NEW RESOURCES

Trinity College: With Hidden Literacies Project, Trinity Professors Make Literature by Marginalized Americans More Accessible. “Edited by Trinity College professors, the new digital anthology Hidden Literacies explores texts by marginalized Americans—including Indigenous and enslaved people, prisoners, and young children—that have not traditionally been included in archives and educational curricula. Bringing together leading scholars of historical literacy from across the country, this collection presents high-resolution images of archival documents paired with scholarly commentary on the documents’ history and significance.”

Virginia Department of Health: Virginia Department Of Health And Virginia Commonwealth University Partner To Launch An Opioid Cost Calculator. “The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) and the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Center on Society and Health collaborated on the development of an opioid cost calculator. The calculator presents cost estimates of how much the opioid epidemic impacts Virginians in multiple categories: lost labor, healthcare, crime, household costs, state costs, and federal costs.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

US Government Accountability Office: Efforts to Protect and Repatriate Native American Cultural Items and Human Remains. “Despite federal legislation calling for their protection and repatriation, cultural items located on federal and Indian lands remain vulnerable to theft, vandalism, and destruction. Moreover, a 2020 report estimated that there are more than 116,000 Native American human remains still in museums and other collections. For Native American Heritage Month (November), today’s WatchBlog post looks at our recent work on federal efforts to protect Native American cultural items.”

TechCrunch: Twitch opens Guest Star up so anyone can run their own talk show now. “With its biggest product launch in years, Twitch is betting on a near future of the platform that features more dynamic conversations, expanding its current focus beyond mostly solo streamers. Through a new tool called Guest Star, which launched in a limited beta earlier this year, streamers can now easily pull other creators and fans into their streams for talk show-like experience.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Miami Herald: Guyana wants Facebook, Twitter to remove ‘illegal maps’ claiming parts for Venezuela. “Guyana, which is considered part of the 15-member Caribbean Community though it lies on the northern coast of South America, shouldering the Atlantic, is asking Facebook and Twitter to get their facts straight and remove what the government considers ‘illegal maps’ of the former British colony. The maps, say the country’s office of foreign affairs, are being posted by Spanish-language media accounts and are claiming a large swath of Guyana for neighboring Venezuela.”

Ars Technica: Twitter restricts staff from policing content violations ahead of US midterms. “According to Bloomberg News, Twitter has significantly cut back on its content moderation staff approved to access a dashboard that logs automated and user-flagged content that requires human review before content is restricted. Ordinarily, hundreds of employees would be using the dashboard, reviewing content to manually enforce actions dictated by Twitter policy, such as banning or restricting accounts. Since last week, two Twitter safety team insiders told Bloomberg that the total number had been reduced to about 15 employees.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Northwestern Local News Initiative: Pro-Journalism Legislation Faces a Make-or-Break Session. “The clock is ticking on the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. With the midterm elections coming up on Nov. 8, the lame-duck session could be the last realistic chance for Congress to pass this bipartisan effort to make Google and Facebook pay for local news content on their platforms.”

Twilio: Twilio discloses another hack from June, blames voice phishing. “Cloud communications company Twilio disclosed a new data breach stemming from a June 2022 security incident where the same attackers behind the August hack accessed some customers’ information. Twilio says this was a ‘brief security incident’ on June 29. The attacker used social engineering to trick an employee into handing over their credentials in a voice phishing attack.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Study Says Almost 30% of People Are Redoing or Refining Their Google Searches. “Almost 30% of people are having to redo their Google searches, either by refining or extending queries, according to research published earlier this month by SEMRush, an online marketing software company.”

Faculty Focus: How and Why to Evaluate Open Educational Resources (OERs). “I expected a good experience when I was asked to review an online course in the spring of 2022 that was comprised of OERs. Unfortunately, as I began reviewing the course the saying, ‘You get what you pay for’ kept going through my mind. But fortunately, it was a good reminder of how to avoid potential pitfalls when using OERs.”

MIT Technology Review: Everything dies, including information. “Surely, we’re at a stage technologically where we might devise ways to make knowledge available and accessible forever. After all, the density of data storage is already incomprehensibly high. In the ever-­growing museum of the internet, one can move smoothly from images from the James Webb Space Telescope through diagrams explaining Pythagoras’s philosophy on the music of the spheres to a YouTube tutorial on blues guitar soloing. What more could you want? Quite a bit, according to the experts.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Washington: How low-cost earbuds can make newborn hearing screening accessible. “Newborns across the United States are screened to check for hearing loss. This test is important because it helps families better understand their child’s health, but it’s often not accessible to children in other countries because the screening device is expensive. A team led by researchers at the University of Washington has created a new hearing screening system that uses a smartphone and low-cost earbuds instead.” Good morning, Internet…

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