NEW RESOURCES

Estonian World: A database of Estonian artists launched in English. “The Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art has launched a database of Estonian artists, available both in Estonian and English, presenting a selection of artists, curators and critics currently active in the Estonian art scene.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Vine cofounder finally releases his next viral video app: Byte. “If you’re still mourning the loss of Vine, you now have a new video app to fill the void and, no, I’m not talking about TikTok. That’s because Vine cofounder Dom Hofmann is finally launching byte, the video app that’s meant to be a successor to the video app that was mercilessly killed by Twitter in 2016.”

iMore: Apple killed The Apple Archive after just 10 days. “Just last week, Sam Henri Gold launched the Apple Archive, dedicated to the unsung studio designers, copywriters, and producers who have created some of Apple’s most iconic videos and photos over the last four decades. The site also features a lot of really cool, unseen photos from marketing campaigns and more. Sadly, however, it seems as though Apple has cottoned on to his venture after Sam was hit with a swathe of copyright strikes through Vimeo from Apple Inc.” Apparently the video is what’s been removed. The rest of it is still available. For now.

Neowin: YouTube partners with Activision Blizzard to stream e-sports events. “In 2019, the war for the live streaming market seemed to intensify significantly, with multiple platforms trying to sign exclusive deals with popular streamers in order to bring in more viewers. At the end of the year, though, while rivals have started to carve out their own space in the market, Amazon’s Twitch was still the dominant force in the market. But Google isn’t about to let that market slip away, and today, it announced a new partnership with Activision Blizzard that entails a couple of things.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: Try Using Google Drive as a Progressive Web App. “Google Drive is now available as a progressive web app (PWA) for desktop and mobile, giving users an alternative to launching the service in their regular browsers. PWAs look and feel like stripped-down apps, even though they’re basically living in a stripped-down version of your browser. ”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

NiemanLab: The Wuhan coronavirus is the latest front for medical misinformation. How will China handle it?. “The Wuhan Coronavirus has infected more than 800 people, mostly in and around Wuhan, China, and killed at least 26. (This morning, a second case was confirmed in the United States, in Chicago. The virus has also been found in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam.) As was the case with the Ebola virus, the coronavirus outbreak is responsible for the spread of a lot of misinformation, although it’s early enough in the epidemic that we don’t yet have tons of info on what that misinformation looks like.”

Sydney Morning Herald: Digitisation is putting the world’s greatest works within reach. “One of the greatest changes in the art world in recent years won’t be seen in galleries because it is happening online. Digitisation programs have accelerated in the past five years and most state art institutions now have more than half of their collections online, changing the way we approach art and rapidly turning the world into a virtual gallery.”

CNN: Exclusive: This site pays Americans to write ‘news’ articles. Signs indicate it originates in Iran. “American Herald Tribune bills itself as a ‘genuinely independent online media outlet.’ Set up in 2015, it publishes in English and pays Americans to write articles. But multiple investigations by American tech companies, details of which have not previously been reported, point to the site originating in Iran.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

US Department of Justice: Man Sentenced to 50 Years in Prison for Orchestrating Snapchat Sextortion Ring that Targeted Children. “U.S. Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan for the Southern District of Florida, Special Agent in Charge George L. Piro of the FBI’s Miami Field Office, Chief W. Howard Harrison of the Planation Police Department, and Chief Dale Engle of the Davie Police Department, announced that Joseph Isaiah Woodson, Jr., 30, of Ashburn, Virginia, was sentenced yesterday to a total of 600 months in federal prison and a lifetime of supervised release by U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez, after having been convicted at trial of using the internet to target and extort children through sexual exploitation (‘sextortion’) and pornographic offenses.”

CNET: Clearview AI sued over facial recognition privacy concerns. “A lawsuit is taking aim at Clearview AI, a controversial facial recognition app being used by US law enforcement to identify suspects and other people. The app is under fire after a New York Times investigation into the software company earlier this week. The app identifies people by comparing photos to a database of images scraped from social media and other sites, and then sells the info to law enforcement agencies.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Crosscut: Seattle may lose its National Archives. That should concern more than local historians. “…the news that the National Archives at Seattle is considering closing its vast facility in Sand Point should send a shudder not just through the community of historians — which it has — but through those who believe in Seattle’s regional exceptionalism. The government is eyeing cashing in on the property the archives sit on, but also in apparently zeroing the facility out of its budget. The archives here are a repository of records that make up our historical record, dating back to the mid-19th century. And they do this for the entire Cascadia region — Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho — plus Hawaii.” One of those editorials where I just wanted to quote the whole thing.

EFF: Don’t Write Copyright Law in Secret. “The USMCA is just the latest example: when copyright terms are negotiated in private, multinational agreements, it tends to favor the interests of large media companies. Countries should decide their own copyright laws by inclusive, democratic processes, not through secret negotiations. Those copyright law expansions bring real threats to human rights in the countries where the United States exports them. In 2011, Colombian graduate student Diego Gomez shared another student’s Master’s thesis with colleagues over the Internet, sparking a six-year legal battle that could have put him in prison for years.” Good morning, Internet…

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