NEW RESOURCES

IndieWire: 45 Genre Screenplays to Download For Free, From ‘A Clockwork Orange’ to ‘Goodfellas’. “The best way to learn the tricks of movie screenwriting is to read as many movie scripts as possible. Script Reader Pro made headlines last year for debuting 50 screenplays online for free, and now the team over at Shore Scripts has done the same by making 45 genre screenplays available for free online. Shore Scripts picked five scripts in nine different film genres to feature, which means you now have free access to films written by Stanley Kubrick, Tony Kushner, Rian Johnson, Nora Ephron, and Tina Fey.”

NASA: Can NASA help predict fires? New database includes fire danger forecasts. “NASA researchers recently created a model that analyzes various weather factors that lead to the formation and spread of fires. The Global Fire Weather Database (GFWED) accounts for local winds, temperatures, and humidity, while also being the first fire prediction model to include satellite–based precipitation measurements. Predicting the intensity of fires is important because smoke can affect air quality and increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

USEFUL STUFF

Nieman Lab: The promises and pitfalls of reporting within chat apps and other semi-open platforms: A journalist’s guide. “Mark Frankel, a social media editor at BBC News, recently finished a Knight Visiting Nieman Fellowship here at Harvard to study how journalists can best uncover and report on stories sourced from audiences on ‘dark social’ apps, message boards, and other private, invitation-only platforms. What follows is an abridged version of a full report on his findings.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

WVNS: Virginia Tech is Leading a Grand-Funded Project to Make Web Archives More Valuable to Rsearchers. “The Institute of Museum and Library Services recently awarded a $248,451 grant for a collaborative two-year project, Continuing Education to Advance Web Archiving, that will create materials to teach librarians and archivists across the world how to collect, extract, and analyze archived information from the world wide web.”

Vanity Fair: “Google Was Not A Normal Place”: Brin, Page, And Mayer On The Accidental Birth Of The Company That Changed Everything. “In 1996, as the World Wide Web was taking off, Larry Page and Sergey Brin watched from the sidelines. Unlike the rest of Silicon Valley, they weren’t interested in using the Internet to buy and sell stuff, or to read and publish stories, or even to score Grateful Dead tickets. They wanted to use it, rather, to get their doctorates. The Web was the uncharted frontier of computer science, and Page and Brin were hardly interested at all in the Web’s content—what they wanted to understand was its shape.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Stolen certificates from D-Link used to sign password-stealing malware. “Criminals recently stole code-signing certificates from router and camera maker D-Link and another Taiwanese company and used them to pass off malware that steals passwords and backdoors PCs, a researcher said Monday.”

The Register: Intel, Microsoft, Adobe release a swarm of bug fixes to ruin your week. “IT admins face a busy week ahead as Microsoft, Intel, and Adobe have issued bundles of scheduled security fixes addressing more than 150 CVE-listed vulnerabilities.”

Tubefilter: After Losing NCAA Scholarship Due To YouTube Channel, Donald De La Haye Gets A Win In Court. “A court case concerning an under-explored area of YouTube law is heating up. A Florida judge has denied the University of Central Florida (UCF)’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Donald De La Haye, who lost his football scholarship at UCF after making ad revenue from videos he posted to his YouTube channel.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: Artificial intelligence helps Stanford researchers predict drug combinations’ side effects . “Last month alone, 23 percent of Americans took two or more prescription drugs, according to one CDC estimate, and 39 percent over age 65 take five or more, a number that’s increased three-fold in the last several decades. And if that isn’t surprising enough, try this one: in many cases, doctors have no idea what side effects might arise from adding another drug to a patient’s personal pharmacy.”

Penn State: Improving disaster response through Twitter data. “A team of researchers from Penn State, the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, and the Qatar Computing Research Institute created an algorithm that analyzes Twitter data to identify smaller disaster-related events, known as sub-events, and generate highly accurate, real-time summaries that can be used to guide response activities.”

China .org: Salt lake database created in China. “China has built a database on salt lakes and environmental sciences, according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Tuesday. Creation of the database began in 2012. The CAS Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes says the database collects information on the environment, resources exploration,images and multimedia archives of salt lakes across the country.” Good morning, Internet…

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