TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tubefilter: GIPHY Collaborates With (And Pays) Creators As Part Of Its New ‘Creators Club’. “Facebook-owned GIPHY has launched Creators Club, a collaborative program where it will work with creators to make original GIFs and short videos.”

Wolfram Blog: A New Way to Ask Wolfram|Alpha Questions with Math Input. “The input field now formats as you type, which is very helpful, especially for people using Wolfram|Alpha in the classroom, or while studying or doing homework. Most mathematics, especially in the US K–12 standard curriculum, is taught by using handwritten methods, and seeing this formatting as you type is extremely useful.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Ars Technica: A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps. “Google Talk, Google’s first-ever instant messaging platform, launched on August 24, 2005. This company has been in the messaging business for 16 years, meaning Google has been making messaging clients for longer than some of its rivals have existed. But thanks to a decade and a half of nearly constant strategy changes, competing product launches, and internal sabotage, you can’t say Google has a dominant or even stable instant messaging platform today.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Robocalls are out of control. Is a new mandated technology helping?. “The FCC’s deadline to implement technology to beat back those annoying robocalls went into effect earlier this summer. As of June 30, every major voice provider in the US, including phone companies AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile and cable provider Comcast, is required to implement a technology called Stir/Shaken designed to curb the tide of spam calls. But experts say the battle to end robocalls isn’t over.”

The Register: Online disinformation is an industry that needs regulation, says boffin . “Society should treat disinformation as the product of an industry worthy of regulation, not a crime committed by individuals, according to Dr Ross Tapsell, a senior lecturer and researcher at the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific.”

BBC: Data protection ‘shake-up’ takes aim at cookie pop-ups. “The UK’s new Information Commissioner will be charged with a post-Brexit ‘shake up’ of data rules, including getting rid of cookie pop-ups. John Edwards has been named the next head of data regulator the ICO.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

KnowTechie: Alphabet’s Wing drone has now delivered over 10,000 cups of coffee. “In a blog post on the company’s website, Wing celebrated its success ahead of the company’s two-year anniversary in September. The company, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, is quickly approaching 100,000 deliveries overall. Of those near 100,000 deliveries, more than 50,000 have come in one city in the last eight months alone.”

PsyPost: Study finds that 30% of people subscribed to a fact-checking newsletter have recently shared misinformation. “New findings published in PLOS One suggest that even people who are highly concerned about fake news are susceptible to sharing it. Among a sample of individuals who were subscribed to a COVID-19-related fact-checking newsletter, about 30% had shared debunked information at least five times in the past 3 months.”

The Conversation: Wearable tech for your ears: ‘Hearables’ can teach you a language or music with the help of AI . “Hearables are wireless smart micro-computers with artificial intelligence that incorporate both speakers and microphones. They fit in the ears and can connect to the internet and to other devices, and are designed to be worn daily. Some technology companies are now marketing these as ‘the future of hearing enhancement,’ and focusing on their capacities to disrupt existing hearing aid markets.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

Gizmodo: A Determined Hacker Has Brought Google Maps to the NES. “Almost a decade before the world finally realized how tedious April Fool’s Day pranks are, Google revealed a farcical 8-bit port of Google Maps for the iconic Nintendo Entertainment System. The prank was quickly forgotten, but not by one maker, who, nine years later, has made the NES version of Google Maps a reality.” Good evening, Internet…

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