NEW RESOURCES

Hindustan Times: Now, a database of harmful chemicals in everyday items. “Chennai-based Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc) has created an online database — Database of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals and their Toxicity Profiles (DEDuCT) — of 686 endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), many of which are present in everyday items.” The news article does not appear to have a link to the resource. It’s available at https://cb.imsc.res.in/deduct/ .

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BetaNews: Ubuntu-based Linux Mint 19.2 ‘Tina’ BETA is here with Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce. “Today, Linux Mint 19.2 BETA is finally released. Codenamed ‘Tina,’ it will be supported until 2023 — long after Windows 7 support ends in January of 2020. In other words, when it achieves stable status, Linux Mint 19.2 should make a great replacement for Windows 7.”

CNN: Instagram doubles down on test to hide likes. “Instagram could be one step closer to concealing your likes. On Wednesday, the Facebook-owned company (FB) said it’s expanding its test that hides likes to more countries, including Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.”

NiemanLab: Attempting a meta-network for local news, Facebook announces community-building grantees. “In its latest quest to build community, Facebook is trying to develop a meta-community for local news publishers to then, you know, build that community. The cycle is being completed with funding, with recipients announced Wednesday, for local outlets to host events and create tools for their own local areas.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: Love Trello? Try These 5 Alternative Kanban Productivity Tools. “If your love affair with Trello continues and you wish you could use Trello-like boards in other apps, you’re in luck. Because the productivity apps we cover below combine Kanban boards with calendars, email, Slack, and more! Let’s explore them one by one.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Daily Beast: The New York Times Is Out to Make Its Obituaries Less White and Less Male. “In recent months, the newspaper has been quietly deploying a statistical demographic tool to help assure that at least 30 percent of its obituaries feature women, with ambitions to raise the obit percentage for racial and sexual- and gender-identity minorities as well.”

Monday Magazine: A passing of the torch for Victoria’s rock music history archives. “His basso profundo voice resonating through the cafe, Glenn Parfitt digs through the memory banks for a nugget about his days managing Victoria nightclubs.”

Bowdoin College: Embroideries, Facebook, and Virtual Sovereignty: How One Student Is Making History Accessible. “Ariana Smith ’21 has a Gibbons grant from Bowdoin this summer to continue researching the history of the Arctic Museum’s collections of Inuit embroideries—and to share this past with the people whose ancestors created them.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: You downloaded FaceApp. Here’s what you’ve just done to your privacy. . “When an app goes viral, how can you know whether it’s all good fun — or covertly violating your privacy by, say, sending your face to the Russian government? That’s the burning question about FaceApp, a program that takes photos of people and “ages” them using artificial intelligence. Soon after it shot to the top of the Apple and Google store charts this week, privacy advocates began waving warning flags about the Russian-made app’s vague legalese. Word spread quickly that the app might be a disinformation campaign or secretly downloading your entire photo album.”

CNET: Loan apps exposed real-time location data on millions in China. “Millions of people in China who use loan apps to borrow money have ended up paying with their privacy. A security researcher discovered a public database left exposed online containing sensitive data on more than 4.6 million devices, including location history, debt logs, financial information and contacts.”

Ars Technica: Microsoft warns 10,000 customers they’re targeted by nation-sponsored hackers. “According to a post from Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Customer Security & Trust Tom Burt, about 84% of the attacks targeted customers that were large, ‘enterprise’ organizations such as corporations. The remaining 16% of attacks targeted consumer email accounts. Burt said some of the 10,000 customers were successfully compromised while others were only targeted, but he didn’t provide figures.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Reddit: Fun little experiment — Using a Raspberry Pi 4 to archive Reddit in real-time. “I recently got a Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB) and wanted to torture the shit out of it by running an Elasticsearch node on it. Much to my surprise, not only does it keep up with indexing Reddit data in real-time, it offers surprisingly fast searches.” Good morning, Internet…

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