Wrong-way driver coming at you 

Here’s a scary fact: Wrong-way drivers on expressways kill about 400 people a year. While traffic cameras can spot a vehicle going against traffic, getting that information to drivers in harm's way is a challenge. In Texas, friends of a wrong-way victim and Bosch engineers are working on alert systems that can be sent to phones of drivers in the path of danger, as described in this story by NBCDFW.

Learn long and prosper 

The unique, futuristic architecture of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto led producers to choose it for the setting of the Eternal Archive in an episode of Star Trek: Discovery’s final season. Library director and avowed Trekkie Michael Cassabon jumped at the chance to showcase his 800,000 volume collection to a wider audience and to hang with the cast and crew. The episode, “Labyrinth,” is dedicated to “librarians everywhere.”

Oldies but goodies

Unless you’re an immortal gaming vampire, you probably haven’t played even a fraction of all the good games available, claims Sydney Butler writing for How-to-Geek. If you’re thinking the game release calendar looks a little sparse, he recommends checking out past classics. Newer doesn’t always mean better, he says, and older games can be purchased for a fraction of the cost of new. He even throws in a Best Games List for good measure.

“It’s wrong but we do it anyway.” 

That’s what gamers say about smurfing, Ohio State studies reveal. Online video gaming systems match players according to their skills; smurfing is when a player creates a new account to play an opponent with lower skills. In three separate studies, social scientists explored the nuances of this admittedly unsporting behavior to discover when gamers think it’s really bad and when it’s just a little bit bad.

No kidding: Update your browser now 

Google’s most recent update of the Chrome browser raised some eyebrows at Mashable when it included nine security patches. May was not a good month for Chrome, with three zero-day vulnerabilities (confirmed exploits by bad actors) in one week. Follow the directions to update your browser wherever you have Chrome installed to stay safe out there.

He liked it so much, he bought the company 

Don’t weep for The Onion. The 36-year-old news parody publication has a new CEO, former NBC news political disinformation reporter Ben Collins. After five owners, the site was looking a bit neglected. Speaking with Fast Company, Collins shared his ambition to unshackle the writing staff, share any profits with them and make sure their work gets seen. Something to look forward to, along with more headlines like “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” Referring to mass shootings, this header has been used 35 times to date.

People in motion 

If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to book a robotaxi there. Taking a spin in a driverless car is the latest must-do tourist activity, reports the New York Times. Rides can be booked with Waymo, the only company currently operating vehicles for the public in the Bay Area. Cars can accommodate up to four passengers, but don’t sit in the driver’s seat. If you do, the car won’t move.

It’s official: A handful of new emoji

What do a fingerprint, a root vegetable and a harp have in common? They’re among the most recent additions to the official emoji lexicon. According to the Unicode website, the characters were based on proposals received by the Unicode Consortium. Reviewing the list of emoji proposed and declined makes for interesting reading. Why not wombats, one wonders?

Name dropping 

“What’s in a name?” mused Juliet. Well, it might depend on who else–or what else–has the same name. Sherwood News decided to dig into baby name data to find out how many girls were named Alexa after Amazon introduced its voice assistant in 2014. From a spike of around 6,000 new Alexas in 2015, the name fell off a cliff, to just 490 last year. Mom: “Alexa, stop hitting your sister. ” Alexa: “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” OK, that could be the kid or the assistant.

Scanning the horizon 

Happy 50th anniversary to the barcode scanner, the futuristic device that sped up grocery lines, cut down on cashier entry errors and paved the way for self-checkout. Back in June, 1974, the National Cash Register Company and Spectra-Physics introduced their Spectra-Physics Model A at a grocery store in Troy, Ohio, and the rest is shopping history, says Smithsonian Magazine.

By the way, APNews debunks a long-held myth about former president George H.W. Bush being out of touch because he showed amazement seeing a supermarket scanner. Turns out, what Bush saw in 1992 actually was rather amazing for its time. Oh, but what fun the media had with the story.