NEW RESOURCES

Newport Daily News: Fort Adams takes first step toward establishing museum with new online artifact catalogue. “The new database of Fort Adams’ historical artifacts is available to the public on CatalogIt Hub. While incomplete, it currently houses four collections featuring 175 photographs depicting moments in the fort’s history as far back as 1903.”

University of Massachusetts Amherst: Holocaust Survivor Lists Digitized For The First Time. “Hundreds of pages with the names of Holocaust survivors relocated to Displaced Persons Camps in Austria and Germany have now been reprinted and digitized. The extensive lists have never been available together, and the original volumes exist in only a few libraries worldwide. Thanks to a collaboration of the Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center in the UMass Amherst Libraries and Schoen Books of South Deerfield, Massachusetts, they are now available on the open web, enabling families of survivors, genealogists and researchers to have access to the vital information they contain.”

Homeland Security: DHS, VA Launch New Online Services for Noncitizen Service Members, Veterans, and Their Families. “Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in partnership with the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense, launched two new resources to support our nation’s noncitizen service members, veterans, and their families. Through its Immigrant Military Members and Veterans Initiative (IMMVI), DHS will host a one-stop online center to consolidate relevant federal resources. As part of the resource center, DHS has also created a portal for veterans who need assistance in applying to return to the United States or accessing VA benefits to which they may be entitled.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Chrome’s new tool should let you revisit your old Google rabbit holes. “Google Chrome is rolling out Journeys, a feature that lets you revisit your old browsing sessions based on the subject matter you were searching for. If you type a word in the address bar that’s related to some convoluted rabbit hole you’ve been down in the past, you’ll see a ‘Resume your research’ option that links you to the related sites you’ve visited before.”

CNET: TikTok expands its policies against dangerous challenges, misogyny. “TikTok on Tuesday unveiled a slew of changes to its community guidelines that it says are meant to promote ‘safety, security, and well-being’ on the popular social video app.”

Washington Post: Twitter got a ‘downvote’ button. Here’s what happens if you click it. . “Like Reddit and YouTube before it, Twitter is getting its own ‘dislike’ button for replies or comments in response to original tweets. The feature, announced in July, started rolling out globally Thursday night, the company said. And like other Twitter updates before it, reception is mixed.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

9 Now: TikTok becomes new frontier for politicians hoping to win votes. “Forget politicians holding babies and burning snags in a local sausage sizzle, the battlefield to win election votes is now going viral. In an online world, every click and like on social media could mean votes and could give political power, with TikTok becoming the new frontier. Exploding onto devices, surging in popularity with teenagers, featuring quick videos with music and dancing — and now politicians are riding the TikTok wave.”

Irish Examiner: RTÉ plans €2.5m project to digitally archive almost 40 years of footage. “The extensive project, which is expected to take up to three years, will see 17,942 hours of GAA coverage, 9,840 hours of rugby footage, 7,560 hours of soccer, and 2,397 hours of Olympic coverage joining a digital archive.” I’m pretty sure that in this case “GAA” would be the Gaelic Athletic Association.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Motherboard: NSO Group Gave Pegasus Spyware Demo to the NYPD. “A section of the New York Police Department (NYPD) focused on intelligence gathering received a demo of NSO Group’s controversial Pegasus spyware product, according to an email obtained by Motherboard.”

BBC: Foreign Office target of ‘serious cyber incident’. “The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was the target of a ‘serious cyber-security incident’, it has emerged. The details came via a tender document published on a government website, seemingly by mistake.”

SC Magazine: Google: Mandatory two-step verification cut compromises in half. “Google announced in May a plan to automatically enroll millions of users in two-step verification by the end of 2021. On Tuesday, it released early results from the project: auto-enrolled accounts were half as likely to be compromised as unenrolled ones.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Rock Paper Shotgun: Semantle is hard mode Wordle, powered by a Google neural network. “In many ways, Semantle is hard mode Wordle. Gone is the simplified dictionary and five-letter limit, meaning words can be any type and length, and gone is any indication of correctly guessed letters or positions. Instead, you’ve got two new helpers: the ability to make infinite guesses, and a neural network able to learn word associations telling you how close, conceptually, you are to the correct answer. I’ve yet to find the solution in fewer than 50 guesses.” Good morning, Internet…

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