NEW RESOURCES

4 New York: NYC to Launch Online Database of School Cafeteria Violations. “New York City parents will soon be able to check how clean their kids’ school cafeterias are, thanks to a new online database that will list lunchroom violations including mice droppings, fruit flies and roaches.”

Builder: New Database Tracks Healthy, Efficient Building Products. “Building Clean offers an easy-to-use interface that includes information about appliances, heating and air conditioning equipment, insulation, lighting, plumbing, roofing, sealants, and water filtration. Building Clean can be used to search for products with third-party health certifications and services that promote transparency about the chemicals contained in the products. The site can also be a resource for businesses looking to break into the energy-efficient product supply chain.”

RowAnalytics: RowAnalytics launches public beta of spot.my, its new deep semantic search tool for life science research. “Complex data analytics software provider RowAnalytics Ltd today announced the public beta release of spot.my, its powerful new search platform for open access life science literature. spot.my is unlike any existing life science search tools – its intuitive and easy to use deep semantic search engine enables scientists to find exactly the papers they need, finding relevant articles without having to build long, complex keyword queries.” I messed around with it a little. I was surprised at the result order when I tried something like diabetes and depression, but the results themselves weren’t terrible.

PSNews: Early Bulletins now available online. “The National Library of Australia (NLA) has announced that the first six years of Australia’s longest running magazine, The Bulletin, have been digitised and made accessible through the Library’s online resource, Trove.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Before you read this and get too excited, I gotta warn you it comes only with a particular magazine and it’s gonna be hard to get your mitts on it. Be told. From Engadget: Google turns Raspberry Pi into a dirt cheap Home competitor. “If you’ve ever wanted to have a conversation with your own tiny home-made computer, then your prayers have just been answered. Raspberry Pi has teamed up with Google, bringing voice integration to the Pi with a clever combination of hardware and software. Packed with the same tech that powers Google Home, the companies have released a kit that transforms a regular Raspberry Pi 3 into your very own virtual assistant.”

AP: Ringling’s final circus to be on Facebook Live. “Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus first wowed audiences in the 19th century. For the iconic American spectacle’s final act, it will broadcast the final performance on a 21st century medium: Facebook Live.”

Naked Security: Update: Google Doc phishing story takes some bizarre turns. “Since news began circulating last night of a phishing campaign parading around as Google Doc access links, the tale has taken strange twists and turns. A self-described graduate student claims he was behind the blast of emails, and that they were part of a test for a school project, not a phishing attack. But according to the university he claims to be enrolled at, he’s not a student there.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Deutsche Welle: German research organization to identify Nazi victims that ended up as brain slides. “The Nazis murdered about 300,000 people with mental illnesses. Some of the victims’ brains were handed over for research, and some are still held at German institutes. It’s time to identify the victims…. The researchers will try to identify the remains so that they can be properly buried. They sift through books and archives at the Max Planck institutes, as well as at hospitals and psychiatric wards, and the archives of any offices associated with the Nazi euthanasia program. They will collect all data in a new database, Czech says.”

TorrentFreak: New Torrent Search Engine Abuses Wikipedia to Get Traffic. “Getting a torrent site off the ground is no easy feat in the current environment but doing so by misleading the public isn’t a great start. A new torrent search site appears to be doing just that, by editing the Wikipedia pages of famous torrent sites in order to drive traffic to its domain.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Ars Technica: Thieves drain 2fa-protected bank accounts by abusing SS7 routing protocol. “A known security hole in the networking protocol used by cellphone providers around the world played a key role in a recent string of attacks that drained bank customer accounts, according to a report published Wednesday.”

CTV News: Facebook, Twitter, Google sued over San Bernardino attack. “Family members of San Bernardino terror attack victims are suing Facebook, Google and Twitter, accusing the companies of providing platforms to aid terrorists.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles said the companies allowed the Islamic State group to spread propaganda, recruit followers and raise money.”

New York Times: Google Agrees to Pay Italy $334 Million in Back Taxes. “Google on Thursday became the latest company to agree to pay back taxes, in this case 306 million euros, or $334 million, to the Italian authorities for its operations in the country from 2002 to 2015.” Good morning, Internet…

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