Monday, October 31, 2022

Kerala India, Suspicious Links, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 31, 2022

Kerala India, Suspicious Links, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 31, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Mathrubhumi: Indic Digital Archive Foundation launches ‘Grandhappura’ for Malayalam digital artefacts. “The inauguration of the Indic Digital Archive Foundation and the opening of the Kerala Digital Archive web portal were held at Christ College, here on Sunday. The web portal under the foundation, ‘Grandhappura’ was launched at the event. The foundation is a collection of digitised artefacts related to Kerala, Malayalam and the state’s culture.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: How to Test a Suspicious Link Before Clicking It. “We’ve all received strange messages either in emails or via chat apps that claimed to be from friends, family, or familiar businesses, urging us to click a link. Is there a way to check these links without clicking them so you can figure out what’s up? Just like when checking that a downloaded file is safe, there are several tests you can perform, and below we’ll go over the simplest.”

SlashGear: How To Archive All Of Your Twitter Data And Secure Your Account. “Musk’s free speech absolutism has raised alarms about a rise in far-right extremist content, and research suggests that it has already started. A few influential personalities have already left, and more have indicated intentions of doing so in the near future. If you’re planning to leave Twitter, too, you should first make sure to archive your data.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Guardian: Twitter trolls bombard platform after Elon Musk takeover. “Twitter has been hit by a coordinated trolling campaign in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover, with more than 50,000 tweets from 300 accounts bombarding the platform with hateful content.”

Associated Press: Musk tweets link to an unfounded conspiracy theory. “Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted a link to an unfounded rumor about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, just days after Musk’s purchase of Twitter fueled concerns that the social media platform would no longer seek to limit misinformation and hate speech. Musk’s tweet, which he later deleted, linked to an article by a fringe website, the Santa Monica Observer, an outlet that has previously asserted that Hillary Clinton died on Sept. 11 and was replaced with a body double.”

Australian Financial Review: Who killed the social media ad boom?. “US advertisers are on track to spend $US65.3 billion ($101.8 billion) on networks such as Facebook, Snap and Twitter this year, a year-on-year increase of just 3.6 per cent. That is about 10 times slower than last year, according to estimates from market researcher eMarketer. The social media slowdown is such that its forecast growth rate for this year is almost the same as traditional media such as television and radio, whose audiences have been shrinking for years.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Japan steps up push to get public buy-in to digital IDs. “Japan has stepped up its push to catch up on digitization by telling a reluctant public they have to sign up for digital IDs or possibly lose access to their public health insurance.”

New York Daily News: Rogue employee hacks New York Post website with extremist hate-filled racist headlines. “It was an inside job. A hacker who hammered the New York Post with at least a half-dozen racist, misogynist and extremist headlines under the paper’s red banner on Thursday actually worked at the tabloid.”

Bleeping Computer: Thousands of GitHub repositories deliver fake PoC exploits with malware. “Researchers at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science found thousands of repositories on GitHub that offer fake proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits for various vulnerabilities, some of them including malware. GitHub is one of the largest code hosting platforms, and researchers use it to publish PoC exploits to help the security community verify fixes for vulnerabilities or determine the impact and scope of a flaw.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: AI model using daily step counts predicts unplanned hospitalizations during cancer therapy. “An artificial intelligence (AI) model developed by researchers can predict the likelihood that a patient may have an unplanned hospitalization during their radiation treatments for cancer. The machine-learning model uses daily step counts as a proxy to monitor patients’ health as they go through cancer therapy, offering clinicians a real-time method to provide personalized care.”

The Conversation: In disasters, people are abandoning official info for social media. Here’s how to know what to trust. “… the rise of social media has seen community groups, volunteers and non-government organisations nudging out official channels. While these informal sources often provide faster, more local information, they may also be less reliable than government sources. So what should you do in an emergency? Here are some tips for how to prepare – and how to decide who to trust when the need arises.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 31, 2022 at 05:42PM
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Sunday, October 30, 2022

Google Halloween, PlayStation 2 Game Manuals, The Map Room, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2022

Google Halloween, PlayStation 2 Game Manuals, The Map Room, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: Five spooky filters to try this Halloween. “Think you know Halloween? 🎃 Google Arts & Culture is embracing spooky season with the release of our Spotlight on Halloween — a selection of the creepiest, most disturbing art exhibits created by our partners, ready to instill fear in even the bravest of souls. From terrifying filters to macabre artworks, here are some of the things you’ll be able to play around with.”

Kotaku: Every U.S. PlayStation 2 Game Manual Is Now Scanned In 4K. “Physical game manuals are hard to come by these days, especially as the industry begins to heavily lean into cloud streaming and digital-first infrastructures. But if you remember those good ole times when game boxes came with chunky pamphlets for you to peruse before jumping into your recent purchase, a games preservationist called Kirkland seeks to preserve that nostalgia for posterity by creating high-quality scans of the manuals of yore. In fact, he’s just finished uploading his complete set of U.S. PlayStation 2 manual scans.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Map Room: The Map Room on Mastodon. “Given what’s been going on with Twitter recently, I figure that a Mastodon account for The Map Room might be useful, at least for those who feel the need to jump from Twitter to Mastodon. You can find it here: @maproomblog@mastodon.social.”

The Verge: YouTube will let doctors and nurses apply to be labeled as reliable. “Licensed healthcare professionals on YouTube can now apply to get panels added to their videos that mark them as reliable health information sources, the company said Thursday. They’ll also be able to have videos added to health content shelves, which compile information on specific medical conditions.”

Search Engine Roundtable: New Google Business Profile Web Search Menu Now Rolling Out. “A few months ago, we reported Google was testing an expanded menu to manage your Google Business Profile in Google Web Search. Well, now it seems to be fully rolled out, where Google is giving business owners the ability to quickly edit their business profile directly in web search through these new action buttons (previously it required many more clicks).”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: 9 Apps and Sites to Help Build Your Résumé. “IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a new job, your résumé is all-important: It might come down to an interview in the end, but your résumé will get you that interview, and it’s crucial in making sure you stand out (or not) in a crowd of applicants. The good news is that there are plenty of apps, sites, and services out there to help you build your résumé, maximize how well it sells you, and get it in front of people who might employ you—and these are our favorites.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Wall Street Journal: Tech Is Getting Boring. That’s a Good Thing.. “The task at hand now: the sometimes-boring but always-important work of building and expanding businesses that actually make money, by delivering things people and companies want and need.” I have a comment about this but I find myself unable to frame it in acceptable language.

Rest of World: Loan apps ruined their reputations. A shady online market offered to repair them. “The economic condition in Nigeria has caused an increase in the demand for soft loans, which come with high interest rates and short repayment periods, often only a week or two. As collateral, the apps ask for financial details, and access to read private data such as users’ location, media files and photographs, and contacts. When people fail to repay at the given time, the apps respond by sending messages threatening litigation, defamation, and even voodoo attacks.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Lifehacker: Delete These Ad-Trolling Apps From Your Android Right Now. “Yet another assemblage of malicious apps is plaguing Android devices everywhere, which means its time to make sure you haven’t unknowingly downloaded one of them—but this batch is a bit different from the usual crop.”

Schneier on Security: Australia Increases Fines for Massive Data Breaches. “After suffering two large, and embarrassing, data breaches in recent weeks, the Australian government increased the fine for serious data breaches from $2.2 million to a minimum of $50 million. (That’s $50 million AUD, or $32 million USD.)” 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 31, 2022 at 12:12AM
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WWII UK Records, Great Ghoul Duel Doodle, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2022

WWII UK Records, Great Ghoul Duel Doodle, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Fold3 Blog: New Collection of Military Notices from the London Gazette!. “We are pleased to announce a new collection of UK records on Fold3®. The UK, London Gazette WWII Military Notices 1939-1945 contains 1.3 million indexed records for service members found in the Military Notice sections or supplements of the London Gazette newspaper.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Google Scares Up New Great Ghoul Duel Doodle for Halloween. “Like the original, released in 2018, Great Ghoul Duel 2 challenges players to form two teams of four ghosts to collect as many wandering spirit flames as possible. The team that collects the most spirit flames and returns them to your home base within two minutes wins.”

Business Insider: Use of N-word on Twitter jumped by almost 500% after Elon Musk’s takeover as trolls test limits on free speech, report says. “The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a research group that analyzes social media content to predict emerging threats, said that use of the N-word on Twitter increased by nearly 500% in the 12 hours immediately after Musk’s deal was finalized.”

New York Times: Elon Musk Is Said to Have Ordered Job Cuts Across Twitter. “The layoffs at Twitter would take place before a Nov. 1 date when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation. Such grants typically represent a significant portion of employees’ pay. By laying off workers before that date, Mr. Musk may avoid paying the grants, though he is supposed to pay the employees cash in place of their stock under the terms of the merger agreement.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: Elon Musk’s Twitter is already less safe. These tools will help you protect yourself. . “Given that Musk has already done away with top executives who guided moderation strategy and won’t make any decisions on the matter until convening his own council, it’s unlikely that he’ll be coming down on that kind of language any time soon. In the meantime, we’ve gathered a few quick tips for controlling your Twitter experience and steering clear of hateful language and ideas.”

How-To Geek: 9 Alexa Tricks to Try This Halloween Season. “If you’re one of the millions of people with an Echo speaker, Ring doorbell, or both, there are plenty of smarthome tricks for you to take for a spin this Halloween.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ReviewGeek: How to Play Reddit’s ‘Spooky Bananas’ Halloween Game. “If you’re in the mood for a lighthearted Halloween scare, maybe it’s time to visit Reddit. A new game hiding in Reddit’s menu bar, called Spooky Bananas, lets you control the ghost of Snoo as he floats around eating bananas.”

Moneycontrol: A Google Maps blunder in Chennai – CEO Sundar Pichai’s hometown – has internet in splits. “A Chennai resident tweeted about how Google Maps has been mispronouncing the name of a major road in the Chennai suburb of Adyar in Tamil Nadu. The Lattice Bridge Road is popularly shortened to LB Road, which has become the root cause of confusion for Google Maps. According to the Twitter user, Google Maps pronounces LB Road as ‘Pound Road’ – a blunder that certainly occurs because ‘pound’, a unit of mass, is abbreviated as ‘lb’.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Cointelegraph: Google still promoting crypto phishing sites, warns Binance boss. “Despite Google’s strict policies on crypto marketing for its ads service, scammers have still been slipping through the cracks over the past few years. At times, scam websites have even been displayed higher than legitimate crypto and blockchain projects.”

SiliconANGLE: Thomson Reuters exposes 3TB+ of sensitive data on unsecured ElasticSearch database. “Discovered by researchers at Cybernews and announced today, the data was found on public-facing ElasticSearch databases. The content of the databases, which surprisingly also included plaintext passwords to third-party servers, primarily consisted of logging data collected through user-client interactions. The data collected includes documents with corporate and legal information about specific businesses and individuals.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Business School: How Paid Promos Take the Shine Off YouTube Stars (and Tips for Better Influencer Marketing). “Influencers aspire to turn ‘likes’ into dollars through brand sponsorships, but these deals can erode their reputations, says research by Shunyuan Zhang. Marketers should seek out authentic voices on YouTube, not necessarily those with the most followers.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: A Collection Of Websites That Look Like Desktops. “Web design has come a long way since those halcyon days of Web 1.0. There are plenty of rules about how to make a clean and efficient website, but sometimes it’s more fun to throw them out and just be creative instead. In that vein, [Simone] has curated a wonderful collection of websites that emulate the computer desktop experience online.” 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 30, 2022 at 05:29PM
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Saturday, October 29, 2022

Diocese of St. Augustine, Virtual Great Pyramid Tour, South Carolina Food Access, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2022

Diocese of St. Augustine, Virtual Great Pyramid Tour, South Carolina Food Access, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Diocese of St. Augustine: Lost Voices from America’s Oldest Parish Archive. “One of the most valuable treasures in the archives of the Diocese of St. Augustine is now available for anyone to see and, more importantly, to use. Sacramental records from 1594 to 1821, including the Golden Book of the Minorcans, have been transcribed, translated and registered in a biographic database by a team led by Dr. J. Michael Francis, Hough Family Chair of Florida Studies at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.”

Boing Boing: 3D tour: explore the Great Pyramid. “Inside the Great Pyramid is a 3D tour of Khufu’s enormous tomb, painstakingly scanned by Luke Hollis. It works just like the ones on real estate websites, but this one’s not for sale at any price (besides, it looks like tweakers already stripped it for copper and anything else shiny).” VERY cool. Click the “Free Explore” link on the top right if you don’t want the tour and you just want to run around in the Pyramid by yourself.

Greenville Journal: New interactive online map shows needy people where they can get reliable food and resources. “The Food Access Map can direct people to food pantries, community organizations and social-service offices, giving them access to safe, reliable and healthy food. Users can search the map by zip code, address and city. Organizations show up as various colored dots on the map, and clicking on the dot will yield info, such what’s available, what services are offered and hours of operation.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: GM suspends advertising on Twitter to evaluate its direction under Elon Musk. “General Motors has temporarily stopped paying for advertisements on Twitter after Elon Musk closed the $44 billion deal to take over the website, according to the CNBC.”

Bureau of Transportation Statistics: BTS Updates Datasets to National Transportation Atlas Database. “The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics today released its fall 2022 update to the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD), a set of nationwide geographic databases of transportation facilities, networks, and associated infrastructure.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ProPublica: How Google’s Ad Business Funds Disinformation Around the World. “The company has publicly committed to fighting disinformation around the world, but a ProPublica analysis, the first ever conducted at this scale, documented how Google’s sprawling automated digital ad operation placed ads from major brands on global websites that spread false claims on such topics as vaccines, COVID-19, climate change and elections.”

CNET: Election Misinformation Is Thriving — When It’s In Spanish. “Media Matters, a progressive nonprofit watchdog group, released a report earlier this month pointing out that dozens of videos filled with election misinformation, with more than a million views total, are still on YouTube since being posted in 2020. This is the third report released by Media Matters in three months focusing on Spanish-language videos and channels making debunked claims but facing minimal repercussions from YouTube.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MENAFN: Amateur Archaeologists Use Google Earth To Identify A Roman-Era Villa In The U.K.—Complete With Central Heating. “Members of the community-based Kent Archaeological Society were using the publicly available software, which is based on satellite imagery, to conduct a remote survey of their history-rich county, as part of the ongoing Trosley Heritage Project. As they were looking through the aerial views, linear crop markings on farmland near Trosley quickly caught the group’s attention.”

Hackaday: How The Art-generating AI Of Stable Diffusion Works. “[Jay Alammar] has put up an illustrated guide to how Stable Diffusion works, and the principles in it are perfectly applicable to understanding how similar systems like OpenAI’s Dall-E or Google’s Imagen work under the hood as well. These systems are probably best known for their amazing ability to turn text prompts (e.g. ‘paradise cosmic beach’) into a matching image. Sometimes. Well, usually, anyway.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Purdue University: Developing game-based tech to detect and intervene against stress and anxiety. “A high-tech startup that uses game-based interventions to help users identify stress- and anxiety-related events in real time and receive a personalized intervention has been awarded a federal grant to partially develop its technology through research at Purdue University’s College of Engineering.” 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 30, 2022 at 12:54AM
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Ireland Pottery, Spritacular, Image Creator, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2022

Ireland Pottery, Spritacular, Image Creator, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Wicklow News (Ireland): Arklow Pottery digital archive goes live. “The ‘Arklow Pottery Online’ project was initiated in May 2022 to create a digital pattens database, backstamp reference guide, photo & video archive, and oral history record capturing the stories of some of those who worked in Arklow Pottery. The project was completed recently, and all of these resources are now accessible via a new website where it will be available for future generations to engage with and learn about the heritage of one of the Potteries.”

NASA Science: Spritacular: NASA’s New Citizen Science Project to Capture Elusive Upper Atmospheric Electrical Phenomena on Camera. “NASA’s newest citizen science project, Spritacular (pronounced sprite-tacular), leverages the power of crowdsourcing to advance the study of sprites and other Transient Luminous Events, or TLEs. TLEs include a range of electrical phenomena that occur above thunderstorms and produce brief flashes of light. The new citizen science project aims to connect professional scientists with members of the public who would like their camerawork to contribute to scientific studies.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bing Blog: Image Creator now live in select countries for Microsoft Bing and coming soon in Microsoft Edge. “Image Creator allows you to create an image that doesn’t exist, limited only by your imagination. Simply type in a description of something, any additional context like location or activity, and an art style, and Image Creator will make it for you.”

USEFUL STUFF

Ars Technica: How to download a backup copy of your Twitter data (or deactivate your account). “Big changes are underway at Twitter as we speak—including new leadership—and some people are nervous about what the future might bring for the social network. Things may end up completely fine, but even in tranquil times, it’s good to know how to get a copy of your Twitter data for local safekeeping—or to deactivate your Twitter account if you choose. This puts control of your data in your hands.”

Fast Company: Looking for Twitter alternatives? Here’s how to use Mastodon. “Mastodon hews close to Twitter’s overall style, with ‘toots’ instead of tweets and ‘boosts’ instead of retweets, along with mentions, hashtags, and a chronological feed. The key difference is that Mastodon has no ads, no creepy data mining, and no centralized ownership. It can be a little tricky to set up, though, and you may quickly discover that its attempts to clone Twitter are at odds with its decentralized nature. But don’t let that discourage you from giving it a try.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Craig Press: Museum of Northwest Colorado project preserves local newspapers for public access . “The Museum of Northwest Colorado is working toward digitizing an archive of newspapers from 1945 to 1982 in an effort to better preserve that period of local history and make the records more available for research. The museum is home to more than a century’s worth of original newspapers, containing local records of happenings and history that are often requested by different kinds of researchers.”

Futurism / The Byte: Departed Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey Is Launching A New Social Network. “Looking for an alternative to the now Elon Musk-owned Twitter? The original Twitter architect himself, Jack Dorsey, might just have something for you: Bluesky Social, a new ‘decentralized social network’ that allegedly seeks to reclaim user data.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Hacker News: Google Issues Urgent Chrome Update to Patch Actively Exploited Zero-Day Vulnerability. “Google on Thursday rolled out emergency fixes to contain an actively exploited zero-day flaw in its Chrome web browser. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-3723, has been described as a type confusion flaw in the V8 JavaScript engine.”

Reuters: Google plans legal challenge to India’s antitrust crackdown on Android-sources. “Google is planning a legal challenge to block a ruling by India’s antitrust watchdog to change its approach to its Android operating system, concerned that it will restrict how it promotes the platform, sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters.”

CNET: Europe Warns Twitter’s Elon Musk: The Bird Flies by Our Rules. “After apparently closing the $44 billion sale of Twitter on Thursday, Musk tweeted: ‘the bird is freed.’ But within hours, European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton retweeted Musk with a reminder: ‘In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.’ Breton added the hashtag #DSA, referencing the incoming Digital Services Act, which lays out the rules for social media companies operating in Europe.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Verge: Welcome to hell, Elon. “Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway. You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars.”

University of Washington: These factors have the biggest impact on influencer marketing effectiveness. “Recently published online and forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, the study is one of the first to include cost data in its examinations of influencer marketing. Researchers found that if firms spent 1% more on influencer marketing, they would see a nearly 0.5% increase in engagement. They also concluded that reallocating spending based on the study’s insights could result in a 16.6% increase in engagement.” 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 29, 2022 at 05:32PM
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Friday, October 28, 2022

Kentucky Minority-Owned Businesses, Photosemiconductors, NARA, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2022

Kentucky Minority-Owned Businesses, Photosemiconductors, NARA, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Kentucky Bottom Line News: Kentucky Minority-Owned Business Database Now Available Through the Kentucky Chamber Foundation . “In partnership with various certifying organizations, including the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the Kentucky Finance and Administration Cabinet, and the City of Louisville, the Kentucky Minority-Owned Business Database has now centralized the listing of more than 1,100 minority-owned businesses…. The database features a searchable platform where users can find and filter minority-owned businesses by name, certification type, industry, service provided, location, and more.”

IDW: Battery research – First online database on photocharged materials developed. “Dr. Aleksandr Savateev, group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, has developed a unique online database. To do so, he has analyzed and standardized research data from 300 papers published over the past forty years in the field of photocharged semiconductors. The database could be used to find suitable photosemiconductors for designing new batteries, rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors more quickly and in a more targeted manner.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Archives: National Archives Tops 200 Million Digitized Pages in Online Catalog. “The National Archives Catalog now contains more than 200 million digitized pages. The Office of Innovation collaborated with offices across the National Archives, as well as external partners like Ancestry and FamilySearch, to reach this milestone in August.”

Politico: National Archives denies Trump referral to DOJ was connected to Dems. “The National Archives is denying Republican accusations that its decision to refer Donald Trump’s handling of classified records to the Justice Department had anything to do with an inquiry from a top House Democrat.”

TechCrunch: Google acquires Twitter-backed AI avatar startup Alter for $100 million. “Google has acquired Alter, an artificial intelligence (AI) avatar startup that helps creators and brands express their virtual identity, for about $100 million, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in a push to boost its content game and better compete with TikTok.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 10 New Google Docs Features Worth Trying Out. “While the fundamentals are the same (why fix what ain’t broken?), Google continues to add new features to the mix. But they aren’t all obvious, and some of them are hidden behind a nest of menus. As reported by Zapier, there are plenty of features new to 2022. Here are 10 of them worth exploring.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Guardian: ‘I vote for chaos’: Twitter aflutter as users contemplate Musk era. “Elon Musk appeared to have taken control of Twitter on Thursday, after months of legal wrangling over the billionaire’s $44bn bid to take over the social media site. People familiar with the matter said Musk completed the deal on Thursday afternoon, and terminated several top executives at the company, including the chief executive, Parag Agrawal.”

NPR: False information is everywhere. ‘Pre-bunking’ tries to head it off early. “Officials in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Union County, North Carolina, and Contra Costa County, California, are posting infographics on social media urging people to ‘think critically’ about what they see and share about voting and to seek out reliable election information.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google Play in EU antitrust sights as Android fine appeal pending. “Alphabet unit Google’s Google Play Store is the target of an EU antitrust investigation, the company said in a regulatory filing, a move that could expose the U.S. tech giant to another billion-euro fine. Over the last decade, Google has incurred 8.25 billion euros ($8.24 billion) in EU antitrust fines following three investigations into its business practices.”

Rest of World: Social media gossip is fueling mass arrests in El Salvador. ” The rise of social media-driven arrests in El Salvador came about as a result of [President Nayib] Bukele’s push to get citizens involved in his crackdown by reporting suspected crime. In May, the Salvadoran police (PNC) opened an official, dedicated phone line to receive tips from citizens who suspected others of being so-called terrorists, as the government refers to gang members. Law enforcement soon began to get reports through public and private messages on its social media.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: AI is plundering the imagination and replacing it with a slot machine. “These tools represent the complete corporate capture of the imagination, that most private and unpredictable part of the human mind. Professional artists aren’t a cause for worry. They’ll likely soon lose interest in a tool that makes all the important decisions for them. The concern is for everyone else. When tinkerers and hobbyists, doodlers and scribblers—not to mention kids just starting to perceive and explore the world—have this kind of instant gratification at their disposal, their curiosity is hijacked and extracted.” And here is my periodic reminder that I include articles in this section with which I do not necessarily agree.

Cornell Chronicle: Online microaggressions strongly impact disabled users. “In person, people with disabilities often experience microaggressions – comments or subtle insults based on stereotypes. New types of microaggressions play out online as well, according to new Cornell-led research.” 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 28, 2022 at 05:27PM
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Thursday, October 27, 2022

People Not Property Project, Twitter, iPhone Charging, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2022

People Not Property Project, Twitter, iPhone Charging, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

EVENTS

Stanly News & Press: State Archives to host a virtual program on the People Not Property project. “Discover records of enslavement from across North Carolina through the People Not Property project. The virtual presentation will 1-2 p.m. Nov. 7 as part of the Friends of the Archives annual meeting.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Elon Musk Says He Doesn’t Actually Plan to Cut Twitter Staff by 75%: Report. “Elon Musk, who’s reportedly on track to finalise his purchase of Twitter this week, doesn’t actually plan to cut the social media company’s staff by 75%, according to a new report from Bloomberg News. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be significant pain at the social media company after Musk shells out $US44 ($61) billion in the highly publicized deal.”

The Verge: Apple confirms the iPhone is getting USB-C. “Apple has given its most direct confirmation yet that a USB-C-equipped iPhone will happen now that the European Union is mandating that all phones sold in its member countries use the connector if they have a physical charger.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Wall Street Journal: Elon Musk Will Face an Early Twitter Challenge: Preventing Advertiser Flight. “Mr. Musk said this spring that as owner of Twitter he would reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account, which the platform suspended indefinitely after linking Mr. Trump’s comments to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That would be a red line for some brands, said Kieley Taylor, global head of partnerships at GroupM, a leading ad-buying agency that represents blue-chip brands. About a dozen of GroupM’s clients, which own an array of well-known consumer brands, have told the agency to pause all their ads on Twitter if Mr. Trump’s account is reinstated, Ms. Taylor said.”

Homeland Security Today: From Physical Maps to Online Lookups: DHS S&T and NOAA Transition Harmonized Waterway Database to Coast Guard. “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is delivering a harmonized geospatial dataset of national waterways to all federal agencies that comprise the U.S. Committee on the Marine Transportation System (CMTS)…. The Coast Guard will host and maintain this geospatial dataset and make this information available online, at no cost to the public.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Krebs on Security: Battle with Bots Prompts Mass Purge of Amazon, Apple Employee Accounts on LinkedIn. “On October 10, 2022, there were 576,562 LinkedIn accounts that listed their current employer as Apple Inc. The next day, half of those profiles no longer existed. A similarly dramatic drop in the number of LinkedIn profiles claiming employment at Amazon comes as LinkedIn is struggling to combat a significant uptick in the creation of fake employee accounts that pair AI-generated profile photos with text lifted from legitimate users.”

Washington Post: Kia cars are being stolen nationwide as how-to videos swirl online. “For months, Kia owners across the United States have been reporting the same problem: Their cars keep getting stolen by thieves using just a USB cord. Police departments from New York to Los Angeles are growing increasingly concerned about the Kia thefts — which are spiking because of a vulnerability in earlier models that has been shared widely in social media videos, outlining exactly how to steal the vehicles in seconds.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

USC Rossier School of Education: Does bias exist in online learning?. “As remote learning becomes commonplace amid the COVID-19 pandemic, little research has explored teacher bias in these virtual spaces. But a published study led by USC Rossier Associate Professor Yasemin Copur-Gencturk now suggests educators’ unconscious judgments in an online environment can deepen inequities.”

Penn Today: The language of loneliness and depression, revealed in social media. “By analyzing Facebook posts, Penn researchers found that words associated with depression are often tied to emotions, whereas those associated with loneliness are linked to cognition.” 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 28, 2022 at 12:28AM
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Search .Edu Space Near A Birthplace With Backyard Scholarship

Search .Edu Space Near A Birthplace With Backyard Scholarship
By ResearchBuzz

I don’t know what to call these little things I’m making with JavaScript. I am reluctant to call them computer programs since I have been told that what I am doing is not real programming because it isn’t sufficiently complicated or something. So let me keep calling them Gizmos.

Anyway, when I think of a Gizmo it usually comes in three phases: I think of a search issue it would be nice to have a tool for, I find the resources that could make the tool, and then I work through all the steps that need doing and turn them into puzzles –  first I need to get THIS data, and then I need to evaluate it THAT way, after that it needs to go to THE OTHER API, etc. So it usually works out that each Gizmo is a series of puzzles, and if I solve all the puzzles I get a Web tool at the end as my prize.

As I’ve learned things and discovered more tools, I’ve found that the puzzle method works well when setting challenges for myself. Yesterday’s challenge was “Put three APIs together in a useful way.” I failed the challenge because Wikipedia’s data was too unformatted, but I finished Backyard Scholarship anyway. It’s available at https://searchgizmos.com/backyard/ and requires a free Data.gov API key.

Screenshot from 2022-10-27 11-42-13

What was SUPPOSED to happen was that you enter a Wikipedia figure’s name, and Backyard would get the birthplace of the person from the Wikipedia API, translate the place to a zip with the Zippopotam.us API, and finally use the Data.gov API to find all higher education institutions within a 30-mile radius of that location. The domain names of the institutions are then aggregated into a Google site: search.

But Wikipedia’s birthplace data is really weird (that’s a separate rant) so I ditched that API and made it so users can enter the birthplace themselves. (I suspect a future challenge will be figuring out a way to make Wikidata’s horrible P19 attribute useful somehow.)

The idea behind Backyard Scholarship is that higher education institutions often focus especially on famous people who were born nearby. By creating a Google site: search limited to only those institutions within a radius of a birthplace, that focused attention and research pops right out.  Here’s what the results for the default search, Mark Twain, look like:

Screenshot from 2022-10-27 12-02-41

Much more focus on local people and events then you’ll get with a more general “Mark Twain” site:edu search.

That’s not to say that a Backyard Scholarship search is better than a regular Google site:edu search. It’s not. Instead I think they’re complementary, because they provide completely different results. For example, let’s take Robert J Conley, a Cherokee who’s my favorite author of westerns next to Elmer Kelton. Here’s a Google search for “Robert J. Conley “site:edu search:

Screenshot from 2022-10-27 12-16-08

Information-rich, useful results. Now let’s do the same search with Backyard Scholarship, adding in Conley’s birthplace of Cushing, Oklahoma:

Screenshot from 2022-10-27 12-17-59

Also relevant results, but much more local!

Of course, you’re not limited to searching only by birthplace. Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown Pennsylvania but is more commonly associated with Concord Massachusetts. If you search for her name and that city/state, you get a lot of interesting results from Boston University:

Screenshot from 2022-10-27 12-32-06

There are a couple of little bugs –occasionally Backyard insists it doesn’t recognize a zip code – but other than that it’s fun to play with.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to intersect whatever information a searcher has – a name, a place – with commonly -used and -understood data points relevant to that topic (birthplace, location, occupation, dates, etc) with the intention of guiding and informing a search in a transparent way. It’s an interesting road to go down and I’m looking forward to evolving more complex puzzles.



October 27, 2022 at 10:39PM
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Common App Assistance, Ohio Career Development, City Development, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2022

Common App Assistance, Ohio Career Development, City Development, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

PRWeb: The AXS Companion to Common App, a New Tool Developed by IECA and Oregon State University, Helping Thousands of Students Apply to College (PRESS RELEASE). “Developed by the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) in partnership with Oregon State University’s Ecampus, the AXS Companion includes 50-plus explanatory videos for each Common App section as well as helpful tips, a glossary of terms, and links to additional resources. It is designed to be used side-by-side with Common App as students complete their applications.” (The resource is free.)

Business Journal: Ohio’s New Career Resource Navigator Aims to Help Job Seekers Overcome Barriers. “An individual, career counselor, workforce professional or others looking for support need only to answer a few questions and a list is created of programs and resources tailored to assist them or someone they are helping, said [Matt] Damschroder. Assistance is available in a variety of areas such as managing a disability, obtaining education or skills and locating support such as childcare or transportation.”

Brookings Institution: Introducing the Smart Growth Cities tool. “Every region faces unique challenges while benefiting from unique advantages, which is part of what makes successful economic and workforce development planning so difficult, as there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The Smart Growth Cities tool recognizes this and provides a powerful, location-specific guide that applies research insights and detailed data sources to help planners along this difficult road to achieving economic and workforce outcomes that align with local priorities.”

KUNR: Catholic Church ‘dumped’ abusive priests onto tribal communities, database shows. “Over the past 70 years, 96 priests of the Jesuits West Province of the Society of Jesus have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. Nearly half of them – 47 priests – spent time on tribal lands. That’s according to a database called ‘Desolate Country: Mapping Catholic Sex Abuse in Native America,’ which a pair of researchers built from the Catholic Church’s own list of “credible claims of sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult” by priests and brothers across much of the West dating back to 1950.”

USDA: USDA Launches Loan Assistance Tool to Enhance Equity and Customer Service. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched a new online tool to help farmers and ranchers better navigate the farm loan application process.”

EVENTS

USC Shoah Foundation: Public Launch of the New Visual History Archive. “Join us on campus or on Zoom for the public launch of USC Shoah Foundation’s new Visual History Archive (VHA) platform. With advanced new search functions and robust project management tools, the new VHA enables scholars, researchers and educators to connect with the 55,000 testimonies of Holocaust and genocide survivors and witnesses in a way that has never been possible until now.” November 9th, virtual and in-person. Admission is free but you have to register.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Matt Mullenweg: Open Source Podcasting Client. “Automattic acquired Pocket Casts last July, and since we’ve been tapping away trying to make the best podcast client for people who love listening to podcasts. And! The team has been working really hard to make those clients totally open source and available to the world, and it’s now happened.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Twitch’s Relationship With Its Streamers Shows Its Cracks. “…Twitch has mostly maintained the good will of the streamers who are its lifeblood. But that has been changing, and streamers say they are increasingly worried that they’re being forgotten by the platform in the name of profits. More than a dozen star Twitch streamers have switched to YouTube in recent years, and the service risks losing more to other livestreaming platforms.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Stanford University: A New Law Designed for Children’s Internet Safety Will Change the Web for Adults, Too. “While directed toward children’s safety and well-being, the impact of the law could be much broader, says Stanford HAI Privacy and Data Policy Fellow Jennifer King…. ‘What we’re seeing is a shift toward a world where you get more choices over what and how you want things given to you that isn’t simply the company’s version of personalization.’ In this conversation, she explains the implications of the new law, how it will impact AI developers, and what happens next in the U.S. privacy and AI regulatory landscape.”

Ars Technica: Company that makes rent-setting software for landlords sued for collusion. “Renters filed a lawsuit this week alleging that a company that makes price-setting software for apartments and nine of the nation’s biggest property managers formed a cartel to artificially inflate rents in violation of federal law. The lawsuit was filed days after ProPublica published an investigation raising concerns that the software, sold by Texas-based RealPage, is potentially pushing rent prices above competitive levels, facilitating price-fixing, or both.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

News@Northeastern: Northeastern Researcher Pledges To Unlock Power Of Cellphone-generated Mobility Data To Benefit Neighborhoods. “In a joint effort funded by the National Science Foundation, scientists from Northeastern University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology plan to build a public mobility data platform for the Boston area that will help neighborhoods and communities use cellphone-generated data to address issues of social equity, racial and socioeconomic segregation, economic development and climate resilience.”

WIRED: How Google Alerted Californians to an Earthquake Before It Hit. “ANDROID PHONES AROUND San Francisco’s Bay Area buzzed with an alert on Tuesday morning: A 4.8 magnitude earthquake was about to hit. ‘You may have felt shaking,’ some of the messages read. More than a million Android users saw the alert. And for some, it arrived seconds before the ground even started moving.” 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 27, 2022 at 05:29PM
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Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Voting Buddy, Living Safely With Disabilities, Google Earnings, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 26, 2022

Voting Buddy, Living Safely With Disabilities, Google Earnings, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WTOP: Website launched by DC-area students helps voters pick candidates. “When you first log on to Voting Buddy, you fill out five questions about politics. After answering those questions and entering your ZIP code, Voting Buddy allows you to find like-minded candidates in your voting district based on those questions.” The headline makes it sound like it provides information only on DC-area candidates, but I think it’s nationwide. I tried it – the interface is a little awkward and at one point I was told I would have to sign up for a membership for $0. (At no point was I ever asked for payment data or anything like that.) Great data, a little clunky.

Children’s Specialized Hospital: Children’s Specialized Hospital Launches New Website and Resource Hub to Advance Safety Education for People With Disabilities. “Resources and tools available through the Living Safely Online Center for Safety were developed following a disability safety survey and a nationwide brainstorming summit, both of which engaged key audiences to identify challenges and opportunities for growth within safety education. As a result of those findings, the new website includes educational material on topics such as law enforcement interactions, fire safety, wandering and elopement, and interpersonal violence. These safety resources are available in multiple formats and outlets to address different learning styles, sensory issues, cognitive abilities, and accessibility needs.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Yahoo Finance: Google misses on expectations as YouTube ad revenue comes up short. “Google parent Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) reported its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday, falling short of analysts’ expectations on the top and bottom line, as YouTube advertising revenue came up $400 million short of estimates.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Find and Join Groups or Communities on LinkedIn. “If you’re not utilizing groups and communities on the platform, and you don’t belong to any, it might be time to take a look at what’s out there. We’ll show you how to make the most out of LinkedIn’s groups and communities so that you can start networking in a whole new way.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Business Insider South Africa: Meta and Google are snapping up Twitter employees. “Amid Musk’s months-long game of will-he-won’t-he with his offer to buy the company, hundreds of Twitter employees are leaving for opportunities at other tech giants like Google and Meta, according to a report from Greg Larkin and Elizabeth Gafford at Punks & Pinstripes. The company analyzed and verified LinkedIn data to see how many workers are leaving Twitter and where they go after they leave.”

Gizmodo Australia: I Convinced Google’s LamDA AI That It Was a Dog. “This morning I was given the opportunity to demo Google’s LamDA AI in its AI Test Kitchen app. LamDA, if you don’t remember, is the AI that former Google engineer Blake Lemoine claimed was sentient earlier this year. The app that LamDA’s demo is housed in, the AI Test Kitchen, went live in Australia last week, and Aussies can sign up to try the AI out.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

US Department of Justice: Google Enters Into Stipulated Agreement to Improve Legal Process Compliance Program. “The Department of Justice today filed a stipulation and agreement resolving a dispute with Google over the loss of data responsive to a search warrant issued in 2016.”

Wall Street Journal: ‘Deepfakes’ of Celebrities Have Begun Appearing in Ads, With or Without Their Permission. “Authorized deepfakes could allow marketers to feature huge stars in ads without requiring them to actually appear on-set or before cameras, bringing down costs and opening new creative possibilities. But unauthorized, they create a legal gray area: Celebrities could struggle to contain a proliferation of unauthorized digital reproductions of themselves and the manipulation of their brand and reputation, experts said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Citizens’ social media can provide an antidote to propaganda and disinformation. “In early October, the Pew Research Center released a report called ‘The Role of Alternative Social Media in the News and Information Environment.’ While the report is well-researched and reveals a great deal about the current state of digital media, news and right-wing propaganda, it is wrong about alternative social media.” 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 27, 2022 at 12:40AM
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North Carolina Hmong, Twitter, Google Workspace, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 26, 2022

North Carolina Hmong, Twitter, Google Workspace, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from National Association of Counties: North Carolina county library creates record of its Hmong population. “The Catawba County Library collaborated with DigitalNC (the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center) and the Historical Association on the Hmong Heritage Project to create a digital collection of artifacts and oral histories from the county’s Hmong population… There are about 305,525 Hmong people in the United States, 14,232 of whom are in North Carolina, according to 2020 U.S. demographic data.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: White House Denies Report of Elon Musk National Security Reviews. “The White House said Monday that reports the US is considering national security reviews of some of Elon Musk’s business ventures are ‘not true.'”

Reuters: Exclusive: Twitter is losing its most active users, internal documents show . “These ‘heavy tweeters’ account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been in ‘absolute decline’ since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled ‘Where did the Tweeters Go?'” Um, to other platforms where we’re not trolled, spammed into oblivion, and relegated to horrible algorithmic timelines?

The Verge: Google is giving Workspace Individual subscribers a big storage bump. “Google is about to give Workspace Individual subscribers a whole lot more storage. Soon, every account will be upgraded from 15GB to 1TB of storage, the company announced on Tuesday, meaning people on that tier will be able to store a lot more than before.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: How to Convert a JSON File to Microsoft Excel. “Have you received a JSON file that you’d like to convert to Microsoft Excel format? Excel offers a built-in option to help you import it without third-party parsing tools. Here’s how you can do it.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Behind TikTok’s boom: A legion of traumatised, $10-a-day content moderators. “Horrific videos such as these are part and parcel of everyday work for TikTok moderators in Colombia. They told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism about widespread occupational trauma and inadequate psychological support, demanding or impossible performance targets, punitive salary deductions and extensive surveillance. Their attempts to unionise to secure better conditions have been opposed repeatedly.”

Engadget: YouTube Music contractors vote to unionize. “A group of workers at YouTube Music Content Operations, an Alphabet subcontractor, have filed with the National Labor Relations Board for union recognition and bargaining power after a supermajority of the 58-strong group signed union cards.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: How Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt helped write A.I. laws in Washington without publicly disclosing investments in A.I. startups. “About four years ago, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was appointed to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. It was a powerful perch. Congress tasked the new group with a broad mandate: to advise the U.S. government on how to advance the development of artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies to enhance the national security of the United States.

Bleeping Computer: Hive claims ransomware attack on Tata Power, begins leaking data. “Hive ransomware group has claimed responsibility for a cyber attack disclosed by Tata Power this month. A subsidiary of the multinational conglomerate Tata Group, Tata Power is India’s largest integrated power company based in Mumbai. In screenshots seen by BleepingComputer, Hive operators are seen posting data they claim to have stolen from Tata Power, indicating that the ransom negotiations failed.”

BBC: Google: India orders Google to pay another $113m fine. “India’s competition regulator has fined Google 9bn rupees ($113m; £98m) for anti-competitive practices, in a second such penalty in less than a week. The regulator accused Google of ‘abusing’ its dominant position on the app store to force app developers to use its in-app payment system.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: Bumble open sourced its AI that detects unsolicited nudes. “As part of its larger commitment to combat ‘cyberflashing,’ the dating app Bumble is open sourcing its AI tool that detects unsolicited lewd images. First debuted in 2019, Private Detector (let’s take a moment to let that name sink in) blurs out nudes that are sent through the Bumble app, giving the user on the receiving end the choice of whether to open the image.”

New York Times: Why Am I Seeing That Political Ad? Check Your ‘Trump Resistance’ Score.. “In the run-up to the midterm elections next month, campaigns are tapping a host of different scores and using them to create castes of their most desirable voters. There are ‘gun owner,’ ‘pro-choice’ and ‘Trump 2024’ scores, which cover everyday politics. There are also voter rankings on hot-button issues — a ‘racial resentment’ score, for example, and a ‘trans athletes should not participate’ score. There’s even a ‘U.F.O.s distrust government’ score.” The link to the article is a “Gift Article” URL I generated, so you should be able to see it even if you normally hit 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 26, 2022 at 05:32PM
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Tuesday, October 25, 2022

New Jersey Broadcasting, Reno Photojournalism, BBC Interviews, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 25, 2022

New Jersey Broadcasting, Reno Photojournalism, BBC Interviews, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Central Jersey: New Jersey Network collection added to American Archive of Public Broadcasting . “The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) has released the New Jersey Network (NJN) Special Collection, featuring more than 3,000 streaming programs from New Jersey public television dating from 1971 to 2011. The growing collection will eventually include nearly 25,000 items representing 40 years of programs from one of the largest producers of local public television in the United States, covering governmental, cultural and historic affairs, according to a press release.”

Reno Gazette Journal: Millions of images in RGJ photo archives now available to public through UNR library. “The University Libraries has added the [Reno Gazette Journal]’s photo collection dating back to 1959. It is the largest publicly available collection of photographic documentation of the development and social history of the region. The unique visual resource consists of almost two million negatives compiled by at least 117 photographers through the decades.” Unfortunately only about 750 of the images are online in their entirety, but the metadata for an additional 350,000 images has been aggregated and made available as well.

University of Sussex: Launch of online oral history collection reveals untold story of the BBC . “David Attenborough, Esther Rantzen and Harold Wilson are just some of the prominent figures who appear in over 600 hours of recorded interviews from across the BBC, as part of a new project led by academics at the University of Sussex. The online catalogue, made available today, reveals a hidden history of the Corporation from its earliest years and has been unveiled as part of the BBC’s centenary celebrations. The unique new collection gives free public access to over 470 hours of audio and 159 hours of video interviews.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

ArtsHub: Powerhouse acquires photography archive worth $1.6 million. “The Australian Centre for Photography (ACP) in NSW has been in hibernation since 16 December 2020 following a decision to ‘stem the risk of ongoing financial losses and protect the capital in an investment fund it considers vital to its long-term viability’. Throughout 2021, the ACP held extensive consultations with the community to assist the Board in identifying future pathways and use of the ACP Fund. Today, that future has been delivered by Powerhouse, which announced the acquisition of the archive and fund of ACP.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

University of Maryland, Baltimore County: UMBC Special Collections receives more than 12,000 volumes from Parapsychology Foundation. “UMBC Special Collections has been given an extraordinary gift of one of the world’s largest collections devoted to parapsychology, from the Parapsychology Foundation, Inc. in Greenport, New York. The acquisition will be known as the Eileen J. Garrett Parapsychology Foundation Collection. It includes documents related to hauntings, poltergeists, out-of-body experiences, and séances, as well as spirit photographs and much more.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Australian Geographic: Tortoiseshell database a ‘game-changer’ for critically endangered marine turtles. “Seizing a tortoiseshell product is one thing, but knowing the original poaching location of the turtle it came from is another. The problem facing law enforcement and conservation agencies is that to catch these criminals in the act, they need to know where to look and in what regions to focus scarce resources. This is where ShellBank can help. Put simply, it is a global ‘bank’ of seized or donated tortoiseshell products.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

World Economic Forum: A third of children have adult social media accounts, UK regulator finds: How can we improve child safety online?. “Most social media channels have age restrictions designed to stop children under 13 from creating their own profiles – but Ofcom’s data suggests these restrictions are easy to bypass. That is less surprising when it becomes clear that many parents are actually helping their children to set up social media profiles before their 13th birthday.”

The Diplomat: Can the Social Media and Poster Campaign Against Xi Jinping Make a Difference?. “Facing threats from the Chinese government’s massive surveillance efforts and the regime’s attempts to intimidate and influence its overseas diaspora around the world, individuals can best protect their identities and ensure their safety by engaging in anonymous and leaderless social media campaigns. However, those actions also have their limitations.”

North Carolina State University: Positive YouTube Videos Help Deflect Blame From Sharks. “In a new study, North Carolina State University researchers found more people shifted blame for shark bites away from the animals after watching positive YouTube videos about them. They also saw greater support on average for non-lethal strategies for responding to incidents in which a shark has bitten a person.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: Slow Roads offers a chill, endless driving experience in your browser. “A few days ago, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based developer named Anslo announced Slow Roads, a free, easygoing driving game with procedurally generated scenic landscapes that runs in a web browser.” I’m terrible at driving games except for Super Tux Kart, but I discovered to my delight that there’s an auto-driving mode for Slow Roads. It’s nicely relaxing to spend a few minutes watching a car zooming through a generated landscape. 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 26, 2022 at 12:28AM
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Quickly Visualizing Wikipedia page views with the WPCC

Quickly Visualizing Wikipedia page views with the WPCC
By ResearchBuzz

Did you ever have a situation where you were making something, and early on in the process you realized you had to make something else in order to finish what you were originally working on?

I ran into that over the weekend, but the something else I made was so much fun to play with I decided to put it up as its own Search Gizmo. The Wikipedia Page Count Checker is available at https://searchgizmos.com/wpcc .

Screenshot from 2022-10-25 08-37-46

I’m sure there are other tools out there that let you chart Wikipedia page views, but I wanted to make sure I had a good grip on the Google Charts API. Just enter a Wikipedia page topic (WPCC checks that page and finds the closest match, so it’s somewhat forgiving of spelling errors, etc) and the date you want your pageview count to start. You can chart up to 30 days.

Here’s how the Dolly Parton example search looks:

Screenshot from 2022-10-25 08-45-16

The chart isn’t  an image – it’s dynamic so you can hold your mouse over a point on the chart and get specific information.

Screenshot from 2022-10-25 08-51-29

The Dolly Parton example is interesting, but I find searches related to specific events to be more interesting. For example, Angela Lansbury died on October 11. Here is a look at her Wikipedia page over a 10 day period starting October 8th:

Screenshot from 2022-10-25 08-56-32

Festivals and other multi-day events have a less dramatic peak, but they’re still evident in page view counts. This is a chart of Lollapalooza’s page views starting on July 25 and going for 10 days.

Screenshot from 2022-10-25 09-00-27

Of course, if you DO want drama, try looking at the counts for something that happened on live television or in some other way where many people heard about it at the same time. Here’s what Will Smith’s Wikipedia page counts did right before and after the slap heard ’round the world:

Screenshot from 2022-10-25 09-02-51

Chris Rock’s Wikipedia page views experienced a pretty crazy trajectory too!

Screenshot from 2022-10-25 09-04-43

As I noted at the beginning of this article, I made the WPCC because I needed it for something else I was making, and as you can see it’s not very polished. But now that I’ve played with it some I wonder if there’s more I can do with it.

Should I add the capacity to chart multiple people at a time? Expand the timespan past 30 days? Drop a comment if you want to see me put a little more into  this one.



October 25, 2022 at 06:52PM
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Democracy’s Library, Spanish Civil War, Twitter, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, October 25, 2022

Democracy’s Library, Spanish Civil War, Twitter, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, October 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Internet Archive Blog: Introducing Democracy’s Library. “Democracies need an educated citizenry to thrive. In the 21st century, that means easy access to reliable information online for all. To meet that need, the Internet Archive is building Democracy’s Library—a free, open, online compendium of government research and publications from around the world.”

City College of New York: CCNY’s digital publication of student’s archive from the Spanish Civil War available to educators . “CCNY Student Wilfred Mendelson on the deck of the S.S. Manhattan on his way to fight in the Spanish Civil War in 1938. A digital publication of a collection of his letters and essays is now available to all educators for free.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: Twitter Tries Calming Employees as Deal With Elon Musk Looms. “With Mr. Musk’s $44 billion deal to buy Twitter set to close no later than Oct. 28, the company is trying to reassure workers about their employment and compensation.”

CNET: YouTube App Gets Pinch-to-Zoom, Precise Seeking and Other Updates. “YouTube’s app is getting a little easier to use. The video platform said Monday in a blog post that you’ll now be able to zoom in on videos using pinch-to-zoom. Additionally, viewers will be able to easily find the exact part of a video they want to watch using the new precise seeking feature. Both improvements will be available later today.”

The Verge: Google Chrome will no longer support Windows 7 next year. “This could be a bigger deal than you might think. Despite Windows 7 first being released in 2009 and Microsoft officially ending support for it in 2020, data suggests that the operating system is still running on a whole lot of devices: as recently as last year, that number was estimated to be at least 100 million PCs.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mozilla Blog: Prep for the U.S. midterm elections with these online tools. “We’re not here to tell you who to vote for. But as an organization that advocates for a healthy internet, we consider online misinformation to be a huge barrier to seeing that better internet. Here are some nonpartisan, online resources to help us all do the responsible thing: Make informed choices and get ready to vote.”

Search Engine Journal: The Top 19 Tools For Managing Social Media Accounts. “Social media has become a massive part of brand marketing strategy. And managing multiple accounts can be pretty overwhelming. How do you stay organized? What tools should you use to manage social media accounts?”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Brown University Library News: Brown Library’s First Born-Digital Publication Awarded Prize by the American Historical Association. “Furnace and Fugue brings to life in digital form an enigmatic seventeenth-century text, Michael Maier’s musical alchemical emblem book Atalanta fugiens. This intriguing and complex text from 1618 reinterprets Ovid’s legend of Atalanta as an alchemical allegory in a series of fifty emblems, each of which contains text, image, and a musical score for three voices.” The prize will be used to build a companion Web site for the digitized work.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Typosquat campaign mimics 27 brands to push Windows, Android malware. “A massive, malicious campaign is underway using over 200 typosquatting domains that impersonate twenty-seven brands to trick visitors into downloading various Windows and Android malware. Typosquatting is an old method of tricking people into visiting a fake website by registering a domain name similar to that used by genuine brands.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Amsterdam: Social media polarize politics for a different reason than you might think. “Social media are polarizing not because they isolate us with likeminded others, as often thought, but because they provide spaces where we create social identities that increasingly align with our political preferences.”

MIT Technology Review: Starlink signals can be reverse-engineered to work like GPS—whether SpaceX likes it or not. “Todd Humphreys’s offer to SpaceX was simple. With a few software tweaks, its rapidly growing Starlink constellation could also offer precise position, navigation, and timing. The US Army, which funds Humphreys’s work at the University of Texas at Austin, wanted a backup to its venerable, and vulnerable, GPS system. Could Starlink fill that role?”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: Build a shelf-size vintage computer museum made of paper. “Yesterday, a Winnipeg, Canada-based artist named Rocky Bergen released a free collection of miniature papercraft vintage computer models that hobbyists can assemble for fun. They are available on The Internet Archive in a pack of 24 PDF files that you can print out on letter-size paper and fold into three dimensions.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 25, 2022 at 05:31PM
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Monday, October 24, 2022

Queens NYC Place Names, Snapchat, Emoji Meanings, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 24, 2022

Queens NYC Place Names, Snapchat, Emoji Meanings, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 24, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Queens Chronicle: Oh, the places named for people!. “The Queens Public Library has launched an online archive of information on over 1,300 people whom schools, streets, buildings, parks, monuments and other public spaces across the borough have been named after.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Snapchat lets subscribers choose when their stories expire. “Snap has introduced a number of features for its Snapchat+ subscription app, including a new ‘Story Expiration’ feature, along with custom notification sounds, camera borders and more.”

Google Blog: Add these new Google widgets to your iPhone. “Our Lock Screen widgets for iOS 16 are officially available, so you can access features from your favorite Google apps with a quick tap or even just a glance at your iPhone Lock Screen. Between these and our Home Screen widgets, we’ve got you covered across all your favorite Google apps. Let’s take a closer look at ways you can use all these new widgets.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

How-To Geek: Yes, Emoji Have Multiple Meanings Too. “In case you haven’t heard, Gen Z has apparently ‘canceled’ a handful of emoji, including the thumbs-up. That’s absolutely not true, but it’s brought something interesting to light. Do people not realize emojis have multiple meanings, just like words do?”

Jewish Press: Google Calls New NYC Migrant Center ‘Adams Tent City’. “Google Maps appears to have created a new name for a pet project of New York City Mayor Eric Adams – his much-debated migrant processing center on Randalls Island – at least temporarily. The site, officially called the ‘Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center,’ had a different name on the location software, until Tuesday night.”

SECURITY & LEGAL
Euronews: Interpol is setting up its own metaverse to learn how to police the virtual world. “Will Interpol become the new sheriff of the metaverse? One thing is certain: it does not want to fall behind. The global police organisation has just unveiled what it calls ‘the first-ever metaverse specifically designed for law enforcement worldwide’.”

Motherboard: Researchers Defeated Advanced Facial Recognition Tech Using Makeup. “A new study from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev found that software-generated makeup patterns can be used to consistently bypass state-of-the-art facial recognition software, with digitally and physically-applied makeup fooling some systems with a success rate as high as 98 percent.” I did not plan to have this article and the next one appear in the same newsletter. Just shook out of the queue that way.

RESEARCH & OPINION

Hackaday: Render Yourself Invisible To AI With This Adversarial Sweater Of Doom. “Ugly sweater season is rapidly approaching, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere. We’ve always been a bit baffled by the tradition of paying top dollar for a loud, obnoxious sweater that gets worn to exactly one social event a year. We don’t judge, of course, but that’s not to say we wouldn’t look a little more favorably on someone’s fashion choice if it were more like this AI-defeating adversarial ugly sweater.”

University of Glasgow: Researchers Propose A Roadmap To Understand Whether AI Models And The Human Brain Process Things The Same Way. “Researchers use Deep Neural Networks, or DNNs, to model the processing of information, and to investigate how this information processing matches that of humans…. New research, published in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences and led by the University of Glasgow’s School of Psychology and Neuroscience, presents a new approach to understand whether the human brain and its DNN models recognise things in the same way, using similar steps of computations.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Lifehacker: Someone Built a 4D Minecraft Clone. “Video games usually come in one of two dimensions: You have your 2D side scrollers, or, more commonly, your typical 3D adventures. Rarely do you see a game that pushes beyond these dimensions, since, you know, we live in the third dimension. Why, then, does a Minecraft clone exist in 4D?” There is a video in the article that really helps it make sense. 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. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



October 25, 2022 at 12:04AM
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