NEW RESOURCES

The Paulding County Carnegie Library (Ohio) has digitized its yearbook collection. 34 CDs worth, with eventual plans to put them online. “The PCCL Digitized Yearbook Collection represents the following schools and years: St. John the Baptist Catholic (2001-2008); Blue Creek (1953-1971); Haviland-Scott (1940-1952); Latty (1942-1952); Grover Hill (1945-1969); Wayne Trace (1972-1977, 1981-2004, 2014); Wayne Trace Jr. High (1975, 1977); Paulding Middle School (1977, 1978, 1979); Emerald Center School (1954); Paulding Elementary (1974, 1975, 1976); Oakwood (1928-1971); Paulding High School (1916-2008 [the yearbook was not always published during the WWII years]); Antwerp High School (1937-2012, 2014).”

TWEAKS & UPDATES

Australian Facebook users are testing a new version of the news feed. “Facebook will initially serve users some default topics such as Animals & Pets, Politics, Travel, TV & Movies and Relationships. These default topics vary for different accounts. By clicking on the settings icon to the right of the topics, you can add and remove topics to suit your interests.”

USEFUL STUFF

Stace Maples has started a series of blog posts on best use hacks for the David Rumsey map collection. “Over the next few weeks I will post a series of brief step-by-step “how-to” tutorials on making use of digital resources from the David Rumsey Map Center and Collection.” Looking forward to reading this!

Oh my: How to install Google Chrome extensions in Opera. “It’s the year 2016. Google Chrome is the most popular browser now, but it’s not the best. In fact, recently, Opera is making a case for you to switch to it. There’s one small problem though: extensions. But what if you could install Chrome extensions in Opera? It’s pretty easy, so here’s a quick guide.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Australian archives crisis continues: there are concerns over the survival of the Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute. “The Institute, also known as PacLII, is based at the University of the South Pacific, where collects and publishes legal material from 20 Pacific countries on its open-access website. But concern has been raised among the region’s journalists and academics that the Australian government will cut funding for the service, something the Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, denies.”

Over at the Boston Globe, Daniel A. Gross writes about the difficulty of building online archives for formerly underground or “taboo” topics. “Already, the Digital Transgender Archive has illuminated some of the unique challenges facing researchers who want to document something that has long been so misunderstood and taboo. It also raises questions about how to accurately document a history that’s often filled with anonymity and pseudonyms.”

Google Photos is celebrating its first birthday and I still miss Picasa. “Now 200 million of you are using Google Photos each month. We’ve delivered more than 1.6 billion animations, collages and movies, among other things. You’ve collectively freed up 13.7 petabytes of storage on your devices—it would take 424 years to swipe through that many photos! We’ve also applied 2 trillion labels, and 24 billion of those have been for … selfies.”

Google is establishing a center for autonomous driving technology — in Michigan. “At the 53,000 square-foot facility, Google engineers will work with local partners to develop and refine autonomous tech. The team’s first job will be to develop the sensors and software for the 100 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans acquired as a part of the FCA deal.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

An apartment complex in Salt Lake City is requiring its residents to “Like” its Facebook page. “The contract requires tenants to friend the City Park Apartments on Facebook within five days, or be found in breach of the rental agreement, though some of the tenants already signed a lease agreement months ago.”

Apparently some hackers were feeling retro: MySpace has apparently been hacked with over 350 million passwords stolen. “It’s unclear when the data was stolen from MySpace, but both the hacker, who’s known as Peace, and one of the operators of LeakedSource, a paid hacked data search engine that also claims to have the credentials, said it’s from a past, unreported, breach. Neither Peace nor LeakedSource provided a sample of the hacked data. But Motherboard gave LeakedSource the email addresses of three staffers and two friends who had an account on the site to verify that the data was real. In all five cases, LeakedSource was able to send back their password.”

Twitter’s given an update on its bug bounty payouts. “A total of 1,662 researchers earned some cash from Twitter’s bug bounty program since it launched in May 2014. Twitter has revealed that it received 5,171 reports and that it paid out a total of $322,420 over two years’ time. The smallest amount anyone ever got was $140, while the biggest was $12,040.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

There is a lot to think about here: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist – “I’m an expert on how technology hijacks our psychological vulnerabilities. That’s why I spent the last three years as a Design Ethicist at Google caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people’s minds from getting hijacked. When using technology, we often focus optimistically on all the things it does for us. But I want to show you where it might do the opposite.” Good morning, Internet…

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