NEW RESOURCES

SBS: New app opens the door to the past – 75 year anniversary of Cowra breakout . “Before dawn on the 5th of August in 1944, Japanese prisoners of war, placed in the detention camp in Cowra, New South Wales, staged a mass breakout. As a result of the incident, 234 Japanese POWs and 4 Australian soldiers lost their lives…. The smartphone application Cowra Voices was developed not only to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Cowra breakout, but also to reach out to younger generations and pass on the history of the tragedy and reconciliation between Japan and Cowra to them.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: FCC finally orders ISPs to say exactly where they offer broadband. “The Federal Communications Commission voted today to collect more accurate data about which parts of the US have broadband and which parts lack high-speed connectivity. From now on, home Internet providers will have to give the FCC geospatial maps of where they provide service instead of merely reporting which census blocks they offer service in.”

The Verge: Facebook open-sources algorithms for detecting child exploitation and terrorism imagery. “Facebook will open-source two algorithms it uses to identify child sexual exploitation, terrorist propaganda, and graphic violence, the company said today. PDQ and TMK+PDQF, a pair of technologies that store files as digital hashes and compare them with known examples of harmful content, have been released on Github, Facebook said in a blog post.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: Make It Harder to Fall Down a YouTube ‘Rabbit Hole’ With This Extension. “Watching videos on YouTube can be entertaining, but watching one video can quickly turn into watch fifty if you’re not careful. YouTube Rabbit Hole is an extension that can help. As the name suggests, the extension reduces the ability for you to fall down the YouTube rabbit hole. How it does that is through hiding things like recommendations and comments.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Wired: Now Even Funerals Are Livestreamed—and Families Are Grateful . “In a culture obsessed with tweeting and Instagramming every moment of life, it’s little surprise that streaming extends to death. Funeral livestreaming services have been around for more than a decade, but the practice has recently exploded in popularity, says Bryant Hightower, president-elect of the National Funeral Directors Association.”

Xinhua: China’s national library goes digital to preserve ancient books. “The National Library of China has been digitizing its collection of antique books as a way of preserving and increasing the public accessibility, the China Culture Daily reported earlier this week. The library’s dedicated online database now has more than 32,000 sets of ancient books, accounting for over 60 percent of its total antique book collection, according to the report.”

The Next Web: Twitch is okay with breastfeeding — but many viewers aren’t, and that’s a problem. “A Twitch streamer apparently started a revolution when she began breastfeeding her child on stream. When a clip of her doing so was deleted, she protested to Twitch. Site support eventually revealed the issue was that no one had, up to now, actually set policy on breastfeeding — but they did decree that it’s allowed.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: StockX was hacked, exposing millions of customers’ data. “It wasn’t ‘system updates’ as it claimed. StockX was mopping up after a data breach, TechCrunch can confirm. The fashion and sneaker trading platform pushed out a password reset email to its users on Thursday citing ‘system updates,’ but left users confused and scrambling for answers. StockX told users that the email was legitimate and not a phishing email as some had suspected, but did not say what caused the alleged system update or why there was no prior warning.”

Phys .org: Lifelong anonymity orders: do they still work in the social media age?. “Lifelong anonymity orders for adults who were convicted of crimes as children are rarely granted. In theory, these orders legally prevent a person ever being identified. But given that information is now shared at lightning speed across different platforms, can these orders still work in practice?”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ThePrint: Not just Modi’s museum for PMs, Indian MPs need archives and oral histories too. “Nearly 500 Members of Parliament have passed away in the last fifteen years, 25 of them belonged to India’s first Lok Sabha. That is loss of history, not just human lives. An old African saying goes: When an old person dies, a whole library burns too. Members of Parliament negotiate, debate and decide on issues that shape our country and are an invaluable part of India’s legislative and deliberative history. With each death, Indians lose valuable institutional history of Parliament and personal memories of their leaders.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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