NEW RESOURCES

Governor of Hawaii: DLNR News Release: Kaulunani Urban And Community Forestry Program Announces Hawaiʻi Tree Canopy Viewer. “The first tree canopy viewer is now available in Hawaiʻi for communities to use to explore tree resources and make management decisions. The interactive viewer shows the extent and location of the tree canopy across the state.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: 5 new tools for LinkedIn creators to get more followers, visibility. “LinkedIn today announced new tools and features that should help make creators more visible, discoverable, and followable. You must have Creator Mode turned on and a public profile to access these features.”

How-To Geek: Telegram’s Premium Subscription Is Coming in June. “Telegram, a popular messaging app, has been planning a premium option since at least 2020 to support development costs. Now we have our first details about the upcoming subscription, called Telegram Premium.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Vice: I Tried to Adopt a Traumatized Sims 4 Baby From Instagram. “Sims like these are lovingly created and then put up for adoption by Simmers on Instagram, which they more commonly refer to Simstagram. Most Simmers use Instagram for roleplay, given that it’s a social media platform focused mainly on still images. They pretend their Sims run the Instagrams themselves, posting as if they were influencers. Storylines run the gamut from pregnant runaway teens to more generic family drama, and just like real influencers, these Sims grow up, get married, and eventually have kids or adopt them.”

Bloomberg: Nextdoor’s Quest to Beat Toxic Content and Make Money. “The social media site is trying to shed its reputation for dividing neighborhoods. But what is the platform without all the awkward comments and uncomfortable politics?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Politico: Google gets UK antitrust probe into app payments. “Google got a third antitrust probe from U.K’s competition watchdog, adding scrutiny of its app store payments to earlier investigations into advertising rules for in-app billing, the authority said Friday.”

Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein: Plaintiffs and Google Agree to $118 Million Settlement of Pay Equity Class Action. “In addition to monetary relief, the Settlement provides that an independent third party expert will analyze Google’s leveling-at-hire practices and that an independent labor economist will review Google’s pay equity studies. The post-settlement work will be supervised by an external Settlement Monitor over the next three years.”

NBC News: Wickr, Amazon’s encrypted chat app, has a child sex abuse problem — and little is being done to stop it. “Wickr Me, an encrypted messaging app owned by Amazon Web Services, has become a go-to destination for people to exchange images of child sexual abuse, according to court documents, online communities, law enforcement and anti-exploitation activists.”

Saudi Gazette: Non-Saudis banned from publishing ads on social media. “The General Commission for Audiovisual Media has issued a circular banning non-Saudis from publishing advertisements on the social media. The commission noted that the practice of posting ads on social media by those who do not have a license for it is a violation of Saudi Arabia’s Labor Law, as well as the rules for dealing with expatriates.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Algonquin College: AC students developing resource database on the Yazidi genocide. “Learners in the at Algonquin College are developing an online resource cataloguing the genocide against the Yazidi people. In partnership with Yazidi Legal Network, the resource will serve as a database on crimes against Yazidis for human-rights lawyers and activists. Yazidis are Kurmanji-speaking peoples indigenous to Kurdistan. Canada has officially recognized the genocide of the Yazidi people by Daesh, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).”

CNET: Google Cloud Calculates 100 Trillion Digits of Pi. “Google’s cloud service has shattered a record it first broke in 2019, calculating 100 trillion digits of pi, Google Cloud said in a release Wednesday. This is the second time the cloud infrastructure setup has churned out an unprecedented number of digits for the mathematical constant. Last time it took pi to 31.4 trillion digits.”

Washington Post: Your kids’ apps are spying on them. “Apps are spying on our kids at a scale that should shock you. More than two-thirds of the 1,000 most popular iPhone apps likely to be used by children collect and send their personal information out to the advertising industry, according to a major new study shared with me by fraud and compliance software company Pixalate. On Android, 79 percent of popular kids apps do the same.” Good morning, Internet…

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