New researches

Monday, August 30, 2021

Honouliuli, Tennessee History, Google Sheets, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, August 30, 2021

Honouliuli, Tennessee History, Google Sheets, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, August 30, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Ka Puna O Kaloʻi: Explore Honouliuli’s history in new online exhibit . “Discover the history of the Honouliuli ahupuaʻa — one of many of Hawaiʻi’s land and water divisions, and where the University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu is located — in a recently launched online exhibit created in part by UH West Oʻahu students. The multi-media exhibit, Honouliuli ‘Āina Ho’ohuli, was the major deliverable of a research project funded by the National Park Service in which UH West Oʻahu’s Dr. Christy Mello, associate professor of Applied Cultural Anthropology, worked with her students, local cultural practitioners, and other experts to create.”

EVENTS

Tennessee Secretary of State: Tennessee State Library & Archives Launching a Lunchtime Speaker Series Commemorating Tennessee’s 225 Years of History. “The first Lunchtime Speaker Series event, a look back at Tennessee’s Centennial Celebration led by Historian David E. Ewing, will be Friday, Sept. 10, from Noon to 1 p.m. The other speaker series events will take place on Nov. 5, Feb. 11 and May 6. Topics for these events include Native American life and culture in early Tennessee, how Tennessee earned the Volunteer State nickname through service in military conflicts and how Tennessee’s topography and geology impacted where pioneers settled.” The events will be livestreamed on both Facebook and YouTube.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Workspace Updates: New intelligent suggestions for formulas and functions in Google Sheets. “Formula suggestions will make it easier to write new formulas accurately and help make data analysis quicker and easier. Simply begin inserting a formula in Sheets—suggestions will be automatically displayed and as you continue to type. You can view additional incremental suggestions in the drop-down menu.”

Engadget: Microsoft releases an improved Windows 11 PC health check app. “When Microsoft released the Windows 11 Insider preview earlier this summer, it did so with some confusion around minimum system requirements. It quickly reversed course, saying that more people could install the software update than its requirements originally stated so the company could gather more performance on how the OS performed. After a few months of users testing and providing feedback, Microsoft says that, for the most part, its system requirements from June will stand — but there are a few notable changes.”

Library and Archives Canada: LAC launches new series of short podcasts: Treasures Revealed. “Each episode in this new series is 10 to 20 minutes long and features a special object from Library and Archives Canada’s (LAC) collection. Whether for their rarity, historical significance or special interest, these items are Canadian treasures, and LAC experts will share why with you. They will also recount fascinating stories about the creation, discovery, preservation or significance of these items.”

USEFUL STUFF

Fast Company: How to take screenshots and record your screen on any device. “While screenshots and screen recording might seem like geeky features, they have all sorts of practical applications. You can use them to share article excerpts on social media, demonstrate how to do something on your device, troubleshoot your own technology problems, capture information that’s at risk of being deleted, or write an old-fashioned Notes app apology letter, among other things. That may explain why Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all built convenient screenshot and screen recording tools right into their respective operating systems.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CrimeReads: Tony Parker: Meet The Man Who Turned Oral Histories Into An Art Form . “The name may not ring a bell to those who aren’t criminologists, but Tony Parker greatly contributed to the literature and representation of criminals. In 22 books, this unassuming British gentleman chronicled all sorts of criminals—murderers, sex offenders, con men, and more—as well as underdogs and outsiders, from single mothers (In No Man’s Land) to miners (Red Hill), to people living in housing estates (The People of Providence) and small towns (A Place Called Bird). His method: to step aside and let people speak for themselves.” What an interesting read!

Today’s Wills & Probate: Archaeologists to digitise burial records following HS2 excavation. “Archaeologists working on the HS2 rail link are looking for volunteers to help digitise the burial records of 57,639 Londoners who lived in the city in the 18th and 19th century. The information relates to St James’s Burial Ground near Euston station, where more than 31,000 burials were excavated as part of HS2’s archaeology work between 2018 and 2019.”

Japan News: Japanese firms help falsify Google reviews to boost medical clinic ratings . “When you look for a store or facility on Google’s search engine, a review section is displayed along with a map. Reviews on the internet not only influence people’s choice of products, but also where they go. The existence of several specialized companies that erase all the low ratings posted and replace them with high ratings has been uncovered by The Yomiuri Shimbun. These companies are said to target local medical clinics, where such ratings can make a big difference, to use their services.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Committee investigating Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot seeks records from social networks. “A congressional committee investigating the deadly Capitol Hill riot that took place Jan. 6 is seeking records from a number of tech companies, including Facebook, Twitter and Google.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Excel autocorrect errors still plague genetic research, raising concerns over scientific rigour. “Autocorrection, or predictive text, is a common feature of many modern tech tools, from internet searches to messaging apps and word processors. Autocorrection can be a blessing, but when the algorithm makes mistakes it can change the message in dramatic and sometimes hilarious ways. Our research shows autocorrect errors, particularly in Excel spreadsheets, can also make a mess of gene names in genetic research.”

The Verge: The Most Popular Posts On Facebook Are Plagiarized. “…while it’s true that it tells us little about hot-button issues like the spread of COVID-19 misinformation or the rise of vaccine hesitancy, the report arguably reveals something just as damning: almost all of the most-viewed posts on Facebook over the past quarter were effectively plagiarized from elsewhere. And some of the same audience-building tactics that allowed Russian interference to flourish on the platform in 2016 continue to be effective. Today, I want to look at two aspects of the data.” Good morning, Internet…

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August 30, 2021 at 05:33PM
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Sunday, August 29, 2021

Coastal Mumbai, Clubhouse, ASL Disney, More: Sunday Evening ResearchBuzz, August 29, 2021

Coastal Mumbai, Clubhouse, ASL Disney, More: Sunday Evening ResearchBuzz, August 29, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Firstpost: Online exhibition archives oral histories of the Kolis, degradation of Mumbai’s coastal ecology. “Through generations, the Kolis have observed firsthand how the ecology has been disturbed, and given how closely intertwined their lives are with nature, have had to adapt to these changes. All this is evident in their photos, displayed at the online exhibition Through the Eyes of the Kolis: A Reflection of Mumbai’s Past, Present, and Future, created by the experimental think tank Bombay61 Studio, with The Heritage Lab and Ministry of Mumbai’s Magic (MMM).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Clubhouse is adding spatial audio effects to make users feel like they’re really in the room. “It’s been a busy summer for Clubhouse. The hit social audio app rolled out new messaging features and an Android app over the last few months and now the company is turning its attention to enhancing its core audio experience. Clubhouse announced Sunday that its rooms will now be infused with spatial audio to give the app’s listeners a richer sense of hanging out live with a group of other people.”

USEFUL STUFF

Variety: New Google Chrome Extension SignUp Offers ASL Captions for Three Films on Disney Plus. “SignUp, a new Google Chrome extension, overlays ASL captions on three Disney Plus movies — ‘Moana,’ ‘Zootopia’ and ‘The Incredibles.’ Founded by Mariella Satow, the free tool was created because many members of the deaf community find that written captions lack vibrancy or aren’t descriptive enough, or are absent from media sites entirely.”

Tom’s Guide: How to block spoilers on social media. “The internet can be a perilous place at times, especially when it comes to pop culture. Everyone is so desperate to discuss something as soon as it’s released that social media is often littered with major spoilers. But you don’t have to ditch social media, or try to make time to watch all your favorite shows and movies as soon as they’re released. There are things you can do to avoid all those pesky spoilers on social media.”

Motley Fool: These Free Tools Will Make Anyone a Better Investor. “In this episode of Industry Focus: Tech, we take a break from talking about specific companies to loop listeners in on our go-to free resources for information on companies. We give a rundown of our favorite primary and secondary resources for information and spend some time talking about the decision that leveled the playing field for the average investor.” Video podcast with captions AND a complete transcript.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Newsweek: YouTube, TikTok Videos Showing Animals Tortured, Buried, Eaten Alive Viewed 5bn Times. “A report published on Wednesday has revealed the shocking scope of animal cruelty videos posted to large social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Facebook. The research, conducted by the Asia for Animals Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC,) identified 5,480 individual links to videos of animal cruelty between July 2020 and August 2021, with a combined number of views totalling more than 5.3 billion.”

WTKR: Influencers in the boxing ring: Are they the new fighters?. “For a number of social media influencers, the main event is in the ring. Controversial YouTuber Logan Paul — known for 20 million-plus subscribers — fought retired boxing legend Floyd Mayweather Jr. in an exhibition match. His brother, also an internet celebrity, is set to fight an MMA fighter in the next few days.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

VentureBeat: Deepfakes in cyberattacks aren’t coming. They’re already here.. “We’ve all heard the story about the CEO whose voice was imitated convincingly enough to initiate a wire transfer of $243,000. Now, the constant Zoom meetings of the anywhere workforce era have created a wealth of audio and video data that can be fed into a machine learning system to create a compelling duplicate. And attackers have taken note. Deepfake technology has seen a drastic uptick across the dark web, and attacks are certainly taking place.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Hindu: India has the world’s lowest survival rate of cinema. And this heritage needs attention. “In his book, The Death of Cinema, Paolo Cherchi-Usai refers to an article published in 1897 in which the life of a cinematograph frame is arithmetically worked out as ‘one-and-one-third seconds’. So, Usai says, it is the most ephemeral of things, whose life is even shorter than that of a firework, and he wonders whether film eventually exists only in the minds of its viewers. If so, physical preservation of film becomes secondary. Indian culture, with its penchant for concepts like maya and transience, seems to follow a similar attitude to cinema.”

Herald Sun: Social media influencers are contributing to toxic diet culture. “For some people, influencers have become their health experts of choice. This new breed of ‘health’ influencers are perpetuating a toxic diet culture – and it’s convincing our most vulnerable.” Good evening, Internet…

August 30, 2021 at 05:15AM
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WWII Hong Kong, Estonia Presidency, Indigenous Canada, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 29, 2021

WWII Hong Kong, Estonia Presidency, Indigenous Canada, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 29, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Korea Times: Hong Kong historians capture horrors of World War II in new website . “Historian Kwong Chi-man wants Hongkongers to remember the horrors of war, and one particularly painful episode from the fall of Hong Kong in December 1941 stands out. Nurses running an orphanage in Fanling in the New Territories were raped and brutalized when Japanese soldiers arrived on December 8 and overran the place.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Estonia’s MPs will pick its next president from a field of one. “President Kersti Kaljulaid’s five-year term expires on 10 October, and lawmakers in the 101-seat Riigikogu parliament must elect a new head of state to replace her in the largely ceremonial post. As no further candidates registered by the late Saturday deadline, the director of the Estonian National Museum, Alar Karis, will be the sole contender. Karis, a former state auditor, is the only one who has managed to get support from the required minimum of 21 lawmakers.”

Government of Canada: Library and Archives Canada announces First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation organizations receiving funding through the Listen, Hear our Voices initiative. “Nineteen (19) Indigenous organizations across the country received funding to digitize and make accessible their existing audio and video heritage for future generations as part of the initiative’s second call for applications, which closed in December 2020. An Indigenous review committee, external to LAC, and consisting of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Nation individuals from across Canada reviewed applications and made the following recommendations for funding.”

Tubefilter: TikTok Launches Latinx Creator Incubator For Hispanic Heritage Month. “TikTok Latinx Creatives, as the program is called, will take place over 10 weeks and serve to nurture 150 resident creators and musicians. The program is being hosted in collaboration Macro, a multi-platform media company representing the voices and perspectives of Black people and people of color. MACRO will advise TikTok on speaker selection, programming, and business-building opportunities for participants.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

VentureBeat: 3 SSL VPN vulnerabilities disclosed in 2019 are still routinely exploited. “Vulnerabilities in SSL VPN products are some of the most exploited by attackers for initial access to target networks, acting as a doorway for exploitation. Earlier this year, Tenable Research named three VPN vulnerabilities as part of its Top Five Vulnerabilities of 2020. Although all three vulnerabilities (CVE-2019-19781, CVE-2019-11510, CVE-2018-13379) were disclosed in 2019 and patched by January 2020, they continue to be routinely exploited more than halfway through 2021.”

Washington Post: There’s no escape from Facebook, even if you don’t use it. “Megan Borovicka joined Facebook in 2013 and then forgot she even had an account. But Facebook never forgot about her. The 42-year-old Oakland, Calif., lawyer never picked any ‘friends,’ posted any status updates, liked any photos or even opened the Facebook app on her phone. Yet over the last decade, Facebook has used an invisible data vacuum to suction up very specific details about her life — from her brand of underwear to where she received her paycheck.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Moving from Android to iPhone reveals my friends’ true feelings. “Yes, iMessage is convenient. Yes, so is FaceTime. While I personally decided to buy an iPhone 12 Pro Max for the redesign and app privacy controls in iOS 14.5, I didn’t expect it to make a difference to anyone in my social circle. I especially didn’t expect it to matter to the point of friends displaying fairly intense relief and jubilation.” I must admit I felt a bit of this when my mother switched from Android to iPhone. But not for long; she didn’t like the iPhone and switched back.

The Conversation: Lesson from a robot swarm: Change group behavior by talking one-on-one rather than getting on a soapbox. “Our robot swarm study looked at how opinions spread in large populations. We found that a population of uninformed individuals can cling to outdated beliefs and fail to adopt better available alternatives when information about the new options spreads to everyone all at once. Instead, when individuals only share the information one by one, the population can better adapt to changes and reach an agreement in favor of the best option.”

TechCrunch: Move fast and break Facebook: A bull case for antitrust enforcement. “My generation has watched with a combination of sadness and trepidation as legislators who barely use email question the leading technologists of our time about products that have long pervaded our lives in ways we don’t yet understand. I, personally, and my company both stand to gain little from this — but as a participant in the latest generation of social media upstarts, and as an American concerned for the future of our democracy, I feel a duty to try.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

AP: Georgia Teens Start Program to Teach Telugu, Tamil Languages. “From a young age, South Forsyth High School students Suhaas Bonkur, Krithika Kasireddy, Ritika Vemulapalli and Vinay Polaku began learning Telugu and Tamil, which are south Indian languages. When the four friends began hanging out, their speaking and comprehension skills strengthened, as well as their bonds with each other. In March, Bonkur began to develop an idea for a free tutoring service that would offer students of any age the opportunity to learn Telugu and Tamil. It wasn’t until his three friends jumped on board that the program started to take off.” Good afternoon, Internet…

August 29, 2021 at 11:40PM
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EOIR FOIA, Twitter Spaces, Google, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, August 29, 2021

EOIR FOIA, Twitter Spaces, Google, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, August 29, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

US Department of Justice: EOIR Launches FOIA Public Access Link. “The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has launched its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Public Access Link (PAL), a new online portal that streamlines records requests for parties with business before the agency and members of the public seeking records.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Mac: Twitter now rolling out Ticketed Spaces for iPhone users. “Twitter announced earlier this year some new ways for creators to monetize their content on the social network, which includes paid Spaces — or ‘Ticketed Spaces.’ After letting users apply for these new features, Ticketed Spaces are now being rolled out to some iPhone users.”

Fast Company: Hate your Google search results? Now there’s a how-to guide for removing information. “Recent events in Afghanistan have highlighted how detrimental people’s past online activity can quickly become. Afghans are scrambling to erase data about themselves from the internet that the Taliban may use to extract retribution. Thankfully, many tech giants are stepping up to protect Afghani users and help them hide or remove their data.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to See What Twitter Lists You’re On (and How to Remove Yourself). “Twitter lists are a great way to keep up with accounts you care about. The advantage of lists is you get to only follow select accounts instead of drowning in thousands of tweets on your typical timeline. And you don’t need to follow the account to add it to your list. There’s a high chance you’re on someone’s Twitter list as well, but how can you tell? We’ll show you how to see what Twitter lists you’re on in this article.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Marketplace: Admit it, you rank your friends by how much they annoy you. Now, Google’s doing it for websites.. “By the end of the month, Google will change how it ranks websites, so that ones that are harder to load are ranked lower. Will that make websites less annoying? Simon Schnieders founded the search engine optimization agency Blue Array. He said Google’s changes are likely to help. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.”

The Scotsman: Support our Libraries: Scotland on Sunday campaign launch. “This week, the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) published a bold and impassioned vision for the future of Scotland’s libraries. Its strategy places them at the heart of our Covid-19 recovery – an approach Scotland on Sunday shares and is here to champion.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Microsoft : Researchers, cybersecurity agency urge action by Microsoft cloud database users. “Researchers who discovered a massive flaw in the main databases stored in Microsoft Corp’s Azure cloud platform on Saturday urged all users to change their digital access keys, not just the 3,300 it notified this week.”

The Verge: Google allegedly offered Netflix a break on the usual Play Store commission. “In this filing, the lawyers accuse Google of offering Netflix a ‘significantly reduced revenue share’ with the apparent intention of squashing its desire to use an alternative payments system.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: Why pigeons mean peril for satellite broadband. “‘It’s actually been very good but I noticed a series of outages – some a second, some longer,’ says Prof Alan Woodward. The University of Surrey cyber-security expert is talking about his new satellite broadband service from space entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Starlink company. The outages, he thinks, may be caused by a lot of ‘pesky pigeons’, which ‘have taken a fancy to sitting on the dish’.”

Ars Technica: A bad solar storm could cause an “Internet apocalypse”. “Scientists have known for decades that an extreme solar storm, or coronal mass ejection, could damage electrical grids and potentially cause prolonged blackouts. The repercussions would be felt everywhere from global supply chains and transportation to Internet and GPS access. Less examined until now, though, is the impact such a solar emission could have on Internet infrastructure specifically. New research shows that the failures could be catastrophic, particularly for the undersea cables that underpin the global Internet.”

E&T: Internet shown to amplify and expose real-life trolls, but not create them. “New research suggests that the internet is not responsible for making people become more aggressive when engaging in political discussions online, but rather makes the behaviour of more aggressive people more visible.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

Hackaday: IRC Server For MS-DOS . “The recent flurry of projects based around Internet Relay Chat (IRC) should be a fair indication that the beloved protocol is not going anywhere. Now, thanks to [Mike Chambers], you can add to the IRC ecosystem by hosting your very own MS-DOS based IRC server.” I had a PC XT that I had to use with black and white TV because I couldn’t afford a real monitor. Sunday nostalgia: it’s real. Good morning, Internet…

August 29, 2021 at 07:29PM
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Saturday, August 28, 2021

The Syracuse 8, Tokyo Paralympics, Vintage Internet, More: Saturday Evening ResearchBuzz, August 28, 2021

The Syracuse 8, Tokyo Paralympics, Vintage Internet, More: Saturday Evening ResearchBuzz, August 28, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Syracuse University: New Digital Exhibition Features Story of The Syracuse 8. “Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center recently released a new digital exhibition titled ‘A Courageous Stand: The Story of the Syracuse 8.’ The Syracuse 8 was a group of Black student-athletes who boycotted the University football program until it addressed their allegations of racism in 1970.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Quint: Google Doodle Celebrates Tokyo Paralympics 2020 with Champion Island Games. “After almost a month of celebrating the inauguration of Tokyo Olympics 2020, Google Doodle is back with its Champion Island Games. This time to celebrate the spirit of Tokyo Paralympics 2020. Champion Island is an animated athletics game, in which you have to defeat each sport champion to collect all seven sacred scrolls and complete the hidden challenges across the game.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: 9 websites that will bring you back to the old internet. “The internet has been around for long enough — and shifted so drastically in that time — that it’s really easy to get nostalgic for past versions of online life. I mean, remember things like Xanga or the old-school AOL homepage? Those sites are pretty much gone — at least how you knew them. But there remain a few sports for old school online life. That in mind, if you’re ever in the mood for some internet-based nostalgia, we’ve got you covered. We rounded up 9 websites that’ll bring you back to the old internet.”

CNET: Browser settings to change ASAP if you care about privacy: Chrome, Firefox and more . “Privacy is now a priority among browser-makers, but they may not go as far as you want in fighting pervasive ad industry trackers on the web. Here’s a look at how you can crank up your privacy settings to outsmart that online tracking.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Conversation: ‘OK Boomer’: how a TikTok meme traces the rise of Gen Z political consciousness. “‘OK Boomer’ began as a meme in TikTok videos, but our research shows the catchphrase has become much more. The simple two-word phrase is used to express personal politics and at the same time consolidate an awareness of intergenerational politics, in which Gen Z are coming to see themselves as a cohort with shared interests.”

9to5 Mac: Analysts: Google to pay Apple $15 billion to remain default Safari search engine in 2021. “It’s long been known that Google pays Apple a hefty sum every year to ensure that it remains the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Now, a new report from analysts at Bernstein suggests that the payment from Google to Apple may reach $15 billion in 2021, up from $10 billion in 2020.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

KTOO: Alaskans wait for vital records as state health department gets back online after cyberattack. “It’s been three months since a cyberattack crippled the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services’ online systems. And for Alaskans who need vital records — things like birth, death and marriage certificates — that has put things on hold.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

William & Mary: W&M’s Digital Inclusion & Governance Lab studies impacts of digital technologies around the world. “Digital technologies are changing the world. And their greatest impact could be in the poorest countries, particularly on an economic, social and political levels. William & Mary’s new Digital Inclusion & Governance Lab is exploring these very issues with an eye to better understanding the potential benefits and consequences of digital technologies.”

Boing Boing: Artist trains AI to generate new pictures of herself. “What [Olesya] Chernyavaskaya is doing here is subtly more interesting: Creating new iterations on a person that does exist. I wonder what it’d be like to behold thousands of photos of yourself that you never posed for? If you tweaked the GAN to display a range of emotions and expressions, maybe it’d be like a magic mirror, offering you visions of a slightly different version of yourself.”

The Globe and Mail: An internet museum sounds like a great idea. But here’s why it shouldn’t come online. “The internet could certainly use more resources to maintain and secure parts of its archive, and regulations to protect its users, including the intellectual property of its content creators. But any thriving internet culture has, should, and does resist its own museumification.” Good evening, Internet…

August 29, 2021 at 05:27AM
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Google Assistant, Microsoft Teams, Google Docs Templates, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 28, 2021

Google Assistant, Microsoft Teams, Google Docs Templates, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 28, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

ReviewGeek: Google Assistant Now Lets You Delay Actions Within Your Routines. “Google has spent the last year trying to improve its smart assistant Routines, the single-command shortcuts that trigger multiple changes across your home. Earlier this year, the company announced one-tap My Actions buttons that let you start Routines from the Google Home app. And now, Google is quietly rolling out a Delay Start feature that lets you adjust when specific actions within your Routines start.”

ZDNet: Microsoft Teams: Now teachers can monitor students’ reading fluency with AI. “Microsoft has rolled out Reading Progress, a free education tool for Teams that gives teachers artificial intelligence (AI) estimations of student performance and errors when reading text.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: The Best Google Docs Templates to Organize Your Life. “Google Docs offers an astonishing variety of templates to handle every need of users. Instead of working hard to create a new document, you can use one of these customized, ready-to-use templates. All of them are free to edit and accessible from your Google Docs web interface. Let’s take a look at how you can use Google Docs templates to organize your life better as well as a selection of the best.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Mashable: Adventure app Randonautica is fueling wildly unfounded conspiracy theories on TikTok. “The urban exploring app created a genre of YouTube and TikTok videos that marry the supernatural with the internet’s obsession with mystery and true crime. Randonautica, which coincidentally led a group of Seattle teenagers to an actual suitcase full of human remains last year, describes itself as ‘somewhere in the middle between a game, science, art, and spirituality.’ Thrilling content keeps audiences engaged, but conspiracy theorists are using viral Randonautica videos to justify harassing real people.”

Washington Post: ‘YouTube magic dust’: How America’s second-largest social platform ducks controversies . “In an era when tech giants control the largest global information networks, their decisions about who can speak and what they can say have massive geopolitical implications…. But for a constellation of reasons, YouTube’s content policies have tended to attract less media attention and scrutiny than those of Facebook or Twitter, experts say — even though nearly a quarter of U.S. adults say they get news from YouTube, according to the Pew Research Center. (Facebook serves as a news source for 36 percent of Americans, the highest share of any social platform, while Twitter is third at 15 percent.)”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC News: T-Mobile CEO apologizes after hacker stole millions of users’ personal information. “T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert published an open apology to customers Friday after hackers stole more than 50 million users’ personal data, including their Social Security numbers and driver’s license information.” As the article points out, T-Mobile has an extensive history of security issues.

Engadget: Amazon disables ISIS propaganda website using AWS to host content. “The Islamic State’s propaganda arm used Amazon Web Services to host content promoting extremism, according to The Washington Post. Nida-e-Haqq, the group’s media arm, posted messages on the website in the Urdu language, including ones celebrating the recent suicide bombing in Kabul that killed 170 people. Since Amazon’s policy bars clients from using its services to incite violence and terror, the company pulled the website after The Post alerted it to its existence.”

Techdirt: Fake ‘U.S. Copyright Office’ Imposter Gets Google To Delist URLs On Section 1201 Grounds. ” The notices claiming to be from the Copyright Office indicated they were sent on behalf of the Video Industry Association of America, which doesn’t appear to exist based on a Google search I performed. Even if it does, the Copyright Office is not a party to these sorts of takedown requests on behalf of any organization. The URLs targeted appear to be mostly related to stream-ripping sites, but not just sites that offer that service. Instead, some of the URLs targeted merely mention sites that offer stream-ripping services, which is how several TorrentFreak posts got targeted.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UCSF: AI Algorithm Matches Cardiologists’ Expertise, While Explaining Its Decisions. “Clinicians rely daily on electrocardiograms (ECG) to detect common cardiovascular conditions, but accurate diagnoses require high levels of expertise. In a new study that reviewed nearly 1 million ECGs from 365,000 adults, an artificial intelligence algorithm exceeded the performance of a widely available commercial system in nearly all examined diagnoses, while also matching the performance of expert cardiologists and, importantly, providing an explanation for its results.”

Commonplace: The Invisible Citation Commons. “Scholarly knowledge relies on citations. Discovering and acknowledging prior work is fundamental to knowing what has been done before, synthesizing the state of the field, and identifying spaces for new research. Despite being so crucial, citations — the pieces of metadata that serve as references to works — are often ignored in discussions of types of open knowledge.” Good afternoon, Internet…

August 28, 2021 at 11:37PM
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North Dakota Agriculture, Facebook Messenger, Google Docs, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, August 28, 2021

North Dakota Agriculture, Facebook Messenger, Google Docs, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, August 28, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Bismarck Tribune: New online local foods map launched in North Dakota. “‘The new map catalogs the state’s local producers, the type of food they sell and where the consumer can buy it,’ Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said. ‘The map is a great tool to connect with and support local growers and producers.’ The map also shows on-farm sales, roadside stands, community-supported agriculture, retail food businesses, u-picks, wholesale options, online ordering opportunities and more.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: New Facebook Messenger Feature Lets You Poll Your Friends. “Facebook just reached a significant milestone with Messenger, as the service has reached its 10th birthday. To celebrate the occasion, the company is adding many new features, including one that lets you poll your friends to find out who is ‘most likely to.'”

Slashgear: Google Docs gets Smart Replies years after launching in Gmail. “A few years after the feature launched in Gmail, Google has announced plans to expand its Smart Replies to Docs, enabling users to rapidly respond to comments by clicking a preset suggestion. The new capability will join other smart features relatively new to Google Docs, including spelling autocorrect and Smart Compose.”

The Register: ‘Apps for GNOME’ site aims to improve discovery of the project’s best applications. “The GNOME project has created Apps for GNOME, a website to ‘feature the best applications in the GNOME ecosystem,’ according to creator Sophie Herold. The scope of the GNOME project is extensive and includes low-level system components, a toolkit for developers of GUI applications (GTK), a desktop shell and window manager, and numerous applications built with these technologies.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Washington Post: One final look inside the archive that exposed Big Tobacco. “Here, in the Minnesota Tobacco Document Depository, lie the remains of 27 years of legal cases against Big Tobacco. There are trial transcripts, exhibits, images of the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel, a diseased lung in preserving liquid, stories of smokers’ deaths, and secrets that, once revealed, helped end the tobacco industry’s dominance in the cultural landscape of the United States. The warehouse, open to the public for 23 years, will close on Tuesday, ending an unprecedented court-ordered, industry-funded central collection of the legacy of a product that, according to the surgeon general, has killed more than 20 million Americans and continues to kill more than 400,000 a year.”

Drone DJ: Nigerian TikTok star, 22, lands Finland drone job through social media videos . “At first, Ignatius Asabor’s journey from Nigeria to Finland could sound like feel-good fiction. ‘You can’t imagine how happy I am,’ he tells you with his trademark toothy grin. But dig deeper, and you realize it’s a story of ambition, hard work, and tenacity. It also serves as a case in point that social media can be a very powerful tool in landing your dream job. Ignatius was born in 1999 in the Nigerian village of Utagba-Ogbe (Kwale). Last week, the 22-year-old engineer shifted base to Oulu, Finland. Filling the gap between the two coordinates are a curious mind, scrapyard robotics, and a ton of TikTok videos.”

It would be very easy to turn this newsletter into NFTBuzz, which is why I am mostly avoiding the flood of NFT-related articles that make it into my Google Alerts. But sometimes… BBC: Twelve-year-old boy makes £290,000 from whale NFTs. “A 12-year-old boy from London has made about £290,000 during the school holidays, after creating a series of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales and selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs).”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Boston .com: A cybersecurity attack is causing ‘significant’ system outages for the Boston Public Library. “The Boston Public Library is working to restore its digital services after being hit by what officials say was a cybersecurity attack. According to the library, the institution began experiencing a system-wide technical outage on Wednesday morning due to the attack, which has affected public computer and printing services and online resources.”

Techdirt: Copyright Scammers Getting More Sophisticated, Just As The US Is About To Make It Easier For Them. “These scams are different than standard copyright trolling, in which there may even be a kernel of truth in the initial copyright claim. Here, the scammers are just phishing for logins or other private data, and using the ridiculously overbroad power of copyright statutory damages to frighten people into coughing up the information. And, not surprisingly, the scam is evolving.”

Global Voices: Facebook user gets 18-month prison sentence for mocking Cambodia’s prime minister. “On December 7, 2020, [Ny] Nak posted that he intended to declare a ‘state of emergency’ in his chicken coop — appearing to mimic a speech Hun Sen made the same day. He was arrested by the police on December 12 and charged with ‘insult’ and ‘incitement.’ He was denied bail in January and convicted on August 19.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Shine: China home to over 1 billion Internet users. “China is home to over 1 billion netizens for the first time, forming the world’s largest and most vibrant digital society, a CNNIC report said on Friday. The country’s booming 5G development and increasing numbers of aged netizens have boosted the user base in China, already the world’s No. 1 country by Internet population for many years, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said.”

New York Times: Very Personal Computing: In Artist’s New Work, A.I. Meets Fatherhood. “Ian Cheng was feeling adrift. It was the start of 2013; he was nearly 30, with an art degree from Berkeley and another from Columbia, but he needed an idea, something to build a career on. Pondering the question one wintry afternoon in the balcony cafe at the Whole Foods Market on Houston Street, a place that promises people-watching and ‘you time,’ he found himself gazing absently at the shoppers below. He grew increasingly transfixed.” Good morning, Internet…

August 28, 2021 at 05:29PM
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