NEW RESOURCES

SiliconEra: Japanese Fan Creates Database of All Final Fantasy XIV Items. “Japanese fan FF14_mirapri completed a database for all of the items in Final Fantasy XIV from Square Enix. This includes all of the cosmetics, hairstyles, seasonal event exclusives, weapons and more spanning the entire history of the MMORPG.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Library of Congress: Improvements Ahead for the Web Archives. “Users of the Library of Congress Web Archives may have recently noticed issues when trying to access archived content presented at webarchive.loc.gov. We want to give some background and explanation about the ongoing work that is happening to modernize and improve functionality, and to set the stage for future announcements about planned improvements for access to the Library’s Web Archives.”

Search Engine Land: Dozens of big brands have blocked GPTBot, OpenAI’s new web crawler. “At least 69 of the 1,000 most popular websites in the world have blocked GPTBot, the new web crawler OpenAI introduced Aug. 7, according to a new analysis. And the percentage of sites is increasing by about 5% per week, according to AI content and plagiarism service Originality.ai.”

USEFUL STUFF

Space: The rare Super Blue Moon rises on Aug. 30 and you can watch it online for free . “After sunset on Wednesday, this Super Blue Moon will rise in the east, as seen from New York City. But if conditions happen to be poor for moonwatching in your area, you’re in luck: The Virtual Telescope Project hosted by astronomer Gianluca Masi of Rome, Italy will host a free livestream of the event starting at 11:30 p.m. on Aug. 30 (0330 GMT on Aug. 31).” Shoutout to everyone else who is getting hurricane rain tonight and will miss the blue moon.

PC World: How to put Chrome’s download notifications back at the bottom. “In early August, Google changed the way Chrome displays download notifications. Instead of files being shown as big rectangular buttons in a bar at the bottom of the screen, the information is now much more discreetly tucked in the upper right-hand corner. A single, small icon shows both your progress and completion status, along with a dropdown list of recent downloads when clicked on. But if you’re finding this update difficult to adjust to, you can reverse it.”

MakeUseOf: Navidrome Is the Perfect Self-Hosted Music Server for Raspberry Pi. “Streaming music is a feature of modern life, and most people are used to the convenience of services such as Spotify and YouTube. If you have a large, privately owned music collection, you can instead use Navidrome to stream your favorite tunes to your mobile devices and listen to internet radio.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: Can news outlets build a ‘trustworthy’ AI chatbot?. “News publishers have jumped headfirst into artificial intelligence, using generative AI tools to produce bland travel guides, inaccurate film blogs, and SEO-bait explainers. By and large, the goal has been: can we make more pages for ads without paying more writers? Now, a group of tech outlets is attempting to incorporate generative AI into its websites, though readers won’t find a machine’s byline anytime soon.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: Blue-tick scammers target consumers who complain on X. “Consumers who complain of poor customer service on X are being targeted by scammers after the social media platform formerly known as Twitter changed its account verification process.”

WIRED: The Cheap Radio Hack That Disrupted Poland’s Railway System . “SINCE WAR FIRST broke out between Ukraine and Russia in 2014, Russian hackers have used some of the most sophisticated hacking techniques ever seen in the wild… But the mysterious saboteurs who have, over the past two days, disrupted Poland’s railway system—a major piece of transit infrastructure for NATO in its support of Ukraine—appear to have used a far less impressive form of technical mischief: Spoof a simple radio command to the trains that triggers their emergency stop function.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Los Angeles Times: Michael Hiltzik: Scientists used to love Twitter. Thanks to Elon Musk, they’re giving up on it. “Concerns about the decline of X as a source of reliable information extends beyond the scientific and academic communities. During the apparent coup attempt in Russia in June, journalists noticed its relative uselessness at helping them find real-time, breaking information from the ground and sifting fact from fakery, due in part to Musk’s trashing of its account verification system.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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