NEW RESOURCES

The Buffalo News: Newly digitized funeral program collection unveiled at Merriweather library. “Interest in genealogical research has increased with new technological innovations, including online databases, but members of the Buffalo Genealogical Society of the African Diaspora long ago discovered the value of African American funeral programs – in all their low-tech glory – as rich sources of biographical information for those working on their family trees. The society recently teamed with the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, University at Buffalo and Western New York Library Resources Council to digitize a community resource that it created called the Funeral Collection project.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Google Domains halts registrations as it waits for the Google Grim Reaper. “Google Domains has registered its last domain. Google announced in July that the service was getting shut down and that it had struck a deal with Squarespace to sell off the existing customer base. Part of that transition process means winding down the existing Google Domains functionality. 9to5Google was the first site to notice that you can no longer buy a domain through the service while it waits for the Google Grim Reaper to arrive.”

TechCrunch: TikTok debuts new tools and technology to label AI content. “As more creators turn to AI for their artistic expression, there’s also a broader push for transparency around when AI was involved in content creation. To address this concern, TikTok announced today it will launch a new tool that will allow creators to label their AI-generated content and will begin testing other ways to label AI-generated content automatically.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeTechEasier: 9 Tools to Convert and Save WEBP Files to JPG . “WEBP is a file extension developed by Google to reduce the size of an image without needing to sacrifice image quality. Recently, many websites have been making use of the WEBP image format, but it’s still not natively supported by many image editors, including older versions of Photoshop or web content management systems, such as WordPress. The solution to this is to convert your WEBP image to JPG. This list includes some of the best tools to convert and save WEBP files to JPG.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Business Insider: New layoffs at Twitter hit trust and safety workers even as advertisers worry about toxic speech. “The cuts happened the first week of September, according to two people familiar with the company, one of the first targeted layoffs since he shrunk operations earlier this year. While this layoff only affected a handful of people, five to 10, it was focused entirely on workers in trust and safety.”

BBC: How will museums of tomorrow tell the Covid pandemic story?. “Covid’s arrival in early 2020 threw organisations and businesses into turmoil. But while most workers grappled with furlough, social distancing and working from home, a small band of museum officers sensed history was in the making. This is one museum service’s story of trying to collect items in real-time to capture the pandemic story for future generations.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CoinDesk: NFL Quarterback Trevor Lawrence and 2 YouTube Influencers Settle FTX Case . “As Sam Bankman-Fried prepares for a trial defense in Manhattan next month, three celebrity promoters of his failed FTX cryptocurrency exchange have opted to settle the case, according to court filings. NFL team Jacksonville Jaguars’ quarterback Trevor Lawrence and YouTube influencers Kevin Paffrath and Tom Nash agreed to settle the case on undisclosed terms. The final court order acknowledging the settlement and removing them from the case is awaiting a sign-off from U.S. Judge K. Michael Moore.”

Bar and Bench (India): X Corp (Twitter) case: Karnataka High Court suggests that government bring in minimum age for using social media. “The Karnataka High Court today suggested that the Central government consider setting a minimum age for using social media so that children are prevented from using it. A bench of Justices G Narender and Vijaykumar A Patil made the suggestion while dwelling upon the dangers of exposing children to social media.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: The Google Trial Is Going to Rewrite Our Future. “The Google antitrust trial, which began last week, is ostensibly focused on the past — on a series of deals that Google made with other companies over the past two decades. The prosecution in the case, U.S. et al. v. Google, contends that Google illegally spent billions of dollars paying off Samsung and Apple to prevent anyone else from gaining a foothold in the market for online search.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis: Turning the tide: Ghana’s innovative approach to tackle marine plastic pollution with citizen science. “Working with IIASA researchers, Ghana has adopted a citizen science approach to addressing the problem of plastic pollution in marine environments, becoming the first country to integrate this type of data on marine plastic litter into its official monitoring and reporting processes. A new study presents this innovative approach on Ghana’s citizen science journey and offers a pathway that can potentially be adopted in other countries.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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