New researches: July 2022

Sunday, July 31, 2022

Great Salt Lake, South Dakota Missing Persons, Google Doodles, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 31, 2022

Great Salt Lake, South Dakota Missing Persons, Google Doodles, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 31, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

USGS: New one-stop shop webpage for all things Great Salt Lake. “On the website, users can see how changing lake levels, which recently reached a new historic low, affect local wetlands, biology, economics, safety, recreation and land use. Both current and historical USGS data from the Saltair and Saline gaging stations automatically populate the site’s diagrams with up-to-date lake level information.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Government of South Dakota: New South Dakota’s Missing Persons Clearinghouse Website Released. “The new page also allows for greater searchability to the user. There are improved and added filters that allow searches by gender and race. Expanded descriptors include height, weight, hair color, eye color, and more narrative information such as the person’s last known location and what the person was last seen wearing. The user also will be able to arrange the page through multiple options including most recent, least recent, and alphabetical.”

CNET: Google’s New Multiplayer Doodle Game Celebrates Petanque. “Google’s latest multiplayer game is set to appear on the company’s search page on Sunday and pays homage to Petanque, a sport similar to bocce and lawn bowling. Invented in the South of France in 1907, Petanque is a leisure activity played by friends, as well as a competitive sport played around the world.”

Reuters: Indonesia Blocks Yahoo, Paypal, Gaming Websites Over Licence Breaches. “Indonesia has blocked search engine website Yahoo, payments firm PayPal and several gaming websites due to failure to comply with licensing rules, an official said on Saturday, sparking a backlash on social media.”

USEFUL STUFF

SlashGear: How To Use An Old iPhone As A Dash Cam. “If you’re particularly frugal or want better features with minimal investment, you can utilize an old iPhone as a dash cam instead of tossing it. In this article, we will take you through how to use an old iPhone as a dash cam.”

MakeUseOf: Top 100% Legal Streaming Services That Don’t Cost a Dime. “With the cost of virtually everything rising for the foreseeable future, it’s understandable that some folks will be looking to cut back. Luckily, there are a bunch of streaming video platforms that offer quality content for free. All of the services listed below are 100% legal and free of charge.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

University of Southern California: #LastSeen: Searching for forgotten photographs of Nazi deportations . “USC Dornsife’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research is the only non-German partner in the first major international initiative to gather and analyze images showing Nazi deportations during World War II — and they want the public’s help.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CarScoops: New Jersey Allegedly Using Social Media To Fine Modified Diesel Trucks. “The owner of a 2008 Dodge Ram 2500 with a modified diesel engine has taken to Facebook to warn others that the state of New Jersey may be trawling social media, looking for trucks that do not comply with emissions regulations.”

Intel 471: How cybercriminals are using messaging apps to launch malware schemes. ” Apps like Discord and Telegram have underlying elements that allow users to create and share programs or other types of content that’s used inside the platform. These programs, colloquially known as ‘bots,’ or other content allows for users to share media, play games, moderate channels, or any other automated task a developer can devise. Cybercriminals have figured out how to leverage this for their own begotten gains.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Siberian Federal University: Russian Scientists Have Taught a neural network to read handwritten Letters of the Russian Alphabet . “SibFU scientists have developed a new convolutional neural network (CNN) capable of recognizing images of handwritten letters with high accuracy. The resulting algorithm transforms the image and recognizes the letter encrypted in it. According to the scientists, the algorithm’s accuracy is 99 %.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 1, 2022 at 12:41AM
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Beyoncé Emoji, Snapchat, Google Play, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, July 31, 2022

Beyoncé Emoji, Snapchat, Google Play, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, July 31, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Culture Map Houston: Beyoncé rules the internet with historic Twitter emoji celebrating her wildly anticipated new album. “Now, in honor of the news that broke the internet this summer, Twitter has released a new fandom emoji in honor of Houston’s icon. Notably, this is only the second time ever that Twitter is creating an emoji for a fandom: BTS, the insanely popular K-Pop act, received the first custom fandom emoji in 2017 when the group reached 10 million followers.”

Variety: Snapchat Will Pay Indie Music Artists Up to $100,000 Monthly for Top-Performing Songs. “Snap has announced the Snapchat Sounds Creator Fund: Its first fund designed to support emerging and independent artists who distribute their music on the app via DistroKid.”

TechRadar: You’re finally getting the Google Play Store and apps you deserve. “A new day is coming for your Android apps. Google is implementing new Play Store rules for developers as it attempts to stamp out intrusive ads, impersonators, and VPNService misuse.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Rest of World: Werewolf erotica is the latest global gig work trend . “The emerging web novel industry spans the globe, taking a business model from Asia, assembling a global supply chain of authors in lower-income countries, and paying them to churn out thousands of words a day for English-speaking readers in the West. Rest of World spoke to four current and former employees at these platforms, who described how the art of novel writing is broken down into a formula to be followed: take a popular theme like werewolves, sprinkle it with certain tropes like a forbidden romance, and write as many chapters as you can.”

Hollywood Reporter: Finding Overlooked Midcentury Beauty in South L.A.. “Frustrated by circular conversations about gentrification with no clear solutions offered, [Jerald] Cooper realized that many people in his community didn’t even know the architectural significance of the buildings around them. ‘You want to save the hood, but what are the basic things that you could know?’ recalls the architecture aficionado of what led to him launching his Instagram account … which documents for its 63,000 followers midcentury modern architecture in Los Angeles, as well as other cities.”

CNN: The online ad market is in decline and it’s dragging down tech giants with it. “Much of contemporary Silicon Valley was built on advertising dollars. That dependence made even the most powerful companies look at least somewhat vulnerable this week after reporting their latest earnings results.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Daily Record (Maryland): Database key to judges’ names must be disclosed, Md. high court says. “Maryland’s Administrative Office of the Courts must disclose the alphanumeric key used to identify District Court judges in the public Judiciary Case Search database, the state’s top court ruled Thursday. In its 5-2 decision, the Court of Appeals said disclosing a code that contains otherwise publicly available information – judges’ names – is in keeping with the presumption that court records are open to the public.”

Washington Post: The GOP went to war against Google over spam — and may win. “It’s unclear what impact Google’s spam filters have had on the GOP’s fundraising, if any. Nevertheless, Republicans have waged a pressure campaign that has included public Twitter offensives and private discussions with Google chief executive Sundar Pichai. GOP lawmakers have introduced draft legislation in both chambers of Congress.”

Krebs on Security: A Retrospective on the 2015 Ashley Madison Breach. “The leak led to the public shaming and extortion of many Ashley Madison users, and to at least two suicides. To date, little is publicly known about the perpetrators or the true motivation for the attack. But a recent review of Ashley Madison mentions across Russian cybercrime forums and far-right websites in the months leading up to the hack revealed some previously unreported details that may deserve further scrutiny.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

News@Northeastern: Northeastern Launches AI Ethics Advisory Board To Help Chart A Responsible Future In Artificial Intelligence. “With the AI Ethics Advisory Board, [Cansu] Canca, co-chair of the board and AI ethics lead of the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern, and a group of more than 40 experts hope to chart a responsible future for AI.”

GroundUp: Restoring UCT’s burnt archives will take years. “After the flames that gutted the Jagger Library at the University of Cape Town (UCT) on 18 April 2021 were finally extinguished, the archives were thought to be lost….Now, 14 months later, at Maitland House in Mowbray, the painstaking process of rebuilding the collection is underway.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Launch And Track Your Model Rockets Via Smartphone. “Building and flying model rockets is great fun. Eventually, though, the thrill of the fire and smoke subsides, and you want to know more about what it’s doing in the air. With a thirst for knowledge, [archy587] started building a project to monitor the vital stats of rockets in flight.” Good morning, Internet…

July 31, 2022 at 05:28PM
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Saturday, July 30, 2022

Connect Alabama, Quick Indoor CO2 Tool, Twitter, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 30, 2022

Connect Alabama, Quick Indoor CO2 Tool, Twitter, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 30, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WSFA: Alabama launches new substance abuse, mental health app. “A new tool is now available to those who may be struggling with substance abuse and mental health. Connect Alabama is a new app that was created through a partnership with the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Alabama Department of Mental Health…. Alabamians can now access resources related to mental health, substance use, and prevention in the palm of their hand.”

Safety+Health: NIST launches tool to help assess ventilation and indoor air quality. “The free Quick Indoor CO2 tool, or QICO2, calculates carbon dioxide levels based on the user’s desired ventilation rate and information about a building and its occupants.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Elon Musk-Twitter Trial to Start Oct. 17. “Twitter and billionaire Elon Musk will go to trial from Oct. 17 to 21, a Delaware Chancery Court schedule confirmed Friday, over the Tesla CEO’s attempt to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the company. The setting of the dates comes a week after Twitter partially blamed a revenue shortfall on ‘uncertainty’ linked to Musk’s rocky takeover bid.”

The Verge: The Twitter Blue subscription is getting more expensive. “The add-ons in the Twitter Blue package range from extremely useful (an undo tweet window to fix typos, a customizable navigation bar, a list of Top Articles shared by people you follow, and ad-free access to articles on sites including The Verge) to trivial (the ability to choose from different app icons) to questionable (NFT hexagon profile pics).”

USEFUL STUFF

PetaPixel: GFP-GAN is a New Free AI Tool That Can Fix Most Old Photos Instantly. “A newly-released artificial intelligence (AI) model called the ‘Generative Facial Prior’ (GFP-GAN) can repair most old photographs in mere seconds, and it can do it for free.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Slashgear: This Rising Instagram Alternative Is Promising Everything Meta Can’t. “Starting off as an iOS app late in 2021, Glass calls itself ‘a sustainable home for photographers.’ But it’s a far cry from Instagram or any other platform of its kind. To start, you get a clean chronological feed with full-screen photos and no other UI distractions.”

Gamerant: Rumor: Google Stadia May Be Getting Shut Down. “Google Stadia hasn’t been as successful as the Internet super-giant wanted it to be. While the game streaming service did end up getting its foot in the door for a little while, it hasn’t been making waves since its release, and many have theorized that Google would end up scuttling the service entirely in the relatively near future.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: Elon Musk countersues Twitter over merger, but details aren’t yet public. “Elon Musk countersued Twitter on Friday, intensifying the conflict between the Tesla CEO and the social networking company he agreed to buy, but the lawsuit is not yet available to the public.”

Washington Post: Secret Service’s ‘ludicrous’ deletion of Jan. 6 phone data baffles experts. “Experts are divided over whether the disappearance of phone data from around the time of the insurrection is a sign of incompetence, an intentional coverup, or some murkier middle ground. But the failure has raised suspicions about the disposition of records that could provide intimate details about what happened on that chaotic day, and whose preservation was mandated by federal law.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Massachusetts Amherst: New Open-Access Book On Microplastic Pollution Highlights The Need For Better Science And Management. “In ‘Microplastic in the Environment: Pattern and Process,’ editor Michael S. Bank, senior scientist at Norway’s Institute of Marine Research and professor of contaminants and complex systems at UMass Amherst, tackles an extraordinarily complex problem that has recently come to popular attention: the problem of microplastics.” Good afternoon, Internet…

July 31, 2022 at 12:58AM
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Facebook Roundup, July 30, 2022

Facebook Roundup, July 30, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Axios: Scoop: Meta officially cuts funding for news publishers. “Meta on Tuesday began telling its news partners in the U.S. that the company no longer plans to pay publishers for their content to run on Facebook’s News Tab, sources tell Axios. Why it matters: As the company moves forward with sweeping changes to the Facebook experience, news has become less of a priority.” Spending money has become less of a priority.

Bloomberg: Meta repeats why it may be forced to pull Facebook from EU. “Meta Platforms Inc reiterated its warning that it may have no choice but to pull its popular Facebook and Instagram services from the European Union if a new transatlantic data transfer pact doesn’t materialize.”

Engadget: Instagram backpedals on full-screen feed and recommended posts. “Following a significant backlash from its users, Instagram is walking back some major changes.”

CNBC: Meta reports earnings, revenue miss and forecasts second straight quarter of declining sales. “Facebook parent Meta reported a steeper-than-expected drop in revenue, missed on earnings and issued a surprisingly weak forecast pointing to a second consecutive decline in year-over-year sales.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Verge: Facebook and Instagram are going to show even more posts from accounts you don’t follow. “Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will more than double the amount of content from recommended accounts people see while using Instagram and Facebook by the end of 2023. He said that such recommendations currently account for roughly 15 percent of the content on Facebook, and that the percentage is already higher on Instagram.”

The Verge: Zuckerberg says Meta and Apple are in ‘very deep, philosophical competition’ to build the metaverse. “Mark Zuckerberg believes that Apple and his company are in a ‘very deep, philosophical competition’ to build the metaverse, suggesting the two tech giants are ready to butt heads in selling hardware for augmented and virtual reality.”

NiemanLab: How one Italian newspaper put Facebook “on lockdown” for more than a year. “Giornale di Brescia, one of Italy’s most popular local newspapers, quit Facebook in November 2020. It was not an easy decision: at that time, the company’s Facebook page had more than 200,000 followers and  drove almost 20% of the website’s traffic.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Brazil Prosecutors Ask WhatsApp to Delay Launch of New Tool Until January . “Brazilian prosecutors on Friday called on messaging platform WhatsApp to delay the launch in Brazil of its new feature called Communities until January to avoid the spread of fake news during and immediately after the country’s election in October.”

FTC: FTC Seeks to Block Virtual Reality Giant Meta’s Acquisition of Popular App Creator Within. “The Federal Trade Commission is seeking to block virtual reality giant Meta and its controlling shareholder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg from acquiring Within Unlimited and its popular virtual reality dedicated fitness app, Supernatural.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Axios: Exclusive: Meta to study race of Instagram users. “The company says it wants to make sure that its products and AI systems operate fairly across racial lines, but feels it can’t do that without better knowing its customers. By working with a third party it aims to both protect privacy and ensure customers are more comfortable sharing their information.”

New York Times: I Was Wrong About Facebook. “I wasn’t just wrong about Facebook; I had the matter exactly backward. Had we all decided to leave Facebook then or at any time since, the internet and perhaps the world might now be a better place. The question of how much better and in what way is a matter of considerable debate. It might be decades before we have any sense of an answer to whether, on balance, Facebook in particular and social networks more generally have improved or ruined society.”

Washington Post: Facebook’s workforce grew more diverse when it embraced remote work. “Facebook was one of an array of companies to dramatically restructure remote work during the coronavirus pandemic, allowing employees to continue working from home while they avoided the spread of covid-19. Now, Facebook Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams said there was an unexpected benefit to that workplace overhaul: it helped the company recruit and retain workers from underrepresented groups.”

July 30, 2022 at 06:53PM
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Medical Imaging, Parenting Musically, Mapping Black California: BLO Directory, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, July 30, 2022

Medical Imaging, Parenting Musically, Mapping Black California: BLO Directory, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, July 30, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Inside Precision Medicine: Moffitt Creates Open-Source Software for Viewing Multiplex Images. “Researchers at the Moffitt Cancer Center have created a new open-source software program that allows users to view multiple 2D images simultaneously. Their program, called Mistic, takes information from multidimensional images to create an abstract of each that can be viewed together. A paper in the journal Patterns describes the program and several applications in cancer imaging.”

Case Western Reserve University: Music’s Lisa Huisman Koops launches “Parenting Musically” podcast. “Featuring interviews with well-known musicians or their parents, paired with researchers and practitioner respondents, Koops’s podcast aims to ‘help families and listeners make music a more important and enjoyable part of daily life.'”

Globe Newswire: Mapping Black California Unveiling Pioneering Statewide Database of California’s Black-Led Organizations (PRESS RELEASE). “Mapping Black California (MBC), a product of Black Voice News (BVN), is relaunching its website with a groundbreaking new data tool, the Mapping Black California: Black-Led Organization (BLO) Directory.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Twitter is testing a status feature that’s taking us back to MySpace. “Facebook is trying to be TikTok, but now, Twitter is bringing us back a little bit of Facebook (or LiveJournal or Myspace). Some users are reporting that they can now post Twitter statuses, which lets them tag posts like they’re retro MySpace moods.”

USEFUL STUFF

ZDNet: How to organize your Google Drive with these 5 tips. “Before I get to these helpful tips, know that these aren’t about the individual apps within Google Drive (Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms). These tips are about Drive itself and getting the most out of the platform.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Rafu Shimpo: First National Names Monument Honoring JAs Incarcerated During WWII to Launch in Fall. “With the support of a $3.4 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture is creating Irei: National Monument for the WWII Japanese American Incarceration, a multi-faceted project to address the erasure of the identities of individuals of Japanese ancestry who experienced wartime incarceration.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Al Jazeera: Social media ‘gurus’ prey on India’s small retail investors. “India’s mom-and-pop investors are facing testing times. During a pandemic-era surge in the stock market, millions poured their savings into equities, drawing on advice from unauthorized financial advisers and social media ‘gurus’ to help identify the next big ticket. But a recent slide in stock values has laid bare the dangers of India’s lax capital market regulations.”

Bloomberg: Chinese Government Asked TikTok for Stealth Propaganda Account . “A Chinese government entity responsible for public relations attempted to open a stealth account on TikTok targeting Western audiences with propaganda, according to internal messages seen by Bloomberg.”

New York Times: Stalkers, Fan Threats, Police Raids: The Hidden Price of Twitch Fame. “Streamers on Twitch and other platforms have had stalkers show up at their homes and at fan conventions, been targeted by armed and violent viewers or dealt with swatting, a sometimes deadly stunt in which someone calls the local police to report a fake crime at a streamer’s home, hoping the raid will be caught live on camera.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Slate: Why I Use Snap and TikTok Instead of Google. “To be clear: I use Google products regularly. But I use them for only the most straightforward tasks: checking the spelling of something, looking for a quick fact, finding directions. If I’m looking for a place for lunch, or a cool new pop-up, or an activity my friends would enjoy, I’m not going to bother with Google.”

Australian Financial Review: Australian researchers to build apps for Google quantum computer. “Google has set up an outpost of its Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab in Sydney, partnering with four Australian universities in the quest to develop world-changing applications for quantum computers.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Oxford: Researchers develop new breath-driven concept set to transform access to hand prosthetics. “By regulating their breathing, users power a small purpose-built Tesla turbine that can accurately control the prosthetic finger movements. The volume of air needed to power the unit can be achieved by young children and the gearing in the unit determines the speed of the grasping action. Cable and harness free, the device is lightweight and suitable for children and adolescents who are still growing. Minimal maintenance and training are needed for ease of use in comparison to other prosthetic options.” Good morning, Internet…

July 30, 2022 at 05:33PM
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Friday, July 29, 2022

AlphaFold, Birds for Kids, The Ebony and Jet Photo Archives, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 29, 2022

AlphaFold, Birds for Kids, The Ebony and Jet Photo Archives, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 29, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

DeepMind: AlphaFold reveals the structure of the protein universe. “In partnership with EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), we’re now releasing predicted structures for nearly all catalogued proteins known to science, which will expand the AlphaFold DB by over 200x – from nearly 1 million structures to over 200 million structures – with the potential to dramatically increase our understanding of biology.”

Newswise: New Course Helps Awaken Curiosity About Nature. “Adults who want to connect kids with nature now have some expert guidance, thanks to a new online course from Bird Academy, the e-learning arm of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. ‘Let’s Go Outside: How to Connect Kids with Birds and Nature,’ contains six lessons with dozens of field-tested activities to reduce screen time for kids and boost their curiosity about the natural world.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ford Foundation: Ford, Mellon and MacArthur Foundations Transfer Sole Ownership of Historic Ebony and Jet Photo Archive to Getty and NMAAHC . “A consortium comprising the Ford Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution, announced today the official transfer of ownership of the acclaimed Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) archive to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and to the Getty Research Institute, a program of the Getty Trust.”

TechCrunch: TikTok begins pilot testing HTML5 mini-games with a handful of partners. “TechCrunch learned and has now confirmed TikTok’s new gaming pilot quietly launched just weeks ago with a variety of new partners, including game developers Vodoo, Nitro Games, FRVR, Aim Lab and Lotem.”

Search Engine Journal: Twitter Transparency Report Shows Dark Side Of Social Media. “Twitter’s transparency report showed decreases in the number of suspended accounts or had content removed due to violating Twitter’s rules. The report also details increasing government requests for information and how often Twitter complies with those requests. Of particular note is an increase in governments targeting journalists with legal demands.”

USEFUL STUFF

New York Times: The Default Tech Settings You Should Turn Off Right Away. “…with every tech product we use, it’s important to take time to peruse the many menus, buttons and switches to pare down the data we share. Here’s a streamlined guide to many of the default settings that I and other tech writers always change.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Axios: Gen Z shapes new social media era. “The social hierarchies created by decades of public ‘like’ counts, and the noise level generated by clickbait posts and engagement lures, have worn on Gen Z. And constant pivots by social media giants have eroded younger users’ trust.”

Politico: Arabic social media remains an unchecked Wild West. “Suspected Kremlin agents peddle falsehoods masquerading as Instagram models. The terrorist organization Hezbollah posts propaganda updates as if it were a news organization. More than 2 million Iraqis join Facebook groups where guns are bought and sold without checks. Welcome to the world of Arabic-language social media — a Wild West where content moderation is minimal, foreign governments act with abandon, and jihadists foster online hate in arguably some of the world’s most war-torn countries.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Politico: Justice Department investigating data breach of federal court system. “The Justice Department is investigating a data breach of the U.S. federal courts system dating to early 2020, a top official testified on Capitol Hill Thursday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UMBC: UMBC-led team generates first global map of cargo ship pollution, revealing effects of fuel regulations. “A new study in Science Advances led by UMBC’s Tianle Yuan used satellite data from 2003 – 2020 to determine the effect of fuel regulations on pollution from cargo ships. The research team’s data revealed significant changes in sulfur pollution after regulations went into effect in 2015 and 2020. Their extensive data set can also contribute to answering a bigger question: How do pollutants and other particles interact with clouds to affect global temperatures overall?” Good afternoon, Internet…

July 30, 2022 at 12:29AM
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Florida Law Enforcement, Ho-Chunk Nation Language, Missing Persons Podcast, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, July 29, 2022

Florida Law Enforcement, Ho-Chunk Nation Language, Missing Persons Podcast, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, July 29, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Miami Herald: Florida debuts new database on cops with bad records. It has holes, reform advocates say. “The basic website can be accessed by simply typing in an officer’s name and guesstimating a start date. The site, which debuted last week, is a start, but also has some critical holes, police reform advocates say. Among them: It doesn’t include citizen complaints, only goes back a decade, and for an officer to make the list, he or she must have a felony criminal conviction or have been found guilty of a moral character violation.”

EIN Presswire: Ho-Chunk Nation Releases Milestone Indigenous Language Digital Dictionary (PRESS RELEASE). “On July 30, 2022, Ho-Chunk Nation is proudly releasing their dictionary at the General Council in Madison, Wisconsin…. The new Hoocąk Wazijaci dictionary is freely available online and via mobile download. It includes nearly 12,000 entries and over 9,000 example sentences.”

Newswise: New Missing Persons Website and Podcast Launched. “A new website and podcast series are launching today (28 July) to tackle the myths and misunderstandings around missing persons issues. Missing Persons Uncovered seeks to empower the public to protect vulnerable loved ones with real-life testimonials and insights from practitioners in the field.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechRadar Pro: Wix has a new AI-powered website builder editor. “Wix has upgraded its website builder with the launch of a new editor offering a personalized web creation tool for each individual user. The launch essentially sees the company combine its Wix Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) features with its classic Wix Editor, offering new themes, section layout suggestions for design optimization, as well as a faster edit tool for content management.”

CNET: Google Reveals Finalists for 2022 Doodle for Google Contest. “Five young, talented artists are a step closer Thursday to having their artwork showcased on Google’s homepage for a day and taking home a chunk of change for themselves and gear for their school.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NPR: Amid the hype, they bought crypto near its peak. Now, they cope with painful losses. “Quarterback Tom Brady and his wife, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, starred in an ad for FTX, and a commercial for Crypto.com featured Academy Award-winning actor Matt Damon. These were designed to appeal to a potential investor’s fear of missing out. ‘Fortune favors the brave,’ Damon says. The ads included little-to-no explanation of crypto, and how risky the unregulated asset is. About two weeks after that Crypto.com ad debuted, Bitcoin set a new record: $68,990. Today, it’s less than a third of that.”

BBC: False claims of ‘deepfake’ President Biden go viral. “People are falsely claiming a video of US President Joe Biden posted by the Democratic Party is a deepfake. A deepfake is a video created using artificial intelligence to show someone saying or doing something they didn’t do. We’ve looked into the video.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: LibreOffice addresses security issues with macros, passwords. “The LibreOffice suite has been updated to address several security vulnerabilities related to the execution of macros and the protection of passwords for web connections. The developer implemented fixes in the stable release of the product (LibreOffice 7.2) and the unstable branch (7.3).”

University of Oxford: Secure cryptography with real-world devices is now a realistic possibility. “New research published in Nature explains how an international team of researchers have, for the first time, experimentally implemented a type of quantum cryptography considered to be the ‘ultimate’, ‘bug-proof’ means of communication.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Forward: Linguist Isaac Bleaman receives National Science Foundation award to study language of Holocaust survivors. “Isaac Bleaman, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to study the speech of native Yiddish speakers who survived the Holocaust. The five-year $470,000 grant will support research that documents the Yiddish language as it was spoken by survivors who were interviewed for the Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation, an organization that was founded by film director Steven Spielberg in 1994.”

Associated Press: Wounded Knee artifacts highlight slow pace of repatriations. “Some 870,000 Native American artifacts — including nearly 110,000 human remains — that should be returned to tribes under federal law are still in the possession of colleges, museums and other institutions across the country, according to an Associated Press review of data maintained by the National Park Service.”

Troy Today: Troy University’s Rosa Parks Museum seeks to engage visitors with interactive app. “Troy University’s Rosa Parks Museum is working to create a mobile app that will engage its visitors, especially young people. The Museum is teaming up with QuantumERA, LLC, an immersive solutions company, to create the ‘Rosa Parks and the Women who Made the Movement’ mobile application, which will feature a virtual Rosa Parks and other unsung figures of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.” Good morning, Internet…

July 29, 2022 at 05:32PM
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Thursday, July 28, 2022

Kangaroo Island Art, Photo Scanning, Free Web Hosting, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 28, 2022

Kangaroo Island Art, Photo Scanning, Free Web Hosting, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 28, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Islander: Art Museum of Kangaroo Island takes on historical art project. “Some of the first European art of Kangaroo Island is on its way back home – in digital form – thanks to an Art Museum of Kangaroo Island project. The project is called ‘Kangaroo Island Art: Explorers and Settlers’.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Digitize Old Photos With Your Phone. “Bring memories back to life by taking your old pictures into the future. We tested three popular photo scanning apps against a scanner.”

MakeUseOf: The 6 Best Free Website Hosting Services. “Need to create your own website? It’s easier than you’d think, especially nowadays with all the handy services and platforms out there—not to mention all the free web hosts you can pick from. Keep reading to be pointed toward the best free web hosts and most popular free web hosting services currently available.”

Search Engine Journal: How To Go Live On TikTok: A Step By Step Guide. “Whether you’re an individual influencer or part of a social media team for a brand, here’s how to set up your first ever TikTok LIVE with this detailed, step-by-step guide.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Pittsburgh City Paper: Environmental watchdogs petition to remove access fee on oil and gas well database. “Environmental activists are calling on a state agency to eliminate access fees for a database containing detailed information about orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells across the commonwealth that they believe Pennsylvania taxpayers should have access to free of charge.”

Six News Australia: Why we’ve created a new Twitter account to monitor MPs on TikTok. “We hear about it almost every day – misinformation spreading on social media, and on platforms like TikTok. But while some think of it as a ‘dancing app,’ TikTok is being used by MPs and parties a lot these days. Labor, the Liberals, The Greens, One Nation & the Victorian Socialists are just some of the parties with active TikTok accounts.”

New York Times: Ties Between Alex Jones and Radio Network Show Economics of Misinformation. “Ted Anderson, a precious metals seller, was hoping to rustle up some business for his gold and silver dealership when he started a radio network out of a Minneapolis suburb a couple of decades ago. Soon after, he signed a brash young radio host named Alex Jones. Together, they ended up shaping today’s misinformation economy.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Russia fines Google $34 million for breaching competition rules. “Russia’s competition watchdog fined Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Google 2 billion roubles ($34.2 million) on Tuesday for abusing its dominant position in the video hosting market, the regulator said in a statement. The decision is the latest multi-million dollar fine as part of Moscow’s increasingly assertive campaign against foreign tech companies.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: Colorful urban environments promote wellbeing, even if they are just in virtual reality. “A new study in Frontiers in Virtual Reality tested the effects of vegetation and colorful patterns in an urban environment. Employing virtual reality, the study found that green vegetation caused volunteers to walk more slowly, while also increasing their heartrate, indicating a pleasurable experience. Meanwhile, colorful patterns increased alertness, fascination and curiosity.”

NewsWise: Rigor and Transparency Index: Large Scale Analysis of Scientific Reporting Quality. “Improving rigor and transparency measures should lead to improvements in reproducibility across the scientific literature, but assessing measures of transparency tends to be very difficult if performed manually by reviewers.” Good afternoon, Internet…

July 29, 2022 at 12:18AM
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OSINT Twitter Tools, Community Disaster Risk, Gene Updater, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, July 28, 2022

OSINT Twitter Tools, Community Disaster Risk, Gene Updater, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, July 28, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Indiana University Bloomington: New social media tools help public assess viral posts, check for bots. “The Observatory on Social Media, or OSoMe, at Indiana University has launched three new or revamped no-cost research tools to give journalists, other researchers and the public a broad view of what’s happening on social media.” They’re very Twitter-oriented and look like a lot of fun.

NOAA: NOAA tool now brings disaster risk, vulnerability down to community level. “A comprehensive update to NOAA’s Billion Dollar Disasters mapping tool now includes U.S. census tract data – providing many users with local community-level awareness of hazard risk, exposure and vulnerability across more than 100 combinations of weather and climate hazards.”

Scientific Reports: Gene Updater: a web tool that autocorrects and updates for Excel misidentified gene names. “…we developed a web tool with Streamlit that can convert old gene names and dates back into the new gene names recommended by [HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee]. The web app is named Gene Updater, which is open source…”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Phys .org: Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria re-launches VicFlora database to help identify plants. “Today, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria re-launched its plant biodiversity website, VicFlora. The new portal features upgrades that allow users to identify Victoria’s plants more easily. It is based on a new, open-source core that allows Gardens botanists to easily add new usability and accessibility features to continually improve the user experience.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Maps May Remove Selfies, Blurry Or Poor Quality Images. “Google Maps has updated its photos and videos criteria for the Google Maps user-contributed content policy. Google added selfie photos, excessively dark or blurry images, significantly rotated compositions, and the use of filters that dramatically alter the representation of the place may be removed from Google Maps.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Comics That Read Top to Bottom Are Bringing in New Readers. “For decades, the fans who powered the comic book industry made weekly pilgrimages to their local comic shops to buy the latest issues about their favorite caped-and-cowled adventurers. These Wednesday Warriors, named for the day new installments typically land on shelves, still do. Voracious readers of printed comics, they skew older — and are mostly male. But now all it takes is a smartphone, as the world of comics is reshaped by the kind of digital disruption that has transformed journalism, music, movies and television.”

BBC: Google rules blocked children’s diabetes app. “An NHS-recommended app for managing Type 1 diabetes says Google won’t let it send text message alerts to the parents of young children using it, via the app.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Techdirt: Phishing Attacks On WordPress Site Owners Disguised As Copyright Infringement Warnings. “What makes this so devious is that, though the public has somewhat learned to filter out the common email phishing attempts, disguising all of this as a copyright infringement issue pointed at website owners is likely to ensnare more people than a common phish attempt.”

The Street: Crypto: A Bernie Madoff-Style Scheme May Have Crushed Prominent Lenders. “An unprecedented crisis of confidence has affected the crypto industry for several months. To measure it, just consider the prices of cryptocurrencies, which are often attached to a platform or a project. The cryptocurrency market has lost $2 trillion in value since hitting an all-time high of $3 trillion in early November, according to data firm CoinGecko. Prices for bitcoin, the king of cryptocurrencies, are down more than two-thirds since hitting an all-time high of $69,044.77 on November 10.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Oregon State University: Harm from blue light exposure increases with age, Oregon State University research suggests . “The damaging effects of daily, lifelong exposure to the blue light emanating from phones, computers and household fixtures worsen as a person ages, new research by Oregon State University suggests.”

Texas A&M Today: Using Historical Weather Data To Optimize Power Grid. “Weather information has been used in electric grid planning and operations since the 1880s. However, no one has yet introduced the idea of incorporating this information into the power flow, or load flow, of the grid, which is a system used to determine how the power flows from the generators through the transmission system to the distribution system (which is then used by consumers).”

Reason: You Can’t Stop Pirate Libraries. “Are the proprietors of these pirate libraries freedom fighters? Digital Robin Hoods? Criminals? That depends on your perspective, and it may also differ depending on the platform in question. But one thing is certain: These platforms are nearly impossible to eradicate. Even a greatly enhanced crackdown on them would be little more than a waste of time and resources.” Good morning, Internet…

July 28, 2022 at 05:28PM
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Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Open Jewelry, Multiracial Fashion, Passwords, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 27, 2022

Open Jewelry, Multiracial Fashion, Passwords, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Hackaday: OpenJewelry, No Pliers Required. “Whereas some people might simply lament the lack of a (stable) Thingiverse-type site for, say, jewelry designs, those people aren’t Hackaday’s own [Adam Zeloof]. With nowhere to share designs among engineering-oriented friends, [Adam] took the initiative and created OpenJewelry, a site for posting open-source jewelry and wearable art designs as well as knowledge about techniques, materials, and processes.”

ShowStudio: A New Digital Exhibition Explores Mixed-Race Identity Through Fashion. “When exploring the complexities of racial identity (let alone mixed-race identity), having context and nuance is essential. That’s why The Mixed Museum – a digital museum and archive – has partnered up with artist and designer Warren Reilly to present By The Cut of Their Cloth.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechRadar: Chrome update will soon help you stop making a huge security mistake. “Making sure you have strong passwords has been common security advice for some time, but Google Chrome is now looking to go a step further with its latest update. The browser is reportedly working on a new feature which will immediately show just how strong, or weak, your passwords are.”

TechCrunch: Google launches Street View in India after years of rejection. “Google has relaunched Street View, the Google Maps feature that allows users to explore an area through 360-degree panoramic street-level images, in India more than a decade after it first rolled out the service in the South Asian market and roughly six years after the feature was banned in the country over security concerns.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC Magazine: Document Editing on the Cheap: How to Use Microsoft Office for Free on the Web. “If you want to use Microsoft Office but don’t want to pay for it, why not try the free Office for the web? Formerly known as Office Online and now known simply as Office, the web-based apps reside online, accessible through your browser.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNBC: Why tech workers are quitting great jobs at companies like Google to fight climate change. “Tech workers are walking away from high-paying jobs with great perks to help fight what they believe is the greatest existential problem of our lifetimes: climate change. In some cases, that has meant taking a pay cut. But Sandy Anuras, who recently joined home solar provider Sunrun as its chief technology officer, says a big paycheck sometimes comes with a price.”

BuzzFeed News: TikTok Owner ByteDance Used A News App On Millions Of Phones To Push Pro-China Messages, Ex-Employees Say. “Former employees claim the company placed pieces of pro-China content in its now-defunct US news app, TopBuzz, and censored negative stories about the Chinese government. ByteDance says it did no such thing.”

University of Southern Mississippi: USM Special Collections Earns Grant for Preservation Work. “The grant – $135,828 from NHPRC, with $70,178 in-kind matching funds from USM to increase access to collections – will support processing, digitization, and development of finding aids for existing collections significant to the history and culture of Mississippi. Select material will be digitized and featured in online presentations.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: There is a lot of antisemitic hate speech on social media – and algorithms are partly to blame. “Scholar Sophie Schmalenberger found that antisemitism is expressed not just in blunt, hurtful language and images on social media, but also in coded forms that may easily remain undetected. For example, on Facebook, Germany’s radical right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, omits the mentioning of the Holocaust in posts about the Second World War. It also uses antisemitic language and rhetoric that present antisemitism as acceptable.”

University of Oxford: Seeing the light: researchers develop new AI system using light to learn associatively . “Researchers at Oxford University’s Department of Materials, working in collaboration with colleagues from Exeter and Munster have developed an on-chip optical processor capable of detecting similarities in datasets up to 1,000 times faster than conventional machine learning algorithms running on electronic processors.” Good afternoon, Internet…

July 28, 2022 at 01:03AM
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Facebook Roundup, July 27, 2022

Facebook Roundup, July 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Axios: Meta provides another $150 million in funding for its Oversight Board. “Meta on Friday said it approved a new three-year, $150 million commitment to fund its global content oversight board, which it has designed to be independent and provides money for via a separate trust…. The board was created to help Meta make tough calls on content moderation, but the group’s power has been challenged at times by the company’s unwillingness to outsource some of its decisions.”

Axios: Sweeping changes remake Facebook app in TikTok’s image. “Meta announced major changes Thursday to the Facebook app that will transform its experience into a more TikTok-like selection of algorithmically chosen videos — and shunt off content posted by family, friends and groups into a separate side feed.”

CNN: Meta considers easing its Covid-19 misinformation policy. “The social media giant on Tuesday asked its independent Oversight Board for an opinion on whether its tougher pandemic policies are still warranted, citing higher vaccination rates around the world as well as the company’s own efforts to promote authoritative information about Covid-19.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Verge: Zuck Turns Up The Heat. “Facebook went public in 2012, riding what became the longest US stock market bull in history. When the government lowered interest rates in the pandemic and investors flooded into tech stocks, the company’s valuation surpassed $1 trillion for the first time. It rebranded to Meta in October of last year, just a few months before its stock price would enter the free fall it’s in now. Now, Zuckerberg isn’t the only one sounding the alarm about potentially worse times ahead.”

Slate: Facebook May Be on the Cusp of an Embarrassing Milestone. “Meta may report its first ever revenue decline when it releases its second-quarter earnings next week, a potentially stunning slowdown for a business that once seemed to have no ceiling.”

Reuters: Facebook’s growth woes in India: too much nudity, not enough women. “On Feb. 2, when Meta Platforms reported Facebook’s first-ever quarterly drop in daily users, its finance chief identified higher mobile data costs as a unique obstacle slowing growth in India, its biggest market. On the same day, the U.S. tech group posted the findings of its own research into Facebook’s business in India on an internal employee forum. The study, conducted over the two years to the end of 2021, identified different problems.”

Washington Post: Facebook workers fear cuts after blunt warnings from Zuckerberg, leaders. “Facebook executives have issued a dizzying number of directives, outlining a new era of higher performance expectations and slowed hiring as the company emerges from the pandemic with a growing list of economic challenges.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TorrentFreak: Meta Hit With Massive Piracy Lawsuit Over Epidemic Sound Royalty-Free Music. “Meta has been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit demanding at least $142 million in damages. Epidemic Sound, a company that provides royalty-free music to YouTubers and other creators, claims that Meta hosts 94% of Epidemic’s music in its own library, none of it licensed. According to Epidemic, this has resulted in billions of illegal views across Facebook and Instagram.”

Bleeping Computer: LinkedIn phishing target employees managing Facebook Ad Accounts. “A new phishing campaign codenamed ‘Ducktail’ is underway, targeting professionals on LinkedIn to take over Facebook business accounts that manage advertising for the company.”

CNN: First on CNN: Human smugglers peddle misinformation to US-bound migrants on Facebook, watchdog says. “Human smugglers frequently misrepresent immigration policies and conditions along the US-Mexico border in Facebook and WhatsApp social media posts targeting US-bound migrants, according to a report released Wednesday by a tech transparency group.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

VoxEU: Social media and mental health . “Using the gradual expansion of the website across US colleges as a natural experiment, the authors find that students were more likely to report that mental health issues negatively affected their academic performance after Facebook was introduced at their college, with evidence suggesting that the effects operated through unfavourable social comparison.”

Washington Post: My video criticizing the Iranian government went viral. Then Instagram restricted my account.. “What did I do wrong? I still don’t know. Instagram didn’t initially offer any explanation. I might guess that my offense was giving voice to the voiceless in Iran. My 7 million followers on Instagram make for a powerful platform.”

July 27, 2022 at 07:59PM
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Heat.gov, Latine Writers, Zoom, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 27, 2022

Heat.gov, Latine Writers, Zoom, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NOAA: Biden Administration launches Heat.gov with tools for communities facing extreme heat. “Today, the Biden Administration through the interagency National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) launched Heat.gov, a new website to provide the public and decision-makers with clear, timely and science-based information to understand and reduce the health risks of extreme heat. Heat.gov will provide a one-stop hub on heat and health for the nation and is a priority of President Biden’s National Climate Task Force and its Interagency Working Group on Extreme Heat.”

Broadway World: The Latine Musical Theatre Lab Launches A Database Of Latine Writers . “The database currently features 100 Latiné musical theatre writers – librettists, lyricists, and composers. Each artist has an individual profile that shares their base city, pronouns, identities, social media handles, and a link to their personal website that directs the user to learn more about each writer, their music, and the stories they tell.” I wasn’t sure what “Latiné” indicated, but apparently it’s an alternative to Latinx.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Zoom brings end-to-end encryption to its cloud phone service. “Zoom is bolstering its privacy and security protections by expanding end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to more of its services. First up is Zoom Phone, its cloud phone system.”

Yahoo Finance: Alphabet earnings miss estimates, ad revenue beats, stock pops. “Google parent company Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) reported earnings that missed Wall Street estimates after the closing bell on Tuesday. The technology giant said adjusted earnings per share hit $1.21 during the second quarter, compared to $1.32 expected by analysts, according to Bloomberg data.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Duke University Libraries: Duke Libraries Partners with the Civil Rights Movement Archive to Sustain Activist Centered History. “Duke University Libraries is pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Civil Rights Movement Archive (CRMA) that designates the Duke Libraries as the stewards who will preserve and sustain the CRMA when the current managers are no longer able to carry the work forward.”

How-To Geek: What Is the AVIF Image Format?. “Move over JPEG, there’s a new image file format in town that wants to be king. Powered by the latest media compression techniques, AVIF is finding its way into browsers, software, and operating systems. So what is it, and do you need to do anything?”

The Verge: The Great Fiction of AI. “In order to survive in a marketplace where infinite other options are a click away, authors need to find their fans and keep them loyal. So they follow readers to the microgenres into which Amazon’s algorithms classify their tastes, niches like ‘mermaid young adult fantasy’ or ‘time-travel romance,’ and keep them engaged by writing in series, each installment teasing the next, which already has a title and set release date, all while producing a steady stream of newsletters, tweets, and videos.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

GPO: GPO Releases Five-Year Strategic Plan Focused on Modernizing and Innovating. “U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) has released its strategic plan for fiscal years 2023–2027. Outlined in the plan are the Agency’s new mission, vision, and values, as well as the four key goals for the next five years: achieve operational excellence; modernize and innovate; ensure financial stability; and develop the workforce.”

Ars Technica: Discovery of new UEFI rootkit exposes an ugly truth: The attacks are invisible to us. “Researchers have unpacked a major cybersecurity find—a malicious UEFI-based rootkit used in the wild since 2016 to ensure computers remained infected even if an operating system is reinstalled or a hard drive is completely replaced.”

The National News: UK and US sign data access pact to share social media and phone data to tackle terrorism. “The UK and US have signed a data access agreement to share social media and phone information to tackle major crimes, including terrorism. The new agreement will come into force in October and will allow either nation to immediately access phone and social media data to help in major investigations, Britain’s Home Office said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Business School: Burgers with Bugs? What Happens When Restaurants Ignore Online Reviews. “Negative Yelp reviews hold more sway with consumers than restaurateurs might think. A machine learning study by Chiara Farronato reveals how online platforms amplify the customer voice, and why business owners should listen.”

Brookings Institution: Misinformation is eroding the public’s confidence in democracy. “The National Intelligence Council has found no indications that any foreign actor has interfered in the technical aspect of voting, such as voter registration, voting and casting ballots, vote tabulation or in the reporting of election results, which is great. However, the spread of false information about the voting systems on social media destabilizes the public’s trust in election processes and results.” Good morning, Internet…

July 27, 2022 at 05:33PM
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Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Online Meeting Platforms, Seeing Speech, New Mexico Missing Persons, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 26, 2022

Online Meeting Platforms, Seeing Speech, New Mexico Missing Persons, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Virtual Events Group: collection of online meeting platforms. They’re divided into several categories including metaverse, networking event, Webinar, and trade show. Alfred P. tells me there are over 200 different platforms described here. The annotations are moderate but every platform I looked at had a “best feature” notation that I liked very much. They all had videos, too.

Lancaster University: Gaelic ultrasound videos shed new light on mechanics of tongue movements during speech. “A research team, led by Lancaster University, made video recordings of people’s tongues while they spoke Gaelic and Western-Isles English to investigate what kinds of movements are used to produce different consonants…. A selection of the videos are now available in a new section of a website dedicated to videos of speech sounds, Seeing Speech, created by speech and language experts at the University of Glasgow and Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.”

Albuquerque Journal: New database lists missing Native Americans from New Mexico, Navajo Nation. “The FBI on Monday unveiled a new database listing the names of 177 missing Native Americans from New Mexico and throughout the Navajo Nation, as part of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives initiative, Raul Bujanda, special agent in charge of the Albuquerque FBI Division, said at a news conference.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PR Newswire: Zillow’s new tool powers home searches in up to five areas at once, letting shoppers move as fast as the market (PRESS RELEASE). “Now available on the Zillow app, the multi-location search feature makes the home shopping experience faster, simpler and easier by allowing shoppers to find available homes in up to five different areas at once; it also gives users the option to easily sift through the listings on the map or all in the same results feed. In addition, users can save their multi-location searches and opt to receive email and push notifications with results and recommendations.” Zillow is planning a number of other search enhancements. They’re mentioned in the release.

TechCrunch: Google is adding new Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Keep optimizations for tablets. “Google introduced Android 12L earlier this year to make tablets easier to use, and at I/O, the company announced plans to update more than 20 Google apps on tablets to optimize them for larger screens. Today, Google said it’s adding several new features for Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Keep to get started on this promise.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Recorder (Amsterdam, New York): Sticker Mule launches what it hopes will be a different social media platform. ” Local e-commerce company Sticker Mule is trying to make its mark in another corner of the digital universe with a new social media platform. ‘Stimulus’ is still in its beta phase, but in its soft launch it has gained about 10,000 verified users and 30,000 casual users.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Boing Boing: YouTube copyright trolls claim public domain footage of Apollo moon landing. “Film archivist Fran Blanche posted content featuring the Apollo moon landings to YouTube, and reported being besieged by frauds using ContentID, the platform’s private copyright enforcement and monetization system.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MercoPress: A first international database on Leopard seals’ births and pups, shows they roam well beyond Antarctica. “Leopard seals remain mostly a mystery given the limited information and research on the species and its range of action. However, an international study shared by several Antarctic institutes and universities identifies leopard seal births and pups in the first database of its kind and reveals evidence that these sightings are not limited to the Antarctic.”

New Security Beat: Delaying the Inevitable? The Uncertain Future of the EPA’s Online Archive. “Imperfect as the platform might be at present, many of the hundred thousand documents on the EPA archive simply aren’t available elsewhere. For instance, one essential record that will vanish is the 2003 Clear Skies Initiative, which was proposed during the presidency of George W. Bush.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

South China Morning Post: A stunning 16th-century Chinese ‘magic mirror’ was found in a US art museum after being tucked away in storage. “Buddhist magic mirrors, also called ‘transparent’ and ‘light-penetrating’ mirrors, were first made in China during the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) and were also a notable artefact from Japan’s Edo period (1603–1867)….When the mirror is held to light from the correct angle, the bronze reflects the light to reveal the secret image, a buddha in the case of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s relic.” Good afternoon, Internet…

July 27, 2022 at 12:23AM
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Mental Health Support, Internet Censorship, Crowdsourcing Drones, More: Ukraine Update, July 26, 2022

Mental Health Support, Internet Censorship, Crowdsourcing Drones, More: Ukraine Update, July 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

InfoMigrants: EU, Red Cross launch mental health program for Ukrainians. “The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the European Union have launched a project to offer mental health services to over 300,000 people from Ukraine. The project aims to support those who have been exposed to trauma and conflict.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

WIRED: Russia Is Quietly Ramping Up Its Internet Censorship Machine. “SINCE 2019, VLADIMIR Putin has supercharged his plan to separate Russia from the global internet. The country’s sovereign internet law, which came into force that November, gives officials the power to block access to websites for millions of Russians. The law was used to hit Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter with blocks and followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Since then, Russian officials have continuously dripped out new policies and measures to further control the internet, boosting the state’s censorship and surveillance powers.”

Reuters: Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine block Google search engine. “Russian-backed separatists in a breakaway region of eastern Ukraine have blocked access to the search engine Google, their leader said on Friday, citing what he calls ‘disinformation.'”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Next Web: Here’s how you can help build Ukraine’s drone army. “Earlier this month, Ukraine launched a campaign to assemble the world’s first ‘Army of Drones.’ It called on the international community to donate funds towards new drones or to ‘dronate’ their own recreational and commercial drones. That’s because Ukraine’s military doesn’t have an official drone unit, so drones supplied and funded globally will play a critical part in protecting the country against Russian occupation.”

The Moscow Times: New Novaya Gazeta Site Blocked in Russia. “Russia on Sunday blocked the website of a new editorial project by independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which was forced to suspend publication in March amid repression of critics of the offensive in Ukraine.”

New York Times: Inside Ukraine’s Thriving Tech Sector. “The hassles never end for Yuriy Adamchuk, a Ukrainian executive who spends most of his waking hours coaxing 3,000 software coders to deliver projects on time, despite the obstacles and occasional horrors of war and a never-ending series of interruptions. Sitting in his office, he starts to elaborate, then is interrupted. The sounds of air raid sirens fill the streets of this historic, elegant city and an automated voice is heard, from loudspeakers in all directions, urging citizens to head to the nearest bomb shelter.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Fordham News: Ukraine Cybersecurity Officials Describe Defense Against Cyber War. “From the moment a group of Ukrainian officials entered the room for a July 20 panel on Ukraine’s virtual front line amidst Russian aggression, the mood palpably shifted. Here, after two days of discussions on previous hacks and potential threats, sat four people who left a war-torn nation for the first time since Russia attacked them on Feb. 23 to discuss the lethal threats of cyberattacks.”

CyberScoop: Cyber criminals attack Ukrainian radio network, broadcast fake message about Zelensky’s health. “Cyber criminals attacked a Ukrainian company that operates nine ‘major’ radio stations to spread a message that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in critical condition and under intensive care, Ukrainian officials announced Thursday.”

Motherboard: Inside Ukraine’s Decentralized Cyber Army. “Ever since it was launched just two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the IT Army has claimed several victims, including Mvideo, a large Russian consumer electronics chain; QIWI, a popular Russian payment service provider; Asna, a network of more than 10,000 pharmacies in Russia; and EGAIS, the Russian government’s unified state automated alcohol accounting information system. The group has been a central figure in the fight that Ukraine and Russia are waging in cyberspace, and it’s breaking new ground in terms of what a volunteer, quasi-hacktivist group can do in the context of a war.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

War on the Rocks: Assess Russia’s Cyber Performance Without Repeating Its Past Mistakes. “Moscow has long cultivated a view of information and technology that is informed in part by its own assessments of U.S. military operations. Their takeaways have historically assigned intentionality and orchestration to events far beyond the remit of U.S. capability, resulting in grand but unrealistic expectations about how information can be weaponized — both against and on behalf of the state. Against this historical backdrop, U.S. strategists should measure Russia’s cyber performance in Ukraine by its own yardstick.”

C4ISRNET: Why Isn’t Russia jamming GPS harder in Ukraine?. “The importance of GPS as a military tool was underscored by Kremlin media in November as troops were massing along the Ukraine border. After Russia demonstrated it could destroy a satellite in space, a television commentator known to be an unofficial mouthpiece of President Vladimir Putin said the nation could ‘blind NATO’ by shooting down all GPS satellites. Despite this, Russian interference with GPS in Ukraine has not been nearly as aggressive as many observers had expected.”

Middle East Monitor: Russia using attractive women to spread propaganda in Arabic, study finds . “Autocrats, dictators and serial human rights abusers employ some of the most sophisticated techniques to execute their war propaganda, which in recent years has been waged through social media. The latest example of such disinformation campaign was uncovered by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) which uncovered Twitter accounts posting pro-Kremlin narratives in Arabic by using attractive female to increase their followers.”

July 26, 2022 at 06:59PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/ipAIO7D

Digital Heritage Archive, Higher Education Options, YouTube, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 26, 2022

Digital Heritage Archive, Higher Education Options, YouTube, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from CBC: University of Calgary profs digitally preserve endangered heritage site in B.C.. “For Prof. Peter Dawson, digital preservation is the next best thing when a site cannot be preserved physically due to cost or environmental factors. Using a terrestrial laser scanner, Dawson and his team capture data on heritage sites to create virtual replicas that can be accessed online by the public. The Digital Heritage Archive focuses on ‘grassroots’ heritage sites like the Swiss village. These are sites meaningful to individuals and communities despite not having official designations of significance.”

PR Newswire: CCsmart.org Helps Americans Understand the Value of a Community College Education (PRESS RELEASE). “CCsmart is an evidenced-based and data driven website designed to make it easier to find reliable information about higher education pathways, from workforce training to associate degrees to transfer options to bachelor’s degrees. It also provides easy to understand information about financial options for various credential and degree options and aid options beyond just Pell Grants and the FAFSA.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: YouTube will start removing misinformation related to abortion. “YouTube on Thursday said it will no longer allow misinformation related to abortion on its platform, including false claims about the safety of the procedure and potentially unsafe instructions about how to self-induce an abortion.”

CNET: TikTok Now Lets Viewers Turn Captions On or Off on Any Video. “TikTok, the popular video sharing social media platform, said Thursday that viewers can now choose to turn auto-generated captions on or off on all videos. Before, creators had to enable captions on their videos in order for people to use them.”

USEFUL STUFF

Smashing Magazine: Powerful Image Optimization Tools. “Optimizing the size of images can have a bigger impact on performance than all other areas combined. In this article, Louis Lazaris covers different tools available for reducing the size of images.” Another excellent roundup from Smashing Magazine.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: Bookstagram Is Fueling an Unnerving Trend. “Readers and reviewers have never been more able to get their voices heard. The rise of Bookstagram and more recently BookTok have enabled bibliophiles to share recommendations, point out plot holes, and discuss fan theories on an unprecedented scale. Yet writers want you to know that it’s one thing to tell the world that you don’t like a book, and another thing entirely to tell its author.”

Library of Congress: “Wow, it’s WordStar!” Exploring a Beloved Early Word Processor and its Many Formats . “Over the course of our Junior Fellowship this summer, we have focused on a variety of streams of work around the Library of Congress’ Sustainability of Digital Formats website. The site contains an extensive list of commonly used file formats, wrappers, and encodings. There are thousands of these created by legacy equipment and software that present challenges in identification, preservation, and use. Among these is the file format produced by the now-defunct word processing platform WordStar.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CitizenLab: Hooking Candiru: Another Mercenary Spyware Vendor Comes into Focus. “Candiru is a secretive Israel-based company that sells spyware exclusively to governments. Reportedly, their spyware can infect and monitor iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs, and cloud accounts. Using Internet scanning we identified more than 750 websites linked to Candiru’s spyware infrastructure.”

Daily Dot: EXCLUSIVE: Anti-vax dating site that let people advertise ‘mRNA FREE’ semen left all its user data exposed. “After the Daily Dot set up a test account on the platform, GeopJr was able to change the account’s private email address, username, and profile picture. GeopJr was also able to edit a public post made by the Daily Dot and change its wording. Other data such as the site’s backups could be downloaded or deleted. GeopJr was able to give away $15 per month subscriptions to Unjected as well as reply to and delete help center tickets and reported posts.”

Ars Technica: Two senators propose ban on data caps, blasting ISPs for “predatory” limits. “US Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) want to ban Internet data caps. The senators today introduced the ‘Uncap America Act,’ which would ‘prohibit predatory data caps that force families to pay high costs and unnecessary fees to access high-speed broadband,’ they said in a press release.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Johns Hopkins: AI Speeds Sepsis Detection To Prevent Hundreds Of Deaths. “Patients are 20% less likely to die of sepsis because of a new AI system developed at Johns Hopkins University that catches symptoms hours earlier than traditional methods, an extensive hospital study demonstrates.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Central Florida: UCF Faculty Combines Harry Potter with Pharmacology Course to Improve Student Outcomes . “Incorporating interactive games in the course has proven to enhance academic success; the number of students who earned an ‘A’ in the class improved by almost 200% in the past three years, and there has been a 73% decline in the number of non-pass students (students who earn a ‘D’ or an ‘F’ in the class).” Good morning, Internet…

July 26, 2022 at 05:31PM
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