[NEWS] Five sci-tech links: Freenet, smartphones, exoplanet mountains, kilonova, geoengineering

[rfmcdonald]

• Motherboard takes a look at the Cleveland Free-Net, an early bulletin board system that was one of the first vehicles for people to get online in the 1980s, here.


• Wired hosts an article making the case that blaming smartphones for causing human problems fits in an ancient tradition of human skepticism of new technologies, here.


• Universe Today's Matt Williams notes that upcoming generations of telescopes may be able to map mountains on exoplanets. (Well, really bumpy planets orbiting small stars, but still.)


• The kilonova GW170817/GRB in NGC 4993, nearest detected source of gravitational waves, is continuing to brighten mysteriously. Matt Williams at Universe Today reports.


• Brian Kahn at Earther notes that, although one popular theorized geoengineering method involving injecting sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere would greatly slow down global cooling and be good for almost all ecosystems, if it stopped rapid calamitous change would be the result.