NEW RESOURCES

ProPublica: New: You Can Now Search the Full Text of 3 Million Nonprofit Tax Records for Free. “On Thursday, we launched a new feature for our Nonprofit Explorer database: The ability to search the full text of nearly 3 million electronically filed nonprofit tax filings sent to the IRS since 2011.”

Saltwire’s The News: ‘Every day when they went to work, they might not come home’. “Stellarton Museum of industry set to launch online database naming 2500 men who died in Nova Scotia coal mines.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BetaNews: How to enable Google Chrome’s secret Reader Mode. “Google has released an update for its browser and while Chrome 75 isn’t, at first glance, the most exciting of releases (with the main focus being on fixing bugs), it does contain a nifty hidden feature.”

Chemistry World: The Cambridge Structural Database hits one million structures. “The Cambridge Structural Database has been collecting the crystal structures for organic and organometallic compounds since 1965, and has just collected its one millionth structure. To celebrate this milestone, we’ve worked with some of the the staff at the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, which curates the CSD, to show some of the individual highlights of their first one million structures, and some of the chemistry and crystallographic trends that a collection of so many structures reveals.”

Neowin: Twitter is throwing out the old rule book and replacing it with a simpler one. “Back in April last year, Twitter announced that it in the process of updating its privacy policy to meet GDPR rules, it has also made it easier to read. Now, the firm has announced a similar move but this time pertaining to the simplification of the Twitter Rules.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The Best Ways to Convert Video to GIF. “GIFs have flooded social networks and instant messaging apps alike. Most of us, however, share GIFs from built-in search engines and invariably end up using the same ones repeatedly. However, if you want, you can easily create a GIF from a video. Here are the best ways to convert video to GIF on any platform.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Vietnam blogger jailed for six years for Facebook posts calling for peaceful protests. “An environmental activist has been jailed for six years in Vietnam for ‘anti-state’ Facebook posts, as part of the country’s continuing crackdown on social media.”

CNET: Meet the angry gaming YouTubers who turn outrage into views. “Starting last year, a new cadre of negative YouTube gaming commentators came to prominence. Almost in unison, they each enjoyed spikes in audience and view counts, attracting hundreds of thousands of subscribers. That translated into millions of views a week as they dissected the video game industry’s missteps, misadventures and controversies. The views get rewarded by YouTube in ad dollars.”

Poynter: We taught more than 5,500 teenagers fact-checking skills this week. Here’s what we learned.. “Hey y’all, it’s Daniel. In this newsletter, we spend a lot of time reporting on and analyzing some of the internet’s biggest problems — and how fact-checkers do (or don’t) help solve them. But this week, I have some good news for you: The kids are alright.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: To members of Pizza Hut’s loyalty scheme: You really knead to stop reusing your passwords. “Pizza Hut has warned members of its loyalty scheme ‘Hut Rewards’ not to re-use passwords after hackers managed to access some customer accounts.” Hut Rewards sounds like a loyalty program you’d join for binge-watching Gilligan’s Island.

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: The hidden secrets of creating a viral YouTube ad. “The research team tested five hypotheses about what drives sharing of video ads across social media, using two independent field studies that analyzed 11 measures of emotion and over 60 ad characteristics. The study included 109 brands that were among the top 100 US advertisers in 2012 as well as additional brands that were historically active on YouTube.”

Brookings: Deepfakes, social media, and the 2020 election. “What happens when you mix easy access to increasingly sophisticated technology for producing deepfake videos, a high-stakes election, and a social media ecosystem built on maximizing views, likes, and shares? America is about to find out.” Good morning, Internet…

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