NEW RESOURCES

The Next Web: The Ethereum Scam Database helps you avoid cryptocurrency scammers. “The Ethereum Scam Database (EtherscamDB) is a handy website that collects crowdsourced information about heaps of online scams in order to guide rookie cryptocurrency enthusiasts away from falling victim to malicious actors, seeking to snatch their precious coins and empty their wallets.”

University of Arkansas: U of A Digitally Preserves Important Dinosaur Tracks Found in Arkansas. “Scientists using laser-imaging technology have documented and digitally preserved the first known set of theropod dinosaur tracks in the state of Arkansas.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

SEO Roundtable: Google My Business Videos Now Live. “About 10 days ago we reported some businesses and merchants were seeing video upload features in the Google My Business dashboard. Well, Google’s Allyson Wright announced in a Google My Business Help thread on Friday that this feature is now fully live.”

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: How to post a still frame of a video to Instagram. “Here’s the scenario: I recorded a video but no photos from my son’s first ski race last weekend. My video footage tuned out to be less than compelling, but I wanted to share something from the big event on Instagram for his grandparents and my tens of followers. Without any photos, what was I to do? With a little trial and error, I found a good way to post a still frame from the video I captured.” Handy tip.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

9 to 5 Google: Google’s Chromecast and Home devices can cause temporary Wi-Fi outages, here’s why. “Google’s suite of products in the past few years have been pretty awesome overall, with Chromecast and Home devices among the best. However, there’s now a confirmed issue with multiple routers where Google’s devices are the cause of temporary outages.” Google is apparently aware of the issue and working on a fix.

Al Jazeera: What unblocking Telegram app means to Iranians. “Telegram is arguably the most popular social media application in Iran. So it will come as a relief to its estimated 40 million users – nearly half of Iran’s population – that the government decided this week to lift restrictions on the app that were put in place during anti-government demonstrations last month.”

CBS New York: Is Instagram Ruining Art? How Social Media Is Changing The Art World. “Social media is taking over the art world. That’s the message various New York City artists told CBS2’s Elle McLogan. On The Dig, several artists invited McLogan into their studios, where they revealed the unprecedented ways that the internet is influencing their work.”

Boing Boing: Marriott fires employee for “willfully liking” a tweet in support of Tibetan independence. “Marriott has fired one of its social media managers because the employee ‘wrongfully liked’ a tweet from Friends of Tibet, a group that supports Tibetan independence from China. The sacking started when Marriott contracted with an outside company to perform a customer satisfaction survey, on which a multiple choice question about which countries guests had used the chain’s hotels in listed “Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan” as separate countries. Describing these territories as independent countries is an offense under Chinese law.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: BitTorrent users beware: Flaw lets hackers control your computer . “There’s a critical weakness in the widely used Transmission BitTorrent app that allows websites to execute malicious code on some users’ computers. That’s according to a researcher with Google’s Project Zero vulnerability reporting team, who also warns that other BitTorrent clients are likely similarly susceptible.

Krebs on Security: Canadian Police Charge Operator of Hacked Password Service Leakedsource.com. “Canadian authorities have arrested and charged a 27-year-old Ontario man for allegedly selling billions of stolen passwords online through the now-defunct service Leakedsource.com.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Columbia Journalism Review: Facebook changes could help the media kick its algorithm addiction. “…the fact remains that if media companies are addicted to Facebook’s algorithm-directed traffic, Facebook is the one who helped get them hooked. The company has spent years pushing media outlets to integrate themselves into its network, via video, Facebook Live, and Facebook’s Instant Articles format for mobile.”

Towards Data Science: I trained fake news detection AI with >95% accuracy, and almost went crazy. “With so many advances in Natural Language Processing and machine learning, I thought maybe, just maybe, I could make a model that could flag news content as fake, and perhaps take a bite out of the devastating consequences of the proliferation of fake news.” Good morning, Internet…

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