NEW RESOURCES

University of Winnipeg: UWinnipeg helps launch Truth and Reconciliation Web Archive. “This new digital archive captures websites, news articles, governmental documents, personal blogs, social media accounts, commentaries, and academic material published online related to the history of the Indian Residential School system and the TRC.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bay Nature: Identify Anything, Anywhere, Instantly (Well, Almost) With the Newest iNaturalist Release. “A new version of the California Academy of Sciences’ iNaturalist app uses artificial intelligence to offer immediate identifications for photos of any kind of wildlife. You can observe anywhere and ask the computer anything. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now and it seems like it mostly works. It is completely astonishing. One iNaturalist user compared it to getting your hands on a real-life Star Trek tricorder.”

TechCrunch: YouTube launches its counter-terrorism experiment for would-be ISIS recruits. “Google’s big experiment in digital counter-terrorism begins rolling out today. Collaborating with its own in-house think tank, Jigsaw, the new effort seeks to bury ISIS-related propaganda on YouTube. Now, when a potential ISIS recruit searches for known extremist content using a predefined set of keywords, they’ll instead be redirected to videos that deconstruct and confront the terrorist group. The project is called the Redirect Method.”

Search Engine Roundtable: YouTube Video Editor Going Offline On September 20, 2017. “So Google decided to kill off the YouTube Video Editor and also the Photo slideshows within YouTube as of September 20, 2017. Google quietly announced this in the YouTube Help Forums and said these tools are being removed because of ‘limited usage.'”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Find Free Fonts Similar to Paid Fonts by Appearance . “Finding the perfect font can be a challenge. You know the name of the prohibitively expensive font you wish you could use, but need to find a free alternative? Or you have a picture of a font as inspiration, but don’t know what the font is called?”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Washington Post: Google spent the most it ever has trying to influence Washington: $6 million. “Google Inc., according to the disclosure forms, spent $5.93 million between April 1 and June 30, more than any other corporation in the second quarter. That’s about 40 percent more than it had spent during the same period last year. The only three entities that doled out more money were large business organizations: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($11.68 million), the National Association of Realtors ($10.92 million), and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America ($6 million).”

Business Insider: Google’s been running a secret test to detect bogus ads — and its findings should make the industry nervous. “To get a sense of the scope of this problem, Google has been quietly conducting tests with a handful of major media properties, including NBCU, CBS, and The New York Times, people familiar with the matter told Business Insider. During these tests, Google and the partners shut off all of their programmatic ad inventory for brief periods, say, 10 to 15 minutes, and then scour the ad exchanges to see what’s listed. Google and its partners found thousands if not millions of video and display ad spots still available on multiple ad exchanges, despite no ads actually being for sale at that time, the people said, asking not to be identified because the results haven’t been publicly released.”

GlobalVoices: Kyrgyzstan Blocks Archive.org on ‘Extremism’ Grounds. “For more than a week, local users in Kyrgyzstan have been unable to access the site over the country’s largest ISP Kyrgyztelekom, as well as another major ISP, Homeline. Users of smaller ISPs such as Aknet say that archive.org is still accessible.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

eWeek: Internet Bug Bounty Raises New Funding to Improve Open-Source Security. “The Internet Bug Bounty (IBB) has raised new funding, in an effort to help reward and encourage security researchers to responsibly disclose vulnerabilities in open-source software. The IBB is backed by Facebook, the Ford Foundation and Github, who are now donating a total of $300,000 to help secure the internet with an open-source bug bounty program.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Business Review: Inside Facebook’s AI Workshop. “Within Facebook’s cavernous Building 20, about halfway between the lobby (panoramic views of the Ravenswood Slough) and the kitchen (hot breakfast, smoothies, gourmet coffee), in a small conference room called Lollapalooza, Joaquin Candela is trying to explain artificial intelligence to a layperson.” Really extensive article.

The Next Web: Facebook’s new patent hints at a modular smartphone. “Facebook yesterday filed a patent detailing plans for a modular smart device. The patent shows off a design that would allow consumers to mix and match different hardware components compatible with a base frame.”

Mashable: Is China’s $150 billion check for the AI industry enough to catch up to the U.S.? . “China sees artificial intelligence dominating our future, and it’s willing to bet $150 billion to make sure it doesn’t get left behind. The Chinese government on Friday announced a major push into the field of artificial intelligence, declaring it would create a $150 billion domestic AI industry by 2030.” Good morning, Internet…

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