NEW RESOURCES

Liberty Street Economics: Just Released: A New Tool for Tracking Regional Employment Trends. “Today we are launching a Regional Employment web interactive that gives users a convenient place to measure and analyze employment trends in the Federal Reserve’s Second District…. The new interactive illustrates employment trends for more than twenty geographies in the region, including states and metropolitan areas, from the year 2000 to the latest available month.” From the Federal Reserve Bank of New York: “The New York Fed oversees the Second Federal Reserve District, which includes New York state, the 12 northern counties of New Jersey, Fairfield County in Connecticut, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Though it serves a geographically small area compared with those of other Federal Reserve Banks, the New York Fed is the largest Reserve Bank in terms of assets and volume of activity.” .

Purdue University: Dashboard shows ‘Achilles’ heel’ of food supply chain. “[Jayson] Lusk, who leads Purdue’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability, and Ahmad Zia Wahdat, a postdoctoral research associate at the center, developed an interactive dashboard to share their findings. A working paper posted on SSRN details their work. The dashboard teases out the inputs needed for different food industries, provides the share of total cost of upstream inputs and labor, and evaluates the risk of an industry based on a diversity score. The score ranges from a value of zero to one, with higher scores indicating less vulnerability.”

This was released last month but I just found out about it. Dawn (Pakistan): Records of WWI soldiers from united Punjab revealed. “The records of thousands of British Indian Army soldiers from united Punjab have been made available to the public by UK-based citizen historians for the first time after around a century.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Variety: Disney Channels Including ABC, ESPN Go Dark on YouTube TV After Google Deal Lapses. “Disney’s suite of networks — including ABC and ESPN — have gone dark on YouTube TV after the media conglomerate and Google failed to forge a new deal before the midnight ET deadline Friday.”

Engadget: Sidewalk Labs products will be folded into Google proper. “Alphabet’s smart city project is winding down and Google will take over its products. Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff announced the news in a letter, in which he noted he is stepping down for health-related reasons. A spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that Sidewalk Labs products will be folded into Google, though Alphabet plans to spin out Canopy Buildings as a separate company.”

USEFUL STUFF

Popular Science: Google integrated its other apps into Gmail. Here’s how to best use them.. “Gmail is a powerhouse of an email app, and its strengths go way beyond sending and receiving messages. The platform also allows you to bring in several of Google’s other apps to join the party from right inside the Gmail interface, giving you quick and easy access to your calendars, to-do list, files, and notes.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechCrunch: Backed by former Facebook and Twitter execs, Tagg launches social branding app for Gen Z . “Depending on what you want to use your profile for (you might want a social profile, or you might want to promote your art and network), you can choose from five profile skins when you onboard into the app. From there, you can customize your page, then follow people and post content like you would on any other app. But on Tagg, there’s no like count on posts, which is an intentional design choice.”

Vulcan Post: This miniature museum of M’sia nearly shut down, but NFTs & the metaverse brought it back. “While NFTs have been in existence for a few years now, their utility only significantly picked up in 2021. This may be due to the growing acceptance that tangible things in this world are moving into a more digital reality, or the envisioned metaverse, largely catalysed by COVID-19. NFTs in Malaysia are most often linked to the arts industry, but they can be used for much more, as we’ve previously written. They have utility functions too, and MinNature Malaysia (MinNature) is attempting to lower the barriers to entry in their usage by allowing visitors to purchase entrance tickets (the NFT) through cryptocurrencies.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: JPMorgan hit with $200 million in fines for letting employees use WhatsApp to evade regulators’ reach. “JPMorgan Chase is paying $200 million in fines to two U.S. banking regulators to settle charges that its Wall Street division allowed employees to use WhatsApp and other platforms to circumvent federal record-keeping laws.”

BNN Bloomberg: Google and Meta Win U.S. Security Agency Backing for Pacific Cable. “U.S. security officials recommended approval for Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. parent Meta Platforms Inc. to build an undersea fiber optic cable linking the U.S. to Taiwan and the Philippines.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Talk with your dead loved ones — through a chatbot. “Surviving loved ones interact with the customized voice avatar via smart speaker, mobile or desktop app, and it responds, through Alexa-like voice recognition technology, with prerecorded stories, memories, jokes, songs and even advice. HereAfter AI is one of a number of startups promising digital immortality through chatbots, AI and even holograms like these out of USC that let Holocaust survivors’ stories live on.”

Mercy Corps: Social Media, Conflict, and Peace-building. “This paper, the product of a working group of NGO and academic experts, aims to be a practical statement about the ‘weaponization’ of social media and peacebuilding responses to it. It attempts to articulate an emerging consensus among peacebuilders about what we know about working in this area, and very practically, what approaches are effective or promising.” Good morning, Internet…

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