NEW RESOURCES

The Namibian: Old laws still mistakenly used – Shivute. “OUTDATED laws which no longer apply in Namibia are still being referenced in cases because an official database of laws does not exist, Chief Justice Peter Shivute said at the Legal Assistance Centre’s launch of the Namlex update 2017 yesterday. The Namlex database is available for free on the LAC website. It is also available to institutions such as parliament.”

Daily Sun (Bangladesh): Digital mapping of Liberation War. “Internet-based news producer Priyo Limited has taken step to build ‘largest digital archive’ with digital mapping of the liberation war of Bangladesh. The developers aim to archive every minute incident, all in a single map, brick by brick of the glorious history of the country.” The site is in Bengali, but unfortunately Google Chrome didn’t offer to translate…

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

DigitalNC: Five More Years of Coastal Newspaper, The State Port Pilot, Added to DigitalNC!. “Five more years of The State Port Pilot, a newspaper from Southport, North Carolina, are now on DigitalNC. These issues span the years 1945-1949, and were provided by our partner, the Margaret and James Harper, Jr. Library. They join previously digitized issues published from 1935-1945.”

TechCrunch: Imgur’s take on Snapchat Stories is for people who really love GIFs . “Imgur, the hugely popular photo and GIF sharing site with over 250 million users, is the latest to board the ephemeral storytelling train. Like the ‘stories’ feature inside Snapchat and Facebook/Instagram, which has cloned the heck of Snapchat, Imgur has moved into lean-back content with the arrival of ‘Snacks’, a new feature that sits at the top of its mobile app.”

Pasadena Star-News: Waze, Google Maps make traffic matters worse during Skirball and Creek fires, officials say. “During this week’s wildfires, navigation apps like Waze and Google Maps were guiding drivers into evacuation areas and caused congestion where officials were ordering streets closed, according to a motion introduced by Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz on Friday, Dec. 8.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 20+ Tools To Supercharge Your Dropbox. “Dropbox is a useful cloud storage, but most users do not realize that it can be way more powerful if you know how to make the most use of it. If combined with the right services, Dropbox can do almost anything imaginable in the cloud space. So, in this post, I’m listing some of the most popular Dropbox tools and services that enhance your favorite cloud’s power and allow you to do a lot more with Dropbox.” Decently-annotated list.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Manchester Evening News: The grisly history of Britain’s biggest and worst World War Two internment camp. “An old cotton mill hides a shameful, little-known secret. Now part of an industrial estate, the brick buildings have changed little over the years. A passer-by might never know the suffering endured there After the outbreak of the Second World War, the mill became a grim, spartan internment camp for thousands of innocent Italian, Austrians and German Jews who had fled the fear of Nazi death camps for new lives in Britain. All men – they were wrongly branded ‘enemy aliens’ as wartime national security was blurred with paranoia and suspicion.”

Engadget: Russian Twitter bots are reportedly helping #NoRussiaNoGames push “It’s both terrifying and fascinating how well Russia uses Twitter to influence the perception of world events. Operatives from the country have supported Trump and Brexit and positioned propaganda that was eventually shared by major news outlets. Now it seems that Russian propagandists are hard at work amplifying an actual hashtag campaign (#NoRussiaNoGames) against the ban of Russian athletes from the upcoming Olympic games.”

Wired: Inside Baidu’s Bid To Lead The AI Revolution . “Presumably, Robin Li wanted attention last summer when he decided to launch Baidu’s bid for the future of self-driving cars from the front seat of a car that was driving itself. He wanted to draw attention to Apollo, the company’s new set of artificial intelligence-driven tools, which Li hopes will come to power vehicles everywhere. Having launched China’s dominant search engine, Li is a celebrity in his home country. But even Li didn’t anticipate the amount of attention he would get.”

The Daily Beast: ‘Niche Memes’ Are the Secret Clip Art Diaries Teens Are Posting on Instagram. “Almost every day, while she’s waiting for soccer practice to begin or for her mom to pick her up from school, 14-year-old New Yorker Carly* fires up her phone and vents about her day to 150 anonymous strangers on Instagram, the only group of people who she feels truly understand her. Her emotional outpourings aren’t posted to a finsta, spam account, rinsta, or any number of other types of Instagram accounts most kids maintain. Instead, she shares these pink and yellow diatribes to a dedicated niche meme account.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: Google lifts lid on FBI data requests: Now you can read actual letters online. “Google has expanded the National Security Letter section of its Transparency Report with new examples of National Security Letters (NSLs) that it’s received from the FBI and is now cleared to disclose.”

New York Times: Net Neutrality’s Holes in Europe May Offer Peek at Future in U.S.. “The Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote on Thursday to roll back the net neutrality rules in the United States. While the European Union has such rules in place, telecom providers have pushed the boundaries at times in Sweden, Germany, Portugal and elsewhere, offering a glimpse at the future American companies and consumers may face if protections are watered down.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!