NEW RESOURCES

British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog: The largest Greek manuscript?. “Add MS 35123 comprises more than 600 leaves, almost 1,300 larger-than-A4 pages, bound tightly between heavy medieval wooden boards that weigh almost 10 kilograms. This giant tome is a late-12th century Biblical manuscript, containing the first eight books of the Old Testament: the five from Moses appended by Joshua, Judges and Ruth.” The first eight books of the Old Testament and LOTS of commentary.

Forward: The comprehensive lexicon of Jewish writers is now accessible on the Internet. This article has been translated from Yiddish. “Researchers and simply lovers of the Yiddish word have long been interested in a digital encyclopedia of all writers who published in Yiddish. Now, in honor of its 75th anniversary, the Jewish Cultural Congress has digitized the Jewish original and installed a search function. His current website includes the entire content of the eight-volume Lexicon of New Jewish Literature, as well as the supplemental volume on Soviet Jewish writers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Rolling Stone: War Misinfo Is Everywhere. So Twitter Is Cracking Down on … Nudity . “X, formerly Twitter, may sound like a porn site, but it’s growing more hostile to adult content. Although currently awash in misinformation and extremist hate speech related to the ongoing war between Israeli armed forces and Hamas militants, the platform is apparently focused on keeping nudity out of users’ feeds rather than how it may be fueling violence and geopolitical instability.”

National Library of Norway: New Bokhylla agreement gives you digital access to 400,000 books. (Translated from Norwegian.) “Soon you will have digital access to all books published in Norway up to and including 2005 in the Nettbiblioteket at nb.no. The new Bokhylla agreement, which has been entered into between the National Library and Kopinor, covers 400,0000 Norwegian books subject to rights. This is 175,000 more than today.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Preservation Underground (Duke University Libraries): Automatic Text Generation Fail. “We discovered that Microsoft Word will now automatically generate Alt Text (alternative text) descriptions of the images you insert into your documents after it described an Ethiopic scroll as a roll of toilet paper. Clearly the robots have some training to do on cultural heritage materials.”

Tubefilter: Dude Perfect gets its own streaming service. “Dude Perfect has officially launched its own streaming service. The Texas-based YouTube trickshot group–aka longtime friends Tyler Toney, Garrett Hilbert, Cody Jones, and twins Cory and Coby Cotton–first unveiled the free-to-watch service (and accompanying app) this past June, during its Pandemonium Tour.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Your Face May Soon Be Your Ticket. Not Everyone Is Smiling.. “Facial recognition software is speeding up check-in at airports, cruise ships and theme parks, but experts worry about risks to security and privacy.”

Engadget: The EPA won’t force water utilities to inspect their cyber defenses. “The EPA is withdrawing its plan to require states to assess the cybersecurity and integrity of public water system programs. While the agency says it continues to believe cybersecurity protective measures are essential for the public water industry, the decision was made after GOP-led states sued the agency for proposing the rule.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Search Engine Journal: Research: GPT-4 Jailbreak Easily Defeats Safety Guardrails. “Researchers discovered a new way to jailbreak ChatGPT 4 so that it no longer has guardrails to prohibit it from providing dangerous advice. The approach, called Low-Resource Languages Jailbreak,” achieves a stunning 79% total success rate.”

WIRED: The Curse of the Creator Economy. “Seldom do I crawl out of a TikTok rabbit hole feeling well-informed and more knowledgeable about complicated subjects. And then there’s the trust issue. Some people gleefully anticipate the end of gatekeepers. But the creator ecosystem has insufficient protections against toxic, even racist content. An oft-cited drive of creators is getting famous, and that compass too often points to the lowest common denominator. Creators are also all too eager to sell out their followers with #ads that might in other venues be called bribes.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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