NEW RESOURCES

Cornell Chronicle: Virtual portal creates access to food security solutions. “The portal will launch with over 100 innovative solutions sourced from multiple initiatives and invites people to contribute to other solutions and add more information. The portal resources target the equitable improvement of nutrition while also restoring and protecting the environment. Solutions span the whole food supply chain and include policies, technologies, nature-based solutions, public/private collaborations, financial solutions, capacity building, and social equity approaches.”

The Art Newspaper: Calling all numismatists! Biggest coin database in German-speaking world to go live today. “A new database with information on approximately 90,000 coins in German and Austrian public collections is due to go live at 6pm central European time today, the fruit of seven years of planning and preparation by 29 institutions. The portal… will offer free access to the biggest coin database in the German-speaking world, comprising parts of the collections of the Münzkabinett in Berlin and its counterpart at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum as well as thousands of coins in smaller museums and university collections.” It’s already launched; this article is from late May. There is an English version of the site available.

USEFUL STUFF

PC Magazine: What Is Amazon Sidewalk and How Do You Disable It?. “When the Sidewalk Bridges(s) in your house are active, wireless signals that reach outside your home to the sidewalk and beyond will allow any passing Sidewalk-enabled device (called a Sidewalk Endpoint) to instantly connect. Sidewalk will also help set up new Amazon products on your home Wi-Fi. You’re not going to use Amazon Sidewalk to sidle up to the neighbor’s house, access their Wi-Fi on your laptop, and use their ISP bandwidth to watch Netflix. But your Echo devices and your neighbors can co-mingle, forming a low-energy, long-range mesh network over the whole area.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

KQED: How Some Elders are Working to Preserve the Legacy of the Black Panther Party in Oakland. “In Buffalo’s view, one of the most important things he can do is continue to preserve the legacy of the Black Panther Party for the generations to come. Buffalo’s story brings up a larger issue of ownership, power and historical narrative when it comes to preserving and sharing the legacy of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, and the broader Bay Area. He’s one of many people eager to ensure the history of the Black Panther Party is accessible and available to the public.” This man spends most of what he receives in government assistance on maintaining a storage unit containing Black Panther Party history and archives. Even when he doesn’t have a place to stay he’s focused on safeguarding history.

Tom’s Guide: LastPass vs. 1Password: Which password manager wins?. “LastPass does have a leg up with its free tier, which has all the basic functionality you could want, although it recently limited syncing across all device types (computers, smartphones and tablets) to its premium plan. However, 1Password’s user experience on Apple devices and its plans to improve the design across platforms put it in close proximity to other competitors. So which should you get? Let this LastPass vs. 1Password faceoff help you decide.”

Refinery29: Queerness Is A Meme: Why All The Good Social Media Is Gay. “From newsgroups and chat rooms to LiveJournal and Tumblr, queer culture and humor has flourished online since the conception of the internet. But over the past several years, queer memes have morphed into their own world, community, and language full of hyper-specific references, trends, and tropes.” I try to avoid too many social media navel-gazing articles, but this was so richly-written I didn’t want you to miss it.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Lexology: The end of an odyssey: The German Act to adapt copyright law to the requirements of the Digital Single Market. “The German Act to adapt copyright law to the requirements of the Digital Single Market will enter into force on 7 June 2021 – as the first national transposition of the Digital Single Market Directive (‘DSM Directive’). It will result in major amendments of German Copyright law and is the attempt to not only unite conflicting interests of rights holders, authors and internet users but also to adjust the partially outdated German copyright law to the digital age. As a result, a huge variety of partly controversially discussed new provisions and amendments will be implemented. We have looked into it and share with you some of the highlights of the new regulation.”

AP: Florida sued over law to ban social media content blocking. “Two groups representing online companies sued Florida on Thursday over a new law that seeks to punish large social media businesses like Facebook and Twitter if they remove content or ban politicians.”

Brussels Times: Interpol develops family DNA database to identify missing persons. “A new Interpol database will make it possible to identify a missing person through the international comparison of family DNA data, the international police cooperation organisation announced. Interpol has been using a DNA database since 2004 in order to help identify human remains that police discover, but they don’t always have a sample from a missing person.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Runner: Why you should try self-hosting and de-Google your life. “Many people found themselves picking up eclectic new hobbies during the pandemic, and while people were baking bread and writing music, I decided to build myself a personal server. I essentially built a new PC with additional hard drives and installed Debian Linux on it, but if you’re interested in doing something similar for a lower cost, I would recommend buying your own hard drives and using any old PC you have sitting around. You can also use a Raspberry Pi — a scientific calculator-sized computer — and format it and install either Debian Linux or FreeNAS.”

Psychology Today: How Social Media Can Influence Your Memories. “A new study published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking has found that sharing your personal memories on social media may have an added benefit of helping you remember those moments.”

Newsroom (New Zealand): Awkward things social media knows about you. “What’s the problem if the very clever people at Facebook and Google become billionaires? They’ve given us so many new ‘friends’ and useful Internet searches. One problem is that the fortunes derive from technologies that many of us are belatedly finding obnoxiously intrusive.” Good morning, Internet…

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