Pace DM: Court Allows Admissions of Wayback Machine Screenshots as Evidence. “The Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed a ruling by the lower court, admitting screenshots from the Internet Archive – Wayback Machine (U.S. v. Gasperini, July 2, 2018).”
BuzzFeed News: No Big Deal, Just A US President Telling A Former Russian President He Needs To Eat More. “As the US–Russia relationship continues to twist and turn, documents declassified on Thursday show just how much the position of the two countries has — and hasn’t — changed. Ties between the two countries have been among the issues dominating Donald Trump’s first term, with everything from accusations of election meddling to tussling over Ukraine and Syria. No one knows exactly what the relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is really like — when the two met in Helsinki in July there was no one else, except for translators, in the room. Things weren’t always so informal. Previous presidents kept meticulous records, and on Thursday a host of those files, from the presidency of Bill Clinton, were released.”
Richmond News: Health agency to mine social media for study on suicide trends, risk factors. “Federal health researchers are looking to mine social media to more quickly identify suicide-related behaviours, instead of relying on woefully outdated data. What the Public Health Agency of Canada wants is an artificial intelligence program that combs social media platforms for keywords to give its researchers a better view of trends and risk factors linked to suicide-related behaviours.”
New-to-me, from The Wilson Post: Antique Southern furniture sleuth. “The Southern furniture historian said the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts is ‘the largest collection of Southern-made material culture in the world and is concentrated on the American South and includes furniture, paintings, metal works, textiles, pottery and some architecture.’…The museum was established in 1965, and its entire collection may be viewed online.”
Bloomberg: Sweden Struggles With ‘Country in Chaos’ Social Media Attacks. “Facing what could be the most tumultuous election in a century, the nation’s institutions and political groups have come under increasing cyberattacks that are threatening to disrupt the outcome. There has been a proliferation of new ‘bots’ on Twitter that are primarily stumping for the nationalist, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats and attacking the ruling Social Democrats.”
A Marquette University Thesis: The Highest Form of Like: Snapchat, College Students and Hyperpersonal Communication. “The purpose of this study explores how college students engaged with others on Snapchat and how that differed from other Social Networking Sites (SNS). Social Information Process (SIP) Theory was applied as a framework for understanding the effects of time-limited (disappearing) messages and extended conversations that can lead to “hyperpersonal” communication, a form of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) that surpasses the level of affection and emotion of Face to Face (FtF) interaction. In a series of focus groups, college students explained how they used Snapchat and other SNS and the effects it had on interpersonal communication. The participants described emotional interactions with others on Snapchat which they characterized as more authentic and in-the-moment than other SNS and that reflected hyperpersonal communication.” The entire thesis is available for download.
Motherboard: This Music Theory Professor Just Showed How Stupid and Broken Copyright Filters Are. “German music professor Ulrich Kaiser this week wrote about a troubling experiment he ran on YouTube. As a music theory teacher, Kaiser routinely works to catalog a collection of public domain recordings he maintains online in order to teach his students about Beethoven and other classical music composers. The first video Kaiser posted online simply explained his efforts to provide digitized copies of public domain recordings to students, with some of the music in question playing in the background. But within three minutes of being posted online, YouTube’s Content ID system had flagged the music for a copyright violation—despite no copyright actually being violated.”
The Art Newspaper: Victoria and Albert Museum brings Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks to life online. “Scholars and digital experts at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London have posted online the contents of two notebooks by Leonardo da Vinci, enabling devotees of the Renaissance polymath to zoom in and examine his revolutionary ideas and concepts.”
Wired: How To Use Twitter: Critical Tips For New Users. “Twitter is where news is broken, links are shared, and memes are born. It’s also a place for chatting with friends. Yet unlike Facebook, Twitter is public by default. And that’s not a bad thing. It means your jokes can go viral (if they’re funny) and in addition to your friends, you can interact with your favorite journalists, athletes, artists, or political figures, all in the same space.” This is a “basics” article, but it’s pretty thorough.
Google Blog: Step aboard Discovery with virtual reality. “Today, on the 34th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Discovery’s maiden voyage, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and Google Arts & Culture have teamed up to bring visitors into the orbiter like never before. Two of the astronauts who helped deliver Hubble to orbit as part of STS-31—Maj Gen Charlie Bolden and Dr. Kathy Sullivan—take us on a 360 journey inside Discovery at the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.”
The Costa Rica News: Meet The New “Virtual Art Museum” Of Costa Rica. “If you are a lover of painting and you want to see the beautiful pieces that the Ticos museums keep, it is no longer necessary for you to leave your house, as Costa Rica launched its new ‘art museum on the internet’.”
New York Times: New York City Is Briefly Labeled ‘Jewtropolis’ on Snapchat and Other Apps. “Users of a variety of popular apps and services, including Snapchat, awoke Thursday morning to find that New York City had been relabeled ‘Jewtropolis’ on maps displayed in the apps.”
China Daily: China builds national database for water networks. “Having an ID number is not the exclusive domain of human beings — now it’s also a ‘right’ owned by the waters in China. A national database for water networks containing the physical data of over 3.33 million natural and artificial rivers, lakes, reservoirs and canals has been formally completed.”
Chemistry World: Chemical reaction database in danger of closing down. “The Chemical Safety Library (CSL), a public database of hazardous chemical reactions launched in March 2017, is struggling to stay afloat and seeking partners to help it keep going.”
ArtsHub: Google goes soggy and we learn why. “At first search engines like Alta Vista offered human driven searches in which real people went on the hunt for information. As the system grew, that became ridiculous. Then we had the miracle of Google, the search engine which sent its spiders out all over the system, constantly indexing until we could find the most extraordinary things in the blink of an eye. The education of your GP? Train timetables in Sweden? Academic papers in Botswana? Done before you finish the thought.”
