NEW RESOURCES

San Francisco Chronicle: 50 years of powerful Bay Area posters collected by Oakland library go online. “Before the internet age, artists, community leaders and organizations in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood would drop off posters at the library that highlighted educational classes for the community, protests and cultural events in the Bay Area. Over the past 50 years, the librarians at the then-called Latin American branch – the first branch in the U.S. dedicated to the Spanish-speaking community – archived and have since collected more than 250 posters, a majority of them stored in boxes. This year the library unveiled a digital version of the collection on its website.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Alphabet’s revenues are still growing, but just barely. “It’s no secret that the huge tech companies are still making money hand over fist, but there’s also a noticeable slowdown going on. Google’s parent company Alphabet is not immune — the company just reported its earnings results for Q4 of 2022, and just barely grew revenue year over year. The $76 billion the company pulled in during the quarter is up only one percent from Q4 of 2021.”

How-To Geek: LibreOffice, the Free Office Suite, Has a Fresh New Look. “LibreOffice is a popular open-source office suite, with applications that can serve as replacements for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Now there’s a new update with design changes and a few new features.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The National: New archive treasure trove to map the history of the UAE. “The documents are part of the second phase of the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive ― a landmark digitisation project between the UAE and the UK ― that aims to shed light on the rich history of the Gulf. A vast collection of hundreds of thousands of files are expected to go live on the AGDA’s website later this year once they are catalogued, transcribed and translated into Arabic.”

New York Times: Will the Metaverse Be Entertaining? Ask South Korea.. “In a vast studio outside Seoul, technicians huddled in front of monitors, watching cartoon K-pop singers — at least one of whom had a tail — dance in front of a psychedelic backdrop. A woman with fairy wings fluttered by. Everyone onscreen was real, sort of.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wall Street Journal: Breakup of Google’s Ad Business Would Reshape $500 Billion Sector. “Google spent the better part of two decades building the world’s most powerful digital advertising machine. Breaking it up would send shock waves through the $500 billion online-ad market.”

Euractiv: Poland warns of disinformation campaigners smearing Ukrainian refugees. “The government Plenipotentiary for the Security of the Information Space of the Republic of Poland, Stanisław Żaryn, warned at a press conference about a disinformation campaign taking place in the country concerning refugees from Ukraine. Ukrainian refugees often fall victim to online and media disinformation. Rarely, however, on a scale against which the governments must warn citizens.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: Empathy’s new tool uses AI to generate obituaries, and it’s not half bad. “Writing an obituary isn’t an easy task. That’s an understatement — it’s incredibly painful, usually expensive too. But someone has to do it. Or perhaps not. Consider leaving it to AI. That’s the pitch Empathy, a platform that provides support for families who’ve recently suffered a loss, is making with the launch of its new tool that uses AI to create obituary drafts. Called Finding Words, the tool generates obits from basic info provided by family members.”

Brown University: Study offers neurological explanation for how brains bias partisans against new information. “People who share a political ideology have more similar ‘neural fingerprints’ of political words and process new information in similar ways, according to a new analysis led by Brown University researchers.”

Ohio State News: True stories can win out on social media, study finds. “Some past research has suggested that falsehoods travel more quickly online than the truth and are more popular with the public, but a new study gives a more hopeful view. Researchers found that posts on the social media site Reddit that included news articles fact-checked as true received more engagement and positive reaction than posts with news labeled as false.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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