NEW RESOURCES

University of Illinois Chicago: Rodolfo ‘Rudy’ Lozano digital exhibit available online. “In anticipation of July 29 marking Rodolfo ‘Rudy’ Lozano Day in Cook County, the University of Illinois Chicago Library is announcing that a digital exhibit celebrating the Pilsen activist, labor organizer and UIC alumnus is available to the public.”

Essex County Standard: The Gilberd School unlocks archive with material from 1950s and 60s. “PAST pupils can now access newly scanned school bulletins and photos from more than 50 years ago. Several important documents and photos detailing the Gilberd School’s history from the 1950s and 1960s are now available for the public to view for the first time.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Google Wallet rolls out to users, will live alongside Google Pay in the US. “Today is apparently the launch day for Google Wallet—Google’s fourth rebrand of its payment system. Users on Reddit report the app has rolled out to them, and a version has popped up on APKMirror if you want to sideload. Google also launched a ton of support pages today relating to Wallet.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 12 Resourceful OSINT Tools You Should Know. “Carrying out open-source intelligence manually is no doubt a Herculean task. There are just too many records and data to go through. Thankfully, many tools have been created to automate and speed up the OSINT process. With these tools, you can get a lot of information about a particular organization and person in seconds.” Interesting mix. Annotation is a little thin so be prepared to explore.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Mashable: ‘Heardle Decades’ lets you guess all the ’80s and ’90s bangers . “Heardle Decades takes the song-guessing Wordle variant to make individual music guessing games based on songs from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. It’s not an official Heardle offshoot, so has nothing to do with Heardle’s new owner, Spotify, but it plugs into the streaming site.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Dozens of Thai activists and supporters hacked by NSO Group’s Pegasus. “More than 30 Thai activists and supporters have been hacked with NSO Group’s potent Pegasus spyware, civil society groups said late Sunday, in the first countrywide campaign brought to light because Apple warned targeted iPhone users.”

Engadget: US Congress calls for the FTC to regulate how VPN companies operate. “US Democrats have urged the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to crack down on deceptive practices in the Virtual Private Network (VPN) industry, The Verge has reported. In an open letter, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) cited research indicating that three-quarters of the most popular VPNs ‘misrepresented their products,’ leading consumers to a false sense of security.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: AI Art Is Challenging the Boundaries of Curation. “The coming-of-age of AI art raises a number of interesting questions, some of which—such as whether AI art is really art, and if so, to what extent it is really made by AI—are not particularly original.”

New Jersey Institute of Technology: Use of Twitter Helped Taliban Regain Control in Afghanistan, Researchers Find. “Twitter was a strategic tool for Taliban operations in overthrowing the Afghanistan leadership during the country’s civil war, and some accounts associated with the oppressive group triggered the company’s algorithms to promote ads for well-known Western brands, researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology, Princeton University and University of Regina found.”

Northwestern Now: Government-funded scientific research reflects public interest, Northwestern study finds . “Around the world, governments fund scientific research with taxpayer money as a public good. But how well does science serve the public interest in practice? A new study led by Northwestern University researchers finds that public funding is well-aligned with public use, and that the public tends to value research that scientists also see as impactful within their fields.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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