NEW RESOURCES

California State University Channel Islands: Virtual Science Carnival will bring more than 50 hands-on science activities to kids and families. “The magic of CSU Channel Islands’ (CSUCI) annual Science Carnival will be virtual this year, which will allow teachers, parents and kids from pre-school age on up to the eighth grade to bring hands-on science activities into their own homes and classrooms. ‘With the Virtual Science Carnival, kids can immerse themselves in over 50 activities where they are touching, seeing and doing science,’ said Science Carnival founder and Professor of Chemistry Phil Hampton, Ph.D.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Inoreader Blog: Monitor Web Pages For Changes Using Web Feeds. “After months of beta testing, we can finally say that our new monitoring feature called ‘Track changes’, part of Web Feeds, is now ready for prime time! This feature is perfect if you want to track visual or textual changes on a web page, like monitoring price changes, product availability, or just following a change log for updates.”

Tom’s Guide: Google Chrome is getting a big upgrade to save you time — here’s how. “Whether you want to take a screenshot and edit it, scan a QR code to share a webpage, even print and save a file as a PDF — Chrome on Android easily lets users do this. Now, desktop users starved of a similar suite of sharing options could soon get the same ability to share their web pages with WhatsApp contacts, other applications and Messages.”

USEFUL STUFF

Troy Hunt: The Facebook Phone Numbers Are Now Searchable in Have I Been Pwned. “The headline is pretty self-explanatory so in the interest of time, let me just jump directly into the details of how this all works. There’s been huge interest in this incident, and I’ve seen near-unprecedented traffic to Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) over the last couple of days, let me do my best to explain how I’ve approached the phone number search feature.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: 5 Art Accounts to Follow on Instagram Now. “My other great cultural love, alongside visual art, is comics. I think it’s because the form combines writing and pictures, the two media to which I’ve devoted my career. Whether it’s a comic or just a meme, I find it immensely satisfying and kinetic when images and words are brought together in such a way to add up to something greater than the sum of those parts. That something is the theme of my picks this month.”

Ahram Online: Online catalogue underway of 29,000 of Petrie’s archaeological finds in Egypt. “When British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie came to Egypt in 1883 he explored several archaeological sites and revealed some of the country’s ancient history. According to Egyptian law at the time, archaeological dig sponsors had full rights to half of finds, while Egypt retained the other half. Half a century after Petrie’s death, the British Museum in London started cataloguing some of the artefacts he unearthed in Egypt, especially those in possession of the 60 museums involved in sponsoring Petrie’s excavation missions. The exciting news is that early this month they began preparing to catalogue them in an online searchable database format.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: Google Is Cracking Down on Apps That Can See Every Other App You Have Installed. “In a recent announcement for developers, Google outlined an update to its policies that will restrict ‘broad app visibility’ in Android 11 or later. Broad app visibility is a function that allows apps to query your device and potentially see what other apps you have installed. Google says it considers data regarding other apps installed on a device to be sensitive information and is making this change to help increase user privacy.”

Washington Post: How America’s surveillance networks helped the FBI catch the Capitol mob. “Debra Maimone pulled down her American flag mask for a moment on Jan. 6 and gazed at the unruly mob of supporters of President Donald Trump overrunning the U.S. Capitol. ‘Put your mask on,’ warned her fiance, as the couple stood beneath an unblinking array of surveillance cameras. ‘I don’t want them to see you.’ It was too late.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: NASA Mars Perseverance rover snaps charming ‘face’ selfie. “NASA’s most recent rovers have all had a mast with a suite of instruments on top that’s thought of as the rover’s ‘head.’ Cameras mounted on the mast give us thrilling views of the Martian surface. Perseverance’s new photo is the equivalent of looking the rover in the ‘eyes.'”

Reuters: Google AI scientist Bengio resigns after colleagues’ firings: email. “Google research manager Samy Bengio said on Tuesday he was resigning, according to an internal email seen by Reuters, in a blow to the Alphabet Inc unit after the firings of his colleagues who questioned paper review and diversity practices.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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