NEW RESOURCES

The Daily Universe: Black voices amplified in photography exhibit. “The project features portrait photographs of 76 Black women, men and youth made using tintype, a photographic process that dates to the Civil War era. In tintype photography, a thin metal plate is coded with a chemical called collodion. The plate is then sensitized to light with silver nitrate and inserted into a non-digital, accordion-like camera called a field camera. The field camera is then exposed to light, embedding the image onto the plate.” The project is also available online.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Black Enterprise: Ebony Magazine Purchased By Former NBA Player Ulysses ‘Junior’ Bridgeman For $14 Million . “The famed EBONY magazine may be on the verge of resurrection. According to The Chicago Tribune, it may have a new owner in former NBA basketball player Ulysses ‘Junior’ Bridgeman. Bridgeman’s company, Bridgeman Sports and Media, has emerged as the successful bidder for Ebony Media’s assets by a Houston bankruptcy court late last week. Bridgeman placed a bid of $14 million for the company.”

The Next Web: Google Photos’ new AI-powered feature turns your 2D snaps into cinematic 3D images. “The feature uses machine learning to predict an image’s depth and create a 3D representation of the scene. It then animates the picture to produce a panning effect.”

BuzzFeed News: Facebook Is Developing A Tool To Summarize Articles So You Don’t Have To Read Them. “In recent weeks, departing Facebook employees have pushed back on the idea that AI could cure the company’s content moderation problems. While Facebook employs thousands of third-party human moderators, it’s made it clear that AI is how it plans to patrol its platform in the future, an idea that concerns workers.”

USEFUL STUFF

Cosmopolitan: Where to Find the Best Free (Yes, Really) Audiobooks. “Sometimes you’re so busy and/or eager to drown out your thoughts while going through your to-do list that all you want is a nice audiobook to tell you a story. What if I told you that you can add to your listening list without spending any money or moving one inch off the couch? Let me tell you all about the best free audiobooks you can find.” This is not a site roundup but rather a specific selection of good free audiobooks.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNN: Every investor in Britain’s slave trade set to be detailed in new ‘dictionary’ after funding from UK government. “The first ever index of investors in Britain’s extensive slave trade is being compiled by academics, after the project received £1 million ($1.4 million) in funding from the UK government. The Dictionary of British Slave Traders will detail the 6,500 members of society who took part in the trade throughout a period stretching more then two centuries.”

Smithsonian Magazine: Your Cherished Family Recipes Could Be Featured in a Museum Exhibition. “Family recipes, whether invented on the fly or handed down through generations, often become treasured heirlooms, offering a window into the private lives, flavors and histories of one’s ancestors. Now, the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) is giving the public a chance to share their relatives’ beloved recipes with a broader audience.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wired: Cops Are Getting a New Tool For Family-Tree Sleuthing. “It used to be that DNA could solve a case only if it matched the genetic profile of someone in a criminal database or an existing suspect. But the recent rise of genetic genealogy—a technique that makes it possible to identify people through relatives who have added their genetic information to genealogy databases—changed the odds. A skilled genetic genealogist can now turn an unknown DNA profile that strikes out in traditional forensic searches into a suspect’s name nearly half of the time.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Techdirt: The Cost Of Broadband Is Too Damned High. “How much do consumers pay for internet service in the United States? The question might seem relatively simple, but the answer has stymied the federal government for years—because no agency collects this data. Throughout 2020, my organization, New America’s Open Technology Institute, published the Cost of Connectivity series to crack open the black box of internet pricing. The collective takeaway of these studies is clear: the cost of internet service is alarmingly high, and there is substantial evidence of an affordability crisis in the United States.”

Red Hat: A brief history of network connectivity: Connected mainframes. “The appearance of the modern data center was not a grand reveal. Rather, it resulted from the evolution and convergence of two technologies that emerged out of the early 1980s. The first is the personal computer. The other is ubiquitous networking. Without either, the modern data center would not exist. This article is the first installment in a four-part series that tells the story of how these two technologies transformed the personal computer from what was essentially a hobbyist obsession into the foundation of modern IT architecture. This evolution, from PC to data center, provides a way to understand not only our present but, more importantly, it allows us to anticipate what our future might become.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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