NEW RESOURCES

WNKY: Brand-new school rating system goes online in Kentucky. “A project in the works for years has finally been revealed. The Kentucky Department of Education has unveiled a 5-star rating online database, where parents can check to see how K-12 schools in the state are performing.”

Sea Around Us: How Sustainable Is Tuna? New Global Catch Database Exposes Dangerous Fishing Trends. “Appearing in everything from sushi rolls to sandwiches, tuna are among the world’s favourite fish. But are our current tuna fishing habits sustainable? Probably not, according to a new global database of tuna catches created by researchers at the University of British Columbia and University of Western Australia.”

Missoula Current: UM students, faculty, staff digitize Kaimin in searchable database. “Kaimin is a Salish word that means ‘paper that brings news,’ and since 1898 the Montana Kaimin newspaper has covered the University of Montana with an independent student voice. Now that 121 years of accumulated news coverage is available online in a searchable database, courtesy of UM’s Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library and its ScholarWorks service.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

India Today: Google collaborates with Swachh Bharat Mission, adds over 57,000 public toilets to Maps across India. “Google on Wednesday, October 2 announced that it has added the location of over 57,000 public toiltets located across more than 2,300 cities in India to its Google Maps. This means that now users in more than 2,300 cities in India will be able to search for public toilets on Maps just as they search for metro stations, petrol pumps, ATMs, hotels and chemists among other things.” I know toilets on a map is a bit of a hee-hee, but lack of access to toilets in India is a big public health problem.

ZDNet: Google launches Password Checkup feature, will add it to Chrome later this year. “Google launched today a new service called Password Checkup that will check a user’s saved passwords if they’ve been leaked and compromised in breaches at other services.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How To Integrate Google Tasks And Google Calendar. “Google Calendar makes it easy to keep track of upcoming events, from work meetings to birthdays and anniversaries. However, you can make the app work even better by integrating Google Tasks with your calendar. This allows you to create to-do lists and check items off as you accomplish them, for optimal organisation. Here are the steps!”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Atlantic: Where Toxic Masculinity Goes to Die. “There’s no elegant way to put this, but I’m in love with an online forum devoted to facial hair. Naturally, and like many other discussion boards, Beard Board is full of men—but the men here are kindhearted and supportive of one another. Cruelty is forbidden; generosity is encouraged. The site can feel like a haven, which is important, because while it’s nominally about beards—growing them, grooming them—in practice it offers a kind of group therapy.”

The Conversation: Why historians are fighting to save Thomas Cook’s enormous archive. “The collapse of Thomas Cook left 155,000 tourists stranded overseas, forcing the UK government to step in to orchestrate the biggest ever peacetime repatriation. The company’s 9,000 employees woke up on September 23 with no job. The focus is, justifiably, on the people immediately affected by this terrible news. But it’s also important to take the long view. With this 178-year-old firm, its heritage is also about to be lost and a number of business historians – myself included – are fighting to save it.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Inquirer: Tax records of 20 million Russians exposed online. “LAST MONTH THE ENTIRE population of Ecuador had private data leaked on to the internet. Now it’s Russia’s turn: it’s not the entire country this time, but due to their relative population sizes, the leak is pretty much identical in size. In other words, it’s bloody huge.”

Ars Technica: Ransomware forces 3 hospitals to turn away all but the most critical patients. “Ten hospitals—three in Alabama and seven in Australia—have been hit with paralyzing ransomware attacks that are affecting their ability to take new patients, it was widely reported on Tuesday.”

CNET, dammit: Zynga data breach exposed 200 million Words with Friends players. “A hacker is reportedly claiming responsibility for a September data breach of popular mobile game Words with Friends that may have resulted in the theft of information from more than 200 million players accounts, including names, email addresses, login IDs and more.” Who has insomnia, two thumbs, and plays Words with Friends like a little ol’ fiend?….

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Guardian: AI equal with human experts in medical diagnosis, study finds. “One burgeoning application is the use of AI in interpreting medical images – a field that relies on deep learning, a sophisticated form of machine learning in which a series of labelled images are fed into algorithms that pick out features within them and learn how to classify similar images. This approach has shown promise in diagnosis of diseases from cancers to eye conditions. However questions remain about how such deep learning systems measure up to human skills.” Good morning, Internet…

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