Word & Way: In St.Louis, Mapping How Religion Is Lived — in Sanctuaries Holy and Profane .“[Adam] Park is a fellow with a novel project called Lived Religion in the Digital Age.The SLU project uses photos, interviews and other data to map religious happenings around the city.The idea is to capture the varieties and complexities of religious practices — some in conventional religious spaces such as churches and others at places such as Busch Stadium, a baseball park in St.
Louis — to build a better understanding of the way religion is lived.”
USGS: Landslide Risks Highlighted in New Online Tool .“The U.S.
Geological Survey today unveiled a new web-based interactive map that marks an important step toward mapping areas that could be at higher risk for future landslides.In collaboration with state geological surveys and other federal agencies, USGS has compiled much of the existing landslide data into a searchable, web-based interactive map called the U.S.Landslide Inventory Map.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
KSBW: PG&E creates new website to map areas that can be affected by power shutoffs .“After being plagued by technical issues and a non-responsive website, PG&E has created and released a new site for the public to see if they’ll be affected by power outages.”
New Indian Express: Google will require all devices to run Android 10 after January 2020 .“The US-based search giant Google is making it compulsory for smartphone manufacturer to ship devices with Android 10 after January 31, 2020.
After the above mentioned date, Google will only approve new devices running the latest Android version, Android 10 and the company will stop approving new devices running Android 9 Pie.”
CNET: Instagram could soon let you send direct messages on desktop .“You may soon be able to use Instagram Direct to ping one or more people on desktop.
Tipster Jane Manchun Wong tweeted about the rumored feature on Tuesday, along with screenshots of what Direct for desktop could look like.” Jane Wong strikes again!
USEFUL STUFF
The Next Web: Here’s how you make your Google Docs secure .“… like every other piece of useful technology, Google Docs can cause unwanted security and privacy problems.
The convenience of Google Docs often leads users to let their guard down and ignore security issues.If you’re using Google Docs to store business secrets, the next best-selling novel, or a future award-winning research paper, here are some tips that will make sure your documents are secure.”
MakeUseOf: How to Grab Someone’s Attention by Sending Full Screen Messages .
“Ever needed to send a message to someone online and really wanted to get your point across? They might ignore a simple direct message on Slack, and an email might sit in their inbox for days.You need another way.If you’re looking for an alternative to get someone’s attention, why not try a full screen message? Through a simple service called BigAssMessage, you can easily make this a reality.
Let’s take a look at it.” Simple and LOUD.Might use this to remind my husband when it’s time to roll the garbage cans out.
University: NYU Launches Center for Social Media and Politics .“NYU has established the Center for Social Media and Politics, which will examine the production, flow, and impact of social media content in the political sphere, as well as support research that uses social media data to study politics.”
The Daily Beast: Real Housewives of Soccer Go to War Over Instagram Mole Hunt .
“It was a lengthy investigation, one that was carefully planned and meticulously executed over the course of several months.And when the big reveal came, it was delivered in stunning style, with a sensational and dramatic denouement.” Filter it though I may, I usually spend time slogging through gossipy news stories and do not include them here.But I thought this was interesting, so let me be gossipy for one moment.
SECURITY & LEGAL
Digital Trends: Get your popcorn ready.Zuckerberg is set to testify before Congress again .
“Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be back in Washington D.C.to testify before Congress once again, this time in support of the platform’s Libra cryptocurrency.”
New York Times: Tech Giants Shift Profits to Avoid Taxes.
There’s a Plan to Stop Them..“Digital tax dodgers, take heed: International leaders have advanced a plan to prevent large multinational companies like Apple, Facebook and Amazon from avoiding taxes by shifting profits between countries.It’s an effort to de-escalate a global battle over how to tax the digital economy.”
Ars Technica: Forum cracks the vintage passwords of Ken Thompson and other Unix pioneers .“As one of the original versions of Unix, BSD is an ancient operating system.So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it used what are, by today’s standards, strange, even ridiculous security.
For one, the hashing function protecting passwords, though state of the art 40 years ago, is now trivial to crack.Stranger still, the password hashes of some BSD creators were included in publicly available source code.And then, there are the passwords people chose.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
Phys .org: The Divided States of America: How social media reveals social fragmentation .“Far from being an egalitarian melting pot of diverse opinions and worldviews, the Internet has grown to mirror the same social divisions that exist offline.The U.S.is fragmented into physically segregated communities with polarized idealogical differences.That is the conclusion of a new paper by the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
This paper quantifies the oft-repeated complaint that social media has become an echo chamber.” .