Friday, July 16, 2021

Art Magazine Collection Archives, StopRansomware, Ball Lightning, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, July 16, 2021

Art Magazine Collection Archives, StopRansomware, Ball Lightning, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, July 16, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

PR Newswire: EBSCO Information Services Releases Art Magazine Collection Archive (PRESS RELEASE). “Art Magazine Collection Archive is a fully searchable full-text archive that assists researchers and those interested in topics such as ancient art, architecture, art preservation, contemporary art, contemporary American art, decorative arts, fine arts, interior design, international art and visual arts. Coverage of the digital archive includes 1,200 issues of The Magazine ANTIQUES (1922-2016), 2,100 issues of ARTnews (1902-2006) and 650 issues of Art in America (1913-2015).”

Department of Justice: U.S. Government Launches First One-Stop Ransomware Resource at StopRansomware.gov. “The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), together with federal partners, have launched a new website to combat the threat of ransomware. StopRansomware.gov establishes a one-stop hub for ransomware resources for individuals, businesses and other organizations. The new StopRansomware.gov is a collaborative effort across the federal government and is the first joint website created to help private and public organizations mitigate their ransomware risk.”

EOS: Have You Seen Ball Lightning? Scientists Want to Know About It. “Ball lightning has been reported for centuries but hasn’t been reliably observed by scientific instruments. A new website hosted by New Mexico Tech physicist Richard Sonnenfeld and Texas State University engineer Karl Stephan is collecting eyewitness accounts to improve the basic understanding of the phenomenon. They’ll compare the accounts with weather radar systems to characterize the factors that could lead to ball lightning.”

San Francisco Business Times: S.F. leaders want residents to be proud of the city. There’s a new initiative to help.. “A new website is designed to match volunteers with community groups and city agencies involved with neighborhood clean ups, gardening projects, and public space and beautification projects.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

France24: Cuba restores internet access after protests, but not social media. “Cuban authorities restored internet access on Wednesday following three days of interruptions after unprecedented protests erupted over the weekend, AFP journalists said. Access to social media and messaging apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter remained blocked on 3G and 4G, however.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 10 Clever Google Maps Settings Everyone Should Be Using. “Every time you head out to a new location, there’s a good chance you instinctively pull up Google Maps to help guide you there — there’s no better tool out there for navigation and traffic updates. But even if you use it practically every day, there’s a good chance that you haven’t made the most of some of its better features. The service has a lot of useful (but buried) tools — and it’s time you check them out.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Baltimore Sun: This Baltimore blogger is preserving Maryland’s culinary history through maps. “Kara Mae Harris is dedicated to preserving Maryland’s culinary history. The Remington resident has spent the last few years logging thousands of recipes from historic cookbooks and plotting them on maps to display the region’s geographical relationship with food.”

South China Morning Post: Popular science blogs disappear from WeChat, Weibo and Bilibili in Beijing’s latest internet content crackdown. “Two popular science blogs in China were censored across social media platforms WeChat, Weibo and video-streaming site Bilibili, a surprising turn in Beijing’s escalating crackdown on internet content.”

New York Times: A New Digital Life, Same Old Problems . “That’s a link among the gripes about selling products on Amazon, distributing apps on smartphone app stores, trying to make a living on YouTube or renting homes on Airbnb. In all of those cases, people and businesses are complaining about the costs, rules and precariousness of activities that were even more burdensome in the olden days, if they were possible at all.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Dua Lipa sued for putting paparazzi photo of herself on Instagram. “Dua Lipa is being sued after allegedly putting a paparazzi photo of herself on Instagram. According to US court documents, the star was snapped queuing at an airport in February 2019 and later shared the shot with her fans ‘without permission or authorisation’.”

Chicago Tribune: ACLU files suit against Chicago police seeking records on beefed-up social media monitoring following protests and looting last year . “The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the Chicago Police Department asking a judge to order the department to release records related to its social media monitoring programs, which were expanded after protests and looting last year.”

TNW: This manual for a popular facial recognition tool shows just how much the software tracks people. “Lawmakers, privacy advocates, and civil rights organizations have also pushed against facial recognition because of error rates that disproportionately hurt people of color. A 2018 research paper from Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru highlighted how facial recognition technology from companies like Microsoft and IBM is consistently less accurate in identifying people of color and women.” Good morning, Internet…

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July 16, 2021 at 07:29PM
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Thursday, July 15, 2021

Georgia Black History, UK Gardens, Glass Making, More: Thursday Evening ResearchBuzz, July 15, 2021

Georgia Black History, UK Gardens, Glass Making, More: Thursday Evening ResearchBuzz, July 15, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Digital Library of Georgia: Civil rights-era issues of Savannah’s leading African American newspaper, the Savannah Tribune, are now available freely online. “The Digital Library of Georgia, in partnership with Live Oak Public Libraries, has made the Savannah Tribune (1943 to 1960) available for viewing at the Georgia Historic Newspapers website. The site provides access to these newspapers with full-text searching, browsing by date and title, and is compatible with all current browsers. The newspaper page images can be viewed without the use of plug-ins or additional software downloads. The archive is free and open for public use.”

Google Blog: Take a trip around UK Gardens with Google Arts & Culture. “Gardens United is a new, interactive digital hub sharing the stories of a range of gardens around the country, thanks to collaboration between Google Arts & Culture and over 30 cultural partners in the UK. From archives to allotments, from botanic gardens to heritage bodies, there is something for everyone to enjoy and discover.”

The Reporter: Glass giant celebrates St Helens history with online heritage hub. “Historic images chart Pilkington UK’s almost 200-year history at the forefront of glass making and the lives of those who worked there, from the three wealthy founding families, to the apprentices and production line workers. The hub recognises the seminal contributions of Sir Alistair Pilkington, with his industry-shaping invention of the Float Glass process in 1958; now the world standard for high-quality flat glass manufacture.”

US PIRG: Green Scissors Coalition Launches New Database Of Wasteful Federal Subsidies. “To make cutting waste and protecting the environment more accessible, the Green Scissors coalition describes each of the database’s items in detail, along with its one-year and ten-year cost to taxpayers. In addition to categorizing each subsidy by issue area, the site allows users to sort the data by subsidy type. ”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Inspiration: How to Find and Replace Text in Google Docs with RegEx Search Patterns. “It is easy to search and replace text in Google Documents with the DocumentApp service of Google Apps Script. You can use use findText method with simple regular expressions to find text elements in the document that match a pattern and replace them with the specified text…. All well and good but in some cases, this simple search and replace function may fail if the search text does not transform into a valid regular expression.”

Mashable: From kitten gifs to Minecraft modding, these online games make coding fun for kids. “Coding games also give kids an opportunity to improve critical thinking and creative problem solving, and the latest spate of coding platforms is designed to appeal to kids with varying interests. There’s text-based coding for creating art and animation, and puzzle games instructing a robot to move crates.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The National: Google Maps slammed for suggesting ‘potentially fatal’ route up Ben Nevis. “SCOTTISH mountaineering charities have slammed Google for suggesting routes up Ben Nevis and other Munros they say are ‘potentially fatal’ and direct people over a cliff.”

New York Times: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg’s Partnership Did Not Survive Trump. “To achieve its record-setting growth, the company had continued building on its core technology, making business decisions based on how many hours of the day people spent on Facebook and how many times a day they returned. Facebook’s algorithms didn’t measure if the magnetic force pulling them back to Facebook was the habit of wishing a friend happy birthday, or a rabbit hole of conspiracies and misinformation.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechRadar: Google finds zero-day security flaws in all your favorite browsers. “DIscovered by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), the four vulnerabilities in Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and WebKit, the browser engine used by Apple’s Safari, were used as a part of three different campaigns.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

IFSEC Global: New research on CCTV camera prevalence in cities uses Google street view . “Do you know how many CCTV cameras there are there in London, or in other major cities around the world? While there have been attempts to estimate these numbers, systematic surveys of camera density are hard to come by. While some studies have sought to estimate the number of CCTV cameras installed in a city, only a few have identified their precise locations. In an innovative study, researchers at Stanford University in California have used Google street view images and computer vision algorithms to count the number and density of cameras in 10 major US cities and six other large cities around the world.” Good evening, Internet…

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July 16, 2021 at 06:33AM
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Peacebuilding, Drone Incidents, North Carolina Newspapers, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, July 15, 2021

Peacebuilding, Drone Incidents, North Carolina Newspapers, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, July 15, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New York University: Center on International Cooperation Launches Digital Tool to Map Data- and Tech-Driven Peacebuilding Work. “A new interactive digital tool visualizes more than 200 data- and tech-driven global peacebuilding organizations and projects, offering a real-time picture of the scope of peace work and its use of cutting-edge technologies.”

The Drive: Use Our New Tool To Explore Thousands Of FAA Drone And Unidentified Aircraft Incident Reports. “We are excited to announce the launch of our new interactive tool that maps and makes searchable thousands of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) and unidentified aircraft incident reports. The vast dataset is drawn from information compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration. Some of the reports are highly unusual, going far beyond typical low-altitude drone mishaps.”

DigitalNC: 1951-1976 Black Mountain News Issues Now Available. “Thanks to a nomination by our partner, Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center, 1,357 issues of Black Mountain News from 1951 to 1976 are now available to view on our website. Black Mountain News is published in Black Mountain which is located in western North Carolina in Buncombe County near Asheville. This batch of Black Mountain News issues builds on our current collection of the paper which originally spanned only from the paper’s first issue on September 6, 1945 to 1950.”

PR Newswire: SC Johnson and AccuWeather Announce Launch of First-of-its-Kind Pest Index to Help Families Plan for a Summer Full of Memories…Not Pests (PRESS RELEASE). “The Pest Index provides users with real-time information on the potential incidence of common bugs in their local towns and cities. It factors in location, weather and insect behavior to predict what level of pest activity – low, moderate or high – people can expect from both indoor and outdoor pests.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: TikTok hits 3 billion downloads. “TikTok has become the first non-Facebook mobile app to surpass 3 billion downloads globally, according to a Tuesday analysis from Sensor Tower. The milestone makes TikTok the fifth nongame app to cross the threshold, following WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook and Instagram, which are all owned by Facebook.”

9to5 Google: YouTube rolls out subs-only chat, live polls, plus Clips to channels w/ over 1K subscribers . “YouTube looks to be taking game-streaming platform Twitch head-on with the addition of subscriber-only chat, viewer polls for all channels, while the Clips feature is arriving for channels with over 1,000 subscribers.”

TechCrunch: Streamlabs launches Crossclip, a new tool for sharing Twitch clips to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. “The company behind ubiquitous livestreaming software Streamlabs is introducing a new way for streamers to share their gaming highlights to platforms well beyond Twitch. Streamlabs calls the new tool Crossclip, and it’s available now as an iOS app and as a lightweight web tool.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tools for Reporters: Who did that website belong to?. “You may already be familiar with WHOIS, the directory of website registrants. Under ICANN rules, you have to have contact info registered for a domain, and that contact info used to be public. Sadly, that changed in 2018 and much of the information is now redacted. But! A tool called WHOIS History Search came to the rescue.” There’s a certain amount of free searching you can do but getting details will cost you.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Inside Facebook’s Data Wars. “An internal battle over data transparency might seem low on the list of worthy Facebook investigations. And it’s a column I’ve hesitated to write for months, in part because I’m uncomfortably close to the action. (More on that in a minute.) But the CrowdTangle story is important, because it illustrates the way that Facebook’s obsession with managing its reputation often gets in the way of its attempts to clean up its platform.”

Jerusalem Post: Jewish-Uzbek historical archives open up to the public. “The news recently reached Israel that Uzbekistan is promoting archival cooperation with Israel. Uzbekistan is now officially researching and documenting the history of its Jewish community, which has existed in the central Asian nation since the region was crushed by the hooves of Genghis Khan’s horses. This also includes hundreds of thousands of Jews who managed to escape the chains of Germany’s Panzer tanks.”

The Verge: Facebook accidentally lost a piece of its moderation policy for three years. “Instagram accidentally banned a post criticizing solitary confinement because Facebook had misplaced the policy allowing it, according to a new Facebook Oversight Board (FOB) decision.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Science: European law could improve ‘scandalous’ lack of clinical trial data reporting. “A total of 3846 European trials—nearly 28% of 13,874 completed trials in the EU Clinical Trials Register (EUCTR) on 1 July—had not posted their results on the register, according to the latest data from the EU Trials Tracker, set up by U.K. researchers in 2018 to expose lax reporting. Public research hospitals and universities, not drugmakers, are responsible for the vast majority of the lapses, which appear to violate European rules that require sponsors to post their results within 1 year of a trial’s conclusion.” Good evening, Internet…

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July 16, 2021 at 04:41AM
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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…

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 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…

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 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…

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July 14, 2021 at 03:03AM
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