NEW RESOURCES

NASA: Take a 3D Spin on Mars and Track NASA’s Perseverance Rover. “Two online interactive experiences let you check out Jezero Crater – the landing site and exploration locale for NASA’s Perseverance rover – without leaving our planet. One new experience, called ‘Explore with Perseverance,’ allows you to follow along with the rover as though you were standing on the surface of Mars. Another interactive – ‘Where Is Perseverance?’ – shows the current location of the rover and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter as they explore the Red Planet.”

Brooklyn Daily Eagle: The courts never closed: Historical Society of the NY Courts launches digital archive. “The Historical Society of the New York Courts has launched ‘Dispensing Justice from a Distance,’ its digital archive of nearly 40 interviews with judges and court staff (including public safety and tech support), documenting their real-time experiences to keep the courts open, both virtually and in person, during the months of lockdown in New York. A timeline tracks the court system’s major milestones during the pandemic with images and documents to complete the record.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Google’s R&D division experiments with newsletters powered by Google Drive. “Following entries into the newsletter market from tech companies like Facebook and Twitter, Google is now experimenting with newsletters, too. The company’s internal R&D division, Area 120, has a new project called Museletter, which allows anyone to publish a Google Drive file as a blog or newsletter to their Museletter public profile or to an email list.”

Google Blog: Our new animated series brings data centers to life. “Google’s Discovering Data Centers series of short animated videos has the answers. As host of this series, I invite you to join us and learn about these expansive, supercomputer-filled warehouses that we all rely on, yet may know little about.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNN: Jaw-dropping moments in WSJ’s bombshell Facebook investigation. “This week the Wall Street Journal released a series of scathing articles about Facebook, citing leaked internal documents that detail in remarkably frank terms how the company is not only well aware of its platforms’ negative effects on users but also how it has repeatedly failed to address them. There’s a lot to unpack from the Journal’s investigation. But one thing that stands out is just how blatantly Facebook’s problems are documented, using the kind of simple, observational prose not often found in internal communications at multinational corporations.”

The Guardian: Facebook and Google condemned over ads for ‘abortion pill reversal’. “Facebook has served ‘abortion reversal’ adverts 18.4m times since January 2020, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), promoting an ‘unproven, unethical’ and ‘dangerous’ procedure.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: India antitrust probe finds Google abused Android dominance, report shows. “Google abused the dominant position of its Android operating system in India, using its ‘huge financial muscle’ to illegally hurt competitors, the country’s antitrust authority found in a report on its two-year probe seen by Reuters.”

Ars Technica: Telegram emerges as new dark web for cyber criminals . “Telegram has exploded as a hub for cybercriminals looking to buy, sell, and share stolen data and hacking tools, new research shows, as the messaging app emerges as an alternative to the dark web. An investigation by cyber intelligence group Cyberint, together with the Financial Times, found a ballooning network of hackers sharing data leaks on the popular messaging platform, sometimes in channels with tens of thousands of subscribers, lured by its ease of use and light-touch moderation.”

The Verge: Treasury to issue new cryptocurrency sanctions after ransomware attacks. “The Biden administration is preparing to issue a series of actions, including sanctions, to make it more difficult for hackers to profit off of ransomware attacks through the use of digital currency, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Texas at Dallas: Team’s Online Project Aims To Expand Scope of Psychology Research. “Dr. Candice Mills, associate professor of psychology in The University of Texas at Dallas’ School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, has received a three-year, $1.25 million grant from the NSF to develop an online platform for research on cognitive development in children ages 3 to 6. The result will be a website that will offer fun research activities for families and will help scientists understand child development on a larger scale than ever before.”

University of Missouri: Proposed tool would give users control of social media images “Imagine unexpectedly seeing yourself in a publicly shared photo on social media. Maybe you don’t want anyone to know you’re on vacation for security reasons, or maybe it’s just not a flattering picture of you. Right now, there’s no way to control your image if it inadvertently ends up in someone else’s selfie. But a University of Missouri engineering team hopes to change that. They’re devising a tool that social media platforms could implement to help you dictate who gets to share your face.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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