TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Fast Company: Suspicious of Google’s reCaptcha? Here’s a popular alternative. “In the fall of 2018, Google released a new version of reCaptcha, the company’s widely used bot detector. reCaptcha v3, as its called, is great at detecting bots but it has a dark side, as researchers suspect that Google is compromising users’ privacy to feed the system. Luckily, there’s alternative to reCaptcha for website owners who don’t trust Google—and could use a little extra cash.”

Bing Blogs: New transit options to help get you there – Real Time Updates, Trip Frequency, and Alternate Routes. “Over the last six months, the Bing Maps team has been hard at work to improve the quality of mass transit routing. Here are our three biggest improvements, which you can try out today on Bing.com and Bing.com/maps.”

Wolfram Blog: Enhanced Step-by-Step Solutions Now on Mobile: Announcing Wolfram|Alpha 2.0 for iOS. “In October 2009, a few months after the website launched, we released Wolfram|Alpha 1.0 for the iPhone. Today, we are announcing the latest evolution in Wolfram|Alpha for your iOS phone or tablet, Version 2.0, which is available now on the iOS App Store.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BetaNews: New platform simplifies the creation of interactive online guides. “A new platform called Stonly seeks to let anyone create easy-to-follow guides called ‘Stonlies’ without any need to write code. Content including text, images and videos can be combined with interactive capabilities to ensure the viewer only gets relevant information.”

The New York Times: Covering Protests Where There Is a Distrust of Social Media. “Daniel Victor, a reporter in Hong Kong, on why protesters there chose not to go after the Instagram moments while marching.”

KATV: Arkansas group to start opioid-deaths state database. “The state of Arkansas is using an almost $1 million Department of Justice grant to create a statewide database for opioid abuse and deaths, but the system will depend on the voluntary compliance of 75 county coroners.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: My browser, the spy: How extensions slurped up browsing histories from 4M users. “When we use browsers to make medical appointments, share tax returns with accountants, or access corporate intranets, we usually trust that the pages we access will remain private. DataSpii, a newly documented privacy issue in which millions of people’s browsing histories have been collected and exposed, shows just how much about us is revealed when that assumption is turned on its head.”

CNET: Slack is resetting passwords due to 2015 hack. “If you’re a longtime Slack user, you may get a notification today that your password needs to be reset. The work messaging app said Thursday that it’s resetting passwords for about 1% of Slack accounts due to a 2015 security incident.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Independent: Social media helps prove UK animals are migrating north as climate warms. “Dozens of animals, from birds to bats, are moving north across the UK as a result of climate change, scientists have discovered thanks to the help of social media.”

EurekAlert: Emotion-detection applications built on outdated science, report warns. “The authors note that the general public and some scientists believe that there are unique facial expressions that reliably indicate six emotion categories: anger, sadness, happiness, disgust, fear, and surprise. But in reviewing more than 1,000 published findings about facial movements and emotions, they found that typical study designs don’t capture the real-life differences in the way people convey and interpret emotions on faces. A scowl or a smile can express more than one emotion depending on the situation, the individual or the culture, they say.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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