NEW RESOURCES

CT Mirror: Sniff around campaign finances with our new database. “By the end of August, candidates for offices ranging from state representative to governor reported raising more than $40 million and spending around $30 million in the 2018 election cycle. CT Mirror today is launching CT Campaign Cash, a database tool to ease inspection of those receipts and expenditures.”

Trib Live: Watch full episodes of ‘Mister Rogers Neighborhood’ on new website. “Ever wish you could relive your youth? Well, leave it to Mister Rogers to fulfill that wish. Since we aren’t done with the Mister Rogers craze yet (yeah, it’s still a thing), a new official show website is taking full advantage by streaming full-length episodes of the beloved children’s TV show.”

BBC: Guide to help book lovers explore Welsh locations. “Book lovers will no longer have to rely on their imaginations to picture the scene of novels set in Wales thanks to a new website. Literary Atlas plots locations in stories set around the country, allowing readers to explore some of the places integral to the plot.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Missouri Secretary of State: Missouri State Archives, Missouri Historical Society Announce the Discovery of Long Lost Census Records . “Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, in collaboration with the Missouri Historical Society, today announced the discovery of 13 pages from the 1880 U.S. Census Population Schedule. Identified by the staff of the Missouri State Archives, a division of Ashcroft’s office, the pages record the households of the 99th Enumeration District in Perry County, including the name, age, marital status, occupation, level of education and more for 633 individuals then residing in the county’s Union Township.”

Neowin: Facebook has finally begun testing the ability to unsend messages on Messenger . “Earlier in the year, Facebook was caught with its hand in the proverbial cookie jar, as the company was found to be deleting messages Mark Zuckerberg and other executives had sent using its messaging platform. As a result of that discovery, Facebook hurriedly announced that it would make the feature available to all users soon.”

TechCrunch: Pocket’s reading app won’t sound so robotic now. “Last year, Mozilla made its first acquisition by snatching up Pocket, the Instapaper competitor that helps you save longer articles for later reading. Today, this popular reading app is getting a major update that gives its app a visual makeover, including a new dark mode, and most importantly, a better way to listen to the content you’ve saved.”

USEFUL STUFF

Business Insider: The 21-year-old who built a robot lawyer to fight parking tickets has a new tool to help you automatically sue companies who get hacked. “In 2018, [Joshua] Browder took aim at Equifax after a data breach exposed the personal data the firm held on tens of millions of Americans, and his app DoNotPay was used to help file 25,000 lawsuits against the company. The British entrepreneur is now expanding into privacy and data security. On Wednesday, he announced that DoNotPay will now help users easily lock the privacy settings on their social media accounts — and help sue those companies that expose users’ data through hacks and breaches.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Poynter: The lifespan of a failed celebrity death hoax . “Establish a credible enough Twitter presence. Post a hoax with the goal of tricking the media into covering it. Come out as a hoaxer. Rinse and repeat. That’s a classic strategy used by some misinformers on Twitter. And BuzzFeed News’ Jane Lytvynenko elucidated it step by step in a thread on Tuesday.”

Forbes: What Brands Can Learn From The New York Public Library’s Instagram Stories. “With the rise of social media in the past decade, attention spans have decreased and the addiction to technology has taken away from consuming off-line content. By embracing social channels like Instagram, the New York Public Library found a way to inspire this new generation of readers through creating digital content that expands their knowledge-base of the classics.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Paloalto Networks: Fake Flash Updaters Push Cryptocurrency Miners. “In most cases, fake Flash updates pushing malware are not very stealthy. In recent years, such imposters have often been poorly-disguised malware executables or script-based downloaders designed to install cryptocurrency miners, information stealers, or ransomware. If a victim runs such poorly-disguised malware on a vulnerable Windows host, no visible activity happens, unless the fake updater is pushing ransomware. However, a recent type of fake Flash update has implemented additional deception.”

I’ve been saying this for years. Lifehacker: You Really Shouldn’t Be Running Adobe Flash Player Anymore. “So if Flash is about to be abandoned by Adobe, is a security nightmare, and has been largely ignored by the majority of web developers for years now, you might as well stop using it, too. Here are a few methods for disabling Adobe Flash.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

In the New York Times, from Bruce Schneier: Internet Hacking Is About to Get Much Worse. “It’s no secret that computers are insecure. Stories like the recent Facebook hack, the Equifax hack and the hacking of government agencies are remarkable for how unremarkable they really are. They might make headlines for a few days, but they’re just the newsworthy tip of a very large iceberg.” Good morning, Internet…

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