computers. Out of the gate, these were way less powerful than "PCs." The debate over whether a portable can "replace" a "PC" was in full force. Quickly the form factor of portable evolved and with that came all sorts of labels: luggable, portable, notebook, desktop, sub-notebook, and so on. This continued all the way until the introduction of "ultra-books." If you're a maker these labels are annoying at best. (1987) Quite often these are marketing at work -- manufacturers looking to differentiate an otherwise commodity product create a new name for the old thing done slightly differently. Under the hood, however, the forms are evolving. In fact the way they are evolving is often surprising. The evolution of new forms almost always follows the surprising pattern of *adding back* all those things from the old form factor. So all those portables, added more floppies, hard disks, then expansion through ports/docks, and then ultimately CPUs as powerful as desktop.

Then we wake up one day and look at the "new" form and realize it seems to have morphed into the old form, capabilities and all. All along the way, the new form is editing, innovating, and reimagining how those old things should be expressed in the new one. These innovations can change software or hardware. But this is where hardware devices like USB come from -- the needs of the new form dictate new types of hardware even if it solves the same problem again. The evolution of PCs to become Servers offers an interesting arc. PCs were literally created to be smaller and less complex computers. They eliminated all the complexity of mainframes at every level while making computing accessible and cheap. When first PCs began to do server tasks, they did those in an entirely different way than mainframes that were servers of the day. They used commodity desktop PCs -- literally the same as a desktop running in an office. That was the big advantage -- cheap, ubiquitous, open! Mainframe people balked at this crazy notion. It was an obvious moment of "that is a toy." Then the age of client server computing was before us, starting in the late 1990s. But what followed was a classic case of convergent evolution. PC Servers started to add attributes of mainframes. At first this seemed totally crazy -- redundant power supplies, RAID, multi processors, etc. THAT was crazy stuff for those $1M mainframes. Pretty soon at h/w level telling a PC Server from a MF became a vocabulary exercise. And here we are today where server to stripped the very elements rooted in PC (like monitors and keyboards!) Guess what? That's a mainframe! On Twitter, this would be: "Mainframe, you've invented a mainframe.

Except, the operating system and software platform is entirely different. The evolution was not a copy, but a useful convergence done through an early series of steps copying followed by distinct and innovative approaches that created a new value ... a new form factor. So here we are today with an iPad that has a trackpad. Many are chuckling at the capitulation that the iPad was never a real computer and finally Apple admitted it. Laptop, Apple has invented the laptop. This was always going to happen. From the earliest days there were keyboard cases that turned iPads into "laptops" (w/o trackpads) and these could be thought of as experiments copying the past. It took time (too much?) to invent the expression of the old in the new. The PC server everyone uses in the cloud today is no mainframe. It is vastly cheaper, more accessible, more scaleable, runs different software (yes people will fight me on these in some way, but the pedantic argument isn't the point). Adding a trackpad to iPad was done in a way that reimagined not just the idea of a pointer, but in the entire package -- hardware and software. That's what makes this interesting. To think of it as capitulation would be to do so independent of how computing has evolved over decades.

An anonymous reader shares a report from TechCrunch, written by Devin Coldewey: It's no secret I'm a fan of the reMarkable, a tablet with a paper-like display that's focused on text and sketching rather than rich media and games. The sequel to the original, announced today, looks to make a good thing even better. Designed for the creation and consumption of monochromatic content like long documents, e-books, notes and sketches, the reMarkable set itself apart as a more minimalist alternative (or complement) to the likes of the iPad or Surface. The device was crowdfunded and has sold more than 100,000 units; meanwhile, the company has grown and attracted a $15 million A round. One sees in retrospect that the money helped launch this successor.

The most obvious change is to the design. It has a bold asymmetrical look with a chrome band along the left side, indicating the tablet's main use as an alternative to a paper notebook: Hold it with your left hand and write with your right. Sorry, lefties. The new tablet is just 4.7 mm (0.19 in) thick, thinner than the iPad Pro and Sony's competing Digital Paper tablets, both of which are 5.9 mm. Let's be honest -- at these levels of thinness it's getting hard to tell the difference, but it's an accomplishment nevertheless. [...] The software running on the reMarkable has received several major updates since the product made its debut, adding things like handwriting recognition, a new interface, better performance and so on. But one of the most requested features is finally coming with the new device: saving articles from the web. The company is claiming a 3x boost to battery life, using the same 3,000 mAh battery, based on performance improvements throughout and a more efficient (but more powerful) dual-core ARM processor. That means two weeks of use and 90 days of standby. This is welcome news, because frankly the battery life and power management on the last one were not great. The reMarkable 2 will sell for $399 if you pre-order, and comes with a Marker and a folio case.

In countries where websites, blogs and a free press are strictly limited, Minecraft "is still accessible by everyone," notes the official official web site for Reporters Without Borders (an international nonprofit defending freedom of information): Reporters Without Borders used this backdoor to build "The Uncensored Library": A library that is now accessible on an open server for Minecraft players around the globe. The library is filled with books, containing articles that were censored in their country of origin. These articles are now available again within Minecraft hidden from government surveillance technology inside a computer game. The books can be read by everyone on the server, but their content cannot be changed. The library is growing, with more and more books being added to overcome censorship.

On March 12 — the World Day Against Cyber Censorship — the Uncensored Library will open its doors, giving young people around the world access to independent information, through a medium they can playfully interact with. The campaign runs under the hashtag: #TruthFindsAWay...

Additional to banned articles from journalists, visitors of The Uncensored Library can find the Reporters Sans Frontières World Press Freedom Index and reports on the current press freedom situation of 180 countries in the world.
They spent three months working with the design studio BlockWorks to assemble 12.5 million blocks into a vast structure with a neoclassical architecture.

You can see it in a short film at uncensoredlibrary.com, or access it in Minecraft at visit.uncensoredlibrary.com

schweini shares a report: Every year the world celebrates the anniversaries of masterworks and maestros. In 2020, a host of events and publications commemorated the lives of Ludwig van Beethoven, Raphael, Charles Dickens, Anne Bronte and William Wordsworth. Such milestones usually come in neat multiples of 50. The 42nd anniversary of anything is rarely observed. Yet on March 8th fans of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" ("HHGTTG") paid tribute to the comedy science-fiction series, which had its radio premiere on that day in 1978 and was subsequently adapted into novels, TV series, video games and a film.

To mark the occasion, Pan Macmillan reprinted the scripts and novels in colourful new editions ("HHGTTG" was the first book published under their "Pan Original" imprint to sell more than 1m copies). The British Library will host a day of "celebrations, conversation and performance." BBC Radio 4 has aired the original episodes; Radio 4 Extra will put on a "five-hour Hitchhiker's spectacular" including archival material and specially commissioned programmes. Such is the enduring interest in Douglas Adams's story that it is due to be adapted into a new television series by Hulu, a streaming service.

As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to spread in the US and other countries, demand for products like face masks and hand sanitizer has led to a spike in prices. To combat price gouging, online retailer eBay is banning some listings related to the coronavirus. From a report: In a notice to eBay sellers posted Thursday and spotted earlier by CNBC, eBay said it would block new listings and remove existing listings in the US for disinfecting wipes, hand sanitizer and face masks, including N95/N100 masks and surgical masks. The listings are being removed due to concerns that inflated prices for these products may violate US laws or regulations. eBay also said it will remove any listings, except for books, that mention COVID-19, coronavirus or 2019nCoV in the title or description. It's unclear how long the ban will last.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Last fall, during a visit to Barnes & Noble's flagship store in New York City's Union Square, the British bibliophile James Daunt strode about the ground floor in oxblood loafers deploring the bookshop's hideous appearance. The carpets were dusty, and the escalators had broken down. A cheap pine table was littered with trinkets and scented candles. A vase was wedged between new titles, its bouquet of sunflowers sagging in brown water. "I like the idea of the flowers, but you have to change the water," Daunt said. "And you have to put in decent flowers -- you can't just go down to the petrol station and grab a bunch. I mean, look at it." Daunt has opened about 60 bookshops in his three-decade career, every one of them profitable, making him one of the Amazon era's most successful booksellers. After founding Daunt Books, a popular, independent brand of stores in the U.K., he was credited with saving the country's largest chain, Waterstones, from ruin by giving managers more agency over their inventory. Those credentials impressed Elliott Management Corp., a notorious $40 billion hedge fund better known for seizing an Argentine warship as collateral and berating corporate governance at Twitter Inc. and AT&T Inc. It acquired Barnes & Noble Inc. last year for $683 million including debt and appointed 56-year-old Daunt chief executive officer, the man in charge of its rescue.
[...]
If Daunt succeeds in rescuing Barnes & Noble, it would earn Elliott a stellar return. In typical hedge fund fashion, it's already insulated itself against not earning anything at all from its bookstore empire. Corporate filings show that a $41,598,957 dividend was paid last year from Waterstones to Book Retail Holdco, an entity controlled by the firm and domiciled in a Channel Islands tax haven that indirectly owns the U.K. chain. Daunt says he's answering a higher calling. "There aren't remotely enough independents to maintain our industry. Publishers won't keep that infrastructure going, it will become a world completely dominated by Amazon, and the traditional bookshop will disappear," he says. His life's work now depends on saving the giants that were once the enemy. "If we can achieve that goal, the owner will also make a lot of money, so they'll be happy as well."

Caitlin McGarry, reporting for Gizmodo: There are currently 342 potential borrowers waiting for 197 digital copies of Ronan Farrow's investigative thriller Catch and Kill at the Los Angeles Public Library. [...] Why can only one person borrow one copy of an ebook at a time? Why are the waits so damn interminable? Well, it might not surprise you at all to learn that ebook lending is controversial in certain circles: circles of people who like to make money selling ebooks. Publishers impose rules on libraries that limit how many people can check out an ebook, and for how long a library can even offer that ebook on its shelves, because free, easily available ebooks could potentially damage their bottom lines. Libraries are handcuffed by two-year ebook licenses that cost way more than you and I pay to own an ebook outright forever.

Ebooks could theoretically circulate throughout public library systems forever, preserving books that could otherwise disappear when they go out of print -- after all, ebooks can't get damaged or lost. And multiple library-goers could technically check out one ebook simultaneously if publishers allowed. But the Big Five have contracts in place that limit ebook availability with high prices -- much higher than regular folks pay per ebook -- and short-term licenses. The publishers don't walk in and demand librarians hand over the ebooks or pay up, but they do just...disappear. "You think about Harvard Library or New York Public Library -- these big systems that, in addition to lending out stuff for people to use, are also the places where we look to preserve our heritage forever," said Alan Inouye, the American Library Association's senior director of public policy and government relations. "You can't do that if it's a two-year license."

When Pakistan's government unveiled some of the world's most sweeping rules on internet censorship this month, global internet companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter were expected to comply or face severe penalties -- including the potential shutdown of their services. Instead, the tech giants banded together and threatened to leave the country and its 70 million internet users in digital darkness. The New York Times: Through a group called the Asia Internet Coalition, they wrote a scathing letter to Pakistan's prime minister, Imran Khan. In it, the companies warned that "the rules as currently written would make it extremely difficult for AIC Members to make their services available to Pakistani users and businesses." Their public rebellion, combined with pressure and lawsuits from local civil libertarians, forced the government to retreat. The law remains on the books, but Pakistani officials pledged this week to review the regulations and undertake an "extensive and broad-based consultation process with all relevant segments of civil society and technology companies." "Because Pakistan does not have any law of data protection, international internet firms are reluctant to comply with the rules," said Usama Khilji, director of Bolo Bhi, an internet rights organization based in Islamabad, the country's capital.

The standoff over Pakistan's digital censorship law, which would give regulators the power to demand the takedown of a wide range of content, is the latest skirmish in an escalating global battle. Facebook, Google and other big tech companies, which have long made their own rules about what is allowed on their services, are increasingly tangling with national governments seeking to curtail internet content that they consider harmful, distasteful or simply a threat to their power. India is expected to unveil new censorship guidelines any day now, including a requirement that encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp tell the government how specific messages moved within their networks. The country has also proposed a new data privacy law that would restrict the activities of tech companies while exempting the government from privacy rules.

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger shared this report from the Hugo award-winning science fiction fanzine File 770: North Bellmore, New York fan Elyse Rosenstein, 69, died suddenly on February 20th. She had been undergoing rehabilitation after suffering a broken leg. At the time of her death, she was a retired secondary school science teacher. With Joyce Yasner, Joan Winston, Linda Deneroff and Devra Langsam, she organized the very first Star Trek convention, held in New York City in 1972. The convention was not only the very first media convention, it was also the biggest science fiction convention to date by a considerable margin...

At the time, Star Trek fans were often looked down on by many science fiction fans, who were more into books and magazines than TV shows. The pair hoped that a convention specifically geared towards Star Trek would do a lot to bring fans together. The rest, as they say, is fan history....

Elyse Rosenstein had a BS in physics and math, and an MS in physics, and taught science for more than two decades. She was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Long Island Physics Teachers Association...

She was nicknamed "The Screaming Yellow Zonker" by Isaac Asimov.

On Tuesday, Netflix lost a bid to escape a lawsuit brought by the trademark owner of "Choose Your Own Adventure" over the 2018 immersive film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. The series' original publisher, Chooseco, sued the company early last year for $25 million in damages, as the company says that Netflix's new movie benefits from association with the Choose Your Own Adventure series, without the company ever receiving the trademark. From Hollywood Reporter: According to the plaintiff, it has been using the mark since the 1980s and has sold more than 265 million copies of its Choose Your Own Adventure books. 20th Century Fox holds options for movie versions, and Chooseco alleges that Netflix actively pursued a license. Instead of getting one, Netflix released Bandersnatch, which allows audiences to select the direction of the plot. Claiming $25 million in damages, Chooseco suggested that Bandersnatch viewers have been confused about association with its famous brand, particularly because of marketing around the movie as well as a scene where the main character -- a video game developer -- tells his father that the work he's developing is based on a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

In reaction to the lawsuit, Netflix raised a First Amendment defense, particularly the balancing test in Rogers v. Grimaldi, whereby unless a work has no artistic relevance, the use of a mark must be misleading for it to be actionable. U.S. District Court Judge William Sessions agrees that Bandersnatch is an artistic work even if Netflix derived profit from exploiting the Charlie Brooker film. And the judge says that use of the trademark has artistic relevance. Thus, the final question is whether Netflix's film is explicitly misleading. Judge Sessions doesn't believe it's appropriate to dismiss the case prematurely without exploring factual issues in discovery. Netflix also attempted to defend its use of "Choose Your Own Adventure" as descriptive fair use. Here, too, the judge believes that factual exploration is appropriate. You can read the full decision here.

DoNotPay, the family of consumer advocacy services meant to protect people from corporate exploitation, is launching a new app aimed at helping end our long national nightmare surrounding robocalls by giving you a burner credit card to get their contact details then giving you a chatbot lawyer to automatically sue them. From a report: DoNotPay Founder and CEO Joshua Browder's Robo Revenge app is unique from every other app looking to protect you from robocalls in that it can get you cash while stopping them completely. "All of the big companies like AT&T and Apple have failed to protect consumers," Browder told Motherboard over the phone. "Consumers have to protect themselves. The only way the problem will end is if the robocallers start losing money every time they call someone."

In the past, DoNot Pay has offered various apps to help consumers fight back. DoNotPay's Free Trial Card creates a virtual, one-time-use credit card to protect you from getting charged by "industrialized scams" like free trials. DoNotPay's original offering was a chatbot lawyer program that automatically disputed parking tickets in small claims court. Robo Revenge combines both features to automatically add you to the Do Not Call Registry, generate a virtual DoNotPay burner credit card to provide scammers when they illegally call you anyways, use the transaction information to get the scammer's contact information, then walk you through how to sue them for as much as $3,000 per call under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a law already on the books meant to protect consumers from calls that violate the Do Not Call Registry. The app also streamlines the litigation paperwork by automatically generating demand letters and court filing documents.

Amazon is quietly canceling its Nazis. Over the past 18 months, the retailer has removed two books by David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as several titles by George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party. Amazon has also prohibited volumes like "The Ruling Elite: The Zionist Seizure of World Power" and "A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind." From a report: While few may lament the disappearance of these hate-filled books, the increasing number of banished titles has set off concern among some of the third-party booksellers who stock Amazon's vast virtual shelves. Amazon, they said, seems to operate under vague or nonexistent rules. "Amazon reserves the right to determine whether content provides an acceptable experience," said one recent removal notice that the company sent to a bookseller. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been roiled in recent years by controversies that pit freedom of speech against offensive content. Amazon has largely escaped this debate. But with millions of third-party merchants supplying much of what Amazon sells to tens of millions of customers, that ability to maintain a low profile may be reaching its end.

It all began when Sacha Baron Cohen shared a picture of Mark Zuckerberg as a Roman Emperor along with some scathing commentary, reports TechCrunch: He tweeted in frustration, "We don't let 1 person control the water for 2.5 billion people. We don't let 1 person control electricity for 2.5 billion people. Why do we let 1 man control the information seen by 2.5 billion people? Facebook needs to be regulated by governments, not ruled by an emperor!

Soon after, Tesla founder Elon Musk responded to the morning diatribe, himself tweeting "#DeleteFacebook it's lame."
Musk's response received 55,400 "Likes", as well as 6,700 retweets and another 1,200 follow-up comments.

Musk also tweeted a photo from inside a massive SpaceX hangar at Boca Chica, announced that small satellite operators using SpaceX "can now book their ride to orbit online," reported that his mother has published a book of life advice, and shared a tweet making fun of WhatsApp.

"Under the age of 39? Odds are that most of your peers learned to code in C.

"Most Baby Boomers and Gen Xers — or, those between the ages of 40 and 74 in 2020 — learned to code in BASIC."

That's just one of the interesting conclusions from HackerRank's third annual "Developer Skills Report," which this year compiled responses from over 116,000 developers (from 162 different countries). Developed for educational use in 1964, BASIC was a popular instructional language in college classrooms. But that began to change in 1972, when Bell Labs invented C, allowing portability of the Unix operating system. Though it wasn't an instant hit, the language rose to popularity in the late 70s and early 80s alongside the growth of Unix. Today, the language is celebrated for its longevity, flexibility, and ease of use — just some of the reasons it's still popular for Gen Zers learning to code today.

Gen Z is more likely than any previous generation to utilize bootcamps. Nearly one in six say they've leveraged bootcamps to learn new skills. On the flip side, they're less likely to learn coding skills from older generations' go-tos, like books and on-the-job training. As Gen Z comes to rely more heavily on non-traditional education sources like bootcamps, they're poised to become a key talent pool.
Jaxenter also summarizes another interesting finding from the survey. "72% of hiring managers reported that bootcamp grads were equally or better equipped for their job." The I-Programmer site even noted the top reasons managers gave the surveyors for why bootcamp grads exceed:

• Ability to learn new technologies & languages quickly (71%)
• Strong practical experience (61%)
• Eager to take on new responsibilities (52%)

And they also summarize another interesting result. "Almost a third of developers at small companies (1-49 employees) haven't obtained a Bachelor's degree -- a proportion that drops to only 9% in companies with 10,000 or more employees."

The US film industry may have generated revenues somewhere in the region of $40 billion last year, but it seems Hollywood still has plenty of work to do if it wants to compete with that most hallowed of American institutions: the public library. From a report: According to a recent Gallup poll (the first such survey since 2001), visiting the local library remains by far the most common cultural activity Americans engage in. As reported earlier today by Justin McCarthy: "Visiting the library remains the most common cultural activity Americans engage in, by far. The average 10.5 trips to the library U.S. adults report taking in 2019 exceeds their participation in eight other common leisure activities. Americans attend live music or theatrical events and visit national or historic parks roughly four times a year on average and visit museums and gambling casinos 2.5 times annually. Trips to amusement or theme parks (1.5) and zoos (.9) are the least common activities among this list."

Electronic component distributor Digi-Key will be producing a small manufacturing run of the "open hardware" ereader from the Open Book Project, reports Gizmodo: The raw hardware isn't as sleek or pretty as devices like the Kindle, but at the same time there's a certain appeal to the exposed circuit board which features brief descriptions of various components, ports, and connections etched right onto the board itself for those looking to tinker or upgrade the hardware. Users are encouraged to design their own enclosures for the Open Book if they prefer, either through 3D-printed cases made of plastic, or rustic wooden enclosures created using laser cutting machines. With a resolution of just 400x300 pixels on its monochromatic E Ink display, text on the Open Book won't look as pretty as it does on the Amazon Kindle Oasis which boasts a resolution of 1,680x1,264 pixels, but it should barely sip power from its built-in lithium-polymer rechargeable battery -- a key benefit of using electronic paper.

The open source ereader -- powered by an ARM Cortex M4 processor -- will also include a headphone jack for listening to audio books, a dedicated flash chip for storing language files with specific character sets, and even a microphone that leverages a TensorFlow-trained AI model to intelligently process voice commands so you can quietly mutter "next!" to turn the page instead of reaching for one of the ereader's physical buttons like a neanderthal. It can also be upgraded with additional functionality such as Bluetooth or wifi using Adafruit Feather expansion boards, but the most important feature is simply a microSD card slot allowing users to load whatever electronic text and ebook files they want. They won't have to be limited by what a giant corporation approves for its online book store, or be subject to price-fixing schemes which, for some reason, have still resulted in electronic files costing more than printed books.