TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Maps Tests New Local Panel With Images At Top & Tabs For Reviews. “Google Maps is testing a new local listing interface where it shows more images in the top portion of the local listing and there are tabs to show the business overview on the left and the reviews on the right.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Techdirt: How The Internet Enabled A Mariners Fan And DoorDash Driver To Connect And Do Something Cool. “The internet is responsible for both good and bad outcomes in society, as is pretty much everything else. But the internet also is only as good or bad as those that make use of it. And sometimes, the internet enables really awesome stuff. Take the story of Sofie Dill, Seattle Mariners fan, and Simranjeet Singh, a DoorDash driver.”

Rest of World: A million-strong troll army is targeting Iran’s #MeToo activists on Instagram. “More than one million bots have flooded the Instagram accounts of prominent Iranian feminist activists, in a coordinated harassment campaign that started mid-April, according to a new report released by Qurium, a digital forensics nonprofit.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: EU reaches agreement on crypto regulation requiring personal data collection on every transfer. “The European Parliament and Council reached a provisional agreement to force crypto providers to provide identifying information on all digital asset transactions, despite an industry backlash. The so-called transfer of funds regulation, or TFR, seeks to strengthen anti-money-laundering requirements to ensure that crypto transfers can always be traced and suspicious transactions blocked.”

Ars Technica: A wide range of routers are under attack by new, unusually sophisticated malware. “An unusually advanced hacking group has spent almost two years infecting a wide range of routers in North America and Europe with malware that takes full control of connected devices running Windows, macOS, and Linux, researchers reported on Tuesday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Wall Street Journal: Tech Giants Pour Billions Into AI, but Hype Doesn’t Always Match Reality. “After years of companies emphasizing the potential of artificial intelligence, researchers say it is now time to reset expectations. With recent leaps in the technology, companies have developed more systems that can produce seemingly humanlike conversation, poetry and images. Yet AI ethicists and researchers warn that some businesses are exaggerating the capabilities—hype that they say is brewing widespread misunderstanding and distorting policy makers’ views of the power and fallibility of such technology.”

Engadget: NOAA triples its supercomputing capacity for improved storm modeling. “Last year, hurricanes hammered the Southern and Eastern US coasts at the cost of more than 160 lives and $70 billion in damages. Thanks to climate change, it’s only going to get worse. In order to quickly and accurately predict these increasingly severe weather patterns, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Tuesday that it has effectively tripled its supercomputing (and therefore weather modelling) capacity with the addition of two high-performance computing (HPC) systems built by General Dynamics.”

EurekAlert: How technology can detect fake news in videos. “Researchers from the K-riptography and Information Security for Open Networks (KISON) and the Communication Networks & Social Change (CNSC) groups of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) have launched a new project to develop innovative technology that, using artificial intelligence and data concealment techniques, should help users to automatically differentiate between original and adulterated multimedia content, thus contributing to minimizing the reposting of fake news.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of East Anglia: Rare Volumes Provide Contemporary Design Inspiration. “What kind of image do the words ‘rare books’ conjure up? Probably a man turning pages with white gloves in an atmosphere that’s reverent, hushed, and a bit stuffy. The Unlocking the Archive project, led by Dr Tom Roebuck and Dr Sophie Butler from UEA’s School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, has been about challenging that perception.”

I am linking to this because I have been Team Brown Noise since I knew about different noise colors, and I’m feeling vindicated. Yes, it’s petty, but it’s also Friday. Mashable: What is brown noise? TikTok suggests it’s better than white noise.. “Whereas white noise encompasses sounds from all over the spectrum, including low, mid-range, and high frequency notes, brown noise uses only low frequency and bass-heavy notes. This makes brown noise much deeper in sound than white noise and more ideal for those who find the high frequency notes in white noise uncomfortable.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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