NEW RESOURCES

Herald Journal News: USU digitizes Brigham Young College image collection . “People can look at photographs, yearbooks, college bulletins and other documents related to the former Brigham Young College in Logan thanks to the work of Utah State University Special Collections and Archives. Darcy Pumphrey, digital library coordinator for the Merrill-Cazier Library, and a team of specialists at USU got together to digitize Special Collections and Archives’ 11,000 images related to BYC — a school founded in August of 1877 that taught high school and college courses before it eventually closed in 1926.” I did not see the URL in the article so I added it to a comment at the end.

Google Blog: Connecting more Americans with jobs. “Starting today in English on desktop and mobile, when you search for ‘jobs near me,’ ‘teaching jobs,’ or similar job-seeking queries, you’ll see in-depth results that allow you to explore jobs from across the web. For many people, a job needs to satisfy some key criteria, like commute time, job specialties they’ve honed or the hours they have available to work. For many jobs, you’ll also see reviews and ratings of the employer from trusted sites, right alongside the job description, and if you’re signed in, for some jobs you’ll even see how long it would take to commute to the job from home.”

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Poverty: now there’s an app for that. “A Duluth high school student saw a news program about homeless children, and instead of changing the channel he decided to help. Four years and thousands of dollars later, Jack Griffin has developed a free online service that links the hungry with food.” The app and Web site currently work for North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and part of Michigan.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: YouTube says LGBTQ+ video censorship won’t happen again. “YouTube has updated its policies to explicitly state that any LGBTQ+-themed video with no graphic/mature language and content is allowed in Restricted Mode.”

They’re apparently over, but Google still has a fidget spinner Easter egg. “Redditors have spotted that the internet giant has added a hidden fidget spinner virtual simulation straight into search results – but you have to search for the right word to find it.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The Half-Forgotten Way to Compile Real News Feeds: RSS. “It doesn’t matter where you get your news from — it’s hard to find quality information among the endless amounts of propaganda, lies, and satire posing as real content. All newspapers and TV channels are guilty, as are plenty of supposedly ‘independent’ websites. Rather than keep fighting a losing battle, why not take matters into your own hands?”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Quartz: Fake evidence of affairs and other creepy ways government spyware is targeting Mexican journalists. “‘You don’t have the balls to watch how I make out with your partner.’ That’s the kind of text message several journalists and human right activists in Mexico received as part of a campaign to hack into their phones. The messages could be traced back to government spyware, according to a new report by the Citizen Lab, a research center based at University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.”

CBS 19: BamaWorks grant to help build database of Jefferson school students. “A grant will help the Jefferson School African-American Heritage Center create a database of students who attended Jefferson high School…. The project proposal aims to create a database from yearbooks from the school that date between 1940 and 1951.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Serious privilege escalation bug in Unix OSes imperils servers everywhere. “A raft of Unix-based operating systems—including Linux, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD—contain flaws that let attackers elevate low-level access on a vulnerable computer to unfettered root. Security experts are advising administrators to install patches or take other protective actions as soon as possible.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Massachusetts: Can Facebook be used to deliver a post-partum weight loss intervention?. “Can a social media tool such as Facebook be used to deliver a post-partum weight loss intervention? UMass Medical School scientist Molly Waring, PhD, thinks it’s possible and with a $750,000 grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, will test the concept with a three-year pilot randomized controlled trial.”

The Guardian: Facebook and Twitter are being used to manipulate public opinion – report. “Propaganda on social media is being used to manipulate public opinion around the world, a new set of studies from the University of Oxford has revealed. From Russia, where around 45% of highly active Twitter accounts are bots, to Taiwan, where a campaign against President Tsai Ing-wen involved thousands of heavily co-ordinated – but not fully automated – accounts sharing Chinese mainland propaganda, the studies show that social media is an international battleground for dirty politics.”

University of Colorado Boulder: Fake news outlets have more media impact than fact-checking outlets. “Last year, fake news websites had about twice as much influence on the media landscape as fact-checking websites did, according to a new study co-authored by a CU Boulder researcher. Between 2014 and 2016, fake news websites outpaced fact-checking websites, both in terms of the number of articles produced each month and their influence on the broader media agenda, the study found.” Good morning, Internet…

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