NEW RESOURCES

WSFA: Virtual museum honoring Tuskegee Airmen launches. “An online museum honoring the Tuskegee Airmen launched Monday and is now available to internet users. The virtual museum is a product of the Commemorative Air Force Red Tail Squadron, America’s tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen. The online collection includes pictures and information on artifacts, memorials and personal mementos that aim to explore the humanity of the airmen’s experiences.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: A cleaner, safer web with Chrome Cleanup. “Chrome already has tools to help people avoid unwanted software. For example, Safe Browsing prevents many infections from taking place by warning millions of users. But sometimes harmful software slips through. Recently, we rolled out three changes to help Chrome for Windows users recover from unwanted software infections.”

The Star: Facebook set to unveil plan to guard against fake news during Canadian election campaign. “Facebook is set to unveil a made-in-Canada measure to guard the 2019 vote from the scourge of fake news and misinformation online — while south of the border the social media heavyweight details how foreign players may have used the platform to spread discord in the 2016 presidential election. The new tool, billed as the ‘Canadian Election Integrity Initiative,’ is a response to a warning from the country’s top cybersecurity agency in June that multiple hacker groups would ‘almost certainly’ attempt to influence the next federal election.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Set Up Two-Factor Authentication on All Your Social Accounts. “To add an extra layer of protection, you should consider using two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication (also known as 2FA or two-step verification) is a security method that uses two different ways to verify your identity. Instead of only entering a password to log in, you’ll be asked to enter a code which is sent via text message to your phone or generated via an app. This verification helps make sure that only you can access your account. We’ve previously pointed out several internet services where you should enable 2FA. Today, let’s see which social media platforms support it and how you can enable them.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Politico: The JFK Document Dump Could Be a Fiasco. “Within the next two weeks, the National Archives is legally obligated to release the last of thousands of secret documents from government files about the assassination, most of them from the CIA, FBI and the Justice Department. And there is every indication that the massive document dump—especially if any of it is blocked by President Donald Trump, the only person empowered under the law to stop the release of the files—will simply help fuel a new generation of conspiracy theories.”

Sydney Morning Herald: Rare Queensland-made braille globe to be replicated. “Richard Frank Tunley created the globe for vision-impaired people by installing metal plates on a wooden sphere that revealed landmasses by shape and with labels written in braille. The original globe is now very fragile but advancements in technology, including 3D printing and photogrammetry, along with a $10,000 of funding from the State Library of Queensland will allow it to be reproduced.”

The Next Web: Someone is blackmailing dark web users to pay up or get doxxed. “It seems the authorities are not the only ones going after dark web drug buyers. Someone is threatening to doxx (the act of revealing potentially incriminating and identifiable information about another individual) dark web users unless they pay off a small ransom fee in Bitcoin. The news comes from Redditor going by the name of StrangerDanger420, who shared images of the blackmail letter with the rest of the dark web community. ”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Latest Adobe Flash vulnerability allowed hackers to plant malware. “Adobe Flash may be on its way out, but apparently, its goodbye tour is going to be marred by security issues just as the software has for most of its existence. Kaspersky Labs reports that a new Adobe Flash vulnerability was exploited by a group called BlackOasis, which used it to plant malware on computers across a number of countries. ”

TechCrunch: We Heart It says a data breach affected over 8 million accounts, included emails and passwords. “We Heart It, an image-sharing site used by 40 million teens as of a couple of years ago, is informing users their personal data may have been compromised. The company was alerted to a possible security breach last week that involved over 8 million accounts, it said on Friday. The breach took place a few years ago and includes email addresses, usernames and encrypted passwords for We Heart It accounts created between 2008 and November 2013.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Washington: Tweeting rage: How immigration policies can polarize public discourse. “To René D. Flores, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Washington, Twitter is a trove of insight into people’s beliefs and their willingness to express them. By analyzing tweets in the months before and after the 2010 passage of the controversial Arizona law, Flores found that the average tweet about Mexican immigrants and Hispanics, in general, became more negative. Social media data, Flores found, was useful in determining whether people had changed their attitudes about immigrants as a result of the law or whether they had begun behaving differently.”

Medium: One person’s history of Twitter, from beginning to end. “On November 8, 2008 I watched Barack Obama win the presidency of the United States while I was sitting on Twitter’s office couch. I forget who invited me, but I was excited to be there because this felt like the first presidential election that the internet had an active part in. Whatever that meant. It felt like all of the tools the web community had spent the last ten years or more building had actually culminated in this moment. And I sat on that couch crying. I was getting to see this moment as a guest in the place that got all of these voices communicating. And all of those voices helped elect a president. In 2008 I thought Twitter helped elect a president. I was off by eight years.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Electronic Beats: This Fascinating Site Visualizes Random Techno Mixes In Real Time. “The internet is bursting with an overwhelming amount of amazing techno mixes, podcasts and radio channels. But for all their musical promise, online platforms are still lagging when it comes to visual accompaniment. A new website called ‘inward’ is hoping to change all that. It provides a non-stop psychedelic barrage of visuals synced in realtime to a curated selection of underground techno radio stations and Soundcloud mixes.” As you might expect, a lot of bright flashing/flickering lights on this site, so be warned. Good morning, Internet…

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