New researches

Sunday, September 5, 2021

Toyota Land Cruiser Heritage Museum, Autism in Higher Education, Callin, More: Sunday Evening ResearchBuzz, September 5, 2021

Toyota Land Cruiser Heritage Museum, Autism in Higher Education, Callin, More: Sunday Evening ResearchBuzz, September 5, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Motor Authority: Sit back and tour the Toyota Land Cruiser Heritage Museum from home. “If you’re a fan of Toyota’s iconic off-roader, the Toyota Land Cruiser Heritage Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah, is a must-see. With the coronavirus pandemic still ongoing, that may not be possible for many people, but the museum now has an online virtual tour that lets you check things out from the comfort of your home.”

Irish Examiner: New website to help autistic students navigate barriers in third-level education. “A new website supporting autistic young people to navigate barriers they might face in higher-level education has launched this week. Launched by national charity AsIAm, the website includes practical resources for third-level students, including financial and budgeting advice, virtual tours, and student recipes.” Third-level is equivalent to American college, it looks like. While some of the resources were Ireland-focused, a lot of them weren’t, speaking more to the topics of autism and college in general.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PR Newswire: Callin Launches the First App for “Social Podcasting” (PRESS RELEASE). “Callin is the first ‘Social Podcasting’ platform where users can create, discover, and consume live and recorded audio content in one place. It combines the best aspects of social audio – live conversations and social discoverability – with the best of podcasting – a library of quality, episodic content that users can listen to anytime.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: The best gardening apps, so you can stop killing all of your plants. “Whether you are starting a windowsill herb garden, buying some indoor plants, or planting a garden in your yard, these apps will help you figure out how to care for your plants and remind you to care for them. There will be no dead plants on these app’s watch.”

Hackaday: Making Web Pages With Word?. “There are, of course, other ways of generating web pages from your technical documentation — there is the Markdown / Pandoc combination, various Wiki solutions, or GitHub Pages, for example. If you’re Python-focused, there’s always the Jupyter Notebooks / JupyterLab approach which we wrote about in 2019. But these presume the source documents are in a certain format. If you have years of existing documentation in Word, or you prefer (or are required) to use Word, [Jim Yuill]’s WWN tool might be of interest.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Core 77: Instagram Account Dedicated to Listing Furniture Design Piracy Examples. “It would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so infuriating for the original designers. The Design Within Copy Instagram account is dedicated to posting the incredibly numerous incidents of piracy within the furniture design world.”

CNN: For misinformation peddlers on social media, it’s three strikes and you’re out. Or five. Maybe more. “It is widely believed by misinformation researchers that one of the most powerful — if controversial — tools that social media platforms have in combating misinformation from public figures and lesser-known individuals alike is to kick the worst offenders off entirely. But before platforms take that step, they typically follow a more nuanced (and sometimes confusing) system of strike policies that can vary from platform to platform, issue to issue and even case by case. These policies often stay out of the spotlight until a high-profile suspension occurs.”

Nigerian Tribune: Stakeholders Lament State Of National Archives, Brainstorm On Revamping ‘Former Monuments’. “THE sorry state of the first office of the National Archives of Nigeria at the University of Ibadan, which was established in 1954, has been a major concern to some stakeholders. A conference was organised recently by Marina Roundtable Limited at the University of Ibadan to brainstorm on how to revive the archives for national development. Both the town and the gown were in attendance.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Director of National Intelligence: NCSC And Federal Partners Kick Off “National Insider Threat Awareness Month”. NCSC is the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. “NITAM is an annual, month-long campaign during September to educate government and industry about the risks posed by insider threats and the role of insider threat programs. Federal insider threat programs are composed of multi-disciplinary teams that address insider threats while protecting privacy and civil liberties of the workforce; maximizing organizational trust and ensuring positive work cultures that foster diversity and inclusion.”

PCWorld: Beware this new phishing attack that’s after your passwords!. “A classic bit of internet security advice just bit the dust. For ages, email users were told to hover their mouse over a link to see where it led—if you saw the URL of a legitimate website, you were in the clear. But on Tuesday, Microsoft shared details on a kind of phishing attack it’s seeing more frequently: Email with links that contain a known website at the start, but actually redirect to a malicious page.” Good evening, Internet…

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September 6, 2021 at 05:03AM
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Glasgow Ghost Signs, Twitch, Sunday Scaries, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 5, 2021

Glasgow Ghost Signs, Twitch, Sunday Scaries, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 5, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The National: Forgotten ‘ghost signs’ of Glasgow mapped by new project. “THEY are faded fragments of days gone by which offer a glimpse into city life of the past. Now a project working to preserve the ‘ghost signs’ remaining on buildings in Glasgow is launching a map of key sites in the South Side. Since 2018, Glasgow City Heritage Trust has been researching and documenting the remains of the signs, which has included putting together an online archive, a conference and walking trails.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tubefilter: Twitch Says It’s Working On Features To Combat Hate Raids. “Sept. 1’s #ADayOffTwitch protest made a noticeable dent in the platform’s traffic. Now, Twitch has updated its safety guide for streamers to confirm that it’s working on tools to combat hate raids.”

Women Love Tech: Headspace Podcast Sunday Scaries On Spotify To Reduce Anxiety. “Headspace and Spotify have collaborated to release a new podcast series, Sunday Scaries, to help people combat the anxiety commonly felt on Sunday afternoons before an upcoming week. This micro-series, hosted by Mindfulness & Meditation Teacher, Dora Kamau, will consist of 12 episodes lasting 7-9 minutes each and will aim to ease listeners who feel anxiety, usually on Sunday afternoons, as the week ahead looms over them.”

USEFUL STUFF

Pocket-Lint: How to use iOS Shortcuts to create a custom RSS reader. “RSS readers might seem like an echo from the past, but they can still serve as a powerful tool to read headlines without having to deal with all the other fluff you’d come across when browsing social media to get your information via instead. If you’d like to easily see the latest headlines from your favourite news sources with only a tap of an icon or just a quick summon by Siri, follow along.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CBC: Hundreds of Nova Scotians are on hidden bad tenant lists on Facebook. “In various Facebook groups, some hidden and some public, landlords swap photos and names of tenants with whom they’ve had bad experiences. Advocates have flagged at least two ‘bad tenant’ lists with hundreds of names in such groups.”

New York Times: The Rise and Fall of ‘ZuckTalk’. “ZuckTalk is a style of unpolished speech exhibited in contexts where polish is customary. It’s a linguistic hooded sweatshirt in a metaphorical boardroom. It is more than a collection of tics, but its tics are crucial to understanding it.”

This is from early August and I missed it. TIME: How Extortion Scams and Review Bombing Trolls Turned Goodreads Into Many Authors’ Worst Nightmare. “Scammers and cyberstalkers are increasingly using the Goodreads platform to extort authors with threats of ‘review bombing’ their work–and they are frequently targeting authors from marginalized communities who have spoken out on topics ranging from controversies within the industry to larger social issues on social media.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Techdirt: Mystery Over Fake Section 1201 Takedown Claims Sent By ‘Video Industry Association of America’ Deepens. “The Section 1201 DMCA notices have continued to flood Google, but now they are being supposedly sent directly by the Video Industry Association of America, with whoever is sending these dropping the pretense that they’re coming from the US Copyright Office. But that isn’t actually clearing much up other than to highlight, again, that the organization doesn’t actually exist and is coming from Russia.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Daily Wildcat: Why Twitch streaming is so addictive. “Clearly, there is an appeal to video game streaming, but what exactly is up with the hype? Well, I could ask the exact same question to someone who watches football games. What the two forms of entertainment have in common is gratification for the viewer. And luckily for us, there have been scientific studies conducted that illustrate the influence that gratification has, especially within a gaming setting.”

ZDNet: Want to see just how bad Google Chrome is? Try this simple trick!. “The first thing I noticed what how slow page loadings were. There’s a very distinct lag during page loading. A click. A pause. Pause. Then the page loads. It’s easy to point the finger of blame at things like Wi-Fi or internet connection or even a slow computer, but you’d be wrong. It’s Google Chrome.” Good afternoon, Internet…

September 5, 2021 at 11:43PM
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Menominee Language, FindMyPast, YouTube, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, September 5, 2021

Menominee Language, FindMyPast, YouTube, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, September 5, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Green Bay Press-Gazette: Ron Corn Jr. is one of fewer than 20 fluent speakers of the Menominee language. He’s working to change that.. “The Menominee Nation offers language instruction through its education system, including an immersion program in which small children are fully immersed in the language. But grassroots programs, such as Menomini yoU, allow for tribal citizens, or anyone else not attending Menominee schools, to learn from home any time.Their website… informs users that they can learn at their own pace, whether 10 minutes or four hours a day and whether it’s in the morning, afternoon or evening.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

FindMyPast: Step back in time with over 300,000 vintage photos . “We love vintage photos here at Findmypast. They offer a window into the past as nothing else can. That’s why we’re delighted to grow our family album of photos with the arrival of the Francis Frith Collection. Read on to find out all about this amazing resource and our other new releases.”

Mike Shouts: The Transformers G1 Cartoon Series From The 80s Is Free To Stream On YouTube!. “As you may have already known, this year marks the 35 years since the release of the first Transformers movie, The Transformers: The Movie. In addition to celebrating the animated movie’s 35th anniversary with theatrical screenings and releasing the movie in 4K UHD, Hasbro will stream all seasons of the 1984 original cartoon series on Hasbro Pulse YouTube channel.”

Gamespot: Streamlabs Introduces Tool To Help Streamers Filter Out Hate And Harassment. “Safe Mode works from within Streamlabs to protect a streamer’s feed and live chat from malicious users. In essence, the tool provides a number of restrictions and filters that grant more control over who can interact with a stream. You can select as many or as few of these options as you’d like, and they run the gamut from features already implemented in Twitch like emote-only chat to new features like clearing all recent events and queued raid alerts.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: “What Song Is This?”: The Best Ways to Identify a Song Online . “It happens to all of us, a song gets stuck in your head, and no matter how hard you think about it, you just can’t remember what the name of the song. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to help you identify music that feels like it’s on the tip of your tongue. Between voice assistants, apps like Shazam and other methods, you will never have an issue identifying a song again.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNET: Yahoo has a new owner, again. “Apollo Global Management on Wednesday said it had completed its acquisition of Yahoo, formerly part of Verizon Media. The private equity firm in May agreed to acquire Verizon’s media group — which included brands such as Yahoo and AOL, as well as ad tech and media platform businesses — for $5 billion.”

PR Newswire: National Museum Of American Jewish History Emerges From Chapter 11 Reorganization (PRESS RELEASE). “Since its galleries closed to the public, the Museum has been steadfastly focused on a strategic planning process to ensure a stable, visionary future. Among these initiatives, the Museum is being promoted for inclusion into the Smithsonian Institution, a proposal that is earning bipartisan support in Congress. Thirty-seven members of the U.S. House of Representatives and twenty-three U.S. senators have championed legislation encouraging the Smithsonian to explore a plan for acquiring the Museum. The Museum will continue operating virtually with a robust online programming schedule while strategizing for reopening.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: Only ‘natural persons’ can be recognized as patent inventors, not AI systems, US judge rules. “AI systems cannot be granted patents and will not be recognised as inventors in the eyes of the US law, said a federal judge who decided to uphold a previous ruling by the US Patent and Trademark Office this week.”

Prospect: How intellectual property laws zapped the comic creatives . “To understand the comics industry today—and indeed the derived films, television and video game spin-offs—perhaps requires an understanding of the law more than lore. What can be done with characters and storylines is strictly regulated by an intricate and lucrative system of permissions and licences. This dominance of law is not new; legal issues have dominated from the very beginning of superhero comics in the 1930s, because of the very nature of the creative and commercial process.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Maryland: Pitfalls of the TikTok Resume Trend . “Employers who use TikTok, Facebook, Twitter or other social networks to evaluate job candidates run certain risks, including overlooking potentially strong non-video savvy applicants or unwittingly succumbing to bias, Stevens says. Social media profiles and TikTok resumes almost always include user images, which can reveal the candidate’s age, race, weight and level of attractiveness – factors that are more easily obscured in a resume.”

The Irish Times: Accessible Stasi archive offers a model for Catholic Ireland’s troubled past. “Religious orders retain their archives. There is no palpable pressure on them to hand them over, nor is there a dedicated public institution to manage the files if they did. Official Ireland still adopts an ad hoc approach to its past, limiting any chance of coherent research or public education on our vanished Catholic past…. It would be wrong to compare Catholic Ireland and communist East Germany, but Ireland’s approach to its collective past today jars with how East Germans sometimes at real risk to themselves and their families took ownership of the Stasi files and their past. Twice.”

ABC News: As flood alerts lit up phones, did ‘warning fatigue’ set in?. “Experts call it ‘warning fatigue,’ and no one can be sure what role it might have played in a tragedy that killed scores of people across the Northeast, including more than two dozen in New Jersey and at least 11 in New York City — many drowning in their basement apartments or in cars trapped in submerged roadways. The weather service acknowledged that in the past, alerts were being pushed out too often. There’s been lots of handwringing over how to get more people to heed warnings.” Good morning, Internet…

September 5, 2021 at 05:29PM
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Saturday, September 4, 2021

BIPOC & LGBTQ Archives, Roblox, Baidu, More: Saturday Evening ResearchBuzz, September 4, 2021

BIPOC & LGBTQ Archives, Roblox, Baidu, More: Saturday Evening ResearchBuzz, September 4, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

EVENTS

Western Michigan University: Community-Driven Archives: Centering BIPOC & LGBTQ Memory and Knowledge. “Join guest scholar Nancy Liliana Godoy, head of the Community-Driven Archives (CDA) Initiative at Arizona State University (ASU) Library, to learn about her community-driven archiving work that focuses on centering BIPOC & LGBTQ memory and knowledge.” Free and virtual. September 9.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Hypebeast: Roblox Introduces Voice Chat With ‘Spatial Voice’ Beta. “Roblox is introducing a new voice chat feature called “Spatial Voice,” starting with an invitation-only beta for select developers, the gaming platform announced on Thursday.” Interesting, comes very soon after Clubhouse announced its own spatial audio feature. I’m not trying to imply they’re copying, just that audio seems like a new focus of social networks.

Analytics India: All The Key Announcements Made By Chinese Search Giant At ‘Baidu World 2021’. ”
Last week at the annual technology conference ‘Baidu World 2021’, the Chinese internet giant Baidu unveiled its second-generation AI chip Kunlun (Kunlun II), robocar, a driverless taxi app (Luobo Kuaipao), and more. In addition, the company showcased various advancements in artificial intelligence, electronic devices, and plans for future growth.”

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: What is an NFT? Everything to know about the expensive digital tokens taking over cryptocurrency. “Nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, are a new kind of collectible that could — or could not — earn you big bucks. NFTs began in 2017 and became the new craze faster than any other cryptocurrency you may have heard of. But you can’t keep NFTs in your dresser drawer, like Pokemon cards, a comic book or paintings. They’re entirely digital and are tied to almost anything — a video highlight, a meme or even a tweet. If this doesn’t make much sense to you, well you’re not alone.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Hour Detroit: A New App Called Inpathy Wants to Rethink the Human Experience Online. “Inpathy aims to change how people interact and empathize with others on social media. Rather than only posting the highlight reels of life, the app encourages transparency among users and sharing the not-so-great moments as well.”

The JC: Graduate creates new conversation app as antidote to ‘toxic’ social media. “A 24-year-old Jewish Londoner says his new social media app, Collate, will offer its users an ‘online oasis away from toxic conversations’. Oliver Kraftman, whose team includes two interns and a part-time tech adviser, revealed that individual posts will be restricted to at least 100 words in a bid to encourage nuance and long-form discussion.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Commerce Dept. security unit to be shut down after overstepping legal limits in launching probes, officials say. “The Commerce Department will eliminate a security unit that it found improperly launched criminal investigations and collected information on hundreds of its employees and average citizens, department officials said Friday…. Operating with little oversight, the obscure unit opened cases ranging from counterespionage to background searches on U.S. residents who wrote innocuous letters to the department’s top official, the review found.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

VentureBeat: Bias persists in face detection systems from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. “Companies say they’re working to fix the biases in their facial analysis systems, and some have claimed early success. But a study by researchers at the University of Maryland finds that face detection services from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google remain flawed in significant, easily detectable ways. All three are more likely to fail with older, darker-skinned people compared with their younger, whiter counterparts. Moreover, the study reveals that facial detection systems tend to favor ‘feminine-presenting’ people while discriminating against certain physical appearances.”

Dazed: Gen Z is developing unexplained tics spread through social media. “New research has identified the unexplained rise of tic-like symptoms in young people since the beginning of the pandemic. Referrals for these rapid onset conditions – found almost exclusively in girls and young women – have increased from 1-5 percent of total cases pre-pandemic to 20-35 per cent of them now, according to a study published on August 13.”

Bloomberg Quint: Apple Should Shed Google and Build Its Own Search Engine. “For years, the smartphone maker has benefited financially from a lucrative deal in which Alphabet Inc.’s Google paid Apple billions of dollars to be the default search engine option on iOS devices. However, the arrangement isn’t likely to survive in a world of rising antitrust scrutiny. That’s why Apple should proactively get ahead of any risk and make its own offering. appease regulators but also be a smart one for its main business.” Good evening, Internet…

September 5, 2021 at 05:41AM
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Mine Waste Disasters, Multilingual Learning, Health Care Inequality, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 4, 2021

Mine Waste Disasters, Multilingual Learning, Health Care Inequality, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 4, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Engineering and Technology: Database aims to help prevent mine-waste disasters. “Researchers at the University of Waterloo have created a database as part of a study intended to help mining companies better understand the societal and environmental impacts of mine-waste disasters and hopefully avoid them in future. The study forms the first global picture of the occurrence rates, behaviours and physical impacts of mine-waste disasters known as tailings flow. Tailings flows are rapid downstream movements of mine waste, following tailing dam failures.” I read this and thought, “I could have sworn I’ve already indexed a resource about tailings flows,” but that was actually about tailings storage.

ABC 10: Multilingual Learning Toolkit: A free resource for teachers to improve language equity in classrooms. “The California Department of Education has recognized that many students bring to school a vital cultural heritage, values, and the ability to communicate in their home language. In a move to address language barriers in education, a new Multilingual Learning Toolkit is available as an additional resource for teachers who serve Pre-K through 3rd graders. It’s a free online portal featuring a vetted selection of resources and best practices, specifically for educators, administrators, and faculty members whose work supports young Multilingual Learners.” I took a quick look. California education is mentioned and referred to several times, but the resources as a whole don’t seem to be California-centered.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Arizona State University: Cronkite’s Southwest Health Reporting Initiative launches health newsletter. “The Cronkite School’s Southwest Health Reporting Initiative has launched a new monthly health newsletter that aims to start a conversation about — and spread awareness of — health disparities in underserved communities. The first issue of ‘Pathways to Equity’ was released this week with the goal of helping the Southwest Health Reporting Initiative expand its reach and access to its content.”

The Verge: Amazon’s new ‘adaptive volume’ will make Alexa speak louder when it’s noisy. “Amazon is working to solve a frustration with smart home speakers by introducing a feature called Adaptive Volume, which will make Alexa respond louder if it detects that you’re in a noisy environment.”

USEFUL STUFF

ZDNet: Quick, easy (and free) way to make Facebook more bearable. “One of the best things that I did to improve my Facebook experience was to install a browser extension called FB Purity. I honestly think that without this I would have dumped Facebook a long time ago.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CanIndia: Google was the first coach of Paralympics silver medallist Praveen Kumar. “Having no knowledge about para-athletics, high jumper Praveen Kumar, who won the silver medal in Tokyo on Friday, depended on Google for basic information about the sport. ‘I would watch videos of high jump on Google and try and learn from it. There was nobody to teach me. Later, during a district-level meeting, I was told about coach Dr. Satyapal and met him and he agreed to train me,’ said Praveen Kumar, who won silver in Men’s High Jump T44 at the Paralympic Games on Friday.”

Conde Nast Traveller: What lies outside the window? A new wave of digital artists show and tell. “For artists, windows have always been the frame within a frame and an escape. During the pandemic, they became a primary medium of inspiration and expression. And a vantage point for street photography, a tool for projection and a framing device for stories. The coming together of the physical window and digital art allowed people to access the view from a window in Mumbai or New York no matter where they were. As we locked ourselves indoors, artists adapted the physical world outside into a digital avatar.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: BrakTooth vulnerabilities put Bluetooth users at risk – and some devices are going unpatched. “White-hat hackers have disclosed a bunch of security vulnerabilities, dubbed BrakTooth, affecting commercial Bluetooth devices – and are raising red flags about some vendors’ unwillingness to patch the flaws.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Facebook Apologizes After A.I. Puts ‘Primates’ Label on Video of Black Men. “Facebook users who recently watched a video from a British tabloid featuring Black men saw an automated prompt from the social network that asked if they would like to ‘keep seeing videos about Primates,’ causing the company to investigate and disable the artificial intelligence-powered feature that pushed the message.” I no longer believe Facebook is making a good-faith effort to combat these problems. Either that or AI-based moderation/direction is not currently possible.

Marshalls: Marshalls launches virtual sample service using augmented reality. “The launch of the new Marshalls virtual sample service is a first for the industry and is the first phase of a major paving visualiser project. The new tool uses the latest in Augmented Reality technology and allows homeowners to see Marshalls paving, walling and edging products in full 3D and ‘place’ them in their own outdoor spaces, experimenting with colours, size and materials. People can download the images to keep for inspiration and comparison, and to share with friends for help with decision making.” Good afternoon, Internet…

September 4, 2021 at 11:35PM
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Police Union Web Sites, APRA-Funded Broadband Projects, Spotify, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, September 4, 2021

Police Union Web Sites, APRA-Funded Broadband Projects, Spotify, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, September 4, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Cornell Chronicle: Police union websites preserved by library archive. “Spearheaded by the library’s Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives in Catherwood Library, in the ILR School, the Police Unions and Associations archive features a curated collection of 165 public safety organizations’ websites, from the Alliance of Hispanic Law Enforcement to the Vulcan Society, a fraternal organization of Black New York City firefighters. Each represents one of four constituencies: labor unions, professional associations, minority law enforcement organizations and police accountability organizations.”

Telecompetitor: New Database Outlines ARPA Funded Broadband Projects. “At least 98 counties and cities are planning or considering broadband projects to be funded, at least in part, through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), according to a new database from the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Philips Hue smart lights can now react to your Spotify songs. “On Wednesday, Signify — a Philips spinoff that manufactures lighting products — announced that Philips Hue lightbulbs are now integrated with Spotify. This includes an algorithm that analyzes the metadata of each song you play on the music streaming platform, in real time, in order to make the lights ‘dance’ to the music.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

City of Boston: Mayor Janey Launches Chatbot To Connect To Food Resources; Food Donations Platform. “Mayor Kim Janey and the Mayor’s Office of Food Access (OFA) today announced the launch of the food resources SMS chatbot and the online food donations platform. Both initiatives respond to goals included in Boston’s Food Access Agenda, aiming to strengthen the citywide food access network by efficiently connecting existing programs and resources to better serve the community.”

Ohio University News: University Libraries’ extraordinary legacy as the first library in the world to catalog online. “t can be said that online cataloging as it is today began on Aug. 26, 1971, when Ohio University’s Vernon R. Alden Library, using a dedicated phone line, was the first in the world to generate an electronic library record. That online cataloging system, created by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), became a pioneer in networking library materials. Fifty years later, the world and OHIO still celebrate the anniversary of this historic moment.”

The Guardian: Reddit reportedly hires bankers and lawyers as it aims for $15bn IPO. “Reddit is seeking to hire investment bankers and lawyers for an initial public offering in New York, two people familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency. Reddit was valued at $10bn in a private fundraising round last month. By the time the IPO would take place early next year, the online message board company is hoping it will be valued at more than $15bn, one of the sources said.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Japan’s new digital chief in copyright gaffe. “The chief of Japan’s Digital Agency, which launched this week to propel creaking government infrastructure into an online future, apologised on Friday after posting an image in breach of copyright rules.”

FTC: FTC Bans SpyFone and CEO from Surveillance Business and Orders Company to Delete All Secretly Stolen Data. “Today, the Federal Trade Commission banned SpyFone and its CEO Scott Zuckerman from the surveillance business over allegations that the stalkerware app company secretly harvested and shared data on people’s physical movements, phone use, and online activities through a hidden device hack. The company’s apps sold real-time access to their secret surveillance, allowing stalkers and domestic abusers to stealthily track the potential targets of their violence.”

Reuters: Google locks former Afghan government accounts amid Taliban push for emails: reports. “Google has temporarily locked down an unspecified number of Afghan government email accounts, according to a person familiar with the matter, as fears grow over the digital paper trail left by former officials and their international partners.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

USC Viterbi School of Engineering: Is it A Horror Film or a Rom-Com? AI Can Predict Based Solely on Music.. “[Professor Shrikanth] Narayanan and team’s study was the first to apply deep learning models to the music used in a film to see if a computer could predict the genre of a film based on the soundtrack alone. They found that these models were able to accurately classify a film’s genre using machine learning, supporting the notion that musical features can be powerful indicators in how we perceive different films.”

Ohio State News: Groundbreaking ideas from women scientists get less attention. “Researchers used a novel way of tracing the flow of ideas to find that even some of the most well-known breakthroughs in biomedical research from 1980 to 2008 had a more difficult road to adoption when research teams were dominated by women. Specifically, the five-year adoption rate of new ideas from female-majority teams was 23% lower than that of male-majority teams – even among the top 0.1% of ideas.”

Science Friday: How Imperfect Data Leads Us Astray. “Datasets are increasingly shaping important decisions, from where companies target their advertising, to how governments allocate resources. But what happens when the data they rely on is wrong or incomplete? Ira talks to technologist Kasia Chmielinski, as they test drive an algorithm that predicts a person’s race or ethnicity based on just a few details, like their name and zip code, the Bayseian Improved Surname Geocoding algorithm (BISG). You can check out one of the models they used here. The BISG is frequently used by government agencies and corporations alike to fill in missing race and ethnicity data—except it often guesses wrong, with potentially far-reaching effects.” A podcast with transcript available. Good morning, Internet…

September 4, 2021 at 05:26PM
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Friday, September 3, 2021

History of Black Travel, Holocaust Education, Apple, More: Friday Evening ResearchBuzz, September 3, 2021

History of Black Travel, Holocaust Education, Apple, More: Friday Evening ResearchBuzz, September 3, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Travel Agent Central: Black Travel Alliance Launches “History Of Black Travel” Website. “Black Travel Alliance, in partnership with Tourism RESET, has launched a new website ‘History Of Black Travel,’ with an aim to educate the public on how the African diaspora has traveled across the globe, progressively making their mark within the travel industry, from centuries past to the present day.”

EVENTS

Arizona Jewish Post: Jewish History Museum to launch new Holocaust education curriculum. “On Aug. 19, Gov. Doug Ducey formally signed Arizona House Bill 2241, making it mandatory for Arizona schools to teach students about the Holocaust and other genocides at least twice between seventh and twelfth grades. For the past year, in anticipation of this legislation, the Jewish History Museum & Holocaust History Center has been working with four Museum Teaching Fellows (MTF) from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on middle and high school lesson plans using survivor testimony in the JHM’s collection.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Apple delays controversial plan to check iPhones for child exploitation images. “Apple said Friday that it is delaying the previously announced system that would scan iPhone users’ photos for digital fingerprints that indicated the presence of known Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). The change is in response to criticism from privacy advocates and public outcry against the idea.”

Bing Blogs: Bing Content submission API is now open to all webmasters. “Evangelizing the new wave of empowering webmasters to have more control on their content which they want search engines and searchers to adopt for, Bing had launched its Bing Content Submission API in Beta mode earlier in May, this year. The API provides the ability for webmasters to notify Bing directly about the changes in their site content in real-time.”

USEFUL STUFF

International Business Times: 18 Best Online Courses To Try On World Distance Learning Day 2021. “Distance learning has been around way before computers and the internet existed. It started in the 18th and 19th centuries when courses and assignments were delivered by mail on a weekly basis. It was only in 1969 that Open University offered courses via distance learning as an alternative to traditional teaching methods. Now with the internet, finding the best online course websites is as easy as a quick Google search.” Nice selection. If you’re looking for a curated, decently-annotated list to help you dip your toe into online learning, here you go.

Chron: EXPLAINER: What is Apple doing with its App Store?. “Over the past week or so, Apple has eased some longstanding restrictions that helped make its App Store into a big moneymaker for the company. The company has long required app developers to pay high commissions to Apple on the sales of paid apps as well as purchases of subscriptions or digital items inside their apps…. But Apple hasn’t always explained its moves very clearly, leaving some iPhone users with unanswered questions as to what exactly Apple is doing and whether and how they’ll be affected.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Is It the Weekend? Not Until He Says So.. “The 18-year-old behind the viral Twitter account @CraigWeekend has offered people a routine reminder to take a load off.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: As college football kicks off, avoid putting your favorite team in your password. “The research published by Specops Software, a Stockholm-based security company, shows that the names, nicknames and mascots of Division 1 football schools are among the most popular choices for passwords within a trove of 800 million compromised logins it analyzed. Nearly one in 10 entries used a college football team reference, according to the report, which focused exclusively on the top college teams.”

Motherboard: This Seemingly Normal Lightning Cable Will Leak Everything You Type. “The OMG Cables, as they’re called, work by creating a Wi-Fi hotspot itself that a hacker can connect to from their own device. From here, an interface in an ordinary web browser lets the hacker start recording keystrokes. The malicious implant itself takes up around half the length of the plastic shell, MG said.”

The Register: US Air Force chief software officer quits after launching Hellfire missile of a LinkedIn post at his former bosses. “Nicolas Chaillan’s impressively blunt leaving note, which he posted to his LinkedIn profile, castigated USAF senior hierarchy for failing to prioritise basic IT issues, saying: ‘A lack of response and alignment is certainly a contributor to my accelerated exit.’ Chaillan took on his chief software officer role in May 2019, having previously worked at the US Department of Defense rolling out DevSecOps practices to the American military. Before that he founded two companies.” Good evening, Internet…

September 4, 2021 at 05:19AM
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