NEW RESOURCES

Now available: a digital archive recording the songs and music of Chilean political prisoners. “Cantos Cautivos (Captive Songs) is a digital archive compiled by Katia Chornik, daughter of two opponents of the dictatorship who survived one infamous detention centre, which was named La Discothèque by agents of the Dina secret police because guards deployed loud music to torture their quarry, or as a soundtrack to the abuse. Chornik spent her childhood in exile, between Venezuela and France, returning to Chile with her parents by the end of the dictatorship. She studied violin and musicology in Chile and the UK.”

New-to-me, from Next Web: FindLectures is curated database of free, mind-expanding talks. “FindLectures is an effort to centralize the vast quantities of free online lectures and talks into one searchable repository of knowledge. It pulls from a number of reputable sources, including Oxford University, TalksAtGoogle, TED, the Library of Congress, and more. At the time of writing, it boasts a catalog of over 25,968 lectures.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Chrome 55 is now available. “For those that may not have realized, Google released the latest version of its Chrome browser into the mainstream earlier this week which brought the popular browser up to version 55. The major update includes no less than 36 security fixes which mitigate a variety of issues including XSS (cross-site scripting), same-origin bypass, and buffer overflow vulnerabilities. Notably, 26 of the fixes were contributed by external researchers who were collectively paid a total of more than $64,000 by Google for their efforts.”

Reddit is cracking down on trolls — apparently also including the CEO, who has admitted to troll-like behavior. “Reddit will start issuing warnings, timeouts and permanent bans to its most abusive trolls, but will also limit the content manipulation capabilities of its own CEO after he apologized today for ethical violations that shook the trust of the online community.”

Google has launched the Google News Lab University Network. “The News Lab University Network will be comprised of an initial cohort of 48 journalism schools from all over the globe. The Network is designed to provide in-person training when possible, and online training materials and support to professors and students on topics ranging from Google tool fundamentals, trust and verification, immersive storytelling, data journalism, advanced search and Google Trends, data visualization, mapping and more. We also want to celebrate and promote academic journalism projects that use Google tools.”

Huh. You can now get prescription Snapchat Spectacles. “In an announcement by Rochester Optical, it seems that they have launched prescription services for the device. The company itself won’t be selling Spectacles (you’ll still have to get your own pair), but they are offering lenses that will be compatible with them, meaning that you’ll have to buy the Spectacles, ship them off to the company who will then cut a special lens that will fit the device.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

It’s not all just documents. From Kotaku: Why Some Video Games Are In Danger of Disappearing Forever. “Years of neglect are eroding gaming history. Cartridges rot in garages, companies horde demos that they will never release, and obscure titles fade into the ether. Some games may even be lost forever.”

Wow. From Recode: Two years after buying Elite Daily, the Daily Mail says the Facebook publisher is worthless. “Elite Daily used to look like a digital publishing success story: Founded by a couple of twentysomethings in 2012, fueled by Facebook growth, then sold for many millions a few years later. Now it is a cautionary tale: The owner of the Daily Mail, the publisher that bought Elite Daily in January 2015, says the New York-based startup has been a bust, and has written down all of its investment in the money-losing company, citing ‘poor performance.'”

Facebook wants to police its livestreams with AI. “Facebook is working on automatically flagging offensive material in live video streams, building on a growing effort to use artificial intelligence to monitor content, said Joaquin Candela, the company’s director of applied machine learning.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Wow: the entire EU is getting a bug bounty program. “Today the European Parliament approved the EU Budget for 2017. The budget sets aside 1.9 million euros in order to improve the EU’s IT infrastructure by extending the free software audit programme (FOSSA) that MEPs Max Anderson and Julia Reda initiated two years ago, and by including a bug bounty approach in the programme that was proposed by MEP Marietje Schaake.”

A giant data leak has just hit football (or “soccer,” rather, if you’re an American.) “German publication Der Spiegel just released the first in what will be a steady stream of details about corruption in various European football clubs as well as the sport’s players. A group known as “Football Leaks” got its hands on a whopping 1.9 terabytes of data, covering 18.6 million documents — including secret agreements between clubs and players. Basically, it’s the Snowden release of professional football.”

Good grief. From OC Register: Woman sentenced to year in jail for using fake Facebook profile to frame her ex. “A 25-year-old Las Vegas woman pleaded guilty and was immediately sentenced to a year in jail Wednesday for creating a fake Facebook profile to set up an Irvine man with bogus claims of stalking, kidnapping and beating her.” Good morning, Internet…

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