Saturday, December 31, 2022

Reporting Robocalls, Twitter, Google Voice, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 31, 2022

Reporting Robocalls, Twitter, Google Voice, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 31, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

In Compliance Magazine: FCC Opens Portal for Reporting Illegal Robocalls. “The FCC’s new Private Entity Robocall and Spoofing Portal allows privately-held enterprises, such as small businesses or private hospitals, to seek support from the Enforcement Bureau to cut off massive influxes of robocalls or efforts to spoof the enterprise’s legitimate phone number with its customers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BBC: Twitter in data-protection probe after ‘400 million’ user details up for sale. “A watchdog is to investigate Twitter after a hacker claimed to have private details linked to more than 400 million accounts…. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) says it ‘will examine Twitter’s compliance with data-protection law in relation to that security issue’.”

The Verge: Google Voice will now warn you about potential spam calls. “Google has announced that it’s adding a red ‘suspected spam caller’ warning to Google Voice calls if it doesn’t think they’re legitimate. In a post on Thursday, the company says it’s identifying spam ‘using the same advanced artificial intelligence’ system as it does with its traditional phone app for Android.”

USEFUL STUFF

Techdirt: Some Tricks To Making Mastodon Way More Useful. “A couple of quick things to note: these are unlikely to be universal. It’s just a few of the things that I’ve found that take the Mastodon experience to a new, better, more useful level. In other words, yes, this is highly subjective. Also, some of the tools I’m discussing are relatively new, often developed by users who saw the need and decided to build something (again, this is something that’s nice about the open platform that enables anyone to see something that they feel can be improved… and improve it).”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

AccuWeather: Social media becomes lifeline during historic Buffalo snowstorm. “During the duration of the storm, social media has played a crucial lifeline not only for [Sha’Kyra] Aughtry but also for countless other Buffalo residents. A Facebook page, created in 2014 after Buffalo was buried under deep snow, regained popularity during this most recent event. Residents could post what they were looking for, whether it was food, medicine or shelter, and neighbors could look out for one another.”

Boing Boing: Chef rates TikTok cooking videos with a “side of salt and extra sarcasm”. “If, like me, you harbor a deep disdain for those ubiquitous cooking videos that are all over social media, TikTok user Chef Reactions is for you. He keeps his identity a secret, but some folks on Reddit have speculated that he might be Canadian. Whoever he is, and wherever he’s located, he’s definitely made watching cooking videos way more fun.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBS Denver: State archives soaked after pipe bursts in government archive building. “In the basement of an unassuming building, just a block from the Colorado State Capital sits a paper trail that tells the story of the state’s history. It’s the Colorado State Archives, and there are three basement levels of boxes containing documents that are part of Colorado history. One week ago, during the historic cold snap that rolled through the State, a pipe burst and leaked water all over the documents.”

Bleeping Computer: Google Home speakers allowed hackers to snoop on conversations. “A bug in Google Home smart speaker allowed installing a backdoor account that could be used to control it remotely and to turn it into a snooping device by accessing the microphone feed. A researcher discovered the issue and received $107,500 for responsibly reporting it to Google last year. Earlier this week, the researcher published technical details about the finding and an attack scenario to show how the flaw could be leveraged.”

WRAL: Cyber attack leaves 6 NC counties locked out of their online records. “From birth certificates to death certificates, your most important records are stored with your county register of deeds; This week, at least six North Carolina registers are in limbo. Nash, Halifax, Edgecombe, Greene, Pamlico and Jones counties were all locked out of their online records after Cott Systems was hit with a cyber attack on Christmas Day.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TO BHMA: Artificial intelligence in the service of Greek foreign affairs. “A modern artificial intelligence tool will put the Diplomatic and Historical Archive of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs on a digital highway. Through the project announced by the Information Society to transform the physical archive into a digital record, the practice of diplomacy and foreign policy will enter a new era. The digital archiving and microphotographing of 65 million pages of documents will turn a new page in the operation of the historical archive of Greek diplomacy.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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January 1, 2023 at 01:31AM
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Montana Law Collections, Bing, Twitter, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 31, 2022

Montana Law Collections, Bing, Twitter, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 31, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

State of Montana Newsroom: Montana State Library Digital Collection Of Current and Historic Montana Law Means More Access and Research Possibilities. “The Montana State Library recently partnered with the State Law Library and Legislative Branch to digitize hundreds of historic print volumes of Montana law… This new online collection delivers all the qualities traditional print readers love: the look and ease of print navigation minus the negatives: torn pages, missing copies, coffee stains, pencil marks from previous users, and having to physically travel to a library. Not a minor inconvenience in our geographically big state since only a handful of Montana libraries have law books.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Catching Up On Bing Search User Interface & Search Experiments. “Over the past several weeks, I’ve been collecting a number of Microsoft Bing search experiments and user interface tests. It has slowed down a bit this week, so I’ll share most of them below.”

Techdirt: It Took Just Four Days From Elon Gleefully Admitting He’d Unplugged A Server Rack For Twitter To Have A Major Outage. “I know, I know. Some of the more angry commenters around here keep insisting that I should stop talking about Elon Musk and Twitter, and I want to do exactly that. I planned to do exactly that and not write another post about it all until next week. And then… Twitter crashed hard last night.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 9 Free Cloud Computing Online Courses for Beginners . “Cloud computing is a game-changing technology that has changed the way we work. IT services are now delivered over the cloud or the internet, making work processes more efficient. With many companies migrating to the cloud, the demand for cloud computing professionals continues to grow. If you’re a beginner, choose from these free online courses to start your career in cloud computing.”

Digital Trends: Thanks to Tapbots’ Ivory app, I’m finally ready to ditch Twitter for good. “New Twitter alternatives have been popping up recently, but it seems that the most popular one continues to be Mastodon. I originally made a Mastodon account back in 2018 when it first launched, but it never clicked with me back then, and I eventually went back to Twitter. With the Musk mess, I tried going back to Mastodon, but again, it didn’t really click with me — until Tweetbot developer, Tapbots, revealed its next project: Ivory.” I love Tweetbot! Had no idea Tapbots was making a Mastodon client.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: The Reign of the Part-Time Twitch Streamer. “Reporting from WIRED’s Will Bedingfield lays out how streamers with small audiences struggle to grow. Even those with a decent following struggle to make ends meet on the platform.”

Wall Street Journal: Google Maps Chief Sees New Directions for Digital Navigation. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google Maps is the fourth most popular mobile app in the U.S. by unique visitors age 18 and up, according to Comscore, making it more popular than the mobile apps of Instagram and Tiktok as well as its closest direct competitor, Apple Maps. The Google Geo group, which runs the Maps app, now also oversees the company’s Waze mapping service. Christopher Phillips, the head of Google Geo, recently talked with The Wall Street Journal about what he sees as the longer-term future of navigation.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Vice: One of the World’s Poorest Countries Put Its Faith in Crypto – Why?. “The Central African Republic heralded its status as the only country in Africa to adopt Bitcoin as legal currency, but 8 months later, many questions remain about what’s really going on.”

The Verge: New York breaks the right to repair bill as it’s signed into law. “The bill establishes that consumers and independent repair providers have a right to obtain manuals, diagrams, diagnostics and parts from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in order to repair their own devices. However, the bill was meaningfully compromised at the last minute by amendments that give OEMs some convenient exceptions and loopholes to get out of obligations that many right to repair advocates had been hoping for.”

Engadget: North Korean hackers targeted nearly 1,000 South Korean foreign policy experts. “South Korean authorities believe North Korean hackers, working for the government, have targeted at least 892 foreign policy experts in the country. The efforts focused on members of think tanks and academics, dating back to April.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PC World: Meet Stable Horde, the crowd-powered Folding@Home of AI art. “Does your PC really need to search for aliens? How about pitching in your resources to help make AI art, instead? A new community effort, Stable Horde, allows you to donate your PC’s extra GPU cycles to create AI art and use your donated time to create AI art in just a fraction of the time instead.”

Mashable: The internet used to be fun. Remember?. “Today, Corn Kid’s glee over the buttery goodness of an ear of corn feels so precious because the internet now feels so sour and divisive. Politics embitters so much of our online experience, and the rest of it is suffocated by negativity or bullying. Meanwhile, cultural content has become so derivative, closer to regurgitation than reinvention.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 31, 2022 at 06:29PM
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Friday, December 30, 2022

Minangkabau-Indonesian Dictionary, Google, Smartphone Chargers, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 30, 2022

Minangkabau-Indonesian Dictionary, Google, Smartphone Chargers, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 30, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Antara Indonesia News Agency: Minangkabau-Indonesian dictionary digitized. “West Sumatra Language Development and Fostering Agency has digitized the Minangkabau-Indonesian dictionary to allow more residents to access the dictionary…. Apart from the Minangkabau-Indonesian dictionary with its 29 thousand entries, the regional office also published the Mentawai-Indonesia dictionary with 4,760 entries, which is expected to be digitized next year.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: 22 products and features we launched in 2022. “We’re just about to auld lang syne-off for the year, but before we do we wanted to take a quick look back on some highlights from the past 12 months! Here are 22 Google products and features launched in 2022.”

Business Standard: India makes USB Type-C charging must for device makers from March 2025. “Mobile device companies in India will have to give USB Type-C as the standard charging port in their products by March 2025, said a civil servant on Tuesday.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

BuzzFeed News: We Spoke To Twitter Troll Juniper About Manufacturing Moral Panics, Creating “Goblin Mode,” And Dealing With Elon Musk. “June, who uses both she and they pronouns, is a 27-year-old from Wisconsin. By day, they work in quality control in the food industry. By night, they are one of our nation’s leading shitposters. She started her account in 2020 to support Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, but quickly found it more cathartic to just make fun of her political enemies.”

WIRED: An App Wants to Subtitle Life for Deaf and Hearing-Impaired Users. “FOLLOWING A CONVERSATION can be a challenge for the deaf and hard of hearing. But what if you could pop on a pair of glasses and have subtitles appear in real time? That’s the promise of a newly released app called XRAI Glass. It works with augmented reality glasses called Nreal Air (sold separately by a different company) to subtitle conversations.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CoinDesk: Anonymous Twitter User Leaks 3Commas API Database. “An anonymous Twitter user has obtained around 100,000 API keys belonging to users of the crypto trading service 3Commas. The leaker published over 10,000 of the keys on Wednesday and says the rest ‘will be published full [sic] randomly in the upcoming days.'”

CBS News: Professor sues TikToker who accused her in University of Idaho murders. “A professor at the University of Idaho has filed a defamation lawsuit last week against the internet personality Ashley Guillard, who alleged to have solved the prominent murder cases and whose TikTok videos have repeatedly alleged that the school’s history department chair was involved in the fatal stabbings of four students last month.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Next Web: What to expect from AI in 2023 . “From the AI developer who tried to convince the world that one of Google’s chatbots had become sentient to the recent launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it’s been 12 months of non-stop drama and action. And we have every reason to believe that next year will be both bigger and weirder.”

New York Times: The Tech That Will Invade Our Lives in 2023. “Each year, I look ahead at what’s new in technology to predict the tech that may affect your life in a big way — and the tech that will most likely be a fad. Before we get into that, though, let’s take a quick look back at 2022.”

Tech Xplore: A greener internet of things with no wires attached. “Emerging forms of thin-film device technologies that rely on alternative semiconductor materials, such as printable organics, nanocarbon allotropes and metal oxides, could contribute to a more economically and environmentally sustainable internet of things (IoT), a KAUST-led international team suggests.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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December 31, 2022 at 01:24AM
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Tom Lehrer, Twitter, NFTs, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, December 30, 2022

Tom Lehrer, Twitter, NFTs, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, December 30, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Techdirt: Tom Lehrer Puts Whatever He Hadn’t Already Donated To The Public Domain Into The Public Domain. “Back in 2014, we wrote about how a fan had basically put all of his works on YouTube, and then contacted Lehrer to apologize. Lehrer told him there was nothing to apologize for: he was glad the works were out there. The fan then asked if he needed to do something to make sure that no one would ever copyright strike the videos, and Lehrer again says not to worry, as far as he’s concerned it’s all in the public domain, and he has no heirs to cause problems after he dies.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Washington Post: Twitter experiences a widespread global outage. “Twitter experienced a global outage late Wednesday, according to numerous reports from Twitter users and the online tracker Downdetector. It wasn’t immediately clear how many Twitter accounts were impacted by the outage. As of just before 8 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Downdetector had tracked more than 10,000 user reports of outages. Virtually all 10,000 reports had emerged over the course of the previous hour.”

Yahoo Finance: 2022, the year NFTs fell to earth. “OpenSea’s best trading day of this year, 1 May, saw a record $2.7bn (£2.2bn) in NFT transactions, but on the worst performing day a few months later on 28 August, it recorded just $9.34m in trade volume.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Defector Media: When Adults Banned Their Books, These Teens Fought Back By Organizing. “Meghana Nakkanti really loved the book Homegoing. The 18-year-old high school student in Nixa, Mo., loved how author Yaa Gyasi’s work of historical fiction, following the descendants of one Ghanaian woman across multiple families and two centuries in both Ghana and the United States, delved into intergenerational trauma. But Homegoing was also one of more than a dozen books that parents at Nakkanti’s school wanted to ban. She found this not just odd, but also extremely disconcerting. So, she and her fellow students mobilized.”

Loudoun Now (Virginia): Morven Park’s 246 Years Project Expands Access to Enslaved Family History. “The 246 Years Project is an initiative of Morven Park and Loudoun County Circuit Court Clerk Gary Clemens and his Historic Records Division team. Morven Park is building an online database organizing fragmentary information about Loudoun’s enslaved communities, allowing descendants to delve deeper into their family histories.”

Cleveland .com: In objection to Musk’s leadership, University Heights suspends its Twitter account. “During his report during City Council’s Dec. 19 meeting, Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan said that, ‘Hate has no home in University Heights,’ and then told council that the city has suspended its Twitter account.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Politico: Ex-Google boss helps fund dozens of jobs in Biden’s administration. “Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google who has long sought influence over White House science policy , is helping to fund the salaries of more than two dozen officials in the Biden administration under the auspices of an outside group, the Federation of American Scientists.”

Engadget: Google is making its internal video-blurring privacy tool open source. “Google has announced that two of its latest privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), including one that blurs objects in a video, will be provided to anyone for free via open source. The new tools are part of Google’s Protected Computing initiative designed to transform ‘how, when and where data is processed to technically ensure its privacy and safety,’ the company said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Bloomberg: Musk’s Frequent Twitter Polls Are at Risk of Bot Manipulation. “New Twitter Inc. owner Elon Musk has outsourced several controversial decisions — like whether to reinstate former US President Donald Trump’s account, and if he should leave the Twitter CEO job — to public polling on the network, saying he intends to follow the will of the people. But the results of such surveys can be easily gamed by bots, according to new research.”

The Verge: How Kindle novelists are using ChatGPT. “Earlier this year, I wrote about genre-fiction authors using AI in their novels. Most wrote for Amazon’s Kindle platform, where an extremely rapid pace of publishing, as fast as a book a month, is the norm. AI helped them write quickly, but it also raised complex aesthetic and ethical questions.”

Utah State University: USU Folklore Announces Digital Trend of the Year. “Utah State University’s Digital Folklore Project has named the hashtag #MahsaAmini, which launched a significant grassroots protest of the Iranian government’s treatment of women, the #DigitalLoreoftheYear for 2022.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Star of Mysore: Over 6,500 Kodavas Gather At One Venue To Break Guinness Record. “Kodava Clan portal, which had entered the India Book of Records for the largest family tree, attempted to break the earlier Guinness Book of World Records after hosting ‘Okkoota’ the largest-ever family reunion on Dec. 24. The event was attended by over 6,500 people/family members at ‘Coorg Ethnic’ in Bittangala, Kodagu district.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 30, 2022 at 06:32PM
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Thursday, December 29, 2022

Virginia Evictions, Google, Twitter, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 29, 2022

Virginia Evictions, Google, Twitter, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 29, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Richmond Times-Dispatch: New database tracks Virginia eviction numbers. “The RVA Eviction Lab and the University of Virginia Equity Center have created the Virginia Evictor Catalog, which collects eviction data from courts. The databank is part of a partnership between the two organizations called the Virginia Housing Justice Atlas project.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: Google Employees Brace for a Cost-Cutting Drive as Anxiety Mounts. “Google workers in Switzerland sent a letter this month to the company’s vice president of human resources, outlining their worries that a new employee evaluation system could be used to cull the work force.”

Economic Times: Google receives CCI notices after failing to pay penalties. “Technology behemoth Google has received demand notices from the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for failing to pay – within the stipulated time – penalties imposed on it for anti-competitive practices, sources told ET on Wednesday.”

USEFUL STUFF

TechCrunch: This tool helps you trim your follow list on Twitter. “Twitter is a mess, but it’s still addictive. While some folks might have headed to Mastadon, those who stick around might still want to get the best out of the bird site. If you feel that your timeline is very cluttered, a new tool named Prune your follows can really help with that. The app shows you the people you follow in largely four categories: Overpopular (most followed), Underpopular (least followed), Overactive (accounts that tweet a lot) and Unactive [sic] (accounts that tweet only a few times a year).”

InfoWorld: How to create your own RSS reader with R. “Choose your feeds wisely, and your RSS reader will let you easily scan headlines from multiple sources and stay up to date on fast-moving topics. And while there are several capable commercial and open-source RSS readers available, it’s a lot more satisfying to code your own. It’s surprisingly easy to create your own RSS feed reader in R. Just follow these eight steps.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Ars Technica: Twitter rival Mastodon rejects funding to preserve nonprofit status. “Twitter rival Mastodon has rejected more than five investment offers from Silicon Valley venture capital firms in recent months, as its founder pledged to protect the fast-growing social media platform’s non-profit status.”

7Life: West Gate Bridge works: Three-hour delays on Melbourne freeway from Boxing Day until January. “Victoria’s transport department has blamed Google Maps for making traffic delays worse on the West Gate Bridge, as motorists are told they are facing delays of more than three hours.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google, YouTube content providers must face U.S. children’s privacy lawsuit. “A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday revived a lawsuit accusing Alphabet Inc’s Google and several other companies of violating the privacy of children under age 13 by tracking their YouTube activity without parental consent, in order to send them targeted advertising.”

CNET: DOJ Investigating $372 Million in Missing FTX Funds, Report Says. “The probe, which is reportedly independent of the fraud case against FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, centers on more than $370 million that went missing mere hours after the cryptocurrency exchange declared bankruptcy.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Trove’s funding runs out in July 2023 – and the National Library is threatening to pull the plug. It’s time for a radical overhaul. “The repeated threats to the public’s access to nationally significant collections are part of a broader malaise. Australia’s national collecting institutions have been hobbled by funding cuts and debilitating efficiency dividends for decades, with the some of the deepest cuts occurring in the years since Trove was launched. Reduced access to these publicly funded resources is more than an inconvenience: it is an attack on democratic accountability.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you.



December 30, 2022 at 01:03AM
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Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library, Pediatric RSV Care, Twitter, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, December 29, 2022

Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library, Pediatric RSV Care, Twitter, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, December 29, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Goshen College: Shetler’s lifelong research enters new stage: Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library website goes live. “Jan Bender Shetler, director of global engagement and professor of history at Goshen College, has spent the past 40 years of her life conducting and analyzing oral history research on cultural memory in Tanzania. This summer, her research entered a new phase with the official public launch of the Mara Cultural Heritage Digital Library (MCHDL).”

Newswise: Free Online Course Focuses on Pediatric RSV Care. “A new online course from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) and the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) is available at no charge to help nurses and other clinicians care for the influx of pediatric patients with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and other respiratory-related illnesses.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Elon Musk Took Twitter from Troubled to Tanking. “With massive layoffs, users flocking to alternatives and advertisers pulling back spending on Twitter, Musk acquired an embattled platform and turned it into a collapsing circus for all of its 238 million users – and the rest of the world – to watch. ‘Twitter’s future is especially uncertain – and it doesn’t look good,’ said Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester.”

Ars Technica: Musk contradicts Twitter safety chief, disavows statement as “fake news” . “…increasingly, Twitter trust and safety chief Ella Irwin seems more willing to confirm or deny rumors to media outlets, a move that’s possibly irking Musk. Over the holiday weekend, Musk tweeted to directly contradict a statement Irwin provided to Reuters, causing even more confusion over what’s going on at Twitter—and whether there’s tension brewing between Musk and Irwin.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Use Your Smartphone to Cope With Vision Loss. “Whether you struggle to read distant signs or find yourself squinting to decipher small print, you probably have a gadget that can help. Too many of us ignore accessibility features, assuming they are only for the blind or severely vision-impaired, but they can also help folks with a wide range of vision loss issues.”

How-To Geek: How to Write an Awesome Stable Diffusion Prompt. “Stable Diffusion, a popular AI art generator, requires text prompts to make an image. Sometimes it does an amazing job and generates exactly what you want with a vague prompt. Other times, you get suboptimal outputs. Here are some tips and tricks to get ideal results.”

MakeUseOf: The Best Sites to Watch Movies for Free (Legally!). “Whether you’re looking for movies or TV shows, finding free videos to stream is totally feasible; it just requires that you know where to look. With that in mind, here are the best free online movie streaming sites to check out.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Search Engine Land: Google algorithm updates 2022 in review: Core updates, product reviews, helpful content updates, spam updates and beyond. “This year had different stresses accompanying the Google algorithm updates, fewer pandemic stresses, and more recession-related stress. We had ten confirmed Google algorithm updates this year, the same number of confirmed algorithm updates we had in 2021. This year, we had a brand new ranking system named the helpful content update, and we had two of them.”

Jerusalem Post: Google fixes error after labeling ‘Jew’ as an offensive slur. “The word ‘Jew’ was listed on Google as a verb marked offensive, defined as ‘to bargain with someone in a miserly or petty way’ for most of the day on Tuesday”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Center for the Study of the Public Domain: January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1927 are open to all!. “On January 1, 2023, copyrighted works from 1927 will enter the US public domain. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. These include Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse and the final Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, the German science-fiction film Metropolis and Alfred Hitchcock’s first thriller, compositions by Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller, and a novelty song about ice cream. Please note that this site is only about US law; the copyright terms in other countries are different.”

Ars Technica: No more TikTok on House of Representatives’ smartphones. “TikTok will no longer be allowed on any device managed by the US House of Representatives. On Tuesday, the House’s Chief Administrative Office announced the ban of the popular video-sharing app, a move that comes just a week after legislation that would bar TikTok from all federal devices was introduced.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: Shadowbanning is real: Here’s how you end up muted by social media. “Two decades into the social media revolution, it’s now clear that moderating content is important to keep people safe and conversation civil. But we the users want our digital public squares to use moderation techniques that are transparent and give us a fair shot at being heard. Musk’s exposĂ© may have cherry-picked examples to cast conservatives as victims, but he is right about this much: Companies need to tell us exactly when and why they’re suppressing our megaphones, and give us tools to appeal the decision.” This URL links to a gift version of this article; you should be able to read it without a paywall. Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you.



December 29, 2022 at 06:29PM
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Wednesday, December 28, 2022

India Medicinal Plants, France Rent Costs, Reporting Fake Accounts, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 28, 2022

India Medicinal Plants, France Rent Costs, Reporting Fake Accounts, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 28, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Hindu Business Line: Database on medicinal plants. “A group of scientists from the North East Institute of Science and Technology, Jorhat, Assam, have created a database of 6,959 medicinal plants found across India. The database sources information under four sections — traditional knowledge, geographical indications, phytochemicals, and chemoinformatics.”

From Le Monde, and Google-Translated from French: Real estate: a new interactive map of rents in France. “A ratio of 1 to 6 between the rents charged in the most upscale neighborhoods of the Ile-de-France region and those of small towns in rural areas. This is revealed by the new rent map just put online on the website of the Ministry of Housing and Ecological Transition. This interactive tool provides the price per square meter, charges included, everywhere in France, for unfurnished houses and apartments in the private rental stock.”

USEFUL STUFF

Social Media Examiner: How to Report Fake Accounts on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. “Are people pretending to be you or your business on popular social platforms? Wondering how to report profiles that steal your content? In this article, you’ll discover how to find and report fake accounts.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Finding Community, and Freedom, on the Virtual Dance Floor. “During the height of the coronavirus pandemic, regular partygoers flocked to virtual clubs hosted on platforms like Zoom, but since physical venues have reopened, the popularity of these digital spaces has waned. Not so with VRChat. When much of the world was locked down, the platform’s daily user numbers steadily increased. That trend has mostly stuck, with numbers continuing to surpass prepandemic levels, according to data cited by the platform.”

TechCrunch: Mastodon creator Eugen Rochko talks funding and how to build the anti-Twitter. “Mastodon’s success has somewhat taken its creator by surprise. Rochko didn’t jump into this project as a power user of social media, nor is he prone to sharing much about himself. When we spoke, he dialed into our video chat from an undisclosed location. He’s never even used Instagram. If growth hackers look at building audience or revenue as an end in itself, Rochko seems to be the opposite when it comes to development. This week we spoke with Rochko about the early days of Mastodon, its recent surge in users and how advertising may or may not factor in its future.”

Ars Technica: Twitter sells blue checks, Tumblr allows nudes: 2022’s biggest Big-Tech U-turns. “During a year that seemingly shook Twitter up for good—adding an edit button and demoting legacy verified users by selling off blue checks—it’s easy to overlook how many other tech companies also threw users for a loop with some unexpected policy changes in 2022.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Comcast agents mistakenly reject some poor people who qualify for free Internet. “People with low incomes can get free Internet service through Comcast and a government program, but signing up is sometimes harder than it should be because of confusion within Comcast’s customer service department.”

CNET: TikTok Under Pressure as Biden Administration Scrutinizes Chinese Ownership. “The Chinese owners of TikTok may be facing pressure to divest. The security concerns of the popular social media platform have led some Biden administration officials to ‘push for a sale of the Chinese-owned company’s U.S. operations to ensure Beijing can’t harness the app for espionage and political influence,’ according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal citing unnamed sources.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Engadget: OpenAI releases Point-E, which is like DALL-E but for 3D modeling. “OpenAI, the Elon Musk-founded artificial intelligence startup behind popular DALL-E text-to-image generator, announced on Tuesday the release of its newest picture-making machine POINT-E, which can produce 3D point clouds directly from text prompts.” I’m putting this under Research & Opinion instead of New Resources because it’s early days for this software. This is maybe an alpha version.

Georgia Tech: Cheerful Chatbots Don’t Necessarily Improve Customer Service. “GT researchers conducted experimental studies to determine if positive emotional displays improved customer service and found that emotive AI is only appreciated if the customer expects it, and it may not be the best avenue for companies to invest in.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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December 29, 2022 at 01:57AM
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Mastodon Web Space Search

Mastodon Web Space Search
By ResearchBuzz

As Twitter continues to do whatever it’s doing, I’ve been spending more time on Mastodon. I quite like it but I’m still pondering how to search Mastodon space.

With Twitter, of course, it’s easy — everything’s in one place. All you have to know is Twitter’s search syntax. With Mastodon, however, you have to find the instances you want to search first. Then you have to search them.

This search puzzle is something that’s been itching the back of my mind so I broke down and put it together this morning. Mastodon Web Space Search uses the Instances.social API to find Mastodon instances either by language or keyword. It then gives you a list of the instances it found (it only finds those with more than 200 active users), lets you choose up to ten of them, and makes you a Google search. There are three steps.

Step One – Search Term

Enter the query you want to use to search the Mastodon instances you find. This will be done via Google so you can use any Google syntax you like. Just don’t make it very long — Google has a query limit of 32 words and a great deal of that will be taken up by the Mastodon instances you’re searching.

Step Two – Find Mastodon Instances by language OR keyword

For step two you’ve got two options, but the first of the two is very simple.

If you want to find Mastodon instances by language, just enter the two-letter language code. You can get a list of language codes here. Please note that just because a language exists doesn’t mean that there are any Mastodon instances out there using it.

If you have a more specific interest and you want to search by keyword, use the second option, Active Instances by Keyword. I encourage you to treat this as a one-word query, as multiple word queries might narrow your search too much. There doesn’t appear to be a standard vocabulary for describing instances, so you might have to experiment a little. (If you find things aren’t updating when you specify new keywords to search, just reload the page.)

Step Three – Make Your Google Search

Once you’ve specified how you want to find Mastodon instances, filled out the search form, and clicked the button, you’ll get a list of instances that match your search. Here’s a list from a search for the keyword science:

Each listing shows the name of the instance, the number of active users, and a brief description. Tick the boxes of the ones that look interesting (up to 10, though in this case you could tick all of them) and click the Search the Web space of these Mastodon instances. button. It’ll bundle the instances you chose into a Google search that’ll open in a new tab. Here’s a few of those instances with a search for geology:

Geology is a relatively general search term, but I found when I looked up instances by keyword I could do more specific terms like volcanology or tectonics and also get decent results (though there were fewer of them, of course.)

I tried doing a Google search of GLAM library with Mastodon instances in English and I was happy with the results:

I’m only just barely getting started exploring and searching Mastodon instances, and I suspect I’ll be tweaking this as I learn more. In the meantime, I’ve found some interesting people to follow, and even a couple of searches I might turn into Google Alerts.

 



December 29, 2022 at 12:37AM
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BooksForTopics, Google Advertising, Earthquake Alerts, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, December 28, 2022

BooksForTopics, Google Advertising, Earthquake Alerts, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, December 28, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Bookseller: BooksForTopics relaunches children’s book listing website. “BooksForTopics has relaunched its website which features children’s booklists sorted by age or topic. The BooksForTopics website is popular among primary schools, providing booklists covering the National Curriculum and reading-for-pleasure recommendations — with everything from diverse and inclusive reading lists and books for reluctant readers to key curriculum topics and year group reading lists.” I believe the site is UK-based.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Marijuana Moment: Google Ends Ban On Advertising Certain Hemp And CBD Products In Parts Of U.S.. “Google will no longer ban the advertising of certain hemp and CBD products in select parts of the U.S. starting next month. The internet giant announced last week that it would be updating its ‘Dangerous Products and Services and Healthcare and Medicines’ to permit the cannabis advertising in California, Colorado and Puerto Rico.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The 7 Best Apps for Earthquake Alerts and Tracking on iPhone. “Some of these apps allow you to keep track of earthquakes worldwide, whereas others can actually warn you with alerts if they detect any dangerous seismic activity around you. So, here are seven of the best iPhone apps you can install for earthquake alerts and tracking.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ProPublica: Porn, Piracy, Fraud: What Lurks Inside Google’s Black Box Ad Empire. “Google’s embrace of publisher confidentiality means roughly 1 million publishers can remain anonymous to companies and individuals who buy ads on its network to reach customers. This opens the door to a range of abuses and schemes that steal potentially billions of dollars a year and put lives and livelihoods at risk due to dangerous disinformation, fraud and scams.”

Bloomberg: A Look at the Gold Rush to Become the New Twitter. “Amid the dysfunction comes an increasing number of alternatives vying to lure Twitterati. Some were created out of the ashes of Twitter, while many are getting a fresh start after languishing in the shadows for years. Here’s a look at the alternatives for those seeking a Plan B, and how they stack up against the Blue Bird.”

The Verge: Please don’t film me in 2023. “In a clip that’s been viewed more than 20 million times, two friends sit on a New York City stoop, observing — and recording — the people walking by. One person appears to bend down to hide from a passing emergency vehicle, looking genuinely concerned. Another stands near-motionless for a time, seemingly unable to move. It’s unclear if they’re having a medical issue, but the clip is presented as amusing. The intention is to stitch together a tapestry of things the creator considers odd. Instead, it ends up feeling like an unnecessary intrusion into a stranger’s walk home.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: Cabinet minister’s Twitter account hacked to promote cryptocurrencies. “The Twitter account of the British education secretary appears to have been hacked. The profile picture was changed to one showing Elon Musk and several tweets were posted promoting a cryptocurrency event.”

WIRED: Elon Musk and the Dangers of Censoring Real-Time Flight Trackers. “Aircraft operators are required to report detailed information on their flight path to various national regulators, including the Federal Aviation Administration. That data is generally a matter of public record and is published to various websites popular amongst airline enthusiasts.”

New York Times: For Sale on eBay: A Military Database of Fingerprints and Iris Scans. “The shoebox-shaped device, designed to capture fingerprints and perform iris scans, was listed on eBay for $149.95. A German security researcher, Matthias Marx, successfully offered $68, and when it arrived at his home in Hamburg in August, the rugged, hand-held machine contained more than what was promised in the listing. The device’s memory card held the names, nationalities, photographs, fingerprints and iris scans of 2,632 people.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Mirage News: Social media and eating disorders: dangerous two-way street. “The influence of social media on the risk and development of eating disorders is well-documented – but does this go both ways? A new research paper from the University of the Sunshine Coast’s Thompson Institute is examining that relationship in reverse, with a new question: How are eating disorders affecting the way people interact with social media?”

McGill University: What AI-generated COVID news tells us that journalists don’t. “AI can help identify biases in news reporting that we wouldn’t otherwise see. Researchers from McGill University got a computer program to generate news coverage of COVID-19 using headlines from CBC articles as prompts. They then compared the simulated news coverage to the actual reporting at the time and found that CBC coverage was less focused on the medical emergency and more positively focused on personalities and geo-politics.”

Creative Commons: Patrick J. McGovern Foundation Funds New CC Initiative to Open Large Climate Datasets . “Today, Creative Commons (CC) is excited to announce one million US dollars in new programmatic support from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF) to help open large climate datasets. The twelve-month grant will enable CC to conduct key climate data landscape analyses and expand our work, bringing people together to create policy and practices to open data that advances climate research and innovation.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 28, 2022 at 06:32PM
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Tuesday, December 27, 2022

FediScope, YouTube, Linux Mint, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 27, 2022

FediScope, YouTube, Linux Mint, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Spotted on Mastodon: FediScope. “FediScope lets you find fediverse accounts for people in a field using Wikidata. You can then compile a custom CSV and import it into Mastodon.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tubefilter: The amount of classical music in YouTube videos is up 90% year-over-year. “Though electronica, pop, hip hop, and alternative are still the most-common genres chosen by Epidemic Sound users, one of the oldest forms of music on record made a huge comeback in 2022. Classical music downloads rose 64% year-over-year on the Epidemic Sound platform, and those tracks appeared in videos around the world. In 13 of the 15 content categories tracked by Epidemic Sound, classical was the fastest-growing soundtrack choice of 2022.”

9to5 Linux: Linux Mint 21.1 “Vera” Is Now Available for Download. “The highly anticipated Linux Mint 21.1 ‘Vera’ release has started appearing today on various of the official download mirrors of the Ubuntu-based distribution, which means that an official release announcement is upon us.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: Podcasting could be in for a rocky 2023. “It feels like 2022 was the year when podcasting came back to earth. After years of go-go growth, podcast hits going mainstream, major corporate investment, and hype about the market to come ($4 billion by 2024!!), optimism about the industry hit the wall of an uncertain economy. M&A took a breather, advertising got tighter, and companies started laying off audio employees after years of frenzied hiring. What does 2023 have in store?”

11 Alive: Students work to preserve Atlanta’s Krog Street Tunnel. “— Wedged between Wylie Street and Dekalb Avenue, the Krog Street Tunnel stands. More than 100 years old, the tunnel is a permanent passage between Inman Park and Cabbagetown. But as Curt Jackson knows, what’s inside the tunnel is ever changing…. That’s why the PhD student spends every Saturday at the tunnel, camera in hand along with a team of Georgia State University students.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Los Angeles Times: Who’s protecting social media’s child stars? Inside the explosive lawsuit against one YouTuber’s empire. “The lawsuit offers an unsettling glimpse into a largely unregulated world of social media, where children spend long hours cranking out videos and branded content. Kids can make millions of dollars and become online celebrities, but because the content is made in the privacy of their own homes, child labor laws — which do apply to social media influencers — are not consistently enforced.”

Financial Times: Cyber attacks set to become ‘uninsurable’, says Zurich chief. “The chief executive of one of Europe’s biggest insurance companies has warned that cyber attacks, rather than natural catastrophes, will become ‘uninsurable’ as the disruption from hacks continues to grow.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: AI Is Now Essential National Infrastructure. “Soon, a comprehensive digital infrastructure—which includes national computing power, a distributed cloud, and an interoperable set of applications and machine-readable legislation—will be as important to a country as roads, rail, and public water supply. In 2023, more and more countries will accelerate the building of such nationwide digital architectures, allowing them to deliver more AI-powered responsive services that cater to the individual and help the population at large.”

The Daily Star (Bangladesh): World Cup revealed our media’s vulnerability to fake news. “In the first two weeks since the World Cup kicked off in Qatar, fact-checkers in Bangladesh debunked at least 10 different fake or misleading news stories, eight of which are related to the football tournament, in top newspapers and TV channels…. Why is our media so vulnerable?”

AFP: Iraqi conservators strive to preserve ancient manuscripts. “In a country that bears the scars of decades of conflict and has seen antiquities and cultural heritage regularly plundered, the House of Manuscripts’ collection has managed to survive. It was safely stashed away in the Baghdad suburbs, while the national museum was ransacked in the turmoil following the 2003 US-led invasion…. The collection, now ensconced in the national museum in the capital Baghdad, includes books, parchments and calligraphy boards, some of them damaged by humidity, pests and centuries of use.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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December 28, 2022 at 01:44AM
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AI-Powered Audio Processing, Google, Mastodon, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, December 27, 2022

AI-Powered Audio Processing, Google, Mastodon, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, December 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Ars Technica: Make your noisy recording sound like pro audio with Adobe’s free AI tool. “Recently, Adobe released a free AI-powered audio processing tool that can enhance some poor-quality voice recordings by removing background noise and making the voice sound stronger. When it works, the result sounds like a recording made in a professional sound booth with a high-quality microphone.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Calmer Christmas Weekend For The Google Search Results. “It seemed a lot calmer this past weekend, Christmas weekend, than we had it a while in the world of Google search volatility. This is a good thing since we really want to see the two Google ranking algorithm updates wind down before year-end.”

USEFUL STUFF

Graham Macphee: Using Mastodon to power my blog comments. “Since my article earlier this year about integrating my blog’s comments with Twitter, I’ve now switched to power my blog comments with discussions happening on Mastodon.”

WIRED: What Music Did You Stream in 2022? Here’s How to Find Your Recaps. “THE END OF the year traditionally brings with it a flurry of recaps and year-in-reviews from music streaming services. After all, whichever service you use, it’s been carefully logging all your listening habits over the past 12 months. Not only does that mean apps can serve up music you like and might like, they’re also able to tell you, in forensic detail, the tunes that you played over the year. However, each streaming service approaches this end-of-year summary slightly differently.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Wall Street Journal: YouTube Stars Cash In Video Rights for Millions of Dollars. “Justin Watkins for more than a decade has made YouTube videos of himself playing and commenting on games such as Roblox, for an audience of mostly young children. His YouTube channel called Thinknoodles is a hit, with millions of subscribers, but he was surprised by the pitch he received from a startup: Would he accept more than $2 million in exchange for the advertising revenues from his thousands of old videos?”

News24: Tutu infinity and beyond: Mourning period ends, but Arch’s legacy to live on in ‘Heirloom Project’. “The [Archbishop Tutu IP Trust and the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation] plan to move forward in protecting his work and legacy through a new global digital journey called the Heirloom Project. It will be a single-site, accessible and usable global digital archive called ‘The Heirloom Project’, which will eulogise Tutu in collaboration with South African and international universities associated with him.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bank Info Security: Hacker Claims to Have Scraped 400M Twitter User Records. “A member of a criminal data breach forum claims to have obtained the emails and phone numbers of 400 million Twitter users in a posting that urges social media CEO Elon Musk to buy the data set for an unspecified price.”

Reuters: Chinese academic database fined by antitrust watchdog. “China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has fined China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) 87.6 million yuan ($12.6 million) for abusing a ‘dominant market position’, the watchdog said on its website on Monday.”

Los Angeles Times: Emails reveal Sam Bankman-Fried’s courtship of federal regulators. “Before his mid-December arrest, cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried repeatedly claimed that he was a responsible business leader who sought more regulation of cryptocurrency and wanted his industry to be part of the mainstream financial system. But now that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Justice Department are prosecuting the 30-year-old for fraud, the extensive professional relationships he cultivated with current and former federal regulators risk embarrassment for all involved.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NiemanLab: The AI content flood . “Here are just three examples: automatically post ChatGPT-powered summaries of news stories moments after they’re published by major news brands, divided by region. Or pick a topic like cooking, and use ChatGPT to populate a recipe site from scratch. Or pick a city, and have the AI argue in favor or against a political position in context of the local community.” There is already so much shallow, low-effort stuff online that I’m discouraged from the get.

The Register: Study finds AI assistants help developers produce code that’s more likely to be buggy. “Computer scientists from Stanford University have found that programmers who accept help from AI tools like Github Copilot produce less secure code than those who fly solo.” I have used ChatGPT for things like generating JavaScript code snippets. It will cheerfully and confidently produce code that is so wrong even I can look at it and know it’s not right.

PsyPost: Study finds parasocial relationships on YouTube can help reduce prejudice towards people with mental health issues. “After watching a video meant for participants to build a relationship with the video creator and a video where the creator talked about his/her mental health issues, experimental groups scored lower on explicit prejudice assessments compared to controls who only watched the relationship-building video. Implicit prejudice levels were not affected. The study was published in Scientific Reports.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 27, 2022 at 06:32PM
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Monday, December 26, 2022

Twitter, Symbol Meanings, Google Pinpoint, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 26, 2022

Twitter, Symbol Meanings, Google Pinpoint, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Twitter says paying Blue subscribers now get ‘prioritized rankings in conversations’. “Twitter has updated its list of features for Twitter Blue, saying subscribers paying for the $8-a-month service will now get ‘prioritized rankings in conversations’ and the ability to upload videos up to 60 minutes in length.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 6 Ways to Find Symbols and Look Up Symbol Meanings . “While surfing the internet (as well as in the offline world), we come across a lot of symbols. Some of them are common, but for others, you’ve probably wondered what a particular symbol means more than once. Thankfully, the internet has many symbol identifier resources to help. We’ll show you how to find out a symbol’s meaning using a variety of methods.”

Online Journalism Blog: Making video and audio interviews searchable: how Pinpoint helped with one investigation. “MA Data Journalism student Tony Jarne spent eight months investigating exempt accommodation, collecting hundreds of documents, audio and video recordings along the way. To manage all this information, he turned to Google’s free tool Pinpoint. In a special guest post for OJB, he explains how it should be an essential part of any journalist’s toolkit.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Mashable: ‘My 2022 eras’ trend is perfect TikTok ephemera. “Soundtracked to a sped-up version of ‘Celebration’ by Azealia Banks, the ‘my 2022 eras’ trend consists of users posting a series of photos that encapsulate their year. Each image is captioned with the “era” is represents. So far, over 340,000 videos have been posted using the song. On the internet, the term era describes a period of one’s life. For example, when someone says “I’m in my girl-boss era,” what they mean is that, right now, they’re ambitious and independent.”

The Independent: Judith Kerr archive acquired by Newcastle’s National Centre for Children’s Books. “Kerr, who died in 2019 at the age of 95, wrote and illustrated a number of much-loved children’s books including The Tiger Who Came To Tea, the Mog series and When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit…. The archive includes artwork and papers for 32 books, loose studio artwork, notebooks and a diary from 1948.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Faxes and floppy disks: Japan’s bureaucracy needs an upgrade. “For a country where emoji were invented, Japan’s bureaucracy remains steadfastly analog. Official documents are often submitted via fax (a machine that sends messages over the phone line) or floppy disk (a precursor to the USB drive). In fact, thousands of government regulations insist on the use of such 20th-century stalwarts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NiemanLab: This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!). “It is at this point that the most organized people in late capitalism will rise up about a very small matter and demand something better: An RSS for the people, open source, easily used, and not some weird niche version for podcasts or that uses AI.”

Route Fifty: Machine Learning Digs Into States’ Archives. “Amid growing backlogs of archival data, states are turning to software tools to streamline records management.”

Hindustan Times: C-DAC Pune to develop ‘virtual walk through’ for Raigad fort. “In a bid to provide a virtual tour of the historic Raigad fort, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune has begun work in collaboration with the state government to digitise the iconic landmark in Maratha history. … This will be the first virtual tour of any of Maharashtra’s forts, utilising cutting-edge technology to provide the public with a one-of-a-kind experience without having to visit the fort.” You can read more about the forts of Maharashtra here.

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

ZDNet: This 3D printing system converts waste sawdust into stunning wooden lamps and guitars. “In the build box, an inkjet print head drops a water-based binder onto the surface of the sawdust and the two substances meld into each other. The printhead simultaneously injects a water-based ink that mimics practically any wood grain you would want, including rosewood, zebrano, ebony and mahogany, among others. Deposits of the binder and injection of the ink is done layer by layer, as per the contours of the rendering dictated by the 3D software.” Good afternoon, Internet..

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December 27, 2022 at 01:47AM
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Prison Banned Books, Wolfram Language, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, December 26, 2022

Prison Banned Books, Wolfram Language, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, December 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Marshall Project: The Books Banned in Your State’s Prisons. “Over the past year, reporters for The Marshall Project asked every state prison system for book policies and lists of banned publications. About half of the states said they kept such lists, which contained more than 50,000 titles. We’ve created a searchable database so you can see for yourself which books prisons don’t want incarcerated people to read.”

Wolfram Blog: New Interactive Course Teaches Useful Tips from an Expert Programmer. “Wolfram Language has a wealth of built-in functions that require little or no programming, but there are special cases that require additional skill and knowledge to get the code to do things that go beyond those built-in capabilities. Wolfram U is pleased to announce a new free interactive course by veteran Wolfram programmer and instructor Dave Withoff that offers a collection of useful tips and instruction for intermediate-level programmers.” The link also includes a recommendation for a beginner course if you’re not an intermediate programmer.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: New Twitter feature lets you watch Tesla stock crater. “The company recently partnered with trading analysis platform TradingView to display price charts in search results for cryptocurrencies, stocks, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The feature works best if you use $cashtags, which are similar to hashtags, only instead of the ‘#’ symbol in front of a keyword, you use the ‘$’ symbol in front of a ticker.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: How to Download Reddit Videos. “Reddit now lets you download videos directly from the app. If you find this feature is not working for you, there are some workarounds you can take advantage of. This tutorial shows you how to download Reddit videos on your Android phone or PC.”

Search Engine Journal: How To Create A Survey Quickly In Google Forms And Microsoft Word. “I find surveys particularly helpful because they are affordable, easy to create, and offer information about customers you can’t find without directly talking to them. This article will outline the benefits of surveys for SEO, tips to create a killer survey that offers great insight, and how to quickly get started with one using Google Forms or Microsoft Forms.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: TikTok’s Dream Worlds Thrived in a Nightmare Year. “While economic pressures have made reality a less and less appealing place to reside, numerous TikTok trends over the past year have offered a form of escape. Over 14 billion people have now watched videos about ‘shifting,’ a meditation-like practice where people believe they can ‘shift’ into other realities, often beloved fantasy locations such as Hogwarts.”

CNN: How virtual clothes could help solve fashion’s waste problem. “The textile and fashion industry creates roughly 92 million tons of waste annually, and digital fashion could have a role in reducing that figure…. For example, a designer could release an item of digital clothing in 10 colors in the metaverse, and use the sales data to inform which colors to use for the real-world version.”

New York Times: Times Past. “The end of the year is an opportunity to look back and reflect. So today we’re bringing you something in that spirit: an interview with Jennifer Parrucci, a senior taxonomist at The Times, about the interesting things she has found digging through the paper’s 171-year archives.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Radio New Zealand: Patient records from second psychiatric hospital caught up in Archives NZ breach. “Archives NZ apologised on Monday for a breach of Sunnyside psychiatric hospital records. Now a new OIA response shows patient records from Seaview psychiatric hospital, near Hokitika, were mistakenly put online, too. But Archives NZ said because no one accessed the Seaview records, it chose not to notify the public.”

Atlanta Business Journal: Atlanta homebuilding giant PulteGroup fires incoming COO for alleged Twitter bots. “The founding family of the Atlanta-based homebuilder (NYSE:PHM) filed a civil complaint against Brandon Jones for ‘interfering, stalking, harassing, and defaming the company’s founder, William J. Pulte, his grandson Bill Pulte, and his family,’ according to a news release Friday. The complaint alleges Jones, who was set to succeed executive vice president and chief operating officer John Chadwick on Jan. 1, creating fraudulent Twitter profiles.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Cardiff University: Adolescent wellbeing improved by online contact with close friends. “Frequent online communication with best friends and existing friendship groups is associated with better wellbeing in young people, new research by Cardiff University has found.”

Stanford University: What to Expect in 2023 in AI. “This year’s biggest headline might have been generative AI, but what should we expect from the field in 2023? Four Stanford HAI faculty members describe what they expect the biggest advances, opportunities, and challenges will be for the coming year.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 26, 2022 at 06:28PM
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Sunday, December 25, 2022

Public Domain Game Jam, iPhone Hacks, Google, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 25, 2022

Public Domain Game Jam, iPhone Hacks, Google, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

EVENTS

Techdirt: Gaming Like It’s 1927: Get Ready For Our Next Public Domain Game Jam. “It’s that time of year! Ever since works in the US finally started entering the public domain again, we’ve been hosting an annual game jam for designers to create games based on the year’s newly copyright-free works. This year, it’s Gaming Like It’s 1927!”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 45 of Lifehacker’s Favorite iPhone Hacks of 2022. “From iOS 16 to the iPhone 14, the iPhone had a big year. We started 2022 with iOS 15.2, which gave us features like Apple Music Voice and legacy contacts, and end the year appropriately with iOS 16.2, with Apple Music Sing and end-to-end encryption for iCloud backups. In between, we discovered a lot of hacks that make life with an iPhone even easier. Here are 45 of our favorites.” Slideshow.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNBC: Google tells employees more of them will be at risk for low performance ratings next year. “More Google employees will be at risk for low performance ratings and fewer are expected to reach high marks under a new performance review system that starts next year, according to internal communications obtained by CNBC.”

Washington Post: Twitter brings Elon Musk’s genius reputation crashing down to earth. “Some Twitter employees who worked with Musk are doubtful his management style will allow him to turn the company around. And some investors in Tesla, by far the biggest source of his wealth, have begun to see him as a liability. Musk’s distraction has prompted questions about leadership of SpaceX as well, though it is much less reliant on his active involvement. Meanwhile, Neuralink and Boring Co., two companies he founded, continue to lag on promises.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Cyberscoop: Insiders worry CISA is too distracted from critical cyber mission. “Republicans and Democrats praised the new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency… But four years in, CISA appears to be struggling with internal divisions over the direction of the agency, morale problems and growing concerns about leadership priorities.”

AI Business: AI-Generated Comic Book Could Lose Copyright Protection. “The Copyright Office (USPTO) granted protection to Kris Kashtanova for the comic book titled Zarya of the Dawn in September…. However, the USPTO has now informed Kashtanova that it has initiated a proceeding to revoke the protection, saying copyrightable works require human authorship.”

Wall Street Journal: SEC Heightening Scrutiny of Auditors’ Crypto Work. “The Securities and Exchange Commission is stepping up scrutiny of the work that audit firms are doing for cryptocurrency companies, concerned that investors may be getting a false sense of reassurance from the firms’ reports, a senior official at the regulator said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: Everyone Is Using Google Photos Wrong. “Uploading thousands of photos and never taking any steps to sort or manage them creates a series of privacy risks and is making it impossible to maintain your photo collection in the future. Now is the time to stop being an information hoarder, before it spirals out of control.”

Daily Beast: We Need a New Approach to Fighting Malevolent Forces Online. “Manifold threats are emerging across the information landscape on which we live, where we work and where we make fundamental political choices about who we are and what we stand for. These are threats made more challenging because so few fully understand them, because the government and the electorate are both so ill-equipped to address them, and because containing them will require us to make choices with profound philosophical consequences about the future of the social contract.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Los Angeles Times: A man’s holiday lights display helped land him a top job at Roku . “On a chilly December evening, 54-year-old engineer Mark Robins opened a laptop inside his son’s room to demonstrate the software he uses to control the 10,000 lights that adorn his house and yard. They illuminate an assortment of candy canes, gift-wrapped boxes and animals, including a flamingo, an owl, a reindeer and a small dog that resembles his elderly mutt, Oscar. A button at the front of the yard invites passersby to synchronize the lights to one of 25 Christmas, pop and rock tunes.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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December 26, 2022 at 01:26AM
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Apple Reviews (Fruit, not Tech), Meredith Bixby’s Marionettes, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, December 25, 2022

Apple Reviews (Fruit, not Tech), Meredith Bixby’s Marionettes, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, December 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me: a database of apple reviews. The fruit, not the tech. They absolutely savaged my favorite (Granny Smith) but to their credit they also slagged the SugarBee, an apple purchase I bitterly regretted a few weeks ago. From the About page: “Brian Frange is a comedian and writer who has been yelling about apples for years. He started yelling about apples professionally in 2016 while working on Comedy Central’s Not Safe with Nikki Glaser while serving as co-host on the Not Safe Podcast. Shortly after that he started the Tumblr apple review blog The Appleist and it became popular, I guess.” This man has a burning hatred for Red Delicious apples and this Web site is a fun read.

Michigan Live: Get up close with Saline’s Bixby marionettes in this new immersive online exhibit. “Marionettes handcrafted by Saline puppeteer Meredith Bixby delighted children across the country through shows based on stories like ‘Pinocchio,’ ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Treasure Island’ for more than 40 years…. During the past year, the group, CultureVerse, has employed cutting-edge 3D scanners to create ‘digital twins’ of a dozen of Bixby’s string-bound creations and recreate the interior of the gutted Saline Opera House, publishing their work in a virtual exhibit.” It’ll take a few minutes for the exhibit to load, but it’s worth it.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Guardian: Twitter restores suicide-prevention hotline feature after outcry. “Twitter has restored a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, after coming under pressure from users and consumer safety groups.”

CNET: Search Engine You.com Launches ChatGPT-Style Chatbot, But Don’t Trust It Fully Yet. “The site works like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which went viral earlier this year for its unique and realistic responses from a computer program. But be careful about its answers.”

Bleeping Computer: DuckDuckGo now blocks Google sign-in pop-ups on all sites. “DuckDuckGo apps and extensions are now blocking Google Sign-in pop-ups on all its apps and browser extensions, removing what it perceives as an annoyance and a privacy risk for its users.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Business Insider: Twitter alternatives that got traction after Elon Musk takeover are suddenly seeing downloads plunge. Which has staying power and who is the next Clubhouse?. “Daily usage of Mastodon, Hive Social, and Counter Social are all up dramatically over the last two months. Meanwhile, at least half a dozen other Twitter-like platforms have recently been launched in beta or are set to be early next year, including Post.News, Spoutible, Mozilla.Social and Bluesky, founded by none other than Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey.”

Ars Technica: Meta and Alphabet lose dominance over US digital ads market. “The share of US ad revenues held by Facebook’s parent Meta and Google owner Alphabet is projected to fall by 2.5 percentage points to 48.4 percent this year, the first time the two groups will not hold a majority share of the market since 2014, according to research group Insider Intelligence.” Still too high.

Wall Street Journal: Elon Musk’s Finances Complicated by Declining Wealth, Twitter Pressures. “Historically, Mr. Musk has been a cash-poor billionaire, depending upon so-called margin loans—borrowing backed up by his shares—for his personal expenses and business investments while holding on to his Tesla shares and benefiting from their rising value. But Tesla’s market value has fallen by about $700 billion this year, sinking his personal wealth along the way.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Fake job postings are stealing applicants’ money and identities. “Lisa Miner thought she had found the perfect new job: Earlier this year, the dialysis technician got an offer to be an app developer for CVS Health after passing a skills test administered by a purported recruiter who had reached out via a personal Gmail account. But the job wasn’t just fake — it was a ploy to steal her money.”

Engadget: Robocall company may receive the largest FCC fine ever. “The FCC has proposed a $299,997,000 fine against ‘the largest robocall firm’ it has ever investigated, the regulator announced. It would be the FCC’s largest fine ever, and targets a firm that made over 5 billion calls in three months, enough ‘to have called each person in the United States 15 times,’ it wrote.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Kyiv Post: OPINION: Twitter’s Lack of Action Sees Users Tumbling Down the Pro-Russia Rabbit Hole. “Though long overdue, it seems that Twitter is more frequently acting on reports of accounts that break its anti-hate policy – or at the very least has finally stopped ignoring such reports altogether. And yet, working against the aims of this important process, many high-profile accounts once banned for spreading dangerous disinformation are being restored – including those directing hate at Ukraine.”

Washington Post: Science Twitter Needs a New Home. “Twitter also helped create a venue for public accountability in science. People like Dutch microbiologist Elizabeth Bik used the forum to shed light on research improprieties in both academia and biotech companies. Even with its warts — and we all know there are many — those things are not only worth keeping alive, but important to maintaining a healthy scientific ecosystem.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 25, 2022 at 06:31PM
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