NEW RESOURCES

Thanks to Diane R. We toss resources back and forth to each other via email and she sent me a gem yesterday from Medievalists: Medieval database revived – examines writings from early medieval England. “Created in the 1990s, the loss of the ground-breaking Fontes Anglo-Saxonici database in 2018 made it virtually impossible once again to trace the precise borrowings within the early medieval literary heritage of the British Isles. However, in a multi-disciplinary project involving medieval scholars and computer scientists, researchers and enthusiasts of the period can once again cross-reference medieval authors with their global counterparts from whom they often ‘borrowed’ long passages in pre-plagiarism times.”

PR Newswire: accessiBe, The Web Accessibility Market Leader, Announces New Search Engine accessFind to Help People with Disabilities Find Accessible Websites. “Through partnerships with organizations including United Spinal Association, Columbia Lighthouse For The Blind (CLB), The Viscardi Center, The IMAGE Center of Maryland, Earle Baum Center of the Blind, Determined2Heal, Senspoint, and others, accessFind will be the first search engine designed to enhance how people with disabilities navigate the internet through the creation of an accessible-friendly index of websites.”

USEFUL STUFF

Washington Post: Extension services are the best free cooking resource. Here’s how to use them.. “Formally established by an act of Congress in 1914, extension programs are based at land-grant colleges and universities and tasked with providing nonformal, research-based education to agricultural producers, business owners and the general public on a wide variety of topics, from parenting and gardening to cooking and food safety.”

Screen Rant: How To Schedule & Register For TikTok Live Events. “TikTok Live allows users to broadcast to their followers in real-time, much like the similar functionality in platforms like Instagram. Not everyone can go live on TikTok — users must be 16 years or older to do so and have at least 1,000 followers. This helps to ensure there will be at least some interest in broadcasts. Of course, when users go live with no warning then only their followers on the app at the time or available to watch when they receive a notification will be able to view the broadcast. That’s what Live Events are aimed at tackling.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Irish Times: Facebook rejects two proposals to reduce Zuckerberg’s control over the company. “Facebook has rejected two proposals intended to diminish chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s control over the company, an expected though disappointing outcome for those worried about the chief executive’s power. The board on Wednesday turned down a proposal to replace Mr Zuckerberg as chairman with an independent representative. Mr Zuckerberg, who has served as chairman since 2012, controls about 58 per cent of the voting shares, according to a regulatory filing.”

The Guardian: Influencers say Russia-linked PR agency asked them to disparage Pfizer vaccine. “French and German YouTubers, bloggers and influencers have been offered money by a supposedly UK-based PR agency with apparent Russian connections to falsely tell their followers the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is responsible for hundreds of deaths.”

CNA Lifestyle: Instagram account shows love – and online exposure – to elderly hawkers. “According to the Instagram account, there will be three posts on three different hawkers each day ‘to help elderly hawkers to get more business during these tough times’. And these hawker highlights are crowd-sourced from the public.” This is in Singapore.

SECURITY & LEGAL

New Zealand Herald: Australian authorities investigate OnlyFans for possible links to financial crime. “NCA NewsWire reports that financial crimes watchdog AUSTRAC and the Australian Federal Police are monitoring the not-safe-for-work site over concerns its murky payments platform is facilitating crime, as banks and regulators are unable to establish who receives the payments.”

The Daily Swig: Bluetooth pairing, pwned: Security researchers discover fresh wave of ‘impersonation attack’ flaws in wireless tech. “Attackers were able to impersonate legitimate devices during the Bluetooth pairing process because of inherent security weaknesses in the Bluetooth Core and Bluetooth Mesh specifications that underpin the ubiquitous wireless technology.”

BBC: Russian hackers target aid groups in new cyber-attack, says Microsoft. “Microsoft says another wave of Russian cyber-attacks has targeted government agencies and human rights groups in 24 countries, most in the US. It said about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organisations had been attacked this week.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Recode by Vox: A disturbing, viral Twitter thread reveals how AI-powered insurance can go wrong. “Lemonade, the fast-growing, machine learning-powered insurance app, put out a real lemon of a Twitter thread on Monday with a proud declaration that its AI analyzes videos of customers when determining if their claims are fraudulent. The company has been trying to explain itself and its business model — and fend off serious accusations of bias, discrimination, and general creepiness — ever since.”

VentureBeat: Adversarial attacks in machine learning: What they are and how to stop them. “Adversarial machine learning, a technique that attempts to fool models with deceptive data, is a growing threat in the AI and machine learning research community. The most common reason is to cause a malfunction in a machine learning model. An adversarial attack might entail presenting a model with inaccurate or misrepresentative data as it’s training, or introducing maliciously designed data to deceive an already trained model.” Good morning, Internet…

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