NEW RESOURCES

DigitalNC: The Carolina Journal, UNC-Charlotte’s student newspaper, is now available on DigitalNC. “Over 100 issues of The Carolina Journal, the student newspaper published by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, are now available on DigitalNC, thanks to our partnership with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Spanning from 1965 to 1969, the student paper covers activities on and off campus.”

Current Archaeology: Carved in stone: recording Scotland’s prehistoric rock art. “The ScRAP project aims to record the many examples of prehistoric rock art found across Scotland. As was the case in Kilmartin, there is currently no standardised database and very little contextual information available for the approximately 2,700 examples of rock art so far known in the country. As a community-based initiative, archaeologists on the project are training volunteers across Scotland to record these prehistoric carvings and upload them to the project’s online database. ”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BetaNews: Microsoft re-open-sources early versions of MS-DOS on GitHub. “Back in 2014, Microsoft gave the source code for MS-DOS 1.25 and MS-DOS 2.0 to the Computer History Museum. Now — in a move it describes as ‘re-open-sourcing’ — the company has pushed the code to GitHub for all to see.” I am feeling old and creaky.

Ars Technica: Google taking new steps to prevent malicious Chrome extensions. “Google has announced plans to further restrict Chrome extensions in a bid to crack down on the number of malicious extensions found in the Chrome Web Store. We’ve seen a spate of malicious extensions this year; the extensions do things like steal credentials and participate in click fraud schemes. The malicious extensions take advantage of the considerable access to webpages that extensions have.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Trends: How to watch the October 9 ‘Made by Google’ event. “The event starts at 11 a.m. ET on October 9 — that’s 8 a.m. PT if you’re on the West Coast, or 3 p.m. GMT for our U.K.-based readers. Of course, you might be wondering how you can watch the Google event for yourself — thankfully, there are plenty of ways to do so. We’ve done the research so you don’t have to.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Royal Central: Hamilton and Royal Archives join forces to teach history lesson. “The actor who plays George III in the hit music Hamilton has been invited into the Windsor Castle library to study documents on the King as academics aim to inspire others to educate themselves about the historical figure. The Queen recently launched a project to open the Royal Archives from the reign of George III. They are releasing letters, diaries, and speeches digitally to give the public a broader understanding of the King. Scholars working on the papers of George III have had to work through 350,000 papers. They’ve selected 20 of those which are now grouped according to the musical; by theme and song lyrics.”

Motherboard: This Solar-Powered, ‘Low Tech’ Website Goes Offline When It’s Cloudy. “It’s not just Motherboard; every website and product connected to the internet would not be able to exist without a vast network of wireless routers, fiber optic cables running underground and underwater, and data centers that house the servers which bring the internet to life. Data centers in the US alone eat up 70 billion kilowatts of energy per year, according to a 2016 estimate from the Department of Energy—that’s 1.8 percent of all energy use across the country. The internet is not ethereal, and a new project from the blog Low-Tech Magazine aims to make that issue more tangible.”

Libraries and Archives Canada: How archives can protect human rights. “When asked to name one of Canada’s fundamental democratic institutions, how many people would immediately say ‘Library and Archives Canada’? Yet, a nation’s archives preserves in perpetuity the evidence of how we are governed. From the story of Japanese Canadian Redress, we can learn how records held by Library and Archives Canada (LAC)—combined with crucial citizen activism making use of these records—have contributed to holding the federal government accountable for now universally condemned actions.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Facebook: Facebook Login Update. “We wanted to provide an update on the security attack that we announced last week. This was a serious issue and we worked fast to protect the security of people’s accounts and investigate what happened.”

ZDNet: Gigantic 100,000-strong botnet used to hijack traffic meant for Brazilian banks. “Over 100,000 routers have had their DNS settings modified to redirect users to phishing pages. The redirection occurs only when users are trying to access e-banking pages for Brazilian banks. Around 88% of these routers are located in Brazil, and the campaign has been raging since at least mid-August when security firm Radware first spotted something strange.”

Mashable: Apple users claim iOS 12 is sending iMessages to the wrong contacts. “…as first discovered by PiunikaWeb, iOS 12 device users are taking to Apple’s Support Communities forum to share reports that the newest version of Apple’s mobile operating system is mistakenly merging contacts that belong to completely separate individuals. Users on the forums are reporting that their messages intended for just one person are being sent to, for example, both their husband and child or their mother and sister thanks to the unintended merges.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Queen Mary University of London: Investigating representations of gender-based violence. “Using interdisciplinary research methods, the two-year study will focus on how four types of violence (domestic abuse, trafficking, street harassment, menstruation-based discrimination) are portrayed in graphic print publications such as comics and public graphic expressions including murals, graffiti and street art. The research will also examine how stakeholders, including activists and artists, use graphic art as an awareness-raising tool. The work aims to foster knowledge exchange via local research hubs. It will result in two creative initiatives with local arts and non-governmental organisations: an open-access digital archive of representations of gender-based violence and a series of workshops for 600 girls aged between 12 and 17.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

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