TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New Zealand Herald: Niki Bezzant: Shining light on food facts. “We still don’t have, for example, proper country-of-origin labelling on foods. We’re maybe halfway there — fresh and frozen fruits, vegetables, meats, fish and seafood will soon be required to display their country of origin, and that’s a great start. But we’re a long way from easily knowing where everything we eat has come from. A couple of good initiatives have recently started, though, which give us access to more information about some of our food if we want it.” One of the resources mentioned looks very NZ-oriented, but the other, about added sugars in foods, looks useful to everybody…

TechCrunch: Hold the first Moon rock ever collected with your smartphone. “NASA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing in a variety of ways today, but here’s one you can experience no matter where you are, provided you have a modern smartphone. NASA’s Astromaterials Research & Exploration Science (ARES) department has released a fully detailed model of the first ever sample of lunar soil and rock, bagged by Astronaut Neil Armstrong during humanity’s first-ever trip to the Moon’s surface.”

The Verge: Publishers are pissed about Amazon’s upcoming Audible Captions feature. “Earlier this week, Audible revealed that it was working on a new feature for its audiobook app: Audible Captions, which will use machine learning to transcribe an audio recording for listeners, allowing them to read along with the narrator. While the Amazon-owned company claims it is designed as an educational feature, a number of publishers are demanding that their books be excluded, saying these captions are ‘unauthorized and brazen infringements of the rights of authors and publishers.'”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Trends: The best free TV show episodes on YouTube. “Free television episodes on YouTube are typically a series pilot or season premiere, but sometimes they can be stand-alone episodes or lower-profile projects posted online to build some buzz. Although many of these free entertainment offerings tend to disappear from YouTube after a while, there are still plenty of quality episodes from major networks and streaming platforms to binge on without spending a dime.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Algorithms Cannot Judge The Realness Of An Author Name?. “With all the E-A-T discussion, a lot of SEOs are into building up the authority of the authors that write on their sites. But what if your authors don’t want their names out there? Asaf Bernstein asked John Mueller of Google about using the authors real name versus a pseudonym and John said ‘I doubt Google’s algorithms would judge the “real-ness” of author names that you use.'”

New York Times: A Last Look at Ebony’s Archives, Before They’re Sold. “For months, a stream of visitors — curious, cultured and deep-pocketed — have slipped into a drab brick warehouse on the West Side of Chicago. They have been escorted upstairs in a creaky elevator to a windowless room and handed blue gloves to wear. Then they have lingered for hours or days over the most significant collection of photographs depicting African-American life in the 20th century.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WRAL TechWire: Will Facebook fight court decision allowing access to private social media postings in murder trial? . “The California Supreme Court has effectively ruled that the defense in a gang-related murder trial can obtain private postings from social media companies. The court on Wednesday lifted a stay of a ruling by the judge overseeing the San Francisco trial and noted that the judge’s findings strongly justify access in this case, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.”

Neowin: German cybersecurity agency identifies critical flaw in VLC Media Player. “A German cybersecurity agency, CERT-Bund, which is responsible for organising the country’s response to any computer emergencies, has recently discovered what it describes as a critical flaw in the popular VLC Media Player.”

Genealogy’s Star: Missouri Actively Resists Public Disclosure Laws: All Genealogists Need to Read This. “I am begging every genealogist who spends a few minutes to read this long email account of the refusal and blatant actions of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services to share this post and the quoted letter as many times as possible. I am fed up with the government lying and refusing to follow the law at all levels. We all need to take a stand on this issue in our own jurisdictions. Here is the entire explanation, you decide for yourself.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Tech Xplore: Kitchen disruption: better food through artificial intelligence. “Looking for that perfect recipe, or a new flavor combination that delights the senses? Increasingly, players in the food industry are embracing artificial intelligence to better understand the dynamics of flavor, aroma and other factors that go into making a food product a success.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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