Facebook, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, and Twitter adopt Aussie misinformation code | ZDNet

A handful of technology giants operating in Australia have agreed on a code of practice that aims to stem disinformation on their respective platforms.

All signatories — Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Redbubble, TikTok, and Twitter – have committed to the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation. They have also committed to releasing an annual transparency report about their efforts under the code.

The code [PDF] was prepared by the Digital Industry Group Inc (DiGi), a non-profit industry association advocating for the digital industry in Australia.

Source: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, TikTok, and Twitter adopt Aussie misinformation code | ZDNet

Police charge Navalny activist with illegal ‘gay propaganda’ for sharing photos of kissing couples

ROTFLMAO – Russia the prude state along with being cruel and petty.

Police in Krasnodar have opened a misdemeanor case against Alexey Navalny’s local campaign coordinator, charging Anastasia Panchenko with illegal “gay propaganda” for sharing two photos on Instagram showing same-sex couples kissing during protests on February 14. According to her lawyer, Mikhail Benyash, Panchenko faces a fine as high as 100,000 rubles ($1,340), if convicted. Officials say the images violate Russia’s ban on “promoting non-traditional sexual relations among minors” because Panchenko’s Instagram page is accessible to minors. 

Free Books : Download & Streaming : eBooks and Texts : Internet Archive

eBooks and Texts

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive offers over 20,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts. There is also a collection of 2.3 million modern eBooks that may be borrowed by anyone with a free archive.org account.

Source: Free Books : Download & Streaming : eBooks and Texts : Internet Archive

How the Internet Archive Digitizes 3,500 Books a Day–the Hard Way, One Page at a Time

Does turning the pages of an old book excite you? How about 3 million pages? That’s how many pages Eliza Zhang has scanned over her ten years with the Internet Archive, using Scribe, a specialized scanning machine invented by Archive engineers over 15 years ago. “Listening to 70s and 80s R&B while she works,” Wendy Hanamura writes at the Internet Archive blog, “Eliza spends a little time each day reading the dozens of books she handles. The most challenging part of her job? ‘Working with very old, fragile books.”

Does turning the pages of an old book excite you? How about 3 million pages? That’s how many pages Eliza Zhang has scanned over her ten years with the Internet Archive, using Scribe, a specialized scanning machine invented by Archive engineers over 15 years ago. “Listening to 70s and 80s R&B while she works,” Wendy Hanamura writes at the Internet Archive blog, “Eliza spends a little time each day reading the dozens of books she handles. The most challenging part of her job? ‘Working with very old, fragile books.”

The fragile state and wide variety of the millions of books scanned by Zhang and the seventy-or-so other Scribe operators explains why this work has not been automated. “Clean, dry human hands are the best way to turn pages,” says Andrea Mills, one of the leaders of the digitization team. “Our goal is to handle the book once and to care for the original as we work with it.”

Raising the glass with a foot pedal, adjusting the two cameras, and shooting the page images are just the beginning of Eliza’s work. Some books, like the Bureau of Land Management publication featured in the video, have myriad fold-outs. Eliza must insert a slip of paper to remind her to go back and shoot each fold-out page, while at the same time inputting the page numbers into the item record. The job requires keen concentration.

If this experienced digitizer accidentally skips a page, or if an image is blurry, the publishing software created by our engineers will send her a message to return to the Scribe and scan it again.

It’s not a job for the easily bored; “It takes concentration and a love of books,” says Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. The painstaking process allows digitizers to preserve valuable books online while maintaining the integrity of physical copies. “We do not disbind the books,” says Kahle, a method that has allowed them to partner with hundreds of institutions around the world, digitizing 28 million texts over two decades. Many of those books are rare and valuable, and many have been deemed of little or no value. “Increasingly,” writes the Archive’s Chris Freeland, “the Archive is preserving many books that would otherwise be lost to history or the trash bin.”

In one example, Freeland cites The dictionary of costume, “one of the millions of titles that reached the end of its publishing lifecycle in the 20th century.” It is also a work cited in Wikipedia, a key source for “students of all ages… in our connected world.” The Internet Archive has preserved the only copy of the book available online, making sure Wikipedia editors can verify the citation and researchers can use the book in perpetuity. If looking up the definition of “petticoat” in an out-of-print reference work seems trivial, consider that the Archive digitizes about 3,500 books every day in its 18 digitization centers. (The dictionary of costume was identified as the Archive’s 2 millionth “modern book.”)

Libraries “have been vital in times of crisis,” writes Alistair Black, emeritus professor of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois, and “the coronavirus pandemic may prove to be a challenge that dwarfs the many episodes of anxiety and crisis through which the public library has lived in the past.” A huge part of our combined global crises involves access to reliable information, and book scanners at the Internet Archive are key agents in preserving knowledge. The collections they digitize “are critical to educating an informed populace at a time of massive disinformation and misinformation,” says Kahle. When asked what she liked best about her job, Zhang replied, “Everything! I find everything interesting…. Every collection is important to me.”

The Internet Archive offers over 20,000,000 freely downloadable books and texts. Enter the collection here.

Related Content: 

Libraries & Archivists Are Digitizing 480,000 Books Published in 20th Century That Are Secretly in the Public Domain

10,000 Vintage Recipe Books Are Now Digitized in The Internet Archive’s Cookbook & Home Economics Collection

Classic Children’s Books Now Digitized and Put Online: Revisit Vintage Works from the 19th & 20th Centuries

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

How the Internet Archive Digitizes 3,500 Books a Day–the Hard Way, One Page at a Time is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don’t miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooksFree Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Italian ambassador killed in DR Congo attack

#Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo was killed on Monday when a UN convoy came under attack in the troubled east, #DRC sources and the government in Rome said. #LucaAttanasio died of his wounds after a World Food Programme (WFP) convoy came under fire near Goma while he was on a field trip to the region, a senior diplomatic source said in Kinshasa.

#Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo was killed on Monday when a UN convoy came under attack in the troubled east, #DRC sources and the government in Rome said. #LucaAttanasio died of his wounds after a World Food Programme (WFP) convoy came under fire near Goma while he was on a field trip to the region, a senior diplomatic source said in Kinshasa. FRANCE 24’s Clément Bonnerot tells us more.

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Roasted Garlic Butternut Squash Soup

Smitha's Bake Love

With the colder days comes the yearning to eat warm, comforting, soul filling food. And I for one think, soups should make the top of the list.

Fall started already in New Jersey and the leaves keep reminding us to gear up for even more colder days.

Warm bowl of fresh soup made with healthy veggies, protein rich broth, simmered with fresh garlic, toasted with mighty spices and to finish it off this warm bowl is accompanied with a slice of fresh baked, toasted bread! – Can we just take a minute to imagine the dinner setup and fill our eyes first?

Butternut is slightly sweet in taste and nutty in taste. Packed richly with vitamins and minerals, this winter staple is

  • Boosts immunity
  • lowers cancer risk
  • Low in calories
  • Aids in bone health (High in Magnesium, Potassium & Manganese)
  • Healthy skin and hair

This simple, flavorsome, comforting dinner is…

View original post 183 more words

India sees new lockdowns as coronavirus cases rise again – ABC News

The spike has been most pronounced in the western state of Maharashtra, where nearly 7,000 cases were detected in the past 24-hours, accounting for almost half of India’s over 14,000 cases confirmed on Monday. The weekly average for infections has nearly doubled to 5,229 in the state in the past two weeks, and most of the cases have been concentrated in a few areas, including India’s financial capital, Mumbai.

Public health officials are also sequencing the virus to see if it has mutated to be able to spread more easily, said state surveillance officer Dr. Pradeep Awate. He said that the virus evolving was natural, but that consequences of it evolving to transmit faster or become more virulent could be “catastrophic.”

Source: India sees new lockdowns as coronavirus cases rise again – ABC News

¿Qué consideras « ofensivo »? — Barbara Crane Navarro

«Los mineros de oro cavan como cerdos salvajes por todas partes. Los ríos del bosque pronto no serán más que remansos fangosos llenos de lodo, aceite de motor y basura. También lavan el polvo de oro en los ríos, mezclándolo con el mercurio. Todas estas cosas sucias y peligrosas enferman las aguas y hacen que […]

¿Qué consideras « ofensivo »? — Barbara Crane Navarro

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