NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: The beating heART of the Czech Republic. “The HeART of Czechia is a new digital collection on Google Arts & Culture that showcases the country’s magnificent art, architecture and design scene. Our 19 partners — including the National Gallery in Prague, the Mucha Foundation, the National Museum, the DOX Centre for Contemporary Arts and Villa Tugendhat — have curated 80 stories. Viewers will be able to find over 30 Street View sites and 20 ultra-high-resolution images.”

University of Maine: Fogler Library creates subject guide on inventor of earmuffs. “Fogler Library staff have created a LibGuide about Chester Greenwood, the inventor of the earmuffs from Farmington, Maine. The guide includes links to information about Greenwood’s personal life, his other inventions and the early earmuff manufacturing process.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Google is testing end-to-end encryption for group chats in the Messages app. “Google said… it is testing end-to-end encryption for RCS-based group chats on its Messages app — RCS stands for Rich Communication Services. The company noted that in the coming weeks it will be rolling out this feature to select users that are part of the app’s open beta program.”

TMZ: Elon Musk Threatens To Sue Twitter Employees … Who Break NDAs. “The Chief Twit reportedly fired off an email to employees that detailed ramifications if they were found to be leaking sensitive insider info to the media … this according to Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer, who says she obtained a copy of the correspondence and quoted from it.” In other words, the email threatening to fire leakers was immediately leaked.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Rolling Stone: Why Is Twitter Shutting Down Chinese Activists’ Accounts?. “Elon’s mass firing of security staff and increased reliance on automation is going to make it easier for tyrants to shout down and silence their critics, former staffers warn.”

Cornell Chronicle: Fictional civilization leaves behind lasting legacy. “Norman Daly spent years chronicling the lost Iron Age civilization of Llhuros – its relics, its rituals, its poetry, its music – as well as the academic commentary it inspired. But the thing that makes Llhuros most noteworthy as a civilization? It never existed.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Ireland’s privacy watchdog engaging with Twitter over data access to reporters. “Elon Musk’s desire to stir conspiratorial shit up by giving select outsiders aligned with his conservative agenda access to Twitter systems and data could land the world’s richest man in some serious doodoo with regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.”

CoinDesk: Class Action Lawsuit Against FTX’s Celebrity Promoters and Sam Bankman-Fried Is Quietly Dropped. “A class action lawsuit filed against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and a host of paid celebrity promoters for the now-defunct crypto exchange has been dropped. On Thursday, lawyers for the suit’s lead plaintiff, Edwin Garrison, filed a voluntary notice of dismissal with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

News@Northeastern: The AI Portrait App Lensa Has Gone Viral, But It Might Be More Problematic Than You Think. “The way AI applications like Lensa work is that developers and engineers use large data sets to train a model to recognize and learn certain characteristics or styles. Once the model learns that information, it can look at a new picture and reproduce that image in one of the styles it’s been trained to reproduce. In this case, Lensa’s app has been trained on artwork created and posted by artists across the internet, and some artists claim this not only devalues their own work, churning out 50 images at a fraction of the cost of a commission, but it is potentially appropriating their work, including their signature.”

Yale Insights: Building Trust with the Algorithms in Our Lives. “Consumers are wary of the recommendations made by algorithms. But according to new research co-authored by Yale SOM’s Taly Reich, showing that an algorithm can learn—that it improves over time—helps to resolve this distrust.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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