NEW RESOURCES

UChicago News: Stamp collection provides rare picture of North Korea. “A group of masked dancers, frozen in dramatic poses. A plane descending at an airport, with another trailing in the distance. And a pair of … carnivorous dinosaurs? These disparate images all can be found within the University of Chicago Library’s new collection of North Korean stamps, assembled in a public online database to provide a unique glimpse of the insular country. The stamps, which span from 1962 to 2018, capture a variety of scenes, settings and characters—ranging from explicit propaganda to traditional Korean garb to simple depictions of wildlife.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Liliputing: freedb is shutting down in March, 2020 (free music database). “Freedb is a free online database of track listings for millions of CDs. Without this type of database, you’d either end up with a bunch of nameless files, or you’d have to manually type the album names, artist info, song titles, and other data into your computer. While FreeDB isn’t the only game in town, it’s been one of the most prominent services providing track listing data for nearly two decades — and according to a note at the freedb website, it’ll shut down at the end of March, 2020.”

Daily Inter Lake: Officials: Burial Ground Has Many More Remains Than Thought. “Officials say a large western Pennsylvania public burial ground already thought to contain hundreds of remains actually has many more than previously thought — and there’s a new resource available to those who believe a relative may be buried there.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: Add IMDB Ratings and Show Info to Netflix With This Extension. “When you’re trying to find something to watch on Netflix, sometimes you want to know what others outside of Netflix thought about the show. That’s where zRate can help. The Chrome extension brings in rating info from IMDB and occasionally Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and offers information about the program’s plot, and the main cast from the same sites.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Smashing the Finance Patriarchy With Memes. “Haley Sacks, 28, doesn’t just want women to save; she wants them to invest. Not only that: She wants them to understand the culture of investment banking. To teach them, she posts memes on Instagram. Her account, @MrsDowJones, has compared Deutsche Bank’s trajectory since 2007 to Rob Kardashian; likened the hype ahead of the Uber I.P.O. to that surrounding the newest royal baby; and used Andy Cohen as a proxy for interest rates.”

Wired: Chatroulette Was Shorthand for Chaos Online. Then Came the 2010s. “When the decade began, this new world was already forming, the plot already in motion. But for a brief moment, as 2009 turned into 2010, we had a glimpse of what a different social web might look like. That moment was Chatroulette.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Indian Express: Delhi Police film protests, run its images through face recognition software to screen crowd. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Ramlila Maidan rally on December 22 — where he said there was no talk of NRC — was the first political rally where Delhi Police used a facial recognition software to screen the crowd. This was also the first time Delhi Police used a set of facial images collected from footage filmed at the city’s various protest events to filter ‘law and order suspects’ at the Prime Minister’s rally.”

CNET: Here’s what California’s new privacy law means for Facebook, Twitter users. “The California Consumer Privacy Act, also known as CCPA, is designed to curb what companies can do with all that information. The law, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, comes as concerns about privacy grow after a steady stream of scandals, like Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data debacle.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Mashable: Does YouTube radicalize users? This study says not —but it’s deeply flawed.. “A new study of YouTube’s algorithm attracting mainstream attention this weekend claims that the online video giant ‘actively discourages’ radicalization on the platform. And if that sounds suspect to you, it should.”

The Next Web: India’s internet shutdowns have cost its businesses billions of dollars. “India has implemented more than 350 internet shutdowns across the country since 2014 — the most notable of which is the ongoing blackout in the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir, which has already lasted 135 days (it is now active only in the Kashmir valley). The aforementioned shutdown was implemented after the Central government announced its intention to revoke Jammu & Kashmir’s special constitutional status, forcing it to abide by national legislation.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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