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Monday, July 11, 2022

Free App Identifies Bird Species by Sound

Data cover-up deepens as at least 3 children die of COVID every day in the US WSWS 


How to Avoid the Worst Instagram Scams - Wired: “Since Mark Zuckerberg snapped up Instagram for a mere $1 billion in April 2012, the app has grown into a social media juggernaut and one of Meta’s biggest assets. More than a billion people use Instagram every month, with influencers relying on it as a key source of their income. Any online congregation of this size is naturally a target for hackers and scammers looking to take advantage of people and make a quick buck. As a result, Instagram is a frequent objective for scammers trying to take over your account and get you to send them money, as well as for shilling cryptocurrency scams…”



How to clear your browser cache

The Verge: “One of the best ways to restore space to your computer or phone — or to fix a problem that may have been caused by a temporary file screwing up the works — is also one of the simplest: to clear the browser cache. However, unless you’ve been instructed sometime in the past to clear your cache, you may be unaware of this otherwise invisible feature. Here’s how to clear your cache on the major browsers and on your Android or iOS devices. We’ve also included instructions on how to clear the data for a single site if you need to…”


Make your own collaborative online maps  The Next Web: This map-making tool has turned me into a digital cartographer: “Are you planning a pub crawl? Going on a road trip? Visiting a new city? You need a map. And now, you can make your very own.  Making maps is usually something you either associate with old dudes in dusty paper-laden shops or serious people who wear colorful glasses and work at huge digital desks.  But now, mapping startup Felt makes it easy to create personalized maps using drawing tools such as markers, pins, notes, and images…Currently, Felt is free for single users, which plans to roll out commercially to enterprise customers. You should definitely give it a try…”


Free App Identifies Bird Species by Sound

Sci-News: “The BirdNET app is a free bird sound identification app for Android and iOS that includes over 3,000 bird species. Ornithologists hope this app will reduce barriers to citizen science and generate tens of millions of bird observations globally…”

The ubiquity of smartphones combined with the power of new machine learning algorithms presents an opportunity to promote positive interactions between humans and birds and thus create new possibilities for avian research,” said lead author Dr. Connor Wood from the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and his colleagues…”



 Washington Post: “…This is a moment I’ve long worried would arrive. The way tens of millions of Americans use everyday Google products has suddenly become dangerous. Following the Supreme Court decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, anything Google knows about you could be acquired by police in states where abortion is now illegal. A search for “Plan B,” a ping to Google Maps at an abortion clinic or even a message you send about taking a pregnancy test could all become criminal evidence. There is something Google could do about this: stop collecting — and start deleting — data that could be used to prosecute abortions. Yet so far, Google and other Big Tech companies have committed to few product changes that might endanger their ability to profit off our personal lives. Nor have they publicly committed to how they might fight legal demands related to prosecuting abortions.

The core issue is Google knows too much about everyone, way beyond just abortion. How much does Google know? I checked, and it’s got about 167 gigabytes just on me, including lots of photos. That’s roughly equivalent to 83,500 Stephen King novels. (You can download your data here, or see its map of your location history here.) Google built a $1.5 trillion business by grabbing every bit of data it can, with very few restrictions…

 

Let’s Get Tactical by Victoria Nuland

(melody borrowed from Let’s Get Physical by Olivia Newton-John) 

I’t’s time for us to turn Ukraine around
Hiroshima in Europe, baby!
We’ve got a thousand tactical nukes —
Let’s use ’em tactically!

The Russians won’t dare launch back at us
My interns did the calculation
When bits of Ukraine glow in the dark
That ends this altercation!

So let’s get tactical, tactical!
I wanna get tactical!
Let’s blow up Sevastopol!
Lemme take it tactical! Tactical!
I know when I’m on a roll!

Let’s go nukular, nukular!
It’s time to go nukular!
Now’s the time to push it through!
Let’s drop one on Kramatorsk! Kramatorsk!
Listen to the Kagan crew!

I’ve been patient, I’ve been good,
Just drooling on my new strait jacket
There’s money to be made if you go my way
War is such a racket!

I can talk the EU into this
I’ll do it diplomatically
I’ll make an offer that they can’t refuse
They will obey ME!

Let’s get tactical, tactical!
I wanna get tactical!
Mariupol’s gotta go!
Take out all their power plants! Take a chance!
NATO’s moving way too slow!

Let’s go nukular, nukular!
I wanna go nukular!
Let’s turn Kharkiv into ash!
Let’s go after Konotop! Konotop!
Let’s reduce it in a flash!

Oh, let’s get tactical, tactical!
We gotta get tactical!
My interns have criteria!
Let’s take out Kaliningrad! Kaliningrad!
Targets in Siberia!

Let’s go nukular, nukular!
I wanna go nukular!
Irradiate Galicia!
Lemme use those baby nukes, baby nukes!
Lemme use those baby nukes!

Lemme use those baby nukes!
Lemme use those baby nukes!



Accenture’s business register bill at ATO nudges $200m