NEW RESOURCES

Consequence of Sound: Radiohead upload their entire discography to YouTube. “Radiohead, the band who revolutionized music accessibility yet hates Spotify, have uploaded their entire discography to YouTube. This news arrives days after Billboard announced they will factor in YouTube streams when determining an album’s chart status.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Google is poised to make another blitz at CES 2020. “Google is likely to take over Sin City again when CES 2020 kicks off in the second week of January, a pretty remarkable feat when you consider it’s arguably the world capital of sensory overload. The tech show has grown in importance to Google, which is trying to sell more consumer devices that compete against the likes of Amazon, Apple and Samsung. As it tries to reach those consumers, the search giant is pouring marketing dollars into its promotions, just like every other tech company.”

BGR: Sadly, you now need a Facebook account to start using Facebook Messenger. “A few years ago, Facebook made it possible for new Messenger users to start talking to their friends and family without registering for Facebook. That was actually a great way to stay off Facebook for anyone not happy with the intrusiveness of the world’s biggest social network, without giving up one of the best things about Facebook. Going forward, however, new Facebook Messenger users will have to register for a Facebook account to actually use the chat service.”

USEFUL STUFF

Smashing Magazine: Creating Voice Skills For Google Assistant And Amazon Alexa. “Voice assistants are hopping out of emerging tech and into everyday life. As a front end developer, you already have the skills to build one, so let’s dive into the platforms.” This is a giant technical dive and definitely not for beginners.

Hackaday: Think You Know cURL? Care To Prove It?. “Do you happen to remember a browser-based game ‘You Can’t JavaScript Under Pressure’? It presented coding tasks of ever-increasing difficulty and challenged the player to complete them as quickly as possible. Inspired by that game, [Ben Cox] re-implemented it as You Can’t cURL Under Pressure!”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Unofficial Networks: Adding Ski Runs to Google Street View. “A look at how they add ski runs to google street view. If you have never used google maps to check out ski runs, its kinda cool and a great way to get a feel for what a ski resort skis like.”

Washington Post: This Instagram account became wildly popular for its queer personal ads — and now it’s a dating app . “In August 2018, the ad was posted to the Instagram account Personals, known for posting such ads by and for the queer community. [Sula] Malina, who uses they/them pronouns, had recently gotten out of an open relationship and was seeking monogamy…. After starting in 2017, Personals became a hugely popular place for people like Malina to meet a partner or to make a friend, attracting more than 60,000 followers. Last month, founder Kells Rakowski took the next step of turning it into its own app, Lex, creating a rare queer-centric platform for romance and friendship.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Chicago Business Journal: Facebook secures patent to track users’ TV viewing with microphones, cameras, GPS. “Facebook Inc. on Tuesday secured a patent to track what users watch on TV and streaming services and correlate it with the rest of their user data, in some cases using a device’s microphone, camera or GPS to capture audio, images, video or location data that reveals what the user is watching.”

Reclaim the Net: YouTube offers new tool for creators to deal with mounting copyright issues. “The YouTube Studio application has recently received a new update, which adds options to combat copyright claims for new and old content creators, as they can now intercede directly in disputes that have to do with this issue. And if recent events with YouTube have been anything to go by, creators will be using this tool a lot.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Phys .org: Finally, machine learning interprets gene regulation clearly. “In this age of “big data,” artificial intelligence (AI) has become a valuable ally for scientists. Machine learning algorithms, for instance, are helping biologists make sense of the dizzying number of molecular signals that control how genes function. But as new algorithms are developed to analyze even more data, they also become more complex and more difficult to interpret. Quantitative biologists Justin B. Kinney and Ammar Tareen have a strategy to design advanced machine learning algorithms that are easier for biologists to understand.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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