NEW RESOURCES

KCBX: Mapping company develops web app to provide context, resources during local wildfires. “A new web service by a California-based mapping company shows detailed information on wildfires in real time. It shows information like nearby population size, climate and drought conditions to try to give people context on wildfires around them.”

EVENTS

The Verge: Google announces October 6th event to launch the Pixel Watch, Pixel 7, and new Nest devices. “Google has started sending out invites for its fall hardware event, which is set to take place on Thursday, October 6th, at 10AM ET. The event will launch the upcoming Pixel 7 phones, as well as the Pixel Watch — the company showed off both devices at its I/O event earlier this year, announcing they’re coming in the fall.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Google Maps is expanding its eco-friendly navigation feature to Europe. “Google announced today it is expanding its options for eco-friendly routing on Google Maps to 40 more countries across Europe. Eco-friendly routes, first introduced to U.S-based users last year, offer to show more fuel-efficient routes instead of the fastest ones. Users can see the eco-friendly route marked with a leaf label.”

Search Engine Journal: Google Will Reject Ads Leading To Pages With Intrusive Advertising. “Google Ads is implementing a new policy requiring landing pages to meet the ‘better ads standards,’ as the Coalition For Better Ads laid out. A change to Google’s destination requirements policy states if an ad leads to a page that doesn’t comply with the better ad standards, Google will disapprove the ad.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNBC: Google CEO says he hopes to make company ’20% more’ efficient, hints at potential cuts. “Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai gave more details about how he is thinking of making Google run ‘on fewer resources’ as it faces a slew of challenges to its businesses.”

CNET: How Amtrak’s Viral One-Word Tweet Inspired a Huge Twitter Trend. “Someone on Amtrak’s social media team could be on the fast track to a promotion. An inspired one-word tweet from the train company’s Twitter account took off faster than a super speedy Shinkansen, inspiring a Twitter trend toward extreme brevity.”

Penn Today: The story the bowls tell. “In an ambitious new project, historian Simcha Gross and Harvard’s Rivka Elitzur-Leiman are studying hundreds of ancient incantation bowls housed at the Penn Museum. They hope to better understand the objects and eventually, build a database of all these bowls worldwide.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Lifehacker: Update Google Chrome ASAP to Patch This Security Flaw. “If it seems like you just updated Chrome, that’s because you did. Google refreshed its web browser to version 105 on Wednesday, introducing new features and security patches. However, only days later, Google has provided yet another update. The company doesn’t usually issue surprise updates without a good reason, and they’ve got one: Chrome 105 includes a zero-day security flaw.”

Bleeping Computer: Hackers hide malware in James Webb telescope images. “The malware is written in Golang, a programming language that is gaining popularity among cybercriminals because it is cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac) and offers increased resistance to reverse engineering and analysis. In the recent campaign discovered by researchers at Securonix, the threat actor drops payloads that are currently not marked as malicious by antivirus engines on the VirusTotal scanning platform.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: How dark is ‘dark advertising’? We audited Facebook, Google and other platforms to find out. “In a new study conducted for the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), we audited the advertising transparency of seven major digital platforms. The results were grim: none of the platforms are transparent enough for the public to understand what advertising they publish, and how it is targeted.”

Cornell Chronicle: New technique boosts online medical search results. “A Cornell-led group of researchers has developed a search method that employs natural language processing and network analysis to identify terms that are semantically similar to those for cancer screening tests, but in colloquial language.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University College London: X-rays, AI and 3D printing bring a lost Van Gogh artwork to life. “Using X-rays, artificial intelligence and 3D printing, two UCL researchers reproduced a ‘lost’ work of art by renowned Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh, 135 years after he painted over it.” Good morning, Internet…

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