NEW RESOURCES

RTE: Footage from fight for independence available online. “Priceless and rarely seen footage featuring many key architects of Irish independence is available to view online after a painstaking repatriation and digitalisation process by the Irish Film Institute. Ireland’s lack of indigenous filmmaking in the first half of the 20th century meant that the only footage of pivotal events like the Easter Rising and the War of Independence was held abroad, with much of it not available to the public.”

Hyperallergic: Newly Digitized Collection of Early 20th-Century Lakota Drawings Tells a Curious History. “In 1922, the Newberry Library acquired this collection of 160 drawings, attributed to ‘Sioux Indians’ living in Fort Yates, which serves as headquarters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The three boxes of art were sold by one Aaron McGaffey Beede, an Episcopal missionary who had provided paper and art supplies to the residents he had come to know, and paid them small sums to purchase the resulting works. This strange exchange arose from a dire situation: in the winter of 1913-14, the Lakota faced starvation from failed crops and a mysterious disappearance of cattle. These drawings, for them, carried exceptional value linked to survival; today, they represent significant records of indigenous self-representation as well as cross-cultural exchange.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: YouTube has 1.8 billion users logged in and watching every month. “YouTube has been grappling for more than a year to balance the needs of its advertisers with its uploaders’ expectations for creative freedom. Last year, an outcry about commercials running next to offensive videos sparked an advertiser boycott. When YouTube responded by more aggressively pulling ads off sensitive clips, it ended up outraging some uploaders who lost their moneymaking power — an event dubbed ‘Adpocalypse.'” I subscribe to several YouTube channels. Almost all of them have Patreon now, and some of them are trying experimentally to get off YouTube.

TechCrunch: Google’s VR180 cameras get their own app that live streams to YouTube. “Just ahead of Google’s big developer conference next week, Google I/O, the company has quietly rolled out a new mobile app for its VR180 point-and-shoot cameras, allowing users to set up their device, view and manage clips, and upload photo and video content to Google Photos and YouTube.”

Google Blog: Introducing the first Daydream standalone VR headset and new ways to capture memories. “Back in January, we announced the Lenovo Mirage Solo, the first standalone virtual reality headset that runs Daydream. Alongside it, we unveiled the Lenovo Mirage Camera, the first camera built for VR180. Designed with VR capture and playback in mind, these devices work great separately and together. And both are available for purchase today.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Irish Times: Band Aid archive arrives for posterity after Bob Geldof donation. “An archivist will spend up to two years cataloguing memorabilia from the famous 1984 campaign for those affected by famine in Ethiopia, the National Library of Ireland (NLI) said. The Boomtown Rats frontman is giving the State hundreds of letters, artwork, poetry and musical recordings after the material had accumulated in a warehouse in London. Much of it will be digitised and put on display for the world to see at the NLI in Dublin.”

Comicbook: New ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Adventure Takes Place in the Real World . “Dungeons & Dragons is sending people on a wild quest that involves secret websites, Yelp reviews, and even excursions into the real world. Earlier this week, we reported that Dungeons & Dragons had started an ARG (alternate reality game), likely to promote their upcoming adventure story that will be revealed in early June. The game began when the brand’s Twitter account was briefly ‘taken over’ by someone claiming to be an associate of Elminster, a popular wizard from one of the campaign settings in the game.”

Bloomberg: Facebook Weighs Ad-Free Subscription Option. “Facebook Inc. has been conducting market research in recent weeks to determine whether an ad-free version paid by subscriptions would spur more people to join the social network, according to people familiar with the matter.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: Facebook Has a ‘Sauron Alert’ to Protect Employees’ Privacy—But Not Yours. “Earlier this week, Facebook fired an employee who was accused of abusing their access users’ profiles to stalk women. Had that employee’s alleged victims worked at Facebook, they would have been alerted by a special internal tool, according to a new report. The rest of us, however, get no such protection.”

Mashable: Facial recognition is coming to TicketMaster events. “One day after the President of the United States proclaimed the new holiday of state ‘Loyalty Day,'” a conglomerate has made an announcement about its ability to track the faces and movements of its millions of IRL customers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Eyerys: Researchers Created ‘Bayou’, An AI Capable In Writing Codes On Its Own. “It has been a goal for humans to create a computer software capable of creating other software on its own. And here, researchers have made than happen. Computer scientists at Rice University’s Intelligent Software Systems Laboratory has developed a deep learning AI that works like a search engine for codes. This AI is aimed to help programmers to write codes that contain Java application programming interfaces (APIs).”

Forbes: Why Are Academics Upset With Facebook’s New Privacy Rules?. “Last month a group of leading academics signed an open letter condemning Facebook’s new privacy rules and API changes that greatly restrict the ability of outsiders to mass harvest data from the platform without the knowledge or consent of users. The letter reflects the view across a broad swath of the academic community that any increase in user privacy protections that prevents them from being able to harvest our personal private information without our knowledge or against our will and turn us all into digital lab rats is simply unacceptable. What does this tell us about the future of online privacy and whether the very academic community that is so quick to condemn Facebook’s own research is willing to apply the same standards to their own work?” Good morning, Internet…

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