NEW RESOURCES

The National: Aberdeen’s suffragette past revealed by new website. “GOLF course flag switches, school fire-raising, cinema protest – the hidden history of suffragettes in the north-east of Scotland is revealed in an interactive online project. The digital database of the suffrage movement in Aberdeen and the surrounding area is now live thanks to Professor Sarah Pederson of Robert Gordon University and her team.”

New-to-me, but apparently around for a while: the archive of the International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals, at http://www.iapsop.com/. From the home page (and I must say this home page design is very 1997-1998, which is not a bad thing. It loads almost instantly): “The IAPSOP is a US-based private organization focused on the digital preservation of Spiritualist and occult periodicals published between the Congress of Vienna and the start of the Second World War. Our all-volunteer staff digitizes, indexes and makes available free-of-charge these periodicals, in our archive, for use by students and researchers.”

The Register: After years of listening, we’ve heard not a single peep out of any aliens, say boffins. You think you can do better? OK, here’s 1PB of signals. “After years of listening to the cosmos, scientists have failed to pick up any sign of alien civilizations. So, the experts have dumped online a petabyte of signals picked up from the Breakthrough Listen project so nerds like you and me can rifle through the readings and have a crack at finding E.T.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Twitter will remove precise location tagging in tweets, citing lack of use. “In an announcement today from its support account, Twitter said it is removing the option to tag precise locations in tweets.”

LinkedIn: Introducing New Tools to Help You Prep for Your Next Interview. “At LinkedIn, we’ve found that 54 percent of jobseekers say the interview phase is ‘moderately to extremely challenging’ due to two reasons: uncertainty and lack of confidence. That’s why we’re starting to roll out a new suite of tools to help you prepare more effectively, so you’re ready to crush your next interview.”

The Daily Iowan: Facing rising subscription costs, UI Libraries cancels more than 800 journal, database subscriptions. “As the cost of subscribing to scholarly publications such as journals and databases rises, the University of Iowa Libraries is forced to cut subscriptions to research that students and faculty need. The UI Libraries has announced it would cancel more than 800 journal and database subscriptions, saving more than $600,00.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Next Web: How to get started with mind mapping apps. “List making and note taking have been digitized to help us keep track of shopping lists, to-do lists, and quick notes. But what if your ideas are more complicated than that? What if, like me, your mind is chaotic and messy, and needs more of a helping hand when formulating ideas?”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

NiemanLab: Meet TikTok: How The Washington Post, NBC News, and The Dallas Morning News are using the of-the-moment platform. “Tired of the trolls and infinite screaming on Twitter? Try the infinite video memes on TikTok — perhaps the most successful new social platform among American young people since Snapchat more than a half-decade ago.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: Disgruntled security firm discloses zero-days in Facebook’s WordPress plugins. “A US-based cyber-security firm has published details about two zero-days that impact two of Facebook’s official WordPress plugins. The details also include proof-of-concept (PoC) code that allows hackers to craft exploits and launch attacks against sites using the two plugins.”

Techdirt: Supreme Court Signals Loud And Clear That Social Media Sites Are Not Public Forums That Have To Allow All Speech. “Last fall I wrote about the Supreme Court agreeing to hear a case that some argued would allow the Supreme Court to declare that social media sites were public forums thereby limiting their ability to block or ban certain users.”

Wirecutter: Buyer Beware: Used Nest Cams Can Let People Spy on You. “We’ve explained before that when you’re selling or giving away your old smart-home devices, it’s critical to do a factory reset on them first in order to protect your data and privacy. We’ve recently learned, however, that even performing a factory reset may not be enough to protect privacy for owners of the popular Nest Cam Indoor. And in a twist, this time the risk is on the side of the person receiving the device, not the person disposing of it.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Computerworld: Seeing the signs (and locating them) with Google Street View and deep learning. “Street signs are everywhere, but where they are precisely is not always known by the local government authorities that manage them. Councils and governments keep datasets of all signs in an area – a record of location data is mandatory – but as roads are redeveloped they are increasingly incomplete and due to errors by humans doing field surveys, often inaccurate.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!