NEW RESOURCES

Digital NC: 70 years of Mars Hill University student newspaper now online. “Seventy years of The Hilltop, Mars Hill University’s student newspaper, have been added to DigitalNC. The 924 issues were provided by our partner, Mars Hill University, and cover academic years from 1926-1995. Mars Hill University is located in Mars Hill, a town in Madison County approximately 20 minutes north of Asheville in the mountains of western North Carolina. According to the university’s website, it is ‘the oldest institution of higher learning in western North Carolina on its original site.'”

SJX: Introducing the Neuchâtel Observatory Chronometer Database. “Put together by Dr Christian Müller, the Observatory Chronometer Database (OCD) is a comprehensive compilation of all 3356 wristwatch movements ever submitted to the Neuchâtel Observatory for testing between the years 1945 to 1967 – the golden age of mechanical wristwatch chronometry. Then known as the Observatoire Astronomique et Chronometrique de Neuchatel, as it was described on historical chronometer certificates, the Neuchâtel Observatory conducted annual contests for various classes of timekeepers, from pocket watches to wristwatches, both mechanical and quartz (the OCD only covers mechanical wristwatches).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Register, with a bit of a mean headline: Open source turns 20 years old, looks to attract normal people. “The Open Source Initiative, a non-profit that advocates open source development and non-proprietary software, pegs the date of inception at February 3, 1998. That’s when the term ‘open source’ was proposed by Christine Peterson during a meeting convened to build upon interest arising from the decision by browser maker Netscape to release its source code.”

New York Times: Early Facebook and Google Employees Form Coalition to Fight What They Built. ” A group of Silicon Valley technologists who were early employees at Facebook and Google, alarmed over the ill effects of social networks and smartphones, are banding together to challenge the companies they helped build. The cohort is creating a union of concerned experts called the Center for Humane Technology.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Next Web: IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, or Metacritic? A data scientist’s guide to movie ratings. “There are a few good reasons you would want to avoid reading reviews, or watching a trailer, although they bring much more information than a rating…. So a numeric movie rating seems to be a good solution in quite a few situations, for quite a few people. This article aims to recommend a single website to quickly get an accurate movie rating, and offers a robust, data-driven argumentation for it.” This is a deep dive.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechCrunch: How Facebook stole the news business. “Big news outlets stupidly sold their soul to Facebook. Desperate for the referral traffic Facebook dangled, they spent the past few years jumping through its hoops only to be cut out of the equation. Instead of developing an owned audience of homepage visitors and newsletter subscribers, they let Facebook brainwash readers into thinking it was their source of information.”

The Rivard Report: San Antonio’s Hidden Black History And The Struggle to Tell It. “When a small group of San Antonians interested in local African-American history approached the City’s Tricentennial Commission, its members hoped it would be their chance to share with the whole city the rich trove of stories they had uncovered. After two meetings with Tricentennial officials, they came away feeling unheard, although the Tricentennial’s new director, Carlos Contreras, says the commission is working to be more inclusive in its presentation of San Antonio’s diverse communities.”

This was on CNN at the beginning of January and I 100% missed it: Meet the scientists immortalizing African heritage in virtual reality. “The archaeological wonders of the world offer a rich window into the past. But many are crumbling, weed-laden and victim to vandalism and conflict. UNESCO World Heritage Sites, such as those in Libya and Mali, have been caught in the crossfire of regional disputes. Concerned with the decay of African heritage sites, The Zamani Project, based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, is seeking to immortalize historic spots in three-dimensional, virtual reality-ready models.”

International Business Times: The Graphic City: A photography competition judged by Artificial Intelligence. “EyeEm’s patented technology uses machine learning and neural networks to identify not only what of a photograph is of, but also whether it is any good. EyeEm regularly invites its global community of more than 20 million photographers to partake in competitions, or ‘Missions’. These often attract more than 100,000 entries, so it would be a Herculean task for a human judge to even look at every image, let alone make value judgements. However, their AI does this in seconds.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Phys .org: Algorithm identifies vulnerable people during natural disasters. “A new algorithm developed at the University of Waterloo will help first responders and home care providers better help the elderly during natural disasters. According to the World Health Organization, older adults who live at home face disproportionally high fatality rates during natural disasters as evidenced by Hurricane Katrina where 71 per cent of the deaths resulting from that disaster involved people over 60 years of age.” Good morning, Internet…

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