NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me: a database of contemporary musical theatre songs — ContemporaryMusicalTheatre.com . From the about page: “ContemporaryMusicalTheatre.com is a subscription website that connects voice teachers, students and musical theatre professionals with today’s best contemporary writers and songs. We represent over 180 writers and 500 largely unpublished songs, curated by industry professionals, searchable by voice and song type and available for purchase directly on our site. We are the only site that does not take a cent of the writers’ sales.”

Bay Area Reporter: B.A.R. archives go digital . “For years researchers, students, historians, and the curious interested in reading old copies of the Bay Area Reporter, at least those printed prior to August of 2005, had two options…. As of the New Year there is now a third option, as copies of the country’s oldest continually publishing LGBT newspaper have been digitized and added to two online collections for periodicals. Now anyone on the globe with an internet connection can access the historic record of the Bay Area’s LGBT community without leaving their home.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechRadar: Google Calendar’s new layout becomes mandatory next month, like it or not. “Google’s streamlined new Calendar layout will be rolled out to all users at the end of February. Google introduced the new desktop design in October, letting users switch back to the ‘classic’ look if they preferred, but from February 28, that option will be removed.”

BetaNews: Microsoft’s emergency Windows Meltdown patch may be incompatible with your PC. “The problem is the fix is incompatible with what Microsoft is calling a ‘small’ number of anti-virus software products. We don’t know how small, or what products are affected, but if you’re running one of those programs, you won’t be offered the patch as it could lead to Blue Screen of Death errors that would leave your PC unable to boot.”

USEFUL STUFF

TechCrunch: Linkkle is a super simple tool for all your social media links. “Decisions, decisions. Do you link to your Instagram profile on your Twitter feed or your Facebook page? Or maybe you want to showcase your Github, LinkedIn and Pinterest pages but there’s only one URL field which means you have to choose. Linkkle is a newly launched, free to use tool that aims to remove this dilemma by letting you post a single link (aka your ‘linkkle’) that points to a link hub where you can add up to 10 links to all your various social media accounts along with some basic profile info.”

Lifehacker: Turn Last Year’s Google Calendar Into An Annual Report . “I’m a big fan of year-in-review charts and graphs, like Spotify’s 2017 Wrapped, or even designer Nicholas Feltron’s personal annual reports. Here’s another good one: Analyse your calendar with the Year in Review tool from the makers of iPhone calendar app Pod.” Love the idea, a little nervous about the permissions required.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Hill: Protesters accuse Twitter CEO of being ‘complicit’ after Trump nuclear button tweet. “An activist group in San Francisco is calling out Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for being “complicit” in President Trump’s tweet boasting about the size and strength of his nuclear launch button. Resist SF on Tuesday night projected the phrases ‘@jack is #complicit’ and ‘Ban @realDonaldTrump’ on Twitter’s headquarters. They are also planning a protest for Wednesday night.”

The Next Web: Twitter lets you describe your pics for the visually impaired. “Did you know Twitter has an option that lets you add a description to pictures, to help the visually-impaired? Well, now you do. The accessibility option has been there for some time, but it’s nevertheless an important one. And, as Twitter user Rob Long pointed out, it’s easy to use.” A good reminder.

SECURITY & LEGAL

SC Magazine: 36 malicious apps advertised as security tools spotted in Google Play. “Trend Micro researchers notified Google that 36 malicious apps on Google Play are posing as security tools. The malicious apps were advertised under names such as Security Defender, Security Keeper, Smart Security, Advanced Boost, and other cyber-security sounding names, but their true purpose was to steal user information and bombard them with ads, according to a 3 January blog post.”

National Post: Google says phones, tablets also affected by newly discovered security issue. “Google says a newly discovered security vulnerability initially thought to be linked to most modern computers is actually a threat to smartphones and tablets as well.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Berkeley Lab: Berkeley Lab’s ArrayUDF Tool Turns Large-scale Scientific Array Data Analysis Into a Cakewalk. “A novel scalable framework developed by researchers in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab’s) Computational Research Division (CRD) and at UC Merced is improving scientific productivity by allowing researchers to run user-defined custom analysis operations on large arrays of data with massively parallel supercomputers, while leaving complex data management and performance optimization tasks up to the underlying system.”

The Register: Skynet it ain’t: Deep learning will not evolve into true AI, says boffin. “Deep learning and neural networks may have benefited from the huge quantities of data and computing power, but they won’t take us all the way to artificial general intelligence, according to a recent academic assessment. Gary Marcus, ex-director of Uber’s AI labs and a psychology professor at the University of New York, argues that there are numerous challenges to deep learning systems that broadly fall into a series of categories.” 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!