TWEAKS AND UPDATES

University of Texas at San Antonio: UTSA Libraries receives grant to digitize The Sons of the Republic of Texas Collection. “The Sons of the Republic of Texas Kathryn Stoner O’Connor Mexican Manuscript Collection includes more than 5,400 items documenting social, political and religious life in central Mexico. Scholars will find information about individuals who influenced the country’s development, including Kings of Spain, two emperors of Mexico, Viceroys of Mexico, and Presidents of Mexico and the United States. Other items include financial records, personal and business correspondence, censuses and maps.”

YouTube: Game on!: YouTube at E3 2017. “This year, YouTube is back again to give gamers around the world a front row seat to everything at E3 on our YouTube Gaming hub. Yesterday we began our exclusive two-day, 17-hour livestream hosted by Geoff Keighley and brought to you by Totino’s Pizza Rolls™. We saw the reveal of the Xbox One X and made live Tiltbrush Art in mixed reality, all in 4K Ultra HD. We’re back today at 1 p.m. PT with more press releases, exclusive interviews, and discussion with YouTube’s biggest names.”

TechCrunch: Snapchat seduces advertisers with new self-serve tools and certified partners. “To beat Facebook and Google’s duopoly, Snapchat needs advertisers to build and buy campaigns with confidence. So today it’s announcing the Snap Publisher tool for building vertical video creative, it’s rolling out its self-serve Ad Manager, and its launching a Snapchat Certified Partners program to connect advertisers to trained third-party ad tech tool providers.”

USEFUL STUFF

Zapier: The Google Tasks Guide: How to Get the Most Out of the Simplest To-Do App. “Google launched Google Tasks, a simple to-do list app built into Gmail, in 2008. That’s when I finally found a replacement for Palm’s to-do list manager. Here’s what makes it my favorite simple to-do list app—and how to get the most out of it.”

MakeUseOf: Learn to Draw at Your Own Pace With Awesome YouTube Videos. “Are you interested in learning how to draw, but do not have the time to take a physical class? You can learn at your own pace and when you have moments to spare thanks to awesome YouTube videos. These channels and tutorials take you from the basics to the more difficult subjects.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Daily News: The billionaire GOP patron behind Trump’s social media bot army. “A GOP donor who once had ties to IBM is the man behind the millions of Twitter bots President Trump counts on as followers who could be employed to target voters with misleading or fake news on social media. In order for it to work, the scheme relies on the quiet guidance of Robert Mercer, a reclusive Republican mega-donor and staunch Trump supporter, sources told the Daily News.”

Mercury News: Twitter tries to carve new niche with live video strategy. “Live events from sports games to award shows get people talking on Twitter. So when Twitter’s executives formed a team to focus on the company’s live video efforts, transitioning from business development into a new role last year made sense to Kumi Walker.”

SECURITY/LEGAL ISSUES

Kotaku: GameStop Customers’ Credit Cards May Have Been Stolen, Company Says. “A very bad year for GameStop got even worse this week, as the retailer sent out letters to online customers informing them that their credit cards may have been stolen.”

MIT Technology Review: A Hack Used to Plunge Ukraine Into Darkness Could Still Do Way More Damage. “Late last year, a cyberattack on Ukraine’s power grid plunged 20 percent of the nation’s capital, Kiev, into darkness. Now security researchers have published details of the malware that they believe may have been used to make that happen.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The New York Times: Making Google the Censor. “Platforms in Europe currently operate notice-and-takedown systems for content that violates the law. Most also prohibit other legal but unwelcome material, like pornography and bullying, under voluntary community guidelines. Sometimes platforms remove too little. More often, research suggests, they remove too much — silencing contested speech rather than risking liability. Accusers exploit this predictable behavior to target expression they don’t like — as the Ecuadorean government has reportedly done with political criticism, the Church of Scientology with religious disputes and disgraced researchers with scholarship debunking their work. Germany’s proposed law increases incentives to err on the side of removal: Any platform that leaves criminal content up for more than 24 hours after being notified about it risks fines as large as 50 million euros.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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