NEW RESOURCES

Malay Mail: Norway to digitise Nigerian literature. “The National Library of Norway said today it would digitise literature from Nigeria following a seemingly unprecedented agreement which organisers hope will lead to an ‘African digital library’. ”

Conway Daily Sun (New Hampshire): Former Local Paper Lives On In New Website. “The Mountain Ear is back! (Well, sort of.) The thousands of stories written over its 30 years under the guidance of Ear co-founder Steve Eastman will be back (eventually), but on a website … which has just gone live.” This archive is in its very early stages.

Oh my. The Next Web: pipes.digital is an intriguing early-stage alternative to Yahoo! Pipes. “One new service that wants to pick up the mantle dropped by Yahoo! Pipes is pipes.digital — an early-stage product that already shows promise. Although it’s nowhere near as feature-rich as IFTTT or Zapier, it is certainly an intriguing effort, and captures the essence of Yahoo! Pipes.” Apparently it’s a bit slow at the moment because it’s getting a lot of attention. I need to remember this one, because I REALLY miss Yahoo Pipes.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Salon: Blackout blackout: The latest in the USDA’s ongoing attempts to stymie transparency. “…in an attempt to persuade a court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by myself and others challenging the blackout, the USDA has brazenly asserted that it was never under any legal duty to post the records — this despite the clear statutory mandate that agencies proactively post frequently requested records, the agency’s acknowledgement that the records at issue were the single-most frequently requested, and even its prior recognition that it was legally required to post the records. It seems, to crib from Lewis Carroll, that the law ‘means just what [the USDA] chooses it to mean — neither more nor less.’ And apparently that meaning can shift at whim.”

USEFUL STUFF

Light Stalking: Our 113 Most Useful Links for Photographers. “One of the wonderful things about the photography world are how many people put in countless talent online to serve the industry. This ranges from an amazing array of free blogs and tutorial sites through to really useful photography tools and portfolio sites for you to display your creativity as well as photography books and magazines. This is a selection of our favourites at the moment. We hope you find them useful.” Big ol’ list, minimally annotated.

Sidecar Photo: Best Online Backup For Photographers. “The recent ransomware incident finally lit a fire under my butt to figure out a cloud backup solution for my photos. I mean, if I’d gotten hit with WannaCry, I could have seriously lost years and years of photographs. Are you crazy, Shimona? You might be asking… Why don’t you have a backup?! Well I do. But it’s on an external drive that’s plugged into my computer. And that’s not good enough with the threat of ransomware. So I set to work trying to figure out the best online backup for photographers is in 2017.” A nice combination of “this is how I’m thinking about this problem” and some how-to stuff.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

KPCC: Meet the 19-year-old racing to preserve the stories of WWII veterans. “More than 16 million Americans served in World War II. … Today, the numbers are different. There are only about 600,000 veterans of that war left. Every day, 650 die. Enter Rishi Sharma, a young man from Agoura Hills on a mission to record and save the stories of the country’s remaining vets. He’s only 19 years old, but he’s in a race against time.” Someone’s chopping onions in here.

Associated Press: Offices of search engine Yandex raided in Ukraine. “Ukraine’s intelligence agency is searching the offices of Yandex, a Russia-based Internet company best known for its search engine.

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

ThreatPost: Microsoft Quietly Patches Another Critical Malware Protection Engine Flaw. “Microsoft quietly patched a critical vulnerability Wednesday in its Malware Protection Engine. The vulnerability was found May 12 by Google’s Project Zero team, which said an attacker could have crafted an executable that when processed by the Malware Protection Engine’s emulator could enable remote code execution.”

Global Voices: Ethiopian Protester Sentenced to Six Years Behind Bars for Facebook Posts. “This week in Ethiopia, two prominent human rights advocates and critics of the ruling government were given long-term prison sentences for ‘incitement’ on Facebook.”

BetaNews: Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others write to House of Representatives asking for reform of NSA surveillance. “A letter signed by more than 30 major technology companies has been sent to the House Judiciary Committee calling for a number of key changes to be made to NSA surveillance. The letter, signed by the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google and Mozilla, asks lawmakers to make a number of considerations when reforming Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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