Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Eviction Laws, Holly+, NASA TV, More: Wednesday Evening ResearchBuzz, July 14, 2021

Eviction Laws, Holly+, NASA TV, More: Wednesday Evening ResearchBuzz, July 14, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Legal Services Corporation: New Eviction Laws Database Reveals Striking Differences in Eviction Processes Around the Country. “The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) launched the LSC Eviction Laws Database today, a new online tool that will aid users in better understanding the significant variation in eviction laws across the country and the effect these differences have on eviction outcomes. LSC produced the database in partnership with the Center for Public Health Law Research at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law. Users can examine the entire eviction legal process, from pre-filing to post-judgment, in different communities around the country.”

Rolling Stone: Holly Herndon Releases AI Deepfake Tool That Lets Others Make Music With Her Voice. “Holly Herndon has released a new artificial intelligence tool — which the composer is also referring to as her ‘digital twin’ — called ‘Holly+’ that allows users to upload any polyphonic audio and receive a new version of that music sung in Herndon’s own voice.” I tried it with an old novelty song I downloaded from Internet Archive. The Holly+ version sounded like a drunk carousel underwater. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

EVENTS

NASA: NASA TV to Air Launch of Space Station Module, Departure of Another. “NASA will provide live coverage of a new Russian science module’s launch and automated docking to the International Space Station, and the undocking of another module that has been part of the orbital outpost for the past 20 years. Live coverage of all events will be available on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.” The first event is July 21.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Twitter is shutting down Fleets, its expiring tweets feature. “Say goodbye to Fleets, the row of fullscreen tweets at the top of the Twitter timeline that expire after 24 hours. The ephemeral tweet format is shutting down due to low usage after launching widely just eight months ago.”

BBC: Facebook adds ‘expert’ feature to groups. “Group admins will have the power to give the title to nearly any member they want. That could mean that groups promoting conspiracy theories or fringe views may also be able to designate ‘experts’.”

USEFUL STUFF

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Art Newspaper: Security guards become guest curators at the Baltimore Museum of Art. “Museum security officers, the people who probably spend the most time looking at art, will soon be organising an exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) as guest curators. The show Guarding the Art, due to open in March 2022, will bring together a selection of works that resonate with each of the 17 participating officers, and offer ‘different perspectives from within the museum hierarchy’, says the curator and art historian Lowery Stokes Sims, who helped develop the project.”

Business Insider: A Facebook engineer abused access to user data to track down a woman who had left their hotel room after they fought on vacation, new book says. “A Facebook engineer reportedly abused employee access to user data to track down a woman who had left him after they fought, a new book says. Between January 2014 and August 2015, the company fired 52 employees for exploiting user data for personal means, according to an advance copy of ‘An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination’ that Insider obtained.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Microsoft Security Blog: Microsoft discovers threat actor targeting SolarWinds Serv-U software with 0-day exploit. “Microsoft has detected a 0-day remote code execution exploit being used to attack SolarWinds Serv-U FTP software in limited and targeted attacks. The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) attributes this campaign with high confidence to DEV-0322, a group operating out of China, based on observed victimology, tactics, and procedures.”

ZDNet: These Iranian hackers posed as academics in a bid to steal email passwords. “An Iranian cyber-espionage campaign used spoofed identities of real academics at a UK university in phishing attacks designed to steal password details of experts in Middle Eastern affairs from universities, think tanks and the media.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Live Science: Book of the Dead fragments, half a world apart, are pieced together. “The two linen fragments were pieced together after a digital image of one segment was cataloged on an open-source online database by the Teece Museum of Classical Antiquities at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Historians at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles who saw the image quickly realized that the institute had a shroud fragment that, like a puzzle piece, fit together with the New Zealand segment.” Good evening, Internet…

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July 15, 2021 at 05:00AM
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League of Nations, Southern Folk Art, SpeakGaelic, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 14, 2021

League of Nations, Southern Folk Art, SpeakGaelic, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 14, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The New Humanitarian: Scanning the past: The League of Nations archive goes digital. “Archivists and historians are making a permanent digital copy of almost every document, letter, memo, photo, and map from the doomed predecessor of the United Nations. The online League of Nations archives will be a rich resource for understanding the past, dealing with the troubled present, and shaping the future, according to project staffers.”

Clarion Ledger: Preserving the hidden folk art spaces tucked away in the rural South. “Since the 1970’s the Kohler Foundation, an arts preservation organization based in Wisconsin, has supported the preservation and restoration of art environments across the U.S. … In 2019, Kohler also took on SPACES as a preservation project. SPACES is both a physical and digital archive documenting hundreds of art environments in the U.S. and across the globe.”

Grampian Online: Social media duo set to front Gaelic language initiative. “SpeakGaelic’s exciting and ambitious new Gaelic learning resources will provide a comprehensive framework for Gaelic language learning across TV, iPlayer, BBC Sounds, web, face-to-face classes, YouTube and other social media to attract and inspire learners and speakers.”

University of New Orleans: Literature Professor Jacinta Saffold Uses Digital Humanities Projects To Explore Black Peoples’ Influence on Pop Culture. “When the coronavirus pandemic forced courses to be delivered online, University of New Orleans African American literature professor Jacinta Saffold created a research project aimed at keeping her students engaged while also conducting original research…. The result was a digital humanities dataset called, ‘The Hype Williams Effect Project,’ a literary compilation that helps document Black people’s influence on contemporary popular culture via the expansive career of hip hop music video director Harold ‘Hype’ Williams.” Professor Saffold is also working on ‘The Essence Book Project’ digital archive.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

XDA: Chrome tests new feature that lets you quickly switch between Google Search results. “Of late, Google has been testing several noteworthy changes in Chrome for Android. The company is revamping the browser’s UI with Material Design elements, it’s testing a new ‘Shortcuts’ widget, and it has even added Android 12‘s bouncy scrolling to the browser. The latest addition to this list is a feature that adds alternate Google Search results underneath the address bar to help you quickly switch between them.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Reuters: Vietnam to tighten grip on social media livestream activity. “Vietnam’s government is seeking to increase scrutiny of livestream content on social media such as Facebook and Google, in its latest move to rein in online activities it deems to be anti-state.”

New York Times: Does Big Tech Make Good Neighbors?. “Conflicts over shared space and limited public resources are nothing new. But we are increasingly living side-by-side with the physical manifestations of the technology services that we want and need. And I’m not sure that we are equipped to deal with them as our new neighbors.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Motherboard: Inside the Industry That Unmasks People At Scale. “Tech companies have repeatedly reassured the public that trackers used to follow smartphone users through apps are anonymous or at least pseudonymous, not directly identifying the person using the phone. But what they don’t mention is that an entire overlooked industry exists to purposefully and explicitly shatter that anonymity.”

Ubergizmo: Instagram’s New Tool Helps Users Secure Their Account After They Were Hacked. “If you’ve ever had your Instagram hacked before or received a notification saying that someone tried to access it, chances are you might rush to quickly secure your account and change your passwords before it happens again. Now Instagram has announced a new tool called Security Checkup that helps users keep their accounts secure.”

KCBX: Social media platforms must get direct parental consent for minors under new California law. “For kids in California, it won’t be as easy as clicking and agreeing to the terms and conditions to open an account on social media platforms. Soon, they will have to get direct parental permission, after Central Coast Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham’s bill AB891 was signed into law recently by Governor Gavin Newsom.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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July 15, 2021 at 12:47AM
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Archive of Indian Music, 2020 Census of American Religion, NewsBlur, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 14, 2021

Archive of Indian Music, 2020 Census of American Religion, NewsBlur, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 14, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Deccan Herald: Wondering what to do with old gramophone records?. “Vikram Sampath, historian and author, launched Archive of Indian Music (AIM) in 2011, a private non-profit trust, to digitise and preserve old and rare Indian gramophone records. The digitised collection is available online on Soundcloud, for free.”

Public Religion Research Institute: PRRI Releases Groundbreaking 2020 Census of American Religion. “The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) today released the inaugural 2020 Census of American Religion, which provides unprecedented county-level data on religious identity and diversity in the United States. Based on interviews with more than 500,000 respondents between 2013 and 2020, the census report reveals the shifting dynamics of American religious affiliation across geography, race and ethnicity, age, and political affiliation over the last decade. It provides the most detailed estimates of American religious affiliation since the U.S. Census Bureau last collected religious data in 1957.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NewsBlur Blog: Redesigning NewsBlur on the web, iOS, and Android. “This past year we’ve focused on maintenance and improving quality behind the scenes. It just so happens that the urge to clean is so strong that this work extended to the front-end. After months of work, today we’re launching a redesigned NewsBlur for all three platforms: on the web, on iOS, and on Android.”

I have been a happy, full-freight-paying customer of NewsBlur for many years. Their new design was rough on my eyes as there wasn’t much contrast between the text and background, but after I tagged them on Twitter they gave me a bit of CSS to fix it and showed me in the preferences where to install it . Now everything’s great. I LOVE NewsBlur.

Ars Technica: Google Meet puts the clamps on free users, imposes 1-hour meeting limit. “Google Meet was rushed out the door to meet the video-conferencing needs of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the service’s launch presented a deal for free users: a video call limit of 24 hours for group calls. Today, 9to5Google confirmed that Google’s pandemic promotion is over, and Google Meet now limits free users to 1-hour group video calls.”

TechRadar: Smugmug Source is like Google Photos for pro photographers. “Most free online photo storage services play well with JPEGs, but support for all flavors of raw format is less common, as is the ability to preview, organize and search them easily. This is the aim of Smugmug Source, which is an add-on to its existing photo storage source for keen snappers who want unlimited online backups for their raw snaps.”

USEFUL STUFF

State Archives of North Carolina: Family Oral Histories: Pre-Interview. “In this post, 2 out of 4, we will explore the pre-interview portion of creating oral histories. Specifically, we are interested in thinking about the physical and digital considerations and limitations about conducting oral history. You will learn how to take the thoughts, themes, and tailored questions you created in the planning stage and begin to apply them to the interview.”

PC Magazine: Done With Facebook? How to Transfer Your Posts to Another Service. “Facebook now allows you to transfer a copy of your posts to Google Docs, Blogger, and WordPress…. One limitation here is that the transfer option didn’t work for me in Firefox. Instead, you may have to use Chrome or Edge for this process. For a more in-depth understanding of this feature, check out Facebook’s help page. Now, let’s see how it plays out.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Daily Dot: This crowdsourced campaign wants to know the truth about everyone’s actual internet speeds. “Consumer Reports launched a website, called BroadbandTogether, where internet users can take an internet speed test, upload their internet bill, and answer a few questions that will be analyzed and help Consumer Reports ‘to press internet service providers and government officials to deliver greater access to fair, affordable, reliable internet services.'”

ZDNet: Best free website builder 2021: Easy-to-use top picks . “Working with a website builder is relatively easy because they offer a what-you-see-is-what-you-get editing interface — meaning what you see. At the same time, you edit your site is what you will actually see if your website was live and viewed in a browser. The best website builders are rich in features that include professionally designed website templates, easy-to-use, drag-and-drop editors, and onboard hosting services.”

Dallas Observer: ‘Find Those Bodies’: Behind One Man’s Push to Restore a North Texas Freedman’s Cemetery. “Willie Hudspeth drove past the burial site the first time he went looking for the bodies. The longtime activist was trekking down a country road in search of a freedman’s cemetery in Pilot Point, a small town north of Denton. But over time, nature had run its course. Grass and weeds blanketed some 400 graves of St. John’s Cemetery, the final resting place for a community composed of freed slaves. Before a fence was installed, cattle would occasionally roam through the wooded grounds.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Google Seeks Settlement With Putin Ally as Huge Fines Loom. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google is seeking an out-of-court settlement after a Russian ruling that it must unblock the YouTube account of a TV channel owned by a U.S.-sanctioned backer of President Vladimir Putin.”

BBC: REvil: Ransomware gang websites disappear from internet. “Websites for a Russian-linked ransomware gang blamed for attacks on hundreds of businesses worldwide have gone offline. Monitors say a payment website and a blog run by the REvil group became suddenly unreachable on Tuesday.” 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!



July 14, 2021 at 06:06PM
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Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Goomics, Rolling Stone, Utah Law Enforcement, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 13, 2021

Goomics, Rolling Stone, Utah Law Enforcement, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 13, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Boing Boing: Site republishes comics strips circulated internally at Google. “Goomics collects comics strips that went around inside Google. Many concern abstruse industry topics; some offer an insight on the company’s politics, inefficiencies and cultural problems.” This cartoons were my Manu Cornet, who recently left the company after 14 years.

ProQuest: ProQuest Offers Entire Rolling Stone Digital Archive. “Researchers can now access 50 years of the culture-defining journalism in Rolling Stone – digitally. The archive of one of the most legendary and influential consumer magazines in history is now available and easily accessible online for the first time to academic institutions and libraries globally through ProQuest.”

PBS: Most Never Shoot at Someone, But These 38 Utah Officers Have Pulled the Trigger Multiple Times. “Tribune and FRONTLINE reporters relied on police records and news reports to document each time a Utah officer fired his or her weapon from 2004 to 2020, tracking 318 shootings. They then conducted additional reporting to verify details of each shooting, and analyzed data points gleaned from record reviews and interviews.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Google Calendar invites now let you choose to attend events virtually. “Now that COVID-19 vaccines are available, businesses and offices have started asking their employees to go into the office a handful of times a week. It can be challenging to plan meetings for hybrid workplace environments, though, when people are physically present in office premises on different days and at different times. That’s why Google has updated the RSVP feature for Calendar that’ll make it more suitable for flexible workplace models.”

BetaNews: Tweak the registry to make sure you’re protected against the PrintNightmare Windows vulnerability. “The accidental revelation of the PrintNightmare security vulnerability in Windows set off a chain of workarounds, third-party patches, official patches and problems with patches. But even after two weeks of back and forth, there are still steps you need to take to ensure that you’re fully protected.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Kaiser Health News: Hospital prices, required to be available and transparent, are anything but easy to find. “In theory, releasing prices may prompt consumers to shop around, weighing cost and quality. Perhaps they could save a few hundred dollars by getting their surgery or imaging test across town instead of at the nearby clinic or hospital. But, typically, consumers don’t comparison-shop, preferring to choose convenience or the provider their doctor recommends…. And hospitals say the transparency push alone won’t help consumers much, because each patient is different — and individual deductibles and insurance plans complicate matters.”

Yahoo Finance UK: Bank of England eyes power of Amazon, Microsoft and Google in finance. “The Bank of England is worried about the growing power of cloud computing in finance, calling for new regulations to govern the use of services like Amazon (AMZN) Web Services and Microsoft (MSFT) Azure in fields like banking and insurance.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BloombergQuint: Google Fined $593 Million By French Antitrust Agency. “Google was fined 500 million euros ($593 million) in France after the search giant failed to follow an order to thrash out a fair deal with publishers to use their news content on its platform.”

TechCrunch: Opioid addiction treatment apps found sharing sensitive data with third parties. “As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to reduce transmission in the U.S, telehealth services and apps offering opioid addiction treatment have surged in popularity…. While people accessing these services may have a reasonable expectation of privacy of their healthcare data, a new report from ExpressVPN’s Digital Security Lab, compiled in conjunction with the Opioid Policy Institute and the Defensive Lab Agency, found that some of these apps collect and share sensitive information with third parties, raising questions about their privacy and security practices.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Scotsman: A backlash is growing against sexist abuse on social media that gives me hope – Laura Waddell. “What the most serious incidents I’ve experienced have in common is misogyny. Every time I’ve received online abuse I can’t easily ignore, implicating my physical safety, it has been tinged with misogynist language. Like domestic abusers, online abusers evoke fear and intimidation. That’s bad enough. But what can be even more demoralising for the victim is seeing others excuse aggression towards women. No matter how blatantly intimidating the missives, on every occasion I’ve been seriously abused online, representatives of the old boys’ network have appeared to congregate around the offender.” 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!



July 14, 2021 at 03:03AM
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North Carolina Government, Ransomware Payments, Edwin Edwards, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 13, 2021

North Carolina Government, Ransomware Payments, Edwin Edwards, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 13, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

State Archives of North Carolina: Senate Audio, 1993-2005, Now Available in NCDC, and CLIR Recordings-at-Risk Grant Expanded. “As discussed in our behind-the-scenes post on this grant, to make the audio searchable, we first had to listen to 400+ audio files pulled from 64 Dictaphone Veritrac tapes and match up what we were hearing with the information published in the Senate Journals, available through the State Publications collection on NCDC… Using them, we pinpointed the legislative days covered by each file, providing users with both dates and legislative days that they can use navigate the Senate Audio files for 1993-2005.”

Gizmodo: This Crowdsourced Ransomware Payment Tracker Shows How Much Cybercriminals Have Heisted. “The way it works is Ransomwhere keeps a running tally of ransoms paid out to cybercriminals in the bitcoin cryptocurrency. This is largely made possible because of the transparent nature of bitcoin: All transactions involving the cryptocurrency are recorded on the blockchain, a decentralized database that acts as a public ledger, thus allowing anyone to track any transactions specifically associated with ransomware groups.”

KATC: LPB, La. Digital Media Archives compiles a list of digital assets of Edwin Edwards. “With the passing of former Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB) and Louisiana Digital Media Archive (LDMA) have compiled a body of archived work highlighting Edwards’ political career. The digital archives include profiles, interviews, and debates and they are all available for the public to freely stream…”

NBC Boston: New Online Trail From Famous Vt. Cheesemaker Connects Consumers to Farms. “One of the best-known brands in grocery stores across New England and beyond has a new tool that aims to drive business to dairy farms that welcome visits. The Vermont-based Cabot Cooperative Creamery, which makes the famous Cabot Cheddar Cheese and other dairy products, is pointing consumers to where they can visit member farms — the ones that are set up for public visits.”

EVENTS

Government Accountability Office: Watchdog Turns 100 but Keeps Barking: Help Us Celebrate Our 100th Birthday—Virtually. “In celebration of our 100th birthday, we will host a virtual event on Wednesday, July 14, starting at 1 p.m. The online ceremony will mark a century of nonpartisan, fact-based work for Congress, which began at GAO on July 1, 1921. Our event will include video tributes from Members of Congress, historical perspectives from the current Comptroller General Gene Dodaro and 2 of his predecessors, as well as remarks from various GAO executives. We are excited to highlight the contributions of our diverse staff to our agency’s mission and future direction.” The event will be livestreamed on YouTube.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Daily Dot: Twitter verified a number of bot accounts—raising questions about security (updated). “In a tweet thread on Sunday, Twitter user Conspirador Norteño, a data scientist focused on disinformation, highlighted six newly-created accounts that had all been verified. While it’s common for malicious actors to hack into already-verified accounts, the six users had all been created just 26 days ago. Not only that, the accounts shared nearly all the same followers and had not made a single tweet.”

AP: Cuba’s internet cutoff: The go-to tactic for global despots. “Cubans facing the country’s worst economic crisis in decades took to the streets over the weekend. In turn, authorities blocked social media sites in an apparent effort to stop the flow of information into, out of and within the beleaguered nation.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ProPublica: A Banking App Has Been Suddenly Closing Accounts, Sometimes Not Returning Customers’ Money. “Chime, a ‘neobank’ serving millions, is racking up complaints from users who can’t access their cash. The company says it’s cracking down on an “extraordinary surge” in fraudulent deposits. That’s little consolation to customers caught in the fray.”

City A.M.: Rip-off travel ads ‘rife’ on Google as scammers exploit Brexit confusion. “Rip-off copycat adverts for travel documents are ‘running rife’ on search engines such as Google as unscrupulous sellers look to capitalise on confusion over post-Brexit travel arrangements.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Sydney Morning Herald: Privacy laws must change to protect kids from social media data harvesting. “One estimate suggests more than 72 million data points are collected about children by advertisers alone before they turn the ripe age of 13. So much what they say, think, do is being sneakily tracked and stolen without meaningful consent. But why does consent in this case matter? The perpetrators are some of the most powerful and wealthy companies on the planet.”

Nature: I critiqued my past papers on social media — here’s what I learnt. “On Good Friday this year, traditionally a time of self-reflection in the Christian calendar, I began critiquing my own scientific record — writing down something critical about each of my publications. Much of my career, my writing and now my podcast, ‘The Error Bar’, has been spent criticizing others’ work. In 57 tweets… I recalled the worst things about each of my publications.”

CNET: YouTube recommendations serve up most videos viewers wish they’d never seen, study says. “When YouTube viewers volunteered to report videos they regretted watching, 71% of them were recommended by YouTube’s own algorithms, according to a Mozilla study.” 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!



July 13, 2021 at 07:48PM
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Monday, July 12, 2021

Muslim Sources, Knewz, Google Photos, More: Monday Evening ResearchBuzz, July 12, 2021

Muslim Sources, Knewz, Google Photos, More: Monday Evening ResearchBuzz, July 12, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

J Source: New Database Aims To Amplify Muslim Voices In Canadian Media. “A new online expert database was launched in May with the goal of increasing Muslim voices featured in Canadian media. Naureen Aqueel, journalist and founder of Muslim Sources, said she hopes to grow the database to improve Muslim representation helping journalists diversify their sources.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Rupert Murdoch’s answer to Google News is dead after only 18 months. “In August of 2019, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp announced that it was developing Knwez, its own ‘conservative friendly’ alternative to Google News. Knewz went live without much fanfare in January of 2020, and officially died today, less than eighteen months later.” As you might imagine, I see literally hundreds of headlines a day (possibly more. I try not to think about it.) I saw zero coverage of Knewz. Jelly got more coverage in the part of media that makes it to my Google Alerts.

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How to Hide Your Sensitive Pictures in Google Photos. “If, for some reason, you have taken photos on your phone that you don’t want just anyone to see, you may want to use some sort of privacy feature. While there are third party apps that can hide your intimate photos, Google recently announced a new feature to lock your private images directly in Google Photos.” This is not necessarily noods; you might have images of things like your driver’s license and passport in case they’re stolen.

Search Engine Journal: 5 Things Google Analytics Can’t Tell You & How to Get the Missing Info. “It’s important for marketers to be aware of Google Analytics’ limitations. Once you know what you don’t have, you can figure out how to get it. Here are the five main things Google Analytics can’t tell you and how to get the missing information, so you can make the right marketing decisions.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

South China Morning Post: China targets LGBT student organisations on social media in new wave of repression. “The WeChat accounts of dozens of LGBT student organisations across China were shut down permanently on Tuesday night in a sweeping wave of repression, sparking anger within the LGBT community. The accounts included those from top universities such as the Sex-Gender Study Community of Renmin University, Peking University ColorsWorld and the Shanghai-based Fudan University Zhihe Society.”

Go San Angelo: Nominations for national ‘I love my librarian award’ now open. “Has a librarian made a difference in your life? You can nominate them for the national ‘I Love My Librarian Award,’ which honors librarians across the country who are changing lives and improving communities. Each year, ten librarians are selected to receive a $5,000 cash award and $750 for their library in recognition of their public service.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Politico: ‘Nowhere to be found’: The internet industry’s D.C. powerhouse recedes. “Silicon Valley’s longtime voice in D.C. is in disarray. The Internet Association has been shedding staff, losing influence on Capitol Hill and shrinking to near-obscurity in media coverage of tech policy debates in Washington, even as the industry faces controversies ranging from alleged monopolization to privacy to how it treats its legions of workers.”

Engadget: Kaseya was warned about security flaws years ahead of ransomware attack. “The giant ransomware attack against Kaseya might have been entirely avoidable. Former staff talking to Bloomberg claim they warned executives of ‘critical’ security flaws in Kaseya’s products several times between 2017 and 2020, but that the company didn’t truly address them. Multiple staff either quit or said they were fired over inaction.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Atlantic: You Really Need to Quit Twitter. “I’m almost 60, and in these many decades I’ve seen people—some of them good friends—taken down by all kinds of things. Alcohol and drugs, mostly. A few years ago, I lost someone to heroin, and hundreds of us sat at his funeral in wordless communion. I know a couple of people who couldn’t shake gambling, and many plagued by food and sex and all the other great distractions. But in all these years—almost 60!—I haven’t had trouble with any of those things. Until now. You know what finally took me down? Fucking Twitter.”

Techdirt: Juul Rented A Scientific Journal For a Month To Spread Glorified Marketing. “Juul is sparing no expense to try and convince the FDA to keep its products on store shelves. Buried in a New York Times report on the looming FDA decision was an interesting nugget: namely that the company had paid $51,000 for a month of favorable coverage in the American Journal of Health Behavior.” Good evening, 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!



July 13, 2021 at 05:36AM
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Search Atlas, Atlantic Ocean, Linux Mint, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 12, 2021

Search Atlas, Atlantic Ocean, Linux Mint, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 12, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Wired: A New Tool Shows How Google Results Vary Around the World. “Search Atlas makes it easy to see how Google offers different responses to the same query on versions of its search engine offered in different parts of the world. The research project reveals how Google’s service can reflect or amplify cultural differences or government preferences—such as whether Beijing’s Tiananmen Square should be seen first as a sunny tourist attraction or the site of a lethal military crackdown on protesters.”

British Library: One-Fifth of the World’s Surface. “One-Fifth of the Earth’s Surface is a digital audio-visual, multimedia web experience by artists Hakeem Adam and Maxwell Mutanda. Commissioned by Abandon Normal Devices and York Mediale, the work is, as the title suggests, an exploration of the ‘power of water as a dynamic and fluid archive’ with the Atlantic Ocean its main subject.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Neowin: Linux Mint 20.2 arrives, upgrade path made available too. “The Linux Mint team has announced the release of Linux Mint 20.2 ‘Uma’. Surprisingly, the upgrade path has also been opened up today. In the past, users normally had to wait a week or two before upgrades were allowed from older Mint versions but it looks like the team was confident enough to allow upgrades right away.”

Poynter: No, Facebook isn’t kicking people out for supporting the NRA. “Facebook doesn’t mention the National Rifle Association in its community standards, where it outlines rules about objectionable content such as hate speech and sexual solicitation. (Facebook does ban users from buying, selling or trading guns and some other regulated products on its platform.) The NRA’s Facebook page, followed by more than 4.7 million people, is active.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: The Best Podcast Apps for Your iPhone and iPad (2021). “We’ve been on this beat for a while, and have a pair of definitive recommendations for the best apps to manage podcasts on your iPhone and/or iPad (and maybe even Android or desktop, too), as well as a few backup suggestions for those seeking a more novel podcast listening experience.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Mashable: GETTR, that site for Twitter rejects, is mad Twitter won’t let it import tweets. “GETTR, the Twitter clone helmed by Donald Trump’s former spokesperson Jason Miller, ran into additional trouble Saturday when it lost the ability to automatically import tweets directly from Twitter. So claimed Miller, who announced the latest setback for his fledgling social media platform via (where else) Twitter.” Twitter did not respond to a request for comment, so it’s not clear why this is happening.

Stuff (New Zealand): National Library signs ‘historic’ agreement to donate 600,000 books to online archive. “The National Library will donate 600,000 books that it was planning to cull from its overseas collection to a United States-based internet archive that will make digital copies of the works freely available online. National Librarian Rachel Esson announced the ‘historic’ agreement on Monday, saying books left at the end of the library’s review process would be donated to the Internet Archive, a digital library with the self-stated mission of universal access to all knowledge.”

University of Iowa Libraries: Brokaw’s Press Passes Grant Access to Unique History. “Beyond the hours of television appearances and bylines, there are unique ways in which we can come to learn and know about [Tom] Brokaw’s impressive list of journalistic endeavors. The Brokaw collection, located in the University of Iowa Libraries Special Collections & Archives, is one of those places where viewers can get a glimpse into the history of the world according to the accounts of one of America’s greatest journalistic icons.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

AP: In crosshairs of ransomware crooks, cyber insurers struggle. “Before ransomware evolved into a full-scale global epidemic plaguing businesses, hospitals, schools and local governments, cyber insurance was a profitable niche industry. It was accused of fueling the criminal feeding frenzy by routinely recommending that victims pay up, but kept many from going bankrupt. Now, the sector isn’t just in the criminals’ crosshairs. It’s teetering on the edge of profitability, upended by a more than 400% rise last year in ransomware cases and skyrocketing extortion demands. As a percentage of premiums collected, cyber insurance payouts now top 70%, the break-even point.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: New electronic paper displays brilliant colours. “Imagine sitting out in the sun, reading a digital screen as thin as paper, but seeing the same image quality as if you were indoors. Thanks to research from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, it could soon be a reality. A new type of reflective screen – sometimes described as ‘electronic paper’ – offers optimal colour display, while using ambient light to keep energy consumption to a minimum.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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July 12, 2021 at 11:28PM
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