New-to-me, and I’m sorry I didn’t discover it before Halloween: Don’t Open. Zombies Inside.. “A College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of English and Latinx literature, [Maia] Gil’Adí is the founder of The Zombie Archive, an online labor of love where she is building a detailed timeline of zombies on the big screen, from 1932’s White Zombie, with Bela Lugosi, through 2014, year of the immortal cinematic classic Zombeavers.”
Ukrainska Pravda: Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces create new unit to inspect cultural monuments in combat areas. “The press service for Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces (part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine) has reported that a new unit comprising both military personnel and civilians has been created to take care of the preservation of cultural heritage as part of a pilot project.”
Georgia State University: Inaugural Online Conference Brings Together Top Distance Learning Educators Inaugural Online Conference Brings Together Top Distance Learning Educators. “To cultivate methods to create a stronger sense of ‘belonging’ and engagement for students, Georgia State Perimeter College’s Office of Online Initiatives is presenting its first ‘unDistance Learning Conference’ Nov. 6 – 10. The conference is a hybrid event, with virtual presentations from nationally known experts Monday through Thursday, and an in-person workshop with group sessions on Friday. The conference aligns with National Distance Learning Week and is free and open to all educators.”
Hongkiat: 10 Best Tools to Create Online Quizzes and Polls. “Online quizzes and polls serve a variety of purposes. They can engage your audience, gather opinions, and collect valuable data to enhance your business operations. A plethora of free tools exists online to help you design these interactive elements effortlessly. These tools offer a wide range of features, from basic to advanced. In this article, we’ll explore ten excellent tools for creating online quizzes and polls. These tools can be integrated into your website or used in your content marketing strategies.”
New York Times: School Cellphone Bans Are Trending. Do They Work?. “A recent report from UNESCO, the United Nations’ educational and cultural agency, found that nearly one in four countries now has laws or policies banning or restricting student cellphone use in schools. Such bans typically make exceptions for students with disabilities and for educational uses approved by teachers. Even so, the smartphone crackdowns are contentious.”
TechCrunch: X is launching two new subscription tiers, including a ‘Premium+’ ad-free plan. “X, formerly known as Twitter, is introducing two new tiers for its subscription offering in order to bring in additional revenue. The social media giant is adding a new Premium+ tier that costs $16 per month and offers the ‘largest reply boost’ and removes ads from the For You and Following feeds. The tier also comes with revenue-sharing, along with access to other creator tools.”
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research: How social media can contribute to species conservation. “With the increasing use of social media and the widespread availability of high-quality digital cameras, new opportunities are arising. Nature photographers worldwide are sharing their biodiversity observations on social media, which has huge potential. A research team has used the South Asian country of Bangladesh as an example to investigate what contribution Facebook data can make to biodiversity monitoring and, ultimately, to assessing potential protected areas.”
Search Engine Journal: Google Launches New Search Tools To Help With Math & Science. “Google is rolling out new capabilities to Search and Lens that will assist in solving complex math and science problems. These new tools provide step-by-step explanations, solutions, and interactive 3D models to aid visual learning for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects.”
Business Insider: Google Brain cofounder says Big Tech companies are lying about the risks of AI wiping out humanity because they want to dominate the market. “A leading AI expert and Google Brain cofounder said Big Tech companies were stoking fears about the technology’s risks to shut down competition. Google Brain was a deep-learning AI research team that merged with the DeepMind division earlier this year. Andrew Ng, an adjunct professor at Stanford University who taught OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, told The Australian Financial Review that the biggest tech companies hoped to trigger strict regulation with the ‘bad idea that AI could make us go extinct.’”
National Library of Wales: The Diversity Project of the Dictionary of Welsh Biography. “Thanks to new funding through the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan, the Dictionary of Welsh Biography (DWB) is undertaking a new project to enhance the quality and range of its contents. Over this year and the next, the Diversity Project will particularly focus on ethnicity and gender equality in newly commissioned articles to improve the representation of Wales’s diverse history.”
The Conversation: How to redesign social media algorithms to bridge divides. “Current engagement-based algorithms make predictions about which posts are most likely to generate clicks, likes, shares or views – and use these predictions to rank the most engaging content at the top of your feed. This tends to amplify the most polarising voices, because divisive perspectives are very engaging. Bridging-based ranking uses a different set of signals to determine which content gets ranked highly. One approach is to increase the rank of content that receives positive feedback from people who normally disagree.”
Bellingcat: Separating Fact from Fiction on Social Media in Times of Conflict. “At Bellingcat, we pride ourselves on providing tools and resources for our audience to think critically about sources they find online. In this short guide, we give a few tips on what to consider when confronted with an abundance of footage and claims. Here’s how to separate fact from fiction with real, recent examples of misinformation.”
WP Tavern: WP Data Dashboard Tracks WordPress.org Themes Ecosystem. “Munich-based digital agency owner Hendrik Luehrsen has been tracking the usage of themes with the FSE tag (block themes) using a spreadsheet that pulls in data from the WordPress.org API. Wrangling the data in a spreadsheet became too cumbersome, so Luehrsen launched WP Data Dashboard over the weekend as a ‘centralized hub for exploring, analyzing, and visualizing data across the WordPress landscape.’”
University of Wisconsin-Madison: From ********* to EZacces$! Your browser extension could grab your password and sensitive info . “When you type a password or credit card number into a website, you expect that your sensitive data will be protected by a system designed to keep it secure. That’s not always the case, according to a group of digital security researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. They found that some popular websites are vulnerable to browser extensions that can extract user data like passwords, credit card information and social security numbers from HTML code. A preprint of their work has already created a buzz in tech circles.”
The Verge: This app is making podcasts more TikTokable. “Detail, a podcast recording and editing app, is catering to the growing demand for video podcasts with a new multicam recording feature. Users can record simultaneously from two iPhones to produce a vertical video of two shots stacked on top of each other. It is a format that is optimized for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, which are becoming increasingly important in the podcast space.”
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