YouTube has long maintained its own design language that sets it apart from other Google apps. YouTube for Android is now testing a somewhat notable redesign that replaces the Library tab with “You.”

This test sees YouTube remove your profile avatar in the top-right corner and move it to the bottom bar. It serves as the icon for a new “You” tab that combines the functionality of the previous account menu and Library. All Google apps have that account pic in the same position, and this YouTube redesign breaks that consistency. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Instagram and other social media apps, which might be the point (see: Shorts).

Your channel information appears first along with buttons to Switch account, Google Account, and Turn on Incognito. App settings are accessed from the gear icon that only appears on this page, and is faster to access than before.  

Next are carousels for History and Playlists, with the latter no longer being a continuous list for a big usability change that reflects how this is no longer a Library page. That said, it could be argued that it’s less important for the main YouTube app to have one than YouTube Music or TV.

Your videos, Downloads, Your clips, Your movies, Your Premium benefits, Time watched, and Help & feedback round out this page.

We only have one report today of this You tab replacing the YouTube Library.

If YouTube proceeds with the redesign, it would further branch off from other first-party apps. YouTube maintains everything from its own font to icons. At this point, it’s likely not getting a Material You bottom bar — tall or otherwise. 

More on YouTube:

Thanks, Samuel

This piece was originally published in the second issue of Nightingale, the printed magazine of the Data Visualization Society.

Even though I got my Ph.D. in Network and Data Science, I have always stayed close to my roots, especially in Physics, whenever seeking inspiration. Growing up in Hungary, I was particularly amazed by the achievements of “The Martians,” a group of renowned scientists who emigrated from Hungary to the US around World War II. Interestingly, some of them even went to the same high school.

The Martians included, for instance, Leó Szilárd, who not only discovered the theory of nuclear chain reaction but also co-patented the refrigerator with Albert Einstein and Eugene Wigner–a key scientist at the Manhattan Project–leading the development of the first nuclear reactor. For his contributions, Wigner received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963, numbering among the 18 Nobel Prizes that have been linked to thinkers with Hungarian origins.

Those 18 prizes only measure about three percent of all the Nobel Prizes ever awarded. In fact, since 1901, about 600 prizes have gone to somewhat less than a thousand laureates in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, Peace, and–starting in 1969–Economics. The site NobelPrize.org highlights other exciting statistics about the prize and its awardees: from the youngest (17 years old) and oldest (97) laureates to multiple-prize winners such as John Bardeen (Physics, 1956 and 1972), Linus Pauling (Chemistry 1954, Peace 1962), and Marie Skłodowska-Curie (Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911).

The Curie family dominated the Nobel. Marie Curie first shared a prize with her husband, Pierre, and later received a second award. Additionally, the mighty couple produced a Nobel-winning heir. Their daughter, Irène Curie, who shared the recognition with her husband, Frédéric Joliot, was awarded the prize in the field of Chemistry in 1935. Marie Curie was a member of another fabulous example of the interlinked small world of laureates (sadly, Pierre passed away in 1906): the Solvay Conference on Physics in 1911. It was probably the most impressive line-up in science ever: 27 of the 29 participants had either already won, or later received, the Nobel Prize.

The stories of the Martians, the Curie family, the Manhattan Project, and the Solvay Conference all suggest that, behind the scenes, some seriously intertwined social networks are at work among Nobel laureates. To trace this network, I went to the most widely used online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and collected the Wiki page text of each laureate.

Then, in each laureate’s page text, I counted the mentions of all the other names, noting whether any pairings shared a common history noteworthy for Wikipedia. This way, I built a network of 682 nodes and 588 links, where nodes correspond to laureates, and the strength of the link between two nodes is proportional to the number of times their Wiki sites reference each other. Additionally, I downloaded the total view count of each laureate’s page and set their network node size proportional to the logarithm of that number. This node scaling eventually highlighted those that have become household names. To finalize the network visualization, I applied color coding that corresponds to the scientific disciplines. You may find the result in Figure 1.

To me, as a network scientist, the first and most striking observation about the network is its core-periphery separation: a large, connected component in the center (a so-called giant component) which contains more than 30 percent of the nodes, and a fragmented ring around it with smaller network components, with sizes up to ten nodes. The most frequent component sizes are as few as two and three nodes, which aligns well with the fact that the Nobel Prize can be shared among a maximum of three laureates, and shared prizes are becoming more and more common in the majority of fields.

I also realized that nodes in the giant component are larger, meaning significantly higher visibility and a greater number of search hits for those laureates, as measured by logarithm of their Wiki view counts. After looking into the data, it turns out that the median Wiki-view count is 351,005 in the central component, while only 170,510 for the outer ring, and the average view count value is about 2.5 times higher for the central component than for the outer ring. So it seems, the central clique is way more popular!

But who are they? The coloring with the green-yellowish shades versus reddish tones is meant to distinguish sciences from humanities, coinciding with the left and right sides of the giant component. These sides are linked by Sir James Chadwick, who won the 1935 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the neutron and who also became a scientific advisor to the United Nations. The science side (Figure 2a), headlining researchers like Albert Einstein and Max Planck, seems to have a strong root in the Prussian Academy of Sciences (1700–1945) and is also strong amongst the founders of modern Physics, from the Curies to Enrico Fermi and Eugene Wigner or György Hevesy (both with Hungarian and Martian roots).

On the humanities side (Figure 2b), we can see some quite popular figures. Apparently, science is not the way to world fame! There are immediately two central laureate organizations that strike the eye: the European Union and the United Nations, both awarded Nobel Peace Prizes. Notable individuals include prominent politicians, such as Barack Obama or Henry Kissinger, the human rights activist Nelson Mandela, and the economist Milton Friedman (with Hungarian, but non-Martian, roots).

As for the outer parts, there are a few famously social individuals, such as Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Richard Feynman — personally, my favorite Nobel laureate for both his scientific contribution and his playful and eccentric personality. These individuals, despite living busy lives, are somewhat isolated from the network, likely due to the time and geographical locations of their active years compared to other laureates. Additionally, the data may be incomplete here as Wikipedia is neither perfect nor 100 percent accurate in documenting social connections, and sadly (or not?), Facebook did not exist at that time.

Finally, the Hungarians and the Martians: looking at the data, it turns out that many of them are not connected to even a single Nobel laureate, and those who are members of the network are simply scattered around. The reasons behind this are unclear — maybe the legend of the Martians is overrated, or maybe there weren’t enough of them awarded a Nobel to appear in the network visibility. One thing is for sure, though: the Manhattan Project counted seven Nobel laureates while it was operational and, later, a dozen more, but among them only Wigner was from the Martians.

As inspirational as it is to scan all these names and connections in The Nobel Network, and despite how it makes me truly feel as if I’m “standing on the shoulders of giants,” the network has its flaws. Besides the peripheral Eastern Europeans, we see an elite club emerging in the center with the majority of popular names clustered together in the giant component, excluding two-thirds of the network. This suggests that two-thirds of the laureates just walk away with the prize and go back to their work, and only the remaining third engage in visible connections, be it friendships or collaborations. As “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” missing more than 60 percent of those brilliant minds from the central flow of ideas seems a pity.

Even more missed opportunities arise. The central component itself is split into two camps: science and humanities. This polarization very much goes against today’s main direction, interdisciplinary research, which gives us the power to tackle major societal problems never experienced before. Additionally, the network reveals the low number of female laureates. Despite the exceptional history of Marie Curie, only about six percent of laureates were female, most of whom were awarded the Peace Prize (16.5 percent of 109 awarded) and the least of whom earned awards in Physics (1.8 percent of 219 awarded).

Still, all is not lost. Mapping exercises like this one can help reveal these issues, which otherwise are barely visible, even to the most avid Nobel fans. Zooming out and utilizing network science can highlight otherwise hidden patterns and enable understanding, which is the first step in identifying future solutions, be it about gender gaps or elitist cliques.

Quordle needs to be approached in a different way to Wordle. With four puzzles to solve in nine guesses, you can’t blindly throw letters at it and expect to win – you’ll stand a far better chance if you think strategically.

That’s the case in Wordle too, of course, but it’s even more important in Quordle.

There are two key things to remember. 

1. Use several starting words

Firstly, you won’t want just a single starting word, but almost certainly two or three starting words. 

The first of these should probably be one of the best Wordle starting words, because the same things that make them work well will apply here too. But after that, you should select another word or possibly two that use up lots more of the most common consonants and that include any remaining vowels.

For instance, I currently use STARE > DOILY > PUNCH. Between them, these three words use 15 of the 26 letters in the alphabet including all five vowels, Y, and nine of the most common consonants (S, T, R, D, L, P, N, C and H). There are plenty of other options – you might want to get an M, B, F or G in there instead of the H, maybe – but something like that should do the trick.

If all goes well, that will give you a good lead on what one or sometimes two of the answers might be. If not, well good luck!

2. Narrow things down

Secondly, if you’re faced with a word where the answer might easily be one of several options – for instance -ATCH, where it could be MATCH, BATCH, LATCH, CATCH, WATCH, HATCH or PATCH – you’ll definitely want to guess a word that would narrow down those options. 

In Wordle, you can instead try several of those in succession and hope one is right, assuming you have enough guesses left. It’s risky, but will sometimes work. Plus, it’s the only option in Hard mode. But in Quordle, this will almost certainly result in a failure – you simply don’t have enough guesses.

In the scenario above, CLAMP would be a great guess, as it could point the way to four of the seven words in one go.

It’s time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off. 

Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I’m still playing now, around 18 months after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it’s fun, but also difficult.

As promised by publisher 3D Realms, the 2023 edition of the Realms Deep streaming game event was full of announcements, like game premieres, new trailers, new demos, and more.

You can watch the entire Realms Deep event on YouTube (get some snacks; it’s nearly four hours long). There was so much revealed on the 3D Realms side, not to mention all of the other new game reveals and announcements from other indie game developers and publishers.

Here’s a quick recap of just some of the highlights of Realms Deep 2023:

Ion Storm: Aftershock – The long-awaited expansion pack to the Build Engine FPS got a new trailer, and you can buy and play the full expansion in just a few days, on Monday, October 2.

Phantom Fury – The Quake engine-based continuation of the Ion Fury universe won’t be out for a while, but you can check the new trailer and a new playable demo right now.

Wrath: Aeon of Ruin – This Quake engine game has been in Early Access for a long time. Today we got a new trailer and a final release date of February 27, 2024.

Kingpin Reloaded – This remastered version of Interplay’s 1999 controversial crime-themed first-person shooter Kingpin: Life of Crime was announced a while ago. Today at Realms Deep, we got a new trailer and a final release date of December 5, 2023.

Cultic Interlude – This Build engine horror-themed game released its first chapter a while ago. While Chapter 2 is coming in the future, you can get a free new ‘Interlude” section of the game right now.

Graven – This fantasy first-person RPG has been available in Early Access for a while, but the final version is coming out on January 23, 2024.

Ripout – This co-op sci-fi FPS looks pretty cool, and it’s coming very soon in Early Access. It will be available on October 24, but you can play the demo right now.

Twisted Tower – This is a newly announced first-person title from Atmos Games that mixes elements and inspriations from BioShock and Willy Wonka. There’s no release date yet for the game.

There were also a lot of notable non-3D Realms games revealed. One of them is Proteus: The Elder Veil, an upcoming expansion pack for the retro shooter Proteus. There’s no release date yet.

Finally, we wanted to mention that during Realms Deep 2023, it was mentioned that Duke Nukem is coming back. Zen Studios, the developers of many virtual pinball games, will release Duke Nukem: Big Shot Pinball, a new table for its Pinball M game. There’s no release date yet for the game.