NEW RESOURCES

Autocar India: New SIAM database lets you check if your vehicle was recalled. “The Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) has unveiled a new database that compiles information on voluntary manufacturer recalls in the country. … Hosted on SIAM’s website, the new database shows records of voluntary vehicle recalls by manufacturers since 2012 and includes details likemanufacturer and model names, and the manufacturing date of the recalled vehicles, along with a brief description of their respective faults.”

BBC News: University creates world’s first public menswear archive. “A UK university has created what it believes is the world’s first dedicated archive of men’s fashion to be open to the public. The archive, at Westminster University’s Harrow campus, contains more than 1,000 garments…. Specially shot detailed images of the pieces are available online and anyone who wants to visit the archive in person can book an appointment through the university.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Raw Story: Equifax tries to get hacked customers to waive right to sue in exchange for using its credit service. “ZDNet editor Zack Whittaker notes that anyone who signs up for Equifax’s free credit monitoring service to see if their personal information has been compromised must sign away the right to participate in any class action lawsuit against the company.”

Mashable: Google search update makes it easier to find details about TV, books, and movies. “Google just made search results a lot more useful. The company is giving its mobile search results a new look, with a new set of tabs that show more information about television shows, movies, stocks, and books. The update’s available now for mobile search results in the U.S.”

Google Blog: Improving our privacy controls with a new Google Dashboard. “Today, we’re announcing a refresh of the Google Dashboard, one of the first places people visit to see the products they use and the data associated with them. It will launch everywhere beginning next week. We also have some updates on the trends we’re seeing across our existing privacy tools and controls.”

All Africa: Rwanda: Digitilisation of Gacaca Archives to Be Completed By June 2018. “Work is being fast-tracked to ensure that the ongoing scanning and digitalisation of 63 million copies of Gacaca courts’s archives are completed in June next year. Dr Jean Damascène Bizimana, the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG) said this Tuesday as officials from CNLG and Aegis Trust, the British NGO which campaigns to prevent genocide worldwide, gave journalists a guided tour of the stores where they are kept at the Rwanda National Police headquarters in Kacyiru.”

USEFUL STUFF

Drivesavers Data Recovery: Drivesavers Upgrades Its Free Data Recovery Offer To Include Hurricane Irma Victims. ” DriveSavers, the worldwide leader in data recovery, eDiscovery and digital forensic solutions, today announced it will provide free data recovery services to Florida residents who lose data as a result of hurricane Irma…. Because exposure to water and air cause corrosion on electronic circuitry, customers must contact DriveSavers and ship their device no later than September 30, 2017. There is a limit of one device per business or household. Customers needing additional recoveries, and those with multi-disk devices such as RAID, NAS and SAN devices, are eligible for a 50 percent discount off the regular service fees. DriveSavers will accept as many water-damaged devices that it can. However, it may limit the number of free recoveries based on the company’s workload, cost of parts and availability of personnel.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNN: Parts of Trump NASA pick’s online presence scrubbed. “Social media accounts and postings belonging to President Donald Trump’s nominee to be NASA administrator were deleted this year, a CNN KFile review has found. Radio interviews and videos featuring Trump’s nominee, Rep. Jim Bridenstine, were also removed from public view.”

Pushpullfork: The botnet cometh. “This morning, I woke up to several hundred notifications on Twitter. It was so many all at once that Twitter automatically gave me some new filtering tools to manage the barrage of notifications. (Why isn’t that just default for all Twitter users when they sign up?!) But these weren’t your regular spam.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

National Law Journal: FTC’s First Action Against a Social Media ‘Influencer’ Might Not Be Last. “This week, the FTC brought its first enforcement action against an influencer—and took the opportunity to issue new guidance for disclosing the business relationships behind promotional social media posts. The FTC targeted Trevor ‘TmarTn’ Martin and Thomas ‘Syndicate’ Cassell, co-owners of the online gambling service CSGO Lotto, who allegedly endorsed the company without disclosing their joint ownership of it. According to the FTC, Martin and Cassell enjoy wide followings in the online gaming community and paid other well-known influencers thousands of dollars to promote their online gambling service on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook without requiring them to disclose the business deals behind the posts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Phys.org: Algorithm uses Instagram posts to advise tourists on attractions most favoured by locals. “Programmers from ITMO University created a computer algorithm that guides tourists to places of interest that are most popular with locals based on their Instagram posts. To test the algorithm, the team analyzed Instagram photos taken in Saint Petersburg and compiled a list of museums, cafes, streets and event venues preferred by the residents of Russia’s northern capital, thus providing local suggestions to tourists. The results of the research were presented at the International Conference on Computational Science and published in Procedia Computer Science.”

Wired: Decentralized Social Networks Sound Great. Too Bad They’ll Never Work. “The power of giant platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter leads to problems ranging from the threat of government-ordered censorship to more subtle, algorithmic biases in the curation of content users consume. Moreover, as these platforms expand their reach, the ripple effects of exclusion can have serious consequences for people’s personal and professional lives, and users have no clear path to recourse. The platforms that host and inform our networked public sphere are unelected, unaccountable, and often impossible to audit or oversee. In response, there is a growing movement among free speech advocates to create new technology to address these concerns. ” Good morning, Internet…

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