NEW RESOURCES

State of Hawaii: New Hiking Website Provides Accurate And Authoritative Information. “Nearly every week the local news reports on hikers who’ve gotten lost and disoriented or who have fallen and been injured or even killed. Often times these hikers were on non-sanctioned or ‘social trails’ highlighted by various social media sites and blogs. The DLNR Na Ala Hele Trail and Access System, administered by the Division of Forestry and Wildlife has introduced a newly designed trails website which provides detailed information, directions, safety considerations, announcements and closure status for more than 100 official State trails.”

Bitcoin .com: New Website Ranks 600 Cryptocurrencies by Github Activity. “From market cap to trading volume, there’s a lot of ways to assess and quantify cryptocurrencies. Traders evaluating new crypto projects are prone to diving deep in their quest to uncover diamonds in the rough. Github activity – the frequency with which the code governing cryptocurrencies is updated – provides a good indicator of which projects are still being cared for and which have been allowed to go to seed. Cryptomiso is a new website that logs and charts the Github commits for over 600 cryptos, and its top 10 contains a few surprises.”

Radii China: Click-through: Online Archive of Chinese Rock Docs. “Interested in the history of Chinese rock’n’roll and have a couple of days to kill? Then I highly recommend you check out this extensive archive of documentaries on underground Chinese music, recently posted online by Hong Kong-based postdoc Nathanel Amar…” This is not so much an archive as a list, but it’s a much longer list than I would have thought and it’s annotated by someone who clearly loves the topic. Fear not, English subtitles abound. They’re not everywhere, but they’re enough places that this list is worth a visit.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Google completes its $1.1B deal to buy a chunk of HTC’s smartphone division. “Google has announced the completion of its $1.1 billion deal to buy a large slice of HTC’s hardware business. The acquisition was announced back in September 2017 but now it has passed the requisite approvals and is finalized. Beyond the transfer of over 2,000 engineers from HTC — that’s around one-fifth of HTC’s engineering team — Google will also receive a non-exclusive license for HTC’s intellectual property. HTC is retaining its Vive VR division and it will continue to make its own smartphones, the company confirmed last year.”

USEFUL STUFF

Fortune: How to Livestream the Super Blue Blood Moon on Wednesday. “The Super Blue Blood Moon eclipse is set to happen on January 31st. According to Space.com, the eclipse should be visible in-person by people in California, western Canada, Hawaii, Alaska, Australia, and eastern Asia, weather permitting. However, if you live somewhere else, catching the eclipse in action might be a bit more challenging.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Buffalo News: Channel 4 archives to be digitized, made accessible to the public. “Buffalo takes its history seriously. In fact, in the 1960s the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society began storing the daily news film from the three commercial TV stations, ending the practice of throwing out ‘yesterday’s news.’ Walter Dunn, who ran the Society back then, was quoted as saying ‘It’s not up to us to decide what’s important. We just need to it and let those in the future figure that out.’ A half century later, we’re finally ready to figure it out.”

Phys .org: Child experts: Just say ‘no’ to Facebook’s kids app. “Child development experts and advocates are urging Facebook to pull the plug on its new messaging app aimed at kids. A group letter sent Tuesday to CEO Mark Zuckerberg argues that younger children—the app is intended for those under 13—aren’t ready to have social media accounts, navigate the complexities of online relationships or protect their own privacy.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Draft FEC Rules Target Political Ads on Social Media . “The U.S. Federal Elections Commission is moving forward with a plan to introduce new rules on political advertising on social media ahead of the 2018 election cycle. The commission has a working draft of the rules in front of it now, longtime Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said Monday at a technology conference in Washington, though she divulged few details.”

Ars Technica: More than 2,000 WordPress websites are infected with a keylogger. “More than 2,000 websites running the open-source WordPress content management system are infected with malware, researchers warned late last week. The malware in question logs passwords and just about anything else an administrator or visitor types.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Open University: Has Twitter’s role as a political influence been overstated?. “We are told that Twitter is the new public sphere, the place where we hold government accountable, encourage diverse voices, and provide resources for public benefit like education, healthcare, and welfare. Using the #metoo campaign as a case study, Naomi Barnes and Huw Davies question whether Twitter really is a public sphere or if it is simply a platform capitalist that monetises displays of outrage?” Good afternoon, Internet…

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