NEW RESOURCES

This launched in early April, and where was I? Off somewhere eating bon-bons, apparently. Anyway, from ACM: World’s Largest Computing Society Makes Thousands of Research Articles Freely Available; Opens First 50 Years Backfile. “ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today announced that its first 50 years of publications, from 1951 through the end of 2000, are now open and freely available to view and download via the ACM Digital Library. ACM’s first 50 years backfile contains more than 117,500 articles on a wide range of computing topics. In addition to articles published between 1951 and 2000, ACM has also opened related and supplemental materials including data sets, software, slides, audio recordings, and videos.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

XDA: Android 13 Beta 3 will bring native support for braille displays. “In a blog post on Thursday, Google announced that the upcoming Android 13 beta release would bring out-of-the-box support for braille display. For the unaware, a refreshable braille display is an electro-mechanic device that surfaces information by raising round-tipped pins through holes in a flat surface. It enables blind and deafblind users (who can’t use a screen reader) to access smartphones or computers.”

The Verge: Glitch acquired by cloud service provider Fastly. “Fastly, a major provider of cloud services, announced today that it’s acquiring Glitch, the quirky and capable web coding platform. Glitch will continue to operate within Fastly, with Fastly planning to grow the team and enable Glitch apps to tap into its edge computing services.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Inspiration: How to Send WhatsApp Messages from Google Sheets with the WhatsApp API and Apps Script. “This tutorial describes how you can use the new WhatsApp API with Google Apps Script to send WhatsApp messages from Google Sheets. The same approach would also work for sending WhatsApp messages from Google Forms when new form submissions are received.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Lifehacker: WeWordle Is the Multiplayer Wordle That Is Currently Stressing Me Out. “If you’re the competitive type and simply texting your dad and friend group your Wordle score first thing in the morning isn’t doing it for you, you can try the newest iteration in the Wordle copycat universe: WeWordle. WeWordle lets you compete with others online—reminiscent of the olden days of Words with Friends, except with the added stressor of a super short time limit of fifteen seconds per turn.”

CNN: He started the Wikipedia page for the Buffalo shooting and many other tragic events. “After Jason Moore, from Portland, Oregon, saw headlines from national news sources on Google News about the Buffalo shooting at a local supermarket on Saturday afternoon, he did a quick search for the incident on Wikipedia. When no results appeared, he drafted a single sentence: ‘On May 14, 2022, 10 people were killed in a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York.’ He hit save and published the entry on Wikipedia in less than a minute.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Techdirt: Clearview Settles Lawsuit, Agrees To Stop Doing Business In Illinois. “Not giving a damn about anything is starting to eat into Clearview’s profits. In addition to facing lawsuits in the US over state law violations, the company is getting smacked around by fines, bans, and the rolling out of ‘OFFICIALLY UNWELCOME’ mats elsewhere in the world.”

Music Business Worldwide: After Suing Google Over App Store Rules, Epic’s Bandcamp Can Continue Using Own Payment System… For Now. . “Last month, Bandcamp’s new parent company filed a motion against Google requesting a preliminary injunction to block the tech giant from removing the Bandcamp app from its app store. Today (Friday May 20), Epic and Google have filed a Joint Stipulation in a Californian court, with the latter company agreeing to not kick Bandcamp off its app store.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Thanks very much to Geoff K. for getting this on my radar: Bada Bing, Bada Boom: Microsoft Bing’s Chinese Political Censorship of Autosuggestions in North America. “We analyzed Microsoft Bing’s autosuggestion system for censorship of the names of individuals, finding that, outside of names relating to eroticism, the second largest category of names censored from appearing in autosuggestions were those of Chinese party leaders, dissidents, and other persons considered politically sensitive in China.”

Newswise: Chula UDC Creates QR Braille: a QR Code Locator for the Blind. “QR Braille for people with visual disabilities, adding braille beads into a frame around the QR Code, will make QR codes truly accessible to all. Ms. Suchitra Jirawanichkul, from the Center of Excellence in Universal Design, designed the QR Braille so that people can touch and spot a QR code’s position, then use a smartphone to scan for information, as well as listen to sounds. This helps increase and promote learning opportunities for those are visually impaired or blind.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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