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  • 3 Aug 2022 9:26 PM | Anonymous

    Millions of people pass through the doors of one of America's most popular museums each year.

    But few come with a purpose as deeply personal as the group of Indigenous South Australians who recently arrived at the front steps.

    WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following story contains images and voices of people who have died.

    For decades, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has held the remains of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people whose bones were taken from Australia in order to be studied in the United States.

    Major Sumner was one of several representatives from the Narungga and Kaurna nations who made the long journey to the US capital to take their ancestors home.

    "Let the world know this is what happened to our people, to the people that passed on," he said.

    "They were taken away, they were put in boxes and kept in museums and poked.

    "Once we rebury them, they [will] no longer be touched."

    The repatriation from Washington was the third time the Smithsonian Institution had returned ancestral remains to Australia.

    It earlier repatriated bones taken from the Northern Territory during a major scientific expedition to Arnhem Land in 1948.

    You can read more in an article written by Jade Macmillan and published in the abc.net.au web site at: https://ab.co/3BFLCq5

    NOTE: abc.net.au is the Australian Broadcasting Company, not the American Broadcasting Company in the U.S.


  • 3 Aug 2022 8:31 PM | Anonymous

    The WXYZ web site has an interesting article written by Ameera David that describes Black American genealogy research:

    Black adults in the United States are more likely than any other group to see race as central to their identity. For many of those Americans, descended from enslaved Africans, the roots of their identity through ancestry remains a mystery.

    When enslaved people were captured from the continent and brought to the Americas, they lost their names, they lost their languages, they lost the freedom to honor their ancestors,” said Gina Paige, President and Co-founder of AfricanAncestry.com.

    Today those ancestors’ descendants are on a quest to reclaim what was taken all those years ago.

    “I can only go so far back in my family as far as my great grandparents on one side and grandparents on the other side, and that was not enough for me,” said Evan Chaney, researching his family history.

    Unlike his grandparents, Evan could use DNA to pick up, where the paper trail had ended- a test through Africanancestry.com that could trace his roots back hundreds of years to a specific country and ethnic group.

    You can read the full story at: https://bit.ly/3BEWhRS.


  • 3 Aug 2022 9:33 AM | Anonymous

    In 2021, the Hawaii State Archives launched a project to digitize what is physically in the building so everyone can access the files online from home.

    From people to parades, from buildings to boats, there are thousands of photos from the past that are now available to go through.

    To see what Honolulu looked like in the 1930s, click here. And for dog lovers, click here.

    The State Archives is currently balancing multiple projects to serve the community.

    One of the largest known collections of Hawaiian music in the world recently landed in their hands. There are over 20,000 pieces of Hawaiian music in scores of boxes that will eventually become accessible to the public once they’re organized. Click here to learn about the project.

    Now, the State Archives is digitizing over 22,000 glass plate negatives. To learn more, click here.

  • 3 Aug 2022 9:18 AM | Anonymous

    The following announcement was written by MyHeritage:

    We’re delighted to introduce Photo Tagger, a free new feature on the MyHeritage mobile app that lets you easily tag multiple photos of the same individual in one go. Previously, tagging photos meant reviewing and tagging them one by one, which was time consuming. Photo Tagger makes organizing your family photos easier and accelerates your productivity, enabling you to tag hundreds of photos in minutes. You can still tag your photos individually as before, but Photo Tagger adds convenient and accurate bulk tagging.

    The benefits of tagging photos

    After you’ve tagged your photos, you can quickly locate photos of your relatives without having to “dig” through your entire photo collection to find them. You’ll know who everyone is at first glance, and you can easily filter photos by person to see all the photos of a specific individual. If you use the MyHeritage website, you can even filter photos to show only those where specific individuals, like you and your grandfather, appear together.

    Tagging your photos enriches them and turns your family tree into an heirloom that your loved ones will treasure for generations to come, making it much easier for your descendants to enjoy these photos and know who appears in them. Tagging will also enrich your family tree by creating personal photos for your relatives,.

    You can read a lot more, including step-by-step instructions on how to use the new Photo Tagger, in the MyHeritage Blog at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/08/introducing-photo-tagger-tag-multiple-photos-instantly/.


  • 2 Aug 2022 3:41 PM | Anonymous

    NOTE: This article has nothing to do with genealogy. If you are looking for genealogy-related information, I suggest you skip this article. In contrast, if you want to know about the latest technology of methods of safely and securely saving your backed-up files, read on.

    Decentralized cloud file storage services, sometimes called cooperative storage clouds, is a new method of storing files in the cloud. Decentralized cloud file storage services have several advantages over the various cloud-based file storage services we have been using for several years (DropBox, BackBlaze, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, iDrive, Amazon Web Services, SpiderOak, Mega, and dozens of other, similar services).

    Is there a need for cloud-based file storage services? Absolutely!

    Computer users around the world are creating huge quantities of latest information yearly. This year alone, humanity will produce more information than the previously 5,000 years combined! Having one copy of each piece of information is insufficient. Additional backup copies are needed. The demand for storage doesn’t appear to be slowing down.

    Cloud storage services of most any sort are great for sharing files with friends and families, keeping documents in sync between all of your devices, restoring files that were deleted accidentally or by hardware malfunction, and so much more. Storing files in the cloud frequently is cheaper than purchasing additional hard drives. In addition, cloud storage protects against in-home and in-office disasters: fires, floods, burglaries, and similar threats.

    More than once I have accidentally deleted important files from my desktop computer. Occasionally, a hardware malfunction has deleted a file or two or even an entire hard drive. Restoring files from the cloud has saved me from disaster on a number of occasions and I assume that thousands (or tens of thousands or more) other computer users have similar stories.

    Yet, even today's cloud-based file storage services are not perfect. To be sure, they are more reliable than my own computer(s) but they still are not 100% reliable. For instance, Amazon Drive just announced they are shutting down their cloud-based file storage service (luckily, they provided 17 months' advanced notice to give users plenty of time to move their files to other services.) Move it or lose it. Several other cloud-based file storage services have suffered with system outages, sometimes for extended periods of time.

    Most cloud storage providers use centralized architectures (all files stored in one place or in a number of places all owned by the same company), so data is also susceptible to a single point of failure, limited encryption, and minimum privacy policies—meaning your data’s security and privacy can be compromised.

    The single point of failure is a significant weakness in traditional cloud-based file storage services. For instance, the largest Amazon Web Services data center in North America once experienced an extended power outage, resulting in website downtimes and permanently lost data due to hardware failures.

    Another concern is data privacy. The most recent and impactful of these was the Equifax hack of 2017, in which almost 150 million customers - about half of the United States population - had their personal identification and credit information compromised in some way.

    Of course, a court order from a U.S. Federal court will supply all the data you have stored online to anyone who can justify the reason from the request.

    Right now, the majority of data making up the many websites we use every day sits in data warehouses owned by just three companies: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. All three of those companies MUST obey court orders from U.S. courts. We have also often seen these companies suffer blackouts, and swaths of the Web go down for hours — that’s the problem with having single points of failure.

    Certainly, there must be a better alternative. Luckily, there is.

    Decentralized Cloud Object Storage Networks

    A move to decentralized cloud object storage networks appears to be replacing traditional centralized data centers. Not only are these decentralized storage services more reliable and more secure, they also have proven to be much cheaper to operate as well.

    Decentralized cloud storage refers to the concept of breaking each file to be stored into smaller pieces, encrypting each piece separately, and then storing the individual pieces in different locations around the world. No one file is every stored completely in one location.

    To protect against unplanned outages, each segment of each of every file is stored in multiple locations. If 5 or 10 copies of every encrypted piece of every file are stored in 5 or 10 different locations, the odds of all 5 or 10 becoming unavailable at the same time are remote indeed.

    With decentralized cloud storage, a court order is useless. Even the owners and operators of the decentralized cloud storage services are unable to retrieve and read your files. Therefore, they cannot give the files to the courts or to anyone else. The only person who can retrieve and read your files is YOU, the one person who created, encrypted, and broke the file(s) up into small pieces before storing the result in different locations all over the world.

    Most of the decentralized cloud storage services already in operation use crowd-sourced file storage spaces. That is, the decentralized cloud storage services themselves typically do not own any file storage space. Instead, they contract out with many different companies and individuals around the world who have extra available storage space available on their various hard drives. When a customer decides to save a file into a the decentralized cloud storage service, the file is first broken into many smaller pieces inside the user's computer, each piece is encrypted while still inside the user's computer, then each piece is copied to multiple locations to various locations around the world.

    The end user typically is not aware of the location of each segment of every file and usually does not care. In short, "it just works." (Some of today's decentralized cloud storage services do have methods of displaying the various storage locations being used.)

    Should the end user then later decide to retrieve a file for some reason, each piece is retrieved from the world-wide locations, is decrypted (inside the user's computer) and then is presented to the user in the identical format that it started with.

    IPFS

    Most of today's decentralized cloud storage services use a method of breaking the file(s) into smaller segments, encrypting the file(s) and then distributing them that is called the InterPlanetary File System (I love that name!) or IPFS for short.

    The peer-to-peer IPFS retrieves pieces from multiple nodes at once, enabling substantial bandwidth savings. With up to 60% savings for video, IPFS makes it possible to efficiently distribute high volumes of data.

    IPFS powers the creation of diversely resilient networks that enable persistent availability — with or without internet backbone connectivity. This means better connectivity for the developing world, during natural disasters, or just when you're on a flaky coffee shop wi-fi connection.

    The average lifespan of a web page is 100 days before it's gone forever. The medium of our era shouldn't be this fragile. IPFS makes it simple to set up resilient networks for mirroring data, and thanks to content addressing, files stored using IPFS are automatically versioned. Of course, web pages are not the only thing that should be stored in cloud-based file storage services.

    IPFS is a distributed system for storing and accessing files, websites, applications, and data.

    What does that mean, exactly? Let's say you're doing some research on aardvarks. You might start by visiting the Wikipedia page on aardvarks at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark.

    When you put that URL in your browser's address bar, your computer asks one of Wikipedia's computers, which might be somewhere on the other side of the country (or even the planet), for the aardvark page.

    However, that's not the only option for meeting your aardvark needs! There's a mirror of Wikipedia stored on IPFS, and you could use that instead. If you use IPFS, your computer asks to get the aardvark page like this: /ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Aardvark.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AardvarkTIP

    The easiest way to view the above link is by opening it in your browser through an IPFS Gateway. Simply add https://ipfs.io to the start of the above link and you'll be able to view the page →(opens new window)

    IPFS knows how to find that sweet, sweet aardvark information by its contents. The IPFS-ified version of the aardvark info is represented by that string of numbers in the middle of the URL (QmXo…), and instead of asking one of Wikipedia's computers for the page, your computer uses IPFS to ask lots of computers around the world to share the page with you. It can get your aardvark info from anyone who has it, not just Wikipedia.

    And, when you use IPFS, you don't just download files from someone else — your computer also helps distribute them. When your friend a few blocks away needs the same Wikipedia page, they might be as likely to get it from you as they would from your neighbor or anyone else using IPFS.

    IPFS makes this possible for not only web pages but also any kind of file a computer might store, whether it's a document, an email, a video, or even a database record.

    Decentralization

    Making it possible to download a file from many locations that aren't managed by one organization:

    Supports a resilient internet. If someone attacks Wikipedia's web servers or an engineer at Wikipedia makes a big mistake that causes their servers to catch fire, you can still get the same webpages from somewhere else.

    Makes it harder to censor content. Because files on IPFS can come from many places, it's harder for anyone (whether they're states, corporations, or someone else) to block things. I assume IPFS can help provide ways to circumvent actions like these when they happen.

    Can speed up the web when you're far away or disconnected. If you can retrieve a file from someone nearby instead of hundreds or thousands of miles away, you can often get it faster. This is especially valuable if your community is networked locally but doesn't have a good connection to the wider internet. (Well-funded organizations with technical expertise do this today by using multiple data centers or CDNs — content distribution networks. IPFS hopes to make this possible for everyone.)

    That last point is actually where IPFS gets its full name: the InterPlanetary File System. The goal is to build a system that works across places as disconnected or as far apart as planets. While that's an idealistic goal, it keeps the IPFS developers working and thinking hard, and almost everything they create in pursuit of that goal is also useful here at home.

    IPFS Services

    So far, the traditional cloud-based file storage services (Dropbox, Google Drive, iDrive, BackBlaze, OneDrive, SpiderOak, and many others) have NOT switched to decentralized cloud file storage technology. However, a number of new startup services have been formed in recent years that have jumped onto the decentralized cloud file storage technology, including Filecoin, Storj, Barracuda, BitTorrent, MaidSafe and the Safe Network, Oberon, NFT.Storage, and other companies you probably have never heard of are dominating the market. I must admit I have not tried all of them so I cannot make specific recommendation as to which IPFS service is "the best."

    My Experience with Storj

    Despite that disclaimer, I can report on one decentralized cloud file storage service. I signed up for an account on Storj.io. I decided to try Storj for three primary reasons:

    1. Storj offers 150 gigabytes of FREE storage space to everyone. That is a huge amount of free storage space, much more than most of the company's competitors.

    2. Most of the decentralized cloud file storage services apparently do not have merchant accounts and therefore cannot accept credit card payments. Instead, most of them are paid only by proprietary crypto payments. However, Storj.io is an exception: it offers payments either by crypto currency or by credit card. I pulled out a credit card and signed up. (There is no charge until you exceed 150 gigabytes of FREE storage space. So far, I am still using free storage space although I expect I will soon go over 150 gigabytes of storage space.) Once you go over 150 gigabytes of FREE storage space, the fee is $4.00 (U.S. for every terabyte of stored data although you are only charged for whatever you use that is above and beyond 150 gigabytes.)

    3. Storj advertises that they have an (Amazon) S3-compatible gateway. This means if you already have or will obtain software that communicates with Amazon S3, it can be reconfigured to work with Storj. There are many S3-compatible products in the marketplace. Admittedly, I have not use the S3-compatible capabilities. However, I have used Arq (a popular backup product that I already owned that works with Microsoft Windows and with Macintosh and now with Storj.) Arq makes it easy to automate backups of part or all of my Mac. It makes backups automatically in the middle of the night or at times that I am not at home. You can learn more about ARQ at https://www.arqbackup.com/

    So far, I have backed up nearly 100 gigabytes of data and the software has worked flawlessly. I have nearly 2 gigabytes of data on my Mac so I expect to expand the size of my backups soon.

    Summation

    So far, I am very happy with Storj.io and its implementation of the InterPlanetary File System. It works well, automatically (even if I am not at home), and very securely. It installed quickly and easily. No surprises.

    I don't have any method of testing the security but I believe it is top-notch. I believe that not even the CIA or the Russian government can hack into my files. Nor can the biggest threat of all: Facebook. The fact that Storj is much cheaper than the other cloud-based file storage services I have tried simply is even more enticing.

    If you would like to learn more about Storj or even download the product and try it yourself, go to https://www.storj.io/. Can you use 150 gigabytes of FREE file storage space?


  • 2 Aug 2022 8:57 AM | Anonymous

    The following press release was issued by Accredited Genealogists Ireland (AGI):

    At its recent Extraordinary General Meeting, Accredited Genealogists Ireland (AGI) announced the election of a new Fellow, Paul Gorry, one of its founding Members.

    Paul is a former President of AGI, serving from 2007 to 2009. Previously he has served as the Association’s Hon. Secretary and on numerous sub-committees, panels and in many other and varied voluntary capacities.

    His career in professional genealogy began in 1979 at the age of nineteen when he began as a freelance genealogist attached to the Genealogical Office, then still based in the Bedford Tower in Dublin Castle. With a number of other professional colleagues, in 1980 he went on to found Hibernian Research, Ireland’s first independent Irish genealogical company. Later, in 1987, he branched out to form his own genealogy research business, Gorry Research, one which, given its reputation for high quality work, has proved to be hugely successful.

    Paul’s ability to ‘Think Big’ (and not be overawed or intimidated by a situation) allowed him, in pre-Internet days, to steer a course in setting up the first Irish Genealogical Congress, which met in Dublin (in Trinity College) in September 1991.

    It saw several hundred delegates from around the world descend on Dublin to choose, over the course of six days, from an array of 60+ individual lectures about aspects of Irish genealogy, all given by acknowledged experts in their field. By anyone’s estimation it was a stunning success and so much so, it was repeated a further three times, with the last being held in September 2001.

    Paul helped found the Council of Irish Genealogical Organisations (CIGO), and in 1995/1996 served as its chairman. He is a Fellow and a vice-president of the Irish Genealogical Research Society; a Fellow for at least two decades of the prestigious London-based Society of Genealogists; and in 1980 he was a founding member of the West Wicklow Historical Society and has been heavily involved in its progress and success ever since.

    Paul is the author of many articles and several books, including with his AGI colleague, Máire Mac Conghail, Tracing Irish Ancestors published in 1997; Baltinglass Golf Club, 1928-2003, published in 2003; Baltinglass Chronicles, 1851- 2001, published in 2006, Seven Signatories: Tracing the Family Histories of the Men Who Signed the Proclamation, published in 2016; and Credentials for Genealogists: Proof of the Professional, published in 2021 (and now in its second edition).

    In announcing Paul’s Fellowship, President of AGI, Nicola Morris, described his more than four decades of contribution to both AGI and the wider world of Irish genealogy as one which embraces such superlatives as “outstanding, sustained, scholarly, generous, consistent, and exceptional”. She went on to say “Accredited Genealogists Ireland is the successful organisation it is today because of the hard work and dedication of its founders, and no more so is this typified than in the distinctiveness and character of the contribution made by Paul Gorry.

    “He has served as Hon Secretary, Vice-President, and then President, he's run sub- committees, sat on panels, been an AGI rep at other events; he’s drafted reports, website text, news items; he’s resolved problems, and worked on new initiatives to expand the membership and/or heighten AGI’s profile. He’s been a mentor, a cheerleader, and a source of endless encouragement to many in AGI. By any measure, his Fellowship is well deserved.”

    AGI colleague, Steven Smyrl, said “over the course of AGI’s now 36-year history, Paul has given, and given, and given, in time, expertise, enthusiasm, dedication and professionalism - all to make AGI the successful accrediting body it is today.” He went on to describe Paul as “a stellar Irish genealogist, one who, enviably, has made a significant and lasting impact on Irish genealogy over the course of his long career.”

    AGI’s Council, and its Fellows, Members, Members Emeritus, and Affiliates offer their heartiest congratulations to Paul.


  • 2 Aug 2022 8:35 AM | Anonymous

    Raymond Frogner says that when he found pictures of boarders in the archives of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in Rome, he knew he was on to something important. “It had a very historic feel, very profound,” the senior archivist at the Winnipeg-based Center for Truth and Reconciliation said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.

    Few archivists are able to explore the order’s private records in the Italian city, Frogner said. But early last month he spent five days searching the archives of the Oblate General House, where photos, personnel files and manuscripts describe the group’s actions around the world since its inception in 1816.

    You can read the full story in the newswaali.com web site at: https://bit.ly/3cZdrQ6.


  • 1 Aug 2022 11:39 AM | Anonymous

    Do you have an old family photograph that "needs work?" That is, does it have cracks or is it badly faded? A newly-released artificial intelligence (AI) model called the “Generative Facial Prior” (GFP-GAN) can repair most old photographs in mere seconds, and it can do it for free.

    A YouTube video is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLDVtzcSeqM

    Anyone who has old photographs of their families and friends that have not held up well against time, regardless of the small and/or poor condition of the image, now has the chance to restore their faded and cracked images, returning them to their original state, or even better.

    In the eight-minute video above from What’s AI, Louis Bouchard describes how well the “Towards Real-World Blind Face Restoration with Generative Facial Prior” project (published in March of 2022), worked at photo restoration with details on how to use it for free.

    According to Bouchard, the AI model works with even very low quality and low-resolution files, yet it can still seemingly outperform many other photo restoration AI tools providing incredible results. While the restored images are impressive, Bouchard says “They do not represent the actual image. It’s important to understand that these results are just guesses from the model — guesses that seem pretty damn close.

    You can read more at https://bit.ly/3Q7O8cK as well as in the YouTube video above.


  • 1 Aug 2022 11:19 AM | Anonymous

    More than two million records detailing baptisms, marriages and burials in York, England over five centuries have been released online thanks to a new partnership between the University of York and Ancestry.

    Marriage certificate of Robert Duck and Catherine Peacock, 1837. Image credit: University of York

    The records, which are held at the University’s Borthwick Institute for Archives, date from between 1538 and 1995 and will enable people with roots in Yorkshire to trace missing pieces of their family history from wherever they are in the world.

    The records are from the archdeaconry of York, which covers the City of York and roughly 20 miles around. They feature famous families from York’s history, such as the Fawkes and Clitherow families, along with members of York’s chocolate dynasties - Rowntree, Craven and Terry.

    You can read more in the University of York web site at: https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2022/community/york-records-online/.


  • 1 Aug 2022 9:46 AM | Anonymous

    Do you make genealogy-related presentations to clubs and other groups? Would you like to expand your audience to larger groups all over the world?

    If so, take a look at Top 100% Legal Streaming Services That Don’t Cost a Dime at: https://www.maketecheasier.com/best-free-sites-legally-stream-movies/

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