ZDNet: Twitter bot activity spiked after the release of the Mueller Report. “The activity of Russian-linked Twitter bots and trolls spiked after the release of the Mueller Report, George Kamide, Director at digital risk protection provider SafeGuard Cyber told ZDNet today. Kamide said his company observed a 286 percent increase in Russian bot and troll activity on Twitter following the public release of the long-awaited Mueller Report.”
Research & Opinion
Science|Business: Two different phases of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Landscape” discovered thanks to a UniBo team
Science|Business: Two different phases of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Landscape” discovered thanks to a UniBo team. “One of the best-known drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, the ‘Landscape’, is the result of two different phases, as the artist appears to have added some details at a later stage. The discovery was possible thanks to a new high-resolution digital scan performed by a team of researchers of the Department of Architecture of the University of Bologna.”
Phys .org: New algorithm allows for faster, animal-free chemical toxicity testing
Phys .org: New algorithm allows for faster, animal-free chemical toxicity testing. “The use of animals to test the toxicity of chemicals may one day become outdated thanks to a low-cost, high-speed algorithm developed by researchers at Rutgers and other universities.”
Slate: End the Tyranny of Arial
Slate, and let me say up front I don’t agree with the “blogging is dead” part (for obvious reasons): End the Tyranny of Arial. “After an era where customizability was the norm, we’ve now reached a period where everything we read online looks the same. Blogging is dead, and the current dominant social media platforms have settled on a unified look: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages largely look the same. While Slack offers themes to change its default colors, and there are third-party apps to modify WhatsApp, there’s little you can do to change the look of messages you send.”
The Register: We know you all want to shove AI where the sun doesn’t shine. And that’s exactly where it’s going – detecting prostate cancer
The Register: We know you all want to shove AI where the sun doesn’t shine. And that’s exactly where it’s going – detecting prostate cancer . “A team of radiologists at the University of California, Los Angeles, built a convolutional neural network to analyse MRI scans of male nether regions and detect signs of the cancer. These types scans are a lot less invasive method than doctors delicately delving in to collect tissue for biopsies.”
MIT Technology Review: Mapping the world in 3D will let us paint streets with augmented reality
MIT Technology Review: Mapping the world in 3D will let us paint streets with augmented reality. “If you believe tech optimists, 10 years from now self-driving cars will be ubiquitous, drones will deliver our parcels, and robots will bring us our groceries. And one day soon, our cities will be painted with augmented reality that feels as if it belongs to the street corner where it was placed.”
Nieman Lab: A cognitive scientist explains why humans are so susceptible to fake news and misinformation
Nieman Journalism Lab: A cognitive scientist explains why humans are so susceptible to fake news and misinformation. “Although the term itself is not new, fake news presents a growing threat for societies across the world. Only a small amount of fake news is needed to disrupt a conversation, and at extremes it can have an impact on democratic processes, including elections. But what can we do to avoid fake news, at a time when we could be waiting a while for mainstream media and social networks to step up and address the problem?”
