NEW RESOURCES

Nevada Today: Neon in Nevada: Preserving the glow of neon. “I’m excited to work for the University Libraries again on the Neon in Nevada Project. The team working on the project collected and processed thousands of images of neon signs across Nevada and preserved them in an interactive digital archive that is now accessible to the public. I am grateful to work on this project because I believe it’s important to showcase the neon sign jewels that exist across Nevada. The goal was to create a space where people in Nevada and elsewhere can view and interact with a vast collection of neon signs from all corners of the state in one place. The Neon in Nevada website and digital archive is a showcase of Nevada’s pride illuminated in neon, telling a vast visual and cultural history of our state.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

AP: Apple, Google raise new concerns by yanking Russian app. “Big Tech companies that operate around the globe have long promised to obey local laws and to protect civil rights while doing business. But when Apple and Google capitulated to Russian demands and removed a political-opposition app from their local app stores, it raised worries that two of the world’s most successful companies are more comfortable bowing to undemocratic edicts — and maintaining a steady flow of profits — than upholding the rights of their users.”

Washington Post: Senate hearing on ‘big data’ morphs into grilling over how Facebook harms teens. “Few things unite U.S. lawmakers in anger like a massive corporation hurting kids. That became abundantly clear at an antitrust hearing Tuesday, as senators took a major detour from its focus — ostensibly about how tech giants’ troves of data hurt competition — to lay into Facebook over explosive reporting suggesting it downplayed Instagram’s toxic impact on teen girls.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

California State University, Dominguez Hills: CSUDH Gerth Archives Obtains L.A. Free Press Collection. “The CSUDH Gerth Archives and Special Collections just got a lot ‘freakier’ with the acquisition of the archives of the L.A. Free Press, one of the first and most important underground newspapers of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The collection had belonged to Art Kunkin, the publisher and editor of the Free Press from its inception in 1964 until 1972. When Kunkin passed away in 2019 at the age of 91, his daughter began looking for an archive to house the large collection. She chose the Gerth Archives due to their dedication to archiving alternative voices from the local community.”

Seacoastonline: ‘Wonderful asset’: York Public Library begins digitizing full archive of The York Weekly. “The public’s access to local newspaper archives will soon improve dramatically, [Joel] Lefever said, thanks to a major project initiated by York Public Library Executive Director Michelle Sampson. Lefever hand-delivered two boxes of microfilm to Sampson on Thursday, Sept. 16, so YPL can have the microfilm records digitized, converted into a searchable format and made publicly available online.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Facebook warned over ‘very small’ indicator LED on smart glasses, as EU DPAs flag privacy concerns . “Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) said Friday that it has asked the tech giant to demonstrate that an LED indicator light also mounted on the specs — which lights up when the user is taking a video — is an effective way of putting other people on notice that they are being recorded by the wearer. Italy’s privacy watchdog, the Garante, already raised concerns about Facebook’s smart glasses — but Ireland has an outsized role as a regulator for the tech giant owing to where the company’s regional base is located.”

NBC News: The battle between the U.S. and ransomware hackers is escalating. “The White House is taking additional steps to encourage ransomware victims to alert the federal government, just as the hackers behind those attacks are threatening victims from doing so. The moves mark an escalation between the Biden administration, which has vowed to crack down on criminal hackers who try to extort Americans, and ransomware gangs, which have proven resilient to efforts to stop them.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

News@Northeastern: ‘Take Breaks, But Don’t Disengage’; The Perils Of ‘Doomscrolling’ When The World Is On Fire. “How to cope with the onslaught? Northeastern experts say it’s a difficult balancing act, especially when the glut of information doesn’t necessarily make us more insightful, and when it’s easy to become numb to injustices at home and in far-flung parts of the world. But it’s also an unprecedentedly connected digital universe, a fact that calls upon those of us with privilege and means to help shoulder more of humanity’s burdens, taking them into our lives in order to help improve conditions for everyone, the experts say.” I see a lot of articles on doomscrolling nowadays and many of them are just “do this” or “don’t do this.” I like this one because it gets into how too much doomscrolling can inhibit your personal development and warp your perspective.

Asahi Shimbun: Social media a boon to finding new animal, plant species. “Satoshi Shimano, a professor of biological taxonomy at Tokyo’s Hosei University, announced the discovery of a new mite species, Choshi hamabe dani, in March. As its scientific name, Ameronothrus twitter, suggests, the arachnid’s existence might not have come to light had it not been for a photo that an amateur photographer posted on Twitter in May 2019. Takamasa Nemoto, a company employee, often snaps photos of mites. But he was unfamiliar with ones he found near a port while out on a fishing trip with his family. His tweet, with the photo of a mite cluster, found its way to Shimano by chance.”

FedTech: CDC Launches Forecasting Center to Help Predict Emerging Diseases. “The agency, which has been criticized by some for how slowly it has sometimes analyzed and shared data during the pandemic, said the new center will ‘accelerate access to and use of data for public health decision-makers who need information to mitigate the effects of disease threats, such as social and economic disruption’ and will ‘prioritize equity and accessibility, while serving as a hub for innovation and research on disease modeling.'” Good afternoon, Internet…

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