NEW RESOURCES

North Carolina Judicial Branch: Pro Bono Go: North Carolina’s New One-Stop Shop for Pro Bono Opportunities. “Pro Bono Go allows legal professionals to visit one website to find pro bono opportunities from the state’s leading civil justice organizations. Volunteers can search and filter opportunities by keyword, location, practice area, type (ex: cases, clinics, etc.), and sponsor organization. Volunteers can also set up customized email alerts when new opportunities matching their preferences hit the site. Volunteers do not need to create an account and never have to remember a password.”

American Libraries: Programming with Digital Collections. “A new LibGuide from the American Library Association (ALA) was recently created to help libraries explore the thousands of primary sources available from the Library of Congress online collection.”

NOLA: New Orleans & Company launches Musician Database, an online collection of 200 profiles. “NewOrleans.com has rolled out its online Musician Database, a collection of biographical pages on more than 200 local musicians presented in alphabetical order. Each profile page can accommodate a brief biography, photos, a description of the music, links to the act’s web page, social media accounts and performance schedule, and a Spotify playlist.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Your Amazon Alexa IFTTT automations are about to stop working. “The team behind IFTTT (short for ‘if this, then that’) wrote in a blog post that Amazon is cutting the service off from Alexa beginning October 31st. Once the integration is severed, users won’t be able to ask Alexa to trigger IFTTT applets. Certain automations will stick around in the IFTTT app, but some will be archived on November 1st unless you take action.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Mysterious bylines appeared on a USA Today site. Did these writers exist?. “Staffers at Reviewed, a USA Today-owned website devoted to shopping recommendations, were about to end their workday Friday when one of them noticed something strange: Articles were publishing on the site by writers none of them had ever heard of — and using suspiciously similar language.”

NPR: TikTok returns to the campaign trail but not everyone thinks it’s a good idea. “But while some first-time, grassroots candidates only know a political playing field that includes TikTok, uncertainty lingers over the best way for national Democrats to embrace it. Especially when the vast majority of the party isn’t on the platform.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

404 Media: Elon Musk Broke All the Tools Historians Need to Archive Tweets About Israel-Gaza War. “When Elon Musk began requiring people to pay steep fees to access the Twitter API earlier this year, he broke a series of tools used by researchers and archivists that could be used to accurately save tweets with metadata.”

Northeastern Global News: The smart home tech inside your home is less secure than you think, new Northeastern research finds . “Our homes are getting smarter every day. The next time you buy a toaster, fridge or dishwasher, setup might involve connecting to your home WiFi network and downloading an app on your phone. But such interconnectivity comes with risk, says David Choffnes, associate professor of computer sciences at Northeastern University.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: Bitcoin mining has “very worrying” impacts on land and water, not only carbon, UN-led study reveals. “As bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have grown in market share, they’ve been criticized for their heavy carbon footprint: Cryptocurrency mining is an energy-intensive endeavor. Mining has massive water and land footprints as well, according to a new study that is the first to detail country-by-country environmental impacts of bitcoin mining.”

New York Times: Is Social Media Addictive? Here’s What the Science Says.. “Experts who study internet use say that the magnetic allure of social media arises from the way the content plays to our neurological impulses and wiring, such that consumers find it hard to turn away from the incoming stream of information.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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