NEW RESOURCES

The National (Scotland): 1921 Scottish Census: Who will you find in the archive?. “THE 1921 census has officially been released by National Records of Scotland – and will provide a glimpse into the home and working lives of Scotland’s people 100 years ago. Family-history website ScotlandsPeople has been updated to include over 9000 volumes of enumeration district books, comprising more than 200,000 images of 4.8 million individual records.”

PR Newswire: The It Gets Better Project Premieres New Web-Series Highlighting LGBTQ+ Professionals In Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Industries (PRESS RELEASE). “Today, the It Gets Better Project premiered a new original web-series called Industry, which takes a closer look at LGBTQ+ STEM professionals and the experiences that led them to careers within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Linux: Debian-Based Tails 5.7 Anonymous OS Adds New Metadata Cleaner Tool, Latest Tor Updates. “Privacy-focused and Debian-based Tails 5.7 amnesic live system is now available for download with various enhancements, new tools, updated components, and bug fixes.”

Honolulu Civil Beat: Chad Blair: The Hawaii Legislature’s New And (Mostly) Improved Website. “I took the revamped site, which was updated Nov. 14, for a test spin this week. My general evaluation is that it will be a very user-friendly experience for most — once they get used to the new layout, and once legislative coders complete their work. It’s sort of like an upgrade to your smart phone: a little irritating at first but then you settle in.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Indy Week: Volunteers Search for Racism Written into Durham Land Deeds. “‘[T]he lot hereby conveyed shall not be sold, transferred, conveyed, leased, or rented to persons of negro blood.’ That’s language taken from a 1932 deed for land in Duke Forest. Here’s another, from a plot off of Cole Mill Road: ‘No person of any race other than the white race shall use or occupy any building on above lot.’ These are racial covenants—racist restrictions written into legally binding land deeds.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: China to punish internet users for ‘liking’ posts in crackdown after zero-Covid protests. “Internet users in China will soon be held liable for liking posts deemed illegal or harmful, sparking fears that the world’s second largest economy plans to control social media like never before.”

El País: Cybercriminals take advantage of Twitter chaos to step up phishing campaigns. “According to the US cybersecurity company Proofpoint, its researchers have observed a considerable increase in phishing campaigns. Specifically, the company said, cybercriminals are using account verification and the new Twitter Blue product as lures to steal Twitter credentials.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Internet Outages Could Spread as Temperatures Rise. Here’s What Big Tech Is Doing. “Early in September, when temperatures spiked to 116 degrees Fahrenheit and broke a 100-year record in Sacramento, California, the government told people to stay indoors as much as possible and to stay cool. That’s when people turning to Twitter to vent their grievances, but it turns out that their social media access could have melted down along with everything else. The extreme heat led to a shutdown of Twitter’s entire data center region, CNN reported.”

WIRED: Effective Altruism Is Pushing a Dangerous Brand of ‘AI Safety’. “THROUGHOUT MY TWO decades in Silicon Valley, I have seen effective altruism (EA)—a movement consisting of an overwhelmingly white male group based largely out of Oxford University and Silicon Valley—gain alarming levels of influence. EA is currently being scrutinized due to its association with Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto scandal, but less has been written about how the ideology is now driving the research agenda in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), creating a race to proliferate harmful systems, ironically in the name of ‘AI safety.'” I don’t remember hearing about EA until the FTX collapse. It’s horrifying. Good afternoon, Internet…

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