NEW RESOURCES

Fader: Creem returns with digital archive and new editorial staff . “Creem, a ’70s and ’80s rock rag that rivaled Rolling Stone in its heyday, has announced its relaunch as a digital publication, newsletter (‘Fresh Cream’), and quarterly print magazine. Its site will also feature a digitized version of every back issue from Creem‘s initial 20-year run, available to peruse with a 30-day free trial until August, at which point it will be bundled with subscriptions to the print quarterly.”

Environmental Analyst: Subak launches ‘Google of climate data’ portal. “Global tech accelerator Subak (which claims to be ‘the world’s first not-for-profit accelerator and data community’) has launched the Data Catalogue – a curated online portal connecting shared climate datasets around the world. The online catalogue has been built to make climate data reliable and accessible for academics, analysts, policymakers and corporations working to identify climate risks and opportunities, and measure decarbonisation efforts.”

WOWK: New foster care dashboard unveiled in West Virginia. “As of Wednesday, West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources has launched a dashboard to track all aspects of the state’s foster care system. Without violating anyone’s privacy, the site allows people to monitor aspects of the nearly 7,000 children in the foster care system in West Virginia.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: Personalize Chrome with themes from LGBTQ+ artists. “To celebrate the next generation of LGBTQ+ artists this Pride month, Chrome commissioned five LGBTQ+ artists to create themes you can select to personalize your Chrome browser and Chromebook. Available globally starting today with more options coming soon, these themes reflect the unique points of view of each individual artist.”

How-To Geek: Microsoft Is Shutting Down “Money in Excel” (and More). “Microsoft introduced ‘Money in Excel’ back in 2020, which allowed people to connect their financial data to Excel sheets. Now the functionality is being discontinued, alongside a few other Microsoft 365 features.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bloomberg: Inside Twitter, Shuffled Jobs and Elon Musk Tweets Dampen Morale. “Executives told workers of plans to pull back resources for some long-term ambitions, including audio spaces, newsletters and communities, in favor of focusing on more immediate needs, like user growth and personalization efforts, according to people familiar with the matter. That means many employees will be shuffled within the company’s consumer product group, the people said.”

New York Times: Help Wanted: State Misinformation Sheriff. “With a salary of $150,000, the person is expected to comb fringe sites like 4chan, far-right social networks like Gettr and Rumble, and mainstream social media sites to root out early misinformation narratives about voting before they go viral, and then urge the companies to remove or flag the posts that contain false information.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: India weighs panel to rule on appeals against social media takedowns. “India is considering whether to set up an appeals panel with the power to reverse the content moderation decisions of social media firms, the information technology ministry said, in what would be the first such move of its kind worldwide.”

NBC Chicago: Illinois Residents Can Now File Claim for Settlement Money in Google Lawsuit . “Illinois residents could soon receive a check as part of a new settlement in a class action lawsuit against Google, claiming the company violated a state privacy law.”

Associated Press: Wray: FBI blocked planned cyberattack on children’s hospital. “The FBI thwarted a planned cyberattack on a children’s hospital in Boston that was to have been carried out by hackers sponsored by the Iranian government, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Washington: VoxLens: Adding one line of code can make some interactive visualizations accessible to screen-reader users. “University of Washington researchers worked with screen-reader users to design VoxLens, a JavaScript plugin that — with one additional line of code — allows people to interact with visualizations. VoxLens users can gain a high-level summary of the information described in a graph, listen to a graph translated into sound or use voice-activated commands to ask specific questions about the data, such as the mean or the minimum value.”

University of Oxford: Long-distance collaboration makes scientific breakthroughs more likely. “In an analysis of data for over ten million research teams, across eleven academic fields from 1961 to 2020, a new working paper from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Work has determined that over the past decade remote collaboration between academic teams has led to more scientific breakthroughs. This is a reversal of what was observed from the 1960s to the 2000s, when remote collaboration led to fewer scientific breakthroughs and more incremental innovation.” Good morning, Internet…

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