TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ubuntu 17.10 — “Artful Aardvark” — is now available in Beta 1. “Ubuntu 17.10 should be available in October. With Canonical making GNOME the default desktop environment, and killing the much-maligned Unity, this will be the most exciting release in years. Quite frankly, the operating system had been feeling sort of stale lately, so a new default DE should shake things up.”

USDA: USDA Integrates Recalls Information into ‘FoodKeeper’ Application. ” The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced new updates to its popular FoodKeeper application that will provide users with new information on food safety recalls. The app has been updated so users can choose to receive automatic notifications when food safety recalls are announced by USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”

XXL: Pimp C’s Wife Denies UGK Archives Were Destroyed in Hurricane Harvey. “Chinara Butler reposted Queenie’s Instagram post about Chad’s circumstances, and although the caption wrote about UGK’s archives being destroyed, a rep for Butler tells Fader she was simply trying to post Chad’s address so others could help. The rep denies the entirety of UGK’s catalogue was destroyed and says there is no truth to that statement, being that they’re ‘in secured locations.'”

TechCrunch: Microsoft’s new Mixer Create app lets you live stream games from your phone. “Microsoft’s mobile game streaming app Mixer Create is launching out of beta testing today on iOS and Android, allowing gamers to broadcast the games they’re playing right from their phone. This feature works on Android with all games, but is more limited on iOS.”

USEFUL STUFF

Cogdog Blog: The Indispensable Digital Research Tool I can Say, Without Lying, Saves Time “I sometimes tell people that when technology evangelists espouse that their tool saves you time, that it’s a red flag warning / code talk for ‘I am lying’. But here, I share my one, career tested exception; it’s old technology that many people have abandoned. I will wade carefully through the acronym jargon, but it’s using an RSS Feed Reader to monitor the most recent news, blog posts, data from sources you choose to follow, not dished out by some algorithm.” I could not do ResearchBuzz without RSS.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Hindu: Delhi Archives to be digitised, microfilmed. “About four crore pages of archival material of the Delhi Archives would be digitised and microfilmed in the next 30 months, with the Delhi government on Thursday launching the digitisation project. The Delhi Archives, which is tasked with preserving the archival heritage of the Capital, has about 10 crore pages of materials, according Deputy Chief Minister and Art and Culture Minister Manish Sisodia, who inaugurated the digitisation project.” One crore equals ten million.

PetaPixel: I Just Had 20,000 Slides Returned from Sports Illustrated. “Here we are in 2017 and I am glad my obsession with keeping stuff carried over into my photography. This maniacal attitude combined with great advice I received early on from mentors like Neil Leifer taught me to fight like hell to keep my copyright and retain ownership and control of my images. In the old days, this meant my chromes — my 35mm color transparencies. There is nothing like a properly exposed, sharp, color slide viewed on a light table through a Schneider loupe. These magical squares are valuable, that’s why clients always tried to keep them.”

Techdirt: Twitter Suspends Reporter’s Account… After He Gets Targeted By Russian Twitter Bots. “Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about how Twitter suspended Ken “Popehat” White for posting an email threat he’d received (Twitter argued he was violating the privacy of the guy threatening him). From there, we wrote about a bunch of stories of Facebook and Twitter punishing people for documenting abuse that they had received. But this latest story is even slightly crazier, as it appears that abusers were taking advantage of this on purpose. In this case, the story involves Russian Twitter bots. ”

Mashable: Inside the black market where people pay thousands of dollars for Instagram verification. “The product for sale isn’t a good or a service. It’s a little blue check designated for public figures, celebrities, and brands on Instagram. It grants users a prime spot in search as well as access to special features. More importantly, it’s a status symbol. The blue emblem can help people gain legitimacy in the business of influencer marketing and bestows some credibility within Instagram’s community of 700 million monthly active users. It cannot be requested online or purchased, according to Instagram’s policies. It is Instagram’s velvet rope.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Digital Trends: ‘The Smell Of Data’ Helps Internet Users Sniff Out The Threat Of Data Leakage. “When online criminals target an organization, they are often able to gain access to lots user accounts at once, rather than just going after individuals. Sites like Have I Been Pwned? have been set up to allow users to check out whether their accounts have been compromised in the wake of a large-scale breach. Now, a new project called the Smell of Data aims to give internet users moment-to-moment updates on whether their private information is at risk of being leaked.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Phys.org: Professors get $300,000 grant for digital fake-news detector. “Two Penn State professors have received $300,000 from the National Science Foundation to develop technology that will enable digital devices to weed out fake news. The university says information sciences and technology professor Dongwon Lee and communications professor S. Shyam Sundar are working on the project.”

Quartz: Alphabet’s Verily and Google found a potential new test for heart disease using AI. “Researchers were able to find new indicators of heart disease risk present in pictures of retinas by analyzing them with artificial intelligence, according to a paper published Thursday by researchers at Google and Verily, which has not been peer reviewed. Doctors today rely heavily on blood tests to determine risk of heart disease; a potential test based on retinal images would be less invasive, easier to obtain, and faster to analyze with AI.”

First Monday: ‘Stop Fake Hate Profiles on Facebook’: Challenges for crowdsourced activism on social media. “This research examines how activists mobilise against fake hate profiles on Facebook. Based on six months of participant observation, this paper demonstrates how Danish Facebook users organised to combat fictitious Muslim profiles that spurred hatred against ethnic minorities. Crowdsourced action by Facebook users is insufficient as a form of sustainable resistance against fake hate profiles. A viable solution would require social media companies, such as Facebook, to take responsibility in the struggle against fake content used for political manipulation.” Good morning, Internet…

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