CNET: Facebook brings Reels to its iOS, Android apps in the US. “It’s official: Reels are now available on Facebook. The short-form videos, which originally launched on Instagram last year, can be created and viewed on Facebook by folks in the US with an iOS or Android device.”
NBC News: Twitch releases new safety feature amid scrutiny over ‘hate raids’. “Phone-verified chats will allow targeted creators to have more control over who can participate in their communities, Twitch said in a blogpost Wednesday. The move will require all or some users to verify phone their numbers before they can participate in streamers’ chats, which could help reduce targeted attacks by bots. Once users verify the phone numbers to their accounts, they will not need to verify them again for other channels.”
PCMag Australia: Google Maps Rolls Out Wildfire Tracking Globally. “Building on the firm’s wildlife boundary map, launched last year to provide satellite data about California’s infernos, the new wildfire layer is now available globally. Tap on a virtual fire—indicated by a red-and-white flame icon—to see links to resources from local governments (think emergency websites, phone numbers, evacuation details). And when available, Maps will provide details about the fire, such as its containment status and how many acres have burned.”
Bloomberg: Google Hands SoftBank Patents From Failed Balloon Moonshot. “Alphabet has transfered about 200 patents from its Loon project to the telecoms unit of SoftBank Group Corp., the Japanese company said in a statement on Thursday. SoftBank is developing its own wireless technology that uses fixed-wing autonomous aircraft as a flying base station.”
New York Times: One Man’s Endless Hunt for a Dopamine Rush in Virtual Reality. “Since the arrival of the seminal Oculus headset in 2013, [Wolf Heffelfinger] has played games in virtual reality, watched movies, visited distant lands and assumed new identities. He sees his virtual adventures as a relentless search for the dopamine rush that comes when the technology takes him somewhere new. When he reaches the edge of what the technology can do, the rush wanes. He has put his many headsets on the shelf, where they have sat for months. But when advances arrive, he leaps back in.”
Wall Street Journal: A Hospital Hit by Hackers, a Baby in Distress: The Case of the First Alleged Ransomware Death. “When Teiranni Kidd walked into Springhill Medical Center on July 16, 2019, to have her baby, she had no idea the Alabama hospital was deep in the midst of a ransomware attack. For nearly eight days, computers had been disabled on every floor. A real-time wireless tracker that could locate medical staff around the hospital was down. Years of patient health records were inaccessible. And at the nurses’ desk in the labor and delivery unit, medical staff were cut off from the equipment that monitors fetal heartbeats in the 12 delivery rooms.”
GovTech: Texas Social Media Censorship Law May Increase Spam Emails. “House Bill 20, which passed on Sept. 9, prohibits email service providers from ‘impeding the transmission of email messages based on content.’ Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University of Law whose research and teaching focuses on Internet, IP and advertising law topics, says this restricts efforts to control email spam.”
The Next Web: Researcher banned from Facebook beseeches Congress to regulate social media. “An NYU researcher who was shut out of Facebook has taken her fight for transparency to the US Congress. During Congressional testimony on Tuesday, Laura Edelson, who investigates online ads and misinformation, called for new data requirements and legal protections for researchers.”
The Hindu: New digital archive promotes South Indian visual artists and their works. “An artist and her efforts to create a space for her peers forms the foundation of A Moxie Tale, a digital archive that promotes visual artists from South India. Now, in its nascent stages, the platform attempts to train the spotlight on South Indian practices, more specifically from Tamil Nadu, and doubles up as a digital space for display, which connoisseurs can browse and opt to support.”
Stanford University: Stanford scholars expand digital database with historic records from the Nuremberg Trial. “This additional collection, to be known as the Tad Taube Archive of the International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, will allow the public to easily browse and discover the contents of over 5,000 trial records – including 250,000 pages of digitized paper documents – showing in meticulous detail the efforts of the IMT, a group of representatives from four Allied countries – the U.S., the U.K., the Soviet Union and France – who were tasked with prosecuting former officials of the Third Reich and holding them accountable for the horrific acts inflicted during World War II and the Holocaust.” The new collection launches tomorrow, October 1.
New York Times: Positive Coronavirus Cases Halt ‘Aladdin’ a Day After It Reopened. “On Tuesday, ‘Aladdin’ held its first performance since Broadway closed for the pandemic. On Wednesday, the show was canceled because of several positive coronavirus tests.”
Techdirt: Should Information Flows Be Controlled By The Internet Plumbers?. “Content moderation is a can of worms. For Internet infrastructure intermediaries, it’s a can of worms that they are particularly poorly positioned to tackle. And yet Internet infrastructure elements are increasingly being called on to moderate content—content they may have very little insight into as it passes through their systems.”
Chattanooga Times Free Press: North Georgia teacher dies of COVID one month after losing her husband to the virus. “North Georgia elementary school teacher Heidi Hammond has died of COVID-19 less than one month after her husband, a middle school football coach in Dalton, Georgia, died of the virus. Hammond, 44, died Friday at AdventHealth Gordon, where she had been hospitalized for more than a month. Prior to her death, Hammond taught first grade at Chatsworth Elementary School in Murray County, Georgia. She had worked in the Murray County School system for more than 20 years.”
Fast Company: 4 Google Calendar efficiency secrets that’ll blow your mind. “No matter how many hours you’ve spent staring at Calendar’s virtual walls, in fact, I’d be willing to wager the service still holds some features you’ve yet to encounter. And some of them could make all the difference in the world when it comes to your appointment-juggling success. Here are four fantastic Google Calendar secrets that’ll change the way you interact with your agenda. Block out some time on your calendar and get in the habit of using them. Trust me: You’ll be glad you did.”
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