New researches

Monday, December 21, 2020

Slovak Songs, Meredith Marionette Touring Company, Poland Architecture, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, December 21, 2020

Slovak Songs, Meredith Marionette Touring Company, Poland Architecture, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, December 21, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Slovak Spectator: Tantsuj tantsuj vikruːtsaj. Online library will teach you how to sing Slovak songs . “Feedback from new singers was very positive. The fund for art support announced a grant call focused on projects that will help art to live during the pandemic and the creation of an online education library was one of many supported activities. Today, eight Slovak songs are accessible. The singers also created a new version of a Slovak folk song where they wish the coronavirus to be taken to hell. It came into being in the homes of various singers.” Sounds good to me.

MLive: Preserving a legacy: Saline puppeteer’s work lives on through digital archive. “For a half century, Meredith Bixby and the Meredith Marionette Touring Company entertained school-aged kids with puppet shows throughout southeast Michigan and across the eastern United States….Nearly 250,000 people attended Bixby’s shows annually during his career from the 1930s to ’80s, with Meredith’s Marionettes performing more than 20,000 times during his career, making Bixby one of the most well known marionettists in the U.S. Now, a new interactive digital archive created by the Saline Arts and Culture Committee aims to bring Bixby’s legacy to life in a brand new way.”

The First News (Poland): Delightful ‘little corset’ tiles showcase rescued fragments of Warsaw architecture. “An Archive of Warsaw Detail has been launched to showcase rescued fragments of the Polish capital’s architecture. The online museum brings together architectural bits and pieces collected during renovation works – both inside buildings and on their façades.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5Mac: Twitter officially relaunching verification program in January, here are the details. “In November, Twitter officially confirmed it would be bringing back its account verification process in early 2021 and shared a policy draft. Now the company has shared all of the fine details on how the relaunched system will work along with how user feedback shaped the new Twitter verification program that’s arriving in January 2021.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: These apps showed me that looking at my own photos is the best social media. “Influencers, advertisers, friends of friends of friends. Social media is a great way to get mundane updates about people you don’t know very well. Unfortunately, in 2020, it was one of the only ways to see into the lives of other human beings, so we scrolled and scrolled. Amid this uninspiring landscape, one of the most entertaining and meaningful forms of ‘social’ media has been hiding in your own smartphone all along: your camera roll. You just need the right tools.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TechRadar: Social media is embracing audio more than ever – but deaf users are being left behind. “… in the fast-paced corporate world of social media, deaf and hard of hearing users are still seeing accessibility forgotten about when features are developed or reviewed. Even when a decision is considered to negatively impact them, advocates feel their views aren’t being listened to.”

NBC News: Racism is rampant on Omegle. Teens are working to hold racist trolls accountable.. “Earlier this month, Hidaya Saban and Alees Elshiek opened the video chat website Omegle for what they described as a social experiment. Omegle, which has been around for approximately a decade, allows users to be paired with strangers in a video chat at random — although Saban, 19, and Elshiek, 18, said they entered the college student section of the site where they were able to pick certain topic tags in order to be paired with those who have similar interests.”

AP: Cooper Hewitt acquires two emoji that symbolize inclusion. “The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has acquired two emoji that have helped broaden diversity for users of the tiny pictures, becoming the third museum to add emoji to their digital collections.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google trial judge suggests potential trial date, and it’s in 2023. “The judge hearing the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Alphabet Inc’s Google suggested a trial date of Sept. 12, 2023, on Friday.”

New Zealand Herald: Google says Australian law on paying for news is unworkable . “Google Australia and New Zealand managing director Mel Silva made her first public comments on the details of the proposed legislation since it was introduced to Parliament last week. The so-called News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code would force Google and Facebook to compensate Australian news media for the journalism that they link to.”

Columbia University: How Will the Facebook Antitrust Suit Impact Free Speech?. “Katy Glenn Bass from Columbia’s Knight First Amendment Institute discusses the Facebook antitrust case, its impact on freedom of speech, and what questions are still unanswered.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

US News & World Report: Report: Social Media Manipulation Affects Even US Senators. “The conversation taking place on the verified social media accounts of two U.S. senators remained vulnerable to manipulation, even amid heightened scrutiny in the run up to the U.S. presidential election, an investigation by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence found. Researchers from the center, a NATO-accredited research group based in Riga, Latvia, paid three Russian companies 300 euros ($368) to buy 337,768 fake likes, views and shares of posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok, including content from verified accounts of Sens. Chuck Grassley and Chris Murphy.” The Senators consented to participating in the research. Good morning, Internet…

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December 21, 2020 at 09:04PM
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Sunday, December 20, 2020

Dubsmash, Visio, Media Bias, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, December 20, 2020

Dubsmash, Visio, Media Bias, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, December 20, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Reddit is buying TikTok rival Dubsmash. “Message board juggernaut Reddit is accelerating its push into video, snapping up a sharing platform that is popular with young people and women. Reddit said in a statement on Sunday that it has acquired TikTok rival Dubsmash. It did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeTechEasier: What is Microsoft Visio? An Intro to the Flowchart and Diagramming Tool . “You’re probably used to hearing about Microsoft Word and Excel, but what about Microsoft Visio? While it’s geared more toward enterprise level users, anyone who needs to create flowcharts or detailed diagrams will find this to be one of the best tools to get the job done. Plus, it’s part of Microsoft Office, so getting around will feel familiar if you’re already used to Office.”

Poynter: Should you trust media bias charts?. “Charts that use transparent methodologies to score political bias — particularly the AllSides chart and another from news literacy company Ad Fontes Media — are increasing in popularity and spreading across the internet. According to CrowdTangle, a social media monitoring platform, the homepages for these two sites and the pages for their charts have been shared tens of thousands of times. But just because something is widely shared doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Are media bias charts reliable?”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Harper’s Bazaar: Is the Thumbs Up Emoji Really a Coded “F*ck You”?. All asterisks by me, and by the way if this is true I’d like to publicly apologize to my mother for all those text conversations. “Let’s set the scene: The ladies of Salt Lake City, the 10th American Housewives franchise, are seated at a dinner. A prosaic fight erupts. Lisa Barlow (who considers herself  ’Mormon 2.0′) says to Heather Gay (a self-proclaimed ‘good Mormon gone bad’), ‘I have never done anything mean to you. And until you figure out what it is that I trigger in you, we can’t have a good solid conversation and move forward. Thumbs up. F*ck you, ‘— a reference to a text exchange between the two that ended with Gay sending a pair of thumbs up emojis, which, according to an insulted Barlow, is ‘universal text code’ for f*ck you.”

Reuters: Google faces $417 million claim from Czech search engine Seznam. “Seznam.cz, the Czech Republic’s leading home-grown web search platform, said on Thursday it had claimed 9.072 billion crowns ($417 million) in damages from Google, alleging that the U.S. giant restricted competition.”

Washington Post: Weather Service faces Internet bandwidth shortage, proposes limiting key data. “For the past decade, the National Weather Service has been plagued by failures in disseminating critical forecast and warning information that is aimed at protecting lives and saving property. In some cases, its websites have gone down during severe weather events, unable to handle the demand.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Courthouse News: Treasure Sold During Holocaust Fought Over at High Court. “The 42 silver religious artifacts are part of what is known as the Welfenschatz or the Guelph Treasure — said by some sources to have been gifted to Adolph Hitler himself by Hermann Goering, the Nazi leader of the state of Prussia. For decades, the treasure has been displayed at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which owns the collection and runs the museum, denies modern assertions that the artifacts were sold during the Holocaust at below-market value. Today, with the heirs of two Holocaust victims seeking to have U.S. courts declare them as the rightful owners of the collection, the museum is joined by the German and Hungarian governments in seeking to have a pair of cases thrown out.”

CNET: Facial recognition’s fate could be decided in 2021. “The dumpster fire that was 2020 has also set the stage for what could be the biggest development in facial recognition and how it gets regulated. In the past year, lawmakers, privacy advocates, lawsuits and local legislative measures have all rallied against the technology as a tool for surveillance and law enforcement. Several crucial decisions in the next year will steer its future.”

BBC: US cyber-attack: Around 50 firms ‘genuinely impacted’ by massive breach. “The cyber-security firm that identified the large-scale hacking of US government agencies says it ‘genuinely impacted’ around 50 organisations. Kevin Mandia, CEO of FireEye, said that while some 18,000 organisations had the malicious code in their networks, it was the 50 who suffered major breaches.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNBC: China’s Huawei tested A.I. software that could identify Uighur Muslims and alert police, report says. “Huawei, together with one of China’s biggest artificial intelligence (AI) firms Megvii, tested a facial recognition system that could be used to detect members of a minority Muslim group and send alerts to authorities, a new report claims.”

MIT Technology Review: Tiny four-bit computers are now all you need to train AI. “Deep learning is an inefficient energy hog. It requires massive amounts of data and abundant computational resources, which explodes its electricity consumption. In the last few years, the overall research trend has made the problem worse. Models of gargantuan proportions—trained on billions of data points for several days—are in vogue, and likely won’t be going away any time soon. Some researchers have rushed to find new directions, like algorithms that can train on less data, or hardware that can run those algorithms faster. Now IBM researchers are proposing a different one. Their idea would reduce the number of bits, or 1s and 0s, needed to represent the data—from 16 bits, the current industry standard, to only four.” Good evening, Internet…

December 21, 2020 at 07:09AM
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Saturday, December 19, 2020

Buddhist Heritage, Burger King, Unilever, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 19, 2020

Buddhist Heritage, Burger King, Unilever, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 19, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Buddhist Door: First Online Exhibition of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on Shared Buddhist Heritage Opens. “The exhibition features the latest technologies, including 3D scanning, a webGL platform, virtual space utilization, innovative curation and narration methodology, and more. Visitors have an excellent opportunity to gain knowledge and a glimpse of the artistic wealth displayed in various museums across Asia.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

USA Today: Burger King rolls out feature to let customers order straight from Google search, Maps, Google Pay. “Burger King really wants you to have it your way, even by ordering from a Google search. The fast-food chain said it will allow customers, starting Dec. 21, to order pickup or delivery straight from Google search results. Customers can also order directly from Google Maps or Google Pay.”

CNN: Unilever to resume advertising on Facebook and Twitter . “Unilever (UL) paused advertising on all three platforms in June, citing hate speech and the polarized atmosphere in the United States. On Thursday, the household goods giant said it would end the pause in January because of progress it said the platforms had made in cleaning up their act.” LOL

Google Blog: 20 years of Year in Search. “The original year-end collection wasn’t just created as a way for people to reflect on Search trends; it was also a way for people, including those who work in marketing or media, to find interesting stories and understand more about the events, people and moments of a certain year. These days, Year in Search is accompanied by a film that showcases the emotion behind the searches and trends of the year. ‘We also started finding a theme—this year it’s “why,” which was at an all-time high in Google Trends history,’ says Simon [Rogers of Google Data Trends].”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

UPROXX: Meet The Community Of Preservationists In Search of Lost Movies. “Sometimes a mere 29 seconds can upset history. And sometimes that 29 seconds arrives in a garbage bag. Dino Everett works at the University of Southern California’s Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive, a job that sometimes means sorting through a lot of junk sent by well-meaning people who think they might have stumbled on an important find in their family attic. But not always. A few years ago, Everett received an unpromising package from Louisiana, an unwanted batch of movie reels someone had acquired in an estate sale, that reframed a key element of film history.”

Bloomberg: Record Labels Reap Billion-Dollar Bonanza From Tunes on Social Media. “After years of railing against technology giants for exploiting music to attract customers, record companies have embraced social media as their new cash machine. In the latest example, Warner Music Group Corp. has signed a deal with TikTok that will boost its fees for song rights and increase collaboration with the popular social-media app. The contract covers recordings from the company’s labels, as well as songs from its publishing division.”

ABC (Australia): ABC establishes new Indigenous Archives Unit. “The Unit will oversee the ABC’s Indigenous content collection, including video, audio, photos and documents. This unique and important collection captures songs and ceremonies from as early as the 1940s to contemporary material on Indigenous communities, health, the land rights movement, the freedom ride in 1965, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in front of Parliament House and the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Arab News: YouTube falls in line with ‘draconian’ social media law, opens office in Turkey. “The law, passed by the Turkish government in July, requires social media companies to abide by new rules by April next year or face hefty fines and a reduction of internet bandwidth to as low as 90 percent.”

BBC: US cyber-attack: Russia ‘clearly’ behind SolarWinds operation, says Pompeo. “US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blamed Russia for what is being described as the worst-ever cyber espionage attack on the US government. ‘We can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity,’ Mr Pompeo said on Friday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: How to reduce the spread of fake news – by doing nothing. “A 2018 study found that when people repeatedly saw false headlines on social media, they rated them as being more accurate. This was even the case when the headlines were flagged as being disputed by fact checkers. Other research has shown that repeatedly encountering false information makes people think it is less unethical to spread it (even if they know it is not true, and don’t believe it). So to reduce the effects of false information, people should try to reduce its visibility. Everyone should try to avoid spreading false messages.”

EurekAlert: ‘The robot made me do it’: Robots encourage risk-taking behaviour in people. “New research has shown robots can encourage people to take greater risks in a simulated gambling scenario than they would if there was nothing to influence their behaviours. Increasing our understanding of whether robots can affect risk-taking could have clear ethical, practiCal and policy implications, which this study set out to explore.” Good morning (just barely), Internet…

December 19, 2020 at 10:12PM
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Friday, December 18, 2020

Friday CoronaBuzz, December 18, 2020: 20 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Friday CoronaBuzz, December 18, 2020: 20 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz

Please wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay at home if you can. Please be careful. I love you.

UPDATES

New York Times: One of the First Virus Hot Spots in the U.S. Is Under Siege Again. “As the virus rages across Westchester County, it has returned to New Rochelle, a city hit so hard during the outbreak’s earliest days that it was for a time the epicenter of the pandemic in the region. In early March, when Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced the state’s first so-called containment zone in this New York City suburb, New Rochelle’s fate proclaimed an unnerving message: The virus is here. Now it is back.”

MISINFORMATION / FACT-CHECKING

NiemanLab: We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists. “A lot of America slipped into conspiracy thinking during this pandemic, and they got there from yoga Instagrams and NFL forums and private church choir Facebook groups that were systematically invaded by QAnon and anti-vax recruiters. It’s going to be a rude awakening in the next few months as we find out which of our friends got sucked into truly astonishing tales of New World Orders and Great Resets that helped them cope — and just so happen to be spectacularly wrong. We’re going to have to learn to create a vocabulary to talk about how their friends fell down the wrong YouTube hole and came out speaking another language.”

Vice: Anti-Vaxxers Are Coaching People How to ‘Refuse’ the COVID Vaccine. “Anti-vaxxers have flooded social media with posts about how to ‘refuse’ a COVID-19 vaccine, part of a widespread campaign to spread misinformation about the vaccine’s development and its effects. The posts are being shared by people who falsely believe that governments and other health agencies will make taking the vaccine mandatory — a claim that has already been debunked.

SOCIETAL IMPACT

NPR: Americans Are Drinking More During The Pandemic. Here’s How To Cut Back. “When the pandemic began spreading across the U.S. in March, stores, restaurants and schools closed down. But liquor stores in many parts of the U.S. were deemed essential and stayed open. Alcohol sales have ticked up during the pandemic, so maybe it’s a good time to ask yourself: Are you drinking more than you’d like to be?”

BBC: Coronavirus: Trains cancelled over Covid-related staff shortages. “South Western Railway (SWR) is cancelling services because so many train crew have contracted coronavirus or are self-isolating. West of England line trains via Salisbury are starting and terminating at Basingstoke until 23 December. Services between Salisbury and Bristol are also cancelled.”

BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS

BuzzFeed News: If You’ve Worked In TV Or Film Production During The Pandemic, We Want To Hear From You. “Now, as the number of COVID-19 cases rise across the country, states like California are locking down and issuing regional stay-at-home orders, putting additional pressure on studios. If you work in TV or film production, BuzzFeed News would like to speak with you about your experience and how you’ve navigated being on set during the pandemic.”

STATE / LOCAL GOVERNMENT

CNN: Florida police raid home of former state Covid-19 data scientist. “About 10 officers with guns drawn showed up to her Tallahassee home around 8:30 a.m., [Rebekah] Jones said. A video taken from a camera in her house, which she posted on social media, showed an officer pointing a gun up a stairwell as Jones told him her two children were upstairs. Jones said that the officer was pointing his gun at her 2-year-old daughter, 11-year-old son and her husband, who she said were in the stairwell, although the video doesn’t make that clear.”

COUNTRY / FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

BBC: Covid: Moderna vaccine moves closer to US approval. “A second coronavirus vaccine is nearing emergency approval in the US after it was endorsed by a panel of experts. The head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said his agency would move quickly to authorise the Moderna vaccine, allowing the company to begin shipping millions of doses.”

INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS

Los Angeles Times: Pastor dies of COVID-19 weeks after Fontana megachurch reopened for indoor services. “Bob Bryant of the Water of Life Community Church in Fontana tested positive for the coronavirus in November and soon developed an aggressive pneumonia in his lungs, according to a post on the church’s Facebook site. He then suffered a heart attack. He ultimately was placed on a ventilator and died [November 30]. He was 58.”

ESPN: Timberwolves’ Karl-Anthony Towns says season will be difficult amid off-court tragedies. “As Karl-Anthony Towns prepares to begin his sixth season with the Minnesota Timberwolves, he said he also is continuing to process the death of his mother, Jacqueline Cruz-Towns, and six other family members who also died of complications from the coronavirus.”

CNN: Former Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton volunteer to get coronavirus vaccine publicly to prove it’s safe. “Former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton are volunteering to get their Covid-19 vaccines on camera to promote public confidence in the vaccine’s safety once the US Food and Drug Administration authorizes one.”

CNBC: Dr. Fauci’s 18-hour workday includes two breaks and answering ‘emails until I’m so tired I can’t do anymore’. “The first thing Fauci does in the morning is appear on interviews for morning news shows about the pandemic, he told the Huffington Post. He said he wakes up at 5:10 a.m., showers, shaves and answers emails before a 6:30 a.m. interview with Good Morning America. At 7 a.m., Fauci leaves his home in Northwest Washington D.C. to go to the National Institutes of Health headquarters.”

HEALTH

WSET: Doubts about COVID-19 vaccine spread on social media, threatening effort to end pandemic. “There is new hope this holiday season as the first COVID-19 vaccines are given to frontline healthcare workers. Public health experts agree it’s the first step toward defeating the devastating pandemic. But Spotlight on America found there’s still widespread hesitance to get the shot, and experts say social media is playing a major role in shaping public opinion.”

Quartz: How many people need to be vaccinated for life to go back to normal?. “In lieu of any other successful containment and mitigation strategies for the pandemic, Covid-19 vaccines have become the de-facto final hope for ending the pandemic. The question now is, how much of the global population will need to get vaccinated to return life to normal? Answering that question depends on a few different factors.”

CNET: COVID-19 vaccine is flying high and on dry ice to reach you. “Air cargo carriers will be at the forefront of distributing the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines around the planet. Transporting vaccines by air isn’t new — that’s how flu vaccines get distributed every year — but the significance and scope of the COVID-19 vaccine distribution is unmatched. Pfizer alone expects to produce up to 50 million vaccine doses in 2020 and 1.3 billion in 2021, and they’ll all need to get somewhere.”

RESEARCH

The Root: CDC’s New Numbers Show Black Americans and Other People of Color Dying at Higher Rates From COVID-19 Than It Previously Reported. “After initially saying that Black Americans are dying at about two times the rate of their white counterparts from COVID-19, the CDC has updated its publicly reported figures to show that the racial disparity in deaths from the disease is even wider. An adjusted data report published by the agency this week now shows that Black people are actually dying from the coronavirus at almost 3 times the rate of their white counterparts.”

Medical Xpress: COVID-19 causes more severe disease than seasonal influenza: comparison of data from over 130,000 hospitalized patients. “Nearly twice as many people were admitted to hospital for COVID-19 at the height of the pandemic than were for influenza at the peak of the 2018/2019 flu season, a study of French national data published today in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal has found (COVID-19, 89,530 patients vs influenza, 45,819 patients). The study compared data from COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital over a two-month period in spring 2020 with influenza patients admitted over a three-month period during the seasonal flu outbreak of 2018/2019.”

OUTBREAKS

BBC: Covid: Sydney residents urged to stay home amid new outbreak. “Hundreds of thousands of Sydney residents have been told to stay home after a new outbreak of coronavirus ended a two-week run of no local cases. Australian officials are scrambling to trace the source of the infection, after finding 28 cases across the city’s Northern Beaches region.”

CRIME / SECURITY / LEGAL

New York Times: Puppy Scams Have Spiked in the Pandemic. “Scammers are notorious for preying on people who are vulnerable during natural disasters, but the isolation of the pandemic has created fertile ground for those looking to exploit people who are seeking the comfort of four-legged companions, mostly puppies, consumer advocates say. Many use social-distancing mandates to explain why buyers cannot see dogs in person before committing.”

OPINION

BuzzFeed News: Was It Selfish To See My Grandmother Before She Died?. “My grandmother had dementia for years, but it was inconsistent. She remembered how to take care of herself, who every member of her family was when they called, the important facts about our lives, and the best gossip. But she forgot the things less fun to remember: finances, current events, deadly global pandemics. Instead, she spent her days wondering why she was so alone, why her family wasn’t visiting like they normally did, and why the caretaker helping her was wearing a mask and a transparent plastic visor.”

CoronaBuzz is brought to you by ResearchBuzz. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment, send resource suggestions, or tag @buzz_corona on Twitter. Thanks!

December 19, 2020 at 07:53AM
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Secret Service, Kansas Data Tool, ARIJ Aleph Archive, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 18, 2020

Secret Service, Kansas Data Tool, ARIJ Aleph Archive, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 18, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

American Military News: Pics: Secret Service launches new website and you can see it here. “The United States Secret Service launched a recently redesigned public website Thursday, including access for public and law enforcement partners who work to support the agency’s missions and modernized agency communication. The new website includes a Newsroom that provides users with the option to receive automated Secret Service agency updates. It also features the agency’s social media feeds.”

KWCH: ACLU of Kansas launches data tool to encourage citizen participation in local government.
“After compiling data from hundreds of open records requests, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas unveiled a database that breaks down and examines voter registration, racial justice and policing in the state.”

OCCRP: New Tool Helps Journalists in Arab World Follow the Money . “The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) are excited to announce the launch of the ARIJ Aleph Archive. This new tool contains documents and data from across the Middle East and North Africa that ARIJ has collected over the last decade, a unique trove of material that will help investigative reporters follow the money. The ARIJ Aleph Archive is part of OCCRP Aleph, the investigative data platform that allows journalists to search and cross-reference more than one billion records to trace connections and patterns and collaborate across borders.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

American Songwriter: Spotify’s Songwriters Hub Launches as a New Tool for the Music Industry. “Today, Spotify is officially launching the entirety of their Songwriters Hub, and Jules Parker explained it all in an exclusive interview with American Songwriter…. The features of the Hub include Written By playlists (collections of a songwriter’s songs) and podcasts about songwriting (to understand the nuts and bolts of the process).”

CNET: Baby Yoda is the latest Google AR object you can add to your home. “If topping a Christmas tree with Baby Yoda isn’t your jam, Google has just served up a new way to bring the galaxy’s most-wanted baby into your home this holiday season. The search giant has added The Mandalorian’s breakout star to its growing repertoire of 3D search results ahead of the show’s season two finale on Friday.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lonely Planet: Iceland can help you quit your ‘doomscrolling’ habit in 2021. “The site is called Joyscroll and it has been launched by the Icelandic tourism board after it conducted an in-depth study to find just how much people were doomscrolling on their phones in 2020. It then decided to create an interactive website that would allow people to counter their instinctive habit of chasing negativity by scrolling through joy-inspiring Icelandic sights and sounds instead.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

ABC 13: ABC13 exclusively debuts Texas’ new job search website during virtual job fair. “ABC13 hosted a virtual job fair featuring more than 400 jobs, and gave southeast Texans an exclusive look at the state’s new jobs website. The state will roll out the new site, where Texans can search for, match and apply for jobs in 2021. However, Workforce Solutions partnered with ABC13 to exclusively debut the new website during our virtual job fair Thursday.”

DigitalNC: DigitalNC from Home: Oral History Transcription. “Transcriptions are the written text of audio files, which are, in our case, recordings of oral histories. The oral histories on DigitalNC vary in length, ranging from two minutes, to two hours, and beyond. Typing out transcriptions from scratch takes time- a lot of time. To help us out, we use the transcription software, Sonix. Once an audio file has been uploaded to Sonix, the software ‘listens’ to and creates text of what it heard.”

CoinWeek: National Endowment for Humanities Funds ANS-Oxford University OXUS-INDUS Project. “The American Numismatic Society (ANS) is pleased to announce that the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded the Society a $150,000 USD grant for the two-year joint ANS-Oxford University OXUS-INDUS project. The award comes through the New Directions in Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions program that partners the NEH with the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) intended to fund trans-Atlantic co-operative projects.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

MIT Technology Review: Congress wants answers from Google about Timnit Gebru’s firing. “Nine members of the US Congress have sent a letter to Google asking it to clarify the circumstances around its former ethical AI co-lead Timnit Gebru’s forced departure. Led by Representative Yvette Clarke and Senator Ron Wyden, and co-signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, the letter sends an important signal about how Congress is scrutinizing tech giants and thinking about forthcoming regulation.” Good afternoon, Internet…

December 19, 2020 at 01:37AM
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Copyright Records, Jimmy Carter, Periscope, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, December 18, 2020

Copyright Records, Jimmy Carter, Periscope, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, December 18, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

US Copyright Office: Copyright Office Launches Copyright Public Records System Pilot. “Today, the U.S. Copyright Office launched a new Copyright Public Records System (CPRS) pilot to the public. The new portal will provide access to the same copyright records for both registration and recordation data that exist in the Copyright Public Catalog but with enhanced search capabilities and improved interfaces for internal and external users.”

WABE: Thousands Of Documents Go Online Detailing Daily Activities Of The Carter Administration. “Two collections of documents from the presidential administration of Jimmy Carter are now digitized and online for public viewing and research. Sheila McAlister, director of the Digital Library of Georgia, says it’s important to make the documents accessible to everyone with an internet connection, especially with the ongoing pandemic.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Twitter is shutting down Periscope. “More than five years after being acquired by Twitter before it officially launched, Periscope is shutting down. ‘We have made the difficult decision to discontinue Periscope as a separate mobile app by March 2021,’ the video live-streaming app announced in a blog post on Tuesday.”

PopSugar: Google Wants to Make It Easier For You to Test Beauty Products Virtually Before You Buy. “Google just announced its partnership with ModiFace and Perfect Corp to launch a tool that helps you virtually test out makeup before you buy it. Starting Dec. 17, customers shopping from brands like L’Oréal, MAC, Black Opal, and Charlotte Tilbury will be able to compare specific shades of lipstick, eyeshadow, and more against their skin tone to ensure they can find a perfect match before they purchase. To use it, all you have to do is open or download the Google Shopping app and search from a range of products you’d like to try on.”

ZDNet: Linux Mint 20.1 beta arrives . “As always, this new Mint will run on systems so low-powered you’d otherwise condemn them to the junkyard. For example, you only need a single GB of RAM, although 2GBs is recommended. For storage space, you only need 15GBs of disk space with 20GB recommended. And, as for your monitor and video, if it can support 1024×768 resolution, or even lower, you’re in business.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

University of Maryland Archives: “Challenging the Status Quo”: Social Justice and Archives. “We asked four University of Maryland Libraries and SCUA staff members what social justice means to them. We asked these questions: 1) what do you do and what are some of your daily responsibilities? and 2) in your position, what does social justice in the archive or library mean to you? Their responses show the wide range of approaches and work that needs to be done in order to make archives more equitable, just, and welcoming spaces.”

Reuters: China tweet that enraged Australia propelled by ‘unusual’ accounts, say experts. “A Chinese official’s tweet of an image of an Australian soldier that sparked a furious reaction from Canberra was amplified across social media by unusual accounts, of which half were likely fake, an Israeli cybersecurity firm and Australian experts said.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Moscow Times: Russia Fines Google for Failing To Remove Banned Content. “A Moscow court fined Google on Thursday for not taking down online content banned by the Russian authorities, the latest in a series of escalating penalties against the U.S. tech giant. Google was found guilty of repeatedly failing to delete search results ‘containing information prohibited in Russia’ and was fined 3 million rubles (around $41,000), state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said.”

Reuters: ‘Gorilla’ Google hit with third lawsuit as U.S. states sue over search dominance . “Google faced its third major lawsuit in two months on Thursday as 38 U.S. states and territories accused the $1 trillion company of abusing its market power to try to make its search engine as dominant inside cars, TVs and speakers as it is in phones.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BloombergQuint: Google Waives $1.5 Billion DeepMind Loan as AI Costs Mount. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google waived a 1.1 billion-pound loan ($1.5 billion) to DeepMind Technologies Ltd. in 2019 after the U.K.-based artificial intelligence lab continued to ramp up the scale of its research and development. Revenue jumped 158% in 2019, DeepMind said in a financial filing this week. Sales were 265.5 million pounds, up from 102.8 million pounds a year earlier.”

Engadget: Google AI is now piloting Loon’s internet-beaming balloons. “Alphabet’s Loon has shifted to a different type of navigation system for its internet-beaming balloons. Rather than relying on algorithms designed by humans, the balloons are using an artificial intelligence system Loon developed with Google AI over the last few years.”

Vancouver Island University: Researchers Developing a Better User Interface for Historical Archive. “VIU researchers are mapping historical data contained in the Canadian Letters and Images Project and creating a sophisticated interface so scholars, students and the public can gain better access to information contained in the archive.” Good morning, Internet…

December 18, 2020 at 06:20PM
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Thursday, December 17, 2020

WWOZ, Texas History, Michelson Cinema Research Library, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 17, 2020

WWOZ, Texas History, Michelson Cinema Research Library, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 17, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Gambit: Community radio station WWOZ marks its 40th anniversary. “During the pandemic, WWOZ has also broadcast full sets recorded at local festivals and clubs. When the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival was pre-empted in spring, WWOZ, whose license is held by the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, broadcast past sets during what would have been eight days of festival hours. ‘Festing in Place’ was born, but it also happened during a time when the station quietly launched Groovapedia, a searchable online archive of videos, interviews, music recordings, photos and more.”

Texas State Library and Archives Commission: Texas Library and Archives Foundation Launches New Website and Online Book Store. “The new website includes a selection of Texas Treasures from the State Archives, such as the 1836, Texas Declaration of Independence, one of the first designs for the Lone Star Flag, William Barrett Travis’s famous letter from the Alamo, and a selection of historic photographs, newspapers, publications, maps, and documents. A variety of free research opportunities can be found at TSLAC, including not only library and archival collections, but also more than 75,000 photographs, vital statistic indexes, county tax rolls and records, city directories, historic newspapers, free access to online genealogy research sites such as Ancestry.com for Texas residents, and much more.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Internet Archive: After Searching for a Decade, Legendary Hollywood Research Library Finds a New Home. “For 50 years in Hollywood, generations of filmmakers would beat a path to the Michelson Cinema Research Library, where renowned film researcher Lillian Michelson could hunt down the answer to just about any question. She was the human card catalogue to a library of more than one million books, photos, periodicals and clippings. But ever since Lillian retired a decade ago, the Michelson Cinema Research Library has been languishing in cold storage, looking for a home. Today it has found one. Lillian Michelson, 92, announced that she is donating her library and life’s work to the Internet Archive. For its part, the nonprofit digital library vows to preserve her collection for the long-term and digitize as much of it as possible, making it accessible to the world.”

CNET: Twitter restores retweet functionality after effort to curb misinformation. “Twitter said Wednesday it will restore traditional retweet functionality after a months-long experiment to limit the spread of misinformation on the platform ahead of the US election last month. Twitter said in October it would prompt users to add a comment to a tweet if they tried to retweet. Users could still retweet if they didn’t add their own remarks, a practice known a quote tweeting.”

USEFUL STUFF

BetaNews: The best password managers 2021. “Using unique passwords is essential for keeping documents, data and accounts safe. However, it can be hard to remember them all. Using password managers is the ideal solution for keeping everything organized. Now that the new year is nearly upon us, it’s time to take a look at the best password managers for 2021.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TVO: ‘One fire away’: Why Ontario communities are digitizing their newspapers. “In the spring of 2017, Allan J. MacDonald set out to preserve fragile copies of Glengarry County’s newspapers in a more permanent location: the internet. With 25 years of experience at the Archives of Ontario behind him, MacDonald had the right skills for the delicate task. So, nearly a decade into his retirement, he tackled the job as Glengarry’s county archivist — a volunteer role.”

Calvert Journal: On the ball: the polka dot toy that entertained a nation. “Instagram and Facebook account @mingearosie explores Romania’s recent past via the photographs of one ubiquitous toy: a red ball with white polka dots.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ABC News: Voter registration data for 113K Alaskans exposed in breach. “The breach affected about 113,000 Alaskans who had used the online voter registration system within the past five years to change some detail, such as an address or party affiliation, he said. That system went online in 2015.”

Harvard Law Today: Online courts: reimagining the future of justice. “Even if there was no COVID-19, online courts would still be the wave of the future. This idea was the starting point for a recent webinar, ‘Online Courts: Perspectives from the Bench and the Bar,’ during which experts from the United States and the United Kingdom examined future prospects for online litigation, and its successes and failures to date.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BuzzFeed News: In 2020, Disinformation Broke The US. “Disinformation and its fallout have defined 2020, the year of the infodemic. Month after month, self-serving social media companies have let corrosive manipulators out for dollars, votes, and clicks vie for attention, no matter the damage.” Good afternoon, Internet…

December 18, 2020 at 01:38AM
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