USEFUL STUFF

Slashgear: 12 Best Uses For Old Laptops. “If you’re the kind of person who just can’t seem to let go of old tech, don’t despair, but do check on your closet-dwelling laptop. There’s a chance that the chemical reactions in the battery have gone rogue, resulting in an explosion or a fire just waiting to happen. Multiple manufacturers have experienced swelling batteries over recent years and that’s a concern, even if your laptop hasn’t been plugged in for some time. Once you’ve ensured your old laptop isn’t plotting your imminent demise, you can start considering what you want to do with it.”

How-To Geek: How to Set Up Shadowsocks With Outline. “Shadowsocks is a powerful tool that can help you escape censorship, in particular the Great Firewall of China. As much as we like it, though, setting it up can be a bit tricky, which is why we’ve put together this guide on how to install Shadowsocks using an open-source program called Outline.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Star (Malaysia): Social media accounts of Singapore political leaders spammed by supporters of banned Indonesian preacher. “The social media accounts of a number of political leaders and government agencies in Singapore have been spammed by supporters of an Indonesian preacher who was denied entry into Singapore on Monday, CNA has reported.”

BuzzFeed News: TikTok Star Charles Gross Doesn’t Want To Be Messy For The Content Anymore. “Charles Gross may have built his entire social media persona around luxury fashion, but he wanted to lunch at a chain restaurant you’d find in an airport. From the videos he posts to his 1 million TikTok followers, I’d expected he’d choose the kind of hydrangea-filled French café that makes you pay for water and air, rather than Le Pain Quotidien (the harder-to-pronounce version of Panera Bread).”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WBUR: Extremists exploit gaming networks and social media to recruit and radicalize. “Alex Newhouse, deputy director at the Middlebury Institute Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, points out that the violence is not linked to the games themselves…. The problem, he says, is that the last two decades made it clear that games are social networks, not just content. With video games and the internet come platforms built to facilitate social interaction and relationships.”

ABC News: Dutch leader faces pressure over old-school text messages. “Mark Rutte is facing unusual political and public pressure after revelations that he has been deleting text messages about official matters for years. Critics accuse him of concealing state activity – but he says the messages just took up too much space in his years-old Nokia phone.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NiemanLab: Do browser extensions keep anyone away from fake news sites? Maybe a tiny bit. “As more companies and platforms adopt ways to figure out whether fact-checking, flagging questionable content, or some other form of alert works best to dissuade people from consuming misinformation, a new study finds that credibility ratings for news sites may offer a tiny ray of hope — if users actually use them.”

The Conversation: Social media can be a force for good in a crisis: lessons from Lagos. “We set out to assess the role that social media played in driving public engagement with Covid health measures in Lagos, Nigeria. We analysed public engagement on Twitter between January and August 2020 that related to the city’s lockdown protocols. One of our key findings was that the public responded most to public health information being shared by prominent individual social media influencers. These included sportspeople, comedians, musicians and business-people.”

Envirotech Online: Gemini Data Loggers sponsors Low Energy Buildings Database. “The Low Energy Buildings Database is the leading publicly accessible database on sustainable buildings and building practices in the UK. Gemini Data Loggers, manufacturer of the Tinytag range of data loggers, is sponsoring a project by AECB (Association for Environment Conscious Building) to upgrade the platform into an international repository for low energy buildings.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hack A Day: Bi-Color Filament Kicks 3D Printed Optical Illusions Up A Notch. “A new video from [Make Anything] shows off a nice combo that has a real visual impact: ambiguous shapes that look different depending on what angle they are viewed at, combined with an unusual filament that enhances the effect greatly.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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