Associated Press: New Twitter rules expose election offices to spoof accounts

Associated Press: New Twitter rules expose election offices to spoof accounts “Tracking down accurate information about Philadelphia’s elections on Twitter used to be easy. The account for the city commissioners who run elections, @phillyvotes, was the only one carrying a blue check mark, a sign of authenticity. But ever since the social media platform overhauled its verification service last month, the check mark has disappeared. That’s made it harder to distinguish @phillyvotes from a list of random accounts not run by the elections office but with very similar names.”

MIT News: Open-source platform simulates wildlife for soft robotics designers

MIT News: Open-source platform simulates wildlife for soft robotics designers. “Since the term ‘soft robotics’ was adopted in 2008, engineers in the field have been building diverse representations of flexible machines useful in exploration, locomotion, rehabilitation, and even space. One source of inspiration: the way animals move in the wild. A team of MIT researchers has taken this a step further, developing SoftZoo, a bio-inspired platform that enables engineers to study soft robot co-design.” I had never heard the term “soft robotics” before, so I used Wiki-Guided Google Search on it and was lead to this article from the Encyclopedia of Robotics. The article gets complicated but there’s plenty there for even a non-technical reader to learn.

Android Police: You can blame this Pixies song for Google Assistant canceling your alarm

Android Police: You can blame this Pixies song for Google Assistant canceling your alarm. “After noticing their alarms didn’t seem to go off on certain days, one Redditor woke up early to get to the bottom of the issue. The Pixies song Where Is My Mind? started playing since it was in a Spotify playlist the user had set as their music alarm in the Google Clock app. If you’re familiar with the song, it starts with a person singing ‘Oooh,’ then someone else cuts them off by exclaiming ‘Stop!’ before music starts playing.”

The College of New Jersey: Computer science research team explores how machine learning can translate sign language

The College of New Jersey: Computer science research team explores how machine learning can translate sign language. “Services like Google Translate can help millions of people communicate in over 100 languages. Users can type or speak words to be translated, or even translate text in photos and videos using augmented reality. Now, computer science professor Andrea Salgian and Ben Guerrieri ’26 are working to add one more language to the list: American Sign Language.”

Indiana University: Internet search trends reflect concerns following Supreme Court health care decisions

Indiana University: Internet search trends reflect concerns following Supreme Court health care decisions. “The study, published April 28 in JAMA Health Forum, analyzed internet searches for abortion- and contraception-related terms following the June 24, 2022, ruling by the United States Supreme Court on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Researchers found that searches increased much more in states where reproductive health care access was more likely to be immediately restricted following the decision.”

Native News Online: A New Online Tool Will Let Native Americans Search for Relatives Who Attended Indian Boarding Schools

Native News Online: A New Online Tool Will Let Native Americans Search for Relatives Who Attended Indian Boarding Schools. “The Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) plans to launch a website this summer that will allow Native Americans to search for information on relatives who attended Indian boarding schools.”

PC Magazine: Twitter Says ‘Security Incident’ Caused Circles Tweets Leak

PC Magazine: Twitter Says ‘Security Incident’ Caused Circles Tweets Leak. “Twitter has admitted that an incident where private tweets intended for posters’ close friends that ended up on strangers’ feeds happened because of a security breach, The Guardian reports(Opens in a new window). Twitter Circles permits users to set a list of close friends and post tweets that only they can read. The incident last month saw Circle tweets popping up in the For You timeline of users who followed the Circle tweet poster but aren’t in their Circle.”

BGR: See where your home was at the time of the dinosaurs using this interactive map

BGR: See where your home was at the time of the dinosaurs using this interactive map. “A new website lets users pinpoint their home city and then see where it was located during the time of the dinosaurs, as well as during other periods of time across ancient Earth. Additionally, the map also showcases how the continents have shifted since the time of ancient Earth and even how ice covered the land throughout history.”

Boing Boing: Minimalist news site powered by AI

Boing Boing: Minimalist news site powered by AI. “News Minimalist is another site that presents topical headlines in a plain, fast-loading format. This one aims not for the old-timey plaintext look but for the contemporary darkmodish style, garnished with data science.” I took a quick look. A nice mix of international news and it has an RSS feed. yes please.