NEW RESOURCES

British Library Maps Blog: The new Roy Military Survey Gazetteer. “The British Library and National Library of Scotland are pleased to announce the availability of a new gazetteer which allows all the names on the Roy Military Survey Maps of Scotland (1747-55, British Library Maps CC.5.a.441) to be searched and browsed. Through the hard work of a team of volunteers over the last six months, all 33,523 names on the Roy Map have been recorded.”

Kennebunk Post: ‘StoryMap’ helps visualize climate change impact. “Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission has released a couple of new tools designed to help coastal Maine communities visualize the future impact of flooding on their towns and help them address it.”

Governor of Nevada: State of Nevada, Governor Sisolak launch NevadaBuilds.com highlighting infrastructure investments. “Governor Steve Sisolak officially launched a website highlighting infrastructure investments coming to Nevada through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, NevadaBuilds.com.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Google will allow alternative payment systems for Play Store in more countries. “Google announced today it’s expanding the user choice billing program for Play Store — which lets users choose alternative payment systems for in-app purchases — to India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the European Economic Area. The company is calling all non-gaming developers globally to apply for this program, and if they qualify, they can use third-party payment systems in the above-mentioned regions.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: How to Read a Blocked Website. “These tools can help you subvert most content blocks, though we strongly urge you to make sure you’re not breaking any laws before you use them. While everything we cover below is legal in the U.S., using these tools in other countries—or using them to access illegal content—could get you in deep trouble. Like, years in prison or massive fines levels of trouble. Do your research, and use them at your own risk.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Brandeis International Business School: Leveraging blockchain to reach the ‘unbanked’. “Users of [Professor Erich] Schumann’s Fincludio app — the name is a portmanteau of ‘finance’ and ‘include’ — choose which services they’re interested in and which banks they want to do business with. Their personal information, meanwhile, is stored securely in a digital wallet on their smartphone. After a user selects a bank, the bank will only receive viewing access to the personal information it is required by law to collect and verify.”

Northumbria University: Major New Project To Reveal New Insights Into 19th Century British And Other Immigrant Sailors In The U.s. Navy. “The ‘Civil War Bluejackets’ Project—so named because of the distinctive uniform worn by U.S. Civil War sailors—is a collaboration between historians at Northumbria University, Newcastle, and computer scientists at the University of Sheffield and the University of Koblenz-Landau. Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the project launches on 6 September 2022 with a call for citizen volunteers to help transcribe tens of thousands of Civil War ‘Muster Rolls’, documents that were carried on board U.S. ships and which capture the personal details of the c.118,000 men who fought on water for the Union between 1861 and 1865.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: Singapore struggles to curb cryptocurrency enthusiasm. “The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on Monday it is taking measures to reduce the harms caused by cryptocurrency, including conducting ‘customer suitability tests’ as part of its ongoing slow-motion crackdown on the alternative tender.”

New York Times: Sweeping Children’s Online Safety Bill Is Passed in California. “The bill, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, could herald a shift in the way lawmakers regulate the tech industry. Rather than wade into heated political battles over online content, the legislation takes a practical, product-safety approach. It aims to hold online services to the same kinds of basic safety standards as the automobile industry — essentially requiring apps and sites to install the digital equivalent of seatbelts and airbags for younger users.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Boing Boing: Using DALL-E to generate fashion. “Director Karen X. Cheng used DALL-E and several other software tools to generate outfits on a video of a woman walking down the sidewalk.”

University of Connecticut: Researchers to Expand the Encyclopedia of RNA. “The National Human Genome Research Institute has awarded genomics expert Brent Graveley and his team $5.6-million to continue to work on an enormous encyclopedia of human RNA molecules and the proteins that bind to them. The grant is jointly awarded to Graveley and Gene Yeo of the University of California, San Diego.”

Argonne National Laboratory: Soaking Up the Sun with Artificial Intelligence. “Solar absorbers are a material used to convert this energy into heat or electricity. Maria Chan, a scientist in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has developed a machine learning method for screening many thousands of compounds as solar absorbers. Her co-author on this project was Arun Mannodi-Kanakkithodi, a former Argonne postdoc who is now an assistant professor at Purdue University.” Good morning, Internet…

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