NEW RESOURCES

Korea Times: Hong Kong historians capture horrors of World War II in new website . “Historian Kwong Chi-man wants Hongkongers to remember the horrors of war, and one particularly painful episode from the fall of Hong Kong in December 1941 stands out. Nurses running an orphanage in Fanling in the New Territories were raped and brutalized when Japanese soldiers arrived on December 8 and overran the place.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Estonia’s MPs will pick its next president from a field of one. “President Kersti Kaljulaid’s five-year term expires on 10 October, and lawmakers in the 101-seat Riigikogu parliament must elect a new head of state to replace her in the largely ceremonial post. As no further candidates registered by the late Saturday deadline, the director of the Estonian National Museum, Alar Karis, will be the sole contender. Karis, a former state auditor, is the only one who has managed to get support from the required minimum of 21 lawmakers.”

Government of Canada: Library and Archives Canada announces First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation organizations receiving funding through the Listen, Hear our Voices initiative. “Nineteen (19) Indigenous organizations across the country received funding to digitize and make accessible their existing audio and video heritage for future generations as part of the initiative’s second call for applications, which closed in December 2020. An Indigenous review committee, external to LAC, and consisting of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation individuals from across Canada reviewed applications and made the following recommendations for funding.”

Tubefilter: TikTok Launches Latinx Creator Incubator For Hispanic Heritage Month. “TikTok Latinx Creatives, as the program is called, will take place over 10 weeks and serve to nurture 150 resident creators and musicians. The program is being hosted in collaboration Macro, a multi-platform media company representing the voices and perspectives of Black people and people of color. MACRO will advise TikTok on speaker selection, programming, and business-building opportunities for participants.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

VentureBeat: 3 SSL VPN vulnerabilities disclosed in 2019 are still routinely exploited. “Vulnerabilities in SSL VPN products are some of the most exploited by attackers for initial access to target networks, acting as a doorway for exploitation. Earlier this year, Tenable Research named three VPN vulnerabilities as part of its Top Five Vulnerabilities of 2020. Although all three vulnerabilities (CVE-2019-19781, CVE-2019-11510, CVE-2018-13379) were disclosed in 2019 and patched by January 2020, they continue to be routinely exploited more than halfway through 2021.”

Washington Post: There’s no escape from Facebook, even if you don’t use it. “Megan Borovicka joined Facebook in 2013 and then forgot she even had an account. But Facebook never forgot about her. The 42-year-old Oakland, Calif., lawyer never picked any ‘friends,’ posted any status updates, liked any photos or even opened the Facebook app on her phone. Yet over the last decade, Facebook has used an invisible data vacuum to suction up very specific details about her life — from her brand of underwear to where she received her paycheck.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Moving from Android to iPhone reveals my friends’ true feelings. “Yes, iMessage is convenient. Yes, so is FaceTime. While I personally decided to buy an iPhone 12 Pro Max for the redesign and app privacy controls in iOS 14.5, I didn’t expect it to make a difference to anyone in my social circle. I especially didn’t expect it to matter to the point of friends displaying fairly intense relief and jubilation.” I must admit I felt a bit of this when my mother switched from Android to iPhone. But not for long; she didn’t like the iPhone and switched back.

The Conversation: Lesson from a robot swarm: Change group behavior by talking one-on-one rather than getting on a soapbox. “Our robot swarm study looked at how opinions spread in large populations. We found that a population of uninformed individuals can cling to outdated beliefs and fail to adopt better available alternatives when information about the new options spreads to everyone all at once. Instead, when individuals only share the information one by one, the population can better adapt to changes and reach an agreement in favor of the best option.”

TechCrunch: Move fast and break Facebook: A bull case for antitrust enforcement. “My generation has watched with a combination of sadness and trepidation as legislators who barely use email question the leading technologists of our time about products that have long pervaded our lives in ways we don’t yet understand. I, personally, and my company both stand to gain little from this — but as a participant in the latest generation of social media upstarts, and as an American concerned for the future of our democracy, I feel a duty to try.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

AP: Georgia Teens Start Program to Teach Telugu, Tamil Languages. “From a young age, South Forsyth High School students Suhaas Bonkur, Krithika Kasireddy, Ritika Vemulapalli and Vinay Polaku began learning Telugu and Tamil, which are south Indian languages. When the four friends began hanging out, their speaking and comprehension skills strengthened, as well as their bonds with each other. In March, Bonkur began to develop an idea for a free tutoring service that would offer students of any age the opportunity to learn Telugu and Tamil. It wasn’t until his three friends jumped on board that the program started to take off.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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