NEW RESOURCES

The Latinx Project: Mexican American Art Since 1848: A New Open-source Digital Search Tool. “Working with a team of software developers, scholars, curators, librarians and archivists, Constance Cortez (UTRGV) and I are addressing the invisibility and lack of access to Mexican American art through the creation of a post-custodial portal, Mexican American Art Since 1848. This online search tool provides visual access to Mexican American art and primary documentation through online unification of geographically disperse records held at different institutions.”

GAO: Our New Interactive Online Resource for Understanding and Combatting Federal Fraud. “Fraud hurts the integrity of federal programs and erodes the public’s trust in the government. To help fight fraud, we developed a new online interactive resource to inform federal officials, Congress, the media, and the public about fraud schemes and how to combat them. Today’s WatchBlog post highlights our new Antifraud Resource.”

The Verge: A New Use For AI: Summarizing Scientific Research For Seven-Year-Olds. “Academic writing often has a reputation for being hard to follow, but what if you could use machine learning to summarize arguments in scientific papers so that even a seven-year-old could understand them? That’s the idea behind tl;dr papers — a project that leverages recent advances in AI language processing to simplify science.” Unfortunately at this writing it’s “under maintenance” – hopefully it comes back soon.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5: Google Labs working on blockchain, ‘next-gen distributed computing’ with new group . “According to Bloomberg, this new group within Google Labs is focused on ‘blockchain and other next-gen distributed computing and data storage technologies.’ Shivakumar Venkataraman, an engineering vice president that has worked on advertising infrastructure and payments systems for over a decade, will be leading.”

USEFUL STUFF

Italics Mag: The Best Italian Museums — The Italics Guide. “According to the data collected by Istat in 2019, there are over 4,800 museums in Italy. This number includes galleries, archaeological areas, ecomuseums, and monuments. It may not come as much of a surprise, considering the wealth of Italy’s artistic heritage. This is spread throughout the Italian territory: one municipality out of three has at least one museum.” I’m including this because most of the museums featured have some form of digital presence that is discussed.

Autoevolution: The Best 5 Google Maps Alternatives With Offline Maps Support. “One of the best things about Google Maps is offline support. With this feature, Google allows you to continue enjoying its navigation capabilities without an Internet connection. This obviously comes in handy when data coverage is not available, no matter if we’re talking about a tunnel or a limited mobile plan that makes it harder to use an online navigation app. But of course, Google Maps isn’t the only app out there with support for offline maps, so if for some reason you’re now looking for an alternative, here are the best five you can try out today.”

KnowTechie: Redditors reveal the most useful websites nobody seems to know about. “Redditor u/SauloJr requested the hive mind’s help a few months back, asking, ‘What useful unknown website do you wish more people knew about?’ We dove into the replies to surface the lesser-known gems that you really should know about. Here’s hoping that they can weather all the additional traffic they’re about to receive.” Interesting list; several I hadn’t heard of.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Forward: ‘A chance to change the world’ — new initiative to elevate voices and experiences of Jews of Color. “There are four primary areas in the initiative: a working group of scholars, artists and activists from diverse communities; a digital archive centering the experiences of Jews of Color, focused on oral histories; public conversations; and publications, programs and creative projects focusing on such topics as Jews of Color, racism, white supremacy and American Jewish life.”

Times of India: Rare books at American College being digitized. “Work is underway to digitize around 11,000 rare books and palm leaf scripts at the Daniel Poor Memorial (DPM) library in The American College, Madurai under the Tamil Nadu digital library project.”

Search Engine Land: Google Considers Reducing Webpage Crawl Rate. “Google may reduce the frequency of crawling webpages as it grows more conscious of the sustainability of crawling and indexing. This topic is discussed by Google’s Search Relations team, which is made up of John Mueller, Martin Splitt, and Gary Illyes.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CTech: Israeli police used NSO’s Pegasus to spy on local mayors, their relatives. “After last week’s multi-part exposé detailed how police’s SIGINT unit had been allegedly employing the controversial Pegasus malware to spy on civilians, Calcalist is revealing that law enforcement tapped the phones of at least three mayors and heads of local councils for the purposes of ‘phishing’ – all under the guise of intelligence activities.”

Washington Post: Google deceived consumers about how it profits from their location data, attorneys general allege in lawsuits. “Attorneys general from D.C. and three states plan to sue Google on Monday, arguing that the search giant deceived consumers to gain access to their location data. The lawsuits, expected to be filed in the District of Columbia, Texas, Washington and Indiana, allege the company made misleading promises about its users’ ability to protect their privacy through Google account settings, dating to at least 2014. The suits seek to stop Google from engaging in these practices and to fine the company.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Art Newspaper: Louvre teams up with Sotheby’s to investigate provenance of works bought during the Second World War. “Sotheby’s and the Louvre in Paris have joined forces on a project aimed at researching items acquired by the museum between 1933 and 1945. The sponsorship deal, which lasts three years, will help fund research that ‘may lead to restitutions [incorporating] digitisation, the organisation of seminars, study days, and publications’, the Louvre says in a statement.”

Fast Company: In this new exhibit, VR helps Holocaust survivors tell their stories. “The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center has long focused on honoring the memory of people murdered during the Holocaust and preserving the stories of those who survived. Now a new pair of short virtual reality films will enable visitors to hear those stories while experiencing immersive visuals that help explain the survivors’ experiences.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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