Good morning. We are currently under a tropical storm warning “until further notice.” I am not particularly worried about flooding etc. but if trees start coming down that will mean extended power outages. If we get knocked out for a while I’ll post something on Facebook / Twitter. Much love.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Android 10 launches today, and Pixel phones get the day one update. “Android 10 is finally finished! The next big Android update, which we’ve been examining for most of the year as the ‘Android Q Beta,’ starts rolling out to devices today. As usual, Android 10 is arriving on Pixel phones first (even the three-year-old Pixel 1), and Google says it is ‘working with a number of partners to launch or upgrade devices to Android 10 this year.'”

NewsTalk ZB (New Zealand): Rule-breaking birth certificate ad back on Google within days. “An advertisement for a dodgy birth certificate reseller is back on Google, with less than a week since the web giant said it had removed it.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: Organize Your Browser Tabs with OneTab, but Back Them Up, Too. “I love OneTab, and you should, too. It’s an incredibly easy way to take the nightmare of tabs you’ve been saving in your browser window and condense them all into a single, easy-to-scan web page. I use this extension constantly, and it has helped me turn my overflowing tab problem into a more manageable mess.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: The World’s First Ambassador to the Tech Industry. “Casper Klynge, a career diplomat from Denmark, has worked in some of the world’s most turbulent places. He once spent 18 months embroiled in reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. For two years, he led a crisis management mission in Kosovo. Yet Mr. Klynge, 46, says his toughest foreign posting may be the one he has now: as the world’s first foreign ambassador to the technology industry.”

The Verge: Google employees and critics protest Eric Schmidt’s keynote at Stanford AI conference. “A Stanford University artificial intelligence conference invited former Google CEO and Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt to give a keynote speech next month. But a group of academics, activists, and current Google employees are urging organizers to reconsider the decision — citing Schmidt’s acceptance of censorship in China and his handling of sexual misconduct allegations at Google, among other controversies.”

Arab News: Egypt turns to social media influencers to boost tourism. “The Egyptian tourism ministry is reaching out to social media influencers to promote Egypt as a travel destination. The ministry issued a statement on Monday saying the cooperation with travel bloggers and their international counterparts is a new method to boost tourism.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Google emerges as target of a new state attorneys general antitrust probe . “More than half of the nation’s state attorneys general are readying an investigation into Google for potential antitrust violations, scheduled to be announced next week, marking a major escalation in U.S. regulators’ efforts to probe Silicon Valley’s largest companies.”

Monash University: Conviction politics: How convicts shaped Australian democracy. “Convicts aren’t often celebrated for their contribution to the nation’s progressive political traditions, and that’s something Associate Professor Tony Moore, Monash historian and head of Communications and Media Studies, is trying to change…. Dr Moore has received an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant of $757,205, together with cash contributions from industry partners of $310,000, to raise awareness of our convict legacy. The work partly involves coding, analysing and visualising recently digitised convict archives.”

Motherboard: Hackers Breach Forum Of Popular Webcomic ‘XKCD’. “Hackers have breached the forum of the popular webcomic XKCD, stealing around 560,000 usernames, email and IP addresses, as well as hashed passwords.” NOT XKCD! That’s like kicking Mr. Rogers.

RESEARCH & OPINION

ScienceBlog: Clickbait Secrets Exposed! Humans And AI Team Up To Improve Clickbait Detection. “Humans and machines worked together to help train an artificial intelligence — AI — model that outperformed other clickbait detectors, according to researchers at Penn State and Arizona State University. In addition, the new AI-based solution was also able to tell the difference between clickbait headlines that were generated by machines — or bots — and ones written by people, they said.”

Phys .org: Turning a handheld smartphone into a fluorescence microscope. “Researchers in the U.S. and China have developed a method to transform a smartphone into a fluorescence microscope. The handheld smartphone-fluorescence microscope (HSFM) device allows complex biomedical analyses both rapidly and inexpensively.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Jenkem Magazine, and do not @ me because I thought this was charming, in a sweary skateboardy kind of way: Discovering Skate Spots Via Google Earth. “You may have seen this part we shared of our friend, Jake Keenan, who seems to have a secret power for finding unusual and virgin skate spots. Well, it turns out he doesn’t just run across these spots randomly. He has a method, and it’s equally nerdy and impressive, thanks to mankind’s biggest tool / enemy: Google.” Fair amount of swearing, but then you get to watch them skateboard. Video with article. Good morning, Internet…

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