NEW RESOURCES

Tasmania Examiner: Australian first historical website to illuminate Tasmania’s Indigenous history. “[The site] was believed to be the first site of its kind in Australia and tells the history of the Stoney Creek people who lived in the Tamar Valley for a thousand generations. The website was developed by historian and academic Dr Michael Powell and Indigenous historian Dr Aunty Patsy Cameron. More than 30 Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics, scholars and community members also contributed to the website.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Yahoo News: Google Maps updates Ben Nevis route after complaints about ‘potentially fatal’ path. “Google has updated a Ben Nevis route in its mapping service after complaints it had suggested a ‘potentially fatal’ path for walkers. The tech giant denied its map offered dangerous directions for people on foot but did admit driving routes could be misinterpreted at the mountain in Scotland.” According to the article I linked to a few days ago, locals attempting to contact Google about this were ignored. Glad to see that news articles about the problem got them to change things before someone died.

Emojipedia: New Emojis in 2021-2022 . “A saluting face, biting lip, coral and a low battery are among the emojis up for approval later in the year. These are currently draft candidates for the next emoji release versioned Emoji 14.0. Other inclusions on the draft list are consistent gender options for pregnancy and royalty, ‘heart hands’, and the ability to choose from 15 different handshake combinations.”

TechCrunch: Twilio’s new tools will let anyone add live video and audio to their apps. “Twilio, a company best known for its tools that help developers build text message/phone-call-powered apps, is branching out into a new category: livestreaming. This morning the company announced Twilio Live, a platform meant to help developers more easily integrate live video/audio features into their apps.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Verge: How to change your iPhone’s text size for a specific app. “Sometimes you want the text in your app to be smaller, so you can fit more content on a single screen. Sometimes you want it to be bigger, especially if you’ve been putting off buying those reading glasses. But until recently, if you had an iPhone, you had to pick a single text size as a standard for all your apps. Not anymore.”

ABC 10: How to watch the Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony. “This year’s Olympic Summer Games, already postponed a year because of the pandemic, will be held without fans cheering from the stands after a state of emergency was declared in Tokyo in an effort to fight a surge in COVID-19 cases. Here is everything you need to know about the opening ceremony and how you can watch it live, on TV and online.”

Mashable: How to create a GIF from a TikTok video . “Gone are the days of screen recording a video on your phone and uploading it to a sketchy GIF-making website, choosing the start and end times, adjusting the frame rate, blah blah blah you know the struggle. Making GIFs can be a huge pain. GIFing on TikTok is refreshingly easy, and only takes a few taps. Here’s how to do it.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Facebook: Taking Action Against Hackers in Iran. “Today, we’re sharing actions we took against a group of hackers in Iran to disrupt their ability to use their infrastructure to abuse our platform, distribute malware and conduct espionage operations across the internet, targeting primarily the United States.”

Tom’s Guide: Update Google Chrome now to fix this dangerous zero-day flaw . “Few details are yet available about the zero-day flaw. Google’s Chrome blog post yesterday (July 15) notes that it involves ‘type confusion in V8,’ the JavaScript rendering engine used by Chrome, and that ‘Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2021-30563 [the flaw’s catalogue number] exists in the wild.'”

Motherboard: Samsung Washing Machine App Requires Access to Your Contacts and Location. “A series of Samsung apps that allow customers to control their internet-connected appliances require access to all the phone’s contacts and, in some cases, the phone call app, phone’s location, and camera. Customers have been furious about this for years.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Los Angeles Review of Books: Archival Futures: The Archive as a Place and the Place of the Archive. “ONE CERTAINTY THAT has always guided historians is the possibility of traveling to work in an archive. The time and costs involved in such research trips set the timelines of their research projects. But, confronted with an unprecedented pandemic, can we still stick to the old certainties that such research trips are central to what we write and teach? In an increasingly uncertain and digitizing world, where the relationship between past, present, and future thins out, it is time to rethink the relationship between historical writing and the archive. Specifically, the notion of the archive as a place requires revision.”

EurekAlert: Beautiful VR setting could reduce pain in unpleasant medical procedure. “Dr Wojciech Krajewski and colleagues at the Wroc?aw Medical University in Poland recruited 103 patients, with a mean age of 66 years, who were listed for rigid cystoscopy with just local, intraurethral anaesthesia. Some were for a first diagnosis and others required follow up having experienced the procedure in the past. Individuals were randomised to undergo classic cystoscopy or the procedure with VR goggles and headphones presenting an image of the Skógafoss waterfall in Iceland.” Good evening, Internet…

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