NEW RESOURCES

The North Carolina State Archives have put militia records from the 18th and 19th centuries online. “The Troop Returns from the State Archives of North Carolina Military Collection are now available online via the North Carolina Digital Collections. This collection includes lists, returns, records of prisoners, and records of draftees, from 1747 to 1893. The majority of records are from the Revolutionary War North Carolina Continental Line.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bing is teaming up with TuneIn. “Bing announced today it has partnered with TuneIn, an online subscription service for audio broadcasts. Searches for ‘online radio stations’ on Bing will now serve up a scrolling carousel at the top of the search results, listing what Bings says are the ‘most searched” radio stations.’

Will Twitter have to resort to job cuts? “The apparent lack of interest in Twitter by potential suitors may force the social media company into a major restructuring — including laying off some its nearly 4,000 employees. The popular but money-losing micro-blogging service spent aggressively on product development and marketing in recent years, betting that it could afford to post losses as long as it attracted new users.”

Facebook has apologized for removing a breast cancer awareness video featuring cartoon breasts. “Before the decision was reversed, Cancerfonden had said in an open letter to Facebook that the campaign ‘was not meant to offend’. It added that it had found a solution to the problem: illustrating breasts using two pink squares.”

USEFUL STUFF

A new tool defends against Petya ransomware – and as a bonus is also good against rootkits. “MBRFilter defeats Petya in a rather simple, clever way. MBRFilter is a driver that simply places the MBR into read-only mode. Therefore, ransomware like Petya cannot overwrite the MBR or otherwise modify its contents. … Although MBRFilter will not help organizations solve their problems with Locky, it has wide use beyond ransomware. ‘This should be effective at stopping all rootkits which require MBR modification,’ says [Craig] Williams.” MBR stands for Master Boot Record; you can learn more about it here.

From Renee Sullivan, a short (just under six minute) video: How to Upload your Facebook Live streams into YouTube. She actually messes up and corrects herself a couple of times so it’s not the most polished video ever, but it’s informative.

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Linux users, watch out for dirty cows. “A serious vulnerability that has been present for nine years in virtually all versions of the Linux operating system is under active exploit, according to researchers who are advising users to install a patch as soon as possible. While CVE-2016-5195, as the bug is cataloged, amounts to a mere privilege-escalation vulnerability rather than a more serious code-execution vulnerability, there are several reasons many researchers are taking it extremely seriously.”

Oracle’s latest security patch addresses 253 flaws. “Oracle released its October Critical Patch Update, fixing 253 different vulnerabilities across the company product portfolio. The update, released Oct. 18, is the second-largest ever issued by Oracle, outpaced only by the company’s July CPU in which 276 vulnerabilities were patched.”

RESEARCH AND OPINION

From Dave Winer, short but important: How I feel about Google re RSS. “Imagine that a big banking firm has a corporate event in Central Park. They not only trash the place, but they leave behind such a mess that the park isn’t usable again for at least ten years. It’s possible it may never recover.”

EurekAlert: Study examines suicides publicized on social media and teens’ ER visits. “Using 2002-2013 data from Canada’s National Ambulatory Care Reporting System, researchers used an interrupted time?series analysis to examine monthly rates of emergency department visits related to suicidal behavior such as intentional self-poisoning before and after [Amanda] Todd’s suicide. They found a no significant change in ER visits for suicidal behavior after her death. Importantly however, the authors found a significant increase in ER visits in teenagers for suicidal behavior that begin in June 2011. No such increase was found among the younger children studied.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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