NEW RESOURCES

Yale Daily News: Professor contributes to new Mao China project. “Mundane objects — from cutlery to wall decorations — form an integral part of everyday life, according to assistant history professor Denise Ho, who used this basic principle to co-advise an online exhibit about Mao-era China. The ‘Mao Era in Objects’ project, spearheaded by professor Jen Altehenger from the University of Oxford, compiled information and photographs regarding 24 objects from Mao-era China.” Another article with no URL I can find. The resource is at https://maoeraobjects.ac.uk/ .

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Neowin: Let’s Encrypt has issued its billionth certificate. “Let’s Encrypt has announced that its billionth certificate was issued today. By automating the issuance of website certificates, Let’s Encrypt hoped to increase the number of HTTPS-compatible websites, making the web more secure for everyone. The announcement comes just a week after Let’s Encrypt introduced support for multi-perspective domain validation.”

USEFUL STUFF

Search Engine Journal: Google Featured Snippets: A 2020 SEO Guide. “For several years now, SEO professionals have shared common best practices used to earn these coveted paragraph, list, or table results. But Google has unveiled a handful of new updates to featured snippets in the past couple of years, which affect which content is selected and how the snippets appear in the search results.”

Make Tech Easier: Top 3 Resources to Teach Kids to Code. “As a former elementary teacher who also spent time teaching technology to young children, I’ve identified a few sites that allow students as young as four to begin learning about code. There are many others out there, but these are three of the most engaging, and they use sound teaching practices.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

South China Morning Post: Malaysian Instagram slang bank creates a graphic archive of the country’s unique urban language. “Loading” according to the Cambridge dictionary is defined as putting goods onto a vehicle, or in finance it means a charge added to an investment. But to Malaysians, since the arrival of the internet, ‘loading’ refers to someone slowly processing information. This is one of the 300 Malaysian slang terms posted so far on the on MySlangBank Instagram account, an archive of urban language made famous by social media and terms already woven into the country’s culture and identity.”

CNN: A high school student created a fake 2020 candidate. Twitter verified it. “Andrew Walz calls himself a ‘proven business leader’ and a ‘passionate advocate for students.’ Walz, a Republican from Rhode Island, is running for Congress with the tagline, ‘Let’s make change in Washington together,’ or so his Twitter account claimed. Earlier this month, Walz’s account received a coveted blue checkmark from Twitter as part of the company’s broader push to verify the authenticity of many Senate, House and gubernatorial candidates currently running for office. Twitter has framed this effort as key to helping Americans find reliable information about politicians in the leadup to the 2020 election. But there’s just one problem: Walz does not exist.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Stuff NZ: Street art – public property or copyrighted art?. “It had been a common conversation among street artists for years – their work getting ripped off without permission or pay. If it wasn’t calendars it was postcards, or T-shirts, or advertising campaigns. They always thought there was nothing they could do. But they were wrong.”

ZDNet: Android malware can steal Google Authenticator 2FA codes. “Security researchers say that an Android malware strain can now extract and steal one-time passcodes (OTP) generated through Google Authenticator, a mobile app that’s used as a two-factor authentication (2FA) layer for many online accounts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Cloud Computing Is Not the Energy Hog That Had Been Feared. “The computer engine rooms that power the digital economy have become surprisingly energy efficient. A new study of data centers globally found that while their computing output jumped sixfold from 2010 to 2018, their energy consumption rose only 6 percent. The scientists’ findings suggest concerns that the rise of mammoth data centers would generate a surge in electricity demand and pollution have been greatly overstated.”

ZME Science: Hunter-gatherer “social media” accelerated our evolution. “As far back as the Stone Age, humans were developing complex and intricate cultural systems. These social networks played a key role in accelerating our development, a new study shows.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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