NEW RESOURCES

Smithsonian: Smithsonian Science Education Center, With Support of the World Health Organization, Launches Vaccine Guide for Youth. “The guide features eight tasks that incorporate investigations and hands-on science to help students discover, understand and take action. Students will learn about the science of vaccines throughout history; how vaccines work and are developed; examine issues of equity, access and misinformation; and develop an action plan for addressing concerns within their communities.”

IceCube Neutrino Observatory: 10 years of IceCube data now publicly available at NASA’s HEASARC archive. “The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is an enormous neutrino detector that comprises 5,160 light sensors attached to 86 bundles of cable (called ‘strings’) that are buried in a cubic kilometer of ice a mile below the surface at the South Pole. A cooperative effort of the international IceCube Collaboration, its purpose is to detect astrophysical neutrinos: elusive, lightweight particles that are created by the most energetic phenomena in the universe.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bleeping Computer: Windows PetitPotam vulnerability gets an unofficial free patch. “A free unofficial patch is now available to block attackers from taking over domain controllers and compromising entire Windows domains via PetitPotam NTLM relay attacks. The PetitPotam attack vector that forces Windows machines to authenticate against threat actors’ malicious NTLM relay servers using the Microsoft Encrypting File System Remote Protocol (EFSRPC) was disclosed last month by security researcher Gilles Lionel (aka Topotam).”

SEO Roundtable: Yahoo Sign Taken Down At Sunnyvale Headquarters. “This is sad, here is a photo from Twitter of the Yahoo sign in front of the Yahoo Sunnyvale, California headquarters, being taken down. You can see tons of legacy photos of this iconic sign on Shutterfly or on Google.”

CNET: Twitter highlights the most tweeted events from the Tokyo Olympics. “The 2020 Tokyo Olympics came to a close Sunday night, but on Monday Twitter took a look back at the most noteworthy trends from the 17 days of international competition. The social media giant found that the most tweeted event was Brazil’s Rayssa Leal winning silver in women’s street skateboarding.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How Take Glorious Sunset Photos With Your Smartphone, Because Yours Suck. I am done with the “bullying headlines” trend. “If you want a really good picture of a sunset, you know that what you probably need is a real camera, by which we mean ‘not a smartphone.’ But unless you’re a professional photographer—or even an amateur photographer who takes pictures as a hobby—chances are the only camera you’ve got with you when that sunset lights up the beach lives in your smartphone. So let’s go with it, because hey, a smartphone can take a hell of a photo these days.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Text Memes Are Taking Over Instagram. “Known in internet slang as shitposting, this style of posting involves people publishing low-quality images, videos or comments online. On Instagram, this means barraging people’s feeds with seemingly indiscriminate content, often accompanied by humorous or confessional commentary. A growing ecosystem of Instagram accounts has embraced this text-heavy posting style, which has exploded in popularity among Gen Z users during the pandemic.”

Ars Technica: Deep dive into stupid: Meet the growing group that rejects germ theory. “Yes, you read that correctly: germ theory denialists—also known as people who don’t believe that pathogenic viruses and bacteria can cause disease. As an extension of their rejection of basic scientific and clinical data collected over centuries, they deny the existence of the devastating pandemic that has sickened upwards of 200 million people worldwide, killing more than 4 million.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Independent: Apple responds to growing alarm over iPhone photo scanning feature. “Apple has responded to growing alarm over its new iPhone scanning feature from privacy experts and competitors. Last week, the company announced that it would be rolling out new tools that would be able to look through the files on a users’ phone and check whether they included child sexual abuse material, or CSAM.”

Engadget: Record labels sue Charter over copyright infringement claims. “Charter Communications has been sued by a group of major record labels who claim it has failed to address ‘flagrant and serial’ music copyright infringement, The Verge has reported. It’s the second time over the last several years that the group has sued Charter over song piracy.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Techdirt: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible To Do Well: Series About Antisemitism Removed By Instagram For Being Antisemetic. “We’ve pointed this out over and over again in a variety of contexts. One classic example is social media websites pulling down human rights activists highlighting war crimes by saying it’s ‘terrorist content.’ Another were the many examples of people on social media talking about racism and how they’re victims of racist attacks having their accounts and posts shut down over claims of racism. And now we have another similar example. A new video series about antisemitism posted its trailer to Instagram… where it was removed for violating community guidelines.”

BBC: Why artificial intelligence is being used to write adverts. “What springs to mind when you think of advertising? Don Draper in the TV show Mad Men sipping a cocktail? Or perhaps trendy people swapping catch phrases in a converted warehouse?’ Well, more of the creative work these days is not being done by humans at all.” Good morning, Internet…

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