NEW RESOURCES

Cato Institute: Learn the History of Liberty with the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. “The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, published in 2008 in hard copy, is now available free online… The Encyclopedia includes more than 300 succinct, original articles on libertarian ideas, institutions, and thinkers. Contributors include James Buchanan, Richard Epstein, Tyler Cowen, Randy Barnett, Ellen Frankel Paul, Deirdre McCloskey, and more than 100 other scholars.”

Phys.org: New gene catalog of ocean microbiome reveals surprises . “Microbes dominate the planet, especially the ocean, and help support the entire marine food web. In a recent report published in Nature Microbiology, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UHM) oceanography professor Ed DeLong and his team report the largest single-site microbiome gene catalog constructed to date.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Now you can post videos directly to Reddit, no third-party service required. “Reddit announced a big, and likely welcome, change coming to its site: native video uploads. After testing the feature out in about 200 communities, native video hosting will now roll out for all Reddit communities, giving every user the ability to upload and share videos on Reddit without the use of a third-party service. Until now, users had to upload videos to another site and then post the video’s link to Reddit in order to share.”

Consumerist: Facebook Cracking Down On Video Clickbait In The Newsfeed. “There are two kinds of video clickbait Facebook is going after: Stories that feature either fake video play buttons embedded in their imagery, or videos that only play a static image.”

Engadget: Google tests tools that encourage you to pay for news. “It’s no secret that Google and conventional news outlets have a fraught relationship, and that’s in no small part due to the problems publishers have turning Google searchers into paying customers. Why subscribe when you just read an article for free? It might soon give you more incentives to sign up, though. The company is conducting tests with the New York Times and Financial Times that would encourage and streamline subscriptions. They’re not necessarily good if you prefer free news, but they might influence your decision if you’re sitting on the fence.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Trends: Stop Spam Calls With The Best Call- And Text-blocker Apps. “We’ve looked at how to block calls on an iPhone and how to block a number in Android before, but in this article, we’re going to highlight the best call and text blocker apps for Android and iOS. These apps are easy to use, they draw on large databases of spam numbers, and they’ll help you rid yourself of spam callers once and for all.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Experts sound alarm over news websites’ fake news twins. “Fake articles made to look like they have been published by legitimate news websites have emerged as a new avenue for propaganda on the internet, with experts concerned about the increasing sophistication of the latest attempts to spread disinformation.”

Ars Technica: Tor “can’t build free and open source tools” and stop racists from using them. “The Tor Project has reiterated its absolutist commitment to free speech, saying that even though Daily Stormer recently moved to a Tor onion service, the organization won’t do anything to stop the ‘hate-spewing website.'”

TechCrunch: Rapportive founder’s new startup Superhuman is what Gmail would be if built today. “Reinventing the email experience is an area numerous startups have tried to tackle over the years, with some apps focused more on triage, others on making a better desktop alternative to Outlook, and still more aiming to re-envision email as a mobile-first product, among other ideas. A new startup called Superhuman, from the founder of Gmail add-on Rapportive acquired in 2012 by LinkedIn, is different.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

eWeek: The True Cost of Ransomware is Much More Than Just the Ransom. “In a ransomware attack, an attacker is able to install malware that encrypts data on a victim’s system. The victimized system will then have a message on it, instructing the user to pay the ransom, in order to decrypt the data. While ransom payments are a core part of the ransomware model, they are likely the smallest financial component in terms of the actual impact that organizations face in the aftermath of an attack.”

CyberScoop: FBI pushes private sector to cut ties with Kaspersky. “The FBI has been briefing private sector companies on intelligence claiming to show that the Moscow-based cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab is an unacceptable threat to national security, current and former senior U.S. officials familiar with the matter tell CyberScoop. The briefings are one part of an escalating conflict between the U.S. government and Kaspersky amid long-running suspicions among U.S. intelligence officials that Russian spy agencies use the company as an intelligence-gathering tool of global proportions.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Next Web: Merging big data and AI is the next step. “AI is one of hottest trends in tech at the moment, but what happens when it’s merged with another fashionable and extremely promising tech? Researchers are looking for ways to take big data to the next level by combining it with AI. We’ve just recently realized how powerful big data can be, and by uniting it with AI, big data is swiftly marching towards a level of maturity that promises a bigger, industry-wide disruption.” Good morning, Internet…

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