NEW RESOURCES

Live Music Blog: New Orleans Jazz Fest Performer History Search Engine Released!. “With New Orleans Jazz Fest kicking off today, the city of NOLA is coming alive in the spirit of music. … For those of us not there and bored over the weekend, or for those of us that are there and perhaps need something to help nurse that hangover before you head back out onto the racetrack, check out this amazing new search engine released by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Archive. It allows users to search for artists that have played the festival over the years starting back in 1970.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Washington Post: EPA website removes climate science site from public view after two decades. “The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday evening that its website would be ‘undergoing changes’ to better represent the new direction the agency is taking, triggering the removal of several agency websites containing detailed climate data and scientific information.”

Ubergizmo: Facebook Creators Can Earn Money From Stolen Videos. “Just like YouTube, Facebook has a problem with people stealing original content and reposting it under their own name or own page. This can be a problem for creators who are hoping to earn money through their videos, but not to worry because in Facebook’s bid to transform itself into a more legit video platform, they can come up with a solution.”

TechCrunch: Google now lets hardware developers tinker with its Assistant. “Google has long said that it wants to open up its Assistant to a broader ecosystem of hardware companies and developers. Today it’s taking a major step in this direction with the launch of the Google Assistant SDK, which allows developers to build the Assistant’s smarts into their own hardware prototypes. Those could be smart mirrors, Google Home-like appliances or a teetotaler’s favorite robot bartender — the world is your oyster.”

USEFUL STUFF

I apologize in advance for the language in the headline. The Next Web: Spellfucker screws up your spelling to outsmart and confuse web bots. “Spellfucker is a new text obfuscating tool that changes the input text into coherent gibberish that humans can make sense of, but not computers. This means it would make it more difficult for bots to exploit information about you, for example, targeting ads based on what you type.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Motherboard: Turkey Has Blocked Wikipedia and Is Censoring Twitter. “President Erdoğan’s crackdown on voices of dissent is expanding to the internet. Emboldened after his slim win in a referendum to broaden his powers, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s purge of voices critical of the government has continued online.”

Bloomberg Quint: You Think Google Search Is Free? Austria Seeks to Tax It Anyway. “Austria is seeking ways to make digital services like Alphabet Inc.’s Google or Facebook Inc. pay taxes for transactions with the nation’s internet users, trying to plug gaps in a tax system still designed for brick-and-mortar business.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

ZDNet: A database of thousands of credit cards was left exposed on the open internet. “A US online pet store has exposed the details of more than 110,400 credit cards used to make purchases through its website, researchers have found. In a stunning show of poor security, the Austin, Texas-based company FuturePets.com exposed its entire customer database, including names, postal and email addresses, phone numbers, credit card information, and plain-text passwords.”

Sunlight Foundation: New bill would preserve public access to public data online. “The Preserving Data in Government Act speaks to a matter of of heightened public interest in the spring 2017, as open government data has been removed from the Internet during the Trump administration. The bill would require federal agencies to preserve public access to data sets and prevent the removal of those data sets from the Internet without sufficient public notice.”

CBR: Best cybersecurity Twitter accounts. “As cybersecurity has become a global issue of utmost significance, some major Twitter commentators have risen to the challenge of following the raging storm. The threats are huge and very real, and they are not just a concern for nations and big organisations, we are all individual targets that cyber adversaries wish to compromise. CBR has compiled a list of some of the best cybersecurity Twitter accounts.”

Everything Lubbock: Bill Proposes Database for Protective Orders in Texas. “A bill filed by a state representative could create an online database of Texans who have had a protective order filed against them for domestic violence—even if they’ve never been arrested or convicted of a crime.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Michigan: As scientists take to Twitter, new study shows power of “visual abstract” graphics to share results. “When it comes to sharing new research findings with the world, Twitter has emerged as a key tool for scientists – and for the journals where they publish their findings. But a new study shows a way for that research to reach even more people, so that new ideas and findings can travel farther.”

University of Illinois: A little support from their online friends calms test-anxious students . “Reading supportive comments, ‘likes’ and private messages from social media friends prior to taking a test may help college students who have high levels of test-anxiety significantly reduce their nervousness and improve their scores, a new study suggests.” Good morning, Internet…

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