NEW RESOURCES

WP Tavern: rtCamp Launches WordPress Plugin Compare Project. “The team behind rtCamp, a 125-person agency and a WordPress VIP Gold agency partner, has launched a new tool called WordPress Plugin Compare Project (WPPC) to help users extend WordPress with the right plugins for their needs. WPPC lets users search for plugins to compare and customize each selection displayed on [a] chart.”

Brixton Buzz (no relation): Revolting Gays: new website documents the South London Gay Community Centre and the Brixton gay squatting scene, 1970s – early1980s. “Telling the story of the South London Gay Community Centre and the Brixton gay squatting community from the 1970s to the early 1980s, the website documents a seemingly disparate group of gay men and their attempts to live together communally. Containing written text, photographs, podcasts, videos and art works, the Revolting Gays website will go live on June 24th this year.”

EVENTS

Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas: Learn how to capture the world in 3D: Sign up for this free online course on photogrammetry for journalists. “Photogrammetry allows journalists to tell stories about the world around them by creating three-dimensional replicas from photographs. Learn more about the photogrammetric process and how it can be used for journalism in a new free online course from the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC World: Best remote desktop software: From casual use to business deployment. “The fascinating and incredibly useful remote-desktop software that allows you to operate another computer over a long distance as if it were your own is now two decades old. But while it’s not new, faster networking and broadband has rendered the remote desktop experience far speedier and more enjoyable. Under optimal conditions, it’s nearly as facile as being there in person.”

From MakeUseOf, for a given value of “Useful”: The 5 Best Free Random Decision Makers. “If you’re trying to make a light-hearted, a random decision maker can help you to more easily make an unbiased decision. It can save you time and prevent overthinking. Of course, they won’t be suitable for large, life-altering decisions–you’ll need to ponder over those, sorry!”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Don’t Believe Everything You Read About the Man in This Photo. “There is no ‘Bernie,’ he’s not a crisis actor, and news organizations are not behind the posts. And the photo? It is of a 36-year-old online gamer, Jordie Jordan. He’s alive, and he had nothing to do with the posts. Instead, the posts are part of a yearslong harassment campaign against him, taking place on online platforms like Twitter, Reddit and Discord.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Crypto Scams Have Cost Consumers More Than $1 Billion, FTC Says. “Crypto scams have cost consumers more than $1 billion since the start of 2021, according to a new Federal Trade Commission analysis. The numbers, which are based on losses reported by consumers from January 2021 through March 2022, also show that crypto is becoming the payment of choice for many scammers, accounting for about one in every four dollars lost to fraud, the FTC says.”

Politico: Discord hires first lobbyists. “The popular online text, video and voice chat app Discord has hired its first federal lobbyists. Monument Advocacy’s Stewart Verdery, Ashley Hoy, Andrew Howell, Joseph Hoefer and Jeff Gary will lobby on privacy and content moderation issues for the platform, which initially found a huge base among gamers but exploded in popularity during the pandemic.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: ‘Civic Fan Fiction’ Makes Politics a Dysfunctional Team Sport. “Stories bind us together, and woe betide anyone who forgets it; there is no perfectly rational and coldly logical way to replace the role of narrative in our lives. We’re meaning-making machines. More than anything else, that is what makes us human: the ability to imbue the inherently meaningless with the most elaborate and consequential of meanings. When it comes to politics, that means storytelling is often at the heart of it, and stories need heroes, villains, and narrative arcs. It’s easier and more satisfying.”

Michigan Daily: TikTok: Proof that we’re living in a simulation. “While it’s fun to imagine that there is a conspiracy behind TikTok’s apparent telepathy, the reality is I have zero proof of a simulation and plenty of proof of the existence of my very real and very human brain, which is simply recognizing a pattern between events in my own life and the things that I observe online. But I do concede that whenever an oddly specific TikTok pops up on my For You page, it feels too accurate to just be chance. So what’s really going on?”

Engadget: Oregon is shutting down its controversial child welfare AI in June. “A number of states across the country have already implemented, or are considering, similar algorithms within their child welfare agencies. But as with Northpointe’s COMPAS before them, their implementation have raised concerns about the transparency and reliability of the process as well as their clear tendency towards racial bias. However, the Allegheny developers did note that their tool was just that and was never intended to operate on its own without direct human oversight.” Good morning, Internet…

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