NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me: an online database of pixel art tutorials. You may not know what pixel art is but I guarantee if you’ve spent any time online you’ve seen it. Envato has a good overview. From the Pixel Art Tutorials home page: “The biggest collection of pixel art tutorials on the net! Search by topic, author or medium to find the perfect article, video, image or book for you. Leave a comment or click reccomend to let others know which tutorials you find most helpful!”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: GitLab adds support for GitHub . “Here is an interesting twist: GitLab, which in many ways competes with GitHub as a shared code repository service for teams, is bringing its continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) features to GitHub.”

Ubergizmo: NBA Targets Casual Viewers With $0.99 Fourth Quarter Live Streams. “Only the most dedicated of NBA fans will spend a significant amount of money on a League Pass. It’s not something that the casual viewer would do, those who only tune in to watch the ending of a game from time to time. Some of these viewers might just stick with illegal online streams to watch the fourth quarter and perhaps this is why the NBA is experimenting with a new $0.99 option which will enable casual viewers to tune into the official stream of a game in the fourth quarter only.” What an interesting idea.

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How to Clean Up Your Instagram Explore Feed. “Algorithmic feeds, how I loathe thee. I hate Twitter’s, minor as it is. I hate Facebook’s, because I just want a simple chronological News Feed. And I hate Instagram’s, because its Explore tab can fill up with all sorts of weird shit that the service thinks I should like. There’s not that much you can to do get a handle on the ever-unruly Explore, but you have a few options.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Portugese American Journal: Na Ponta da Língua: Research project explores Portuguese immigration experiences – Participants welcome. “What is your experience of Portuguese immigration? What are the stories, dreams, and impressions that define your sense of Portuguese identity? Why not share them? Na Ponta da Língua/On The Tip of The Tongue is waiting to hear from you. It is the virtual platform and hands-on biographical research project initiated in 2014 by social scientist and Portuguese migrations specialist Elsa Lechner. With funding in 2017 by the Gulbenkian Foundation program on Portuguese Language and Culture, Lechner and her multidisciplinary group of 6 colleagues from France, Brazil, the United States, and Portugal launched the project’s virtual platform last September.”

Times of Israel: Amid racism claims, state to open archives on Jewish North African immigration. “The government on Sunday said it would open state archives on the mass immigration to Israel from North Africa in the early years of the state after a television series documented systematic, historical racism toward the newcomers. The cabinet approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to give public access to all the archival material regarding the integration of large numbers of immigrants in the early years of the State of Israel, his office said.”

Middle East Eye: Bahrain pledges tough crackdown on seditious social media accounts. “Bahraini authorities on Sunday pledged a crackdown on social media accounts which offended ‘national and traditional values’. Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah al-Khalifa said the government was adopting ‘severe measures to deal with unprecedented chaos by disruptive social media accounts,’ in a statement published by the official Bahrain News Agency.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Facebook scraped call, text message data for years from Android phones. “Facebook uses phone-contact data as part of its friend recommendation algorithm. And in recent versions of the Messenger application for Android and Facebook Lite devices, a more explicit request is made to users for access to call logs and SMS logs on Android and Facebook Lite devices. But even if users didn’t give that permission to Messenger, they may have given it inadvertently for years through Facebook’s mobile apps—because of the way Android has handled permissions for accessing call logs in the past.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Havana Times: Social Media Increases Participation of Nicaraguan Youth in Social Justice Causes. “The social networks in Nicaragua are the principal platforms used by youth to support social justice causes and mobilizations. This was the principal revelation of the recent study: ‘How the youth get information and how they participate,’ presented by the Nicaraguan Foundation for Economic and Social Development, or FUNIDES.”

University of Texas at Austin: Students create tool to help journalists enhance 360-degree videos. “At every step, from early design to final build, the team worked to make it as easy as possible for journalists using ImmerJ to import finished 360-degree videos and enhance them with headlines, sub-headlines, captions in body type, graphics, 3D objects, and even conventional framed video clips. Journalists can do all without having to tinker with any of the computer programming that’s below the surface.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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