NEW RESOURCES

Thanks to Laura to pointing out this one from the News-Gazette (Illinois): UI lecturer’s tool follows money that funds hate groups. “Neo-Nazis and white supremacists who organized volatile marches in Charlottesville, Va., and other cities need money to finance those rallies. John Bambenek, a University of Illinois lecturer and cybersecurity expert, hopes to disrupt their fundraising through a tracking program that monitors and reports on all donations to alleged neo-Nazis and white supremacists online. It posts transactions to Twitter in hopes of exposing the financial backing of extremist groups.” Do not repeat my mistake of reading the comments.

Irish Examiner: Deserters, acts of heroism, and IRA murders unearthed. “Details of deserters, acts of heroism and men killed in the Irish revolution are dotted throughout the new online database of men who served at Ballincollig military barracks in Co Cork. It was home to a number of different regiments from the early 19th century through to the earliest months of Irish independence almost a century ago.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Colorado Virtual Library: CHNC News: New Titles and New Partners. “The Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection recently added four new titles; the Brush Lariat, the Morgan County Republican, the Louisville Times and the Whitehorn News. These four new titles, added by a longtime CHNC partner and two new partners, join 205 titles of historic Colorado newspapers.”

XXL: Bun B’s Wife Says UGK Archives Are Destroyed Due to Hurricane Harvey. “On Wednesday (Aug. 30), Bun B’s wife Queenie posted a message revealing Pimp C’s son was stuck at his grandmother’s house in six feet of water. In the caption of the photo, Queenie also revealed everything that was left of the UGK archives was now gone. It’s uncertain what was included in the archives. Chinara Butler, Pimp C’s widow, also reposted the photo from Queenie from another account.” UGK was a hip-hop duo from Port Arthur, Texas. Bun B is still around but Pimp C died in 2007.

USEFUL STUFF

Medium: #BotSpot: Twelve Ways to Spot a Bot. “…many bots and botnets are relatively easy to spot by eyeball, without access to specialized software or commercial analytical tools. This article sets out a dozen of the clues, which we have found most useful in exposing fake accounts.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Japan Today: Why did Google’s ‘incorrect settings’ cause serious network failure in Japan?. “Google Inc has issued an apology for the large-scale communication failure that occurred around noon on Aug 25 in Japan, saying that its incorrect settings caused the failure. ‘Due to incorrect network settings, a failure that makes it difficult to access Internet services occurred,’ the company said. ‘We apologize for the inconvenience and concern.’ From the beginning, many experts considered that a large amount of route information sent from Google triggered the failure. And it turned out to be true.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Yahoo must face litigation by data breach victims: U.S. judge. “A U.S. judge said Yahoo must face nationwide litigation brought on behalf of well over 1 billion users who said their personal information was compromised in three massive data breaches.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: Google is coming after critics in academia and journalism. It’s time to stop them.. “About 10 years ago, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor who coined the term network neutrality, made this prescient comment: ‘To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king.’ Wu was right. And now, Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power. It has reached a dangerous point common to many monarchs: The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent.”

Gizmodo: Yes, Google Uses Its Power to Quash Ideas It Doesn’t Like—I Know Because It Happened to Me. “Six years ago, I was pressured to unpublish a critical piece about Google’s monopolistic practices after the company got upset about it. In my case, the post stayed unpublished. I was working for Forbes at the time, and was new to my job. In addition to writing and reporting, I helped run social media there, so I got pulled into a meeting with Google salespeople about Google’s then-new social network, Plus.” This is really disturbing.

New Scientist: Fatal AI mistakes could be prevented by having human teachers. “Artificial intelligence needs our help. The best AIs are quickly mastering skills from lip-reading to video games, but only by learning through repeated failure. As robots take on riskier domains, like healthcare and driving, this is no longer an acceptable approach. Fortunately, a new study suggests that with the right human oversight, it might be possible to ditch the failures.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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