afternoonbuzz

Facebook, Bulgarian Twitter, Eudora, More: Wednesday Afternoon Buzz, May 23, 2018

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Mark Zuckerberg Played Parliament for Fools and They’re Pissed. “For a moment, Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before members of the European Parliament looked like it was going to be a very bad day for the Facebook CEO. Then he started answering questions, a flood of pablum spewed from his mouth, and everyone got angry.” This article includes literally dozens of questions which Mark Zuckerberg apparently failed to answer with any level of detail.

The Verge: Twitter is treating Bulgarians tweeting in Cyrillic like Russian bots . “A week ago, Twitter announced it would become more aggressive in pursuing trolls on its service, a move which seems to have had some unforeseen consequences, judging by the present upheaval in the Bulgarian Twitter community. An increasingly large and unhappy number of people have had their Twitter accounts suspended and messages filtered out of conversations, apparently for the offense of merely tweeting in Cyrillic.”

Globe Newswire: Computer History Museum Makes the Eudora Email Client Source Code Available to the Public (PRESS RELEASE). “Computer History Museum (CHM), the world’s leading institution exploring the history of computing and its impact on the human experience, today announced the public release and long-term preservation of the Eudora source code, one of the early successful email clients, as part of its Center for Software History’s Historical Source Code. The release comes after a five-year negotiation with Qualcomm. The first version of Eudora was created in the 1980s by Steve Dorner who was working at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It took Dorner over a year to create the first version of Eudora, which had 50,000 lines of C code and ran only on the Apple Macintosh.” I miss Eudora a lot.

USEFUL STUFF

Social Media Examiner: How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Event. “Does your business host an event or conference? Wondering how to use social media to build awareness for an event? In this article, you’ll discover how to use social media to keep your event top of mind with your audience.” A top-level overview of things to think about, not a step-by-stepper.

Make Tech Easier: 8 Tools to Help You Block Content and Websites on Your Devices. “If you wish to keep your devices away from any unwanted services or websites, you should consider installing a content or ad blocker that will keep the unwanted items out of your way. Many of these tools let you define what you would like to block and do their work accordingly. In this week’s roundup we cover eight tools from our Software Discovery section that help you block content or websites on your devices. Some of these tools will limit your access to websites, while others will completely block access to certain content on your device. Let’s check them out.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Korea Bizwire: Historic Text to be Recreated as Part of 3D Database. “The ‘Anthology of Great Buddhist Priests’ Zen Teachings’ (also known as ‘Jikji’), the world’s oldest existing book printed with moveable metal type, will be re-created and incorporated into a 3D database.”

24700: Time Traveling Through CalArts’s Poster Archive With Michael Worthington. “In 1994, Graphic Design faculty members Shelley Stepp and Kary Arimoto-Mercer created a physical archive for the posters as a way to preserve students’ work. From their initial efforts, the physical archive has grown exponentially, requiring that the posters be stored in various corners of offices across the Graphic Design program. Without a central location or means to access the physical poster archive, Graphic Design faculty Michael Worthington devised a plan to consolidate the work into a digital space, a platform that could be made available online to alumni and current students, as well as to CalArts and design communities at large.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: Microsoft, Google: We’ve found a fourth data-leaking Meltdown-Spectre CPU hole . “A fourth variant of the data-leaking Meltdown-Spectre security flaws in modern processors has been found by Microsoft and Google researchers. These speculative-execution design blunders can be potentially exploited by malicious software running on a vulnerable device or computer, or a miscreant logged into the system, to slowly extract secrets, such as passwords, from protected kernel or application memory, depending on the circumstances.”

Engadget: FBI admits to ‘over-counting’ inaccessible mobile devices. “For the last two years, the FBI has repeatedly claimed that thousands of phones linked to criminal investigations were inaccessible due to locks and encryption. Last year FBI Director Christopher Wray said it had failed to access 7,800 mobile devices, but tonight a Washington Post report reveals that number is incorrect. According to the Post, the accurate number is between 1,000 and 2,000, with a recent internal estimate putting at about 1,200 devices, and in a statement, the FBI responded: ‘The FBI’s initial assessment is that programming errors resulted in significant over-counting of mobile devices reported.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Bloomberg: Twitter Bots Helped Trump and Brexit Win, Economic Study Says. “Twitter bots may have altered the outcome of two of the world’s most consequential elections in recent years, according to an economic study. Automated tweeting played a small but potentially decisive role in the 2016 Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s presidential victory, the National Bureau of Economic Research working paper showed this month. Their rough calculations suggest bots added 1.76 percentage point to the pro-‘leave’ vote share as Britain weighed whether to remain in the European Union, and may explain 3.23 percentage points of the actual vote for Trump in the U.S. presidential race.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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