NEW RESOURCES

Citypages: Twin/Tone Records opens its video vault on YouTube. “If you read our profile of the Suicide Commandos, you learned that Twin/Tone Records recently stirred out of its long hiatus to release the band’s new album, and you saw a 1979 live clip of the Commandos in action. Those two things aren’t unrelated: The label has begun uploading some of its video archive to its YouTube channel over the past month, including that Suicide Commandos video.” You can learn more about Twin/Tone and its bands here.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Wow! Facebook comments now have Reactions, too. “Love them or hate them, Facebook’s Reactions aren’t going away. The social network is expanding its like button yet again. This time, it’s comments that are getting the new emoji-filled treatment.”

Digital Trends: Google Assistant Now Available On PCs Via Autovoice Chrome Extension. “Last week, Google released its Google Assistant software development kit, allowing anyone with the necessary skills to create their own intelligent, voice-controlled device. Now, a talented Android developer has used the SDK to make Google Assistant functionality available via Google Chrome, even on a PC running Windows 10.”

USEFUL STUFF

Wrike: 51 Chrome Browser Extensions to Amplify Your Productivity . “We’ve listed these 51 extensions for Google Chrome, arguably one of the most popular and most extensible internet browsers in use today. But don’t worry if you use another browser, you probably still have access to these tools. Firefox typically has these same extensions (called ‘Add-ons’) ported over to Mozilla. Both Opera and Vivaldi can access the Chrome webstore via an add-on. Check to see what’s available.”

MakeUseOf: Transform Evernote Into a Project Management Tool in 9 Easy Steps. “When I decided I needed to take back control of Evernote, I had 19 notebooks containing over 500 notes (that was after recently deleting 1,000 notes in probably eight or ten notebooks). I had 43 tags, most with just a couple notes. … Here’s how I turned this chaos into a fantastic personal project management system and what it can teach you about taking care of your Evernote setup.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Ugh. It’s 2017 and I can’t believe Microsoft is still trying this stuff. The Verge: Windows 10 S won’t let you change the default browser or switch to Google search. “In a FAQ for Windows 10 S, Microsoft admits ‘you are able to download another browser that might be available from the Windows Store, but Microsoft Edge will remain the default if, for example, you open an .htm file.’ This means if you click a link from another app, or open a link from an email then you’ll be thrown into Microsoft Edge, even if you wanted to use another browser.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Ars Technica: US Intelligence “transparency report” reveals breadth of surveillance by NSA, others. “A report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) yesterday provides a sobering set of statistics on the breadth and depth of US intelligence surveillance of targets both overseas and within the United States. Even after steps were taken to reduce the collection of phone call metadata—ending bulk collection of phone company records and limiting collection to specific requests against records held by telecommunications providers—the National Security Agency collected over 151 million phone call records while tracking only 42 targets.”

Gizmodo: 130 Million at Risk of Fraud After Massive Leak of Indian Biometric System Data. “A series of potentially calamitous leaks in India leave as many as 130 million people at risk of fraud or worse after caches of biometric and other personal data became accessible online. That’s according to a new report from the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), which details breaches at four national- and state-run databases, all of which are said to contain purportedly ‘uniquely-identifying’ Aadhaar numbers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Google Research Blog: Updating Google Maps with Deep Learning and Street View. “Every day, Google Maps provides useful directions, real-time traffic information and information on businesses to millions of people. In order to provide the best experience for our users, this information has to constantly mirror an ever-changing world. While Street View cars collect millions of images daily, it is impossible to manually analyze more than 80 billion high resolution images collected to date in order to find new, or updated, information for Google Maps. One of the goals of the Google’s Ground Truth team is to enable the automatic extraction of information from our geo-located imagery to improve Google Maps.” 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!