NEW RESOURCES

PetaPixel: AI Time Machine Allows You to Picture Yourself in any Historical Period. “AI Time Machine is a new tool that allows users to create images of a person in different time periods throughout history using AI-image generator technology.”

Electronic Frontier Foundation: EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance Database Now Documents 10,000+ Police Tech Programs. “With this project, we are creating a searchable and mappable repository of which law enforcement agencies in the U.S. use surveillance technologies such as body-worn cameras, drones, automated license plate readers, and face recognition…. The Atlas of Surveillance has now hit 10,000 data points. It contains at least partial data on approximately 5,500 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states, as well as most territories and districts.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: Public safety accounts urge caution on Twitter after changes. “Government agencies, especially those tasked with sending messages during emergencies, have embraced Twitter for its efficiency and scope. Getting accurate information from authorities during disasters is often a matter of life or death.”

Fortune: Scammers are targeting desperate FTX customers by pretending to be the DOJ, promising access to funds. “FTX customers around the world no doubt regret their decision to sign on with the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange. Adding insult to injury, they’re now the targets of scammers pretending to be the U.S. Department of Justice.”

CNBC: Elon Musk says he will reinstate Twitter account of former President Donald Trump after online poll. “New Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk announced that he will reinstate the Twitter account of former President Donald Trump on Saturday.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Engadget: Governments vote to retire the leap second by 2035. “Introduced in 1972 as a way to adjust Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to reconcile discrepancies that can come up between atomic time and observed solar time, the leap second has been the bane of tech companies for decades. In 2012, for instance, Reddit was down for about 40 minutes when the addition of a leap second that year confused the company’s servers. More recently, Cloudflare saw part of its DNS services affected due to a time change in 2016.”

The Guardian: Twitter has ‘50% chance’ of major crash during World Cup, says insider. “Twitter stands a 50% chance of a major outage that could take the site offline during the World Cup, according to a recently departed employee with knowledge of how the company responds to large-scale events.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Google clamps down on illegal loan apps in Kenya, Nigeria. “Google is requiring loan apps in Kenya to submit proof of license to operate in the country, failure to which they risk removal from Play Store, its digital distribution service. Those that have applied for licensing by Central Bank of Kenya, and can produce evidence of the same, may also be spared.”

Reuters: Italy court rejects Google’s appeal against watchdog fine, accepts Apple’s one. “An Italian administrative court rejected an appeal by Alphabet’s Google against a decision by Italy’s antitrust authority to fine the group, but accepted Apple’s appeal against the watchdog’s ruling.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Twitter Was Influential in the Pandemic. Are We Better for It?. “When I wanted immediate feedback on an epidemiological model at 2 a.m., colleagues in Australia were awake and online to help. Twitter helped me to reach hundreds of thousands of concerned people, online and via news media, and help them understand what was happening. My Twitter following exploded from just over 10,000 to over 100,000 followers in six months. Many of my colleagues could tell a ‌‌similar story. And they could tell another as well.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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