NEW RESOURCES

StateScoop: For data that’s public and usable, Manhattan unveils BoardStat. “The platform contains a set of 12 dashboards — one for each district. Users get a map of services requests to see where residents are submitting complaints about potholes, rodent infestations, graffiti and other problems. The tool enables searches by date, agency and visualizes complaints down to the street level. There is also “Top 10 Complaint Types” feature that delivers a bar chart of the top 10 district complaints for a selected time period. District board members and the community can see the top issues affecting their neighborhoods for a certain month, season, or year, and they can learn exactly where the issues are popping up.”

WiredGov (UK): Researchers release largest ever public collection of British conversations. “The recordings used for the project were carried out between 2012 and 2016. They were gathered by members of the British public, who used their smartphones to record everyday conversations with their families and friends. These included: a newlywed couple reminiscing about their recent honeymoon, students drinking in their halls, a father and daughter chatting in the car and grandparents visiting family for the day. In a landmark moment for social science, the anonymised transcripts of these recordings were released yesterday, free of charge, to the public. This is the largest collection or ‘corpus’ of British English conversations ever made freely available.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Twitter pledges to update public policies after Trump threatens North Korea. “Twitter didn’t act to remove President Donald Trump’s tweet threatening North Korea in part because it is newsworthy, the company said today. Twitter says it will update its public guidance on what factors may lead to a tweet being pulled from the platform — or allowed to stay on it — to include a consideration of newsworthiness, as part of an effort to make the rules clearer to users.” So if you’re famous or an elected official, your tweets will be newsworthy, therefore you won’t be held accountable for Twitter’s rules? Doesn’t this read like Twitter is arguing that online standards of behavior for elected officials and famous people should be lower than they are for the average Jo(e), because news? How does that make sense?

Recode: Twitter is testing a big change: Doubling the length of tweets from 140 to 280 characters. “Twitter’s iconic 140-character limit for tweets may be on the way out. In the hope that it will encourage more people to post, Twitter is doubling the number of characters that some users get for a tweet. The test means that a small group of Twitter users will now get 280 characters per tweet instead of the traditional 140 characters.” So now Twitter will apply its inconsistent and ridiculous policies to twice as many characters at a time! Yay!

TechCrunch: Vimeo acquires Livestream, launches its own live video product. “After abandoning its plans to launch a subscription video-on-demand business earlier this year, IAC-owned streaming video site Vimeo announced today that it’s acquiring the live video streaming platform, Livestream, and launching its own live streaming product, Vimeo Live. The move to integrate Livestream’s technology into Vimeo will allow video creators to capture, edit, stream and archive their live events, the company says, in addition to hosting, distributing, and generating revenue from their videos.”

USEFUL STUFF

Techradar: Seen an amazing photo online? Vivaldi shows you its metadata with two clicks. “Ever seen an incredible picture online and wondered what type of camera it was taken with, what exposure and focal length settings the photographer used, or where and when it was taken? The latest version of super-customizable web browser Vivaldi puts all that information at your fingertips.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Chronicle of Higher Education: A Revolt at a Journal Puts Peer Review Under the Microscope. “When controversial papers prompt editorial-board mutinies, critics often see examples of political correctness run amok. But this case doesn’t quite fit that narrative. While many scholars who resigned from the board and signed the petition freely admit they find the views expressed by the author reprehensible, their primary concern centers on a matter of editorial process: The paper was rejected by peer reviewers, editorial-board members say, but it was published anyway.”

CNET: Google marks 19th birthday with 19 doodle surprises. “What good is a birthday without fun and games? That is apparently the thinking of Google, which on Wednesday celebrates its 19th birthday in a numeric symmetry. Google has culled together some of the search giant’s most memorable interactive doodles from the past 19 years and presented them to you in a carnival prize wheel.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Password-theft 0day imperils users of High Sierra and earlier macOS versions. “There’s a vulnerability in High Sierra and earlier versions of macOS that allows rogue applications to steal plaintext passwords stored in the Mac keychain, a security researcher said Monday. That’s the same day the widely anticipated update was released.”

Canoe: Possible class-action lawsuit against Google for linking names under publication bans. “New and startling evidence of Google’s ability to possibly defeat court-ordered publication bans has emerged as an Ottawa law firm prepares a class-action lawsuit against the search engine giant. The Ottawa Sun has found that, in two high-profile Ontario cases, Google searches aimed at finding online news coverage of the trials will return ‘related searches’ that include the names of individuals shielded by the courts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Register: Baidu puts open source deep learning into smartphones. “A year after it open sourced its PaddlePaddle deep learning suite, Baidu has dropped another piece of AI tech into the public domain – a project to put AI on smartphones.”

The Guardian: Google Maps must improve if it wants cyclists to use it. “Google Maps added a directions function for cyclists in 2010 in the US and Canada, and two years later across Europe. And while there are dozens of other apps now offering a similar service, Google Maps is the default for many. But the app seems to be falling behind expectations.” Good morning, Internet…

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