NEW RESOURCES

New-to-Me, from Kottke: Audio samples of 1500+ musical genres. “Warning: you might lose an entire hour to this… Every Noise at Once is a one-page map of playable audio samples for more than 1500 musical genres, from deep tech house to Finnish metal to smooth jazz to geek folk to klezmer to deep opera.”

KNOM: Ecological Atlas of Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi Seas Conveys Years’ Worth of Data. “THROUGH COLLABORATION WITH VARIOUS DATA-GATHERING AGENCIES, nonprofit organization Audubon Alaska has released a free, publicly accessible atlas of the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi Seas.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Instagram: Introducing Polls in Instagram Stories. “Today we’re introducing an interactive poll sticker in Instagram Stories that lets you ask a question and see results from your friends and followers as they vote. Whether you’re trying to plan tomorrow’s outfit, choosing which class to take or figuring out where to go for dinner, now it’s easy to share a two-option poll right in your story. After you’ve taken a photo or video for your story, select the ‘poll’ sticker and place it anywhere you’d like — you can write out your own question and even customize the poll choices.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Trends: Learn How To Convert A PDF Into An Excel Document, With These Easy Options. “Just because your co-worker sent you a PDF file instead of the Excel document you wanted, doesn’t mean you have to stick with it. In this guide, we’ll teach you how to convert a PDF into an Excel document in a few quick and easy steps. We’ll even teach you a few different ways to do it.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Wired: Selfie Factories: The Rise Of The Made-for-Instagram Museum. “WHEN THE MUSEUM of Ice Cream opened in New York in 2016, it was more a temporary curiosity than a rival to, say, the Whitney Museum of American Art, which stood just across the street. The walls were painted a soft shade of millennial pink. In one room, ice cream cones hung like pendant lights. There was a giant ice cream sandwich swing. And a sprinkle pool. Even the museum’s co-founders, Maryellis Bunn and Manish Vora, often wore some shade of bubblegum pink around the museum as if they, too, were on display. One year and three cities later, the Museum of Ice Cream has graduated to cult status on Instagram.”

CBC: Tech-savvy investigators are ready to put algorithms under the microscope — if companies let them. “Decades before you could buy a plane ticket on your phone, there were computerized reservation systems (CRS). These were rudimentary information systems used by travel agents to book customers’ flights. And they had one devious flaw.”

TechCrunch: Hands-on with Snapchat’s mediocre, crashy AR art. “After trekking out to the middle of Central Park to see Snapchat’s newest AR feature, I can solidly say that the best part of the experience was getting to spend some time outside during a beautiful fall day. Yeah, it was that lame.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Cylance: Turn Off Bluetooth: BlueBorne ZeroDays Disclosed. “Last month, I wrote about Broadpwn. Broadpwn is an exploit which can be used to take over many smartphones and tablets, iPhones and Android devices alike. It targets Broadcom Wifi chipsets, which are used in mobile devices from a variety of OEMs including Apple and Samsung. The bright side is that it’s simply a vulnerability that was found by a security researcher, and updating to the latest versions of iOS and Android patches the vulnerability. That’s not the case for this Bluetooth exploit, however. Armis Labs discovered eight zero day vulnerabilities. That’s right – BlueBorne is a collection of vulnerabilities, many with patches that are still being developed.”

USA Today: Personal info on nearly 1,200 NFL players and agents exposed in NFLPA database leak. “Colin Kaepernick was among 1,133 players and agents whose personal information was exposed due to a misconfigured online database operated by the NFL Players Association, according to an internet security company.”

Wall Street Journal: SEC Weighs How to Protect Vast Trading Database From Hackers. “U.S. regulators, already grappling with defending their systems against hackers, are taking a fresh look at how to protect a vast database of stock-market trades that promises to be an even bigger target of cyberthieves. The Consolidated Audit Trail, which is scheduled to begin receiving data in November, would keep track of every trade and order in U.S. stock and option markets. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton is assessing the type of information reported to the CAT, according to testimony prepared for a House hearing on Wednesday.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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