GoKawiil
Tech News
A PhD student wrote to Nature's advice column describing a loss of motivation after switching from wet-lab work to bioinformatics, citing years-long difficulty obtaining clinical metadata needed for their project. Life coach Vikki Wright and educator Nicole Barnes responded, framing the experience as a recognizable 'third-year slump' tied to adjusting to a new working environment rather than necessarily a sign to quit.
Signal is moving toward letting users register accounts without providing a phone number, using zero-knowledge proof cryptography to verify accounts without exposing identifying data. The technology mirrors methods Signal already uses for donation badges and group membership, where proofs confirm status without revealing which specific badge or group is involved.
The author recounts habitually dating and archiving personal projects, from essay ideas to songwriting details like key, tempo, and recording dates, citing a note found from 2022 that resurfaced this practice. The piece argues that capturing such metadata immediately, while memory is fresh, prevents future confusion about when and how creative work was made.
Calibre, the open-source e-book library management tool, has introduced a feature that lets users generate custom book covers using AI. This joins its existing suite of tools for organizing, converting and syncing e-books across formats and devices.
Google rolled out a new location metadata API for Android's Photo Picker in its August Mainline update, and Snapseed (version 4.1.5.970833206) is the first app to adopt it. The update adds a prompt asking whether to include an image's location info when selecting it, plus a floating toggle button to quickly enable or disable that metadata sharing.