NEW RESOURCES

Radio Prague International: “His story is a how-to manual”: New Winton website launched. “A freshly launched website celebrates the legacy of Sir Nicholas Winton, who in 1939 saved 669 mainly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia by helping them get to his native UK. The site showcases a wealth of material from the Sir Nicholas Winton Memorial Trust – and of course introduces visitors to his inspirational story.”

Christian Post: CCCU launches new database of racial, ethnic diversity resources. “A coalition of nearly 200 Christian institutions of higher education across North America has launched a new database providing resources to ‘identify how racism has affected and shaped the work of Christian higher education.'”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Library of Medicine: Progress Towards a Modernized ClinicalTrials.gov. “In 2019, NLM introduced a multi-year effort to modernize ClinicalTrials.gov, the world’s largest publicly accessible database of privately and publicly funded clinical trials. This effort was launched with a commitment to engage with and serve the millions of users who rely on this essential resource — with a focus on delivering an improved user experience on an updated platform that will accommodate growth and enhance efficiency.”

Angelus News: Vatican Radio to launch web radio on 90th anniversary. “The web radio, debuting Feb. 12, will make Vatican Radio broadcasts available over the internet in English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Armenian. The broadcasts will also be available via the Radio Vaticana app. Vatican Radio already transmits via radio waves, shortwave, satellite, DAB+, and digitally.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC World: How to file your taxes for free. “Tax filing season is here again and, apparently, not ‘resting quietly at home’ due to COVID-19. Disappointing as that is, beginning February 12, 2021, the IRS is accepting e-filed tax returns. So at least you can file without having to leave the house. Word has it there’s another stimulus check on the way, but what you may not know is that due to regulations associated with this stimulus check, you may need to file a 2020 tax return if you haven’t filed a tax return in prior years.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

ABC Columbia: UofSC creates project to document the experiences of residents during the Black Lives Matter movement. “The University of South Carolina is documenting the experiences of residents during the expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement that took place over the summer.”

Business Insider: Google has pulled down a propaganda blog backing the military coup in Myanmar after outcry by online activists. “Google has pulled down a propaganda blog supporting the military coup in Myanmar after the blog was discovered by an online activist this week. The blog was managed and hosted via the Google-owned Blogger platform under the URL seniorgeneralminaunghlaing.com, taking its name from the Myanmar military leader who has seized control of the country.”

PC Gamer: No, Tabletop Simulator, you can’t outsource localisation to Google Translate. “Listen, Google Translate isn’t terrible in a pinch. If you need to quickly work out how to say ‘sandwich’ in German, it’ll do. Unfortunately, Tabletop Simulator developer Berserk discovered the hard way that you can’t replace a full localisation team with Google’s web tool. Last week’s update claimed to bump the number of supported languages in the table-flipper up to 29. But non-anglophone players quickly discovered this claim came with a massive caveat—namely, that the new translations seemed to have been hastily thrown together using Google Translate, with disastrous results.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ProPublica: The U.S. Spent $2.2 Million on a Cybersecurity System That Wasn’t Implemented — and Might Have Stopped a Major Hack. “The software company SolarWinds unwittingly allowed hackers’ code into thousands of federal computers. A cybersecurity system called in-toto, which the government paid to develop but never required, might have protected against this.”

Outlook India: Govt working on law to regulate social media: Ram Madhav. “Senior BJP leader Ram Madhav said that social media has become so powerful that it can even topple governments, leading to anarchy and weakening democracy, and solutions to tackle this are needed to be found within the constitutional framework.”

PopCulture: Metallica’s Twitch Dub Due to Copyright Concern Sparks Hilarity on Social Media. “A live-streamed Metallica concert was cut short this weekend when the host service Twitch dubbed over it with royalty-free music. Fans were amused by this course of events — not least of all because Metallica helped make copyright laws what they are today.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NiemanLab: As Facebook pulls news in Australia, rural and elderly Australians will be hardest hit. “A study of local news consumption by the News and Media Research Center at the University of Canberra shows 32% of people in regions with populations under 30,000 have been turning to social media to fill the news gap. Newspaper closures and job losses have hit areas outside Australian cities hard. More than 100 local news outlets have closed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Removing news from Facebook will further restrict the choices of people with already limited access to news.”

Poynter: Factually: Twitter, your Birdwatch has problems. “For the last week, I’ve analyzed more than 2,600 notes made by Birdwatchers and reviewed 8,200 ratings pushed by the social media platform based on that information. And I have tested out a public algorithm the company uses to rank notes based on their ‘helpfulness.’ The results so far aren’t encouraging, as I found blatant misinformation receiving ‘not misleading’ notes, context that reveals political bias and a small number of voices — with dubious Twitter feeds of their own — dominating Birdwatch activity.” Good morning, Internet…

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