NEPAL

Skype is offering free calls to land lines and mobiles in Nepal. (It looks like that means to mobiles associated with Nepal, not mobiles that are from somewhere else and happen to be in Nepal, if I’m reading this correctly.)

NEW RESOURCES

A new online archive about John Cage is now available. “Today, the New World Symphony launches a video-based exploration of the work of John Cage, one of the 20th century’s most influential and provocative composers and visual artists. Part of a free, online resource, the archive grew from a 2013 celebration of Cage on the 100th anniversary of his birth, and allows viewers to experience his music and learn more through behind-the-scenes discussions.”

The diaries of a priest who ministered to soldiers in World War I are now available online. “Experts in the Dublin Diocesan Archive and the Digital Library in University College Dublin have worked together for over a year and a half transcribing and digitising diaries and papers of Fr Francis Gleeson, a Dublin priest who ministered to soldiers in World War One.”

USEFUL STUFF

Interesting: The one word reporters should add to Twitter searches that you probably haven’t considered. Note this is more about finding sources to talk to, but it’s an excellent reminder of the importance of language!

From The Intercept: The whys and hows of encrypting your laptop.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

I know like it seems there just was one but WordPress has issued a new security release, WordPress 4.2.1. “A few hours ago, the WordPress team was made aware of a cross-site scripting vulnerability, which could enable commenters to compromise a site. The vulnerability was discovered by Jouko Pynnönen.” And this is why I don’t run self-hosted WordPress anymore… You can get more details about the security issue here.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

A Texas judge has been admonished for writing Facebook posts about her trials.

The Tow Center for Digital Journalism is talking about news media and algorithmic transparency. “There is a lot of interest in understanding the human component to how algorithms are designed, and how they evolve and are adjusted over time and are kept in operation. Facebook and Google: we know there are people behind your algorithm! At a high level, transparency here might involve explaining the goal, purpose, and intent of the algorithm, including editorial goals and the human editorial process or social context crucible from which the algorithm was cast.”

Hmmm.. did Google update its algo over the weekend?

RESEARCH AND OPINION

Research done by the University of Maryland indicates that Google searches for a certain word starting with n may indicate higher mortality rates for African Americans in that region. ” Researchers found that those areas with greater levels of racism, as indexed by the proportion of Google searches containing the ‘n-word,’ had higher mortality rates among Blacks….Given the challenges in measuring racism through surveys, the researchers used a proxy measure previously developed by Seth I. Stephens-Davidowitz, co-author on the study, that was based on the volume of searches for the ‘n-word’ ending in -er¬ or -ers, not including those ending in -a or ¬-as as such searches were shown to be used in different contexts.” Good morning, Internet…

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