Saturday, July 17, 2021

Indigenous Tasmania, Google Maps, Emoji, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, July 17, 2021

Indigenous Tasmania, Google Maps, Emoji, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, July 17, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Tasmania Examiner: Australian first historical website to illuminate Tasmania’s Indigenous history. “[The site] was believed to be the first site of its kind in Australia and tells the history of the Stoney Creek people who lived in the Tamar Valley for a thousand generations. The website was developed by historian and academic Dr Michael Powell and Indigenous historian Dr Aunty Patsy Cameron. More than 30 Indigenous and non-Indigenous academics, scholars and community members also contributed to the website.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Yahoo News: Google Maps updates Ben Nevis route after complaints about ‘potentially fatal’ path. “Google has updated a Ben Nevis route in its mapping service after complaints it had suggested a ‘potentially fatal’ path for walkers. The tech giant denied its map offered dangerous directions for people on foot but did admit driving routes could be misinterpreted at the mountain in Scotland.” According to the article I linked to a few days ago, locals attempting to contact Google about this were ignored. Glad to see that news articles about the problem got them to change things before someone died.

Emojipedia: New Emojis in 2021-2022 . “A saluting face, biting lip, coral and a low battery are among the emojis up for approval later in the year. These are currently draft candidates for the next emoji release versioned Emoji 14.0. Other inclusions on the draft list are consistent gender options for pregnancy and royalty, ‘heart hands’, and the ability to choose from 15 different handshake combinations.”

TechCrunch: Twilio’s new tools will let anyone add live video and audio to their apps. “Twilio, a company best known for its tools that help developers build text message/phone-call-powered apps, is branching out into a new category: livestreaming. This morning the company announced Twilio Live, a platform meant to help developers more easily integrate live video/audio features into their apps.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Verge: How to change your iPhone’s text size for a specific app. “Sometimes you want the text in your app to be smaller, so you can fit more content on a single screen. Sometimes you want it to be bigger, especially if you’ve been putting off buying those reading glasses. But until recently, if you had an iPhone, you had to pick a single text size as a standard for all your apps. Not anymore.”

ABC 10: How to watch the Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony. “This year’s Olympic Summer Games, already postponed a year because of the pandemic, will be held without fans cheering from the stands after a state of emergency was declared in Tokyo in an effort to fight a surge in COVID-19 cases. Here is everything you need to know about the opening ceremony and how you can watch it live, on TV and online.”

Mashable: How to create a GIF from a TikTok video . “Gone are the days of screen recording a video on your phone and uploading it to a sketchy GIF-making website, choosing the start and end times, adjusting the frame rate, blah blah blah you know the struggle. Making GIFs can be a huge pain. GIFing on TikTok is refreshingly easy, and only takes a few taps. Here’s how to do it.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Facebook: Taking Action Against Hackers in Iran. “Today, we’re sharing actions we took against a group of hackers in Iran to disrupt their ability to use their infrastructure to abuse our platform, distribute malware and conduct espionage operations across the internet, targeting primarily the United States.”

Tom’s Guide: Update Google Chrome now to fix this dangerous zero-day flaw . “Few details are yet available about the zero-day flaw. Google’s Chrome blog post yesterday (July 15) notes that it involves ‘type confusion in V8,’ the JavaScript rendering engine used by Chrome, and that ‘Google is aware of reports that an exploit for CVE-2021-30563 [the flaw’s catalogue number] exists in the wild.'”

Motherboard: Samsung Washing Machine App Requires Access to Your Contacts and Location. “A series of Samsung apps that allow customers to control their internet-connected appliances require access to all the phone’s contacts and, in some cases, the phone call app, phone’s location, and camera. Customers have been furious about this for years.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Los Angeles Review of Books: Archival Futures: The Archive as a Place and the Place of the Archive. “ONE CERTAINTY THAT has always guided historians is the possibility of traveling to work in an archive. The time and costs involved in such research trips set the timelines of their research projects. But, confronted with an unprecedented pandemic, can we still stick to the old certainties that such research trips are central to what we write and teach? In an increasingly uncertain and digitizing world, where the relationship between past, present, and future thins out, it is time to rethink the relationship between historical writing and the archive. Specifically, the notion of the archive as a place requires revision.”

EurekAlert: Beautiful VR setting could reduce pain in unpleasant medical procedure. “Dr Wojciech Krajewski and colleagues at the Wroc?aw Medical University in Poland recruited 103 patients, with a mean age of 66 years, who were listed for rigid cystoscopy with just local, intraurethral anaesthesia. Some were for a first diagnosis and others required follow up having experienced the procedure in the past. Individuals were randomised to undergo classic cystoscopy or the procedure with VR goggles and headphones presenting an image of the Skógafoss waterfall in Iceland.” Good evening, Internet…

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July 18, 2021 at 03:48AM
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Friday, July 16, 2021

Japanese Woodblock Prints, Romani Concentration Camp Records, Microsoft Teams, More: Friday Evening ResearchBuzz, July 16, 2021

Japanese Woodblock Prints, Romani Concentration Camp Records, Microsoft Teams, More: Friday Evening ResearchBuzz, July 16, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

My Modern Met: Download 1,000+ Japanese Woodblock Prints by Edo-Era Master Hiroshige . “The Minneapolis Institute of Art recently made their extensive digital collection of woodblock prints by Hiroshige available to view and even download via their website. Within this 1,000+ image archive are examples of his landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, and more—many of which influenced Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters like Monet and Van Gogh.”

Romea: Czech local archive publishes digitalized records online of the former concentration camp for Romani people at Lety. “News server Denik.cz reports that the State Regional Archive (SOA) in Třeboň, Czech Republic has released on its website its archival collection of digitalized documents about the WWII-era concentration camp called the Zigeunerlager (in Czech, Cikánský tábor) at Lety; the digital collection was created in collaboration with the Institute of the Terezín Initiative in Prague as part of a project called the ‘Database of victims of the national socialist persecution of “gypsies”‘.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

MakeUseOf: 8 New Microsoft Teams Meeting and Search Features You Must Try. “As more people work remotely than ever before, tech companies are enhancing their online productivity suites to provide a seamless user experience. As part of the same effort, Microsoft has added new search and meeting features to Teams. Let’s find out how you can work more efficiently with these new features.”

Ubergizmo: Twitter Rolls Out Automatic Captioning For Voice Tweets. “Users won’t have to do much work themselves. All they need to do is record a voice tweet like they would normally, and then the other user will just have to click on the CC button to view the captions. However, it seems that this is a feature for the web so if you’re viewing it on mobile, it won’t work.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNN: Twitter is a mess in India. Here’s how it got there. “The company has struggled to fill key spots mandated by the government that other firms have had more success with. And tech experts told CNN Business that they’re puzzled by Twitter’s seeming inability to commit to either complying with the rules or to taking a stand and defying them entirely.”

YourStory: Top tech blogger Amit Agarwal on building a global content business for over 15 years. “Amit Agarwal has developed projects with the likes of Airbus, LinkedIn, Disney, and even the US embassy. In a conversation with YourStory, the professional tech blogger shares his success secrets, building a global content business from Bharat, and more.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NOLA: Two library workers sue New Orleans, alleging social media policy stifles criticism. “Two New Orleans public library workers filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the municipal government, Mayor LaToya Cantrell and her top deputy, alleging that a June 2020 policy infringes on their free speech rights and threatens to punish them for any criticism they might express, even in their private lives.”

Wired: The net is closing on child sexual abuse images. “Each day, a team of analysts faces a seemingly endless mountain of horrors. The team of 21, who work at the Internet Watch Foundation’s office in Cambridgeshire, spend hours trawling through images and videos containing child sexual abuse. And, each time they find a photo or piece of footage it needs to be assessed and labelled. Last year alone the team identified 153,383 webpages with links to child sexual abuse imagery.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Bloomberg: Social Media Fails to Curb Racist Emojis Aimed at Soccer Stars. “A wave of online racism aimed at some of England’s Black soccer players has highlighted how social media companies’ content moderation systems are failing to monitor the use of emojis.” Good evening, Internet…

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July 17, 2021 at 05:30AM
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Sheffield Knife Blades, Autocar Magazine, Aquaculture Research, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 16, 2021

Sheffield Knife Blades, Autocar Magazine, Aquaculture Research, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 16, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Star: Sheffield’s amazing cutlery history celebrated at online project launch. “The Name on a Knife Blade project, which actually began last year, is the brainchild of the city’s unique and internationally-renowned Hawley Collection, which is housed at the museum. The Ken Hawley Collection Trust looks after Ken’s lifetime’s work to preserve the history of Sheffield’s edge tools and cutlery manufacture and silversmithing, which amounts to more than 100,000 items of all sorts.”

I mentioned this in March as being in-progress but it looks like it’s about ready to go. Daily Mail: Autocar turns 125! World’s oldest car magazine’s archive goes online. “Over the past six months, more than a million pages spanning 125 years of automotive history have been ‘digitised’ for posterity…. The Autocar motor archive… goes live next month with podcasts narrating the first 52 pioneering editions in their entirety and the most visually attractive front covers available as prints and posters.”

BusinessMirror: Virtual library boosts open access to aquaculture, fisheries publications. “The Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center Aquaculture Department (Seafdec/AQD), an international research center located in Tigbauan town in Iloilo province, has given the public unrestricted access to over 1,800 publications, including full-text digitized books, extension manuals, conference proceedings, annual reports, and other materials authored by the organization’s scientists and researchers, Seafdec/AQD said in a news release.” Lots of English-language content here, definitely worth a visit.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Now You Can Delete the Last 15 Minutes of Your Google Search History on iOS. “In its never-ending quest to convince users that it has privacy top of mind, Google is rolling out a quick auto-delete control to scrub the last 15 minutes of your mobile search history. The feature is arriving on iOS devices first, with the option coming to Android devices later this year.”

USEFUL STUFF

Dazed: Looking for a creative spark after lockdown? Try this inspiration generator. “Adobe has created a new tool to help designers beat the blank. Called the Inspiration Generator and available in English, German, and French, the tool creates unique creative briefs for the user to respond to. The idea is that anyone with the skills to make something, but lacking a sense of direction or purpose, can create for the sake of it. Some of the oblique strategies we were presented with: ‘adventurous surfer movie poster’ and ‘chic florist magazine cover’.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Hyperallergic: Busch-Reisinger Museum’s New Instagram Account Redefines the Boundaries of Its Collection. “Founded as the Germanic Museum at the turn of the 20th century, the Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum has reinvented itself spatially and conceptually on several occasions over its nearly 120-year history. In recent years the museum’s curatorial team has been reassessing what these moments of reinvention mean for the museum’s identity in the 21st century. How can the Busch-Reisinger remain vital well into the future? How will the contours of the museum change, whether through new acquisitions, the reframing of current holdings, or the changing demands of contemporary audiences?”

CNBC: Google parts with Cloud VP after uproar over his manifesto renouncing his antisemitism. “[Amr] Awadallah, an Egyptian American who is well-known in the cloud industry, also posted his manifesto on YouTube and Twitter in attempts to decry antisemitism by recounting how he became enlightened after he ‘hated all Jews.’ In an awkward attempt to decry hate amid the Israel-Palestinian conflict, he listed all the Jews he knew who he said were good people.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: How your personal data is being scraped from social media. “Name, location, age, job role, marital status, headshot? The amount of information people are comfortable with posting online varies. But most people accept that whatever we put on our public profile page is out in the public domain. So, how would you feel if all your information was catalogued by a hacker and put into a monster spreadsheet with millions of entries, to be sold online to the highest paying cyber-criminal?”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Mississippi State University: MSU faculty member devises automated system to aid museums in collecting genetic data. “Ryan A. Folk, an assistant professor of biological sciences and herbarium curator at MSU, is using a $432,781 three-year National Science Foundation grant to automate the data collection process by using a combination of unique object identifiers, QR codes and citizen scientists, or non-biologists recruited to help with data acquisition.”

EurekAlert: Galactic fireworks: New ESO images reveal stunning features of nearby galaxies. “A team of astronomers has released new observations of nearby galaxies that resemble colourful cosmic fireworks. The images, obtained with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), show different components of the galaxies in distinct colours, allowing astronomers to pinpoint the locations of young stars and the gas they warm up around them.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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July 16, 2021 at 11:47PM
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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…

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 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…

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 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…

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July 15, 2021 at 05:00AM
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