NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from CBC: University of Calgary profs digitally preserve endangered heritage site in B.C.. “For Prof. Peter Dawson, digital preservation is the next best thing when a site cannot be preserved physically due to cost or environmental factors. Using a terrestrial laser scanner, Dawson and his team capture data on heritage sites to create virtual replicas that can be accessed online by the public. The Digital Heritage Archive focuses on ‘grassroots’ heritage sites like the Swiss village. These are sites meaningful to individuals and communities despite not having official designations of significance.”

PR Newswire: CCsmart.org Helps Americans Understand the Value of a Community College Education (PRESS RELEASE). “CCsmart is an evidenced-based and data driven website designed to make it easier to find reliable information about higher education pathways, from workforce training to associate degrees to transfer options to bachelor’s degrees. It also provides easy to understand information about financial options for various credential and degree options and aid options beyond just Pell Grants and the FAFSA.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: YouTube will start removing misinformation related to abortion. “YouTube on Thursday said it will no longer allow misinformation related to abortion on its platform, including false claims about the safety of the procedure and potentially unsafe instructions about how to self-induce an abortion.”

CNET: TikTok Now Lets Viewers Turn Captions On or Off on Any Video. “TikTok, the popular video sharing social media platform, said Thursday that viewers can now choose to turn auto-generated captions on or off on all videos. Before, creators had to enable captions on their videos in order for people to use them.”

USEFUL STUFF

Smashing Magazine: Powerful Image Optimization Tools. “Optimizing the size of images can have a bigger impact on performance than all other areas combined. In this article, Louis Lazaris covers different tools available for reducing the size of images.” Another excellent roundup from Smashing Magazine.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: Bookstagram Is Fueling an Unnerving Trend. “Readers and reviewers have never been more able to get their voices heard. The rise of Bookstagram and more recently BookTok have enabled bibliophiles to share recommendations, point out plot holes, and discuss fan theories on an unprecedented scale. Yet writers want you to know that it’s one thing to tell the world that you don’t like a book, and another thing entirely to tell its author.”

Library of Congress: “Wow, it’s WordStar!” Exploring a Beloved Early Word Processor and its Many Formats . “Over the course of our Junior Fellowship this summer, we have focused on a variety of streams of work around the Library of Congress’ Sustainability of Digital Formats website. The site contains an extensive list of commonly used file formats, wrappers, and encodings. There are thousands of these created by legacy equipment and software that present challenges in identification, preservation, and use. Among these is the file format produced by the now-defunct word processing platform WordStar.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CitizenLab: Hooking Candiru: Another Mercenary Spyware Vendor Comes into Focus. “Candiru is a secretive Israel-based company that sells spyware exclusively to governments. Reportedly, their spyware can infect and monitor iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs, and cloud accounts. Using Internet scanning we identified more than 750 websites linked to Candiru’s spyware infrastructure.”

Daily Dot: EXCLUSIVE: Anti-vax dating site that let people advertise ‘mRNA FREE’ semen left all its user data exposed. “After the Daily Dot set up a test account on the platform, GeopJr was able to change the account’s private email address, username, and profile picture. GeopJr was also able to edit a public post made by the Daily Dot and change its wording. Other data such as the site’s backups could be downloaded or deleted. GeopJr was able to give away $15 per month subscriptions to Unjected as well as reply to and delete help center tickets and reported posts.”

Ars Technica: Two senators propose ban on data caps, blasting ISPs for “predatory” limits. “US Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) want to ban Internet data caps. The senators today introduced the ‘Uncap America Act,’ which would ‘prohibit predatory data caps that force families to pay high costs and unnecessary fees to access high-speed broadband,’ they said in a press release.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Johns Hopkins: AI Speeds Sepsis Detection To Prevent Hundreds Of Deaths. “Patients are 20% less likely to die of sepsis because of a new AI system developed at Johns Hopkins University that catches symptoms hours earlier than traditional methods, an extensive hospital study demonstrates.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Central Florida: UCF Faculty Combines Harry Potter with Pharmacology Course to Improve Student Outcomes . “Incorporating interactive games in the course has proven to enhance academic success; the number of students who earned an ‘A’ in the class improved by almost 200% in the past three years, and there has been a 73% decline in the number of non-pass students (students who earn a ‘D’ or an ‘F’ in the class).” Good morning, Internet…

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