NEW RESOURCES

Illinois News Bureau: Illinois artist Ben Grosser’s solo show imagines ‘Software for Less’. “A University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor of new media in the School of Art and Design, the co-founder of the Critical Technology Studies Lab at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and a faculty affiliate with the School of Information Sciences and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, [Ben] Grosser makes artwork that provides alternative ways of experiencing software and considers its cultural, social and political effects, how it changes our behavior and who it benefits.”

BusinessWorld: UN ESCAP launches risk and resilience database for Asia Pacific. “THE UN ECONOMIC and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP) has announced the launch of an online portal to track various hazard hotspots as well as climate adaptation efforts across the Asia Pacific region, featuring up-to-date information from over 50 countries including the Philippines.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: Experience the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics with Google and YouTube. ”
While some of the Tokyo 2020 Games are over, others are just beginning: The Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games are right around the corner. And just like earlier this summer, there are few ways you can enjoy the action from home.”I think they mean “a few” and this is an unfortunate typo…

GPO: GPO Makes Available Statute Compilations In USLM XML Format. “The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) and its legislative data partners in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have made Statute Compilations available in USLM XML format. This new format makes documents easier to use, read, and download. The public can access the compilations on GPO’s trusted digital repository govinfo, the one-stop site for information published by the Government.” USLM stands for United States Legislative Markup. You can read the schema user guide here.

Ubergizmo: WhatsApp Launches Public Beta Program For Its Desktop App. “The app already has betas for its mobile apps on iOS and Android, but now according to WABetaInfo, it seems that WhatsApp is also working on bringing its public beta program for its desktop app as well.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Wired: On Roblox, Kids Learn It’s Hard to Earn Money Making Games. “ROBLOX has become a video game titan, in recent years dominating the world of kids’ gaming and earning $454 million in revenue last quarter alone. A new report argues that success is built on exploiting young game developers, many of them children, who are making content for the game.”

Washington Post: In China’s blossoming live-streaming scene, new stars take root: Succulents. “The thick, fleshy plants have been growing in popularity in China for nearly a decade, but only recently collided with live-streaming in e-commerce, a $60 billion industry that got a massive boost during the pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of people are logging on daily to admire these vegetating celebrities, oohing as chattering hosts turn and twirl them around, showing off blushes of new color, entire centimeters of growth, or — what a treat! — some velvety new leaves.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

10 Boston: New Hampshire Town Loses $2.3M in Taxpayer Money to Cyberattack. “Peterborough, a town of just over 6,000 residents, is located in southern New Hampshire, about 35 miles west of Manchester. [Tyler] Ward and [Nicole] MacStay said town officials learned on July 26 that the ConVal School District, which serves Peterborough and eight other surrounding towns, had not received its monthly $1.2 million transfer form the town.”

The Conversation: The more video streaming services we get, the more we’ll turn to piracy. “We now have more than a dozen ‘subscription video on demand’ services to choose from, with many dozens more options available worldwide to anyone with a VPN to get around geoblocks. But all this competition isn’t actually making things easier. It’s likely all this ‘choice’ will see more of us turning to piracy to watch our favourite films and televisions shows.” Or maybe finding something else to watch? Just an idea.

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

BBC: JMW Turner painting goes on display for first time since 1833. “A Turner painting of Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire has gone on public display for the first time in nearly 200 years. The watercolour is being shown at the town’s local museum, as part of a scheme to encourage people back to small museums and heritage sites. Other objects going on display around the UK include a 160-million-year-old crocodile, a rare Bronze Age sword and the original Jolly Fisherman painting.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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