New researches

Thursday, April 22, 2021

1940 Census Datasets, Historical KKK Ledgers, Cape Town University Fire, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 22, 2021

1940 Census Datasets, Historical KKK Ledgers, Cape Town University Fire, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 22, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NARA: NARA Datasets on the AWS Registry of Open Data. “The metadata index for the 1940 Census dataset is 251 megabytes, and all of the 3.7 million images from the population schedules, the enumeration district maps, and the enumeration district descriptions total over 15 terabytes. This dataset reflects the 1940 Census records that are also available on NARA’s 1940 Census website and in the National Archives Catalog.”

9 News: Century-old KKK ledgers for Denver are now digitized and available to the public. “A century ago, tens of thousands of people in Denver and the surrounding area joined the Ku Klux Klan, and their names were recorded in two ledgers that History Colorado has now digitized and made available for free online. The ledgers include nearly 30,000 entries on 1,300 pages from the 1920s and 1930s. They are the largest archival item digitally available from History Colorado’s collection, the museum announced on Monday.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

University of Cape Town: Recognising the loss of the Jagger Reading Room. “The fire destroyed the Jagger Reading Room, gutting its roof and destroying the galleries, adjacent stores and offices. The team at UCT Libraries can confirm the archival and published print collections kept within the Reading Room were consumed by the flames. These include the vast majority of the African Studies Published Print Collection (approximately 70 000 items), the entire African Studies Film Collection on DVD (approximately 3 500), all the UCT university calendars, some of the heavily used Government Publications documents from South Africa and across the continent, and manuscripts and archives kept in the Reading Room for processing or digitisation or awaiting transfer after being digitised.”

WAFA News Agency: The Palestinian Museum launches phase two of its Digital Archive project to include more than 360,000 items. “The Palestinian Museum announced the launch of phase two of its Digital Archive project (PMDA), which will continue for three years as of March 2021 and when complete, the archive will include more than 360,000 freely-available items, according to a press release. During phase two, the project will widen its reach, gathering Palestinian archives from families and institutions, and from diaspora Palestinians in Jordan and Lebanon.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Vice: Commercial Airline Pilots Keep Reporting UFOs Over Canada. “On the morning of May 30, 2016, an Air Canada Express flight from Montreal to Toronto reported it had ‘crossed an unidentified flying object, round in shape, flying at an approximate speed of 300kts,’ or more than 550 km/h. Over 8,000 feet above Lake Ontario on Nov. 14 of that year, two crew members were injured when a Porter Airlines plane dove to avoid hitting an ‘object’ that ‘appeared to be solid… and shaped like an upright doughnut or inner tube.’ By combing through thousands of reports in a government flight incident database, VICE World News has uncovered dozens of recent UFO sightings from Canadian and international airlines.”

Tennessee Historical Commission: Tennessee Historic Cemetery Register and GIS Map of the State’s Historic Cemeteries. “The Tennessee Historic Cemetery Preservation Program will soon make a map of the state’s historic cemeteries available to the public. Identifying locations of the state’s numerous cemeteries is an on-going project and the map is subject to change as this work progresses. The Tennessee Historical Commission defines historic cemeteries as those 50 years old or older. However, some of the cemeteries on the map are not historic by definition–yet.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Brace yourselves. Facebook has a new mega-leak on its hands. “Still smarting from last month’s dump of phone numbers belonging to 500 million Facebook users, the social media giant has a new privacy crisis to contend with: a tool that, on a massive scale, links Facebook accounts with their associated email addresses, even when users choose settings to keep them from being public. A video circulating on Tuesday showed a researcher demonstrating a tool named Facebook Email Search v1.0, which he said could link Facebook accounts to as many as 5 million email addresses per day. The researcher—who said he went public after Facebook said it didn’t think the weakness he found was ‘important’ enough to be fixed—fed the tool a list of 65,000 email addresses and watched what happened next.”

Engadget: The FCC is going to hold providers accountable for anti-robocall efforts. “The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is introducing a new database all voice providers will have to use to allow the agency to track the work they’re doing to stop robocalls. Starting September 28th, 2021, phone companies will be required to block any incoming traffic from providers not listed in the Robocall Mitigation Database.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

International Atomic Energy Agency: IAEA Data Animation: INIS Scientific Database Evolution Proves Power of Global Cooperation. “All for one and one for all: A new IAEA data animation demonstrates the power of global scientific collaboration, charting the 50-year evolution of the Agency’s International Nuclear Information System (INIS) into one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of scientific and technological literature which is now visited by around 8000 researchers every day. The animation shows the Repository’s exponential growth over five decades, breaking down the contributions by country and international organization.”

Royal Astronomical Society: Can you help us find the Moon Trees?. “There could be as many as 15 Moon Trees in the UK – trees grown from seeds flown around the Moon by NASA astronaut Stuart Roosa on the Apollo 14 mission in 1971. But where are they now? The Royal Astronomical Society and the UK Space Agency would love to know, in their joint quest to find these living pieces of space history.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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April 23, 2021 at 02:22AM
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Anti-Racist Resources, School-Area Air Pollution, Visual NFT Search, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, April 22, 2021

Anti-Racist Resources, School-Area Air Pollution, Visual NFT Search, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, April 22, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

I hurt my back during my spreadsheet mania thanks to long periods of sitting on my worn-out million-year-old kneeling chair. New cushion, trying new chairs, but RB/CB may be sporadic. I hope not. Feeling pretty good today. Love.

NEW RESOURCES

Concordia University: LAUNCHED: A database of anti-racist educational videos and learning materials. “The Anti-Racist Pedagogy Project features pre-recorded talks from Concordia students and faculty as well as grassroots social justice organizers and activists in Montreal. The project came about as a response to both the Black Lives Matter movement’s work to address pervasive anti-Black racism and the COVID-19 pandemic that suddenly forced educators to move their classes online.”

University of Massachusetts Amherst: UMass Amherst Political Economy Research Institute Launches New Tool to Track Air Pollution at Every U.S. School. “Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) today unveiled a new interactive, web-based tool for tracking industrial toxic air pollution at every school in the United States. The tool, Air Toxics at School, reports toxicity-weighted concentrations of pollutants to show individual chronic human health risk from industrial toxic air pollutants at the schools’ locations.”

Spotted via Reddit: ZodiacNFT. From the About page: “Zodiac is a visual discovery engine for NFTs. Combined with a set of proprietary AI modules, Zodiac enables users to search for and discover the best content on blockchain.” It’s a visual search engine for NFTs. I put in a picture of my mother’s dog and got lots of NFTs of dogs and cats. I put in a Norma Shearer meme and got pictures of Marilyn Monroe.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Neowin: Google to shut down the classic Sites version on January 1, 2022. “Google launched a redesigned Sites back in 2016 for customers of G Suite (now Google Workspace). The classic Sites version has since remained in place alongside the new one as Google worked to build new capabilities similar to those of the legacy version. While the legacy Sites continued to exist for a couple more years, its days are now numbered.”

USEFUL STUFF

Internet Archive Blogs: The Librarian’s Copyright Companion Goes Open Access. “As a law librarian and author, Ben Keele wants to share his expertise on copyright with as many people as possible. His book, The Librarian’s Copyright Companion, 2nd edition (William S. Hein, 2012), coauthored with James Heller and Paul Hellyer, covers restrictions on use of copyrighted materials, library exemptions, fair use, and licensing issues for digital media. (Heller wrote the first edition in 2004.) The authors recently regained rights to the book in order to make it open access.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Route Fifty: Census Delay Spells Election Chaos for States. “The months-long delay in tallying last year’s census is wreaking havoc on the states with elections this year and next. The stakes are high in states with fast-changing populations: In states that are becoming more diverse, Democrats are eager to wield increased statehouse clout and advance agendas such as expanding voting rights and moving away from mass incarceration. Republicans hanging on to control in swing states want to draw new legislative and congressional district lines to retain endangered suburban districts by extending them into rural areas where conservative sentiment is still strong.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: Biden administration unveils effort to strengthen cybersecurity of power grid. “The Biden administration kicked off a 100-day effort on Tuesday to beef up cybersecurity in the nation’s power grid, calling for industry leaders to install technologies that could thwart attacks on the electricity supply. The move follows a high-profile, if unsuccessful, cyberattack in Florida that sought to compromise a water treatment plant, which highlighted some of the cybersecurity vulnerabilities in America’s critical infrastructure.”

Yahoo News: The Postal Service is running a ‘covert operations program’ that monitors Americans’ social media posts. “The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News. The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as ‘inflammatory’ postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.”

Information Age: How Confidential Computing is dispelling the climate of distrust around cloud security. “In a standard cloud configuration, data is encrypted when it’s ‘at rest’ or ‘in transit’ but the moment that data is processed it is decrypted, leaving it potentially vulnerable. The evaluation of business-critical data migrating to the cloud has increased since the start of the pandemic, heightening concerns about this weakness. Confidential Computing solves this problem in hybrid cloud environments by directing data in use into a hardware-based Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), an area separated from other workloads. Data remains encrypted right up until the application notifies the TEE to decrypt it for processing.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Business Insider: Deleting Yahoo Answers is a disastrous idea. For history’s sake, we need to preserve our digital record.. “Just like with the end of Orkut or GeoCities, Yahoo Answers will delete the content generated by millions of users, including unique knowledge that feeds search engines. More than a debate about fake news, this is a debate about memory and the need to save the content and knowledge produced by humanity – even if that content doesn’t seem worthy or relevant now.”

TechCrunch: AI-driven audio cloning startup gives voice to Einstein chatbot. “You’ll need to prick up your ears for this slice of deepfakery emerging from the wacky world of synthesized media: A digital version of Albert Einstein — with a synthesized voice that’s been (re)created using AI voice cloning technology drawing on audio recordings of the famous scientist’s actual voice.”

BBC: AI unlocks ancient Dead Sea Scrolls mystery. “Researchers say Artificial Intelligence (AI) has for the first time shown that two scribes wrote part of the mysterious ancient Dead Sea Scrolls. Tests were carried out on the longest text, known as the Great Isaiah Scroll. It was found that probably two unknown individuals had copied down the words using near-identical handwriting.” Good morning, Internet…

April 22, 2021 at 07:19PM
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Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Toronto Protests, Hong Kong History, Jack Wolfskin, More: 23RD ANNIVERSARY Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 20, 2021

Toronto Protests, Hong Kong History, Jack Wolfskin, More: 23RD ANNIVERSARY Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 20, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Tamil Guardian: Images of Resistance: An Archive of Action. “The Tamil Canadian Centre for Civic Action has organised a physical and virtual exhibition showcasing interview, documents, photographs, and untold stories of the 2008-2009 Toronto Protests against the genocidal war in Sri Lanka.”

New-to-Me, from AppleDaily: Brit builds online archive of Hong Kong’s colonial history . “‘Gwulo: Old Hong Kong’ has over 34,000 articles and 20,000 historic photos, spanning from the British annexation of Hong Kong in 1842 until the handover to China in 1997. The site covers the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, the history of local districts and even the evolution of streetlight. It has attracted a massive following of history fans from across the globe.”

HYPEBEAST: Jack Wolfskin Opens Archive to Celebrate 40th Anniversary. “Marking 40 years since founder Ulrich Dausien established the Jack Wolfskin brand, the outdoors-focused label is giving a look inside its extensive archive. The online exhibition will tell stories from the German brand’s four decades, particularly shining a light on the innovations and products that have defined it since it first emerged in 1981. The archive prominently displays the brand’s signature paw print logo, which launched back in 1983.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Washington Post: South Africa wildfire that burned University of Cape Town, library of African antiquities is under control. “Ujala Satgoor, executive director of UCT Libraries, described how ‘some of us watched, from on-site, with horror and helplessness’ as the building burned…. The library houses printed and audiovisual materials on African studies; 1,300 sub-collections of unique manuscripts and personal papers; and more than 85,000 books and pamphlets on African studies, including up-to-date materials and works on Africa and South Africa printed before 1925, according to the UCT website.”

USEFUL STUFF

TechRepublic: How to create QR codes: 5 methods. “The use of QR codes as a way to access online menus, especially, proliferated during COVID-19 efforts to minimize physical contact points. Many sales systems, such as Addmi, OpenTable, Shopify and Square, let business owners generate QR codes. You don’t need a point of sales system to create QR codes. The following five methods offer reliable ways to create QR codes to provide contactless access to web pages and other information.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Wired: In war zones, social media disinformation is costing lives . “The organisation we work for, the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, has spent the past 20 years mediating peace talks. We sit between rebel groups and governments and try to forge ceasefires and political negotiations. It’s risky work that doesn’t always pay off. In recent years, a new phenomenon has made an already difficult job much harder: sophisticated networks of mis- and dis-information on social media.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Just Security: Federal Agencies Face April Deadline on Secret JFK Files. “Some 15,834 assassination-related documents remain partially or wholly classified, according to the National Archives. Most of these records were generated by the CIA and FBI. They include contemporaneous reports related to the murder of the 35th president in Dallas on November 22, 1963, files of CIA officers who knew about accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and interviews conducted by congressional investigators in the 1970s.”

Department of Justice: Nigerian National Facing Federal Charges for Role in Social Media Elder Scam with Losses of More Than $474,000. “A criminal complaint was filed today in U.S. District Court in Maryland charging Oluwaseyi Akinyemi a/k/a ‘Paddy Linkin’, a/k/a ‘Joseph Kadin’, age 34, of Hyattsville, Maryland, for the federal charges of mail fraud, attempted mail fraud, and mail and wire fraud conspiracy, in connections with an advanced fee fraud scheme using social media to target elderly victims and causing losses of $474,145.07.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Social media ‘likes’ change the way we feel about our memories – new research. “Memories are often considered very personal and private. Yet, in the past few years, people have got used to notifications from social media or phone galleries telling them they have a ‘memory’. These repackaged versions of the past affect not just what we remember but also the attachments we have with those memories. In a new study, we found social media has the potential to change how people feel about their memories.”

Reason: The Confusion Surrounding Brian Sicknick’s Death Was a Failure of Government Transparency. “Because the Capitol Police are under the legislative branch, the department is exempt from the federal Freedom of Information Act. You can’t put in a public records request for an incident report or the other sort of records that most every other police department in the U.S. is required by law to disclose when asked.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 21, 2021 at 03:29AM
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Climate Change Indicators, University of Portland Newspapers, Facebook, More: 23RD ANNIVERSARY Tuesday ResearchBuzz, April 20, 2021

Climate Change Indicators, University of Portland Newspapers, Facebook, More: 23RD ANNIVERSARY Tuesday ResearchBuzz, April 20, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

Happy birthday to – US!
Happy birthday to – US!
Happy birthday to – ResearchBuzz and everybody who reads ittttt
Happy birthday to – US!

I just find the stuff. Y’all are the ones who put it to use, do your research, answer your questions, share with interested parties. YOU are the ones who get this information where it needs to go, and I am so grateful to you!

THANK YOU FOR READING!

NEW RESOURCES

International Monetary Fund: IMF Launches Climate Change Indicators Dashboard. “The Dashboard is a single platform that brings together experimental climate change indicators that allows comparison across countries. The indicators have been developed in cooperation with international organizations and other agencies including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank Group (WBG), the United Nations (UN), the European Commission, the European Statistical Office (Eurostat), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).”

The Beacon (University of Portland): Let’s get digital: Library facility digitizes student newspaper collections. “Nothing is forever, and that includes paper. As decades old student newspapers yellow and become frail, they become harder and harder to flip through. In order to preserve a history unique to the University of Portland, library faculty members took on the project of digitizing the entirety of student newspapers in UP’s history, The Columbiad and The Beacon. A year and a half after receiving a grant from the Oregon Heritage Commission, the entirety of these collections is now digitized and available through the library’s digital collections.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Facebook is making it easier to export text posts. “Facebook is rolling out a new feature today, allowing users across the globe to have the option to archive their posts and notes created on the social media site and transfer a copy of that data onto Google Docs, WordPress, or Blogger.”

BBC: Parler set to return to Apple’s App Store. “Apple is to allow the controversial social media app Parler, a popular platform with far-right supporters, back onto its App Store. The app was pulled following the deadly US Capitol riots on 6 January. In a letter to two Republican lawmakers on Monday, Apple said Parler had made updates to its app and content moderation policy that would lead to it being reinstated.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Inspiration: How to Perform IP Address Lookup with Google Sheets. “IP2Location is another good alternative that retrieves more detailed geolocation information for any IP address. The IP location lookup service can retrieve the client’s country, city name, region, the ISP name and more. If you have a bulk list of IP addresses, you can use Google Sheets to estimate the corresponding geographic details for each of the addresses in few easy steps.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Trinity Tripod: Instagram Art Accounts for Your Feed Enrichment. “There’s something profoundly refreshing about Instagram accounts that aren’t trying to sell you something, convince you of something, or brag to you about something. That being said, here are my top five art or creatively-centered accounts to check out in your spare time, though I encourage you to do your own searching based on your interests. I promise it’s worth it.”

University of Houston: UH Receives Mellon Foundation Grant to Establish Puerto Rican Literature Database. “The University of Houston has received a nearly $1.35 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to establish a free, open-access digital portal for anyone to learn about or teach Puerto Rican literature.”

Huck: The digital archive unearthing queer Arab history. “Lebanese artist and designer Marwan Kaabour discusses his new Instagram account devoted to documenting LGBTQ+ narratives in Arab history and popular culture, which have all too often been cast aside.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Senate to Call Spotify, Match at Apple, Google Antitrust Hearing. “Google will send a top policy executive to testify at Wednesday’s Senate app store antitrust hearing, while legal executives from Spotify Technology SA, Tile and Match Group Inc. will serve as witnesses, according to people with knowledge of the matter.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New School News: MS Data Visualization Collaborates with the Smithsonian Museum for Digital Archive Project. “What Makes a Buddha. A Manifestation of Masks. Smithsonian Rock Ranger. Gender Tagging. While the titles of these projects, plus many more, might not seem like they have anything to do with each other, they are all in fact explorations and interpretations by Parsons MS Data Visualization students of artistic data published by the Smithsonian Institute’s Open Access Policy.” I found these projects very interesting, but you might need to give them a few minutes to load.

Gizmodo Australia: Why The Federal Court Should Throw The Book At Google Over Location Data Tracking . “The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has had a significant win against Google. The Federal Court found Google misled some Android users about how to disable personal location tracking…. We believe Google’s behaviour should not be treated as a simple accident, and the Federal Court should issue a heavy fine to deter Google and other companies from behaving this way in future.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

Screen Rant: How To Find Google Search’s NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Easter Egg. “Google is no stranger to hiding Easter eggs in Search and now there’s one to celebrate NASA’s historic Ingenuity Mars helicopter flight.” Good morning, Internet…

April 20, 2021 at 05:30PM
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Monday, April 19, 2021

Dutch Museums, The Cuban 27N Movement Web Archive, Google Chrome, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 19, 2021

Dutch Museums, The Cuban 27N Movement Web Archive, Google Chrome, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 19, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

DutchNews: Let’s get digital: Museum Week goes online with 400 star objects. “Some 400 museums in the Netherlands will be showcasing their collections online at this year’s Museum Week, an annual event to promote Dutch museums big and small, which starts on Sunday. This year’s overarching theme is once again that of freedom, referring both to regret at the lack of freedom to come and go among the Rembrandts and the Appels, while at the same time celebrating the efforts museums are making to secure public online access to ‘the true gold’ in their collections.”

Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation: IPLC Launches the Cuban 27N Movement Web Archive. “The Cuban 27N Movement Web Archive preserves and provides access to a broad range of websites related to the Cuban 27N Movement initiated in November 2020 by protesters in Havana, Cuba, demanding freedom of expression and other civil rights.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google introducing a feature in Chrome 90 to create links to highlighted text on a webpage. “An upcoming feature in Chrome 90 will allow users to create a link to a section of a website that they’ve highlighted. First launched as a browser extension called Link to Text Fragment last year, Google has now added the feature within Chrome itself.”

Vox: Facebook plans to go after Clubhouse — and podcasts — with a suite of new audio products. “Facebook wants you to start talking, and listening, on Facebook. Sources say the social network is planning to announce a series of products — some of which won’t appear for some time — under the umbrella of ‘social audio’ on Monday. They include Facebook’s take on Clubhouse, the audio-only social network that grew rapidly last year, as well a push into podcast discovery and distribution, aided by Spotify.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

A million thanks to Mandy W. for bringing this to my attention. The South African: Watch | Cape Town fire: Dreadful scenes as UCT Library goes up in flames. “Well, this is just utterly devastating: Hundreds of years of history has gone up in smoke on Sunday, as the Cape Town fire ripped its way through campus – and set the UCT Library ablaze. Students were evacuated from their Halls of Residence earlier on Sunday, after the inferno made its way from Table Mountain, through Devil’s Peak, and into Newlands. …Precious archives, historic texts, and collections of African Studies are all in jeopardy this afternoon. The UCT Library is home to some classic publications, and has a long-standing history as an extraordinary hub for higher education.”

Georgia State University: Georgia State Libraries Awarded National Grant To Digitize Historically Significant Labor and Civil Rights Materials. “Georgia State University’s Libraries have received a $350,000 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to digitize and provide access to American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Civil Rights Southeast Division and national-level records from the AFL, CIO and AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department.”

Daily Tar Heel: Digital time capsules: UNC Story Archive preserves oral histories for future generations. “The University Library is looking for participants for its recently released UNC Story Archive, a program where members of the campus community can tell their stories — all in their own voice. The project is based in the Wilson Special Collections Library and is open to all members of the UNC community, including students, alumni and faculty. Nicholas Graham, the university archivist, said the goal of the project is to build a more comprehensive and representative record of the UNC experience — especially those of students.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Priti Patel: Facebook encryption plan ‘must not hamper child protection’. “Facebook’s plans to roll out encryption across its messaging services could jeopardise ongoing work to combat child abuse, the Home Secretary is to warn. Such encryption means only the sender and recipient can read messages. ‘We cannot allow a situation where law enforcement’s ability to tackle abhorrent criminal acts and protect victims is severely hampered,’ Priti Patel will tell a charity-hosted event.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Economic Times: Google translation AI botches legal terms ‘enjoin,’ ‘garnish’: Study. “Translation tools from Alphabet Inc’s Google and other companies could be contributing to significant misunderstanding of legal terms with conflicting meanings such as “enjoin,” according to research due to be presented at an academic workshop on Monday.”

SF State News: New study on #MeToo movement reveals Twitter echo chamber. “Two years ago, San Francisco State University Associate Professor of Economics Sepideh Modrek published a paper about the 2017 #MeToo movement. The viral hashtag emerged after celebrities started coming forward with sexual assault allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and other well-known public figures. Modrek’s first paper was a snapshot of those early Twitter conversations of mostly women tweeting personal stories of sexual assault and voicing support for survivors. In a new paper published in the April 2021 Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Modrek returned to Twitter to examine how the movement affected those uninvolved in the initial online conversations. The answer, unfortunately: not much.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 20, 2021 at 04:07AM
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California Homelessness, North Carolina Newspapers, World Cultural Heritage, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, April 19, 2021

California Homelessness, North Carolina Newspapers, World Cultural Heritage, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, April 19, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

I am so sorry I vanished. I have been obsessed with this project I’ve been working on. It’s a new tool for searching Google News called Gossip Machine and I shared it with my Patreon last night. I’m 100% thrilled with how well it works!

My brain is buzzing with about a million other ideas so I’ll start tinkering with those shortly, but in the meantime I have a lot of email to answer and a lot of ResearchBuzz to do.

And hey, TOMORROW IS RESEARCHBUZZ’ 23rd ANNIVERSARY! I know some of you have been reading almost from the beginning. I’m so grateful to you and everyone else who takes the time to read. Thank you so much. And, of course, I love you.

Tara

NEW RESOURCES

StateScoop: California launches statewide homelessness data platform. “The Homeless Data Integration System integrates data maintained by the 44 state planning bodies that coordinate services for homeless people, also known as continuums of care. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a press release Wednesday that the new system, which was developed by the Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council, will help guide state policy.”

DigitalNC: The Commonwealth, a newspaper from Scotland Neck, now on DigitalNC. “Over 2000 issues of The Commonwealth, a paper published in Scotland Neck, are now on DigitalNC. The issues span 40 years, from 1882 to 1922, adding a lot of coverage in our newspaper collection from the coastal region of the state.”

Google Blog: Culture needs us, as much as we need culture. “On the occasion of World Heritage Day, UNESCO, Google Arts & Culture and our international partners are joining forces to promote access to and education around cultural and natural heritage through a new online resource, Explore UNESCO World Heritage. This is a unique opportunity to enjoy a virtual globetrotting tour of cultural landmarks and outstanding places of natural beauty, as well as to access accurate and reliable information on sites of outstanding universal value.”

EFF: Am I FLoCed? A New Site to Test Google’s Invasive Experiment. “Today we’re launching Am I FLoCed, a new site that will tell you whether your Chrome browser has been turned into a guinea pig for Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoC, Google’s latest targeted advertising experiment. If you are a subject, we will tell you how your browser is describing you to every website you visit. Am I FLoCed is one of an effort to bring to light the invasive practices of the adtech industry—Google included—with the hope we can create a better internet for all, where our privacy rights are respected regardless of how profitable they may be to tech companies.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NPR: Success! NASA’s Ingenuity Makes First Powered Flight On Mars. “Orville and Wilbur would be proud. NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has made the first-ever powered flight on another planet, 117 years after the Wright Brothers’ historic flight on this planet. The flight itself was modest. The 4-pound helicopter rose 10 feet in the air, hovered briefly, and returned to the Martian surface. An images taken from the craft showed Ingenuity’s shadow on the surface and another taken from the Perseverance rover showed an airborne Ingenuity.”

ZDNet: WordPress could treat Google FloC as a security issue. “The backlash against Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) has continued, with a proposal raised in WordPress Core to block the controversial alternative identifier to third-party cookies by default. The WordPress proposal would see the blogging system use its weight to thwart FLoC.” WordPress powers a big chunk of the Web so this is important.

Ghacks: Firefox 90 won’t handle FTP sites anymore. “Mozilla announced today that Mozilla’s Firefox web browser won’t support the FTP protocol from Firefox 90 onward. It was clear that FTP support would be removed from the browser, but it was not clear until today when that would happen.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Courier: WATCH NOW: Haitian art collection is being ‘digitized’ for future at Waterloo Center for the Arts. “It’s roughly 2,000 miles between Waterloo and the island nation of Haiti, but the Waterloo Center for the Arts is the repository for the world’s largest and most significant public collection of Haitian art. There are more than 1,700 pieces in the collection, including colorful paintings by Haitian masters, metal sculptures, beaded and sequined flags and banners, mixed media and other objects representing Haiti’s creative and cultural past and present.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: New York State just passed a law requiring ISPs to offer $15 broadband For low-income households, which seems quite a thing to leave out of the headline. “According to NY Assembly member Amy Paulin (via Bloomberg), the average price of broadband in New York is currently $50. This new bill caps the price at $15 for regular broadband and $20 for high-speed broadband, but only for those who qualify as low income. That’s still over 7 million people in 2.7 million households according to a press release from Cuomo’s office.”

TASS: Google promises to remove all illegal content shortly, Russian lawmaker assures. “Google representatives promised to review a document from the State Duma’s commission on investigating facts of foreign interference in Russian affairs and vowed to soon remove all content violating Russian laws, head of the commission Vasily Piskarev told reporters on Friday after the meeting.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

InfoMigrants: Developing projects to improve psycholocial health of migrants and refugees. “The website is available in four languages (German, English, Dari and Arabic) and was supported by the German Ministry for Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.) The researchers found that the need for professional psychological help among migrants and refugees was greater than that of the general population…. That is why the website bundles together lots of different projects conducting research on and offering help in this area across Germany.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

NOLA Gambit: Shining down: Doreen Ketchens releases two new albums. “Clarinetist and vocalist Doreen Ketchens has aimed to release an album every year since the mid-’90s — and occasionally has hit two or even three releases. The plan going into 2020 was to keep up the pace when she and her band, Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans, booked studio time in February and started working on the new recordings. Of course, no one’s plans worked out in 2020.” The first time I heard Doreen Ketchens play clarinet was on a YouTube video. I wanted to run down the street and knock on people’s doors and tell them about this brilliant clarinetist. Do yourself a favor and listen to her play and sing “When the Saints Go Marching In”. Good morning, Internet…

April 19, 2021 at 05:29PM
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Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Vatican Observatory, St. Louis Photography, 3D Model Animation, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 14, 2021

Vatican Observatory, St. Louis Photography, 3D Model Animation, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 14, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Catholic Courier: Vatican Observatory launches podcast, new website. “The podcasts are available on several platforms and they feature one of the pope’s own Jesuit astronomers speaking with a notable figure in the world of space exploration or science. For example, one episode features Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno — a planetary scientist, director of the Vatican Observatory and president of the foundation — speaking with U.S. astronaut Nicole Stott and her husband Christopher Stott of the International Institute of Space Commerce.”

Harvard Gazette: Photography exhibit examines justice, grief, and resilience. “A new digital exhibition opened March 26 at the Griot Museum of Black History in St. Louis, showcasing six photography-based artists from or living in the city’s north side, as part of a cultural partnership with the Harvard University Commonwealth Project.”

Creative Bloq: Google’s new 3D tool is fun, creative and surprisingly useful. “Another day, another Google tool to discuss. And this one is a 3D animation tool, making it particularly relevant to the creative community. Hurrah! Yup, Google’s latest offering is a tool which simplifies the animation process – making the artform more accessible for anyone wanting to have a go. Surprisingly, though, it’s also a super-useful tool for professionals. Disbelieving? Bear with us and we’ll explain.”

EVENTS

Belarus News: Belarusian State University to host online conference on cultural heritage. “The online discussions will bring together around 40 scientists, teachers, postgraduate students, and researchers from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Turkmenistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and India. They will discuss matters related to Oriental studies, classical and medieval studies of Belarus, cultural heritage, history, and religion of the East in ancient and medieval times in the historical memory of the Belarusian nation and share results of research in this field. Following the conference, the BSU will publish a collection of reports from the conference in its Digital Library.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tubefilter: YouTube Testing Language Dubbing Tool, Enabling Viewers To Toggle Between Multiple ‘Audio Tracks’. “A YouTube spokesperson confirms to Tubefilter that the platform is piloting a new feature among a small group of creators that allows them to upload multiple ‘Audio Tracks‘ to a single video — which viewers can then toggle between.”

USEFUL STUFF

New York Times: 5 Ways to Tap Into Your Smartphone’s Audio Powers. “It has been a decade since Apple integrated Siri right into its iPhone software and mainstreamed the voice-activated assistant. But the assistant is just one of the voice-powered tools in your smartphone’s ever-growing audio toolbox. Your device can also be a digital recorder, a dictation machine, a podcast production studio and more. Here’s how to get things done with more talking and less typing.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Wired: TikTok Duets Are Reviving the Exquisite Corpse. “The platform, thanks to its duetting and stitching functions, automates a lot of what the Surrealists were doing. It’s not exactly an exquisite corpse, since TikTok records the entire genealogy of any given work, and there is a want for continuity with what others have contributed before. But there is a similar spirit of spontaneous collaboration, and a kindred quest for the absurd. Grocery Store: A New Musical’s voices are automatic doors and produce misters. They may be singing in harmony, but they’re far off-script from the story Mertzlufft started.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Independent (Ireland): Law to stop social media management abroad for political parties after Sinn Féin revelations. “Legislation on political donations and electoral reform are being expanded to ensure there is greater transparency around how parties are funded. It comes after the Irish Independent revealed Sinn Féin’s Facebook accounts were being managed by people based in Serbia and Germany. Facebook ad library data shows Sinn Féin’s main account has been managed by people in Ireland, the UK, Germany and Serbia.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Penn State News: GIS technology helps map out how America’s mafia networks were ‘connected’. “At its height in the mid-20th century, American organized crime groups, often called the mafia, grossed approximately $40 billion each year, typically raising that money through illegal or untaxed activities, such as extortion and gambling. A team of researchers used geographic information systems — a collection of tools for geographic mapping and analysis of the Earth and society — and data from a government database on mafia ties during the 1960s, to examine how these networks were built, maintained and grown.”

Nuclear Engineering International: Keeping a record . “ARCHIVING FOR NUCLEAR DECOMMISSIONING: Challenges and Collaborations, hosted in December, examined the issues of building, managing, and opening an archive related to nuclear energy. The event was hosted by Archives Portal Europe and organised by the Research Center for Cooperative Civil Societies at Rikkyo University in Japan, in collaboration with the Energy Archives Network (Eogan), the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which shared a case study on Nucleus, its historical archive in Caithness, Scotland, and the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), a non-profit membership organisation that seeks to secure the preservation of digital resources.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 14, 2021 at 11:55PM
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