NEW RESOURCES

State Archives of North Carolina: New Siler City Veteran’s Vietnam War Collection Available. “The Grover M. Johnson Jr. Papers is composed of correspondence, photographs, 35mm and 126 Format color slides, and miscellaneous materials, documenting the U.S. Army service of Grover M. Johnson Jr. of Siler City, N.C., during the Vietnam War from November 1966 to October 1968. He served for several months in the 569th General Supply Company at the U.S. Army’s Camp Davies, just outside of Saigon, Republic of Vietnam. For most of his overseas service during the war, Johnson Jr. served on Okinawa in the Headquarters Company at Headquarters, U.S. Army Ryukyu Islands (USARYIS).”

Architect: New Website Celebrates 50 Trailblazing Women in American Architecture. “Believed to be the second African-American woman licensed as an architect in the U.S., Topeka, Kan.–born Georgia Louise Harris Brown (1918-99) emigrated to Brazil because it offered greater opportunities for women of color. She is one of 50 women profiled in the new website Pioneering Women of American Architecture, launched by the New York–based Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation (BWAF) last week.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: Update Maccabees Confirmed by Google – December 2017 . “Today we received confirmation from a Google spokesperson that a core algorithm update is currently underway: ‘We released several minor improvements during this timeframe, part of our regular and routine efforts to improve relevancy.'”

TechCrunch: Facebook will ditch Disputed Flags on fake news and display links to trustworthy articles instead. “Facebook announced two changes today that it hopes will make it easier to staunch the spread of fake news. The first change is to the News Feed, where users will no longer see ‘Disputed Flags,’ or red badges displayed under articles flagged by Facebook’s third-party fact-checkers. Instead, they will see Related Articles, or links to content from reputable publishers. The second change is a new initiative to help Facebook understand how people judge the accuracy of information based the news sources they use, which won’t result in any immediate changes to the News Feed, but is meant to help the company gauge how well its efforts to stop the spread of misinformation are working.”

USEFUL STUFF

International Business Times: How To Set Up Two-Step Long Verification For Twitter. “When Twitter introduced its two-step verification feature, many users weren’t sold on its practicality. Then earlier this year, users complained that the method is just as vulnerable as other security features. This Thursday though, the company may have already sorted out the problem with its two-factor authentication.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Reaction: Social media and the rise of fake news in Africa. “Deliberate misinformation written with the intent to mislead is a persistent problem in Africa. Its effect has been most notable in countries with deeply polarised political landscapes, such as Zambia and Tanzania, and its prevalence has dramatically increased in recent years due to the growing influence of social media. Not only politicians, but businesses and NGOs are now deemed legitimate targets of fake news campaigns. And, given the projections for internet and smart phone usage all point upwards, it is not a problem that will go away quickly.”

New York Times: Instagram Is Now a Dating Platform, Too. Here’s How to Navigate It.. “As of September, Instagram has more than 800 million users worldwide who engage with the app at least once a month. Of those, 300 million use Instagram Stories every day, according to a spokesperson for the company. Some of them use Instagram for their businesses; some for sharing photos of their kids; and some for distributing memes about hungover mornings and overeating. And then there are those who use Instagram as a supplemental match-making tool. ‘It’s basically a portfolio for your dating life,’ said Halen Yau, 31, a public relations manager from Toronto.”

Mashable: Amazon might release its own version of YouTube. Here’s why that’s a good idea. “Amazon may be preparing to launch a YouTube-style streaming service. The retail giant filed trademark requests on Dec. 5 for the names ‘AmazonTube’ and ‘OpenTube.’ Although the trademarks don’t necessarily mean the company plans to launch a new service, it does suggest that the company may be, at the very least, considering doing so.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Facebook sends Ars takedown notice from Pink Floyd over NASA audio. “On Wednesday, Ars received an official notice via our Facebook page that one of our videos was in apparent violation of Pink Floyd’s copyright. According to the takedown notice, just a six-second portion of our video was infringing. When we clicked the link to see, it turned out that Pink Floyd was upset about six seconds of audio that we had taken from an official NASA recording that we pulled from the Internet Archive.” Thanks to this story, ResearchBuzz Firehose now has an “Oh for crying out loud” tag.

RESEARCH & OPINION

Fast Co Design: How MIT Students Fooled A Google Algorithm. “Machine learning algorithms, which use large amounts of data to power everything from your email to language translation, are being heralded as the next big thing in technology. The only problem is, they’re vulnerable.” Good morning, Internet…

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