NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: With just a flick of a wand, “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” is on Google Arts & Culture. “For Harry Potter’s fellow students at Hogwarts, “A History of Magic” is historian Bathilda Bagshot’s legendary chronicle of Wizarding history. And last year, we mere Muggles got our own version. ‘Harry Potter: A History of Magic’ is an exhibition from the British Library containing rare books, manuscripts and magical objects from the British Library’s collection, capturing the traditions of folklore and magic from across the world, which are at the heart of the Harry Potter stories…. To bring the Harry Potter magic to more fans around the world, hundreds of the exhibition’s treasures from London as well as 15 online exhibits are now available in six languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi and Brazilian Portuguese, and more coming soon) on Google Arts & Culture.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PetaPixel: 500px Acquired by VCG, the Getty Images of China. “500px has been acquired by Visual China Group (VCG), the Beijing, China-based photo and media agency that’s known as ‘the Getty Images of China.’ VCG announced today that its subsidiary VCG Hong Kong has acquired 100% of 500px shares. VCG previously led a $13 million funding round in 500px back in July 2015, becoming 500px exclusive distributor of images in China, and in October of that year 500px announced an expansion into China with its new website, 500px.me.”

TechCrunch: YouTube Live gains automatic captions, chat replay and more. “YouTube today announced several new features designed to improve the live streaming experience for both creators and viewers. The most notable additions include the ability to play back a live chat after the live stream ends, and the launch of live automatic captions on videos.”

USEFUL STUFF

Wired: Feedless Takes The News Feed Out Of Social Media. “It’s an app, but one designed to save us from apps. It blocks the feed from social media websites like Facebook and Twitter on Safari for iOS, leaving just the bare bones of those apps. The goal, [Ryan] Orbuch says, “was to remove the most time-sucking feature of social media and leave all the useful stuff like messaging and events.””

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Variety: CNN Boss Jeff Zucker Calls on Regulators to Probe Google, Facebook. “Jeff Zucker has called upon advertisers and tech firms to help find new way to monetize news content on mobile platforms, and on authorities to pay closer attention to the power wielded by Google and Facebook, as news providers try and adapt to the changing digital landscape.”

Slate: YouTube Is Struggling to Deal With the Conspiracy Theory Videos That Flood the Site. “It’s an ugly game of whack-a-mole, and YouTube seems to be losing. On Sunday, the director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, Jonathan Albright, published a Medium post about the videos that come up if you search YouTube for ‘crisis actor.’ His analysis generated nearly 9,000 videos. The vast majority of the video ‘titles … are a mixture of shocking, vile and promotional,’ Albright wrote in his report. ‘Themes include rape game jokes, shock reality social experiments, celebrity pedophilia, “false flag” rants, and terror-related conspiracy theories dating back to the Oklahoma City attack in 1995.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mashable: How one man created a fake Facebook celebrity and fooled an entire nation. “This is the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but in the world of social media and fake news. Have you met every single friend you have on Facebook in real life? We all know the basic rules about keeping photos and posts private and carefully vetting friend requests. But things can get complicated. And dangerous.”

Forbes: The Feds Can Now (Probably) Unlock Every iPhone Model In Existence. “In what appears to be a major breakthrough for law enforcement, and a possible privacy problem for Apple customers, a major U.S. government contractor claims to have found a way to unlock pretty much every iPhone on the market. Cellebrite, a Petah Tikva, Israel-based vendor that’s become the U.S. government’s company of choice when it comes to unlocking mobile devices, is this month telling customers its engineers currently have the ability to get around the security of devices running iOS 11.”

TODAY: German prosecutors say won’t investigate Facebook over hate postings . “German prosecutors said on Monday they would not open a formal investigation of Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook managers in connection with a complaint alleging the company broke national laws against hate speech and sedition.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Business Insider: There’s now a giant database for rare zoo animals to find a mate that works just like a dating app. “Rare animals can now have profiles uploaded to a global database called the Zoological Information Management System. According to The Times newspaper, more than a thousand paper ‘studbook’ animal records are in the process of being added to the database, which covers 22,000 species. The data transfer is due to take around two years.” Good afternoon, 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!