NEW RESOURCES

Balkan Insight: Tito’s Name Still Adorns Streets Across Ex-Yugoslavia. “A new Google map…developed by Italian researcher Giorgio Comai shows that there are still 276 squares, streets and waterfronts named after former Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito. The map, created using data from Google from August 2017, shows that more than half of them are located in Serbia – 176 squares, streets and waterfronts named after Tito.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

YouTube: YouTube seeks to simplify livestreaming. “Updates to YouTube Live that launch Tuesday will bring more streaming power to your iPhone or iPad, help you moderate comments, and stream with less of a delay, Kurt Wilms, product lead for YouTube Live, said in a blog post.”

USEFUL STUFF

Smashing Magazine: A Guide To Virtual Reality For Web Developers. “Recently, there has been a proliferation of virtual reality (VR) web browsers and VR capabilities added to traditional browsers. In this article, we’ll look at the state of browsers in VR and the state of VR on the web via the WebVR APIs.” Even if you are not a Web developer, this is a good overview of where we’re at at the moment, and how far we’ve come since VRML.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Yale Environment 360: Unnatural Surveillance: How Online Data Is Putting Species at Risk. “The burgeoning pools of digital data from electronic tags, online scientific publications, ‘citizen science’ databases and the like – which have been an extraordinary boon to researchers and conservationists – can easily be misused by poachers and illegal collectors. Although a handful of scientists have recently raised concerns about it, the problem is so far poorly understood.”

BetaNews: Facebook offers millions to music industry to avert copyright crisis . “Facebook is said to be offering hundreds of millions of dollars to music publishers and record labels to avoid having to take down user-generated videos that feature copyrighted music. Bloomberg cites ‘people familiar with the matter’ as saying Facebook’s payments will allow for the legal use of songs in uploaded videos. At the moment rights holders can tell Facebook to remove any videos that feature copyrighted music, and the social network is keen to create a frictionless experience for users if at all possible.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: Router flaws put AT&T customers at hacking risk. “Thousands of routers, many of which belong to AT&T U-verse customers, can be easily and remotely hacked through several critical security vulnerabilities. Five flaws were found in common consumer Arris routers used by AT&T customers and other internet providers around the world. The flaws were detailed in a blog post by Joseph Hutchins, who described some of the them as being as a result of ‘pure carelessness.'”

Gizmodo: Prosecutor Claims Social Media Surveillance of Black Lives Matter Members Wasn’t Surveillance. “Six local Black Lives Matter members in Clarkstown, New York have filed a federal suit against the town, its chief of police, police sergeant, and its Special Investigations Unit, accusing them of racial profiling and illegal surveillance that violated their first and 14th amendment rights. In a response to a local news outlet, Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Zugibe denied the charges. The SIU, he says, does not engage in the illegal surveillance BLM members have alleged.” The comments section is half interesting legal debate about using public information for surveillance and … half is not, unfortunately.

WENY: Chinese billionaire sues social media accounts over ‘malicious rumors’. “One of China’s richest men is taking legal action against ‘rumormongers,’ accusing them of spreading fake news about him and his company. Dalian Wanda Group — a massive Chinese conglomerate whose businesses include AMC movie theaters — has filed lawsuits in China against multiple social media accounts that it says circulated ‘malicious rumors’ about Wang Jianlin, its billionaire chairman.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CBS Philly: Study: Religious People Use More Positive, Less Profane Language On Social Media. “A new study finds that religion plays a significant role in the language and moods expressed on social media. After studying 12,815 people from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, researchers found that Facebook users who had religious affiliations were more positive and less vulgar in language than users who were not religious.” Warning: LOUD autoplay video.

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

British Library: A rough guide to making a manuscript. “Tonight, when you pick up your book, observe the legacy of sewn gatherings in the fixings of the pages. Discern, in your fountain pen, the memory of the hollow feather. What follows is a general, Wiki-How-style overview of how a medieval manuscript would have been fashioned. The craft flourished for over 1,000 years and dominates the material foundation of Western literary culture.” Reading this made me really appreciate the artists and crafters who made these books. Good afternoon, Internet…

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