NEW RESOURCES

Hill Air Force Base: Base history through newspaper digital archive . “Hill AFB’s history has been preserved and now it’s offered free to anyone with computer access. Hill’s base newspaper, the Hilltop Times, and its predecessor, the Hill Fielder is available online in a searchable database offered by the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library.” This looks like an extension of the access that was first established in 2018.

Fast Company: This new tool shows you the local mosquito forecast. “If you’re planning a barbecue, you can now check the mosquito forecast along with the weather forecast. A new tool predicts local mosquito activity, from ‘low’ ranging up to ‘severe,’ for a period of seven days, using an algorithm that processes detailed weather data from Google Earth Engine, the tech giant’s massive satellite imagery database.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Twitter Circle is in testing for the tweets you’d rather keep to ‘select people’. “Twitter’s pending acquisition hasn’t put a freeze on all product testing, as we’ve seen hints of the upcoming edit tweets feature leak out. And, now, the company has announced a limited test for Twitter Circle. It’s a function that’s similar to Instagram’s Close Friends feature or, if you’ve been around for a while, Google Plus.”

Search Engine Land: Google blocked 3.4 billion ads, suspended 5.6 million accounts in 2021. “Google blocked or removed 3.4 billion ads in 2021, according to its annual Ads Safety Report, which was released today. Google also tripled the number of account-level suspensions for advertisers in the last year. 3.4 billion ads blocked or removed. The top three categories of bad ads were abusing the ad network (652 million); adult content (287 million); and trademark (137 million).”

9to5 Google: Google Tasks adds support for recurring tasks, rolling out now. “The to-do list app Google Tasks is finally picking up an overdue feature. Rolling out now, Google Tasks is adding support for recurring tasks in your lists.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bleeping Computer: Google Docs crashes on seeing “And. And. And. And. And.”. “A bug in Google Docs is causing it to crash when a series of words are typed into a document opened with the online word processor. Once crashed, you may not be able to easily re-access the document as doing so would trigger the crash again.”

Silicon Valley Business Journal: Google is reportedly updating its performance review process. “Google LLC is reportedly revamping the way it evaluates its workers. The internet giant, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOGL), is set to replace its biannual performance review process with annual evaluations, The Information reported. The Mountain View company is making the move to save time and improve morale, according to the report.”

USC: Retrofitted food truck documents Armenian stories in Southern California and worldwide. “USC’s Institute of Armenian Studies converted a food truck into a mobile studio that travels throughout Southern California recording Armenian diasporans’ stories. The initiative, called #MyArmenianStory, is a crowd-sourced oral history project that documents the Armenian experience.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: EU’s new rules for Big Tech will come into force in Spring 2023, says Vestager. “The European Union’s flagship reform for tackling Big Tech platform power, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), will come into force in early 2023, Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager has said — rowing back from an earlier suggested timeframe of this fall. But she also implied that enforcements against unruly Internet ‘gatekeepers’ could flow soon after the regulation is in place.”

TorrentFreak: US Court Orders Every ISP in the United States to Block Illegal Streaming Sites. “More than a decade after U.S. lawmakers scuttled the controversial SOPA legislation that would’ve required ISPs to block pirate sites, a US court has demonstrated that the ability to block sites has been available all along. Injunctions issued in response to lawsuits against three pirate streaming services require every ISP in the United States to prevent subscribers from accessing them.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): How parents’ views of their kids’ screen time, social media use changed during COVID-19. “In April 2021, the Center followed up with many of the same parents we surveyed in March 2020 to check in on their children’s use of technology and social media during the pandemic. This second survey focused on parents who had a kid age 11 or younger in 2020, and it was fielded at a time when some schools were temporarily reverting to virtual learning and vaccines were not yet approved for children under 12. Below, we take a closer look at what these parents told us about their young child, including how the experiences they reported in 2021 compared with their responses from 2020.”

Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology: IRIS Debuts Powerful New Application Where Students Use Seismic Waves Data to Learn about the Layers of the Earth . “IRIS has released an online version of its popular activity ‘Determining and Measuring Earth’s Layered Interior’ to challenge students to use evidence in the form of earthquake data to understand the Earth’s interior layers. This free web-based tool for Earth Science classrooms was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.” Good morning, Internet…

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