NEW RESOURCES

BBC: Mabel Remington Colhoun photo collection goes online. “On an outside wall of Londonderry’s Tower Museum hangs a blue plaque in honour of Mabel Remington Colhoun. It remembers the many and varied achievements of an archaeologist, teacher and historian to life in the north west. But, throughout a life less ordinary, she was also a prolific photographer.”

FEMA: FEMA Releases National Risk Index: New Online Data Shows Natural Hazards Risks for Communities. “FEMA announced the Phase 1 rollout of the National Risk Index, a new online resource that helps illustrate communities most at risk from natural hazards. This online mapping application analyzes risk factors from 18 natural hazards. Additionally, to provide a holistic view of community risk, the application includes expected annual losses, social vulnerability and community resilience layers.”

National Library of New Zealand: New website connects Pacific people to cultural heritage collections. “The website is designed by, with and for Pacific peoples, educators, learners and researchers. Representatives from libraries, universities, archives and museums from around and within the Pacific, as well as NGOs and those working with community groups, made up the initial co-design group.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Internet Archive: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive. “Great news for everyone concerned about the Flash end of life planned for end of 2020: The Internet Archive is now emulating Flash animations, games and toys in our software collection.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNN: Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s new company launches its first product. “On Wednesday, Mayer announced that her secretive startup Lumi Labs — which she cofounded in 2018 with Enrique Muñoz Torres, who also worked at Yahoo and Google (GOOG) — has been rebranded as Sunshine and has its first product: Sunshine Contacts.”

Mashable: Facebook moderators blast Zuckerberg, claim he’s risking their lives for profits. “Mark Zuckerberg’s drive for profits might end with their deaths. So argue the more than 200 content moderators who published an open letter Wednesday accusing the Facebook CEO of hypocrisy and a wanton disregard for their health during a raging pandemic. In demanding many return to the office, the moderators insist, both Zuckerberg and the CEOs of content moderation companies CPL and Accenture have taken the psychologically taxing job of content moderation and added the deadly element of coronavirus exposure.”

Washington Post: Ethiopia’s cracking down in Tigray. But activists are spreading the news.. “In the early hours of Nov. 4, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed shut down telecommunications and deployed troops to his country’s northern Tigray region. Shortly after, a flurry of new Twitter accounts appeared and began to tweet about the situation. By the following week, new accounts were responsible for nearly a quarter of tweets about the crisis.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Girard Sharp: TurboTax Users Reach $40 Million Settlement With Intuit. “If approved, the settlement is expected to return between $15 and $75 to class members who make a claim. The settlement also requires Intuit to follow the FTC’s online marketing guidelines and disclose the Free File Program—along with a taxpayer’s qualifications to file for free—on the TurboTax website.”

Reuters: Google signs copyright agreements with six French newspapers. “Alphabet’s Google has signed copyright agreements with six French newspapers and magazines, including national dailies Le Monde and Le Figaro, the U.S. tech company said in a post on its blog on Thursday. The announcement follows months of bargaining between Google, French publishers and news agencies over how to apply revamped EU copyright rules, which allow publishers to demand a fee from online platforms showing extracts of their news.”

BetaNews: Batterygate: Apple to pay $113 million for throttling iPhone performance. “Starting back in 2016, Apple used updates to iOS to throttle the performance of older iPhones in a bid to improve battery life. While the company’s intensions may have been good, the fact that customers were not warned about the reduction in performance did not work in its favor.”

The Register: US Senate approves deepfake bill to defend against manipulated media. “Introduced last year by US Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Jerry Moran (R-KS), the Identifying Outputs of Generative Adversarial Networks Act (IOGAN Act) aims to promote research to detect and defend against realistic-looking fakery that can be used for purposes of deception, harassment, or misinformation.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Phys .org: ‘Strange rays’ crowdsourced on social media shed light on black hole illumination. “Unlike most scientific research, the team observing IC 5063’s strange rays assembled in a peculiar fashion: via crowd sourcing on social media. In December 2019, space image processing expert and citizen scientist Judy Schmidt noticed strange cones while processing an image of IC 5063, at first wondering if they were real, and if they were, whether they were galaxy-sized shadows, star streams, or something else.” Good morning, Internet…

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