NEW RESOURCES

Fine Books & Collections: Peruse the Copyright Title Pages Collection at the Library of Congress. “Last month, in honor of the U.S. Copyright Act’s 150th anniversary, the Library of Congress launched an interesting new digital collection: Early Copyright Materials of the United States, 1790-1890. It might sound bland, but the result is an online database of 50,000 title pages of books published during that time that were deposited with the LOC by the publisher—and sometimes the author—prior to publication in order to fully register them per the terms of the law.”

California Department of Technology: New Cannabis Search Tool Unveiled . “The California Department of Technology (CDT) collaborated with the cannabis licensing authorities and others to launch a search tool that allows the public to find cannabis license information in one place. The new unified search tool has information from all three of states cannabis licensing authorities – the Bureau of Cannabis Control (BCC), the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and The California Department of Public Health (CDPH).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PC Magazine: Amazon Steps Into Virtual Tourism With Amazon Explore Beta Program. “When you think of tourism, Amazon probably doesn’t come to mind. But the company is entering the virtual tourism space with a new service called Amazon Explore. On Tuesday, the company launched a public beta for Amazon Explore as the pandemic continues to stifle tourism and travel across the globe. The service is designed to offer 40-minute to one-hour sessions with hosts based in the country you’re seeking to explore.”

Johns Hopkins Events: Lunch with the Libraries – Archival Justice: Reparative Collecting with Ephemera. “Collections of ephemera—materials created to serve a time-limited purpose, which are often, therefore, cheap and disposable—offer one route to a more just archive. Fliers, brochures, pamphlets, and postcards, for example, help make visible the experiences and interests of those whose lives went unrecorded or were twisted in more permanent accounts. Technological solutions for making these kinds of materials more discoverable in libraries and archives are also on the rise—which means, they are now more available to all kinds of audiences and researchers. In this presentation, Dr. Gabrielle Dean, William Kurrelmeyer Curator of Rare Books & Manuscripts in the Sheridan Libraries, will showcase several pieces of ephemera and ephemera collections that help us see not only what has been left out of history, but also, what we can never fully recover.” This event will be presented on Zoom.

Neowin: Google is permanently removing paid extensions from the Chrome Web Store. “Earlier this year, Google decided to temporarily suspend the ability to create paid browser extensions on the Chrome Web Store. While temporary, there was no set date for the measure to be reverted, and as it turns out, it won’t be.”

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: SIM swap fraud: How to prevent your phone number from being stolen. “In January, a published study revealed how incredibly easy it to do, potentially leading to thousands of dollars in fraud — that’s your money on the line. The practice of SIM swapping is becoming increasingly common, and despite carriers putting safeguards in place, researchers were able to demonstrate taking over your phone number quickly and with ease.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Times of India: Egmore museum to start digitisation drive in October. “The move will also help India’s second oldest museum in updating its official portal with pictures of its rich collection. The digitisation drive will cover the accession register, a record that contains details of each artefact. According to museum sources, the project will take about six months.”

Stanford Cyber Policy Center: Who Are the President of Guinea’s Facebook Trolls? The Blurry Line Between Modern Campaigning and Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior. “The West African country of Guinea will hold a crucial presidential election in October 2020 that will determine whether President Alpha Condé will extend his rule into a second decade, or whether Guinea will undergo its first-ever democratic transition of power. The election also has significant economic implications for Guinea’s international investors. In the runup to this election, we identified a network of 94 Facebook Pages that exhibited coordinated behavior in support of Condé and his party.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: U.S. expected to sue Google next week as DOJ seeks support from states. “The U.S. Justice Department is expected to sue Alphabet’s Google as soon as next week, and is currently urging state attorneys general to sign onto the lawsuit, according to three sources familiar with the process.”

AP: US Judge Dismisses New Mexico Privacy Claims Against Google. “A U.S. district judge has dismissed New Mexico’s privacy claims against Google over privacy concerns, but New Mexico’s top prosecutor vowed Monday to continue the legal fight to protect child privacy rights.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Mashable: Doctors use algorithms that aren’t designed to treat all patients equally. “The battle over algorithms in healthcare has come into full view since last fall. The debate only intensified in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which has disproportionately devastated Black and Latino communities. In October, Science published a study that found one hospital unintentionally directed more white patients than Black patients to a high-risk care management program because it used an algorithm to predict the patients’ future healthcare costs as a key indicator of personal health. Optum, the company that sells the software product, told Mashable that the hospital used the tool incorrectly.”

ZDNet: Drain the App Store swamp: Elect an independent third party. “If you’re a developer on the two major mobile application stores — Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store — there is no democracy whatsoever. As a developer for Apple, you aren’t even allowed to mention to your customers that they can buy directly from you, outside of the App Store. You can’t even say ‘visit our website for current pricing’ with a link. Both companies take an approach to running their app stores that would make any authoritarian leader proud.” Good morning, Internet…

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