NEW RESOURCES

Global Coffee Report: WCR releases Arabica genetic fingerprint database. “Verification of coffee varieties ensures quality control of plant material is available to farmers worldwide. WCR is making the database openly accessible to the scientific community so that it can be used by public and private labs for variety verification.”

Digital Library of Georgia: Standard Telephone Company Records documenting Standard Telephone Company’s provision of services to rural northeast Georgians for the past century are now available online.. “The collection contains historical materials dating from 1904 to 1999 that come from the archives of the independently-owned Standard Telephone Company. Headquartered in Cornelia, it provided telephone service to rural northeast Georgians. Among the materials are items recognizing fifty years of service from the Standard Telephone Company’s longtime employee, Henry Davis, an African-American telephone engineer, the first in Georgia and possibly the nation.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

California Department of Parks and Recreation: California State Parks Unveils Enhanced PORTS Website Offering Innovative Learning Resources for Teachers and Students. “PORTS is an innovative initiative that connects K-12 classrooms with the wonders of California’s diverse state parks through virtual field trips, live interactive sessions, and comprehensive digital resources. The newly updated website offers a range of exciting features to enrich the educational journey of teachers and students across the state.”

WordPress: Introducing the 100-Year Plan: Secure Your Online Legacy for a Century. “A domain is your most valuable digital asset. While standard domain registrations last a decade, our 100-Year Plan gives you an opportunity to secure your domain for a full century.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bloomberg: Google Axes Bad Reviews of Tracker Exposing Uyghur Forced Labor. “The Human Rights Foundation’s Uyghur Forced Labor Checker had been experiencing a spate of unusual activity in recent months, with the number of downloads fluctuating dramatically, according to Claudia Bennett, the nonprofit’s legal and program officer. The tool, a Google Chrome extension, alerts internet users if a retailer or business whose website they are visiting has links to forced Uyghur labor.”

BBC: ‘Girl’ trends are sticky and fun. But they can also be problematic.. “Lazy girl jobs are just one instance of a parade of content recently branded as ‘girl’ trends. In the past month, we’ve seen the rise of ‘girl math’, which allows shoppers to justify pricey purchases with a bit of number crunching; and ‘girl dinner’, in which meagre snack platters constitute a full dinner. As these trends rise, there’s one key thing they have in common besides their nomenclature – there’s nothing inherently feminine about them at all.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: AI chatbots help web content farms copy work from top publishers, report says. “Dozens of websites are using AI chatbots to copy and repurpose articles from top publishers, according to a report from the news-rating group NewsGuard, offering a glimpse into how artificial intelligence tools risk undermining media companies and muddying the online news industry. The 37 websites, which Bloomberg also reviewed, posted stories that contained identical text, photos and quotes to articles previously published by the New York Times, Reuters and CNN, according to the report.” Not that junk content online is anything new.

The Messenger: Trump Advisor’s Former Social Media Company Gettr Accused of Stiffing IT Firm Out of $3 Million. “The social media company founded by Donald Trump advisor Jason Miller stiffed a tech outfit they hired for IT services out of more than $3 million, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in New York.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Oregon State University: FDA approving drugs after fewer trials, providing less information to public, OSU studies find. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is approving more novel pharmaceutical drugs based on single clinical trials and with less public disclosure about those trials than was the norm just a few years ago, a pair of recent studies from Oregon State University found. Researchers agree it is important to minimize delays in making treatments for diseases such as cancer available to patients, but they say their findings point to a need for greater transparency around how drugs receive approval.”

The Conversation: Online gaming communities could provide a lifeline for isolated young men − new research. “Online gaming communities could be a vital lifeline for young men struggling silently with mental health issues, according to new research. My colleagues and I analyzed an all-male online football gaming community over the course of a year. We discovered that members who reported more depressive symptoms and less real-life support were roughly 40% more likely to form and maintain social ties with fellow gamers compared with those reporting more real-life support.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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