ecolo-zip Database, Building Energy Usage, ChatGPT, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 31, 2023

ecolo-zip Database, Building Energy Usage, ChatGPT, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 31, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

HPC Wire: KL Krems Launches ecolo-zip Database, Mapping Terrain, Vegetation, and Climate Precisely. “ecolo-zip, a globally unique database offering intricate details on terrain formations, vegetation, and climate conditions across 1.5 million locations in 94 countries and regions, has been successfully developed and released.”

EPA: EPA Launches Online Tool Providing Energy Use Data and Insights from ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager®. “Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing the launch of a web-based tool that enables users to explore aggregate energy use data from more than 150,000 commercial and multi-family buildings in the United States.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: New Version Of ChatGPT Gives Access To All GPT-4 Tools At Once. “OpenAI plans to unveil a new way to use multimodal GPT-4 with access to All Tools without switching and more document analysis capabilities. Screenshots shared by numerous ChatGPT Plus users on X show new capabilities for PDF and document analysis and an ‘All Tools’ feature. All Tools gives users access to all GPT-4 features without having to switch between one over the other.”

TechCrunch: X to take on newswire services with new product, XWire. “As Instagram Threads is leaning away from news, according to statements made by Instagram head Adam Mosseri, its competitor X appears to be doubling down. Executives at the company formerly known as Twitter spoke during yesterday’s all-hands internal meeting of their desire to create a new wire service called XWire, according to Bloomberg. The product would rival existing services for press releases, like Cision’s PR Newswire.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Denver Post: The Denver Art Museum has been quietly removing plundered artworks from its website without explanation. “For years, the Denver museum has carefully curated which repatriations and deaccessions — pieces removed from its collection — it chooses to publicly announce, a practice that goes against industry recommendations. Unlike some other institutions, it’s impossible in Denver to see which pieces, and how many, the museum has returned after foreign governments or U.S. authorities provided evidence that they were stolen or illegally trafficked.”

The Scotsman: Opening up ‘treasure trove’ archives of Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and George Mackay Brown. “Kept for decades in cardboard boxes and disintegrating plastic bags, they are a treasure trove of diaries, drafts, doodles, pocketbook, lists and letters offering invaluable insights into the minds of three of Scotland’s leading writers of modern times…. Now a major appeal is underway to help open up public access to the personal archives kept by Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and George Mackay Brown.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Stateline: Politicians love to cite crime data. It’s often wrong.. “Across the country, law enforcement agencies’ inability — or refusal — to send their annual crime data to the FBI has resulted in a distorted picture of the United States’ crime trends, according to a new Stateline analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program participation data.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Register: Boffins find AI stumbles when quizzed on the tough stuff . “…to better assess how large language models – which interpret text input – and large multimodal models – which interpret text, images and perhaps other forms of input – actually handle problem solving, a group of ten researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Washington, and Microsoft Research have devised a testing benchmark called MathVista that focuses on visually-oriented challenges.”

NOAA: NOAA uses artificial intelligence to translate forecasts, warnings into Spanish and Chinese. “Through a series of pilot projects over the past few years, NWS forecasters have been training artificial intelligence (AI) software for weather, water and climate terminology in Spanish and Simplified Chinese, the most common languages in the United States after English. NWS will add Samoan and Vietnamese next, and more languages in the future.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: A Paper Printer For Q Code Menus. “Do you miss the days of thumbing through a sticky, laminated booklet to order your food? Sick of restaurants and their frustrating electronic menus? Fear not, for [Guy Dupont] and his QR code menu printer are here to save the day.” I don’t miss sticky menus, but I really do not like scanning unknown QR codes with my phone. 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 live at Calishat.

November 1, 2023 at 12:49AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/FyjU3OX

Supporting Lewiston Maine, Ukraine History, Internet History, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, October 31, 2023

Supporting Lewiston Maine, Ukraine History, Internet History, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, October 31, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

State of Maine: Governor Mills Launches “Healing Together” Online Resource to Help Support to Lewiston Victims and Families. “The website, available at https://www.maine.gov/governor/mills/lewiston also identifies mental health resources from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services to support anyone affected by the violence in Lewiston who may be struggling. The website lists community funds established by the Maine Community Foundation, the L-A Metro Chamber, the United Way of Androscoggin County, and Central Maine Medical Center that will deliver financial supports to those affected by the shootings, and those organizations involved in the community and heath care response.”

Ukrainska Pravda: Preserving oral history. Digital archive of Holodomor and collectivisation of Ukrainian SSR created. “The project called Oral history of Ukrainian peasant culture of 1920-1930 has been released on the platform of Great Transformations archives. It tells the audience about the impact of collectivisation on the lives of Ukrainians – in particular, about the consequences of the Holodomor of the 1930s and changes in the cultural sphere through participants’ eyes in these events.”

Laughing Squid: An Online Museum of Pivotal Early Internet Artifacts. “Neal Agarwal of Neal.fun created a fascinating online museum of early Internet Artifacts that documents the pivotal years of the development of the world wide web as we know it today. It starts out with the revolutionary ARPANET in 1977.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: Vivaldi 6.4 Takes Video Playback and Calendar to the Next Level. “The Vivaldi web browser is already popular and feature-packed. While it has received several updates recently, the latest Vivaldi v6.4 release makes watching and controlling videos easier than ever on desktop (particularly in ‘pop-up’ mode). It also delivers a better calendar experience, among other improvements.”

USEFUL STUFF

Google Blog: Curl up with a spooky Halloween story with Google Books. “Spooky season is upon us, and this time of year there’s nothing better than to curl up with a spine-tingling tome and scare yourself silly. Google Books has the stories, free of charge – all you need to do is find a cozy corner and get reading.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Taipei Times: Task force to combat false reports . “The Mainland Affairs Council has reached out to temples across Taiwan to promote awareness of Chinese misinformation campaigns, after national security agencies reported a ‘high occurrence’ of election disinformation being spread among the religious community, a senior government official said.”

El País : Fitness, butts and Instagram stories: How exercise is sexualized on social media . “A couple of months ago Laura Kummerle tried uploading something different to her Instagram page. She’d been posting fitness routines for several years, so the exercises weren’t entirely new. But the camera shot was different: it focused directly on her butt, sexualizing the entire result. What happened next came as a surprise to no one, except Kummerle herself…. Her post multiplied the views she normally receives; comments and revenue soared as well.”

Colorado Public Radio: New Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library staffers are updating more than exhibits overdue for change. “Since starting the position in July, [Dexter Nelson II] manages and supervises a staff of four, all of whom focus on the museum, gallery, and archives on the second and third floors. He has a few immediate goals recently completed, and a few goals to fill. One completed goal is hiring a new Library Program Associate to create programming specific to the archival collection — which includes audio tapes of Colorado’s first Black surgeon, artwork of the first Black person in Colorado, and hundreds of vinyl records.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Google expands its bug bounty program to target generative AI attacks. “With concerns around generative AI ever-present, Google has announced an expansion of its Vulnerability Rewards Program (VRP) focused on AI-specific attacks and opportunities for malice. As such, the company released updated guidelines detailing which discoveries qualify for rewards and which fall out of scope.”

Radio Free Europe: ‘Cultural Expropriation’: Russia Steps Up Seizures Of Artifacts In Occupied Ukraine. “Late last month, a new exhibition opened at the Tauric Chersonesos museum complex in the Russian-occupied Crimean city of Sevastopol devoted to artifacts recovered at the Stone Age Kamyana Mohyla site in the occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region. At the same time, artifacts from the Tauric Chersonesos preserve are currently on display in the Russian city of Novgorod in an exhibition called Byzantine Gold.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Business School: When Tech Platforms Identify Black-Owned Businesses, White Customers Buy . “The study, coauthored by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Luca, Abhay Aneja at the University of California-Berkeley, and Oren Reshef of Washington University in St. Louis, shows that making it easier to search for Black restaurant owners on Yelp substantially increased their demand, leading to more calls, more delivery orders, as well as more in-person visits—boosting in-store traffic by about 10 percent.”

University of Michigan: New phone case provides workaround for inaccessible touch screens. “A new smartphone case could soon enable folks with visual impairments, tremors and spasms to use touch screens independently. Developed at the University of Michigan, BrushLens could help users perceive, locate and tap buttons and keys on the touch screen menus now ubiquitous in restaurant kiosks, ATM machines and other public terminals.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 31, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/qTwzWHm

Pro Bono Opportunities North Carolina, Library of Congress, New Orleans Musicians, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2023

Pro Bono Opportunities North Carolina, Library of Congress, New Orleans Musicians, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

North Carolina Judicial Branch: Pro Bono Go: North Carolina’s New One-Stop Shop for Pro Bono Opportunities. “Pro Bono Go allows legal professionals to visit one website to find pro bono opportunities from the state’s leading civil justice organizations. Volunteers can search and filter opportunities by keyword, location, practice area, type (ex: cases, clinics, etc.), and sponsor organization. Volunteers can also set up customized email alerts when new opportunities matching their preferences hit the site. Volunteers do not need to create an account and never have to remember a password.”

American Libraries: Programming with Digital Collections. “A new LibGuide from the American Library Association (ALA) was recently created to help libraries explore the thousands of primary sources available from the Library of Congress online collection.”

NOLA: New Orleans & Company launches Musician Database, an online collection of 200 profiles. “NewOrleans.com has rolled out its online Musician Database, a collection of biographical pages on more than 200 local musicians presented in alphabetical order. Each profile page can accommodate a brief biography, photos, a description of the music, links to the act’s web page, social media accounts and performance schedule, and a Spotify playlist.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Your Amazon Alexa IFTTT automations are about to stop working. “The team behind IFTTT (short for ‘if this, then that’) wrote in a blog post that Amazon is cutting the service off from Alexa beginning October 31st. Once the integration is severed, users won’t be able to ask Alexa to trigger IFTTT applets. Certain automations will stick around in the IFTTT app, but some will be archived on November 1st unless you take action.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Mysterious bylines appeared on a USA Today site. Did these writers exist?. “Staffers at Reviewed, a USA Today-owned website devoted to shopping recommendations, were about to end their workday Friday when one of them noticed something strange: Articles were publishing on the site by writers none of them had ever heard of — and using suspiciously similar language.”

NPR: TikTok returns to the campaign trail but not everyone thinks it’s a good idea. “But while some first-time, grassroots candidates only know a political playing field that includes TikTok, uncertainty lingers over the best way for national Democrats to embrace it. Especially when the vast majority of the party isn’t on the platform.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

404 Media: Elon Musk Broke All the Tools Historians Need to Archive Tweets About Israel-Gaza War. “When Elon Musk began requiring people to pay steep fees to access the Twitter API earlier this year, he broke a series of tools used by researchers and archivists that could be used to accurately save tweets with metadata.”

Northeastern Global News: The smart home tech inside your home is less secure than you think, new Northeastern research finds . “Our homes are getting smarter every day. The next time you buy a toaster, fridge or dishwasher, setup might involve connecting to your home WiFi network and downloading an app on your phone. But such interconnectivity comes with risk, says David Choffnes, associate professor of computer sciences at Northeastern University.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: Bitcoin mining has “very worrying” impacts on land and water, not only carbon, UN-led study reveals. “As bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have grown in market share, they’ve been criticized for their heavy carbon footprint: Cryptocurrency mining is an energy-intensive endeavor. Mining has massive water and land footprints as well, according to a new study that is the first to detail country-by-country environmental impacts of bitcoin mining.”

New York Times: Is Social Media Addictive? Here’s What the Science Says.. “Experts who study internet use say that the magnetic allure of social media arises from the way the content plays to our neurological impulses and wiring, such that consumers find it hard to turn away from the incoming stream of information.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 31, 2023 at 12:14AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/SFwub4l

India Cultural Heritage, FOIAonline, Virtual White House Tours, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2023

India Cultural Heritage, FOIAonline, Virtual White House Tours, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from MIT Technology Review: The grassroots push to digitize India’s most precious documents. “The museum building houses the largest reference library for Gandhian philosophy in the state of Karnataka, and over the next year, the large assortment of books—including the collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, a translation of his autobiography, Experiments with Truth, into the Kannada language, and other rare items—will be digitized and their metadata recorded before they join the Servants of Knowledge (SoK) collection on the Internet Archive.”

MuckRock: Here’s why MuckRock and POGO had to archive FOIAonline. “… while the decommissioning of FOIAonline has been in the works for several years, it still remains unclear when the public can expect access to these records to be restored by government agencies, if ever. In the interim, POGO and MuckRock have partnered to host a publicly available archive of nearly 34,000 documents captured before FOIAonline was shuttered.”

ABC News: The White House and Google launch a new virtual tour with audio captions, Spanish translation. “Can’t come to Washington? Couldn’t get a ticket to tour the White House? Don’t worry. The White House, Google Maps and Google Arts & Culture launched a new virtual tour of the famous mansion on Friday, which is also National Civics Day. With a computer or smartphone, users will be able to spend time zooming in on all of the rooms that they would have seen had they been able to go on an in-person tour.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: Firefox 119 Arrives With Updated Firefox View and PDF Viewer. “Mozilla releases a new major Firefox update every four weeks, giving the open-source web browser a steady stream of improvements. Firefox 119 will start rolling out today, complete with an updated Firefox View, an improved PDF viewer, security fixes, and more.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How to Download Videos From X/Twitter. “Although the official X app doesn’t let you download videos, there are some straightforward ways to get the job done, whether you’re on Android, iOS, Mac, or PC.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bloomberg: Google Paid $26 Billion to Be Default Search Engine in 2021. “Google paid $26.3 billion to other companies to ensure its search engine was the default on web browsers and mobile phones, a top company executive testified during the Justice Department’s antitrust trial Friday.”

TechCrunch: AI’s proxy war heats up as Google reportedly backs Anthropic with $2B. “With a massive $2 billion reported investment from Google, Anthropic joins OpenAI in reaping the benefits of leadership in the artificial intelligence space, receiving immense sums from the tech giants that couldn’t move fast enough themselves. A byword for the age: Those who can, build; those who can’t, invest.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Inside Google’s Plan to Stop Apple From Getting Serious About Search. “For years, Google watched with increasing concern as Apple improved its search technology, not knowing whether its longtime partner and sometimes competitor would eventually build its own search engine. Those fears ratcheted up in 2021, when Google paid Apple around $18 billion to keep Google’s search engine the default selection on iPhones, according to two people with knowledge of the partnership, who were not authorized to discuss it publicly.”

Reuters: Google CEO Sundar Pichai to testify Monday in US Google antitrust trial. “Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet and its subsidiary Google, will testify on Monday in the once-in-a generation antitrust fight over Google’s dominance of search and some parts of search advertising.”

KNWA: Blogger Matt Campbell suing Gov. Sanders over documents regarding lectern. “Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is being sued for documentation about the purchase of a $19,000 lectern by blogger Matt Campbell. Campbell’s lawsuit against the governor’s office was filed on October 24. The lawsuit states the governor’s office did not turn over documents related to the purchase of a $19,000 lectern, claiming that is a violation of the state’s FOIA law.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Verge: The poster’s guide to the internet of the future. “The idea is that you, the poster, should post on a website that you own. Not an app that can go away and take all your posts with it, not a platform with ever-shifting rules and algorithms. Your website. But people who want to read or watch or listen to or look at your posts can do that almost anywhere because your content is syndicated to all those platforms.” If you’ve been on the Internet since the early 1990s, this is going to seem very familiar…

North Carolina State University: Helping Companies Understand – and Respond to – Online Misinformation . “When misinformation spreads on social media, there can be real consequences for both companies and the public. A new study offers insight into how consumers respond to these online hoaxes, which companies can use to better respond to these misinformation campaigns.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 30, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/WoO8ea7

Sustainable Food Science, Landslide Alerts, United Nations, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2023

Sustainable Food Science, Landslide Alerts, United Nations, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Confectionery News: New database launched to drive innovation in Sustainable Food Systems. “IFIS Sustainability a cutting-edge, free Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) database that curates the latest scientific research at the intersection of food and sustainability, has launched a new digital tool providing food innovators access to the latest in sustainable food science.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

University of Hawaii News: Landslide alerts, maps focus of new Pacific Disaster Center/NASA tool. “Landslides cause thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damage worldwide every year. Through a partnership with NASA, a robust new tool to identify, track and respond to rainfall triggered landslides is now available to all users of the free Pacific Disaster Center’s (PDC) DisasterAWARE software. PDC is an applied research center managed by the University of Hawaiʻi.”

Kyodo News: New U.N. panel to weigh benefits, risks of artificial intelligence. “U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres launched an advisory body of experts Thursday to discuss the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence as well as how the world can better control it. The group of 39 specialists, including a political analyst and anthropologist, will publish a set of recommendations by the summer of 2024 through an interim report due at the end of this year.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: To Go Viral on TikTok, Do This. “If this story were a TikTok video, the writer would be applying lip gloss right about … now. Unscrewing the cap on a tube of mauve goo and giving it a generous swipe across puckered lips. Mwah! The application of lip gloss in the first few seconds of an online video is a subtle trick that creators and influencers use to grab attention — ideally without viewers’ even realizing why they were moved to stop scrolling.”

BBC: Fidias: YouTuber sorry for freeloading stunt video in Japan. “A popular YouTuber has apologised after a video titled I Travelled Across Japan For Free riled locals. Fidias Panayiotou’s video – which showed him dodging train fares and a five-star hotel breakfast bill, has earned almost half a million views. Some have called for his arrest on social media and rail authorities are considering further action against him.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Jurist: New York high court finds police can search state DNA database for relatives of potential suspects. “The New York Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that the state legislature authorized the Commission on Forensic Sciences to create rules allowing police to search the state’s DNA database to identify family members of potential suspects. Practically, this means New York police officers can resume using the state’s DNA databank for these types of searches.”

The Conversation: Ukraine’s IT army is a world first: here’s why it is an important part of the war. “The IT army has thousands of volunteer members around the world, who use Twitter and Telegram channels to communicate, coordinate and report on actions. Its members have already taken part in a wide variety of attacks. These range from stealing and exposing important information to successfully disrupting Russian communications and other critical networks in order to hinder the Russian war efforts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Yale News: Zooming in on our brains on Zoom . “When Yale neuroscientist Joy Hirsch used sophisticated imaging tools to track in real time the brain activity of two people engaged in conversation, she discovered an intricate choreography of neural activity in areas of the brain that govern social interactions. When she performed similar experiments with two people talking on Zoom, the ubiquitous video conferencing platform, she observed a much different neurological landscape.”

Emory University: Emory establishes state-wide initiative to reduce youth athlete injury using virtual reality technology. “The Emory Sports Performance And Research Center (SPARC) has received a $4.5 million grant from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation to establish the Georgia Initiative for Virtual Reality, Education and Sport (GIVES) program. The school-based program will leverage virtual reality (VR) technology and disseminate scientific discoveries from EMORY SPARC to reduce injury risk in young athletes and improve their game performance.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Space: Declassified spy satellite images reveal 400 Roman Empire forts in the Middle East. “Hundreds of Roman Empire forts popped up in old spy satellite imagery depicting regions of Syria, Iraq and nearby ‘fertile crescent’ territories of the eastern Mediterranean. These satellites were once used for reconnaissance in the 1960s and 1970s, but their data is now declassified. Some of their archived images are now allowing for fresh archaeology finds in Earth zones often difficult for researchers to visit.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 30, 2023 at 12:44AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/TutgIY3

Solar Mirror Research, The Digital Florentine Codex, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2023

Solar Mirror Research, The Digital Florentine Codex, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NREL: News Release: New Database Shines Spotlight on Decades of Solar Mirror Research. “The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is preparing to unveil a database containing the results of exposure experiments on solar reflectors conducted over more than four decades. The publicly available Solar Mirror Materials Database (SMMD) will contain information from thousands of solar mirror samples from more than a hundred suppliers that have been subjected to outdoor tests and laboratory environments.”

Getty: A Rare 500-Year-Old Manuscript Gets a Second Life Online. “The Florentine Codex… is a 16th-century manuscript that details, in both the Spanish and Nahuatl languages, the culture and history of the Mexica (Aztec) people, including the invasion of Mexico City by the Spaniards and their Indigenous allies. The Digital Florentine Codex reveals the manuscript’s contents by providing access to new and previously published Nahuatl and Spanish language transcriptions, English and Spanish translations, as well as easily searchable texts and images.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: Twitter takeover: 1 year later, X struggles with misinformation, usage decline. “X looks and feels something like Twitter, but the more time you spend on it the clearer it becomes that it’s merely an approximation. Musk has dismantled core features of what made Twitter, Twitter — its name and blue bird logo, its verification system, its Trust and Safety advisory group. Not to mention content moderation and hate speech enforcement. He also fired, laid off or lost the majority of its workforce — engineers who keep the site running, moderators who keep it from being overrun with hate, executives in charge of making rules and enforcing them.”

Search Engine Journal: Google Introduces AR Beauty Ads, Promote Products With Virtual Try-On. “Google has launched a new advertising product called AR Beauty Ads, which allows beauty brands to promote their products using augmented reality (AR) technology. The interactive ads feature virtual try-on capabilities that aim to showcase items in a more engaging way.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

KUSA: Descendants rethink ethnic identity after historians uncover indigenous slave names. “[Native Bound Unbound] brings a new team of historians together who search old documents, like baptismal and census records, to identify and catalog thousands of names of forgotten indigenous slaves in the Western Hemisphere. … The goal is to eventually publish an open-source website where people can read stories and find names of their enslaved indigenous ancestors.”

Rowan University: Global impact: Alumna’s gift to preserve history, legacy of Operation Uganda. “[Betty Bowe Castor’s] gift will support the establishment of the Operation Uganda Digital Collection & Exhibit, an online archive containing historic records that will showcase the educational legacy of Operation Uganda and its important role in teaching the South Jersey region about Africa.”

Reuters: Google to run internet cables to Pacific islands in Australia-US deal. “Alphabet’s Google will run undersea cables powering internet access to at least eight far-flung Pacific Ocean nations under a joint U.S.-Australian deal set to be announced on Wednesday, according to a U.S. official.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Governing: States Act, but Can Legislation Slow AI-Generated Election Disinformation?. “Artificial intelligence (AI) is hardly the first breakthrough technology released into society before its impact was understood. We still have a lot to learn about human-made chemicals that have made their way into air, soil, water, food and our bodies since the 1950s. But a contentious election season is just ahead, and policymakers have to do their best to contain a force that could make things even more volatile.”

Ars Technica: Pro-Russia hackers target inboxes with 0-day in webmail app used by millions. “A relentless team of pro-Russia hackers has been exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in widely used webmail software in attacks targeting governmental entities and a think tank, all in Europe, researchers from security firm ESET said on Wednesday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ohio State News: ‘Dim-witted’ pigeons use the same principles as AI to solve tasks. “A new study provides evidence that pigeons tackle some problems just as artificial intelligence would – allowing them to solve difficult tasks that would vex humans. Previous research had shown pigeons learned how to solve complex categorization tasks that human ways of thinking – like selective attention and explicit rule use – would not be useful in solving.”

Texas A&M: Developing deep learning technologies for medical image classification. “Dr. Tianbao Yang, associate professor for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, recently received more than $1 million from the National Science Foundation to develop deep learning technologies for medical image classification by leveraging both the images and associated free-text reports of patients for self-supervised learning.”

Cornell Chronicle: Robot stand-in mimics your movements in VR. “Researchers from Cornell and Brown University have developed a souped-up telepresence robot that responds automatically and in real-time to a remote user’s movements and gestures made in virtual reality.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 29, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/rcLDs1R

WRAL Archives, INsights on Food SystEm Risks Framework, TikTok, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2023

WRAL Archives, INsights on Food SystEm Risks Framework, TikTok, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WRAL: WRAL announces public preview of AI-powered archives platform. “WRAL Archives uses state-of-the-art artificial intelligence to automatically extract metadata from media assets, including facial sentiment, audio transcription, logo identification, subject demographics, object identification, weather conditions and much more.”

ESCAP: New index reveals increasing risk in food systems across countries in Asia and the Pacific. “ESCAP and the WFP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific are launching the INsights on Food SystEm Risks (INFER) Framework, a data-driven approach for assessing multidimensional risks to food systems. INFER integrates up-to-date understanding of food systems with well-established concepts of risk based on three dimensions: hazard and exposure, vulnerability, and lack of adaptive capacity.”

EVENTS

Engadget: TikTok’s first live ‘global music event’ will feature Cardi B and Charlie Puth. “Dubbed as the platform’s first ‘live global music event,’ TikTok In The Mix will take place in Mesa, Arizona on December 10. The headliners are Cardi B, Niall Horan, Anitta and Charlie Puth, all of whom are popular figures on TikTok. The service says there will be surprise guests and performances by emerging artists, some of whom are involved in the TikTok Elevate program for up and coming musicians.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PetaPixel: Google’s New Image Verification Tool Can Help Spot AI Fakes. “Google’s ‘About This Image’ tool, announced last May during Google I/O, combs an image’s metadata to find context and identify if it’s an AI fake or not. The tool is now rolling out as part of Google’s updated search tools.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

MIT Technology Review: This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI. “The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to ‘poison’ this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, by rendering some of their outputs useless—dogs become cats, cars become cows, and so forth.”

TechCrunch: Google is actively looking to insert different types of ads in its generative AI search. “Google confirmed on its earnings call that it is working on different ad formats for its generative AI-powered search experience — Google shared some ideas earlier this year and the mention in the earnings call could indicate that a rollout could happen sooner rather than later.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Even Google CEO Sundar Pichai doesn’t understand Google’s privacy controls. “Like a lot of Google court cases, this case has most of the records sealed so that embarrassing comments and testimony about the reality of Google’s business don’t reach the public. The Register noticed that a transcript of the expert’s video deposition is public, though, so we can see just a glimpse of what is going on in this case.”

The Guardian: National Library of Australia says yes to Indigenous voice referendum memorabilia. “Australia’s national library is urging Australians not to dump the T-shirts, posters, badges, fridge magnets and other campaign material they acquired during the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum campaign, and consider donating the items to the national archives instead. The National Library of Australia is seeking material from both sides of the campaign, including examples of misinformation and images depicting the conflict in communities in the lead up to the 14 October poll.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Verge: Microsoft fixes the Excel feature that was wrecking scientific data. “In 2020, scientists decided just to rework the alphanumeric symbols they used to represent genes rather than try to deal with an Excel feature that was interpreting their names as dates and (un)helpfully reformatting them automatically. Yesterday, a member of the Excel team posted that the company is rolling out an update on Windows and macOS to fix that.”

University of Copenhagen: Strong AI skills significantly raise salaries. “Some professional competencies and skills are worth more than others. A new study maps the value of 962 specific skills and shows that knowledge about artificial intelligence (AI) in particular is in high demand today. On average, AI skills increase remuneration by 21 percent.” (translated from Danish.) 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 live at Calishat.

October 29, 2023 at 12:45AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/KVevOjf

Steamboat Photography, New Jersey Reproductive Health, South Carolina School Spending, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2023

Steamboat Photography, New Jersey Reproductive Health, South Carolina School Spending, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Government of South Dakota: Henry J. King Steamboat Photographs Added to South Dakota Digital Archives. “A historic collection of photographs documenting steamboat traffic on the Missouri River has been added to the state of South Dakota’s digital archives. The Henry J. King collection of photographs and postcards was donated to Brule County in 1961 by Mr. and Mrs. Blakely King in memory of Mr. King’s grandfather, Captain Henry J. King. Captain King was a Missouri River boatman in the early days of Chamberlain.”

Government of New Jersey: Governor Murphy Signs Legislation Launching a New Online Portal to Provide Access to Critical Reproductive Health Care Information . ” Governor Phil Murphy today signed a bill (S-3275/A-4829) alongside members of his Administration, legislators, advocates, and public officials to launch a brand new website – the Reproductive Health Information Hub accessible at nj.gov/reproductivehealth – providing critical information on reproductive rights, access, and health care coverage across New Jersey.”

WRDW: South Carolina launches tool to shed light on school spending. “State leaders unveiled the new dashboard Wednesday at the State House. It allows viewers to see statewide data – like how money is being spent in all districts and where those dollars are coming from. It also offers district-by-district looks and comparisons between districts on data like average teacher salaries, money in their rainy-day funds and how their revenue per student correlates to test scores.”

EVENTS

Space .com: Watch the partial lunar eclipse of the Full Hunter’s Moon on Oct. 28 with these free livestreams. “If you’re out of the path of the eclipse or are unable to get outside to watch it, you’re in luck: You can watch it here at Space.com, thanks to one of the livestreams we’ve assembled to let you watch the partial lunar eclipse on Oct. 28 from the comfort of your own mobile device or computer.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Futurist: Banks That Lent Elon Musk Money To Buy Twitter Are Totally Screwed Now. “The mercurial CEO had to borrow a whopping $13 billion from seven banks to scrounge together the asking price of $44 billion almost exactly a year ago. Those banks still haven’t recovered from the ensuing chaos, the Wall Street Journal reports…. The numbers are staggering: the seven banks, which include Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays, are bracing themselves to take a hit of at least 15 percent, per the report, amounting to a loss of around $2 billion — a devastating bet on the world’s richest man that has seemingly backfired spectacularly.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: Elon Musk Mocked Ukraine, and Russian Trolls Went Wild. “Since Elon Musk spent $44 billion on Twitter (now X) last year, the billionaire has been determined to wipe out bots and spammy accounts. Things haven’t gone smoothly. Amid the chaos, in recent weeks Russian trolls have jumped on one of Musk’s own posts and used it to push pro-Kremlin messaging, a new analysis shows.”

CNN: Fake placenames with anti-Israel messages flood Google Maps’ depiction of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. “When Google Maps users navigated to the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Tuesday, they might have seen placenames that included, ‘F**k Israel,’ and ‘May god curse Israel’s Jerusalem.’ Cyber activists appeared to have targeted the service to post anti-Israel messages, likely by taking advantage of a feature on Google Maps that allows people to create and contribute information about businesses and landmarks that appear on the service.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CISA: CISA, HHS Release Collaborative Cybersecurity Healthcare Toolkit . “Today, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) co-hosted a roundtable discussion on the cybersecurity challenges that the U.S. healthcare and public health (HPH) sector system faces, and how government and industry can work together to close the gaps in resources and cyber capabilities. Ahead of the roundtable, CISA and HHS released a cybersecurity tool kit that includes resources tailored for the healthcare and public health sector.”

Reuters: EU’s Breton confirms investigations into three tech platforms, including X. “EU industry chief Thierry Breton has launched investigations into three tech platforms over content moderation decisions, including Elon Musk’s X. Under the bloc’s wide-sweeping Digital Services Act, very large tech platforms and search engines must do more to tackle illegal content and risks to public security, and to protect their services against manipulative techniques.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

North Carolina State University: Using AI to Solve Fundamental Issues in Nuclear Physics. “Understanding the behavior of nucleons impacts many branches of physics, ranging from fundamental questions to applied nuclear science. But the numbers and types of calculations required to make accurate predictions about the behavior of nucleons can require massive amounts of computing power. Enter the STREAMLINE project. STREAMLINE, which stands for SmarT Reduction and Emulation Applying Machine Learning In Nuclear Environments is a multi-institutional collaboration aimed at solving the nuclear many-body problem by using machine learning, or AI.”

The Conversation: In times of war, digital activism has power. Here’s how to engage responsibly. “Eyewitness accounts, verified facts and culturally sensitive reporting are competing with misinformation, political propaganda and irresponsible journalism. This information warfare has real-world consequences. Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protests organised through social media have drawn tens of thousands of people onto the streets, despite anti-protest measures adopted in some countries.”

David Strom: The decline of online shopping. “So what has happened to online storefronts in the past 25 or so years? In the quest to make everyone able to buy just about anything, they have become unusable. Menus are inscrutable, choices confound, and delivery mechanisms are so plentiful that they can paralyze consumers.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 28, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/FA5yBC7

Italy’s Puglia Region, Geoffrey Chaucer, WordPress, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2023

Italy’s Puglia Region, Geoffrey Chaucer, WordPress, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: Explore UNESCO World Heritage in Italy’s Puglia Region. “At the heart of the Mediterranean region of Puglia, amidst picture-postcard landscapes with beautiful coastlines, a magical combination of artifacts, history, art and unspoilt nature can be found. Each of the region’s six provinces (Bari, Brindisi, Foggia, Lecce, Taranto and Barletta-Andria-Tran) offers visitors a wonderful experience. In addition to its many historical cities and towns, Puglia is also home to three UNESCO World Heritage sites newly launched on Google Arts & Culture.”

The Guardian: Chaucer goes digital as British Library makes works available online . “The entire collection of Geoffrey Chaucer’s works held by the British Library is being made available in digital format after the completion of a two and a half year project to upload 25,000 images of the often elaborately illustrated medieval manuscripts.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: WordPress LiteSpeed Plugin Vulnerability Affects 4 Million Websites. “The popular LiteSpeed WordPress plugin patched a vulnerability that compromised over 4 million websites, allowing hackers to upload malicious scripts. LiteSpeed was notified of the vulnerability two months ago on August 14th and released a patch in October.”

USEFUL STUFF

Boing Boing: A free, open-source interactive world map. “Protomaps is a free and open-source map of the world for use in your websites, apps, and other projects: an alternative to hosted services, freer than Google Maps and simpler to adapt than OpenStreetMap.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Daily Beast: Google Red-Flagged Kentucky AG’s Taxpayer-Funded Ads. “With less than a week to go before the Republican primary this May, the office of Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron launched a paid video ad campaign to raise awareness about human trafficking, featuring the gubernatorial candidate himself. To be clear, the video was not the work of Cameron’s political campaign. Instead, it was part of a public outreach program conducted by the commonwealth’s office of attorney general (OAG). And the costs weren’t underwritten by voluntary donors, but by a $175,000 taxpayer-backed federal grant that the OAG received from the Department of Justice in January.”

CNBC: Snap shares seesaw amid concerns about the war’s effect on advertising . “Snap shares initially soared as much as 20% in after-hours trading as the company beat on the top and bottom lines, then declined and remained relatively flat as investors digested news that some advertisers had paused spending following the onset of the war in the Middle East.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: What the Techno-Billionaire Missed About Techno-Optimism. “AS A GENERAL rule, any essay that includes the one-sentence paragraph ‘I am here to bring the good news’ is written by someone who wants to take your money, your vote, or your soul. As far as I know, Marc Andreessen, the browser pioneer and cofounder of powerhouse VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, isn’t running for office. But the Techno-Optimist manifesto he posted this week (it’s a habit with him) is definitely bullish on inflating his already bloated wallet—and narrowing the broad arc of human existence with a relentless pursuit of new and even risky technology.”

Mashable: Are people actually using TikTok for news?. “It has been nearly four years since I made my first TikTok, bright-eyed and sporting a bob on the third floor of the BBC’s New Broadcasting House back when I was a video journalist there. It’s not just my hair length that’s changed; in the time it’s taken for my hair to grow down past my elbows, the representation of news media on TikTok has exploded. This is a win for the digital audiences who have flocked there – or so it seemed, until a new study was released this month.”

Michigan Daily: How the SAG-AFTRA strike has changed the fabric of our social media feeds. “There have been several major side effects of the strike, most notably its massive effects on TV and movie production. Writing and filming for popular TV shows and anticipated movie releases has been heavily delayed as negotiations have continued. The screen is not the only place that has experienced such tangible side effects from the strike. In fact, the place where I have noticed the most change since the strikes began is not on the big screen, but in the composition of my social media feed — specifically what is missing from it.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: Dev sets up “goatse” trap for sites that steal his free web game. “Here at Ars, we’ve seen time and again how simple web and/or mobile games can be cloned or outright stolen by unscrupulous developers aiming to cash in on someone else’s game concept. But developer Josh Simmons was in a unique position to inflict a particularly rude punishment on websites that were directly stealing and monetizing his web game Sqword without permission.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 28, 2023 at 01:00AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/4vOR61M

NHL Puck and Player Data, Banned Books Utah, FOIA.gov, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2023

NHL Puck and Player Data, Banned Books Utah, FOIA.gov, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National Hockey League: NHL EDGE website provides Puck and Player Tracking data to fans . “The NHL has spent the past decade exploring new tech to gather new data. Puck and Player Tracking became fully operational in 2021-22, with up to 20 cameras in each arena and infrared emitters in each puck and sweater. The cameras detect infrared signals from the pucks up to 60 times per second and the players up to 15 times per second, generating millions of raw location data points.”

Salt Lake Tribune: Explore The Tribune’s database of books banned in Utah schools. “The district with the most bans — Washington County School District — removed 54 titles. The top author — fantasy writer Sarah J. Maas — had her books pulled 38 times. These are just some of the findings from The Salt Lake Tribune’s survey of the titles banned across 17 of the state’s largest school districts since a new 2022 law on books challenges took effect. Search through our database and see what’s been banned at your kid’s school.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

US Department of Justice: New Search Tool Improves FOIA.gov User Experience. “We developed the search tool after in-depth research and information gathering from agencies and public users to help identify the best solution. Through these efforts, we identified six topical areas that comprise the largest portion of FOIA requests. These ‘common topics’ launch users into logic-based pathways that ask a series of questions to help get the user to the right place. Alternatively, users can enter their own search terms.”

Mashable: Pebble, a Twitter alternative that launched during the Musk era, is shutting down. “Pebble, which recently underwent its own name change from its previous moniker T2, has announced that it will be shutting down on November 1. The platform is the first of the many Twitter alternatives to launch after Musk to close down.”

TechCrunch: TikTok is testing 15-minute uploads with select users. “TikTok is testing the ability for users to upload 15-minute videos, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday. The social media giant said the new upload limit is being tested in select regions with a limited group of users, but declined to share specifics. The new option increases the video upload limit on the app from 10 minutes to 15 minutes.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Hackaday: NFTs And Tulipmania: A Little Bit Of History Repeating. “We were not surprised to read that a company that tracks NFTs declared that most NFTs are now worthless. But the NFT — non-fungible token — market was huge, so around 23 million people invested in NFTs that are now worth nothing. Worse still, the company notes that because of oddities in how NFTs are priced, the real number of worthless assets is probably even greater than they think.”

Yahoo Finance: Alphabet beats Q3 revenue and earnings, but cloud business falls short. “Google parent company Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) reported its third quarter earnings after the bell on Tuesday, beating analysts’ expectations on revenue and earnings per share, but a poor showing by the company’s cloud business sent the stock down in after-hours trade.”

Houston Chronicle: Mysterious ‘Secret Squirrel Facility’ shows up on Google Maps in Texas. “As first reported by the San Antonio Express, a Reddit user recently spotted a building located just outside of New Braunfels, Texas that Google Maps identifies as ‘SECRET SQUIRREL FACILITY.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Chinese bots targeted Trudeau and others – Canada. “Canada says it has detected a disinformation campaign likely tied to China that has targeted dozens of its politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The ‘spamouflage’ campaign used waves of online posts to discredit Canadian MPs, the foreign ministry said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Search Engine Land: Study: Blogs appear most often in top Google positions. “Blog posts are the most prevalent content type in the top 10 positions of Google Search, excluding home pages, according to a study by enterprise SEO platform BrightEdge.”

The Guardian: ‘Callous, reckless, unethical’: scientists in row over rare fossils flown into space. “It was meant to be a grand gesture that would raise the profile of South African science – by allowing fossil bones found at the nation’s Cradle of Humankind site to be flown into space on a Virgin Galactic flight last month. The result was very different. A wave of global condemnation has since engulfed the research team – led by the palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger – that allowed the ancient bones to be used this way.”

Washington Post: AI is learning from stolen intellectual property. It needs to stop.. “Our books are copyrighted material, not free fodder for wealthy companies to use as they see fit, without permission or compensation. Many, many hours of serious research, creative angst and plain old hard work go into writing and publishing a book, and few writers are compensated like professional athletes, Hollywood actors or Wall Street investment bankers. Stealing our intellectual property hurts.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 27, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/LPSyaCX

Human Mobility Worldwide, World Digital Preservation Day, PimEyes, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 26, 2023

Human Mobility Worldwide, World Digital Preservation Day, PimEyes, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 26, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

ReliefWeb: CLIMB Database: Human Mobility in the Context of Disasters, Climate Change and Environmental Degradation Database. “This online database compiles over 1578 national policy instruments in 172 countries and over 230 bilateral and/or regional policy instruments containing provisions of relevance to human mobility in the context of disasters, the adverse effects of climate change, and environmental degradation.”

EVENTS

Penn State: Libraries to host virtual, local World Digital Preservation Day events on Nov. 2. “World Digital Preservation Day, held annually on the first Thursday of November, celebrates best practices in archiving and storing digitized and born-digital content. Penn State University Libraries is hosting several virtual and University Park in-person events Thursday, Nov. 2.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: Face Search Engine PimEyes Blocks Searches of Children’s Faces. “Concerns about children’s privacy have led PimEyes, the public face search engine, to ban searches of minors. The PimEyes chief executive, Giorgi Gobronidze, who is based in Tbilisi, Georgia, said that technical measures had been put in place to block such searches as part of a ‘no harm policy.'”

USEFUL STUFF

Book Riot: All The Public Libraries Offering Free Access To Banned Books: A Comprehensive Guide. “This list is as comprehensive a roundup as possible of all the U.S. public libraries offering access to banned books. It includes the name of the library, the people who are being granted access to the collections, materials within the collections, as well as any other pertinent or relevant information.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: ‘Reddit can survive without search’: company reportedly threatens to block Google. “Reddit isn’t denying that it might block crawlers. ‘In terms of crawlers, we don’t have anything to share on that topic at the moment,’ Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt tells The Verge, clarifying that the company’s earlier “nothing is changing” comment only applied to logins.”

Ars Technica: Thanks to AI, the future of programming may involve YELLING IN ALL CAPS. “Not long after OpenAI first unveiled its DALL-E 3 AI image generator integrated into ChatGPT earlier this month, some users testing the feature began noticing bugs in the ChatGPT app that revealed internal prompts shared between the image generator and the AI assistant. Amusingly to some, the instructions included commands written in all-caps for emphasis, showing that the future of telling computers what to do (including programming) may involve surprisingly human-like communication techniques.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

404 Media: Inside a $30 Million Cash-for-Bitcoin Laundering Ring in the Heart of New York. “The records provide rare insight into an often unseen part of the criminal underworld: how hackers and drug traffickers convert their Bitcoin into cash outside of the online Bitcoin exchanges that ordinary people use. Rather than turning to sites like Coinbase, which often collaborate with and provide records to law enforcement if required, some criminals use underground, IRL Bitcoin exchanges like this gang which are allegedly criminal entities in their own right.”

ABC 7: Online scammers trick OC man into handing over $20,000 in person. “A Southern California family is warning others after their elderly father was apparently scammed of $20,000.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

AVMA Journals: Converting the JAVMA and AJVR archives to digital files—an important ongoing project. “Librarians have long wrestled with how best to fulfill requests for single articles pertinent to a historian’s or veterinary scholar’s work. Indeed, the University of Pennsylvania has received on average 1 request for an archived article per day for the past 6 years. Retrieving and scanning each article is a laborious task, and one that costs considerable staff time and overhead. This is also not ideal for our journals because the important work of our authors is not being cited, and citations are what drive further submissions and impact factor. Since I began as Editor-in-Chief in 2021, my team has been intent on improving access to the back volumes prior to 2000.”

Northeastern News: Apple AirTags can track lost suitcase, but slow to alert for stalking, researchers say. “The researchers looked primarily at how Apple sends notifications to iPhone users when around an AirTag that isn’t theirs. They did this by pairing an AirTag with a master device and leaving said device in one place. They then would bring the AirTag plus an unassociated iPhone around with them to see how long it’d take the notification to kick in. They tested the devices at different times of day and in different locations, like on a remote beach in Nahant, to see if the presence of others affected the alert.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 27, 2023 at 12:50AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/qb0xfTg

Johns Hopkins University Public Art, Twitter, Google Keep, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 26, 2023

Johns Hopkins University Public Art, Twitter, Google Keep, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 26, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Johns Hopkins University: A New Virtual Guide To The Extensive Public Art Collection At Johns Hopkins. “Johns Hopkins University has joined nearly 300 cultural institutions on Bloomberg Connects, an app offering free digital access to art collections and exhibits around the world. Through the app, users can listen to exclusive audio guides, read commentary from art critics and historians, and view countless works of art.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Fast Company: ‘Ruthless and clumsy’: Twitter alumni give Elon Musk low marks on his first year. “The litany of issues that X now faces are huge. The userbase has shifted, and who is prioritized in the timeline is dictated now by who’s willing to pay, rather than who has relevance or importance in topical conversation.”

Lifehacker: You Can Now Format Text in Google Keep. “There are a lot of notation apps out there that will happily take both your time and money, but you don’t need to look far for such an app: These days, Google Keep is good enough to make do for simple note taking and writing. The company recently updated the app to support version history (thank goodness), and now allows you to format text within a note.”

Bleeping Computer: Google Chrome’s new “IP Protection” will hide users’ IP addresses. “Google is getting ready to test a new ‘IP Protection’ feature for the Chrome browser that enhances users’ privacy by masking their IP addresses using proxy servers. Recognizing the potential misuse of IP addresses for covert tracking, Google seeks to strike a balance between ensuring users’ privacy and the essential functionalities of the web.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ProPublica: A Prominent Museum Obtained Items From a Massacre of Native Americans in 1895. The Survivors’ Descendants Want Them Back.. “After the mass killing at Wounded Knee, the American Museum of Natural History received children’s toys taken from the site. A 1990 law was meant to ‘expeditiously return’ such items to Native Americans, but descendants are still waiting.”

The Mainichi: Japan asks Google to revert map names of disputed E. China Sea islets . “Japan’s Foreign Ministry said Friday it had asked Google Inc. to revert to only using Japan’s name on Google Maps for a group of islets controlled by Tokyo but claimed by China and Taiwan.”

New York Times: Cameo to the Moon, and Back. “A start-up that offers fans a way to buy personalized videos from celebrities was supercharged by pandemic boredom and venture capital. All it had to do was grow forever.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Google Maps Disables Live Traffic Data in Israel, Gaza at Military Request. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google is disabling live traffic conditions in Israel and the Gaza Strip for its Maps and Waze apps at the request of the Israeli military, ahead of a potential ground invasion into Gaza.”

Kyiv Independent: The writing is on the wall: Ukrainian archivists collect Russian graffiti as evidence of war crimes. “The message is just one of around 650 inscriptions translated and verified by members of the Wall Evidence project, an open-source digital archive of graffiti, drawings, diary entries, notes, and other markings left behind by Russian forces in previously occupied territories. The inscriptions documented by the project span historical references, ethnic sentiments, and propaganda phrases, revealing a wide spectrum of attitudes from fear and confusion to enjoyment, cruelty, cynicism, and remorselessness.”

ALM Benefits Pro: Twitter’s $500M ERISA lawsuit continues, as employees seek denied severance benefits . “Late last week, an earlier lawsuit alleging Employee Retirement Income Security Act violations was amended to include another former employee. It also provides more details on claims about Musk’s disregarding of the severance plan in violation of ERISA and the intertwining of Musk and Twitter so he cannot avoid personal liability. In addition to seeking a minimum of $500 million in damages, the suit aims to compel Musk and X to pay terminated employees what they are owed under the severance plan.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Central Florida: New UCF Project is Harnessing Virtual Reality to Teach Quantum Computing. “Researchers from the University of Central Florida, University of Texas at Dallas and Vanderbilt University have received a three-year, $927,203 grant for advancing future quantum education by using virtual reality (VR) and machine learning to identify and address misconceptions regarding quantum information science (QIS).”

The Conversation: Why Google, Bing and other search engines’ embrace of generative AI threatens $68 billion SEO industry. “Google, Microsoft and others boast that generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT will make searching the internet better than ever for users. For example, rather than having to wade through a sea of URLs, users will be able to just get an answer combed from the entire internet.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 26, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/YBQsjyt

Snapchat, Dr. Janice Duffy, Chrome Extensions, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 25, 2023

Snapchat, Dr. Janice Duffy, Chrome Extensions, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 25, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Snapchat isn’t just for teens anymore. Now it needs to make some real money. “That subscriber number is just a fraction of its overall user base of Snapchat, which has quietly become one of the world’s fastest-growing social platforms. As of the end of June, it reported 397 million daily active users — more than X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The company’s challenge now is figuring out how to successfully monetize those users to turn around a streak of disappointing financial results.”

ABC News Australia: Adelaide woman receives settlement after a lengthy battle against tech giant Google. “Dr Janice Duffy successfully argued in 2015 and 2023 that Google published defamatory extracts from American website RipOff Report on its search engine page, despite her notifying the company and asking for the posts to be removed. She was set to start her damages trial on Monday for her most recent case but reached a confidential settlement with the multibillion-dollar company, which would pay her damages and legal costs.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 11 of the Best Music Extensions for Google Chrome. “Listening to your favorite music throughout the day can help you relieve stress, improve your mood, and give you an energy boost. That’s the power of music, and if you are a Chrome user, it’s now easier than ever to access and even create new tunes right from your browser. Chrome extensions can be excellent companions for any music lovers out there. Check out the best options for you if music is a big part of your life.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Silicon Valley Ditches News, Shaking an Unstable Industry. “Some executives of the largest tech companies, like Adam Mosseri at Instagram, have said in no uncertain terms that hosting news on their sites can often be more trouble than it is worth because it generates polarized debates. Others, like Elon Musk, the owner of X, have expressed disdain for the mainstream press. Publishers seem resigned to the idea that traffic from the big tech companies will not return to what it once was.”

GhanaWeb: Kintampo Waterfalls: Woman behind viral video retracts and apologises over false publication. “In a surprising turn of events, the lady behind the widely circulated Kintampo Waterfalls viral video has formally come forward to retract the content of the video. Farida Antwi, a student at the Kintampo College of Health also admittedly apologised to the public for churning out false information through the publication of the said video.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: Brave browser installs a VPN service on Windows whether you want it or not. “Brave’s privacy-centric browser has been downloading VPN services to some customers’ computers without their consent. Noted by Ghacks, starting in 2022, downloading Brave to a Windows PC meant you were also downloading the company’s VPN service, regardless of whether you wanted it.”

CNBC: Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX allies secretly poured $50 million into ‘dark money’ groups, evidence shows. “Former crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried and his allies donated $50 million during the 2022 election cycle toward politically active groups that do not publicly disclose the names of donors, according to documents recently made public by prosecutors.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

AfricaNews: Project to create the largest database on the African genome. ” Scientists plan to collect genetic material from 500,000 people of African descent to create what they believe will be the world’s largest database of population genomic information.”

404 Media: Mastodon Is the Good One. “I’ve now been using it for about two months and I am here to tell you that it is, in principle, what we should want the internet to be. If you have been remotely interested in Mastodon but had reservations about joining because you thought it would be difficult, confusing, or otherwise annoying, it is not.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

ABC News Australia: Retired country maths teacher Robert Martiensen created thousands of artworks in secret. “It’s the late 1980s and inside a derelict farmhouse on the outskirts of Mount Gambier in South Australia, a reclusive, retired high school maths teacher begins constructing exquisite wooden boxes, each unique, their organic forms determined by the chunk of wood they came from. The artist’s name is Robert Martiensen, though he’s never been to art school. He keeps his life as an artist a secret, avoids cameras and never exhibits or sells his work.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 26, 2023 at 12:08AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/QvBR9DF

Family History Month, Christiansburg Institute, Los Angeles Indigenous History, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 25, 2023

Family History Month, Christiansburg Institute, Los Angeles Indigenous History, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 25, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National Genealogical Society: Celebrate Family History Month with New Resources from NGS!. “Whether you’re curious about old photos and hoping to scan them, looking to record family members’ memories, or aiming to write stories that are part of your family’s legacy, this is the moment to begin or restart a project. It’s easy to put off these tasks, thinking there’s always tomorrow. But as we’re often reminded, the best time is now. NGS created three resources to inspire you this month with steps to help make projects successful.”

Cardinal News: Virginia Tech helps Christiansburg Institute preserve Black history archives. “For 100 years, Christiansburg Institute battled white discrimination by serving as a model of Black education and culture tucked away in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. Today, the battlefield has transferred to a digital arena as the nonprofit that carries its name strives to preserve it for future generations.”

USC Dornsife: Mapping project reveals LA’s Indigenous past, aims to inform the city’s future. “Blending insight from representatives of local Indigenous communities, extensive archival research and contemporary technologies such as spatial analysis and modeling, the long-running project headed by the Spatial Sciences Institute (SSI) at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences has developed the first systematic map of L.A.’s natural ecology. ‘Mapping Los Angeles Landscape History’ offers a comprehensive view of the region’s natural environment and how Indigenous people interacted with the land and each other in a sustainable way before the arrival of European settlers.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Poynter: Fact-checkers and the social media misinformation tsunami: A Q&A with Lucas Graves. “Not so many years ago, fact-checking went hand-in-hand with elections reporting and political journalism. With the rise of social media, though, fact-checkers have spent more and more time debunking online misinformation, viral memes and other hoax content. That shift has raised an important question for those who analyze and follow the work of fact-checkers: Has online misinformation reduced the amount of attention from fact-checkers to elections fact-checking and the fact-checking of government?”

Tubefilter: TikTok comes “Out Of Phone” to advertise at airports, gas stations, and movie theaters. “TikTok is complementing its digital advertising business with a real-world push. The video app has debuted a product it has dubbed Out Of Phone: An IRL media operation that will distribute vertical videos across locations like airports, gas stations, and movie theaters.”

PR Newswire: LensCrafters Creates Its Own Immersive Experience on Roblox to Drive Awareness on Proper Vision Health (PRESS RELEASE). “LensCrafters, one of the largest optical retail brands in North America, launched its first virtual experience, LensCrafters Eye Odyssey on Roblox, a global immersive platform where millions of people connect and communicate daily. LensCrafters Eye Odyssey, one of the first online edutainment experiences with an optical retailer on Roblox, offers an engaging and educational way to promote healthy eye care habits, while providing an entertaining and immersive experience for young people.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Japan Investigates Google Over Alleged Antitrust Violations. “Japan’s antitrust watchdog has begun an investigation into whether Alphabet Inc.’s Google abuses its market position to block rival services, compounding scrutiny of the internet leader’s business practices across the globe.”

Associated Press: Thousands of remote IT workers sent wages to North Korea to help fund weapons program, FBI says. “Thousands of information technology workers contracting with U.S. companies have for years secretly sent millions of dollars of their wages to North Korea for use in its ballistic missile program, FBI and Department of Justice officials said.”

Ars Technica: Rapper Pras’ lawyer used AI to defend him in criminal case—it did not go well. “[Prakazrel “Pras”] Michel was represented at trial by defense counsel David Kenner, who is accused of failing to provide a cogent defense and misattributing two songs to the Fugees. The allegations about Kenner’s use of AI are reminiscent of a previous incident in which a lawyer admitted using ChatGPT to help write court filings that cited six nonexistent cases invented by the artificial intelligence tool.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Silence on Social Media Is Not Complicity. “I think the pressure to say something publicly really comes from the fear we face when we’re confronted with horrors like this. What we want is a simple binary where there’s a good side and an evil side and we can easily identify heroes and villains. And social media kind of lends itself to making very binary statements. It’s really hard to do nuanced analysis in a format that really only allows for 280 characters at a time.”

Cornell Chronicle: Research repository arXiv receives $10M for upgrades. “Cornell Tech has announced a total of more than $10 million in gifts and grants from the Simons Foundation and the National Science Foundation, respectively, to support arXiv, a free distribution service and open-access archive for scholarly articles.”

Stanford News: OpenCap: Sophisticated human biomechanics from smartphone video. “With synchronous video from a pair of smartphones, engineers at Stanford have created an open-source motion-capture app that democratizes the once-exclusive science of human movement – at 1% of the cost.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 25, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/lLvtQcS

Outdoor Play and Learning Tool, Basement Films Archive, AI Denoising, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 24, 2023

Outdoor Play and Learning Tool, Basement Films Archive, AI Denoising, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 24, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of British Columbia: UBC researchers launch new online tool to help teachers take their classes outdoors. “Researchers from UBC and BC Children’s Hospital have launched a new online Outdoor Play and Learning tool, to help parents, caregivers and educators gain the skills and confidence to support outdoor play and learning in elementary schools from kindergarten through Grade 7.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

KOB4: Basement Films archive finds new home at CNM. “The Basement Films archives are officially moving into their new home at [Central New Mexico Community College.] The archive, which specializes in 8mm and 16mm films, was kicked out of its previous space at UNM in August. Recently, CNM offered a partnership they couldn’t refuse.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tape It: Tape It launches automated studio quality noise reduction AI for music (PRESS RELEASE). “Today, music software developer Tape It released their free AI-powered Denoiser that automatically removes background noise such as hums and hisses. It produces studio-quality results on full songs, single instrument tracks, and field recordings — not just on spoken word. Tape It launched its Denoiser as a free web app and will later implement it into the company’s flagship product, the Tape It iOS app, which helps musicians organize and record song ideas.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

9to5 Mac: Report: AI features in development for iOS 18, Siri, Apple Music, Xcode and more. “In his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Apple was caught by surprise at the sudden swell of generative AI tools this year. But they are working hard to catch up with Apple SVPs Craig Federighi, John Giannandrea, and Eddy Cue all in charge of integrating AI-powered functionality into Apple’s products and services.” It surprises me how much these big Silicon Valley companies chase after each other. It shouldn’t, but it does.

New York Times: An Industry Insider Drives an Open Alternative to Big Tech’s A.I.. “Ali Farhadi is no tech rebel. The 42-year-old computer scientist is a highly respected researcher, a professor at the University of Washington and the founder of a start-up that was acquired by Apple, where he worked until four months ago. But Mr. Farhadi, who in July became chief executive of the Allen Institute for AI, is calling for ‘radical openness’ to democratize research and development in a new wave of artificial intelligence that many believe is the most important technology advance in decades.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Expedia’s Ex-COO Says Ad Fees Jumped After Google Remade Search. “About 500 million people visit Expedia’s Vrbo from Alphabet Inc.’s Google each year and that number didn’t increase even though the company’s search advertising costs grew from $21 million in 2015 to $290 million in 2019, according to Jeff Hurst, Expedia’s former chief operating officer.”

News 12 The Bronx: Authorities: Social media influencer Cesar Pina charged in multimillion-dollar Ponzi-like scheme. “Cesar Pina, 45, was charged with one count of wire fraud, U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger announced. Authorities say Pina, who advertised real estate investments offering huge guaranteed profits, was actually running a Ponzi-like scheme, in which he took money from new investors to pay off older ones, as well as pocketing some of the cash. They say he’s been running the scheme since 2017.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Associated Press: Health providers say AI chatbots could improve care. But research says some are perpetuating racism. “As hospitals and health care systems turn to artificial intelligence to help summarize doctors’ notes and analyze health records, a new study led by Stanford School of Medicine researchers cautions that popular chatbots are perpetuating racist, debunked medical ideas, prompting concerns that the tools could worsen health disparities for Black patients.”

Marcus on AI: “Math is hard” — if you are an LLM – and why that matters. “Notice anything? It’s not just that the performance on MathGLM steadily declines as the problems gets bigger, with the discrepancy between it and a calculator steadily increasing, it’s that the LLM based system is generalizing by similarity, doing better on cases that are in or near the training set, never, ever getting to a complete, abstract, reliable representation of what multiplication is.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Popular Mechanics: Scientists Figured Out How to Design Dice to Roll Any Way You Want. “Ask any Dungeons and Dragons player: dice rolls don’t always go your way. But what if you could use a complex algorithm to design dice to physically roll any way you wanted? Scientist Yaroslav Sobolev at the Institute for Basic Science in Ulsan, South Korea—along with his colleagues—have designed an algorithm that creates wonky-shaped objects called ‘trajectoids’ that mathematically travel along any set path.” 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 live at Calishat.

October 25, 2023 at 12:38AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/019a6Hw