NEW RESOURCES

The Mac Observer: Reddit Saved an 80GB Archive of Apple Videos from YouTubs Censors. It really does say YouTubs. “A teenager named Sam Henri created a YouTube account with every Apple video ever made, from commercials, keynotes, and miscellaneous videos going back to 1980. YouTube censors made him take it down, even though it appeared Apple itself didn’t seem to care. But Reddit stepped in and created a torrent of the 80GB archive that anyone can download.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: ‘Humans of New York’ lands a Facebook video series. “‘Humans of New York,’ in which regular New Yorkers talk about their lives, is one of the best things about Facebook, in my opinion — and I don’t live anywhere near Manhattan….. And as of next week, it’ll have a 12-part Facebook video series on the site’s new video platform, Facebook Watch.”

TechCrunch: Facebook will live stream over a dozen college football games this year. “Facebook wants you to watch more video on its site – including those you can’t see elsewhere. To that end, the social network earlier this month launched a dedicated section for original video, called Watch. Now that’s being expanded with the addition of live-streamed college football games, broadcast in partnership with sports network Stadium. The deal will bring 15 live college football games to Facebook, including nine Conference USA games and six Mountain West games.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: How to Turn an Android Tablet Into a Desktop Notification Center. “Android tablets seem to be slumping hard: sales are down and developers aren’t interested in supporting them with specific apps…not even Google. But with slumping interest comes depressed secondhand market sales, so tablets are also hard to get rid of. There are a lot of things you can do with a tablet you’re not using, but my favorite use is sticking it on an elaborate PC desktop and using it as a dedicated widget pad and notification center. Here’s how you go about it.”

Larry Ferlazzo always has great pointers: “Playbuzz” Has Become A Remarkably Versatile Free Tool For Creating Online Games & Presentations. “Playbuzz appeared in 2015 as a tool for creating online games, and I praised it at that time – along with sharing some concerns (see ‘Playbuzz’ Is A Great Place For Creating Learning Games – If It Doesn’t Blocked By Your District’s Content Filters). They have added tons of new features, including being able to easily create some nice-looking presentations and sharing snippets of videos.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Quartz: In China you now have to provide your real identity if you want to comment online. “The Chinese government under president Xi Jinping is continuing to make life on the internet difficult for its potential detractors. Yesterday (Aug. 25), the country’s highest internet regulator released new rules (link in Chinese) that govern who can post what online. The upshot: anonymity on the Chinese internet is just about dead.”

Gizmodo: Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And It Won’t Tell Me How. “People generally are aware that Facebook is keeping tabs on who they are and how they use the network, but the depth and persistence of that monitoring is hard to grasp. And People You May Know, or ‘PYMK’ in the company’s internal shorthand, is a black box. To try to get a look into that black box—and the unknown and apparently aggressive data collection that feeds it—I began downloading and saving the list of people Facebook recommended to me, to see who came up, and what patterns might emerge.”

New York Times: In Social Media Era, Selfies Are the New Tupperware Party. “The pitch comes in the form of before and after photos posted to Facebook or Instagram by a woman you know. The focus is on her eyes, specifically her eyelashes, which at first appear ordinary and untouched — a stark contrast from a picture taken weeks later, when they look long and thick. Mascara magnifies the effect in another snapshot. Reach out, the captions enthuse, if you want in!”

Vice: American Neo-Nazis Are Flocking To Russian Social Media. “In the uproar following the violence in Charlottesville earlier this month, one of America’s leading neo-Nazi websites, The Daily Stormer, was all but chased off the internet, thwarted even by Russian authorities within hours of its attempt to register a new .ru domain. But Moscow’s swift move came with a striking irony: American and European right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis have in recent years flocked to Russia’s biggest social network site, VK.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Leak of >1,700 valid passwords could make the IoT mess much worse. “The list of telnet-accessible devices, currently posted at this Pastebin address, was first posted in June, but it has been updated several times since then. It contains user names and passwords for 8,233 unique IP addresses, 2,174 of which were still running open telnet servers as of Friday morning, said Victor Gevers, chairman of the GDI Foundation, a Netherlands-based nonprofit that works to improve Internet security. Of those active telnet services, 1,774 remain accessible using the leaked credentials, Gevers said. In a testament to the poor state of IoT security, the 8,233 hosts use just 144 unique username-password pairs.”

NewsdzeZimbabwe: Social Media Abusers Face 10 Years In Jail : New Bill. “People who abuse social media face 10 years in jail in terms of the refined Cyber Crime and Cyber Security Bill which goes to Parliament soon. Foreign-based Zimbabweans who cause harm back home using social media or any other computer-based system will be extradited and prosecuted.”

Consumerist: Is A Facebook ‘Friend’ The Same As A Real Friend, Legally Speaking?. “Thanks to Facebook, the term ‘friend’ has been stretched far beyond its traditional definition. Many Facebook users have ‘friends’ they have never met in person, haven’t seen in years or decades, know very little about, and who you may actually find objectionable in spite of the ‘friend’ designation. That’s why, according to one Florida appeals court, being someone’s Facebook friend is no indication of any genuine familiar or intimate connection to that person. Good morning, Internet…

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

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