Good Monday morning. It’s November 30th. The National Christmas Tree Lighting cermony is Thursday night. Here’s the official link where you can watch the livestream or play it on demand at any time.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,171 words — about a 4 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. Walmart will fulfill some online orders via its 4,700 stores instead of distribution centers. You’re correct if you remember Walmart delivery news about drones and self-driving cars. They’re doing everything possible in their e-commerce battle with Amazon. And just like that, they’ve reinvigorated the concept of a local store’s delivery driver. (Official announcement)

b. Uganda used facial recognition technology from Huawei in the violent beginning to its presidential election season that has left nearly fifty people dead. And yes, that sentence could easily have been written about Dallas or Atlanta. The Ugandan government has 83 facial recognition monitoring centers and employs nearly 500 people. (Quartz)

c. U.S. presidential candidates spent $53K+ on advertising per electoral vote during the campaign’s final week. Yes, week. That number swelled to $554K and $505K in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin. The presidential campaign accounted for nearly $1.8 billion while all races accounted for $8.5 billion. (Ad Age-paywall)

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations
COVID-19 Forecast Hub
Google County Level Mobility Reports
Long-Term Care COVID Tracker

COVID-19 Tech News

3 Ways Tech Can Help the World Weather COVID-19 – World Econ Forum
Ad Council’s Challenge: Persuade Vaccine Skeptics – New York Times
AI Can Run Your Meetings Now – Wired
Facebook Group Connects Long Haulers – Bay News 9 
Facebook Group for Victim Puts Name to Number – Sun Journal
MN Co. Using Viral Sign Technology for Detection – KSTP Minneapolis
People Weak Link for Apps Tracking Exposure – US News & World Report
Universities tracking COVID through Facebook surveys – Denver 7

EXTRA: What I Told George Mason University Students

I recently had an opportunity to judge the capstone business case competition at my alma mater, George Mason University. I’ve been a coach and a judge often over the last twenty years, but this year’s virtual competition was different because of the pandemic. 

We know that the semester starting in January will be tough for all educators. Check in with yours to see if there are some ways you can give a little bit of time to help the students get through this strange time to learn.

Here are the final comments I sent for the students after the presentations.

About Presenting to Others

1. Case studies aren’t about checking off a requirements list. Show us that you thought hard.
2. Stay smart, creative, and reasonable.
3. Follow the rules. We didn’t bother debating about a team we disqualified for using new info in the case.
4. The most important outcome is profit. Your boss should tell you otherwise if necessary. Better: confirm by asking.

About Video & Slides

5. Tech happens. Watch every second of your presentation again even if you’re bored.
6. We hate typos. One is okay. Three will discredit your ideas.
7. Don’t use full sentences in slides. 
8. Show your face like streamers do.
9. Don’t force things. A list with nine items is fine.

3. Search Engine News

You knew that Google could provide information on how to care for a Christmas tree. Now it is helping Los Angeles municipal staff care for an area’s tree canopy. 

The Google Tree Canopy Lab combines aerial images with machine learning to display maps of trees as part of its Environmental Insights Explorer. Why trees? They help fight urban heat island effects and provide more sustainable living in an area. You can see the live data here. Think back twenty years ago and imagine someone telling you that there would be maps of trees accessible to anyone anywhere in the world.

Google Maps is also testing a display of street address numbers directly on Google Maps. Sterling Sky’s Joy Hawkins tweeted a screencap of a map showing the test on the day before Thanksgiving.

4. In the Spotlight — Holiday Cybersecurity Tips

“Due to the pandemic, this holiday season may look and feel a bit different …”

— The federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency demonstrating their gift for understatement in an otherwise great Holiday Cybersecurity tip sheet.

On this Cyber Monday, the usual warnings seem intuitive and old hat, but they bear repeating. CISA’s holiday tip sheet includes important reminders about not using unsecured public Wi-Fi, how to identify legitimate websites, and using a credit card instead of a debit card.

Access all the holiday cybersecurity tips here, and don’t forget the additional resources section. 

5. Debunked — Election Videos

There is a staggering amount of election disinformation coming from the administration and some Republican members of Congress. As of this writing, President Donald Trump’s campaign has lost 39 out of 40 lawsuits that it has filed since the election.

Reuters sorted out the ongoing social media blitz of disinformation in this fact check that it titled, “Dominion is not linked to Smartmatic, Antifa or Venezuela, did not switch U.S. 2020 election votes in Virginia and was not subject to a U.S. Army raid in Germany.”

It’s OK to have doubts or wonder if there’s some truth to the falsehoods.

Read the fact check here.

6. Following Up — Amazon Sidewalk

We told you about Amazon Sidewalk back in September. This new Amazon function uses Echo and Ring devices to extend the range of your home network so that it works in a backyard, driveway, or elsewhere around your home.

Privacy experts immediately hated the idea. Now security experts are joining them. 

How-To Geek shows you how to opt-out of the automatic function.

7. Protip — Google Chrome’s New Features

There are two new features in the latest Google Chrome upgrade for you to consider.

Upgraded PDF viewing is now available, but optional. Tech Radar shows you how to turn on the feature for your browser.

Search all open tabs at once is also available in extreme beta. You can use the function in Google Chrome’s Canary build or see images and read about it here in Bleeping Computer.

Screening Room— No, You’re Crying

9. Coffee Break — Hidden Biden Employment Ad

Anyone snooping in the source code of the Biden Build Back Better website found an intriguing offer from his team. According to the person I first saw post it online, it hearkens back to the days of spy agencies recruiting via puzzle competitions.

See the image for yourself.

Good Monday morning. It’s November 23rd. Happy Thanksgiving. My sister-in-law and her family are big fans of the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving Parade, which is still happening this year. The parade’s official site shows the performers, the floats, the TV schedule — everything you need to know to curl up on the couch with a cup of nostalgia.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,106 words — about a 4 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. Amazon Pharmacy launched Tuesday. Regular readers have followed its methodical Galactic Empire march through acquisitions, intellectual property, and pre-positioning. Amazon says they’ll even call your pharmacy to transfer your meds over because they’re helpful like that. And yes, Prime members get two day delivery.

b. Digital media companies Vox and HuffPo had interesting weeks. The three co-founders of Vox announced separately that they were leaving. Meanwhile, Verizon sold HuffPo to BuzzFeed, where one of its co-founders is now editor-in-chief. 

c. Apple is paying another $100 million plus over Batterygate. The company began using its software to slow down its iPhone 6 and 7 devices with dated batteries because the devices might unexpectedly stop working. The company has previously paid more than $500 million in fines to European regulators and to settle a class action suit in the U.S. (NPR)

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations
COVID-19 Forecast Hub
Google County Level Mobility Reports
Long-Term Care COVID Tracker

COVID-19 Tech News

4 Ways Virtual Meetings Can Cause Legal Problems – Law 360
A COVID-fighting tool is buried in your phone. Turn it on – Washington Post
COVID-19’s new twist to Internet romance scams – Tampa Bay Times
Google updates COVID-19 forecasting models – Venture Beat
New York Fines Sellers for Hand Sanitizer Price Gouging – CNBC
YouTube, Facebook and Twitter fight vaccine conspiracies – BBC

A new autonomous vehicle is taking to city streets. Kar-Go will be tested delivering medicine in London. The futuristic looking vehicle plots out efficient delivery schedules and sorts the packages inside, giving the recipient access to only their items. 

3. Search Engine News

Leisure travel’s annual peak is during Thanksgiving Week. Media reports are covering a travel surge this year despite warnings from the CDC and other public health experts that gathering with people outside your household is dangerous.

Google Maps is rolling out enhancements that will hopefully mitigate some of the danger by showing data that only a company with Google’s scale can capture. 

If you’re driving, you can look at Google Maps for information on COVID-19 infection rates, local guidelines, and information on testing sites and restrictions. People on buses and trains will be able to see real-time information on how crowded stations and routes are as well as delays.

Please stay home if you can.

4. In the Spotlight — Facial Recognition Bias

“Department personnel shall not use third-party commercial facial recognition services or conduct facial recognition searches on behalf of outside agencies.”

— Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief John McMahon, banning the department’s use of Clearview AI

We’ve written before about facial recognition bias and about Clearview AI, a company that scraped non-public data from Facebook and other sites to build a database of people who would not otherwise be included in law enforcement databases. More than two thousand public agencies and companies have used Clearview’s data.

It is important to understand that Clearview even downloaded photos of you posted by others. The sites prohibit that activity, and Clearview’s actions may still cause the company significant legal harm. But the database exists.

Machine learning and rudimentary AI are exciting and will undoubtedly help solve problems in the future, but today’s software amplifies human foibles at scale. One example: a paper collaborated on by researchers at multiple universities found that images analyzed by software at Google, Microsoft, and Amazon identified women by describing their physical appearance three times more often then men. The top descriptors for men were “official” and “businessperson,” but were “smile” and “chin” for women.

We’ve known for a long time that facial recognition software is racially biased. That was a big part of the decision making process executives at IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft cited when they stopped selling those services to law enforcement agencies earlier this year.

Research dating back to 2018 found that facial recognition bias exists on both gender and race. Darker skinned females were misidentified more than 33% of the time while the error rate for light skinned males was only 1%. And if you’re mistakenly detained or arrested for a crime as part of that one percent, you will undoubtedly think that rate is too high.

The data-driven technologists who create the software that accomplishes the miracle of facial recognition acknowledge the bias. But too many decisions continue to be made that place women and people of color into inappropriate circumstances because of facial recognition bias.

5. Debunked:  Moose Licking Cars

Here is your Thanksgiving Day trivia. Memes claiming that moose lick cars have been circulating online for days. 

That’s because they do!

The moose are apparently attracted by the road salt on cars, but human-moose close proximity can be dangerous because, well, just let this 2016 CTV report that Snopes dug up explain things.

6. Following Up: Twitter Fleets

It was only last week when we told you about Facebook Messenger’s ephemeral function called Vanish that causes messages to disappear after being read.

Twitter launched the same function last week with the horribly punny name of “fleets”.  The message stays on your timeline for 24 hours before, err, vanishing.  

See the announcement and short video here.

7. Protip: Move files from Phone to Computer

Black Friday sales will undoubtedly beckon to some of you and you’ll want to move files between computer and phone because you bought one or the other.  One is easy, ten is a pain, and more than that requires special help.

Digital Trends has you covered whether your favorite flavor is PC or Mac.

9. Coffee Break: Still Tasty

Thanksgiving ain’t Thanksgiving without leftovers so the good folks at Still Tasty tell you when they can be safely eaten.

As a special holiday gift to my youngest son, the USDA debunks a story about refrigerating hot food. Seems it’s perfectly safe to do so. You’re welcome, son.

Stuffing is only safe 3-4 days. Don’t make too much!

Good Monday morning. It’s November 16th. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg appear (yes, again)  before the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday to testify about their companies’ handling of the 2020 election.

One item sure to be discussed: Facebook has extended its ban on political advertising for another month. That ban includes social issues as diverse as the environment, taxes, and gun rights for any advertiser.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,034 words — about a 4 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. Amazon breached European antitrust rules according to an action filed by the EC. A second probe is also underway regarding how Amazon chooses sellers to offer products via Prime. (CNBC)

b. Disinformation continues flowing on social media even with a political and advocacy ad blackout. Facebook removed pages and groups linked to former Trump administration official Steve Bannon for falsely claiming the presidential election was fraudulent.

Bannon isn’t alone. Shaun Dakin flagged a group for us that is posing as an environmentally friendly page focused on sustainability. The group claims to be a Delaware-based LLC managed by a firm in California, but Facebook has labeled it as Russian state media. Bad actors often build large audiences around other topics before sending disinformation to them.

c. Russian and North Korean hackers are also targeting COVID-19 vaccine research according to an important announcement from Microsoft on Friday. The post is an open call for the world’s governments to act with NGOs to protect this infrastructure. Read it here.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations
COVID-19 Forecast Hub
Google County Level Mobility Reports
Long-Term Care COVID Tracker

COVID-19 Tech News

5 Key Errors Undermine COVID-19 Data Shared on Twitter — Informatics
DeSantis data hire: Uber-driving, COVID-conspiracy sports blogger — Miami Herald
Facebook Shares Insights into COVID Impacts on SMBs — Social Media Today
Hot New COVID Tech is Wearable And Tracks You — New York Times
How Ticketmaster Plans to Check Your Vaccine Status — Billboard
NZ to adopt Apple and Google’s automated tracing — New Zealand Herald

3. Search Engine News

We’ve told you a lot about what Google has been calling “Core Vital Statistics”–metrics describing how a visitor experiences a webpage. Google warned earlier this year that these page experience metrics would be used as a ranking signal. Google announced last week that these factors will influence ranking beginning in May. That’s 165 days from now.

Your organization will need to pay attention to how fast a page’s main content loads and the way that it renders. No-nos include loading things after the page loads so that the display shifts, which is Google’s technical terms for everything on the page moving up or down after it loads.

Your search team is going to want to strip your website’s pages of many of its pretty and cool things. Remember that Charles Lindbergh famously left a parachute and radio behind in order to conserve fuel on his record-breaking flight. You won’t have to trim the edges from your maps like he did, but consider if you really need a map showing your location or whether an address and a map link are sufficient.

We know that Google warns about issues like encryption, page speed, and mobile-friendliness well in advance of making significant ranking changes. And while they sometimes delay those ranking changes, they do eventually launch.

4. In the Spotlight — Facebook Vanish Arrives

“Some people are going to get into trouble with this.”

— my wife, after I practiced using Facebook Messenger Vanish with her.

Disappearing messages have been around for years and are most prevalent on Snapchat. Facebook is again facing a clamor of copying Snap’s functionality with its launch of Facebook Vanish. The feature is live on Facebook Messenger in the U.S. and coming to Instagram.

This is very different from secret conversation mode. Each person in Vanish Mode must agree to start a Vanish Mode chat with each other. The conversation is separate from any existing conversation with that person. The ephemeral magic happens when you view another screen on your device and return to the Vanish Mode chat to find everything gone.

All messages are deleted after the person has seen them and switched to another screen although you will get an alert message if the other person uses their device to take a screenshot. Reminder: they can always take a screenshot with another device.

None of this applies to group chats today. There’s plenty of misinformation floating around online so here is the official Facebook Vanish announcement.

5. Debunked: Parler

A meme making the rounds claims that George Soros owns the conservative social media site Parler (pronounced: parlor).

This is getting conflated with documented news that shows David Mercer and his daughter Rebekah are investors in the site. The Mercers previously sponsored Breitbart News and have provided funds for other Steve Bannon ventures.

The Associated Press included the hoax in its weekly roundup.

6. Following Up: Walmart & Cruise Partner for Self-Driving Car Delivery

We’ve told you in the past about GM’s Cruise unit receiving authorization to test its vehicles in San Francisco. The company announced last week that it is partnering with Walmart in Scottsdale to deliver groceries and packages with self-driving vehicles monitored by a human.

Morning Brew has news and analysis.

7. Protip: Moving from or Organizing Google Photos

People are not happy with Google’s announcement that images uploaded to Google Photos count against a user’s free storage limits. Lifehacker has you covered if you want to reduce the space you’re using there or if you decide to move entirely.

Do not delete photos until you know they’re safe elsewhere.

Screening Room: Jackman & Reynolds Christmas

9. Coffee Break: Octopus Play

Great, now the octopi are sentient. That’ll change ordering at restaurants.

Have a look at this 75 second excerpt from a CBC documentary about an octopus initiating a game with its human handler.

And so a game was born …