By ResearchBuzz
NEW RESOURCES
Seattle Times: Archives of The Rocket, influential Seattle music magazine, go digital. “Acting as a hub of information before the digital age, the magazine helped bring together key bands like Nirvana and Alice in Chains through its classified ads, while its writers and artists helped the growing music community make sense of, and rally around, the raw new sounds being created…. Now, all 336 issues — more than 16,000 pages of Seattle music history spanning 1979 to 2000 — have been digitized, made searchable by keyword and are available to the public for free.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
Marketplace: What happened to the Metaverse?. “It wasn’t all that long ago when ‘the Metaverse’ was being pushed hard in certain corners of the Big Tech universe. What was it? It wasn’t always clear — something about a virtual but realistic place where, we were told, we’d be hanging out with friends, holding office meetings and even buying property. Contributing to the hype: a tech giant neck deep in a PR mess and eager for a rebrand.”
How-To Geek: A Look Back on NFTs: Where Are They Now?. “Going into 2023, things weren’t looking good for NFTs. Between 2022 and 2023, the average price of NFT sales dropped by 92 percent, according to a Chainalysis report. This meant that an NFT once worth $1,000 was now only worth $80. Evidently, things had gone quite sour for the NFT market. NFTs can still hold value, but their current prices pale in comparison to those of 2021 and 2022, as is evident via the aforementioned Chainalysis statistic. 2023 has shown just how fragile the NFT industry is.”
WRAL: Major pornographic website blocks NC access days before new law takes effect. “One of the world’s largest pornography websites blocked access to at least some North Carolina users Thursday ahead of a new state law taking effect that will require adult websites to verify user ages. Instead of complying or providing its usual content, Pornhub redirected North Carolina users to a message asking them to reach out to lawmakers and oppose the new law.”
AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD
Boing Boing: One man’s horrific saga of inadvertantly destroying municipal infrastructure with superabsorbent water beads. “With viral challenges getting bigger and broader in scope, it can be easy to forget the consequences they have on people around them. The cautionary tale of French TikToker Cyrilschr, however, serves as a sobering warning to those seeking to get a little too big for their britches. In 2020, he filled a bathtub with Orbeez–superabsorbent expanding toys–for views, only to then be left with the problem of disposing of them.”
Ars Technica: AI-created “virtual influencers” are stealing business from humans. “Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as hair care line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret. Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media—despite the fact that she is entirely fictional.”
Meduza: Latvian government blocks all Yandex sites. “Latvia’s electronic media regulator (NEPLP) announced Thursday that it has blocked access to all websites affiliated with Yandex. According to the agency’s head, Ivar Abolins, the company’s audio streaming service, Yandex Music, will also be blocked as it contains podcasts and other content ‘created by sanctioned individuals in Russia.'”
SECURITY & LEGAL
Hartford Courant: Bring Me Back Home: New registry seeks to prevent tragedy when loved ones go missing. “When Connecticut State Trooper Stephanie Cortes read that 80-year-old Anne Page of Willington had been found dead on Christmas Eve, her first thought went to the Bring Me Back Home Program — a new, voluntary registry designed to aid law enforcement in locating Connecticut residents with Alzheimer’s, dementia and other cognitive or developmental challenges that raise the risk of wandering and disorientation.”
ABC News: Prosecutors say there’s no need for a second trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. “A second trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on charges not in the cryptocurrency fraud case presented to a jury that convicted him in November is not necessary, prosecutors told a judge Friday.”
Bleeping Computer: Malware abuses Google OAuth endpoint to ‘revive’ cookies, hijack accounts. “In late November 2023, BleepingComputer reported on two information-stealers, namely Lumma and Rhadamanthys, who claimed they could restore expired Google authentication cookies stolen in attacks. These cookies would allow the cybercriminals to gain unauthorized access to Google accounts even after the legitimate owners have logged out, reset their passwords, or their session has expired. BleepingComputer has contacted Google multiple times over a month with questions about these claims and how they plan to mitigate the issue, but we never received a response.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
NPR: Artificial intelligence can find your location in photos, worrying privacy experts. “A student project has revealed yet another power of artificial intelligence — it can be extremely good at geolocating where photos are taken. The project, known as Predicting Image Geolocations (or PIGEON, for short) was designed by three Stanford graduate students in order to identify locations on Google Street View. But when presented with a few personal photos it had never seen before, the program was, in the majority of cases, able to make accurate guesses about where the photos were taken.”
OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL
New York Times: Need a Home for 80,000 Puzzles? Try an Italian Castle.. This article is a gift link. “Until recently, the Miller collection resided at Puzzle Palace in Boca Raton, Fla….Puzzles occupied even the bathrooms. Then last year, on a whim, the Millers bought a 15th-century, 52-room castle in Panicale, a hamlet in central Italy. They packed their puzzle collection into five 40-foot shipping containers and, for their own transit, booked a cruise from Miami to Rome.” Good morning, Internet…
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December 30, 2023 at 06:33PM
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