NEW RESOURCES

Columbia University Libraries: Missionary Research Library Pamphlets: 3,000+ Now Available Online!. “Global in scope and including materials from as far back as the 18th century, the Missionary Research Library (MRL), housed at the Burke Library, chronicles world history and the efforts of Protestant missionaries both in the United States and abroad. The MRL contains over 20,000 pamphlets (among other items) and now, thanks to the hard work and dedication of Columbia’s Libraries Preservation and Digital Conversion staff, more than 3,000 have been fully digitized and are freely accessible online!”

Taipei Times (Taiwan): Foundation launches a case judgement database. “The Judicial Reform Foundation yesterday called for more transparency and accountability in the judicial system as it launched a new database containing the written judgements of court cases. The database will allow the public to scrutinize the decisions and conduct of judges and prosecutors, foundation members said.”

DigitalNC: Murphy Public Library Offers 20 Years of the Cherokee Scout. “20 years of the Cherokee Scout, from Murphy, N.C., are now available online. Murphy Public Library, located in Cherokee County, is a new partner on DigitalNC and the first from the county.” The new archive covers 1923-1943.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Science: BioRxiv preprint server gets funding from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. “BioRxiv, the free online archive of draft biology papers, is getting a major funding boost. Today, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced that it is putting an undisclosed amount of money into expanding the preprint server and adding more software tools through a collaboration with bioRxiv’s founder, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York.”

Engadget: Google becomes first foreign internet company to go live in Cuba. “After former President Obama reopened America’s diplomatic relations with Cuba, businesses started looking for opportunities to make inroads to the island nation. Google was one of these, with Obama himself announcing it would come to help set up WiFi and broadband access there. Cuba’s national telecom ETECSA officially inked a deal with Google back in December, and today, they finally switched on the service, making the search giant the first foreign internet live on the island.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Al Jazeera: Facebook, Twitter, other social media banned in Kashmir. “Authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir have banned Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp after the Indian government said social media services were ‘being misused by anti-national and anti-social elements’. It is the first time the government has taken such a step, although it regularly blocks mobile internet signal in the Kashmir Valley.”

Daily Dot: Inside Finstagram, the private world of ‘fake’ teen Instagram accounts. “A Finstagram, or ‘finsta’ for short, is a ‘fake Instagram’ account. The accounts are typically private, with usernames that don’t give away the identity of the owner right away. The term was created and popularized by high school teenagers, but the fad has moved to the college scene as well. It’s mainly used to free people up from the confines of a traditional account, making them feel better about posting ridiculous memes, ugly selfies of their friends, and anything else that crosses their mind. It’s more fleeting like Twitter, less permanent than Facebook.”

Motherboard: People Don’t Want to Leave AI Up to Corporations. “Now that machines are learning to do all sorts of things on their own, from deciding who gets bail to finding new pharmaceuticals, the question is how we can ensure that computers don’t accidentally screw up people’s lives. The results from a new survey conducted on behalf of the Royal Society, a UK-based scientific fellowship, show that at the very least folks want the government to be involved in deciding how AI develops.”

TechCrunch: AI report fed by DeepMind, Amazon, Uber urges greater access to public sector data sets. “What are tech titans Google, Amazon and Uber agitating for to further the march of machine learning technology and ultimately inject more fuel in the engines of their own dominant platforms? Unsurprisingly, they’re after access to data. Lots and lots of data.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Politico: Feds fight suit over web takedown of animal abuse data. “The Justice Department is mounting a legal defense of one of the most-publicized counter-transparency moves of the new Trump administration: the Agriculture Department’s decision to take offline a massive set of records on enforcement of laws against animal abuse.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!