NEW RESOURCES

Digital Library of Georgia: Issues of the Mission Messenger Now Available Freely Online. “19th and 20th-century issues from the journal of the largest group of Protestant women in the world have just been digitized. Mercer University Special Collections and Archives have partnered with the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) to digitize Mercer’s run of the Mission Messenger from 1895-1921, published monthly by the Woman’s Baptist Missionary Union of Georgia (WBMU), more commonly known today as simply the Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU).”

Daily Swig: New tool can uncover redacted, pixelated text to reveal sensitive data. “The tool, called Unredacter, was released by Bishop Fox today (February 15). To demonstrate that pixilation is ‘a no-good, bad, insecure, surefire way to get your sensitive data leaked’, it was designed to take redacted pixelized text and reverse it back into its reveal the supposedly hidden ‘clear text’.”

KDKA: IRS Launches Resource Page That Offers Latest Guidance On Tax Filing Season. “The page provides you with the latest information affecting the 2022 tax season, and provides updates on the efforts by the agency to address the inventory of previously filed tax returns.”

Tennessean: Enslaved people’s records show a grim, but needed, look at what made Nashville | Opinion. “The spreadsheet, more than 14,000 rows deep with data, might bore you – until the names stop you cold: Eliza, age 3; Peter, 11; Martha Foster, 1. After each, it reads ‘child of Albert and Betsy.’ On Nov. 1, 1852, it says, John Nichol sold Albert and Betsy, along with Eliza, Peter, Martha Foster and their other five children to Bradford Franklin. Davidson County legally recorded this enslaved family as property, bought and sold. Metro Archivist Ken Fieth has spent some 25 years compiling a searchable spreadsheet, available here. Transaction by transaction, it lists buyer, seller, enslaved person’s name, gender, age and relatives (if known).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Windows Central: ‘No politics’ button now exists in LinkedIn, other new features coming soon. “LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky recently spoke to the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern in a video interview, wherein the networking platform was discussed in-depth and a feature you may not even know you had was focused on. Midway through the WSJ’s video, Stern details how you can find the ‘allow political content’ button.”

KSHB: Prosecutor won’t charge reporter who uncovered database flaw. “A Missouri prosecutor will not charge a St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist who exposed a state database flaw that allowed public access to thousands of teachers’ Social Security numbers.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Daily Beast: Russian Sock Puppet Crew Faked Texas Guv Tweet About Biden Blackmail. “Since 2014, Secondary Infektion, a disinformation crew attributed to Russia by cybersecurity officials at Facebook and Reddit, has littered the internet with fake government documents and forged screenshots of nonexistent social media posts. Despite the group’s long pedigree and deep catalog of content, its forgeries and fakes have largely failed to move public opinion or organic engagement on social media. The content, however, offers a glimpse of how Moscow has tried to undermine Ukraine’s pro-Western government with provocation forgeries similar to those now expected by U.S. intelligence.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: French watchdog says Google Analytics poses data privacy risks. “Google Analytics, the world’s most widely used web analytics service developed by Alphabet’s Google (GOOG), risks giving U.S. intelligence services access to French website users’ data, France’s watchdog CNIL said on Thursday.”

Mashable: Crypto ‘romance scammers’ stole $139 million from victims in 2021. “‘A newly released data spotlight shows that in 2021 reported losses to romance scammers were up nearly 80 percent compared to 2020, and the total reported lost over the past five years has now reached $1.3 billion,’ cautions the FTC. ‘According to the spotlight, consumers who paid romance scammers with cryptocurrency reported losing $139 million in total in 2021, more than any other payment amount.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Thank you Wordle, it’s been fun. “I know many people play Wordle and don’t share their scores at all. I like the sharing because it makes it into a game within a game. One old friend started trying to guess my words by working backwards from my grid pattern. He’s amazingly good at it. The puzzles calm me. They’re a milestone, a marker in what still feels like endless days waiting for my life to feel more on-track. Wordle is a game I’ve been playing on my infinite pandemic commute. My personal waiting game.”

Analytics India: Google AI researchers present a new method to train models, ‘DeepCTRL’. “Google Cloud AI researchers have offered a unique deep learning training approach that incorporates rules so that the strength of the rules may be controlled at inference. DeepCTRL (Deep Neural Networks with Controllable Rule Representations) combines a rule encoder and a rule-based objective into the model, allowing for a shared representation for decision-making. Data type and model architecture are unimportant to DeepCTRL.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

MakeUseOf: What Is RF Energy Harvesting? . “While many innovations have sought to improve this experience through things like solar panels, they’re typically not the most effective or aesthetically pleasing option. Here’s why RF harvesting technology can be the key to the cordless smart home experience.” Good morning, Internet…

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