NEW RESOURCES

Penn State News: Global Building Network online bibliography produced by University Libraries. “Established in 2018, GBN coordinates a worldwide effort to engage and convene a transdisciplinary group of stakeholders and partnerships to accelerate the development of research, education and case studies on the benefits of high-performance buildings. It aims to advance building science, construction processes and building management to create an international framework that will make buildings more sustainable, more efficient and healthier for people.”

The Next Web: Furious AI researcher creates a list of non-reproducible machine learning papers. “On February 14, a researcher who was frustrated with reproducing the results of a machine learning research paper opened up a Reddit account under the username ContributionSecure14 and posted the r/MachineLearning subreddit: ‘I just spent a week implementing a paper as a baseline and failed to reproduce the results. I realized today after googling for a bit that a few others were also unable to reproduce the results. Is there a list of such papers? It will save people a lot of time and effort.’ The post struck a nerve with other users on r/MachineLearning, which is the largest Reddit community for machine learning.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: Get the full news story with Full Coverage in Search. “In 2018, we first introduced the Full Coverage feature as part of Google News. With just a tap, people can see top news, local headlines, in-depth pieces, explainers, interviews and more on a developing news story. We’re now bringing Full Coverage to Search, making it easier for more people to explore all aspects of a story from a variety of perspectives.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: How to Scrape Webpages at Regular Intervals (Automatically). “In this write-up, I will introduce you to two methods for web scraping. The first method is a beginner-friendly way to scrape data using a ready-to-use solution. The second method is a programmer-friendly way to scrape data using Scrapy, which supports powerful scraping if well done. Let’s check both of them.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechCrunch: Dan Siroker’s new startup Scribe automates Zoom note-taking. “Scribe appears in the meeting as an additional participant, recording video and audio while creating a real-time transcript. During or after the meeting, users can edit the transcript, watch or listen to the associated moment in the recording and highlight important points. From a technological perspective, none of this feels like a huge breakthrough, but I was impressed by the seamlessness of the experience — just by adding an additional participant, I had a full recording and searchable transcript of our conversation that I could consult later, including while I was writing this story.”

International Business Times: Activists In Race To Save Digital Trace Of Syria War. “From videos of deadly air strikes to jihadist takeovers, Al-Mutez Billah’s YouTube page served as a digital archive of the Syrian war until automated takedown software in 2017 erased it permanently. The page exhibiting footage that violated YouTube’s community standards could not be restored because Al-Mutez Billah, a citizen-journalist, had been executed by the Islamic State group three years earlier over his documentation efforts.”

The Verge: Here’s a first look at Mark Cuban’s podcasting platform Fireside. “Broadly, the app is best described as a hybrid between Spotify’s Anchor software and Clubhouse. Although it prioritizes live conversation, like Clubhouse, it tries to make off-the-cuff conversations sound more professional. Intro music welcomes people into a room, for example, which is a nice touch, but it doesn’t exactly translate like it does during an edited podcast.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mississippi Today: House advances bill that would entangle Mississippi Archives and History board in politics. “A bill that has angered many state historians would have the governor and lieutenant governor appoint members to the board that oversees the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, a move opponents say would politicize an agency that has remained above that fray for more than 100 years.”

Krebs on Security: A Basic Timeline of the Exchange Mass-Hack. “Sometimes when a complex story takes us by surprise or knocks us back on our heels, it pays to revisit the events in a somewhat linear fashion. Here’s a brief timeline of what we know leading up to last week’s mass-hack, when hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Exchange Server systems got compromised and seeded with a powerful backdoor Trojan horse program.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

CNET: Hamilton’s entire first act stunningly recreated in Animal Crossing. “Hamilton was a huge success when it transitioned from the stage to Disney Plus last year, yet the musical film may not be the most impressive reimagining of the hugely popular play. That accolade may instead go to Guitar_Knight14, a YouTuber who meticulously recreated Hamilton’s first act in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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