NEW RESOURCES

Chemical Watch: Database reveals vast numbers of food contact chemicals not on radar. “Following a systematic review process, the scientists from the Food Packaging Forum (FPF), with help from Swiss and US academics, selected information from over 1000 published studies measuring chemicals in food contact materials (FCMs) and articles, including processing equipment and tableware. The resulting database, FCCmigex, contains many food contact chemicals (FCCs) for which little is known about use and migration into foods.”

HPC Wire: Nvidia Announces Database of 100K AI and HPC-enabled Brain Images. “Researchers at King’s College in London have curated the largest database of synthetic brain images in the world using Nvidia’s Cambridge-1 supercomputer and artificial intelligence. The database contains 100,000 images of brains and is being made freely available to healthcare researchers to advance cognitive disease research.”

KRQE (New Mexico): Secretary of State launches website to combat voting misinformation. “The Secretary of State’s office has launched a new website aimed to crack down on election misinformation. The Rumors vs. Reality page addresses concerns over voter secrecy and integrity, saying ballots remain private, even to election workers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Supreme Court temporarily blocks Texas’s social media moderation law. “The Supreme Court of the United States temporarily blocked a sweeping Texas law on Tuesday that restricts the ability of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to moderate content on their platforms. By a 5-4 vote, the justices granted an emergency request from the tech industry to block a lower court order that would have allowed the law to take hold, pending legal challenges.”

9to5Google: Twitter preps ‘Search Subscribe’ notifications for new tweets matching a search term. “In the latest pre-release version of the mobile app, Twitter is preparing a way to get notifications about new tweets that match a particular search term. When it comes to tweet-related mobile notifications, the best app for the job has always been the official Twitter app, albeit limited to only new tweets from accounts you follow. Meanwhile, on desktop, TweetDeck offers an expanded suite of notification possibilities combined with the speed of still being an official Twitter application.”

How-To Geek: Vivaldi Browser Pushes Customization With Editable Toolbars. “Firefox has allowed people to customize the main toolbar for years, including adding, removing, or moving buttons and search boxes. However, Chrome only allows you to move around extension buttons, and most Chromium-based browsers can’t do much better. Vivaldi 5.3, which starts rolling out today, adds Firefox-style toolbar customization — and even goes a bit further.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

SEO Roundtable: Rumor: Apple To Announce New Search Engine Next Week. “Robert Scoble posted a bunch of items around what to expect from the Apple WWDC (aka World Wide Developer Conference) that is happening Monday, June 6th. Robert said a bunch of things but specific to search he said ‘and a new search engine is coming too.'”

The Verge: The Murena One shows exactly how hard it is to de-Google your smartphone. “An Android phone without Google. No Google apps, no Google Play Services, no peppy Google Assistant. No Google surveillance and data snooping, no incessant ad targeting, no feeling like privacy is a pointless exercise. Some companies, like Huawei, have been forced to figure out how to build this kind of device. A few others have tried for the sake of maintaining your privacy and as a way to fight back against the tyranny of Big Tech. None of it has ever really worked.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Yahoo Finance: Google and Samsung smart products easy targets for hackers, Which? study finds. “From a doorbell to a wi-fi router and a mobile phone, smart products are easy targets for hackers, new research from consumer group Which? has found. In most cases, Which? tested devices that no longer receive software security updates, leaving cybercriminals free to steal data.”

University of Central Florida: When Hurricanes Strike, Social Media Can Save Lives. “In 2011 only about 10% of the U.S. population turned to social media for information during a crisis, according to several studies. Today that number is closer to 70%. A new study from the University of Central Florida found that social media isn’t just good for communicating. It can be a critical tool for collecting intelligence in real time to better deploy resources before and after hurricanes hit.” I have a rant about emergency responder services standardizing their social media information, but I’ll spare you…

RESEARCH & OPINION

Arizona State University: Closing the gap for real-time data-intensive intelligence. “The online world fills databases with immense amounts of data. Your local grocery stores, your financial institutions, your streaming services and even your medical providers all maintain vast arrays of information across multiple databases. Managing all this data is a significant challenge. And the process of applying artificial intelligence to make inferences or apply logical rules or interpret information on such data can be urgent, especially when delays, known as latencies, are also a major issue.”

Northwestern Now: Unpaid social media moderators perform labor worth $3.4 million a year on Reddit alone. “The social networking platform Reddit relies on volunteer moderators to prevent the site from being overrun by problematic content—including hate speech—and ensure that it remains appealing for users. Though uncompensated, this labor is highly valuable to the company: According to a pair of new studies led by Northwestern University computer scientists, it’s worth at minimum $3.4 million per year, which is equivalent to 2.8% of Reddit’s 2019 revenue.” Good morning, Internet…

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