TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Techdirt: Ajit Pai’s FCC Does Something Good, Frees Wireless Spectrum The Auto Industry Had Done Little With. “Last week, the FCC quietly voted unanimously to add 45MHz of spectrum to Wi-Fi to public access, taking it away from an auto industry public safety initiative that failed to materialize over the last 20 years. Spectrum in the 5.850GHz to 5.925GHz range for several decades had been set aside for something called Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), a vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications system that was supposed to warn drivers of traffic dangers.”

Ubergizmo: YouTube Testing A Timestamp Button For Commenting. “While YouTube does allow users to leave comments that include the timestamp, sometimes you have to go hunting for it, and not all users bother either, but that could change in the future. It would seem that according to a YouTube support document, the company is now testing a timestamp button that allows users to leave comments at that particular point in the video.”

USEFUL STUFF

Search Engine Journal: How to Create Google My Business Posts That Get Results. “Having a Google My Business (GMB) profile is one of the best ways to get attention for your local business and boost your rankings. With so many features, working with GMB can get overwhelming. One feature worth using: Google My Business Posts.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

KWWL: Local nonprofit believes Facebook took down their page by mistake. “Just 4 days before Giving Tuesday, the largest day of giving worldwide, the nonprofit Table 2 Table Food Rescue sees an impact after Facebook unpublished their page.”

Neowin: UK government sets less ambitious gigabit broadband goal. “The UK’s Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has announced that the country’s original plan to bring gigabit broadband to every home in the country by 2025 has been scaled back so that the technology will be available in 85% of residences. While those in towns and cities around the country will likely be unaffected by the watering down of the plan, those out in more rural areas will be left with poorer internet connections.”

Tubefilter: This Streamer Took The Sims’ Lack Of Diversity Into Her Own Hands — And Then Became An Advisor To EA. “Amira Virgil was an avid streamer of The Sims — but she became frustrated when she couldn’t create characters that reflected her reality. And so Virgil, who goes by the online moniker XMiraMira, took matters into her own hands, creating a downloadable ‘Melanin Pack’ — enabling users to create characters with 18 different skin tones and makeup looks to suit a diverse array of character preferences. In the latest episode of Creator News, Virgil shares that her custom packs have been downloaded more than 1 million times to date, which led her to create other mod packs in realms like hair, clothing, and more.”

The Verge: The cockroach emoji proposal is a story about texting through the apocalypse. “A slate of new emoji was announced in January. Months later, they’ve finally trickled onto most people’s phones… but in one case, it’s really more of a skitter. I’m talking about the cockroach, arguably the most shudder-inducing emoji of 2020 — and the product of a great little short story about the looming end of the world.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Google’s antitrust battles: Here’s what you need to know. “Several areas of Google’s business are being scrutinized. Here’s what you need to know about the tech giant’s antitrust battles.”

NextGov: House Bill Would Create NOAA-Led National Database to Help Coastal Communities Confront Rising Seas. “Legislation recently introduced in the House calls for the creation of a sea level-tracking database—deemed the National Coastal Data Information System—to inform people in frontline coastal communities how climate change is uniquely impacting their areas, and ultimately advance their preparedness for future natural disasters.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: What Facebook Fed the Baby Boomers. “After years of reading about the ways that Facebook is radicalizing and polarizing people I wanted to see it for myself — not in the aggregate, but up close and over time. What I observed is a platform that gathered our past and present friendships, colleagues, acquaintances and hobbies and slowly turned them into primary news sources. And made us miserable in the process.”

The Guardian: For the sake of democracy, social media giants must pay newspapers. “One of the lessons we have learned over a couple of centuries is that functioning societies need free media – free in the sense of liberty rather than free beer. I hold no brief for newspapers, per se, or for many conventional media organisations, but I think it’s unquestionable that the survival of liberal democracy requires a functioning public sphere in which information circulates freely and in which wrongdoing, corruption, incompetence and injustices can be investigated and brought to public attention.”

TechCrunch: What will tomorrow’s tech look like? Ask someone who can’t see. “When I was pronounced legally blind in 2009, I didn’t know one other person who called themselves blind – least of all ‘low vision’ or ‘visually impaired.’ Today, I manage the largest blindness community in the world, Be My Eyes, a support platform where more than 4 million people and companies use live video to support users in almost 200 languages. And though the growth of our collective community is a crucial step making our lives better, it’s just one piece of what makes today, as I’ve heard many others say, ‘a great time to be blind.'” Good morning, Internet…

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