NEW RESOURCES

KnowTechie: Apple quietly launches new website to showcase its own apps. “Quickly and quietly, Apple launched a new website for its app, named Apps by Apple, weeks before its iPhone 15 event. The new website is designed to promote the company’s in-house apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV.”

CarMag: South Africans Can Now See if Used Cars Have Been Written Off with VIN-Lookup Website. “The South African Insurance Association has launched its VIN-Lookup website, which allows the public to receive a brief description of a vehicle using its VIN to ensure it has not been previously written off.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Futurism: USA Today Owner Pauses AI Articles After Butchering Sports Coverage. “The Dispatch — which is notably owned by USA Today publisher Gannett — only started publishing the AI-generated sports pieces on August 18, using the bot to drum up quick-hit stories about the winners and losers in regional high school football and soccer matches. And though the paper’s ethics disclosure states that all AI-spun content featured in its reporting ‘must be verified for accuracy and factuality before being used in reporting,’ we’d be surprised if a single human eye was laid on these articles before publishing.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Bunch Of Google Search Interface Tests & Experiments. “There have been a number of Google Search user interface tests and experiments I haven’t been able to post yet. Being that today is Labor Day (here in the US), I figured I’d cover a bunch of them in one story – since many of you want stories today.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Archinect: The Cultural Landscape Foundation acquires photographer Alan Ward’s archive. “The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) has just announced a gift of landscape photographer and architect Alan Ward’s digital archive, a donation they say provides both the public and scholars exposure to one of the profession’s most beloved practitioners.”

ABC News: Google’s Chromebooks thrive in US classrooms but generate waste, costs, critics say. “While many classrooms have come to depend on Chromebooks, the products have shown a tendency to malfunction or fail within a handful of years for reasons unrelated to user treatment, critics told ABC News. On top of that, the Chromebooks are difficult to repair, generating harmful waste, imposing significant replacement costs and disrupting student learning, they added.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: US appeals court curbs Copyright Office’s mandatory deposit policy. “The U.S. Constitution bars the U.S. Copyright Office from demanding that a publisher deposit physical copies of its books with the office or pay a fine, a Washington, D.C., federal appeals court said on Tuesday.”

Minnesota Star-Tribune: Attorneys decry Minneapolis demands for private data in government transparency lawsuit. “A government transparency group engaged in a two-year legal battle with Minneapolis over access to police misconduct records is accusing city officials of attempting to intimidate their board members — many of whom are journalists — by demanding private data such as Social Security numbers through the discovery process.”

AFP: Half of Switzerland’s large companies have been the victim of a cyber attack. “Almost half of Switzerland’s large businesses have been the victim of cyber attacks, often with disastrous consequences, according to a study published on Monday. A report by SwissVR Monitor found that 45% of Swiss companies with 250 or more employees claim to have suffered at least one cyber attack.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

El País: Seismographs record tremors from the war in Ukraine. “In a groundbreaking paper published in the prestigious journal Nature, a group of researchers demonstrates how a seismological network designed to detect nuclear tests thousands of miles away can also pick up explosions from the war in Ukraine. There are far more of those than either side acknowledges.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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