New researches

Saturday, June 26, 2021

Arcade Fire, Tyres & Accessories, Europe Methane Emissions, More: Saturday Evening ResearchBuzz, June 26, 2021

Arcade Fire, Tyres & Accessories, Europe Methane Emissions, More: Saturday Evening ResearchBuzz, June 26, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NME: Arcade Fire launch new ‘Past Lives’ series, sharing archive gig footage. “Arcade Fire have launched a new archive series, sharing footage from past gigs during the summer. Past Lives will see the band sharing performances from across their career, beginning today (June 25) with a performance from their ‘Everything Now’ tour in 2017.”

Tyre Press: Tyres Industry Publications: the next 75 years. “The consumer tyre advice site WhatTyre and a new paywall-free digital archive of Tyres & Accessories magazine lead a range of new services from Tyre Industry Publications.”

Clean Air Task Force: Massive Quantity of Methane Emissions Documented Across Europe at Oil & Gas Facilities. “Using a state-of-the-art infrared camera, Clean Air Task Force has documented methane emissions leaking or venting from oil & gas facilities all over Europe. So far, the organization has visited over 150 sites in seven European countries and found harmful, invisible methane pollution at the vast majority of sites. Today, Clean Air Task Force (CATF) releases footage from Germany, Italy and Hungary as the first wave of evidence for its new campaign, CutMethaneEU.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Twitter may soon let you connect your Google Account. “Twitter is working to make it possible to sign in to your account through a connected Google Account. For years, Google has offered a way for apps to let their users sign up or log in with nothing more than their Google Account, saving the step of needing to fill in basic information like your name and email address or even picking a password.”

Screen Rant: Posting To Instagram On Desktop Now Available For Some Users. “A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg that the company is testing the ability to create a new Instagram post from a desktop browser. Only a small bunch of users are currently part of the test and it remains unclear if it is a closed beta test or just a random server-side selection.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The New Arab: The road ahead for Israel’s Naftali Bennett and Archiving the Middle East’s Queer Heritage. “In this week’s episode of The New Arab Voice, we will start by covering Iran’s presidential election. Then, we will dive into the profile of Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennet, and what his leadership will mean for Palestine. Finally, we will continue celebrating pride month by speaking to the founder of Takweer, an online archive trying to reshape narratives surrounding the queer community in the Middle East.” 30-minute podcast, I did not see a transcript.

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: TikTok insiders say social media company is tightly controlled by Chinese parent ByteDance. “The former employees who spoke to CNBC said the boundaries between TikTok and ByteDance were so blurry as to be almost non-existent. Most notably, one employee said that ByteDance employees are able to access U.S. user data.”

Tom’s Guide: Apple Glass patent shows how it could avoid Google Glass fail. “One of the many problems with Google Glass was a fear of privacy violations. When somebody films you with their phone, it’s pretty obvious that you’re on camera, and you can move away, cover your face or ask the person to stop filming. With Google Glass, the only clue that footage was being taken was a small light on the camera. For Apple Glass, the iPhone maker’s upcoming smart glasses, Apple seems to have taken heed of the controversy.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

International Policy Digest: In Celebrating Pride, Social Media and Civil Society Transcend the Political Battle over Trans Rights. “This online cultural movement is thus cementing ideas around transgender rights more quickly and assertively than the federal government—fulfilling much the same role popular culture played during the battle to secure legal equality for gay and lesbian Americans a decade ago. In 2012, then Vice-President Biden famously credited the TV series Will and Grace for doing ‘more to educate the American public than almost anybody’s ever done so far,’ setting in motion a societal shift that culminated with the Supreme Court decisions to legalize same-sex marriage across all 50 states in 2015 and ban workplace discrimination based on both sexuality and gender identity in 2020.”

NASA: Watch (and Hear) How NASA’s Perseverance Rover Took Its First Selfie. “The historic image of the rover beside the Mars Helicopter proved to be one of the most complex rover selfies ever taken. Video, with bonus audio, sheds light on the process.” Good evening, Internet…

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June 27, 2021 at 03:56AM
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East Coast Whale Sighting, Rainforest Recordings, Wisconsin Agritourism, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, June 26, 2021

East Coast Whale Sighting, Rainforest Recordings, Wisconsin Agritourism, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, June 26, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Maine Public Radio: In Fight Over Right Whales And Lobster Fishery, All Sides Want To Know More About Whale Activity Off Maine. “Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration created a new website that maps almost two decades of work to detect whales off the east coast, via ‘passive acoustic’ recorders set on buoys, on submerged platforms, and on underwater gliders that can zig and zag around the Gulf of Maine for months at a time.”

National Geographic: You can now hear rainforest sounds worldwide—here’s why that matters. “Gorillas beating their chests, chimpanzees pant-hooting, elephants rumbling—and poachers firing assault rifles—these are some of the more than a million hours of sounds recorded by a grid of 50 microphones in the Congolese rainforest since 2017. The massive acoustic monitoring effort covers about 480 square miles in the Republic of Congo’s Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park—an area about the size of Los Angeles. It’s part of Cornell University’s Elephant Listening Project, established in 1999 to detect communication among forest elephants and pinpoint poaching activity.”

We Are Green Bay: New website connects people with Agricultural Tourism destinations in Wisconsin . “There is a newly redesigned website to help people connect with agricultural tourism options in our state. The Wisconsin Agricultural Tourism Association helps visitors to the state find opportunities for visiting and touring local farms, as well as other activities like corn mazes, fairs and local vineyard experiences.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Guardian: From the ashes: historical botanic photos destroyed in Cape Town fire resurrected. “Luckily, after joining the university in 2000, [Professor Timm] Hoffman invested in the digitisation of the photographic archive. Although he is yet to muster the courage to go through the digital databases – ‘I’m still grieving,’ he says – he estimates that 30,000 images have been digitised and that he has at least one image for 90% of his most important sites. But only 10% of another collection of 35,000 slides had been digitised. ‘If we’d invested in bigger, faster scanners we could have finished by now,’ he laments. ‘But I’m also very proud that we digitised at all. Not many ecologists are focused on digital archives. No one else has a collection like this in Africa.'”

Search Engine Journal: Google Rolls Out New Spam Algorithm Update. “Google’s Danny Sullivan confirms an algorithm update targeted at fighting spam is rolling out to search results. The rollout of the update will conclude today, June 23, 2021. A second spam update will follow next week.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tom’s Guide: Milkshake website builder: How to use this new service. “For Instagram-first businesses, website builders don’t come much better than Milkshake. This free Android and iOS app is designed to help you maximize your one Instagram bio link, providing more detailed information than services like Linktree. It’s easy to use and requires zero knowledge of coding. In fact, you can make your first website in a few clicks—Milkshake’s website claims that it takes only minutes to get your new site online.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Aussie Theatre: Australia and UK announce largest cultural exchange between the two nations. “A collaboration between the British Council and the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen, the UK/Australia Season is a unique artistic programme of more than 200 live and digital events, marking the largest ever cultural exchange between the two nations. Launching in both countries in September 2021, The Season will strengthen and build cultural connections and will include a diverse programme spanning theatre, film, visual arts, dance, design, architecture, music, literature, higher education and a public engagement programme.”

NBC News: ‘Give credit where it’s due’: TikToker speaks out about Black creator strike. “The strike is part of an ongoing issue on the platform in which white and non-Black creators use choreography created by Black content creators without crediting the person who came up with the dance moves. Dances have the ability to rocket both songs and creators to viral status. Ultra-famous TikTokers like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae are often cited as two examples of white stars making it big off of Black creators’ choreography.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Daily Swig: West Virginia job seekers alerted to gov’t employment agency data breach. “WorkForce West Virginia has revealed that its Mid Atlantic Career Consortium Employment Services (MACC) database was breached earlier this year, but says it has now been secured. The state government agency oversees West Virginia’s unemployment insurance program, as well as operating a workforce development services including the MACC job seekers’ database – the largest online database of job seekers and job openings in the state, it says.”

The Record: Hacker wipes database of NewsBlur RSS reader. “A hacker has wiped the database of NewsBlur, a popular web-based RSS reader, and demanded a ransom payment from the company in exchange for access to its original data. The incident, which took place earlier today, has already been resolved after the NewsBlur staff restored to a previous backup they had on hand by chance.”

Court News Ohio (which for some reason doesn’t have a encrypted connection, so you might get a warning): New Platform Provides Path to Accessible Sentencing Data. “The Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission unveiled a new website to help courts implement a uniform sentencing entry system, which will lead to the development of a statewide criminal sentencing database. It will be called the Ohio Sentencing Data Platform, or OSDP.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: Collection of starshade research helps advance exoplanet imaging by space telescopes. “- The open access Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS) has published a special section on the latest science, engineering, research, and programmatic advances of starshades, the starlight-suppression technology integral to extra-solar and exoplanet detection.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 27, 2021 at 12:08AM
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Friday, June 25, 2021

Rainfall Reports, Global Storm Database, Sean Wall, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, June 25, 2021

Rainfall Reports, Global Storm Database, Sean Wall, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, June 25, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Wired: Citizen Scientists Digitized Centuries of Handwritten Rain Data. “IN MARCH 2020, as the United Kingdom went into pandemic lockdown, climate scientist Ed Hawkins put out a call to people with time on their hands: He needed help turning nearly 350 years’ worth of archival rainfall reports into digital documents that modern researchers could easily use. To his surprise, 16,000 people volunteered…. Now, just over a year later, his group has released their work, a massive data set of upwards of 5 million observations extracted from the UK Meteorological Office’s paper records—the oldest dating to 1677.”

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Building a Global Storm Database. “A new global database built by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) captures characteristics and rainfall data of strong thunderstorms from the past 20 years. Including storms in both midlatitude and tropical zones is key to capturing how contrasting storm behavior and corresponding precipitation could affect populated regions of the globe.”

RTE: Archive of Limerick East Brigade leader Sean Wall online. “The Sean Wall Family Archive is a valuable collection of material relating to the Limerick East Brigade leader and his extended family, in particular the roles played by his brothers Fr Tom Wall and Bill Wall, who were also very active in republican circles during those years.”

British Library Endangered Archives Blog: New online – April/May 2021. “We have another four completed digitisation projects that have recently gone online. These four projects represent both the global breadth of EAP projects and the wide variety of content types.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Colorado Virtual Library: Next Draft: A Monthly Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion digest from EDIT. “This month we launched a monthly Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion digest from EDIT, the Colorado Virtual Library EDI Team. In it you’ll find recent EDI-related posts and events. This digest is sent to Libnet subscribers, but we will also be sharing here on the Colorado Virtual Library.”

Gizmodo: A Google Drive Update Might Break All Your Links. “Now that Google has opened up its business-focused Workspace suite to everyone, there are some new Google Drive features. But as with every move, sometimes things get busted along the way.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Digital Library of Georgia: How I Built A Funeral Program Collection for African Americans in Atlanta. “What started as a friendly competitive thought has now become another resource for researchers as well as scholars (I am one of the latter) who are interested in the individuals and local communities represented in the individual documents. The Atlanta funeral programs collection could possibly provide the information needed by a family historian (like myself) working to piece together their family’s story. This collection will always mean a lot to me, not only because I helped to start it but also because members of my own family are featured in the collection.”

TechCrunch: Kayak co-founder Paul English just launched Moonbeam, a podcast discovery app. “Today, [Paul] English launched Moonbeam, a podcast discovery app that blends machine learning and human curation to present personalized recommendations. This might sound like what Podz is doing, creating a newsfeed-style stream of content that users might like. But Moonbeam ups the ante by creating a creator-friendly platform, allowing podcast hosts to select clips of their show to feature on the app, too. The app also lets fans send a tip to the creator if they like their show enough (Moonbeam won’t take a cut, but there’s still that pesky in-app purchase fee for podcasters to consider).”

Digital Camera World: Shutterstock nabs LIFE magazine photo archive from Getty. “It was only last February that Getty Images announced it had added 75,000 images from The LIFE Picture Collection to GettyImages.com, and planned to add a further 400,000 Images between 2020 and 2025. Well, we’re not sure what happened there, but that’s clearly no longer the case. Because its rival Shutterstock has just announced an editorial partnership with media company Meredith Corporation to exclusively represent The LIFE Picture Collection.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wall Street Journal: App Taps Unwitting Users Abroad to Gather Open-Source Intelligence. “A consumer app has assembled a workforce of hundreds of thousands of smartphone users world-wide, some of whom are being unwittingly tasked with basic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for the U.S. military.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Indiana University: New center for AI, machine-learning research dedicated at IU Bloomington. “The initial focus of the Luddy Center for AI, which will open in August, will include robotics, complex networks, health and social media. The center will draw upon the strength of researchers at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, as well as collaborators from IU’s extensive range of health and life science schools, departments and programs.”

New York Times: The Internet Eats Up Less Energy Than You Might Think. “From 2010 to 2018, the data workloads hosted by the cloud data centers increased 2,600 percent and energy consumption increased 500 percent. But energy consumption for all data centers rose less than 10 percent. What happened, the authors explain, was mainly a huge shift of workloads to the bigger, more efficient cloud data centers — and away from traditional computer centers, largely owned and run by non-tech companies.” Good morning, Internet…

June 25, 2021 at 06:29PM
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Thursday, June 24, 2021

Georgia Bulletin, Ireland Women’s History, Robocalls, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 24, 2021

Georgia Bulletin, Ireland Women’s History, Robocalls, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 24, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Digital Library of Georgia: Issues of the Georgia Bulletin, the weekly newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, are now available freely online on the Georgia Historic Newspapers website. “In conjunction with our partners at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, the Georgia Bulletin (1963-1980) is now available for viewing at the Georgia Historic Newspapers website. These newspapers will contribute to a broader scholarship about Catholicism in Atlanta as well as in Georgia.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Extra (Ireland): Mná 100: New podcast series launched to highlight contribution of women to Irish independence struggle. “A new podcast series entitled Mná 100 has been launched to highlight the contribution made by women to Ireland’s struggle for independence a century ago. The podcast was developed as part of the Decade of Centenaries programme instigated to commemorate the momentous events that led to the foundation of the Irish state between 1912 and 1923.”

CNET: Hate robocalls? You’ll love what’s coming as of June 30. “A big deadline in the fight to beat back those annoying robocalls is coming June 30. As of that date, every major voice provider in the US, including phone companies AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile and cable provider Comcast, will have to implement a technology called Stir/Shaken.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

SupChina: The people who work for TikTok are workaholics and they want more!. “In a gutting blow to increasingly feverish calls for a better work-life balance in China’s tech sector, a sizable portion of the workforce at ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok and Douyin, has voiced opposition to a policy change proposed by the company that would discourage employees from working regularly on weekends.”

The Register: Euro court rules YouTube not automatically liable for users illegally uploading copyright-protected material . “Europe’s leading court has partly sided with YouTube regarding copyrighted works posted illegally online in a case that touches on ‘profound divisions’ in how the internet is used. The case, Frank Peterson and Elsevier Inc. v Google LLC and Others, was first brought by German music producer Peterson against the YouTube platform in the German courts in 2009.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Times of India: Social media companies to shut fake a/cs within 24 hours of complaint. “In a major decision that is likely to end the menace of impersonation on social media in India, the government has mandated that top companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have to remove accounts with fake profile pictures of known personalities and businesses, and even the general subscriber, within 24 hours of being notified of the same by the user or someone on his/her behalf.”

Mexico News Daily: International organizations launch website to aid identification of human remains. “Three international organizations launched an online platform on Tuesday to aid the identification of human remains found in Mexico. The Mexico Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the Mexico and Central America delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the German development agency GIZ launched the website…”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: Machine learning aids earthquake risk prediction. “An upside of the Christchurch quake was that it was one of the most well-documented in history. Because New Zealand is seismically active, the city was instrumented with numerous sensors for monitoring earthquakes. Post-event reconnaissance provided a wealth of additional data on how the soil responded across the city.”

Techdirt: Changing Section 230 Won’t Make The Internet A Kinder, Gentler Place. “Users dedicated to spreading lies or hateful content are a tiny minority, but weakening Section 230 will make their job easier. When content moderation doesn’t go their way—and it usually doesn’t—they’re willing to sue. As the cases below show, Section 230 is rightfully used to quickly dismiss their lawsuits. If lawmakers weaken Section 230, these meritless suits will linger in court longer, costing online services more and making them leery of moderate the speech of known litigious users. That result could make it easier for these users to spread lies online.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

The Verge: Listen to Spotify on this nostalgic iPod-style web music player. “In an era before multitouch displays, the iPod’s click wheel was the king of music playback control. Now, a new project from frontend software developer Tanner Villarete has attempted to emulate its classic controls as a web app, complete with support for your Spotify and Apple Music library.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 25, 2021 at 12:09AM
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Tennessee Supreme Court, North Virginia Newspapers, Instagram, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, June 24, 2021

Tennessee Supreme Court, North Virginia Newspapers, Instagram, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, June 24, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

AP: Tennessee Supreme Court Full Case Records Now Online. “The opinions have long been available electronically, but the associated case files were stored in more than 10,000 boxes in the attic of the Capitol building, according to a news release from the Administrative Office of the Courts. For more than a decade, Library and Archive staff has been cleaning and indexing these records. Today, around 85% of the collection is available online.”

Inside NoVa: Vintage Arlington newspapers digitized, placed online. “As part of a partnership that includes the Library of Virginia, the Center for Local History of the Arlington library system and the Sun Gazette, archive materials from a number of Arlington newspapers can now be found online. Editions of the Northern Virginia Sun from 1935 to 1978 have been digitized and made available through the Virginia Chronicle, a free online resource tool. Copies of the Columbia News also were digitized as part of the effort.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Instagram tests putting suggested posts ahead of your friends’. “Instagram says reception to its ‘suggested posts’ feature has been so positive that it’s launching a new test: this time, suggested posts will be mixed throughout your primary feed, sometimes ahead of photos and videos from people you follow.” How dare you choose what you want to look at.

TimesColonist: First Nations win access to archives of Sisters of St. Ann. “First Nations have won access to the private archives of the Sisters of St. Ann, an order of Catholic nuns that ran four residential schools, including the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The Royal B.C. Museum said Wednesday it had signed a memorandum of agreement with the Sisters of St. Ann to provide access to the order’s archives to the museum and to the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at UBC.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Cointelegraph: Activists archive Hong Kong pro-democracy newspaper on blockchain. “Hong Kong cyber-activists are not giving up on the freedom of speech and are backing up articles from the pro-democracy tabloid newspaper Apple Daily using blockchain technology. Following a national security probe, Apple Daily printed its last edition on Thursday. But Hong Kong activists took it from there and uploaded the publication’s articles on a distributed network, Reuters reported.”

Yonhap News Agency: S. Korea to inject 50 bln won into animation industry . 50 billion won is a little more than $44 million US. “In addition to injecting more funds into the industry, the five-year plan also includes plans to diversify animations, which are currently largely concentrated on films for toddlers and children. The government also plans to beef up commercial support by expanding channels for animation distribution and helping companies make merchandise based on animations. The plan also includes setting up a digital archive for animation sources.”

The Register: Syria and Sudan turn off the internet to suppress … cheating by kids sitting exams. “Access Now reports as a part of its #KeepItOn campaign that there were 115 internet shutdowns in 2019, 60 in 2020 and 50 between January and May of 2021. Of those so far in 2021, 24 affected a whole country or region, 11 took in more than one city or area, and 13 cut off only one city, county or village.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: US cheerleader wins free speech case against her former school. “The US Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a teenager who was kicked off her school cheerleading squad over a profane social media post. In an 8-1 ruling, it concluded that the Mahanoy Area School District had violated Brandi Levy’s freedom of speech under the First Amendment.”

Meduza: Russia’s censorship agency asks Google to shut down ‘Smart Vote’ website. “Following a complaint from a Yekaterinburg lawyer, Russia’s federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor (RKN), has sent a letter to Google asking the company to halt technical support for the website of Alexey Navalny’s ‘Smart Vote’ initiative.”

Los Angeles Times: He tried to commemorate erased history. China detained him, then erased that too. “Thousands of politically sensitive cases disappeared last month from China Judgments Online, the public archive. The deletions were first noticed by a Chinese activist with the Twitter handle @SpeechFreedomCN, who has been keeping an archive of speech crime cases. He has tracked more than 2,040 cases, dating to 2013, based on official documentation in China Judgments Online or public security bureaus’ reports on the social media apps Weibo and WeChat.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

National Alliance on Mental Illness: How To Navigate the Overwhelming Volume of Mental Health Apps. “Research and our initiatives at the Division of Digital Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School suggest that there are issues and limitations that app users need to be aware of. However, certain apps have the potential to be a successful supplement to mental health treatment if users find the right program to fit their individual needs.”

Gizmodo: Google Glass Was Ugly, but Facebook’s AR Baseball Hat Might Actually Be Worse. “One of the biggest hurdles for augmented reality devices is design: No one wants to wear an obvious gadget on their face. Realising the issues Google Glass had with gaining consumer traction, it seems Facebook may embrace a unique design for a future wearable. Folks, it’s a baseball hat.” Good morning, Internet…

June 24, 2021 at 05:29PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/2T5gpst

Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Banana-Related Research, NARA, OpenDocument Format, More: Wednesday Evening ResearchBuzz, June 23, 2021

Banana-Related Research, NARA, OpenDocument Format, More: Wednesday Evening ResearchBuzz, June 23, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

EurekAlert: A new site for banana-related research. “MusaNet, the global collaborative network for Musa-related research, was created in 2011 to implement the Global Musa Strategy established with the banana research community. MusaNet is excited to announce the launch of a new website that collects and shares information on all aspects of banana, be it diversity, conservation or current threats.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Archives: National Archives Releases Recommendations from Internal Task Force on Racism. “Last year, as our nation was confronting ongoing issues related to racial justice, Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero established a task force of National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) employees to identify issues of racial inequality in both our customer-facing operations and internally within our workplaces, in pursuit of an equitable and inclusive environment for all employees and customers.”

Neowin: OpenDocument Format 1.3 becomes approved as an OASIS Standard format. “The Document Foundation, the body behind the popular LibreOffice suite, has announced that Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF, also known as OpenDocument Format) 1.3 has been approved as an OASIS Standard after receiving 14 affirmative consents and no objections. With the standardisation of the format, other office suites, including Microsoft Office, can add support for the format according to defined specifications that boost compatibility between different suites.”

USEFUL STUFF

Online Journalism Blog: What are regular expressions — and how to use them in Google Sheets to get data from text . “In an extract from a new chapter in the ebook Finding Stories in Spreadsheets, I explain what regular expressions are — and how they can be used to extract information from spreadsheets. The ebook version of this tutorial includes a dataset and exercise to employ these techniques.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Tech Giants, Fearful of Proposals to Curb Them, Blitz Washington With Lobbying. “Executives, lobbyists, and more than a dozen groups paid by Big Tech have tried to head off bipartisan support for six bills meant to undo the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.”

NDTV Education: National Library To Upload Books On Indian Culture On Web. “As part of its outreach drive for young generation readers, the National Library plans to upload on the web a select part of its voluminous collection, including books on Indian culture, a top official said Tuesday. Of the 20 lakh odd books in its possession, 5,000 titles under the Indian Culture section will be uploaded on the web in the coming months, the new officiating director general told reporters here.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: House Judiciary Committee debates antitrust legislation to rein in Big Tech. “The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday began debate on a series of bills aimed at reining in the power of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and other tech giants. The first of the five bills advanced out of committee by early afternoon on Wednesday.”

Reuters: Brazilian Senate to hear Google, Facebook, Twitter in pandemic probe. “A Brazilian Senate committee on Wednesday formally approved a request to call representatives of Google, Facebook and Twitter to testify in an ongoing probe into the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Senators want to look into what role the companies had in helping to spread potentially dangerous misinformation during the pandemic.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: AI helps restore Rembrandt’s Night Watch masterpiece. “For the first time in more than 300 years, Rembrandt’s masterpiece The Night Watch can again be seen in its entirety in the Netherlands. Created in 1642 by the Dutch master, the huge picture was trimmed on all four sides in 1715 to fit between two doors in Amsterdam town hall. The city’s Rijksmuseum has now added the missing scenes from a small, early copy of the original. It used artificial intelligence (AI) to mimic Rembrandt’s style.”

Open Access Government: Big data: With great data comes great responsibility. “Personal data stored within large repositories of companies are regularly exfiltrated in data breaches. Almost every individual in Western society has been subject to their data being exposed in almost always multiple data breaches. Nation-state actors have been exposed to conduct cyber-espionage on individuals and companies. Although it is 2021, George Orwell’s novel 1984 is a distinct possibility nowadays. So, we must ask ourselves: How do we combine Western civil liberties with the advance of ubiquitous data collection technologies?” Good evening, Internet…

June 24, 2021 at 05:09AM
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Invasive Plants, New York Times, Instagram, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 23, 2021

Invasive Plants, New York Times, Instagram, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 23, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Green Blog: UC launches WeedCUT, a new online tool to manage invasive weeds in wildlands without herbicides. “Cal-IPC and the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM), with funding from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) Alliance Grants Program, developed two resources that provide land managers access to the latest information on non-herbicide practices for managing weeds in wildlands. Best Management Practices for Non-Chemical Weed Control is a free downloadable manual. The same information has been incorporated into an interactive online tool called WeedCUT.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: Introducing Gift Articles, a New Way for Times Subscribers to Share Articles. “New York Times news subscribers can now share up to 10 gift articles with nonsubscribers each month on NYTimes.com and soon, on iOS and Android.”

Bloomberg: Facebook’s Instagram Adds Shopping Via Images, Virtual Try-On. “Facebook Inc.’s Instagram is adding new shopping tools, like letting people search for products using an image, as it expands e-commerce offerings across its family of apps.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Reclaim the Net: Patreon deplatforms censored video archive altCensored for “hate speech”. “altCensored, a platform that archives videos that have been censored or limited by YouTube, has been booted by the fan-funding platform Patreon for ‘hate speech.’ The platform has received around 500,000 unique monthly visitors over the last year, according to estimates based on web analytics company SimilarWeb and altCensored’s server logs.” Platforms like altCensored do important work. YouTube content removal often leads to unintended consequences like removing evidence of war crimes.

San Antonio Express-News: Black history preserved in collection donated to San Antonio African American Community Archive. “The largest known San Antonio African American history collection now resides with the San Antonio African American Community Archive Museum. Laura Thompson, CEO and creator of The African American Network, has donated her collection of biographies to the museum, located in La Villita. The collection, called 300 Voices in 300 Days, was part of the city’s tricentennial celebration.”

The Globe and Mail: How families are building a digital archive to commemorate the Air India bombing. “Air India Flight 182 was flying from Toronto to London, England. A bomb caused it to crash into the Atlantic Ocean while in Irish airspace. All 329 people on board were killed, including 280 citizens or permanent residents of Canada. The disaster was followed by long trials (which ended in acquittal), a public inquiry and an apology from the Canadian government. However, to Dr. [Chandrima] Chakraborty and many others, including victims’ families, this event was never truly perceived as a Canadian tragedy.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Egypt detains female TikTok star after human trafficking conviction. “The verdict came five months after another court overturned prison sentences that [Haneen] Hossam and [Mawada] Adham were given for ‘violating family values’ with videos they posted on TikTok. Human rights activists say the two women have been prosecuted as part of a crackdown by Egyptian authorities targeting female social media influencers on charges that violate their rights to privacy, freedom of expression, non-discrimination and bodily autonomy.”

National Law Review: State Laws Hinder Progress of Non-Bias AI. “Artificial Intelligence (AI) relies on oceans of data, most people know this. But many people do not yet understand how data shapes AI before the AI is functional, or how data is used by AI in production. Each raises its own set of practical, technical and social issues. This lack of understanding can lead people to conflate data used in AI formation with the data AI uses as it operates.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Nature: Ancient oaks of Europe are archives — protect them. “Fennoscandia and the United Kingdom could better safeguard their oaks using mechanisms such as those offered by the European Union’s Natura 2000 network of protected areas, or the protections conferred by UNESCO World Heritage sites in the United Kingdom. Otherwise, unsustainable management practices, deforestation, air pollution and climate change could leave these ancient species vulnerable to disease and extinction, with the loss of irreplaceable scientific information and cultural heritage.” Clueless about Fennoscandia? Me too. WorldAtlas helped me out.

EurekAlert: Using virtual populations for clinical trials. “A study involving virtual rather than real patients was as effective as traditional clinical trials in evaluating a medical device used to treat brain aneurysms, according to new research. The findings are proof of concept for what are called in-silico trials, where instead of recruiting people to a real-life clinical trial, researchers build digital simulations of patient groups, loosely akin to the way virtual populations are built in The Sims computer game.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 24, 2021 at 02:53AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/3jla6fp