NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Boing Boing: Site maps the abandoned railroads of America. “Abandoned Rails maps thousands of miles of abandoned routes, complete with photos and articles about the history of America’s railroads.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NiemanLab: Quartz is dropping its paywall (but hopes its 25,000 paying members will stick around for the newsletters). “With the short-lived metered paywall out of the way, the vast majority of Quartz content will now be free for all. Frequent visitors to QZ.com will be asked to register their email after reading three articles per month. The only content that’ll remain subscriber-only is a handful of premium emails, including the recently-launched Quartz Africa, The Forecast, and the Weekend Brief.”

Mashable: YouTube’s new Search Insights tells creators exactly what their viewers are looking for. “This week, YouTube rolled out a brand new feature for content creators that tells you just that. It’s called Search Insights. If you blinked, you might have missed it as YouTube rolled out this new tool for creators fairly quietly, with an announcement that appears to have only been posted on its Creator Insiders video channel.”

USEFUL STUFF

Brass Oak Genealogy: 1950 US Census: I’m Here To Help!. “You’ve probably spent some time over the last two weeks trying to find people in the 1950 US census (I know I have!). But it’s not an easy task, especially without a solid index and the search tools that we’re used to on genealogy websites. That said, I’ve created a variety of videos that address some of the issues and offer solutions and workarounds.”

Lifehacker: 18 of the Best Ways to Customize Your Gmail Inbox. “Gmail has plenty of interesting settings and features buried under the hood that are worth checking out. From expanding the way you ‘star’ important emails to archiving emails as soon as you’ve responded to them, at least a few of these tips are sure to boost your productivity and your overall Gmail experience.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Vox: One Good Thing: 32 years after its debut, Microsoft Solitaire is still a blissful time-waster. “There’s a pleasant, throwback quality to solitaire in this age of doomscrolling. For a few minutes at a time, I can look away from the rest of the world and just look for a way to get to the six of clubs that I know I need to finish this game.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Mayor (EU): Berlin opens a cyber-security centre to protect against increasing attacks. “On Wednesday, Berlin authorities opened a security centre against cyber-attacks as part of the Berlin IT Service Centre (ITDZ). The ‘Security Operations Centre’ is supposed to help Germany’s capital detect and ward off hacker attacks. According to the German press agency dpa, experts would be working in the IT centre around the clock, monitoring access to the digital public system and coordinating cross-agency measures.”

Ars Technica: TikTok under US government investigation over child sexual abuse material. “TikTok is under investigation by US government agencies over its handling of child sexual abuse material, as the burgeoning short-form video app struggles to moderate a flood of new content. Dealing with sexual predators has been an enduring challenge for social media platforms, but TikTok’s young user base has made it vulnerable to being a target.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: Social Media–Based Interventions for Health Behavior Change in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Systematic Review. “Despite the wealth of evidence regarding effective health behavior change techniques using digital interventions to focus on residents of high-income countries, there is limited information of a similar nature for low- and middle-income countries… The aim of this review is to identify and describe the available literature on effective social media–based behavior change interventions within low- and middle-income countries.”

9to5 Google: ‘The Qubit Game’ from Google tasks you with building a quantum computer . Yesterday (April 14) was World Quantum Day, and the Google Quantum AI team marked the occasion with ‘The Qubit Game.’ It’s meant to serve as a ‘different way to introduce people to the world of quantum computing.'” Good afternoon, Internet…

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