New researches: June 2021

Monday, June 28, 2021

Texas Parks, Belarus Human Rights Abuses, Monsignor Terrence J. Murphy, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, June 28, 2021

Texas Parks, Belarus Human Rights Abuses, Monsignor Terrence J. Murphy, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, June 28, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Texas Film Commission: Texas Film Commission, Texas Archive of the Moving Image Launch Online Exhibit ‘Parks Under the Lone Star’. “The Texas Film Commission and the Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) today announced the launch of Parks Under the Lone Star, the newest online exhibit from TAMI. Parks Under the Lone Star features more than 60 videos collected as a part of the Texas Film Round-Up and takes users on a visual journey through the state and national parks of Texas.”

International Federation for Human Rights: Mobilising for Justice in Belarus: FIDH Launches Website Tracking Systematic Human Rights Violations. “Since May 2020, the administration of Aliaksandr Lukashenka, the de facto president of Belarus, has intensified repression, aiming to crush the country’s democratic movement. A new website launched today by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) tracks, compiles, and presents detailed information on the human rights situation in the country, including on political prisoners, violations against vulnerable groups, and efforts to advance accountability for the regime’s crimes.”

University of St. Thomas: Introducing the Monsignor Murphy Digital Archive. “The impact of Monsignor Terrence J. Murphy, the namesake of the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law and Public Policy, who served as the University of St. Thomas president from 1966-91, will continue to be felt for generations thanks to a generous gift from his family. Murphy, who passed away in 2004, would have turned 100 on Dec. 21, 2020. In celebration of this milestone, the Murphy Institute launched the Monsignor Murphy Digital Archive this spring. The collection features Murphy’s original manuscripts; more than 150 sermons, dedications and addresses were digitized.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Google delays Chrome’s cookie-blocking privacy plan by nearly 2 years. “Google has delayed a major privacy change to its Chrome browser, pushing back a plan to block third-party cookies until late 2023 as it determines how to protect users while providing web publishers a way to make money.”

BetaNews: Microsoft officially confirms Windows 11 with integrated Teams and support for Android apps . “The new operating system is based on the now cancelled Windows 10x design, but it’s much more than that. As you’ve have seen from the leaked screenshots, it has a centered taskbar and Start menu, rounded corners across the design, no live tiles, and web widgets for creators.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Creative Commons: We’re Launching the CC Open GLAM Program. “On policy, we’ll work to reform the copyright system on a global level to bring it in line with the needs of GLAM institutions and allow them to conduct their legitimate activities; we’ll continue to insist that works in the public domain must remain in the public domain; we’ll encourage a purposeful policy discourse celebrating open culture as a positive affirmation of the importance of open access and sharing of cultural materials to the fullest extent possible; we’ll also engage in conversations on respectful and ethical use of culturally-sensitive materials.”

BBC: Jack Dorsey: Unpicking Twitter boss’s passion for Nigeria. “Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is no stranger to controversy but in Nigeria he has become embroiled in the battle between the country’s tech-savvy youths and a ruling class that is seen to be out-of-touch with their thinking.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: An internal code repo used by New York State’s IT office was exposed online. “A code repository used by the New York state government’s IT department was left exposed on the internet, allowing anyone to access the projects inside, some of which contained secret keys and passwords associated with state government systems. The exposed GitLab server was discovered on Saturday by Dubai-based SpiderSilk, a cybersecurity company credited with discovering data spills at Samsung, Clearview AI and MoviePass.”

CNN: House Judiciary advances sweeping legislation to rein in and break up Big Tech. “A powerful House panel on Thursday approved a sweeping set of proposals aimed at weakening Big Tech. It passed a series of measures imposing new obligations on top digital platforms, prohibiting them from abusing any gatekeeper power, and in some cases opening the door to new fines and breakups.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ars Technica: Archaeologists recreated three common kinds of Paleolithic cave lighting. “Lighting sources could indeed hold vital clues to the different ways prehistoric peoples used caves, according to a new paper by a team of Spanish scientists, published in the journal PLOS ONE. They conducted in situ experiments with three different kinds of Paleolithic lighting sources in the hopes of shedding some light (pun intended) on what those various illumination methods might tell us about the emergence of ‘human symbolic and artistic behavior’ in the form of cave art.”

Analytics India: Google Made A Come Back In The World Of Robotics. “In recent years, with the advancement of modern technology, Google accumulated and reassessed its target on the mechanics of complex robots. For the last few years, Google has been remodeling its program focusing on robots that are much more manageable and simpler than human-shaped machines.”

The Citizen (Tanzania): The UN’s refugee data shame, and what needs to be done. “Back in 2017, I wrote of the risks of the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, collecting biometric registration data from Rohingya refugees, noting that the data could be used to drive unwilling repatriation; that collecting such data may make refugees believe their access to aid depends upon providing such data; and that – once collected or shared – such biometric data is virtually impossible to get rid of. Nearly four years later, a report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) says these worst-case scenarios have come true: A detailed database of the Rohingya refugee population has been handed over to Myanmar’s government, which drove them across the border into Bangladesh almost four years ago.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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June 28, 2021 at 09:41PM
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Sunday, June 27, 2021

Blackfoot Language, Natural Disaster Recovery, Savannah Civil Rights, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 27, 2021

Blackfoot Language, Natural Disaster Recovery, Savannah Civil Rights, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 27, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Lethbridge News Now: New tool developed to help preserve the language of Blackfoot. “Eldon Yellowhorn is working hard to preserve the Blackfoot language. Yellowhorn is a professor in the department of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University (SFU). He’s the lead for a team that has developed an online tool to help people learn the language of Blackfoot, as part of the Blackfoot Revitalization Project.”

Vanderbilt School of Engineering: Grad student adds drone imagery to toolbox for post-disaster recovery. “A new online gallery of photos taken in the days, weeks and months following the March 2020 regional tornados is the work of an engineering graduate student who wants to make disaster recovery more equitable. Daniel Perrucci, a Ph.D. candidate in civil engineering, used bird’s eye imagery from drones as well as street-level photography to document pockets of recovery in East Nashville and Mount Juliet, which is about 17 miles of the city. The storms were of the same strength, caused similar damage and the same number of fatalities in each area.”

Digital Library of Georgia: Urban planning, civil rights, and trends in landscape design in Savannah are highlighted in the newest collection available from the Digital Library of Georgia. “The historical significance of the collection may not be obvious at first, but Luciana Spracher, director for the City of Savannah Municipal Archives, describes its importance to contemporary research: ‘While on the surface the Park and Tree Commission Minutes might seem mundane, upon closer inspection they contain important information that reflects the intersections of urban planning and civil rights, trends in landscape design, development of Savannah’s cemeteries (both African American and white, since Savannah’s cemeteries were originally segregated), and details such as the use of convict labor in city infrastructure projects; all topics that draw on current socio-political trends and that are largely underrepresented in scholarship.'”

USEFUL STUFF

Ars Technica: Google Photos is so 2020—welcome to the world of self-hosted photo management. “We take more photos now than ever before. Growth in this segment is explosive, with over 1.4 trillion photos taken last year, according to InfoTrends. That’s up from 1 trillion in 2017. Video is much the same, with YouTube saying in recent years that about 500 hours of video are uploaded to the platform every minute. Finding a solution to organizing and safely storing these precious memories is more important than ever, and it’s becoming an increasingly large problem to solve.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNN: Frustration and bewilderment: Emails show tension between Facebook and Biden campaign. “People working with Joe Biden’s presidential campaign repeatedly warned Facebook about violent campaign-related rhetoric on its platform during the heat of the 2020 election, but a series of email exchanges reveals how the social media giant sometimes brushed them off.”

AP: Case files on 1964 civil rights worker killings made public. “The 1964 killings of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County sparked national outrage and helped spur passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They later became the subject of the movie ‘Mississippi Burning.'” While the files have been made public, they have not yet been digitized.

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Amazon and Google probed over efforts to stop fake reviews. “Amazon and Google are under investigation over concerns fake five star reviews on their websites could be misleading shoppers. The Competition and Markets Authority is also worried that ‘law-abiding businesses’ who sell over Amazon and Google may be losing out to firms using false recommendations.”

Search Engine Journal: Google Patent Aims to Solve Searchers’ Need for Related Media Content. “There’s a newly granted Google patent out that involves methods, systems, and media for presenting content organized by category. This patent caught my attention as it talks about related entities and describes how they fit together in the world of media. This advances the idea of performing queryless searches, a hallmark of Google Discover, for media content such as TV shows, movies, and more.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Wired: Zillow Taps AI to Improve Its Home Value Estimates. “As the US housing market began to overheat, in February Zillow began making initial cash offers to buy homes based on its price estimate. Now Zillow has updated its algorithm behind those estimates in a way the company says will make them more accurate—and allow Zillow to offer to buy more homes.”

Artnet News: A Painting Fell Off the Wall and Went in for Conservation. Turns Out It’s a Long-Lost Rembrandt Worth Up to $240 Million. “The painting, The Adoration of the Magi, is believed to date from 1632 to 1633. Scholars had long believed that only copies of the picture had survived, including well-known examples in Gothenburg, Sweden, and St. Petersburg, Russia. The work had long been in the collection of a family that had no idea it was a genuine Rembrandt, until 2016, when art restorer Antonella di Francesco took it in for repairs after it fell off a wall.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 28, 2021 at 03:29AM
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Gale, Google Authenticator, Google Scholar, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, June 27, 2021

Gale, Google Authenticator, Google Scholar, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, June 27, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

PR Newswire: Gale Unveils New Archive on Far-Right Groups in America (PRESS RELEASE). “Gale, a Cengage company, has released the second installment of its Political Extremism and Radicalism series. Political Extremism and Radicalism: Far-Right Groups in America examines the history of radical right movements in the U.S. from 1850-2010s.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ubergizmo: Google Authenticator For iOS Now Supports Face ID/Touch ID. “Apps like Google Authenticator help you generate 2FA codes that act as another layer of protection for your online accounts. This means that in addition to your password, you will get a one-time generated code that verifies who you say you are, so in the event that your password is stolen, hackers still can’t get into your account.”

Paul over at The Distant Librarian hipped me to this one. The Libvine: What does this new Google Scholar “Public Access” feature mean for me or my work?. “Google Scholar recently released a new feature to the Scholar Profile section that tracks whether articles that are supposed to be open access under funder mandates are actually freely available.”

Mashable: Telegram now lets you video chat on group calls. “Tired of voice chatting on Telegram? Well, as part of its latest update, you can now video chat with groups of people instead — whether you’re on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop. The new capability lives within the Voice Chat feature. Whenever you start a voice chat room, a camera icon will now appear. All you have to do is tap on it to enable your video.”

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: Facebook can track you across the web. Here’s how to stop it. “If you haven’t been using the privacy feature Facebook introduced last year, now’s the time to start. It’s called Off-Facebook Activity and it lets you see and control data that apps and websites share with the platform — and monitor the kind of information third-party apps can access.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

ABC News: Archive at NYC historical society to focus on social change. “The New-York Historical Society is creating a new archive which will focus on’marginalized communities and inclusive voices’ in New York City over the past quarter century.”

Techdirt: Texas Consumers Lose Control Of Their Thermostats, Get Another Crash Course In Value Of Competent Regulators. “During the recent heat wave, some Texans were shocked to wake up to find that their local energy company had turned up their thermostats in the night to save energy. Houston locals weren’t exactly thrilled to wake up sweating in the night to the sound of dehydrated, crying infants. Customers had apparently signed up for a ‘sweepstakes’ where the fine print in a massive, overlong end user agreement gave control of their own AC thermostats over to the local utility”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Daily Dot: Exclusive: Hacker reveals smart meters are spilling secrets about the Texas snowstorm. “Power companies across Texas have refused to disclose which areas of the state were exempt from controlled blackouts after a devastating snowstorm crippled the power grid in February—but one hacker has found that smart meters, the electrical devices on the sides of homes and businesses that monitor energy consumption, are quietly broadcasting data that could be used to determine what infrastructure may have been protected.”

CNN: 4 companies affected by security breaches in June. “There’s been a sharp rise in cyberattacks in recent weeks, often disrupting services and products that are essential to everyday lives…. The uneasy trend continued in June, with several high-profile companies like McDonald’s and Peloton revealing they, too, were targeted by hackers. These incidents highlight the growing need for cybersecurity professionals, a space that’s facing a skills gap.”

The Verge: Ransom Notes. “Major cybercrime gang Evil Corp — great branding btw — reportedly likes sick Lambos. Stopping ransomware is simple in that way: all you have to do is cut off the cash. The question is how, and none of the choices are very good.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Journal of Cultural Economics: The value of digital archive film history: willingness to pay for film online heritage archival access. “With the passage of time, celluloid film degrades and valuable film history is lost, resulting in loss of cultural history which contributes to the shared sense of community, identify, and place at a local and national level. Despite the growth in digitised services for accessing cultural resources, to date no economic valuation has been performed on digital local history resources which are accessible online. Despite the recent emergence of online portals for digital cultural services in many countries (such as virtual tours of art galleries and digitisation of cultural archives) a shift which has accelerated in response to the Covid-19 epidemic, there remains a major literature gap around the value of digital culture.”

DND: National Digital Archive of Pakistani journals will be established at PASTIC. “The Pakistan Scientific and Technological Information Centre (PASTIC) is a premier organization in the Country established for the Dissemination of Scientific & Technological Information for catering to the information needs of scientists, researchers, academicians, industrialists, entrepreneurs, planners, policymakers, etc. The official launching ceremony of the PASTIC’s PSDP-funded project titled ‘National Digital Archive of research published in Pakistani journals’ was held on June 24, 2021 at Islamabad Hotel in Islamabad.” Good morning, Internet…

June 27, 2021 at 08:47PM
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Saturday, June 26, 2021

North Texas Nonprofits, Maine Restaurants, Open Source Security, More: Saturday Evening ResearchBuzz, June 26, 2021

North Texas Nonprofits, Maine Restaurants, Open Source Security, More: Saturday Evening ResearchBuzz, June 26, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Dallas News: New North Texas Database Connects Nonprofit Talent with Opportunities for Board Service. “Communities Foundation of Texas has introduced a new database that connects individuals willing to commit their time and talents to the organizations that need them. The nonprofit board service directory offers members of the public an easy way to search for openings that align with their passions. The directory currently offers 150 open board positions from 40 nonprofits throughout North Texas, and is updated weekly.”

Bangor Daily News: Look into Portland’s beloved restaurant scene before it was a foodie destination. “Before it became a world-class foodie destination and engine of the city’s economic fortunes, Portland’s restaurant scene looked like a lot of fun. That’s how old-school Portlander Abraham Schechter remembers it. The city library’s archivist, Schechter recently assembled a trove of historic menus and scenes from 1980s Portland restaurants for public viewing in the library’s digital collection.” It is just me, or is that first sentence a bit of a read?

EVENTS

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

VentureBeat: Google extends open source vulnerabilities database to Python, Rust, Go, and DWF. “One of the major challenges of aggregating data from multiple open source databases is that they can adhere to different formats, often created by an individual organization. This distributed model makes it more difficult to unify and describe vulnerabilities in a common vernacular. So Google, in conjunction with the wider open source community, has been working on a ‘vulnerability interchange schema’ to describe vulnerabilities across open source projects in a format that can be used by both humans and automation tools.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tom’s Guide: How to use Instagram Reels — everything you need to know about the TikTok competitor. “…if you’re curious about Instagram Reels or eager to give your content creator career a try, we’ve got you covered. Below we’ve included a simple guide on how to use Instagram Reels, including creating content, editing it and posting your masterpiece for the world to see.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Venice may be put on endangered list if cruise ships not banned, says Unesco. “The UN art heritage agency has said it would examine a proposal to put Venice on its endangered list if the lagoon city does not issue a permanent ban on cruise ships docking there, according to the Italian news agency Ansa.”

New Indian Express: Weavers hitch wagon to social media. “Weavers who do not have websites, have joined hands with online stores and microblogging sites to get orders. The uploaded videos and content on these sites also put their names on the organic Google rankings page, which will fetch them customers. It seems their ventures have yielded results, and they are earning handsome returns. They are expecting good orders to roll in once the festival season starts.”

SECURITY & LEG

Techdirt: Clearview Forbids Users From Scraping Its Database Of Images It Scraped From Thousands Of Websites . “Clearview called out Google’s apparent hypocrisy on the subject of site scraping when Google sent a cease-and-desist demanding it stop harvesting images and data from Google’s online possessions. But Clearview is apparently unable to recognize its own hypocrisy. While it’s cool with site scraping when it can benefit from it, it frowns upon others perpetrating this ‘harm’ on its own databases.”

OPB: Oregon House clears bill to create new database tracking police discipline records. “A bill cleared the House Thursday that would require Oregon law enforcement agencies to report disciplinary action of police officers to the state and establish a statewide database of all actions taken against public safety employees that lead to economic sanctions.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Wall Street Journal: Library of Congress Looks to AI to Help Users Sift Through Its Collection . “The Library of Congress expects that artificial intelligence can help people search through its troves of digital information to glean new insights about the U.S.’s history. To that end, America’s oldest federal cultural institution is experimenting with AI technologies that are commonly employed by Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.”

Bloomberg CityLab: The U.S. Neighborhoods With the Greatest Tree Inequity, Mapped. “A new analysis quantifies just now unequal tree cover is in the U.S.: Neighborhoods with a majority of people of color have, on average, 33% less tree canopy than majority-white communities, according to data from the Tree Equity Score map, a project of the conservation nonprofit American Forests. The poorest neighborhoods, where 90% of residents live in poverty, have 41% less coverage than the wealthiest ones.” Good evening, Internet…

June 27, 2021 at 06:17AM
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Arcade Fire, Tyres & Accessories, Europe Methane Emissions, More: Saturday Evening ResearchBuzz, June 26, 2021

Arcade Fire, Tyres & Accessories, Europe Methane Emissions, More: Saturday Evening ResearchBuzz, June 26, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NME: Arcade Fire launch new ‘Past Lives’ series, sharing archive gig footage. “Arcade Fire have launched a new archive series, sharing footage from past gigs during the summer. Past Lives will see the band sharing performances from across their career, beginning today (June 25) with a performance from their ‘Everything Now’ tour in 2017.”

Tyre Press: Tyres Industry Publications: the next 75 years. “The consumer tyre advice site WhatTyre and a new paywall-free digital archive of Tyres & Accessories magazine lead a range of new services from Tyre Industry Publications.”

Clean Air Task Force: Massive Quantity of Methane Emissions Documented Across Europe at Oil & Gas Facilities. “Using a state-of-the-art infrared camera, Clean Air Task Force has documented methane emissions leaking or venting from oil & gas facilities all over Europe. So far, the organization has visited over 150 sites in seven European countries and found harmful, invisible methane pollution at the vast majority of sites. Today, Clean Air Task Force (CATF) releases footage from Germany, Italy and Hungary as the first wave of evidence for its new campaign, CutMethaneEU.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Twitter may soon let you connect your Google Account. “Twitter is working to make it possible to sign in to your account through a connected Google Account. For years, Google has offered a way for apps to let their users sign up or log in with nothing more than their Google Account, saving the step of needing to fill in basic information like your name and email address or even picking a password.”

Screen Rant: Posting To Instagram On Desktop Now Available For Some Users. “A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg that the company is testing the ability to create a new Instagram post from a desktop browser. Only a small bunch of users are currently part of the test and it remains unclear if it is a closed beta test or just a random server-side selection.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The New Arab: The road ahead for Israel’s Naftali Bennett and Archiving the Middle East’s Queer Heritage. “In this week’s episode of The New Arab Voice, we will start by covering Iran’s presidential election. Then, we will dive into the profile of Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennet, and what his leadership will mean for Palestine. Finally, we will continue celebrating pride month by speaking to the founder of Takweer, an online archive trying to reshape narratives surrounding the queer community in the Middle East.” 30-minute podcast, I did not see a transcript.

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: TikTok insiders say social media company is tightly controlled by Chinese parent ByteDance. “The former employees who spoke to CNBC said the boundaries between TikTok and ByteDance were so blurry as to be almost non-existent. Most notably, one employee said that ByteDance employees are able to access U.S. user data.”

Tom’s Guide: Apple Glass patent shows how it could avoid Google Glass fail. “One of the many problems with Google Glass was a fear of privacy violations. When somebody films you with their phone, it’s pretty obvious that you’re on camera, and you can move away, cover your face or ask the person to stop filming. With Google Glass, the only clue that footage was being taken was a small light on the camera. For Apple Glass, the iPhone maker’s upcoming smart glasses, Apple seems to have taken heed of the controversy.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

International Policy Digest: In Celebrating Pride, Social Media and Civil Society Transcend the Political Battle over Trans Rights. “This online cultural movement is thus cementing ideas around transgender rights more quickly and assertively than the federal government—fulfilling much the same role popular culture played during the battle to secure legal equality for gay and lesbian Americans a decade ago. In 2012, then Vice-President Biden famously credited the TV series Will and Grace for doing ‘more to educate the American public than almost anybody’s ever done so far,’ setting in motion a societal shift that culminated with the Supreme Court decisions to legalize same-sex marriage across all 50 states in 2015 and ban workplace discrimination based on both sexuality and gender identity in 2020.”

NASA: Watch (and Hear) How NASA’s Perseverance Rover Took Its First Selfie. “The historic image of the rover beside the Mars Helicopter proved to be one of the most complex rover selfies ever taken. Video, with bonus audio, sheds light on the process.” Good evening, Internet…

June 27, 2021 at 03:56AM
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East Coast Whale Sighting, Rainforest Recordings, Wisconsin Agritourism, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, June 26, 2021

East Coast Whale Sighting, Rainforest Recordings, Wisconsin Agritourism, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, June 26, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Maine Public Radio: In Fight Over Right Whales And Lobster Fishery, All Sides Want To Know More About Whale Activity Off Maine. “Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration created a new website that maps almost two decades of work to detect whales off the east coast, via ‘passive acoustic’ recorders set on buoys, on submerged platforms, and on underwater gliders that can zig and zag around the Gulf of Maine for months at a time.”

National Geographic: You can now hear rainforest sounds worldwide—here’s why that matters. “Gorillas beating their chests, chimpanzees pant-hooting, elephants rumbling—and poachers firing assault rifles—these are some of the more than a million hours of sounds recorded by a grid of 50 microphones in the Congolese rainforest since 2017. The massive acoustic monitoring effort covers about 480 square miles in the Republic of Congo’s Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park—an area about the size of Los Angeles. It’s part of Cornell University’s Elephant Listening Project, established in 1999 to detect communication among forest elephants and pinpoint poaching activity.”

We Are Green Bay: New website connects people with Agricultural Tourism destinations in Wisconsin . “There is a newly redesigned website to help people connect with agricultural tourism options in our state. The Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association helps visitors to the state find opportunities for visiting and touring local farms, as well as other activities like corn mazes, fairs and local vineyard experiences.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Guardian: From the ashes: historical botanic photos destroyed in Cape Town fire resurrected. “Luckily, after joining the university in 2000, [Professor Timm] Hoffman invested in the digitisation of the photographic archive. Although he is yet to muster the courage to go through the digital databases – ‘I’m still grieving,’ he says – he estimates that 30,000 images have been digitised and that he has at least one image for 90% of his most important sites. But only 10% of another collection of 35,000 slides had been digitised. ‘If we’d invested in bigger, faster scanners we could have finished by now,’ he laments. ‘But I’m also very proud that we digitised at all. Not many ecologists are focused on digital archives. No one else has a collection like this in Africa.'”

Search Engine Journal: Google Rolls Out New Spam Algorithm Update. “Google’s Danny Sullivan confirms an algorithm update targeted at fighting spam is rolling out to search results. The rollout of the update will conclude today, June 23, 2021. A second spam update will follow next week.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tom’s Guide: Milkshake website builder: How to use this new service. “For Instagram-first businesses, website builders don’t come much better than Milkshake. This free Android and iOS app is designed to help you maximize your one Instagram bio link, providing more detailed information than services like Linktree. It’s easy to use and requires zero knowledge of coding. In fact, you can make your first website in a few clicks—Milkshake’s website claims that it takes only minutes to get your new site online.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Aussie Theatre: Australia and UK announce largest cultural exchange between the two nations. “A collaboration between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen, the UK/Australia Season is a unique artistic programme of more than 200 live and digital events, marking the largest ever cultural exchange between the two nations. Launching in both countries in September 2021, The Season will strengthen and build cultural connections and will include a diverse programme spanning theatre, film, visual arts, dance, design, architecture, music, literature, higher education and a public engagement programme.”

NBC News: ‘Give credit where it’s due’: TikToker speaks out about Black creator strike. “The strike is part of an ongoing issue on the platform in which white and non-Black creators use choreography created by Black content creators without crediting the person who came up with the dance moves. Dances have the ability to rocket both songs and creators to viral status. Ultra-famous TikTokers like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae are often cited as two examples of white stars making it big off of Black creators’ choreography.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Daily Swig: West Virginia job seekers alerted to gov’t employment agency data breach. “WorkForce West Virginia has revealed that its Mid Atlantic Career Consortium Employment Services (MACC) database was breached earlier this year, but says it has now been secured. The state government agency oversees West Virginia’s unemployment insurance program, as well as operating a workforce development services including the MACC job seekers’ database – the largest online database of job seekers and job openings in the state, it says.”

The Record: Hacker wipes database of NewsBlur RSS reader. “A hacker has wiped the database of NewsBlur, a popular web-based RSS reader, and demanded a ransom payment from the company in exchange for access to its original data. The incident, which took place earlier today, has already been resolved after the NewsBlur staff restored to a previous backup they had on hand by chance.”

Court News Ohio (which for some reason doesn’t have a encrypted connection, so you might get a warning): New Platform Provides Path to Accessible Sentencing Data. “The Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission unveiled a new website to help courts implement a uniform sentencing entry system, which will lead to the development of a statewide criminal sentencing database. It will be called the Ohio Sentencing Data Platform, or OSDP.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: Collection of starshade research helps advance exoplanet imaging by space telescopes. “- The open access Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS) has published a special section on the latest science, engineering, research, and programmatic advances of starshades, the starlight-suppression technology integral to extra-solar and exoplanet detection.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 27, 2021 at 12:08AM
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Friday, June 25, 2021

Rainfall Reports, Global Storm Database, Sean Wall, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, June 25, 2021

Rainfall Reports, Global Storm Database, Sean Wall, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, June 25, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Wired: Citizen Scientists Digitized Centuries of Handwritten Rain Data. “IN MARCH 2020, as the United Kingdom went into pandemic lockdown, climate scientist Ed Hawkins put out a call to people with time on their hands: He needed help turning nearly 350 years’ worth of archival rainfall reports into digital documents that modern researchers could easily use. To his surprise, 16,000 people volunteered…. Now, just over a year later, his group has released their work, a massive data set of upwards of 5 million observations extracted from the UK Meteorological Office’s paper records—the oldest dating to 1677.”

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Building a Global Storm Database. “A new global database built by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) captures characteristics and rainfall data of strong thunderstorms from the past 20 years. Including storms in both midlatitude and tropical zones is key to capturing how contrasting storm behavior and corresponding precipitation could affect populated regions of the globe.”

RTE: Archive of Limerick East Brigade leader Sean Wall online. “The Sean Wall Family Archive is a valuable collection of material relating to the Limerick East Brigade leader and his extended family, in particular the roles played by his brothers Fr Tom Wall and Bill Wall, who were also very active in republican circles during those years.”

British Library Endangered Archives Blog: New online – April/May 2021. “We have another four completed digitisation projects that have recently gone online. These four projects represent both the global breadth of EAP projects and the wide variety of content types.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Colorado Virtual Library: Next Draft: A Monthly Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion digest from EDIT. “This month we launched a monthly Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion digest from EDIT, the Colorado Virtual Library EDI Team. In it you’ll find recent EDI-related posts and events. This digest is sent to Libnet subscribers, but we will also be sharing here on the Colorado Virtual Library.”

Gizmodo: A Google Drive Update Might Break All Your Links. “Now that Google has opened up its business-focused Workspace suite to everyone, there are some new Google Drive features. But as with every move, sometimes things get busted along the way.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Digital Library of Georgia: How I Built A Funeral Program Collection for African Americans in Atlanta. “What started as a friendly competitive thought has now become another resource for researchers as well as scholars (I am one of the latter) who are interested in the individuals and local communities represented in the individual documents. The Atlanta funeral programs collection could possibly provide the information needed by a family historian (like myself) working to piece together their family’s story. This collection will always mean a lot to me, not only because I helped to start it but also because members of my own family are featured in the collection.”

TechCrunch: Kayak co-founder Paul English just launched Moonbeam, a podcast discovery app. “Today, [Paul] English launched Moonbeam, a podcast discovery app that blends machine learning and human curation to present personalized recommendations. This might sound like what Podz is doing, creating a newsfeed-style stream of content that users might like. But Moonbeam ups the ante by creating a creator-friendly platform, allowing podcast hosts to select clips of their show to feature on the app, too. The app also lets fans send a tip to the creator if they like their show enough (Moonbeam won’t take a cut, but there’s still that pesky in-app purchase fee for podcasters to consider).”

Digital Camera World: Shutterstock nabs LIFE magazine photo archive from Getty. “It was only last February that Getty Images announced it had added 75,000 images from The LIFE Picture Collection to GettyImages.com, and planned to add a further 400,000 Images between 2020 and 2025. Well, we’re not sure what happened there, but that’s clearly no longer the case. Because its rival Shutterstock has just announced an editorial partnership with media company Meredith Corporation to exclusively represent The LIFE Picture Collection.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wall Street Journal: App Taps Unwitting Users Abroad to Gather Open-Source Intelligence. “A consumer app has assembled a workforce of hundreds of thousands of smartphone users world-wide, some of whom are being unwittingly tasked with basic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for the U.S. military.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Indiana University: New center for AI, machine-learning research dedicated at IU Bloomington. “The initial focus of the Luddy Center for AI, which will open in August, will include robotics, complex networks, health and social media. The center will draw upon the strength of researchers at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, as well as collaborators from IU’s extensive range of health and life science schools, departments and programs.”

New York Times: The Internet Eats Up Less Energy Than You Might Think. “From 2010 to 2018, the data workloads hosted by the cloud data centers increased 2,600 percent and energy consumption increased 500 percent. But energy consumption for all data centers rose less than 10 percent. What happened, the authors explain, was mainly a huge shift of workloads to the bigger, more efficient cloud data centers — and away from traditional computer centers, largely owned and run by non-tech companies.” Good morning, Internet…

June 25, 2021 at 06:29PM
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Thursday, June 24, 2021

Georgia Bulletin, Ireland Women’s History, Robocalls, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 24, 2021

Georgia Bulletin, Ireland Women’s History, Robocalls, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 24, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Digital Library of Georgia: Issues of the Georgia Bulletin, the weekly newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, are now available freely online on the Georgia Historic Newspapers website. “In conjunction with our partners at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, the Georgia Bulletin (1963-1980) is now available for viewing at the Georgia Historic Newspapers website. These newspapers will contribute to a broader scholarship about Catholicism in Atlanta as well as in Georgia.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Extra (Ireland): Mná 100: New podcast series launched to highlight contribution of women to Irish independence struggle. “A new podcast series entitled Mná 100 has been launched to highlight the contribution made by women to Ireland’s struggle for independence a century ago. The podcast was developed as part of the Decade of Centenaries programme instigated to commemorate the momentous events that led to the foundation of the Irish state between 1912 and 1923.”

CNET: Hate robocalls? You’ll love what’s coming as of June 30. “A big deadline in the fight to beat back those annoying robocalls is coming June 30. As of that date, every major voice provider in the US, including phone companies AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile and cable provider Comcast, will have to implement a technology called Stir/Shaken.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

SupChina: The people who work for TikTok are workaholics and they want more!. “In a gutting blow to increasingly feverish calls for a better work-life balance in China’s tech sector, a sizable portion of the workforce at ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok and Douyin, has voiced opposition to a policy change proposed by the company that would discourage employees from working regularly on weekends.”

The Register: Euro court rules YouTube not automatically liable for users illegally uploading copyright-protected material . “Europe’s leading court has partly sided with YouTube regarding copyrighted works posted illegally online in a case that touches on ‘profound divisions’ in how the internet is used. The case, Frank Peterson and Elsevier Inc. v Google LLC and Others, was first brought by German music producer Peterson against the YouTube platform in the German courts in 2009.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Times of India: Social media companies to shut fake a/cs within 24 hours of complaint. “In a major decision that is likely to end the menace of impersonation on social media in India, the government has mandated that top companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have to remove accounts with fake profile pictures of known personalities and businesses, and even the general subscriber, within 24 hours of being notified of the same by the user or someone on his/her behalf.”

Mexico News Daily: International organizations launch website to aid identification of human remains. “Three international organizations launched an online platform on Tuesday to aid the identification of human remains found in Mexico. The Mexico Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the Mexico and Central America delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the German development agency GIZ launched the website…”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: Machine learning aids earthquake risk prediction. “An upside of the Christchurch quake was that it was one of the most well-documented in history. Because New Zealand is seismically active, the city was instrumented with numerous sensors for monitoring earthquakes. Post-event reconnaissance provided a wealth of additional data on how the soil responded across the city.”

Techdirt: Changing Section 230 Won’t Make The Internet A Kinder, Gentler Place. “Users dedicated to spreading lies or hateful content are a tiny minority, but weakening Section 230 will make their job easier. When content moderation doesn’t go their way—and it usually doesn’t—they’re willing to sue. As the cases below show, Section 230 is rightfully used to quickly dismiss their lawsuits. If lawmakers weaken Section 230, these meritless suits will linger in court longer, costing online services more and making them leery of moderate the speech of known litigious users. That result could make it easier for these users to spread lies online.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

The Verge: Listen to Spotify on this nostalgic iPod-style web music player. “In an era before multitouch displays, the iPod’s click wheel was the king of music playback control. Now, a new project from frontend software developer Tanner Villarete has attempted to emulate its classic controls as a web app, complete with support for your Spotify and Apple Music library.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 25, 2021 at 12:09AM
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Tennessee Supreme Court, North Virginia Newspapers, Instagram, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, June 24, 2021

Tennessee Supreme Court, North Virginia Newspapers, Instagram, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, June 24, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

AP: Tennessee Supreme Court Full Case Records Now Online. “The opinions have long been available electronically, but the associated case files were stored in more than 10,000 boxes in the attic of the Capitol building, according to a news release from the Administrative Office of the Courts. For more than a decade, Library and Archive staff has been cleaning and indexing these records. Today, around 85% of the collection is available online.”

Inside NoVa: Vintage Arlington newspapers digitized, placed online. “As part of a partnership that includes the Library of Virginia, the Center for Local History of the Arlington library system and the Sun Gazette, archive materials from a number of Arlington newspapers can now be found online. Editions of the Northern Virginia Sun from 1935 to 1978 have been digitized and made available through the Virginia Chronicle, a free online resource tool. Copies of the Columbia News also were digitized as part of the effort.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Instagram tests putting suggested posts ahead of your friends’. “Instagram says reception to its ‘suggested posts’ feature has been so positive that it’s launching a new test: this time, suggested posts will be mixed throughout your primary feed, sometimes ahead of photos and videos from people you follow.” How dare you choose what you want to look at.

TimesColonist: First Nations win access to archives of Sisters of St. Ann. “First Nations have won access to the private archives of the Sisters of St. Ann, an order of Catholic nuns that ran four residential schools, including the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The Royal B.C. Museum said Wednesday it had signed a memorandum of agreement with the Sisters of St. Ann to provide access to the order’s archives to the museum and to the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at UBC.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Cointelegraph: Activists archive Hong Kong pro-democracy newspaper on blockchain. “Hong Kong cyber-activists are not giving up on the freedom of speech and are backing up articles from the pro-democracy tabloid newspaper Apple Daily using blockchain technology. Following a national security probe, Apple Daily printed its last edition on Thursday. But Hong Kong activists took it from there and uploaded the publication’s articles on a distributed network, Reuters reported.”

Yonhap News Agency: S. Korea to inject 50 bln won into animation industry . 50 billion won is a little more than $44 million US. “In addition to injecting more funds into the industry, the five-year plan also includes plans to diversify animations, which are currently largely concentrated on films for toddlers and children. The government also plans to beef up commercial support by expanding channels for animation distribution and helping companies make merchandise based on animations. The plan also includes setting up a digital archive for animation sources.”

The Register: Syria and Sudan turn off the internet to suppress … cheating by kids sitting exams. “Access Now reports as a part of its #KeepItOn campaign that there were 115 internet shutdowns in 2019, 60 in 2020 and 50 between January and May of 2021. Of those so far in 2021, 24 affected a whole country or region, 11 took in more than one city or area, and 13 cut off only one city, county or village.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: US cheerleader wins free speech case against her former school. “The US Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a teenager who was kicked off her school cheerleading squad over a profane social media post. In an 8-1 ruling, it concluded that the Mahanoy Area School District had violated Brandi Levy’s freedom of speech under the First Amendment.”

Meduza: Russia’s censorship agency asks Google to shut down ‘Smart Vote’ website. “Following a complaint from a Yekaterinburg lawyer, Russia’s federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor (RKN), has sent a letter to Google asking the company to halt technical support for the website of Alexey Navalny’s ‘Smart Vote’ initiative.”

Los Angeles Times: He tried to commemorate erased history. China detained him, then erased that too. “Thousands of politically sensitive cases disappeared last month from China Judgments Online, the public archive. The deletions were first noticed by a Chinese activist with the Twitter handle @SpeechFreedomCN, who has been keeping an archive of speech crime cases. He has tracked more than 2,040 cases, dating to 2013, based on official documentation in China Judgments Online or public security bureaus’ reports on the social media apps Weibo and WeChat.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

National Alliance on Mental Illness: How To Navigate the Overwhelming Volume of Mental Health Apps. “Research and our initiatives at the Division of Digital Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School suggest that there are issues and limitations that app users need to be aware of. However, certain apps have the potential to be a successful supplement to mental health treatment if users find the right program to fit their individual needs.”

Gizmodo: Google Glass Was Ugly, but Facebook’s AR Baseball Hat Might Actually Be Worse. “One of the biggest hurdles for augmented reality devices is design: No one wants to wear an obvious gadget on their face. Realising the issues Google Glass had with gaining consumer traction, it seems Facebook may embrace a unique design for a future wearable. Folks, it’s a baseball hat.” Good morning, Internet…

June 24, 2021 at 05:29PM
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