NEW RESOURCES

BBC: Historic Kinora ‘flipbook footage’ of Wick saved for the future. “The National Library of Scotland spent years digitising the footage, which shows the hustle and bustle of the fishing industry in the Highland coastal town of Wick. The reels, some of which are up to 120 years old, were originally played on a device called a Kinora viewer. A reel of images printed on card was revolved in the viewer, creating an illusion similar to a flip-book animation.” The video is freely available to view online.

New-to-me, from IndyStar: ‘I was there’: Promoter shares details of past concerts at Indiana Rock History database. “[Steve] Sybesma played a large role in thousands of shows that happened in Indiana, thanks to his time as co-owner of concert company Sunshine Promotions from 1974 to 2000. As the ultimate live music insider, Sybesma is sharing event details that can’t be found anywhere else. Beyond the basics of a concert’s date, headlining performer and supporting acts, the Indiana Rock History project frequently discloses attendance figures, what artists were paid and how much money was collected in ticket sales.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

SCOTUSblog: Legal research no longer limited to keywords. “Longtime readers of SCOTUSblog are by now familiar with Casetext’s legal search tool. It solves an ever-present need for our team: finding opinions from all levels of the court system for our articles and case pages. Practitioners who read this blog, on the other hand, face a different need in their day-to-day work with the law. Rather than searching cases by name, attorneys need a way to search case law to find support for specific propositions. This task is challenging not just because the common law is vast, but because judges will use different articulations for the same proposition or principle. Casetext addresses this formidable challenge head on with their new tool: Parallel Search.”

NiemanLab: Who shares the news that people see on Facebook — friends or publishers?. “The majority of people in our survey (54%) saw no news within the first 10 posts in their feeds at all. The most common type of news in the sample was hard news from mainstream publishers. I got a good question from Nieman Lab reader and contributor Dan Kennedy: ‘Were you looking only at stories from news organizations popping up in someone’s news feed? Or were you also counting friends who share news stories?'”

USEFUL STUFF

Business Insider: How to archive a Google Classroom on a computer or mobile device when you no longer actively need it. “As the end of your term or semester rolls around, consider archiving your Google Classroom. A feature available only to teachers, archiving is a way to keep you organized and preserve materials as you move on to a new section or other courses. Archiving is a way to file a class and its materials away without permanently deleting it.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Facebook Struggles to Balance Civility and Growth. “In the past several months, as Facebook has come under more scrutiny for its role in amplifying false and divisive information, its employees have clashed over the company’s future. On one side are idealists, including many rank-and-file workers and some executives, who want to do more to limit misinformation and polarizing content. On the other side are pragmatists who fear those measures could hurt Facebook’s growth, or provoke a political backlash that leads to painful regulation.”

Reddit: Italian newspaper’s online archive is going to get lost because Flash won’t be supported anymore. “Italian newspaper’s online archive is going to get lost because Flash won’t be supported anymore – edit: might get lost, they are actually working on it but my hopes aren’t too high.” I am linking to Reddit instead of the original article because a) the original is in Italian; b) I liked the Reddit discussion.

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Supreme Court hears case on hacking law and its limits. “For the first time, the US Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments surrounding a 34-year-old law on computer hacking — examining how the terms of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act mean everyday activities like browsing Instagram on a work computer could be interpreted as a federal crime.”

Ars Technica: Cases against Facebook are reportedly coming… when FTC decides how. “After well over a year spent investigating Facebook, state and federal regulators are more than ready to start launching a slate of cases against Facebook, new reports say—that is, as soon as the agencies can agree on how they actually want to do it. New suits against Facebook should come before the end of January, The Wall Street Journal writes. Both the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of attorneys general for 47 states and territories are expected to take some kind of action.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: One of biology’s biggest mysteries ‘largely solved’ by AI. “One of biology’s biggest mysteries has been solved using artificial intelligence, experts have announced. Predicting how a protein folds into a unique three-dimensional shape has puzzled scientists for half a century. London-based AI lab, DeepMind, has largely cracked the problem, say the organisers of a scientific challenge.”

Online Journalism Blog: “There are still many questions that are not answered” – Nicolas Kayser-Bril on investigating algorithmic discrimination on Facebook. “In a special guest post for OJB, Vanessa Fillis speaks to AlgorithmWatch’s Nicolas Kayser-Bril about his work on how online platforms optimise ad delivery, including his recent story on how Facebook draws on gender stereotypes.”

Chemistry World: Nature journals set to offer all authors open access route in 2021 – for a price. “In a significant policy shift, Nature and its 32 sister journals will give authors the chance to make their work free to read immediately after publication from January 2021. The move was announced by Springer Nature, the world’s second biggest scholarly publisher, which runs the Nature-branded journals, earlier this week. The publisher plans a hefty article processing charge (APC) of €9500 (£8460) per article. Springer Nature says it’s not waiving the APC for researchers based in developing nations, which many open access journals and publishers already do.” Good evening, Internet…

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