New researches: May 2023

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Mental Health Chatbots, Twitter, Google Maps, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 31, 2023

Mental Health Chatbots, Twitter, Google Maps, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 31, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Daily Dot: ‘This robot causes harm’: National Eating Disorders Association’s new chatbot advises people with disordering eating to lose weight . “After unionizing, the staff of the National Eating Disorder Association’s (NEDA) support phone line were abruptly fired in March and replaced with a chatbot. Yesterday, many in the larger eating disorder recovery community online tested out the chatbot’s abilities and flagged how it advised them on weight loss.”

The Verge: Twitter is adding crowdsourced fact checks to images. “Twitter is expanding its crowdsourced fact-checking program to include images, shortly after a fake image went viral claiming to show an ‘explosion’ near the Pentagon.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Save Images From Google Maps. “Google Maps provides users with precise and detailed maps and imagery, allowing them to explore the world at their fingertips. Other than viewing locations on the map, users can see images taken by those who have been there. Have you ever found an image you wanted to save but couldn’t? The inability to save images with right-click is one of Google Maps’ limitations, and getting one saved may seem impossible. But there are ways to bypass this limitation, allowing you to save any image on Google Maps.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Desk: Scrapers briefly cause outage at Internet Archive. “On Monday, the Internet Archive’s founder Brewster Kahle said the website was down for about an hour after someone using virtual hosts linked back to Amazon Web Services launched ‘tens of thousands of requests’ to download Optical Character Recognition (OCR) files.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Search Generative Experience Early Complaints & Responses From Google. “Google began to slowly roll out the Google Search Generative Experience on Thursday and I posted many screenshots of what I found. Since then, Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, responded to some public complaints and criticism of this new search experience. John Mueller of Google also responded to some questions and complaints.”

WIRED: Why Fake Drake Is Here to Stay . “We talk to Puja Patel, editor in chief of Pitchfork and cohost of The Pitchfork Review, about how AI is taking over our feeds and where it goes from here.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

AFP: Anti-LGBTQ disinformation surges online in East Africa. “Anti-LGBTQ bills in Kenya and Uganda have unleashed an unprecedented wave of online disinformation targeting the community, with experts accusing political leaders of spreading falsehoods that put lives at risk.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Daily Beast: Twitter Fails to Remove Hate Speech By Blue-Check Users: Report. “Twitter is failing to remove 99 percent of hate speech posted by Twitter Blue users, new research has found, and instead may be boosting paid accounts that spew racism and homophobia. Researchers at the Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) flagged hate speech to the company in tweets from 100 Twitter Blue subscribers. Four days later, they say, 99 percent of the tweets were still up and none of the accounts had been removed.”

Newswise: Issa-kun, the artificial intelligence haiku poet. “Associate Professor Tomohisa Yamashita and his colleagues at the Laboratory of Harmonious Systems Engineering (Harmo Lab, Faculty of Information Science and Technology) devote their research to Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the benefit of human happiness. One of their breakthroughs is the birth of Issa-kun, a haiku generator.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Courthouse News Service: Comedic history found in sobering tale of medieval scribe’s private library. “Centuries before ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ hit theaters, a medieval priest transcribed three brutal tales from a traveling minstrel with one recounting how a deadly run-in with a killer bunny ended with villagers bringing out their dead.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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June 1, 2023 at 12:38AM
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Congressional Research Service RSS, Block Party, Twitter, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, May 31, 2023

Congressional Research Service RSS, Block Party, Twitter, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, May 31, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Disruptive Library Technology Jester: Congressional Research Service Syndication Feed. “Use your favorite search engine to look for ‘Congressional Research Service RSS or Atom’; you’ll find a few attempts to gather selected reports or comprehensive archives that stopped functioning years ago. And that is a real shame because these reports are good, taxpayer-funded work that should be more widely known. So I created a syndication feed in Atom.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Popular anti-troll tool Block Party shuts down. “Last week, Twitter launched a new API subscription tier that was supposedly meant for ‘startups.’ Instead of drawing startups in, though, it’s already claiming victims. Block Party, a popular anti-harassment tool, has now gone on ‘indefinite hiatus.'”

Axios: Twitter only worth 33% of what Musk-led investors paid, Fidelity says . “In Fidelity’s latest Twitter markdown, the financial services giant estimated in a monthly report of portfolio valuations that the company is now worth about $15 billion, or 33% of the October purchase price, per a Bloomberg assessment Tuesday.”

Engadget: Bluesky now lets you choose your own algorithm. “Bluesky, the Jack Dorsey-backed decentralized Twitter alternative, has released one of its most significant updates to date: the ability for users to choose their own algorithms. The service, which is still in a closed beta, released its ‘custom feeds’ feature, which allows people to subscribe to a range of different algorithms and make their own for others to follow.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Inside Sudan’s War, ‘There’s Another War for Art’. “Dozens of Sudanese artists and curators have fled their studios and galleries in the capital, jeopardizing thousands of artworks and imperiling an art scene central to the 2019 revolution.”

Search Engine Journal: Executive Director Of WordPress On 20 Years Of Innovation. “On May 27, 2023, WordPress celebrates 20 years of extraordinary growth. It powers approximately 43% of all websites and is the leading content management system by far. How did WordPress achieve this milestone and will it be able to continue as arguably the most successful open source project ever?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Minnesota enacts right-to-repair law that covers more devices than any other state . “It doesn’t cover video game consoles, medical gear, farm or construction equipment, digital security tools, or cars. But in demanding that manuals, tools, and parts be made available for most electronics and appliances, Minnesota’s recently passed right-to-repair bill covers the most ground of any US state yet.”

Politico: Russia’s Wagner Group uses Twitter and Facebook to hunt new recruits. “Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group has been using Twitter and Facebook to recruit medics, drone operators and even psychologists to aid fighting operations, including in Ukraine, according to exclusive research seen by POLITICO. Job ads for Wagner, which has mercenaries operating in several countries, have reached nearly 120,000 views on the two social media platforms over the last ten months, according to Logically, a U.K. disinformation-focused research group.”

Reuters: Dutch parliament chair calls on Twitter to prevent threatening messages on platform. “The chairwoman of the Dutch parliament on Wednesday called on Twitter to act to stop threats being broadcast on the social media platform against the country’s lawmakers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Sidney Morning Herald: Anti-Voice accounts on Twitter ‘abusive with impunity’ by using false identities. “The most active Twitter accounts opposing the Indigenous Voice to parliament are people using false identities who are stoking an increasingly divisive online campaign, rather than computerised ‘bots’, an analysis reveals.”

University of Portsmouth: New research uses AI to analyse propaganda tweets on Iranian nuclear deal. “Thousands of state-sponsored propaganda tweets on the Iranian nuclear deal have been analysed using artificial intelligence by experts at the University of Portsmouth.”

The Conversation: AI is helping us read ancient Mesopotamian literature. “The primary objective of the eBL project is to advance the understanding of Babylonian literature by reconstructing it to the fullest extent possible. Additionally, the project aims to provide a user-friendly platform containing extensive transliterations of cuneiform tablet fragments, along with a robust search tool, to address the abiding problem of the fragmented nature of Mesopotamian literature.” Good morning, Internet…

May 31, 2023 at 05:33PM
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Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Asteroid Mining, San Francisco Political History, AI in Classrooms, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 30, 2023

Asteroid Mining, San Francisco Political History, AI in Classrooms, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Phys .org: Want to be an asteroid miner? There’s a database for that. “Asteroid mining is slowly but surely coming closer to reality. Many start-ups and governmental agencies alike are getting in on the action. But plenty of tools that would help get this burgeoning industry off the ground are still unavailable. One that would be particularly useful is a list of potential candidate asteroids to visit. While the information has been available in various places, no one has yet combined it into a single, searchable database until now.”

Beyond Chron: 40 Years That Shaped San Francisco: The New [Tenderloin Housing Clinic] Archive. “The archive may be the largest source of stories on how San Francisco went from never passing a tenant ballot measure until 1992 to now having the nation’s strongest tenant protection laws. The city also has the most powerful protections for SRO hotels and rental housing.”

EVENTS

United Nations: UNESCO unveils new AI roadmap for classrooms. “The UN convened the first ever global meeting with education ministers from around the world to explore risks and rewards of using chatbots in classrooms, announcing on Friday a new roadmap to chart a safer digital path for all.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Review Geek: Brave Invents a Convenient Alternative to Incognito Browsing. “The Brave Browser 1.53 update, which should arrive in the coming weeks, introduces a feature called ‘Off the Record’ or ‘OTR.’ The idea is pretty simple; websites can mark themselves as ‘sensitive,’ and when visited, users will have the option to view this site without leaving a paper trail.”

USEFUL STUFF

Larry Ferlazzo: This Week’s Free & Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools For The Classroom. “At least, for now, I’m going to make this a weekly feature which will highlight additions to THE BEST NEW – & FREE – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WBZ: One Salem Museum Looks For Social Media Savvy Student For New Program. “One Salem museum is looking for someone with a knack for TikTok to join their team as part of a new program. Peabody Essex Museum is hiring for its first-ever TikTok Creator and Residence Program to get the museum seen from a different perspective.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Hill: Ocasio-Cortez says fake Twitter account impersonating her. “The account, which has amassed nearly 100,000 followers and is dubbed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Press Release (parody), has tweeted a number of times with false or misleading statements while claiming to be the congresswoman from New York.”

Bloomberg Law: US Supreme Court Turns Away Social Media Sex Trafficking Case. “The US Supreme Court turned away an appeal from victims of child pornography who claimed Reddit Inc. knowingly facilitates and benefits from images of child sexual abuse. The justices without comment left in place a ruling that affirmed Reddit can’t be held liable for violating sex trafficking laws when people use its platform to post pictures of minors being abused.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stuff New Zealand: To combat AI this election, we need to rediscover the art of conversation. “ChatGPT, the AI engine at the centre of the current controversies around machine intelligence, itself suggests the negative impacts could be disinformation and manipulation, deepfake technology, biased algorithms, voter profiling and microtargeting – proving that ChatGPT might be more self-aware than the average beltway politician.”

Yale: New AI platform aims to improve disaster response. “Picture this: a magnitude 7.2 earthquake strikes San Francisco in the dead of night. As local and federal officials scramble to assess the damage and plan a response, they have a sophisticated new dashboard in front of them with real-time, on-the-ground data—informed by commercial satellite imagery and Tweets, with analysis by artificial intelligence.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 31, 2023 at 01:06AM
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Belgium’s Botanical Gardens, Kentucky Public Health, War of 1812 Pension Files, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 30, 2023

Belgium’s Botanical Gardens, Kentucky Public Health, War of 1812 Pension Files, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Brussels Times: Belgium’s botanical gardens and arboretums unveil massive online database. “The new website – a global first on this scale – makes 83,000 plants belonging to 25,000 different species and varieties from 25 botanical gardens and arboretums available at the click of a button. Visitors can view technical data sheets on each plant which detail their main characteristics, their origin and their location in the botanical garden in question.”

News-Enterprise (Kentucky): New website tracks county-by-county data on health factors. “The state Department for Public Health has launched a new resource for tracking a variety of topics that affect health in Kentucky…. topics include air quality, asthma, birth defects, cancer, childhood lead poisoning, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, carbon-monoxide poisoning, climate and weather, drinking water, heat-related illness, radon gas and reproductive and birth outcomes.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Fold3: War of 1812 Pension Files Digitization Moves Forward!. “We have some exciting news to share. Ancestry® and the National Genealogical Society® have recently finalized a contract with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to resume digitization of the War of 1812 Pension Files. Like so many other things, this ongoing project came to a screeching halt during the closure of NARA due to COVID-19.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Reuters: Vatican chastises bishops who stoke division on social media. “The Vatican urged bishops and high-profile lay Catholic leaders on Monday to tone down their comments on social media, saying some were causing division and stoking polemics that harmed the entire Church.”

Hold the Front Page: Editor calls for regional daily’s archive to go back online. “An editor whose newspaper’s archive disappeared from the web without explanation two months ago has called for it to go back online. Eastern Daily Press editor Richard Porritt has told readers he is ‘pushing’ for a revival of the Local Recall project, which was launched by Archant with Google funding in 2020 but went offline earlier this year.”

Slashgear: TikTok Users Are Reimagining Alternative Human Histories With Generative AI . “New AI trends just kept coming; the latest one is very thought-provoking and creative. TikTokers have created viral videos with pictures and accompanying textual descriptions of what the world would look like if human history were changed. Most of these videos try to explore different narratives by changing important details of specific historical events, for example, the victors of a pretty significant conflict in human history.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Here’s What Happens When Your Lawyer Uses ChatGPT. “A lawyer representing a man who sued an airline relied on artificial intelligence to help prepare a court filing. It did not go well.”

University of Arizona: UArizona researcher at the forefront of Indigenous data sovereignty. “The concept known as IDSov emphasizes Indigenous Peoples’ right to control data about their people, lands and cultures. Stephanie Russo Carroll, associate director of the University of Arizona Native Nations Institute, has focused her career on encouraging institutions to adopt policies and practices that recognize that right.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NiemanLab: Seeing stories of kindness may counteract the negative effects of consuming bad news. “During the pandemic, multiple studies linked news consumption to poorer mental health, documenting symptoms of depression, anxiety, hopelessness and worry. In our research, we found that spending as little as 2-4 minutes on Twitter or YouTube reading about the pandemic affected people’s moods adversely. However, our latest study has found that looking at positive news stories — specifically, videos and articles featuring acts of kindness — can actually counteract the ill-effects of seeing negative news stories.”

Poynter: Pink slime from AI content farms is a poor substitute for real journalism. “It’s pink slime on steroids. I’m writing, of course, about the creators of AI content farms that quickly churn out content related to current events using generative AI language-bots, like Open AI’s Chat GPT and Google’s Bard. A May 1 investigation by NewsGuard, an online trust-rating platform for news, found more than 49 such AI-generated content sites in seven languages: English, Tagalog, Portuguese, Thai, French, Czech and Chinese.”

Notre Dame News: The metaverse can lead to better science. “One Notre Dame researcher says we should look beyond the hype to see how virtual reality can make scientists more effective. But to realize the benefits, researchers must also plan well and avoid potential pitfalls.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

The Atlantic: Life Is About to Come With Subtitles. “‘How does that feel?’ I saw the captioned words right after Alex uttered them. Because I have always watched videos with closed captions on, my initial thought was that he’d stepped out of a TV screen to talk to me.” Good morning, Internet…

May 30, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Monday, May 29, 2023

Yom Kippur War, 2020 Census Demographics, Proton Family Plan, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 29, 2023

Yom Kippur War, 2020 Census Demographics, Proton Family Plan, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Times of Israel: ‘Egypt, Syria are coordinating’: IDF estimates on eve of Yom Kippur War declassified. “The Defense Ministry on Sunday launched a website hosting dozens of newly declassified documents, images, videos and other files from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in honor of the conflict’s 50th anniversary later this year.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

US Census Bureau: Census Bureau Releases New 2020 Census Data on Age, Sex, Race, Hispanic Origin, Households and Housing. “Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2020 Census Demographic Profile and Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (DHC). These products provide the next round of data available from the 2020 Census, adding more detail to the population counts and basic demographic and housing statistics previously released for the purposes of congressional apportionment and legislative redistricting.”

How-To Geek: Proton’s Family Plan Offers a Suite of Privacy Tools and Cloud Storage. “Families searching for a privacy-focused alternative to Google One now have at least one option. Proton just launched a family bundle of its own, which includes access to Proton’s full suite of apps and plenty of cloud storage.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNBC: Tech layoffs ravage the teams that fight online misinformation and hate speech. “Across the tech industry, as companies tighten their belts and impose hefty layoffs to address macroeconomic pressures and slowing revenue growth, wide swaths of people tasked with protecting the internet’s most-populous playgrounds are being shown the exits. The cuts come at a time of increased cyberbullying, which has been linked to higher rates of adolescent self-harm, and as the spread of misinformation and violent content collides with the exploding use of artificial intelligence.”

Motherboard: Captcha Is Asking Users to Identify Objects That Don’t Exist. “People trying to use Discord are being asked to identify an object that does not exist. The object in question is a ‘Yoko,’ which appears to be a kind of mix between a snail and a yoyo.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Driver’s Licenses, Addresses, Photos: Inside How TikTok Shares User Data. “The profusion of user data on Lark alarmed some TikTok employees, especially since ByteDance workers in China and elsewhere could easily see the material, according to internal reports and four current and former employees. Since at least July 2021, several security employees have warned ByteDance and TikTok executives about risks tied to the platform, according to the documents and the current and former workers.”

Merco Press: Brazilian gov’t, Google team up to filter hate speech. “Brazil’s Ministry of Racial Equality (MIR) and Google will develop a filter to prevent hate speech, intolerance, and racism to be disseminated through the internet, Agencia Brasil reported. The South American country’s authorities contacted the internet giant after becoming aware of a video game available through the multinational technology company’s app store in which the user acted as a ‘slave owner.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Sofia Globe: Diplomacy by disinformation: Russian embassies’ role in Kremlin’s information war. “On Twitter, for example, the overall number of posts by Russian diplomatic missions increased by 26 per cent in just a month after the war began. This is according to the Hamilton Dashboard – a database created by the German Marshall Fund to track the public messages coming from Russia and other states through media and social networks. The data shows also that the number of reactions and retweets of the Russian embassies’ posts over the same interval grew by over 200 per cent, while the disinformation in them became more blatant and aggressive.”

The Conversation: DIY degree? Why universities should make online educational materials free for all. “My proposal – also outlined in this journal article – is that a proportion of educational resources generated by publicly funded universities should be made public and freely available. This could radically expand opportunity and flexibility and potentially allow students to design their own degrees, by doing multiple different units from different universities.”

McGill University: Mapping the genetic history of French Canadians through space and time. “A new McGill University-led study is now providing insight into the complex relationship between human migration and genetic variation, using a unique genealogical dataset of over five million records spanning 400 years to unravel the genetic structure of French Canadian populations.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 30, 2023 at 12:08AM
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Exploring Search Results as Word Clouds: CloudSERP Explorer

Exploring Search Results as Word Clouds: CloudSERP Explorer
By ResearchBuzz

In my endless quest to find ways for users to create more detailed search queries without having lots of foreknowledge…

I made a Gizmo, CloudSERP Explorer, that queries WordPress, Bing, and Bing News, then shows the titles of the results as a word cloud (one cloud per query.) Clicking on a word takes you to a search of the cloud’s word-source using both the original query and the word you clicked on.

I started this as a goof but I like the way it turned out. The clouds for the different resources can look VERY different and make quite different impressions. And I find when I click on a word to do a search, it’s less because it looks relevant and more that it *doesn’t* — what in the world is that word doing in this cloud?

Those clicks take me to odd corners, which can be a good thing.

May 29, 2023 at 09:44PM
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Wisconsin History, Mentoring Best Practices, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, May 29, 2023

Wisconsin History, Mentoring Best Practices, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, May 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Wisconsin State Journal: Wisconsin to celebrate 175th birthday Monday. “The Wisconsin Historical Society has launched a new website celebrating a list of Wisconsin ‘visionaries, changemakers and storytellers.'”

American Council on Education: New Ace Brief, Search Tool Outline Effective Mentoring Programs And Practices For Graduate Education. “For students of color and other historically minoritized students, mentoring has been shown to be especially promising in encouraging their pursuit of graduate education, according to a new brief published by ACE….ACE’s new search tool offers examples of institutions that employ these various practices. Practices are organized into four stages of students’ academic journeys along the pathway into and through graduate education.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PressGazette: Twitter’s shrinking role as traffic source for news publishers revealed. “Twitter’s role as a traffic referral source to publishers’ sites has been shrinking. Data from publisher analytics firm Chartbeat shows that Twitter referral traffic, 1.9% of all traffic in April 2018 to 1,350 publisher sites included in the analysis, had fallen to 1.2% five years later in April this year.”

USEFUL STUFF

Slashgear: This Chrome Extension Helps Students Prove AI Didn’t Write Their Essays . “Draftback is a Google Chrome browser extension available as a free download from the Chrome Web Store. When installed, Draftback adds a special button to the top of a Google Doc interface that retraces the entire revision history of the document.”

MakeUseOf: 5 Free Interactive Presentation Tools You Can Try Online. “Giving a presentation that’s engaging can be difficult, especially if the material happens to be particularly dry. One of the best ways to keep audiences engaged is by making your presentation interactive. Luckily, there are plenty of online tools that aim to make creating interactive presentations as easy as possible. Here are five of the best for your consideration.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Library of Congress: Library of Congress Launches COVID-19 American History Project. “The Library of Congress has announced the congressionally-funded COVID-19 American History Project, a multiyear effort to collect, preserve and make available to the public the oral histories of frontline healthcare workers, survivors of loved ones who died, and others impacted by the pandemic.”

Progress-Index: Former tennis stars donate money to preserve historic Black student records housed at VSU. “Former women’s tennis stars Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss have donated money to Virginia State University to help preserve the history of Black athletes in the Jim Crow era. … The money will be used to digitize and preserve records of the Virginia Interscholastic Association currently housed at VSU. The records contain information about the achievements of Virginia-based Black athletes who were assisted by the work of the VIA.”

Canada’s National Observer: Wildfire conspiracy theories spread faster than flames. “Emergency responders and some politicians are exasperated and say this kind of disinformation hinders efforts to keep people safe during extreme weather events like the fires and to deal with climate change, which climate researchers say has fuelled the fires.”

BBC: French Open 2023: Grand Slam using AI to protect players from online abuse. “The Bodyguard technology aims to filter out abusive comments on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok and Discord. Players can scan a QR code to connect their social media accounts to its system, with the company stating it analyses every real-time comment in under 200 milliseconds and blocks abusive remarks.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBS: Nearly every state and D.C. sue telecom company over billions of robocalls. “Attorneys general from almost every state in the U.S. filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Avid Telecom, a company accused of making more than 7.5 billion robocalls to people on the National Do Not Call Registry. Attorneys general from the District of Columbia and every state except Alaska and South Dakota are acting as plaintiffs.”

Reuters: Judge Throws Out Shareholder Lawsuit Against Elon Musk Over Twitter Buyout. “A judge dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Elon Musk that claimed he cheated Twitter shareholders several times last year in the course of buying the social media company for $44 billion.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: A Hospital Visit Reveals Medieval Secrets Hidden in Books. “Even in medieval times, recycling was in vogue: Bits of parchment salvaged from older handwritten manuscripts were often used to reinforce other books. Using CT scanning, a team of researchers has now shown that those medieval leftovers hidden beneath some books’ covers can be seen.” Good morning, Internet…

May 29, 2023 at 05:33PM
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Sunday, May 28, 2023

Google Chrome, Apple, Revitalizing Old PCs, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, May 28, 2023

Google Chrome, Apple, Revitalizing Old PCs, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, May 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: New ways to customize Chrome on your desktop. “Looking for more ways to make Chrome your own? With the latest updates to Chrome on desktop, it’s easier than ever to personalize the look and feel of your browser — exactly how you want it. Here’s a closer look at the ways you can customize Chrome to make it yours.”

Engadget: Apple’s free My Photo Stream service will shut down on July 26th. “Apple plans to shut down its My Photo Stream service on July 26th, 2023, the company announced on Friday. The free service has been available since the release of iCloud in 2011. You can use My Photo Stream to upload the last 30 days of images and videos – up to a limit of 1,000 – from your Apple devices to iCloud.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: 10 Inexpensive Ways to Breathe New Life Into an Old PC. “Why buy a new computer when the one you have just needs a little spring cleaning and some inexpensive upgrades to give you many more years of service? Here are some easy tips and tricks to rejuvenate your old PC.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Tom’s Hardware: Google’s AI Search Feels Like a Content Farm on Steroids. “Currently available for testing in limited beta, Google’s new Search Generative Experience (SGE) shifts the site from being a search engine that links the best content to a publication offering its own mini-articles. But instead of hiring expert writers to do the work, Google employs an AI that ingests data from human-authored content and spits out weaksauce advice with no expertise or authority to back it up.”

NPR: Can a chatbot help people with eating disorders as well as another human?. “The National Eating Disorders Association is shutting its telephone helpline down, firing its small staff and hundreds of volunteers. Instead it’s using a chatbot — and not because the bot is better.”

The Verge: A fake climate change theory is going viral on TikTok after Joe Rogan talked about it. “A made-up global warming theory discussed in the Joe Rogan Experience podcast is spreading on TikTok despite the platform’s new policy against climate disinformation, a new report shared exclusively with The Verge finds.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Twitter likely to quit EU code against disinformation, EU official says . “Twitter is likely to pull out from a voluntary EU code of practice to tackle disinformation, but the move does not mean it will quit Europe, an EU official said on Thursday.”

Bloomberg: US and Guam hit by Chinese hacking campaign: report . “An alleged campaign by Chinese state-sponsored hackers on targets in the US and Guam has raised fears that Beijing is preparing to disrupt communications in the Pacific in the event of a conflict. The hacking campaign was first identified by Microsoft Corp on Wednesday and quickly confirmed by authorities in the US, UK and other allied nations.”

South China Morning Post: As India goes digital, unsuspecting victims lose life savings to social media scams. “While cybercrimes are not new to India, a new wave of these crimes is spreading rapidly across the country … These crimes are pushing many deep into debt, and often, despair. Late last month, a software engineer in the southern city of Hyderabad took his own life after losing more than 1.2 million rupees in a similar scheme, just months after he got married.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Arizona: A new method for creating 3D images. “[Professor David] Brady developed the set of algorithms and strategies for measuring a two-dimensional hologram and used those measurements to estimate three-dimensional objects. The resulting image is not a photograph; rather, it is a three-dimensional representation of the scene. A person can view the 3D representation using interactive software or by 3D-printing a model, Brady said.”

Queen Mary University of London: Social media platforms letting down autistic users, new research shows. “While understanding and awareness of autism has majorly progressed in recent years, with around 7000 Brits diagnosed, most autistic adults in the UK still don’t get the support they need to be fully included in society. Autism can have a profound impact, with just 29% of autistic adults in any kind of work and new Government plans announced this month to boost employment prospects.”

New York Times: How Twitter Shrank Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis. “…for all its influence, social media is still downstream of other institutions — universities, newspapers, television channels, movie studios, other internet platforms. Twitter is real life, but only through its relationship to other realities; it doesn’t have the capacity to be a hub of discourse, news gathering or entertainment on its own. And many of Musk’s difficulties as the Twitter C.E.O. have reflected a simple overestimation of social media’s inherent authority and influence.” Good morning, Internet…

May 28, 2023 at 05:28PM
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Saturday, May 27, 2023

Nebraska Cultural Heritage, Scotland Endangered Archives, Google Chrome, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, May 27, 2023

Nebraska Cultural Heritage, Scotland Endangered Archives, Google Chrome, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, May 27, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Lincoln Journal-Star: WanderNebraska kicks off second year with 150 sites across state. “This Memorial Day weekend, the Nebraska State Historical Society Foundation will launch its 2023 WanderNebraska Travel Adventure Program with an expanded list of more than 150 sites across the state…To make things easier, the foundation also launched a new website featuring information about all 150 sites, including hours of operation, upcoming events, a map for directions and more.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Hold the Front Page: Newspaper archive featuring almost 1,000 titles saved after fundraising success. “A bid to save a collection of almost 1,000 historic newspapers has succeeded after raising more than £115,000 in six months. The National Library of Scotland launched the ‘Save Our Stories’ campaign, backed by The Scotsman, after warning around two-thirds of the newspapers in its archives risked being lost unless ‘essential conservation and preservation work’ was carried out.”

9to5 Google: Google Chrome extensions can now create a side panel UI. “In addition to your Bookmarks and Reading List, the desktop Chrome side panel will soon support Manifest V3 extensions that want to display an interface.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tom’s Hardware: Windows XP Offline Activation Enabled With This New Tool. “A recent blog post by TinyApps highlights the arrival of an offline tool that can successfully activate a Windows XP install. The new tool is safer than prior solutions, it isn’t a crack and it works completely offline. It doesn’t require online connectivity (a risky area for Win XP machines to tread), which is a considerable bonus.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Japan’s unlikely venue for G-7 discussions: A website beloved by anime fans. “The gathering of world leaders here has attracted an unlikely audience online: Japanese youths glued to more than 72 hours of summitry and offering real-time commentary on a livestreaming site popular among anime fans.”

Jerusalem Post: A digital Jewish library aims to add women’s Torah scholarship to its shelves. “Sefaria, the app that contains a digital collection of Jewish texts, has made everything from Genesis to an essay on Jewish law and gambling accessible at the tap of a finger. But in one way, it’s the same as nearly every other Jewish library in history: Almost all the texts, from ancient times to the present, are written by men. Now, Sefaria is hoping to chip away at that gender disparity by organizing and supporting a group of 20 women Torah scholars who are writing new books on Jewish texts.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: Deepfakes, Cheapfakes, and Twitter Censorship Mar Turkey’s Elections. “This election cycle has been marred by a torrent of misinformation and disinformation on social media, made more difficult by a media environment that, after years of pressure from the government, has been accused of systematic bias toward the incumbent president. That has intensified as the Erdoğan administration struggles to hold onto power.”

Bloomberg: China cracks down on over 1 million social media posts, accounts. “China said it took action on more than 1 million social media posts and accounts in its latest campaign to moderate online content that it regards as malicious. Authorities permanently banned 66,000 accounts and cracked down on 928,000 others in the drive that started in March, China’s cyberspace regulator said in a statement on Saturday.”

Reuters: US jury says Google owes Sonos $32.5 million in smart-speaker patent case. “Alphabet Inc’s Google must pay $32.5 million in damages for infringing one of smart-speaker maker Sonos Inc’s patents in its wireless audio devices, a San Francisco federal jury decided on Friday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence: Chat AIs can role-play humans in surveys and pilot studies. “Synthetic data from large language models can mimic human responses in interviews and questionnaires. Research data from popular crowdsourcing platforms may now contain fake responses that cannot be reliably detected, raising the risk of poisoned data.”

USC Viterbi School of Engineering: Can AI Teach Your Child Perseverance?. “A team of researchers that includes Emmanuel Johnson, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI), has been awarded a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund a new artificial intelligence institute focused on AI in education.”

University of Rochester: Large language models could be the catalyst for a new era of chemistry. “Large language models like the one behind the popular ChatGPT could transform the future of chemistry, according to a researcher at the University of Rochester. Andrew D. White, an associate professor of chemical engineering, outlines why he believes large language models (LLMs) represent the future of the field in an article published by Nature Reviews Chemistry.” Good morning, Internet…

May 27, 2023 at 09:08PM
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Friday, May 26, 2023

Data Storytelling Asia, Henry Kissinger, Google Maps, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2023

Data Storytelling Asia, Henry Kissinger, Google Maps, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

International Journalists’ Network: New data storytelling tool available for journalists [Asia]. “Kontinentalist, a Singapore-based media that tells data stories about Asia, is launching Lapis, a no-code data storytelling tool that facilitates real-time collaboration and long-term community building, in December. The tool aims to spearhead data storytelling excellence in Asia and beyond, with support from the 2022 Google News Initiative (GNI) Challenge. Interested journalists can sign up to be one of the first on the new platform or help shape the tool as an alpha tester.”

National Security Archive: Henry Kissinger’s Documented Legacy. “To contribute to a balanced and more comprehensive evaluation of Kissinger’s legacy, the National Security Archive has compiled a small, select dossier of declassified records—memos, memcons, and ‘telcons’ that Kissinger wrote, said and/or read—documenting TOP SECRET deliberations, operations and policies during Kissinger’s time in the White House and Department of State.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

India Today: Google Maps Street View now available across India, even small village and town roads mapped and photographed. “The Google Maps Street View feature appears to be available in most Indian cities, letting users experience a ‘virtual representation’ of their surroundings. Google announced Street View for Maps in India last year, though it was initially launched in Bengaluru on a pilot basis.”

PC Magazine: YouTube Stories Heading for the Google Graveyard. “YouTube’s answer to Instagram stories, YouTube Stories, is being killed off. In a blog post(Opens in a new window) announcing the move, Google said that starting June 26 users will no longer be able to post Stories, and their existing posts will expire seven days after that.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Screen Rant: Shonen Jump Develops AI Manga Writing Tool, Steps Into Controversy. “Shonen Jump+’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief Yuta Momiyama tweeted out a link to the company’s new AI tool Comic-Copilot (or Comicopa for short), which is intended to help mangaka with simple tasks like refining dialogue and creating character names. Mangakas can ask the AI a question or give it a request and Comicopa will attempt to help them the best it can. The website stresses that the tool is meant to be used as an aid for mangakas and not their replacement and as of now this certainly rings true.”

CNN: Google removes ‘Slavery Simulator’ game from store following a wave of criticism in Brazil. ” A game entitled ‘Slavery Simulator,’ where players can ‘buy and sell’ enslaved Black characters, has been taken down from Google’s app store after widespread criticism from Brazilian social media users.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: The cyber gulag: How Russia tracks, censors and controls its citizens. “Rights advocates say that Russia under President Vladimir Putin has harnessed digital technology to track, censor and control the population, building what some call a ‘cyber gulag’ — a dark reference to the labor camps that held political prisoners in Soviet times. It’s new territory, even for a nation with a long history of spying on its citizens.”

The Hacker News: Severe Flaw in Google Cloud’s Cloud SQL Service Exposed Confidential Data. “A new security flaw has been disclosed in the Google Cloud Platform’s (GCP) Cloud SQL service that could be potentially exploited to obtain access to confidential data.”

NPR: TikTok sues Montana over its new law banning the app. “TikTok has filed a federal lawsuit against Montana after the state passed a law last week intended to ban the app from being downloaded within its borders. The widely expected lawsuit argues that banning a hugely popular social media app amounts to an illegal suppression of free speech tantamount to censorship.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Columbia Journalism Review: How the media is covering ChatGPT. “In order to better understand how ChatGPT is being covered by newsrooms, we interviewed a variety of academics and journalists on how the media has been framing coverage of generative AI chatbots. We also pulled data on the volume of coverage in online news using the Media Cloud database and on TV news using data from the Internet TV News Archive, which we acquired via The GDELT Project’s API, in order to get a sketch of the coverage so far.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 27, 2023 at 01:44AM
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Find TV Stations By City/State and Google Search Them: Marion’s Monocle v2

Find TV Stations By City/State and Google Search Them: Marion’s Monocle v2
By ResearchBuzz

I have mentioned before the idea of “persistent metadata,” metadata about physical objects that is always available and always applicable. The two types of persistent metadata I use the most in building my Search Gizmos are time and location.

The ability to narrow down what you’re searching by a date or place with contextual meaning is a powerful tool. It gives you a non-keyword-based way to focus your results (so important when searching unstructured data!) and adds a contextual boundary to hopefully make your results richer and more relevant. But we can make it still better by adding an additional search filter: an authoritative source. Let me give you an example.

I learned today that the Federal Communications Commission has an API for its Public Inspection File. This database contains information about the television and radio station licenses issued by the FCC. You can search that database by keyword, whether that’s a station name or location. The results you get back from the searches include information about the station’s owners, call sign, location, and website.

In other words, the FCC has a database of Web sites for licensed television stations that you can search by location. Looking at it, I thought “Why don’t I apply that data to a Google search?”

So I did. I made a Gizmo, Marion’s Monocle 2, that lets you specify a state, get a list of FCC-licensed television stations in that state (grouped by city), choose up to 10 of them, and create a query to explore those stations’ Web space on Google via the site: syntax. You can then add keywords to the initial query to run a more specific search or just browse to see what Google is indexing from those particular sources. In addition, you can search Google News to see if any articles by that station have been indexed by Google in the last 24 hours.

For a long time I have wanted a way to search news sources relevant to a location that I KNEW were relevant to a location, not whatever some black hat SEO person had managed to convince Google was relevant. Restricting my search to only those resources licensed by the FCC seems like a pretty tight way to do that.

May 26, 2023 at 09:36PM
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Superspreaders of Low-Credibility Information, Mapping Telegraph Technology, Twitter, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2023

Superspreaders of Low-Credibility Information, Mapping Telegraph Technology, Twitter, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Indiana University: Top FIBers dashboard tracks superspreaders of low-credibility information online. “With the goal of tracking superspreaders that are disseminating large quantities of low-credibility content, Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media, or OSoMe, has launched a new tool: the Top FIBers dashboard. This dashboard provides monthly reports highlighting the top 10 superspreaders of low-credibility information on social media.”

Carnegie Mellon University: Digital Map Provides Interactive Lesson on Telegraph History. “Before Andrew Carnegie became the industrialist he’s remembered as today, he worked for an early telegraph company in Pittsburgh as a messenger boy. When the first telegraph office opened in Pittsburgh, it was the westernmost telegraph office in North America, as shown by a new digital map created by [Professor] Edmund Russell.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BBC: Twitter engineering boss Foad Dabiri quits day after DeSantis launch glitches. “An engineering chief at Twitter says he is leaving the company a day after the launch of Ron DeSantis’ US presidential campaign on the platform was hit with technical glitches. Foad Dabiri tweeted: ‘After almost four incredible years at Twitter, I decided to leave the nest yesterday.'” This man had an impossible task given the resources available.

Android Police: Google shoves more ads into the Play Store, to no one’s surprise. “The banners themselves are wider, so you’ll see two per row, but you’re getting two rows, so you’re actually seeing more ads — four of them, to be more precise — on your screen. And yet again, you can scroll through them to see more.” *Altavista-ing intensifies*

TechCrunch: Twitter introduces a new $5,000-per-month API tier. “Twitter announced a new API tier today called Twitter API Pro for startups that costs $5,000 per month. The tier gives developers the ability to fetch 1 million tweets per month and post 300,000 tweets per month, and gives them access to the full archive search endpoint.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Start-Ups Bring Silicon Valley Ethos to a Lumbering Military-Industrial Complex. “Small, fast-moving U.S. tech firms are using the war in Ukraine to demonstrate a new generation of military systems but face the challenge of selling them to a risk-averse Defense Department.”

Castanet: Google Maps sending drivers on unpassable route to Sun Peaks. “Police have been called twice this month by drivers who followed bad directions into the mountains east of Sun Peaks. Chase RCMP say they were called at 9:30 p.m. on May 13 to help a stranded motorist who had called 911. The caller had been following Google Maps directions to Sun Peaks and ended up lost in the dark near Cahilty Forest Service Road in Adams Lake.”

BBC: Venezuela: ‘I’m paid to tweet state propaganda’. “Every day, Venezuela’s ministry of communications tweets a ‘hashtag of the day’, which is repeated not only by elected officials’ accounts and state sympathisers but also by ‘digital troops’ like Rafael, who are paid to share propaganda.’

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBS: Senators issued satellite phones, offered demonstrations on upgraded security devices. “Amid growing concerns of security risks to members of Congress, over 50 senators have been issued satellite phones for emergency communication, people familiar with the measures told CBS News. The devices are part of a series of new security measures being offered to senators by the Senate Sergeant at Arms, who took over shortly after the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

The Guardian: Twitter accused of responding ‘to tyrants quickly’ but ignoring Australian government. “Julie Inman Grant tells Senate estimates Twitter’s slowness to tackle online child abuse material is in contrast to its blocking of anti-Erdoğan tweets in the lead-up to the Turkish election.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Galleries West: New Equipment Developed by Edward Burtynsky to Scan Major Photo Collection. “The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University will digitize 25,000 press photographs of Canadian events, speeding the normally laborious work with an innovative machine developed by Toronto photographer Edward Burtynsky.”

Drexel University: Q+A: How Can Artificial Intelligence Help Doctors Compare Notes To Improve Diagnoses? . “Spotting patterns among patient records can allow physicians to better diagnose and treat their patients. With access to more records, and more time to parse them, it’s possible that these health care providers could identify and provide better treatments for conditions that have been particularly elusive to diagnoses. Recent developments in artificial intelligence and natural language processing programs are making it possible to glean information from volumes of electronic health records — giving doctors an important new tool to help patients.” Good morning, Internet…

May 26, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Thursday, May 25, 2023

WHO Open Data, The Browser Company, Zoonotic Disease Nevada, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2023

WHO Open Data, The Browser Company, Zoonotic Disease Nevada, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

World Health Organization: WHO releases data.who.int. “Data.who.int provides open access to WHO’s health data through a harmonized, consolidated and seamless experience. Starting with the data underlying WHO’s annual World Health Statistics report, the new website reimagines the indicator page – the most representative level of data presentation – with consistent, expressive and accessible visualization, while also presenting metadata to promote ease of accessibility, reference and use.”

TechCrunch: Arc browser’s new tool lets you remove some elements from a website. “The Browser Company, the company behind the web browser Arc, introduced a fun new tool today called Boosts. It lets you customize a website with new colors and fonts. But the best feature of this tool is that you can ‘Zap’ (read: remove) any element from a website like a sidebar or a trending topic box.”

KOLO (Nevada): Nevada launches website for kids to learn about zoonotic diseases. “One Health Nevada is an interactive website for kids to learn about how diseases spread between animals and humans and what people can do to keep themselves and animals healthy. The site is geared towards kids involved in 4-H, or those who own pets, livestock, enjoy hunting, fishing or being outdoors. They can also find health tips, activities and educational resources.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Hindu: Snowflake buys ex-Google executives built search engine Neeva . “Snowflake, a cloud data management firm, has purchased ex-Google executives built ad-free search engine Neeva for an undisclosed sum. The details of the transaction have not been spelled out, but the acquisition could give the cloud data management firm a lift as it aims to becomes an AI company.”

USEFUL STUFF

New York Times: To Mute or Unfollow? Experts’ Tips for a Mindful Approach to Social Media. “You don’t have to quit Instagram and TikTok cold turkey. Use these strategies — some practical, some more philosophical — to be online in a healthier or less harmful way.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Sky News: Sunak and Google CEO to meet for talks on AI threats. “Rishi Sunak and Sundar Pichai will meet on Friday for talks amid an intensifying debate about the threats and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence, Sky News learns.”

NARA: National Archives Awards $6.5 Million in Grants for Historical Records Projects . “Grants went to 17 edition projects to publish the papers of key American figures such as Frederick Douglass and Jane Addams, as well as cross-cutting projects such as the Chinese American WWII Veterans Online Resource and Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: An Android app started secretly recording users almost a year after it was listed on Google Play. “An Android recording app called iRecorder Screen Recorder began as an innocent screen recording app but turned evil nearly a year after it was first released, as detailed by Ars Technica. The app first came out in September 2021, but after an update the following August, it began recording a minute of audio every 15 minutes and forwarding those recordings, through an encrypted link, to the developer’s server.”

Moscow Times: Putin Signs Off on Sanctioned Tycoons’ Shared Yandex Stake – Reports. “President Vladimir Putin has agreed on the sale of a majority stake in the Russian side of splintered tech giant Yandex to three sanctioned billionaires and the state-owned VTB Bank, the news websites The Bell and Meduza reported Sunday, citing four unnamed sources close to the company.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Scripps Research: Scripps Research develops behind-the-scenes tool for better biomedical data discovery. “This new tool, called the Data Discovery Engine (DDE) Schema Playground, was described in a paper that published in BMC Bioinformatics on April 20, 2023. The DDE Schema Playground is a browser-based resource that empowers scientists to make their data more findable and accessible on the web, which has been a significant barrier in the past.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 26, 2023 at 12:47AM
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KinBank, ChatGPT Prompt Engineering, Merlin Bird ID App, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2023

KinBank, ChatGPT Prompt Engineering, Merlin Bird ID App, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Phys .org: Database stores names for family members in 1,200+ languages. “Fiona Jordan, professor of anthropology from the University of Bristol, has been working with colleagues from Australia, Finland, and Brazil to develop KinBank—a catalog of more than 1,200 languages and their words for family members—known as kinship terminology. It features more than 210,000 kinship terms ranging from cousins to great-grandparents.”

Vanderbilt University: Vanderbilt launches free online ChatGPT course, shaping the future of AI education. “Jules White, associate dean for strategic learning programs and associate professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University, is making ChatGPT more accessible and useful for the broader public with the launch of his free online Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT course on the Coursera platform.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Cornell Chronicle: Merlin milestone: App now helps ID birds worldwide. “The free Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology just hit a major milestone: The digital field guide and ID assistant can now help users identify birds in any country – a grand total of 10,315 species.”

Yahoo Sports: Shaquille O’Neal finally served in FTX lawsuit while covering Celtics-Heat in Miami . “O’Neal, who has been apparently ‘dodging’ lawyers representing FTX investors for months, was finally served a complaint Tuesday that’s part of a proposed class-action lawsuit filed against the failed cryptocurrency company, Adam Moskowitz, a lawyer representing the FTX investors, confirmed to People.”

Bloomberg: Microsoft to Add Bing Search to OpenAI’s ChatGPT in Battle With Google. “Microsoft Corp. is bringing its Bing search engine to OpenAI Inc.’s ChatGPT, further tightening ties with the artificial intelligence startup in a bid to challenge Google.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NPR: Ron DeSantis debuts presidential bid in a glitch-ridden Twitter ‘disaster’. “It was supposed to be a historic moment for Twitter: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would smoothly kick off his presidential candidacy on the social media platform. An uninterrupted conversation between DeSantis and Twitter CEO Elon Musk would be live-streamed on Twitter Spaces to mark the event. But instead, the live audio event was beset with technical malfunctions. After some 20 minutes of crashing and echoing and chaos, it abruptly ended.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: EU, Google to develop voluntary AI pact ahead of new AI rules, EU’s Breton says. “Alphabet and the European Commission aim to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) pact involving European and non-European companies before rules are established to govern the technology, EU industry chief Thierry Breton said on Wednesday.”

Dutch News: Dutch consumers group plans privacy case against Google. “Dutch consumers lobby group Consumentenbond said on Tuesday it is preparing a mass claim against Google for infringing the privacy of users. The watchdog claims that the American tech company is collecting a large amount of sensitive information about users, much of which consumers are unaware of.”

Omaha World-Herald: Bill passes to create video archive of Nebraska legislative activity. “Legislative Bill 254, introduced by State Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon, passed on a 48-0 vote. The measure would require the creation of a digital archive of video coverage of legislative debate and public hearings starting with the 2025 session.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Scientific American: People, Not Google’s Algorithm, Create Their Own Partisan ‘Bubbles’ Online. “A study published today in Nature found that Google’s search engine does not return disproportionately partisan results. Instead politically polarized Google users tend to silo themselves by clicking on links to partisan news sites. These findings suggest that, at least when it comes to Google searches, it may be easier for people to escape online echo chambers than previously thought—but only if they choose to do so.”

The Verge: A Google DeepMind AI language model is now making descriptions for YouTube Shorts. “Google just combined DeepMind and Google Brain into one big AI team, and on Wednesday, the new Google DeepMind shared details on how one of its visual language models (VLM) is being used to generate descriptions for YouTube Shorts, which can help with discoverability.”

The Packer: Survey measures impact of rising costs, stress, social media on food choices. “The survey showed 4 in 10 Americans (42%) said they have come across social media content about food and nutrition in the past year. Predictably, exposure to this content is inversely proportional with age, with Gen Z (71%) and millennials (58%) reporting the highest exposure, as compared to older generations, the survey said. Two-thirds said they trust that information at least a little (46%) or a lot (21%), the survey found.” Good morning, Internet…

May 25, 2023 at 05:29PM
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Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Jean Sibelius, Equitable Biking Access, Opioid Response Planning, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, May 24, 2023

Jean Sibelius, Equitable Biking Access, Opioid Response Planning, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, May 24, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National Library of Finland: The new website of the Jean Sibelius Works project. “The renewed trilingual website of the complete critical edition of Jean Sibelius’s works (JSW) contains information about this large-scale collaborative project involving the National Library, the Sibelius Society, and the German publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel, its activities and publications.”

People for Bikes: A New Tool for Equitable Bike Planning. “This interactive web application helps identify historically underserved communities based on a variety of factors…The tool also assesses climate, disaster, and environmental burdens, providing decision-makers with the necessary information to construct resilient bike infrastructure in the face of climate change and natural disasters.”

PR Newswire: New Tool Aims to Help Local Leaders Curb Opioid Crisis at Community Level (PRESS RELEASE). “The tool provides geographic-specific information on the potential need for opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment and recovery services and the locality’s capacity to meet that demand.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

AFP: Climate scientists flee Twitter as hostility surges. “Scientists suffering insults and mass-spam are abandoning Twitter for alternative social networks as hostile climate-change denialism surges on the platform following Elon Musk’s takeover.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

PetaPixel: Photographer Creates Lifelike Social Media Influencer Using Only AI. “A photographer whose work has transitioned to being ‘80% AI’ has generated a lifelike social media influencer using artificial intelligence (AI). Antti Karppinen did not use his camera at all during his latest project for Finnish energy giant Helen where he created a children’s character called Ellen.”

News24: Unknown individual renames Eskom HQ as ‘MegaGravy Train Park’ on Google Maps . “Eskom’s famous headquarters, Megawatt Park in Sunninghill, Johannesburg, has been renamed Eskom MegaGravy Train Park on Google Maps. The renaming of the headquarters by an unknown individual pokes fun at the embattled power utility.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

FTC: Scammers are hijacking job ads. Here’s how to spot the fakes. “Scammers are taking outdated ads from real employers, changing them, and posting them on employment websites and career-oriented platforms like Indeed or LinkedIn. The modified ads seem to be real job offers with legitimate companies. They’re not. In fact, their goal is to trick you into sharing personal information. So how do you know if you’re dealing with a scammer?”

Bleeping Computer: Google launches bug bounty program for its Android applications. “Google has launched the Mobile Vulnerability Rewards Program (Mobile VRP), a new bug bounty program that will pay security researchers for flaws found in the company’s Android applications.”

Search Engine Journal: Vulnerability in WordPress Google Analytics Plugin Hits +3 Million Websites. “The National Vulnerability Database announced that a popular Google Analytics WordPress plugin installed in over 3 million was discovered to contain a Stored Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford University: Assessing Political Bias in Language Models. “…new research from Stanford University has quantified exactly how well (or, actually, how poorly) [Large Language Models] align with opinions of U.S. demographic groups, showing that language models have a decided bias on hot-button topics that may be out of step with general popular sentiment.”

Medical XPress: AI tool outperforms human emergency call handlers in identifying stroke, new study shows. “A team of researchers from Denmark has developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) framework to address the number of strokes that go unrecognized by human emergency call handlers. The framework outperformed emergency call handlers in recognizing stroke for both sexes and across all age groups studied, indicating its potential as a supplementary tool for early and precise stroke identification in the future.”

STAT News: Social media risks for youth mental health highlighted in new surgeon general report. “Amid what he called the worst youth mental health crisis in recent memory, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory Tuesday warning about social media’s impact on developing young brains.” Good morning, Internet…

May 24, 2023 at 05:29PM
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Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Prompt Engineering, Malta Ship Graffiti, Flipboard, More: Tuesday Evening ResearchBuzz, May 23, 2023

Prompt Engineering, Malta Ship Graffiti, Flipboard, More: Tuesday Evening ResearchBuzz, May 23, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

TNW: OpenAI is offering a free class in prompt engineering for devs. “As with all skills, prompt engineering takes practice. And, seeing how quickly this technology has come into mainstream use, experts are few and far between. But one AI company is offering free training right now. A short course in prompt engineering has been developed in partnership with OpenAI and is available via the DeepLearning.AI website.”

Times of Malta: Heritage Malta launches website on historic ship graffiti. “The platform serves both as a digital archive and an educational resource, providing enthusiasts, historians, and the public with an unprecedented opportunity to explore and understand the graffiti. The site houses a vast collection of images, in-depth descriptions, and historical context for various ship graffiti discovered in Malta and Gozo.” This is graffiti OF ships, not graffiti ON ships.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Flipboard becomes first app to support Bluesky, Mastodon and Pixelfed all in one place. “Social magazine app Flipboard is continuing its investment in the federated social web with today’s news that it’s integrating with decentralized social networks Bluesky and Pixelfed.”

Engadget: LinkedIn starts rolling out new verification and anti-scam features. “After previewing new verification features last month, LinkedIn is now rolling them out to give job-seekers confidence that they’re dealing with real companies and jobs. At the same time, the work-oriented social media site has introduced warnings for messages that may look like scams. The latter feature arrives amidst a spate of fake accounts on the site, according to LinkedIn’s latest transparency report.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WCMH: Ohio farmer known for ‘It ain’t much, but it’s honest work’ meme dies at 76. “An Ohio farmer known by many through a meme has died, but not without leaving behind a legacy in the agricultural world alongside his internet fame.” Read about this guy, he was all about soil science and no-till agriculture.

MIT Technology Review: How to preserve your digital memories. “I recently published a short story about new policies recently announced by Google and Twitter that allow the companies to remove inactive accounts. Google said the decision was based on security concerns, and experts I spoke with said that these sorts of policies are likely to become the norm. It got me thinking about my own email records, and the systems that we have—or, more precisely, don’t have—for preserving our digital lives.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Comedian Uncle Roger silenced on Chinese social media after jokes about China. “A Malaysian comedian better known for mocking attempts by Western chefs at Asian cooking has had his Chinese social media account suspended after making jokes about China. Nigel Ng, who uses the name Uncle Roger, is the latest comedian to feel the consequences of jokes that could be perceived as reflecting negatively on China under increasingly intense censorship and rising nationalism.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: Social media dependency is linked to a reduced preference for freedom, study finds. “Social media dependency is associated with a reduced preference for freedom, according to new research published in Psychological Reports. The study suggests that people who are heavily dependent on social media may use it as a way to escape from the uncertainties and challenges of the real world.”

Mirage News: Survey: 7 in 10 Parents Say Social Media Image Editing Apps Negatively Affect Children’s Body Image. “According to a new national survey conducted online by The Harris Poll on behalf of The On Our Sleeves Movement For Children’s Mental Health, 69% of parents of children younger than 18 think social media image editing apps and filters have a negative influence on their child(ren)’s body image.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Slashgear: This Awesome Raspberry Pi Project Can Track The International Space Station . “Around the web, there are various tools that allow users to track the International Space Station’s orbit. The European Space Agency, for instance, shows the station’s approximate location, as well as where it was 90 minutes back and where it will be an hour and a half in the future. An enterprising Raspberry Pi user, however, has been able to emulate the effect of this high-tech software using a humble ePaper display and some Python coding.” Good evening, Internet…

May 24, 2023 at 05:01AM
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Police Use of Force Legislation, Organ Donation Data Dashboard, Moog Synthesizers, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 23, 2023

Police Use of Force Legislation, Organ Donation Data Dashboard, Moog Synthesizers, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 23, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Duke University: Wilson Center Creates Database to Track Police Use of Force Legislation. “In the first year following [George] Floyd’s death, 1,489 bills relating to police violence were proposed. However, only 169 became law. That is just one of the findings in a database created by the Wilson Center for Science and Justice to better understand lawmaking in response to calls for reform.”

US Department of Health and Human Services: HRSA Announces Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Modernization Initiative. “Today, HRSA is posting on its web site at Organ Donation and Transplantation (hrsa.gov) a new data dashboard to share de-identified information on organ donors, organ procurement, transplant waitlists, and transplant recipients.”

Engadget: Moog celebrates 70th anniversary with musical web app. “It’s hard to believe, but iconic synth manufacturer Moog is turning 70. Synthesizers didn’t become mainstays in popular music until the 1970s, but Bob Moog started manufacturing and selling theremins in 1953, with actual synths following in 1963. To celebrate the anniversary, the company launched a web app filled with interactive experiences for music historians and casual fans alike.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: Google’s Photo App Still Can’t Find Gorillas. And Neither Can Apple’s.. “Google’s and Apple’s tools were clearly the most sophisticated when it came to image analysis. Yet Google, whose Android software underpins most of the world’s smartphones, has made the decision to turn off the ability to visually search for primates for fear of making an offensive mistake and labeling a person as an animal. And Apple, with technology that performed similarly to Google’s in our test, appeared to disable the ability to look for monkeys and apes as well.”

Dazed: Grimes calls song made by AI-cloning her voice a ‘masterpiece’. “Last month, Grimes urged fans to create songs using her AI-generated voice through her new website Elf.Tech, where anyone can upload themselves singing and have their voice generated in the style of the artist, free of charge. Now, an LA-based artist called Kito has released a new track ‘Cold Touch’ using the software – and, according to Grimes, it’s a ‘masterpiece’.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Keen Gamer: The Art Of Abandonware Preservation. “Despite video gaming’s relative youth compared to other media, many games have already been lost to time. Around the world, archivists have been striving to record and preserve such abandonware and return it to the players. We spoke with some of the people involved to find out just what it takes to save a lost game and why such archives are so important.”

The Verge: A Twitter bug is restoring deleted tweets and retweets — including my own. “Earlier this year on the 8th of May I deleted all my tweets, just under 5,000 of them. I know the exact day because I tweeted about it. This morning, though, I discovered that Twitter has restored a handful of my old re-tweets; interactions I know I scrubbed from my profile. Those re-tweets were gone. I remember surveying my bare timeline with satisfaction before thinking, ‘great, time to draw attention to myself.’ But now they’re back.”

BBC: Weapons expert cut from government event due to Twitter posts. “A global expert on nerve agents, stood down from speaking at a government-backed conference, says he believes it is because he is outspoken on a range of issues including asylum policy. Dan Kaszeta was disinvited from Tuesday’s conference after his social media content was vetted.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Motherboard: Verified Twitter Accounts Spread AI-Generated Hoax of Pentagon Explosion. “Accounts such as @WarMonitors, @BloombergFeed, and RT posted an image of a large, gray smoke cloud appearing next to a white government building with a corresponding caption that stated there was an explosion near the Pentagon. Bellingcat journalist Nick Waters tweeted that there are a few signs that make it an AI image, including that the fence melds into the crowd barriers on the image and there are no other images or videos being posted on social media.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Tom’s Guide: Forget Photoshop — AI imaging tool lets you edit photos with no experience. “Photo editing could become the next area conquered by AI thanks to an exciting new tool unveiled by a group of researchers from Google. Working with the Max Planck Institute of Informatics, they have created a point-based image manipulation tool called DragGAN. Essentially, it’s able to incrementally move multiple points of an image along a target trajectory defined by the user. The really clever part is AI keeps the output within the bounds of a realistic-looking image.” The first time I saw this I didn’t think it was real.

Stanford University: Is That Self-Driving Car a Boy or a Girl?. “In her latest researchopen in new window, conducted with Malia Masonopen in new window of Columbia University, [Professor Ashley] Martin looks at how people respond when real or imagined products are assigned a gender — or no gender. One of their studies analyzed Amazon.com reviews to see how shoppers reacted to the anthropomorphizing and gendering of robotic vacuums.”

University of Arizona: Would you trust an AI doctor? New research shows patients are split. “A University of Arizona Health Sciences-led study found that more than 50% of people don’t fully trust AI-powered medical advice, but many put faith in AI if it’s monitored and guided by human touch.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 24, 2023 at 01:43AM
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