Women’s Rights, WhatsApp, Wikipedia, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 18, 2021

Women’s Rights, WhatsApp, Wikipedia, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 18, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

British Library: Creating a Web Collection for the exhibition – Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights. “The core aim of the collection was to capture websites that reflect the activism around women’s rights online. From the beginning we also recognised that the scope for this collection was difficult to define and that sites relevant to this collection would come from many areas and would not focus solely on feminism, gender and women’s studies but also subjects such as family history, society and culture and welfare for example.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ghacks: WhatsApp makes data-sharing with Facebook mandatory. “One core difference between the new and the old privacy policy is that all users who accept the new privacy policy will have data shared with Facebook. Whatsapp is a Facebook company, as Facebook acquired the messaging service in 2015. Previously, existing users who accepted the revised privacy policy of 2019 could opt-out of having data shared with Facebook, provided that they did so in the first 30-days after accepting the terms.”

MarketWatch: Wikipedia turns 20 years old today — the free encyclopedia gets more traffic than Netflix. “Wikipedia was launched on Jan. 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger as an English-language encyclopedia, according to — aptly — Wikipedia. Since then, the website has become every undergrad’s first stop when embarking on a research paper, the go-to site for cheating in trivia, and my personal favorite — The Wiki Game. Wikipedia is the 13th most popular website on the internet, ahead of Netflix NFLX and Reddit. With 55 million articles, the site attracts 1.5 billion unique visitors a month.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 7 Ways to Free Up Storage Space on Google Photos. “While Google Photos has proudly offered free high-quality photo storage for years, that’s changing in 2021. Beginning June 1, all ‘high-quality’ photos you upload to Google Photos will start to count against your Google account storage. If you relied on the free storage and are now worried about running out of space, you can prepare yourself and avoid paying for more storage by freeing up space in Google Photos. Follow the below tips to free up storage space in Google Photos—as a bonus, you’ll also clean up your photo library while at it.”

TechCrunch: PrivacyGrader is a free tool to help companies get smarter about data and disclosures. “In order to use PrivacyGrader, you need to have an authenticated email address tied to the website that you want analyzed — so you shouldn’t be able to see your competitors’ grades. Once your request and email address are validated, Vaidya said you should get an analysis back in less than 24 hours, which will score your site across more than 50 different factors, including trackers, storage of personal data and overall compliance with GDPR, CCPA and other regulations.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BBC: The Instagrammers who worry Iran. “As the only major social media network not blocked by the government, Instagram is a popular platform for young Iranians to express themselves. This has created a dilemma for the government, which experts say is loath to block the tool for fear of provoking unrest, hampering business owners who rely on it for advertising, and severing a useful means of communication with its citizens. Instead, the government has attempted to act as a moderator.”

The Guardian: Historians having to tape together records that Trump tore up. “The public will not see Donald Trump’s White House records for years, but there is growing concern the collection will never be complete – leaving a hole in the history of one of America’s most tumultuous presidencies. Trump has been cavalier about the law requiring that records be preserved. He has a habit of ripping up documents before tossing them out, forcing White House workers to spend hours taping them back together.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

KTLA: New app to help California family, friends schedule video visits with inmates at 4 state prisons. “The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has announced a new tool to help friends and family visit inmates. The Visitation Scheduling Application app can be accessed on smartphones, tablets and computers and allows approved visitors to easily schedule their own video visits and receive instant confirmation. The CDCR said the app will first be used to schedule video visits at four state prisons: San Quentin State Prison, Valley State Prison, the California Institution for Men and the Central California Women’s Facility.”

Reuters: Google Play is unsportsmanlike, U.S. states likely to argue in potential lawsuit. “State attorneys general are planning a third lawsuit against Alphabet Inc’s Google, this one focused on the search and advertising giant’s Play Store for Android phones, according to two sources familiar with the matter.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Techdirt: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation. “I’ve delayed writing deeper thoughts on the total deplatforming of Parler, in part because there was so much else happening (including some more timely posts about Parler’s lawsuit regarding it), but more importantly because for years I’ve been calling for people to think more deeply about content moderation at the infrastructure layer, rather than at the edge. Because those issues are much more complicated than the usual content moderation debates.”

CNET: After Twitter banned Trump, misinformation plummeted, says report. “The week after Twitter banned President Donald Trump from its platform, online misinformation about election fraud fell by a whopping 73%, according to a Saturday report by The Washington Post. Talk around election fraud dropped from 2.5 million mentions to 688,000 mentions across a selection of social media sites, the Post reported, citing data from researcher Zignal Labs.” Good morning, Internet…

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January 18, 2021 at 06:20PM
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Sunday CoronaBuzz, January 17, 2021: 26 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Sunday CoronaBuzz, January 17, 2021: 26 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.

NEW RESOURCES – MEDICAL/HEALTH

Mashable: The CDC’s vaccine counter is the website you’ll constantly refresh in 2021. “Getting a window into the United States’ fight against the pandemic has often felt like trying to pry open a black box made even more difficult to understand by cagey crew members. Now, there’s a slightly more satisfying way to get a view of the battle firsthand. The CDC has released a new section of its COVID data website that tracks vaccinations across the country.”

NEW RESOURCES – LEGAL / SECURITY / PRIVACY / FINANCIAL

CBS 46: Latest data estimates 19.5% of homes in several metro Atlanta cities are in a mortgage forbearance program. “The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has released a new tool that will help local agencies determine which areas have had the most financial impact from COVID-19. The new website provides maps and graphs of mortgage forbearance and delinquency rates across the country.”

NEW RESOURCES – STATE-SPECIFIC

CBS Philly: COVID In Pennsylvania: New Website Helping Keep Track Of Who’s Vaccinated And Where. “Getting everyone vaccinated is the goal of health experts to curb the pandemic. Now a website in the state of Pennsylvania is helping keep track of who’s getting the vaccine and where.”

KREM: Can you get the COVID-19 vaccine in Washington? Online tool determines eligibility. “The Washington State Department of Health is launching a new tool that will allow residents to determine their eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine. PhaseFinder allows users to take a survey to determine when they will be eligible to get the vaccine, according to a presentation given by the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) in December.”

WRCB: Tennessee unveils new tool to determine your COVID-19 vaccine eligibility. “The eligibility tool also allows users to opt-in to receive updates and notifications about their vaccine phase and provides risk-based and age-based phase information at the county level.”

WOWT: Nebraska planning next phase of COVID-19 vaccine rollout. “There’s a new tool that allows Nebraskans to see COVID-19 vaccine-related information. The COVID-19 vaccination dashboard can be found on the Department of Health and Human Services’ website. It’s similar to the state’s COVID-19 cases dashboard. The dashboard tracks how many of the Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine doses the state has received, how many have been administered, and how many people have received two doses of the vaccine.”

TribLive: New Pa. websites promote restaurants and show violators of covid measures. “New interactive dashboards announced Tuesday by state officials allow users to find open Pennsylvania restaurants, which are offering takeout and those accused of violating covid-19 mitigation measures.”

MISINFORMATION / FACT-CHECKING

Snopes: Viral Post ‘How To Fight Covid at Home’ Provides Problematic Advice. “We refer to repeatedly copy-and-pasted text shared across multiple digital platforms as ‘copypasta’ — a sort of chain email for the social media age. Copypasta has been a major feature of the COVID-19 pandemic and the misinformation associated with it, often claiming to provide anonymously sourced ‘insider’ information on how to treat, cure, or avoid the disease that is often incorrect and dangerous. As always, we remind our readers that anonymous claims on the internet should never be taken as factual, efficacious, or even safe.”

HEALTH CARE / HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS

NPR: Black Doctors Use Social Media To Share Accurate Information About COVID-19 Vaccine. “About a quarter of the American public is hesitant to get a COVID-19 vaccine. That number goes up to a third of Black Americans, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month. The hesitancy is rooted in real mistreatment and fanned by myths and misinformation. As NPR’s Pien Huang reports, some Black doctors are finding creative ways to encourage vaccine acceptance.”

BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS

BBC: How RuPaul’s Drag Race UK faced Covid challenge. “Wearing blood-red shoulder pads, piercing red contact lenses, and dripping in jewels, Cherry Valentine’s drag is a world away from the day job as a mental health nurse. ‘It was a weird contrast to go from competing in the Olympics of drag… to the heart of a global pandemic.’ As one of the 12 queens in series two of Drag Race UK, Cherry says things became a “whole different ballgame” when filming was shut down because of the pandemic.”

STATE / LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Salt Lake Tribune: Exclusive: Utah leaders went rogue in early coronavirus response, emails from health experts show. “The powerful state budget managers who controlled key parts of Utah’s initial coronavirus response were skeptical about the value of medical expertise in handling the crisis and made repeated attempts to resist or subvert health officials, according to records obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune.”

COUNTRY / FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Washington Post: The Trump administration approved faster line speeds at chicken plants. Those facilities are more likely to have covid-19 cases.. “Since 2018, the Trump administration has issued — or reissued — temporary waivers that grant permission to 54 poultry plants to increase line speeds. These plants are allowed to speed up lines from 140 to 175 birds per minute, a 25 percent increase. They are also 10 times as likely to have coronavirus cases than poultry plants without the line-speed waivers, according a Washington Post analysis of data collected by the nonprofit Food and Environment Reporting Network (FERN). The Post analysis mirrors academic research that shows more coronavirus cases in counties with plants that have waivers to raise line speeds.”

Sky News: COVID-19: Nicola Sturgeon announces national lockdown in Scotland. “A nationwide lockdown will be introduced in Scotland from midnight tonight, Nicola Sturgeon has announced. The first minister told the Scottish Parliament there will be a legal requirement for people to stay at home for the rest of January, with schools remaining closed to most pupils until the start of February at the earliest.”

NBC News: Faced with mounting cases, England announces new lockdown. “British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday announced a new national lockdown in England, including the most stringent level of restrictions since the start of the pandemic, to slow down the spiral in new cases of Covid-19 on the same day the U.K. started the rollout of AstraZeneca’s vaccine.”

US Army: Army’s official face mask to be issued to new Soldiers in 2021. “The official Army-designed, -tested, and -refined face mask – the Combat Cloth Face Covering (CCFC) – will be provided to new Soldiers during the second quarter of FY2021. This was one of the updates provided to the Army Uniform Board (AUB) during its 152nd meeting, which occurred on Nov. 18.”

INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS

Korea Times: K-pop in 2021: Social media-friendly musicians survive pandemic. “K-pop is tech-savvy. K-pop artists were able to build a global fandom thanks to their strategic use of YouTube and social media to interact with their fans abroad. Considering its tech-friendly nature, it’s no surprise K-pop is remaining strong despite the pandemic. K-pop musicians’ bonds with global fans are stronger than one might expect, partly because their decades-old relationships were built online, according to a K-pop expert.”

Pramila Jayapal: Jayapal Tests Positive for COVID-19 Following Lockdown at Capitol With Republican Lawmakers Who Cruelly and Selfishly Refused to Wear Masks. “United States Representative Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) received a positive COVID-19 test result tonight after being locked down in a secured room at the U.S Capitol where numerous Republican lawmakers recklessly refused to wear masks in the moments after the January 6 attack.”

HEALTH

Independent (Ireland): Beats of the Swinging Sixties a hit with stroke patients on Zoom. “Karen Roberts is using Zoom to conduct online exercise classes and has discovered the musical hits from that period have ‘the perfect beat and tempo’ to get the best results. Initially she was providing free socially distanced dance exercise classes on the public green at Maunsells Park in Galway to help elderly cocooners maintain muscle strength during the pandemic.”

New York Times: How to Get More From Your Pandemic Bubble. “Social bubbles have helped us cope with the restrictions of Covid-19. For today’s Well Challenge, look to your pandemic pod to inspire and motivate you toward a healthier and happier life.”

TECHNOLOGY

EDGE Media Network: Watch: Instagram Account Shames Gay Men Partying Amid Pandemic. “…the account shares images and videos —often times posted by Instagram users — that show men partying despite the global COVID-19 pandemic (EDGE cannot verify all of the posts), adding snarky captions and dragging those featured.”

RESEARCH

EurekAlert: Public mobility, social media attention in response to COVID-19 in Sweden, Denmark. “Denmark was one of the first countries to enforce lockdown to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and subsequent gradual reopening, whereas Sweden has had few restrictions, largely limited to public recommendations. Researchers assessed public mobility and social media attention associated with COVID-19 spread and societal interventions from February to June in Denmark and Sweden.”

WCVB: Vitamin D eyed as possible new tool in fight against coronavirus. “Brigham and Women’s Hospital will look at whether vitamin D can lessen the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. Researchers are also studying whether vitamin D supplements reduce the chance of becoming infected if you have been exposed to someone in your household who tested positive for COVID-19.”

University of Florida: Smell Tests Evaluated As Potential Tool To Identify COVID-19 (UF MBI News). “A team of University of Florida neuroscientists will analyze two different smell tests under a National Institutes of Health grant aimed at developing inexpensive, at-home tests to help identify new cases of COVID-19 and provide a warning sign of a community outbreak in time to thwart it.”

CRIME / SECURITY / LEGAL

USA Today: How scammers siphoned $36B in fraudulent unemployment payments from US. “In a Zoom session with the camera turned off, Mayowa describes how he scoops up U.S. unemployment benefits fattened by COVID-19 relief, an international imposter attack that has contributed to at least $36 billion being siphoned away from out-of-work Americans. Mayowa is an engineering student in Nigeria who estimates he’s made about $50,000 since the pandemic began. After compiling a list of real people, he turns to databases of hacked information that charge $2 in cryptocurrency to link that name to a date of birth and Social Security number.”

ZDNet: Be warned: COVID-19 vaccine scams are now appearing online, over text, and by email. “There is now a rising sense of urgency due to the new COVID-19 variant that appears to be more easily transmitted. Mass vaccination is no easy task, especially when two separate doses are required — and when you combine millions of people desperately waiting for news and confusion in how vaccine programs are being operated, this becomes a situation that cybercriminals can exploit. Over the past few weeks, scammers and other threat actors have launched their own programs: not for public health, but to steal personal information, conduct identity theft, scam victims, and all with the potential for criminal financial gain.”

WLNY: Only On CBS2: Illegal Parties Continue To Rage Across NYC In Violation Of COVID-19 Restrictions. “For months, we have been told to avoid large gatherings to slow the spread of COVID-19, but there have been dozens of illegal parties across New York City since the start of the pandemic. Video posted to Instagram shows more than 100 people in Queens jammed together, dancing and drinking with no masks in sight.”

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!

January 17, 2021 at 07:29PM
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Spicy Green Book, Pangloss Collection, Nuremberg Trials, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 17, 2021

Spicy Green Book, Pangloss Collection, Nuremberg Trials, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 17, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

ABC7: Local online website designed to help Black-owned business expands nationwide. “Spicy Green Book started out showing businesses in Orange County, but now the website is a national online guide featuring 185 Black-owned businesses in 23 states including Ontario, Canada. And now, there’s an app to go along with it.”

EurekAlert: Endangered linguistic heritage: a new website for the Pangloss Collection. “Like certain animal and plant species, some of the world’s languages are in danger of extinction. Fortunately, the Pangloss Collection, an open archive started in 1995 by the Langues et civilisations à tradition orale laboratory (CNRS/Université Sorbonne Nouvelle/Inalco), makes available recordings of endangered languages in order to preserve this linguistic heritage and make it open-access. Languages without a written tradition (the vast majority) could otherwise disappear completely when their last speakers pass away. Other relatively undocumented languages are also included in the collection. Thanks to the support of the CNRS, the Pangloss Collection is now being revamped with a new website, also accessible to the general public.”

From November. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: For 75th Anniversary of Nuremberg Trials, Museum Makes Available War Crimes Trial Recordings, Film. “The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has made available online the full sound recordings of the War Crimes Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) established in Nuremberg, Germany, commonly referred to as the Nuremberg Trials. Additionally, the film evidence presented by the World War II Allied prosecutors at the trial is now available for online viewing. The collection consists of 1,942 gramophone discs holding 775 hours of hearings and 37 reels of film used as evidence in the trials.”

Auburn Pub: Women’s park in Seneca Falls unveils digital collection. “The Hunt family papers include more than 1,100 plans, contracts, essays, store records and correspondence from 1828 to 1856. They were held by the Jane and Richard Hunt family and private owners for more than 140 years. The park has been able to make them available online with support from the Northeast Museum Services Center, the park said in a news release.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NBC News: Online far-right movements fracture in wake of Capitol riot. “Online far-right movements are splintering in the wake of last week’s Capitol riot, as some radical anti-government movements show signs of disillusionment with the relatively hands-off approach of some QAnon conspiracy theorists amid warnings of future violence.”

TechCrunch: How Twitter is handling the 2021 US presidential transition. “Twitter has set out its plans for US Inauguration Day 2021, next Wednesday, January 20, when president-elect Joe Biden will be sworn into office as the 46th US president and vice president-elect Kamala Harris will become VP.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: 10 photo archive websites that let you lose yourself in history. “Thousands of dedicated historians, photography enthusiasts, and archivists across the globe have spent years digitizing antique and vintage imagery to make it available for everyone to view online. Whether you’re interested in a specific area or era of the past or just feeling nostalgic for different times, browsing these collections is absolutely fascinating. From missions to the moon to quirky 1930s studio portraits via vintage Vogue photoshoots, we’re sure you’ll find something brilliant to browse in these amazing photo archive websites.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

I’m not 100% sure why I’m including this story. I think it’s a combination of interest in the idea that misinformation turns up in the oddest places, and an interest in how it’s refuted by crowd action. Anyway, Unseen Japan: A wild theory about how the Japanese word for ‘I’ was corrupted by Allied occupiers leaves Japanese Twitter users shaking their heads.. “Languages evolve constantly. I’ve discussed this evolution in past articles – e.g., the drift from ‘nippon’ to ‘nihon’ for the name of Japan. Many times, this influence is just a natural, internal progression. But sometimes, it happens through outside influence or even force. In Japan, one story about a supposed forced change in the way that people spell a simple Japanese word recently made the rounds on Twitter. However, in this case, the ‘change’ appears to be nothing more than a post-World War II conspiracy theory.”

Alaska Native News: Alutiiq Museum to Create Online Database of Ancestral Collections. “With a $32,578 grant from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak and the Alutiiq Museum are collaborating on a tool that will help people locate, view, and study Alutiiq objects in the world’s museums. The Amutat project, which started this month, will begin developing a database of ancestral Alutiiq objects linked to the museum’s website. Visitors to the page will be able to search and study a wide range of Alutiiq tools, clothes, and ceremonial pieces assembled in one place.”

WLRN: Stonewall National Museum & Archives Gets Money To Go Digital. “The Stonewall National Museum & Archives is digitizing the LGBTQ history it’s been collecting for nearly 50 years — a dream that started before the pandemic but is even more urgent now. The Fort Lauderdale museum received a $50,000 dollar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to begin the process to put its archives online.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Sky News: Home secretary told to ‘get a grip’ after 150,000 police records wiped . “Home Secretary Priti Patel has been told to ‘get a grip’ after 150,000 fingerprint, DNA and arrest history records were accidentally wiped from police databases. Critics have seized on the mass information loss, warning it would not make the streets safer, amid fears suspects could slip through the net.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NOAA: The Global Drifter Program Launches a New Interactive Map Tool. “Drifters are deployed in the global ocean to measure sea surface temperature and ocean currents, but most are also equipped to measure other variables. As the drifter moves around, guided by currents, measurements of atmospheric pressure, winds, wave spectra, and salinity can also be taken. These data are collected by sensors in the drifter and transmitted to overhead satellites. Tracking the location of drifters over time allows scientists to build a profile of ocean currents.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!

January 17, 2021 at 07:24PM
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AI Incidents, January 6, North Korea Stamps, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, January 15, 2021

AI Incidents, January 6, North Korea Stamps, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, January 15, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

TechTalk: The AI Incident Database wants to improve the safety of machine learning . “Most complex software systems fail at some point and need to be updated regularly. We have procedures and tools that help us find and fix these errors. But current AI systems, mostly dominated by machine learning algorithms, are different from traditional software. We are still exploring the implications of applying them to different applications, and protecting them against failure needs new ideas and approaches. This is the idea behind the AI Incident Database a repository of documented failures of AI systems in the real world. The database aims to make it easier to see past failures and avoid repeating them.”

Motherboard: Developer Makes Interactive Map of Parler Videos From Capitol Hill Riots. “A developer calling themselves Patr10tic has taken archived versions of videos uploaded by Parler users during the deadly Capitol Hill siege, geolocated them, reuploaded them, and placed them on an interactive map for anybody to watch. The beta project nicknamed ‘Y’all Qaeda’ is one of the first to present posts and videos from the archived Parler data that was saved by a hacker and a team of archivists. So far, most reporting and projects have relied on metadata alone.”

North Korea Tech: North Korean stamps website appears. “The Korea Stamp site is operated by the country’s national stamp issuer to sell North Korean stamps to collectors worldwide. The site incudes a catalog of several thousand stamps dating back to just after the end of the Second World War in 1946. Newer stamps are apparently for sale, each costing between a few U.S. cents and a few U.S. dollars, but I couldn’t get the shopping cart function to work.” Please note that this is for informational purposes only and I do not advocate doing business with North Korea. It feels weird to include that disclaimer, but these are weird times.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says banning Trump was the ‘right decision’. “Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said Wednesday he thought the company made the right call by permanently barring President Donald Trump’s account after violence broke out on Capitol Hill last week, but it was a decision he isn’t celebrating.”

Facebook: Our Preparations Ahead of Inauguration Day. “We began preparing for Inauguration Day last year. But our planning took on new urgency after last week’s violence in Washington, D.C., and we are treating the next two weeks as a major civic event. We’re taking additional steps and using the same teams and technologies we used during the general election to stop misinformation and content that could incite further violence during these next few weeks.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Golden Transcript: Golden Museum gets a sweet treat. “Local couple Dorothy and Bill Harmsen opened their first Jolly Rancher Ice Cream store on Washington Avenue in 1949 and began selling early versions of their now-iconic confection out of it soon after. The store closed in 1951, but the brand’s local ties continued as production of the candies was moved to a factory in Wheat Ridge where it continued until new owner The Hershey Company moved production to Mexico in 2002. But even as Jolly Rancher is regarded as a sweet piece of Golden’s past, the company’s history has been neither widely known nor easy to learn much about. Until now.”

BuzzFeed News: This Pro-Trump YouTube Network Sprang Up Just After He Lost. “A network of YouTube channels connected to the pro-Trump media outlet Epoch Times launched after Election Day as part of a disinformation campaign to keep President Donald Trump in office. Only one of the channels discloses its ties to the newspaper, which traffics in conspiracy theories and has become one of the president’s staunchest media allies.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: Developer of Popular Women’s Fertility-Tracking App Settles FTC Allegations that It Misled Consumers About the Disclosure of their Health Data. “The developer of a period and fertility-tracking app used by more than 100 million consumers has settled Federal Trade Commission allegations that the company shared the health information of users with outside data analytics providers after promising that such information would be kept private. The proposed settlement requires Flo Health, Inc. to, among other things, obtain an independent review of its privacy practices and get app users’ consent before sharing their health information.”

Legal Genealogist: Ancestry sued for yearbooks. “The case, brought by two California residents against Ancestry, focuses on the yearbook collection — ‘U.S., School Yearbooks, 1900-1999’ — and charges Ancestry with ‘knowingly misappropriating the photographs, likenesses, names, and identities of Plaintiffs and the class; knowingly using those photographs, likenesses, names, and identities for the commercial purpose of selling access to them in Ancestry products and services; and knowingly using those photographs, likenesses, names, and identities to advertise, sell, and solicit purchases of Ancestry services and products; without obtaining prior consent from Plaintiffs and the class.'”

TechCrunch: A security researcher commandeered a country’s expired top-level domain to save it from hackers . “The domain — scpt-network.com — was one of two nameservers for the .cd country code top-level domain, assigned to the Democratic Republic of Congo. If it fell into the wrong hands, an attacker could redirect millions of unknowing internet users to rogue websites of their choosing. Clearly, a domain of such importance wasn’t supposed to expire; someone in the Congolese government probably forgot to pay for its renewal. Luckily, expired domains don’t disappear immediately. Instead, the clock started on a grace period for its government owners to buy back the domain before it was sold to someone else.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: Researchers deconstruct ancient Jewish parchment using multiple imaging techniques. “A picture may be worth a thousand words, but capturing multiple images of an artifact across the electromagnetic spectrum can tell a rich story about the original creation and degradation of historical objects over time. Researchers recently demonstrated how this was possible using several complementary imaging techniques to non-invasively probe a Jewish parchment scroll. The results were published in the journal Frontiers in Materials.”

Journal of the Medical Library Association: Causality dilemma: creating a twenty-first century university archive. “For its fifteenth anniversary, the Jay Sexter Library at Touro University Nevada (TUN) sought ways to capture its institutional history by founding an archive. Among many challenges, the library struggled to convince the administration of the importance of an archive. To generate interest in TUN’s history, a task force comprising library, executive administration, and advancement staff hosted and recorded a panel event with some of the university’s original faculty, staff, and administration. By having this event, new TUN employees were able to experience the shared knowledge of TUN’s early days, and the library was able to create and preserve its own institutional history.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!

January 15, 2021 at 08:22PM
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NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Climate Change Visualization, Google News, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 14, 2021

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Climate Change Visualization, Google News, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 14, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NASA: Explore NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory With the New Virtual Tour. “The interactive tour takes visitors to several locations at the 177-acre laboratory, which together provide an overview of JPL’s rich history and its many space missions, past and present. Each location is embedded with dozens of points of interest – including videos, fun facts, and images. For example, you can drop by the control room for the Deep Space Network, where JPL staff communicate with every NASA spacecraft flying beyond the orbit of the Moon.”

News 10 ABC: UAlbany researchers launch climate change visualizer. “A new tool developed by researchers at the University at Albany Visualization and Informatics Lab (AVAIL) helps visualize the progress of climate change. AVAIL’s tool offers an interactive way to process as much as two millennia of paleoclimate data from around the globe.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Guardian: Google admits to running ‘experiments’ which remove some media sites from its search results . “Google has been hiding some Australian news sites from search results, in a move media outlets say is a show of ‘extraordinary power’ as the tech company bargains with the Australian government over financial payment for content.”

USEFUL STUFF

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Mother Jones: Telegram Finally Takes Down Neo-Nazi Channels. “Since Tuesday, a wave of neo-Nazi and white nationalist accounts have come down. The removals follow an online campaign by activists, including extremist researcher Gwen Snyder, who pushed over the last week for Apple and Google to ban Telegram from their app stores, and for the app’s users to undertake reporting campaigns to prompt such channels removal.”

Vox: Is the country falling apart? Depends on where you get your news.. “Since the protests that arose in the wake of George Floyd’s death last summer, I have increasingly watched livestreams on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook to get a sense of how things feel on the ground. In particular, the Twitch channel Woke collects lots of different livestreams into a single feed, highlighting the audio from only one of them at a time (so as to avoid aural confusion) but letting viewers watch many different streams simultaneously, sometimes over a dozen at once. The feel of the channel is a little like the oft-depicted image of one person sitting in front of many televisions, all tuned to different things.”

Little White Lies: An unseen archive of movie poster artwork is being published. “The vast collection consists of thousands of pieces – from concept art to finished artwork – spanning more than half a century. Many of the designs are alternative and unused versions of classic posters you know and love, such as The Empire Strikes Back and Aliens (which was originally subtitled ‘The Return’) – but there’s also hundreds of more obscure titles, making this a fascinating look back at cinema’s forgotten history. When our friends at Feref, one of the world’s leading film marketing agencies, reached out to us about the project we knew we had to share it with our readers. They’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign to turn the archive into a deluxe coffee table book, bringing this unique visual record to life.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Parler’s amateur coding could come back to haunt Capitol Hill rioters. “A key reason for her success: Parler’s site was a mess. Its public API used no authentication. When users deleted their posts, the site failed to remove the content and instead only added a delete flag to it. Oh, and each post carried a numerical ID that was incremented from the ID of the most recently published one…. Another amateur mistake was Parler’s failure to scrub geolocations from images and videos posted online. Sites like Twitter and Google routinely remove such metadata from content posted by their users. The video files hosted on Parler, by contrast, were ‘raw,’ meaning they still contained this information.”

ZDNet: Google reveals sophisticated Windows and Android hacking operation. “The exploit chains included a combination of both zero-day and n-day vulnerabilities, where zero-day refers to bugs unknown to the software makers, and n-day refers to bugs that have been patched but are still being exploited in the wild.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

News @ Northeastern: On Twitter, Journalists And Politicians Have More Credibility On Vaccines Than Medical Experts, Study Finds . “Black, Indigenous, and other non-white people in the United States are more likely to rely on trusted voices within their own communities for information about the pandemic and the coronavirus vaccine, finds a new study led by researchers from Northeastern. And, at least on Twitter, all people are more receptive to information shared by journalists and politicians on both the left and right than by epidemiologists, scientists, and medical professionals.”

Science: Scientists ‘program’ living bacteria to store data. “Hard disks and optical drives store gigabits of digital data at the press of a button. But those technologies—like the magnetic tapes and floppy drives before them—are apt to become antiquated and unreadable when they are overtaken by new technology. Now, researchers have come up with a way to electronically write data into the DNA of living bacteria, a storage option unlikely to go obsolete any time soon.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!

January 15, 2021 at 01:41AM
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UFOs, Austria Animation, Facebook, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, January 14, 2021

UFOs, Austria Animation, Facebook, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, January 14, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

I forgot to mention yesterday that the ResearchBuzz Firehose Web site broke (it wouldn’t do the infinite scroll to browse through posts.) I replaced the site theme and that fixed it, but I have to replace the headers and make everything pretty – right now it’s basic. But the search function and so forth should work. Let me know if you have any problems with it.

NEW RESOURCES

CNET: Alien fans, get lost in a huge UFO archive of declassified CIA documents. “Do UFOs exist? ‘Unidentified flying objects’ are definitely a thing, but do they have alien origins? I’m on the side of the skeptics, but there are plenty of true believers and UFO-curious folks eager for official information from the government. Thanks to The Black Vault, an online archive of declassified government documents, you can now dig through a massive trove of information the CIA has collected on UFOs over the years.”

Cartoon Brew: Stream 100 Films For Free (Wherever You Are) At The Best Austrian Animation Festival. “On February 1, this set-up will be replaced by Best Austrian Animation’s brand-new online database — the culmination of years of archiving. The database will serve as a permanent research platform about contemporary animation from Austria. Ultimately, every film ever shown at the festival since 2013 will have an entry containing information, visuals, and in some cases the entire film.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Neowin: Facebook’s Access Your Information tool gets a makeover and a new search tool. “Facebook today announced a visual redesign for its privacy settings tool called Access Your Information. The tool was first launched in 2018 in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Back then, the tool had two data categories that were rather broad, but the new makeover makes it easier to navigate and use. The latest version removes the data categories ‘Your Information’ and ‘Information About You’. It now breaks those pieces of information into eight categories…”

Axios: Scoop: Snapchat will permanently ban Trump’s account. “Snapchat will permanently ban President Trump’s account on Jan. 20, Axios has learned, after locking it indefinitely last week following the Capitol siege.”

American Botanical Council: Nonprofit American Botanical Council Launches New, More Powerful Website. “As part of the tax-exempt nonprofit’s ongoing research and educational mission and commitment to provide ABC Members around the world with reliable, authoritative science-based and traditional-use information on herbs, phytomedicines, essential oils, medicinal fungi, and other beneficial botanicals, ABC has spent the last two years building a new website to improve the user experience for ABC members and other website visitors.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNET: Notion is TikTok’s new aesthetic obsession: Here’s how to set yours up. “At the onset of the pandemic, neatly organized planners got left behind on office and classroom desks across America. But Gen Z seems to have found an answer to the organizational woes of studying from home in a strange yet aesthetically-pleasing place: A piece of enterprise software called Notion, which offers a digital workplace for taking notes, making to-do lists, creating mood boards and more. Its clean, trendy look and easy setup have made it a new mainstay in TikTok groups for studying, staying organized and cutting out wasted time bouncing between different apps.”

Reuters: Uganda bans social media ahead of presidential election. “Uganda banned social media and beefed up security in the capital on Tuesday, two days ahead of a presidential election pitting Yoweri Museveni, one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, against opposition frontrunner Bobi Wine, a popular singer.”

The Guardian: Revealed: walkie-talkie app Zello hosted far-right groups who stormed Capitol. “Audio and chat logs reveal that at least two insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol on 6 January used Zello, a social media walkie-talkie app that critics say has largely ignored a growing far-right user base.” Zello became prominent as a useful app to have before Hurricane Irma a few years ago.

SECURITY & LEGAL

9to5 Google: YouTube rival Rumble sues Google over video search rankings. “According to the Wall Street Journal, the Canadian-based Rumble has accused Google of ‘unfairly rigging its search algorithm’ and favoring video content hosted on YouTube over rival platforms. Rumble has become a popular video hosting platform for conservatives in the US who claim that the established tech platforms are engaging in censorship.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Data Center Knowledge: Machine Learning Is Helping High-Performance Computing Go Mainstream. “Once confined to specialized workloads with high compute requirements, such as academic and medical research, financial modeling, and energy exploration, high-performance computing, or HPC, has in recent years been finding its way into IT of all stripes. This has partly been brought about by the mainstreaming of machine learning (a subset of artificial intelligence), which generally operates at a snail’s pace on conventional servers and needs the added oomph that HPC brings to the table.”

Lawfare Blog: The Facebook Oversight Board Should Review Trump’s Suspension. “While Congress works out what form of accountability it will impose on President Trump for inciting insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week, the president has faced a swift and brutal reckoning online. Snapchat, Twitch, Shopify, email providers and payment processors, among others, have all cut ties with Trump or his campaign. And after years of resisting calls to do so, both Facebook and Twitter have suspended Trump’s accounts.”

Harvard Business Review: How to Hold Social Media Accountable for Undermining Democracy. “While the blame for President Trump’s incitement to insurrection lies squarely with him, the biggest social media companies — most prominently my former employer, Facebook — are absolutely complicit. They have not only allowed Trump to lie and sow division for years, their business models have exploited our biases and weaknesses and abetted the growth of conspiracy-touting hate groups and outrage machines. They have done this without bearing any responsibility for how their products and business decisions effect our democracy; in this case, including allowing an insurrection to be planned and promoted on their platforms.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!

January 14, 2021 at 06:22PM
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Women on Air, Election Maps, Middle Ages for Educators, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, January 13, 2021

Women on Air, Election Maps, Middle Ages for Educators, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, January 13, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

Hi. EMS came and got my mother Monday and she’s currently in the hospital with both Covid and pneumonia. My Granny is still in rehab but we have to find her a care situation by Friday as she can no longer live alone. And I got out of my 12-day self-isolation yesterday.

It seems like all I’ve had emotional energy for is doomscrolling on TweetDeck, and I’m damned angry at myself for it. I’m letting you down by not keeping up with ResearchBuzz and CoronaBuzz. I hate that because a) this is my baby and I’m not taking good care of my baby and b) I’m not doing right by those of you who have been so kind to support me on Patreon. Again, if you want a refund, let me know.

Let me get some work done. Hug your people. Wear a mask. I love you.

NEW RESOURCES

Irish Examiner: Women on Air: New database encourages women to contribute to broadcast media. “Women on Air is launching a new media database aimed at women who are ‘ready, willing and able’ to contribute to broadcast media opportunities. The organisation aims at bringing greater gender balance to Irish airwaves and have chosen Women’s Little Christmas (Nollaig na mBan) to launch their new database, which a view to providing ‘greater visibility and access to women from a wide range of backgrounds and expertise.'”

Spotted via Reddit: a database of election maps from a nonpartisan site. From the page: “Below you’ll find over 800 high-quality election maps available for you to view and download. Make sure to check out our User Guide if you have any questions about how to use the database.”

Princeton University: Middle Ages for Educators website brings Princeton scholarship to an international audience. “Princeton’s Program in Medieval Studies and the Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity have launched a new website, Middle Ages for Educators, aimed at high school and college students and educators worldwide and, more broadly, at anyone interested in studying or teaching Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.”

Justice for Iran: Profiles of hundreds individual and tens institutional Iranian perpetrators released. “The database demonstrates profiles of only a part of hundreds of perpetrators of grave violations of human rights who have so far been identified by Justice for Iran. It consists of more than 220 individuals and a multitude of institutions that have been involved in more than 430 incidents of grave human rights violations. The current time frame spans across the past four decades, following the inception of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Amongst other rights, violations include 156 incidents of violations of the Right to Life against individuals or large groups of prisoners, 106 incidents of violations of the Right to Freedom of Assembly, and 62 incidents of violation of the Prohibition of Torture.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Conspiracy theories about Capitol riot are still popping up on social media. “Ashli Babbitt, a President Donald Trump supporter, was identified by US Capitol Police as one of the five people who died after a mob stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday. It didn’t take long, though, for conspiracy theorists to falsely claim the 35-year-old Air Force veteran was actually alive and well.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Bridge Chronicle: Pune bizman dies by drowning after Google Map reveals the wrong path. “A Chinchwad-based businessman died by drowning after his car went under the backwater of a dam in Akole tehsil of Nagar district on Saturday (January 9) early morning. His two other friends accompanying him managed to escape and save their lives. The businessman was driving the car and relied on the closest route shown by Google Maps while they were enroute Kalsubai – a mountain in the Western Ghats and the highest point in Maharashtra with its summit situated at an elevation of 1,646 metre – for a trek.”

ABC News (Australia): Australian historians are building a 2020 time capsule — this is what’s in it. “When a koala which had been hanging on the Brooklyn Bridge arrived in a FedEx box for Libby Stewart in Canberra, she refused to touch it. The then-senior curator at the National Museum of Australia (NMA) had arranged for the plush toy, which had been left on the New York City icon, to be sent Down Under. A tag hanging from its foot read: ‘One billion of the world’s unique wildlife has died in the Australian bushfire.’ Ms Stewart had wanted to acquire the item, ever since the global campaign appeared on Instagram, for the NMA’s bushfire collection but there wasn’t a clear consensus on how long COVID-19 could survive on flat surfaces.”

Rolling Stone: Patreon Claimed They Kicked Conspiracy Theorists Off. QAnon Still Flourishes. “Both aspiring and well-established QAnon influencers are directly profiting off the paid subscription service platform Patreon, despite the website publicly cracking down on accounts pushing the conspiracy theory last winter. Rolling Stone found nearly a dozen examples of creators on the platform using language that identifies them as followers of QAnon, the far-right extremist conspiracy theory baselessly positing, among other things, that President Trump will arrest and execute a cadre of left-wing political figures who are secretly pedophiles.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: Google’s Plan To Quash Cookies Draws Scrutiny From Regulators. “On Friday, UK’s antitrust authority announced a new investigation into Google’s plan to end support for third party cookies in Chrome. The probe, it explained, is meant to determine whether the change ‘could cause advertising spend to become even more concentrated on Google’s ecosystem,’ potentially choking out competing companies that are — for the most part — already gasping for air.”

The Guardian: Twitter’s Trump ban could lead to regulation rethink, says Hancock. “The decision by Twitter to permanently suspend Donald Trump from its platform could justify tightening the regulation for social media companies, a cabinet minister has suggested. Matt Hancock said the move showed Twitter ‘taking editorial decisions’ and by implication accepting that social media companies are not just platforms.”

Threatpost: Researcher Builds Parler Archive Amid Amazon Suspension. “A security researcher said she has scraped and is archiving 99 percent of Parler’s public posts, as the social-media network goes offline following suspensions from Amazon, Apple and Google. Archived content includes public posts from the social-media site. These posts reportedly included Parler video URLs made up of raw video files with associated embedded metadata – and precise GPS coordinates of where the videos were taken, sparking privacy concerns about the service’s data collection.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University at Buffalo: Twitter was right to suspend Trump’s account, UB expert says. “UB geographer Monica Stephens agrees with Twitter’s decision to suspend President Donald Trump’s account following Wednesday’s insurrection in which his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the process of confirming President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory. ‘I think that given the circumstances, Twitter did the right thing,’ says Stephens assistant professor in the Department of Geography who analyzes social media to understand how user-generated content is impacting communities, social relations and democratic processes.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!

January 14, 2021 at 04:11AM
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