NEW RESOURCES

Energy Voice: Female energy high-fliers to be identified via crowdsourcing database. “RenewableUK has today announced that it will launch a crowd-sourced database of women working in the energy sector to enable easier identification of experts.”

News and Tribune: Decades of student publications digitized at IU Southeast. “On April 1, 1947, the second edition of The Southeastern Student was released to students and staff at Indiana University Southeast. The edition, an early ancestor of today’s student newspaper, The Horizon, consisted of school reminders, updates on the employment of alumni and statistics on a recent basketball tournament in Bloomington. That student publication, just two pages long and without photographs or design elements, paved the way for more than seven decades of student work. The bulk of those publications (1947-2007) have been digitized and are available online thanks to grants from the Horseshoe Foundation of Floyd County and Indiana University Bicentennial.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: A Day Care and a Dog Rescue Benefit: On Facebook, They Were Political Ads. “What do a day care center, a vegetarian restaurant, a hair salon, an outdoor clothing maker and an investigative news publisher have in common? To Facebook, they looked suspiciously like political activists.”

CNET: Twitter bought an anti-harassment startup and immediately shut it down. “Twitter acquired ‘trust and safety service’ Smyte on Thursday, then shut down their API, giving existing customers no time to prepare for the closure.”

Bloomberg: United Talent Agency Creates Podcast Network for YouTube Stars. “Hollywood firm United Talent Agency represents some of the biggest YouTube stars and podcast networks around. Now it’s trying to bring those two worlds together. UTA has teamed up with Cadence13 to create Ramble, which they say is the first podcast network devoted exclusively to online creators. The first members of the network include Rhett and Link, hosts of the YouTube show ‘Good Mythical Morning,’ and Hannah Hart, host of ‘My Drunk Kitchen.'”

USEFUL STUFF

Emulsive: Where Are My Effing Pictures? Or, Finding An Archive System For My Film Photography. “This, to me, is one of the joys of digital photography. I can find anything with ease, using the multiple search filters available to me. A lot of this data needs no input from me since it’s recorded by the camera and transferred directly to Lightroom when I import new images. Adding my own data simply allows me to fine-tune the process of organising and searching my images further. Archiving and accessing archived digital files is a relatively simple matter – assuming that your digital archiving system involves something more sophisticated than a drawer full of old mobile phones or your Facebook posting history. So, when I started shooting with film cameras once again it was clear that organising or archiving physical negatives would require some thought. Or, rather, it should have been clear but, truth be told, I didn’t really think about it until I loaded scans from my first roll into Lightroom and realised that my Metadata panel was essentially empty. I could fill in camera, lens, and ISO information and have a stab at the correct date, but time? Shutter speed? Aperture? Not a clue.” Deep dive.

Engadget: GarageBand lessons are now free for aspiring musicians. “GarageBand has long been a useful tool to record music, podcasts and more. Even better, the app is free to download and use on your Mac or iOS devices, making it easy to try. Recent updates have brought enhancements like a portal for free sound packs and a better drum sequencer (on mobile), along with Touch Bar support and realistic-sounding drummers on the desktop. Now, Apple is upgrading its music creation suite yet again, offering it’s previously $5 artist piano and guitar lessons for free, along with more additions to its drummers, loops and sound effects.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian:
‘Facebook is taking everything’: rising rents drive out Silicon Valley families. “A group of affiliated real estate companies, including Menlo Gate and Redwood Landing Properties, purchased and began managing the 20 apartments now facing sharp rent increases – using a process that tenant activists say is cruel, but increasingly common. The firms, linked to the investor Jesshill Love, sent notices to tenants saying their rents would soon rise from $1,100 to $1,900 a month, and that they would have to leave in 60 days if they didn’t sign a lease.”

Snopes: Journalists, Activists Criticize Social Media Sites Amid Conflicts Over Content. “In June 2018, journalists and activists raised concerns over sudden apparent suspensions or sanctions from social media web sites within days of one another amid increased concerns over their policies toward news outlets. In the latest incident, Lucas Waldron — graphics producer for the investigative news site ProPublica — said on 21 June 2018 that the visual platform Instagram had deleted a post on the outlet’s account that identified members of a white supremacist group.”

6sqft: Help preserve the untold stories of the Stonewall Riots by donating personal photos, letters. “Did you participate in the Stonewall Inn Riots of 1969 and the period of LGBTQ activism in New York City between 1968 and 1971? Do you know someone who did? If so, consider contributing pride memorabilia from that moment in history to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, which is compiling a collection to preserve the history of Stonewall. The project, Stonewall Forever, launched last year after Google granted the LGBT Center $1 million to preserve oral histories and experiences of those present during the riots.”

Poynter: We tried to create a deepfake of Mark Zuckerberg and Alex Jones — and failed. Here’s what happened.. “Making it look like someone did or said something that never happened is harder than it looks. That’s what Poynter learned over the past several weeks while trying to create a ‘deepfake’ video of Alex Jones, Infowars host and frequent conspiracy theorist, giving remarks that were actually made by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Deepfakes, named after the Reddit user who came up with the method, are essentially created by extracting a large number of frames from one video and superimposing them on one another.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Futurism: IBM’s Debater AI Is Impressive, But It Won’t Conquer Humanity. “We’re living in a strange time, when it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish a human from artificial intelligence. And, yes, it can be pretty uncanny. One recent example: Google’s demonstration of its Duplex technology, in which the software fooled an innocent (human) hairdresser into believing she was talking to a human on the phone. And now, IBM has taken things a step further by putting on a human-robot debate, setting its brand new Project Debater against Israeli professional debater Dan Zafrir.” Good morning, Internet…

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