NEW RESOURCES

UCLA: New Online Mapping Tool Helps California Prepare for Extreme Heat. “The online mapping tool developed by UCLA and the Public Health Alliance of Southern California allows users to find information about temperature extremes, explore vulnerable populations, understand community health situations and seek out state resources such as air conditioners for low-income households.”

Times of Israel: Google engineer identifies anonymous faces in WWII photos with AI facial recognition. “Walking past the countless photos of Holocaust survivors and victims at Warsaw’s POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in 2016, New York-native Daniel Patt was haunted by the possibility that he was passing the faces of his own relatives without even knowing it…. he set to work creating and developing From Numbers to Names (N2N), an artificial intelligence-driven facial recognition platform that can scan through photos from prewar Europe and the Holocaust, linking them to people living today.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Chrome Unboxed: ChromeOS can now open 7z, ISO, RAR and many other newly supported archival formats. “Most notably among the above newly supported formats are ISO and 7z. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve already received 7-zip folders from others or transferred them myself (RAR is a thing of the past for me), and simply couldn’t open them. I think the more users see that ChromeOS can do what Windows can – at least for the basics, the more they will be willing to invest in it or integrate it as a part of their workflow.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: Stardust is the first period tracker app to offer end to end encryption. “…period tracking app Stardust, which combines traditional menstruation tracking with the movements of our moon and the planets, has come out ahead of many others by announcing itself as the first recognized app to offer end-to-end encryption for all users.”

MakeUseOf: Identify Bird Sounds With BirdNET-Pi on Raspberry Pi. “You may well have seen various bird species in your backyard or garden, but there may well be many more roosting nearby that you have only heard. To identify them, you don’t need to be an expert in ornithology, however: all that’s required is a Raspberry Pi equipped with a mic and the BirdNET-Pi software.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Challenges of the Future Confront the Art World. “Should the British Museum return the ancient sculptures known as the Parthenon Marbles to Greece? Is the art world contributing to global warming? Is the hot market for digital art known as NFTs over? These are among the most vexing challenges facing the art world today, especially the question of how — or even whether — to return what many view as plundered art, like the Parthenon Marbles, to their rightful owners.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TorrentFreak: Digital Trails: How Bungie Identified a Mass Sender of Fake DMCA Notices. “In response to persons unknown sending large numbers of fake DMCA notices to YouTube while impersonating its anti-piracy partner, Bungie filed a lawsuit in the US seeking millions in damages. At the time the name of the ‘Doe’ defendant was unknown. This is how a Bungie investigation followed digital breadcrumbs to track down and identify that person by name and physical address.”

Bleeping Computer: LGBTQ+ community warned of extortionists abusing dating apps. “According to the FTC, the criminals pose as potential romantic partners on LGBTQ+ dating apps, sending explicit photos to their targets and asking them to reciprocate. If they fall for it, the victims get blackmailed into paying a ransom, usually in untraceable gift cards, under the threat of having sexual imagery they shared with the scammers leaked to their family, friends, or employers.”

Reuters: Exclusive: Google Hit With Antitrust Complaint by Danish Job Search Rival. “Google was hit with an antitrust complaint on Monday after a Danish online job-search rival took its grievance to EU regulators, alleging the Alphabet unit had unfairly favoured its own job search service. The complaint could accelerate EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s scrutiny of the service, Google for Jobs, three years after it first came under her microscope.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

World Bank: 70% of 10-Year-Olds now in Learning Poverty, Unable to Read and Understand a Simple Text. “As a result of the worst shock to education and learning in recorded history, learning poverty has increased by a third in low- and middle-income countries, with an estimated 70% of 10-year-olds unable to understand a simple written text, according to a new report published today by the World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, UK government Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”

TechRadar Pro: Why this chess grandmaster left Google behind. “When [Tal] Shaked arrived at Google in 2004, the company had just 3,000 employees and looked nothing like the sprawling megacorporation it is today. He was brought on as a junior engineer to work on Google Search. At the time, Google’s search rankings were not powered by any form of intelligence. Instead, a dedicated team of engineers was tasked with managing a complex rule-based system designed to serve up the best and most relevant results to users.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Dalhousie University: ‘It takes a village to build a whale’: Dal’s Blue Whale Project set to soar this fall. “Since 2017, Dalhousie’s Blue Whale Project has left a big impression on everyone who’s encountered it, from students and faculty to community members and volunteers. Now, just months away from the blue whale arriving at its final resting place in Dal’s Steele Ocean Sciences Building, there is a buzz of excitement around the university.” Good morning, Internet…

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