TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Genealogy’s Star: Reclaim the Records frees the NYC marriage license index for 1996-2017. “Another big win for genealogists and others needing records from New York. Reclaim the Records has won a lawsuit and now has the NYC marriage license index for 1996-2017, 1.5 million records, free online, searchable and downloadable.”

TechCrunch: YouTube rolls its music subscription services into 12 more markets. “YouTube has rolled out its music streaming service to a bunch more international markets, adding 12 new countries today, and also launching the premium music video version of the service across the full 17 markets. In February CEO YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki discussed the company’s ambitious expansion plans for the service, saying it was intending to expand to as many as 100 countries.”

The Shamrock Genealogist: New Blog Series: Genealogy On the Road. “I’m happy to announce a new blog series that I’m starting called Genealogy On the Road. So why am I starting this series? I currently work full time as an IT analyst for a human resources company (it’s a bit hard to explain sometimes what I do). I regularly travel to client sites as well as to offices in California during the year so I thought it would be interesting to help document some travel tips for how you can do genealogy on the road. ”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Microsoft PowerPoint: From Newbie to Master. “Microsoft PowerPoint has been a staple for creating presentations for many years. But like anything, not everyone is an expert right off the bat. You have to start somewhere, right? So, let this beginner’s guide to PowerPoint be that first step.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Techdirt: Norwegian Court Orders Website Of Public Domain Court Decisions Shut Down With No Due Process. “Enter Hakon Wium Lie. You might know him as basically the father of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Or the former CTO of the Opera browser. Or maybe even as the founder of the Pirate Party in Norway. Either way, he’s been around a while in this space, and knows what he’s talking about. Via Boing Boing we learn that: (1) Wium Lie has been sued for a completely absurd reason of (2) helping a site publish public domain court rulings that (3) are not even protected by a database right and (4) the judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff (5) in 24 hours (6) before Lie could respond and (7) ordered him to pay the legal fees of the other side.”

The Guardian: Fears mount over WhatsApp’s role in spreading fake news. “Abijeet Nath and Nilotpal Das were driving back from a visit to a waterfall in the Indian province of Assam earlier this month when they stopped in a village to ask for directions. The two men were pulled out of their car and beaten to death by a mob who accused them of stealing children.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Krebs on Security: Google to Fix Location Data Leak in Google Home, Chromecast. “Google in the coming weeks is expected to fix a location privacy leak in two of its most popular consumer products. New research shows that Web sites can run a simple script in the background that collects precise location data on people who have a Google Home or Chromecast device installed anywhere on their local network.” Ew.

BetaNews: Fans targeted by phishing campaign as World Cup gets underway. “As the FIFA World Cup tournament enters its second week, cybercriminals are using a phishing campaign to trick fans into opening an infected attachment. Emails identified by Check Point attempt to lure would-be victims into downloading a schedule of fixtures and a result tracker, but doing so will prove to be an own goal.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Bloomberg: Google Is Training Machines to Predict When a Patient Will Die. “A woman with late-stage breast cancer came to a city hospital, fluids already flooding her lungs. She saw two doctors and got a radiology scan. The hospital’s computers read her vital signs and estimated a 9.3 percent chance she would die during her stay. Then came Google’s turn. An new type of algorithm created by the company read up on the woman — 175,639 data points — and rendered its assessment of her death risk: 19.9 percent. She passed away in a matter of days.”

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News. “In today’s fast-paced and complex information environment, news consumers must make rapid-fire judgments about how to internalize news-related statements – statements that often come in snippets and through pathways that provide little context. A new Pew Research Center survey of 5,035 U.S. adults examines a basic step in that process: whether members of the public can recognize news as factual – something that’s capable of being proved or disproved by objective evidence – or as an opinion that reflects the beliefs and values of whoever expressed it.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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