New researches

Monday, October 4, 2021

Facebook Outage, Refugees in Germany, Ho Chi Minh City Museums, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 4, 2021

Facebook Outage, Refugees in Germany, Ho Chi Minh City Museums, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 4, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

Brian Krebs: What Happened to Facebook, Instagram, & WhatsApp?. “Facebook and its sister properties Instagram and WhatsApp are suffering from ongoing, global outages. We don’t yet know why this happened, but the how is clear: Earlier this morning, something inside Facebook caused the company to revoke key digital records that tell computers and other Internet-enabled devices how to find these destinations online.”

NEW RESOURCES

Deutsche Welle: Refugees in Germany tell their stories in ‘Archive of Refuge’. “In the video, 19 women and 23 men — four of whom belong to the LGBTQ community — tell about fleeing their native countries to Germany, some of them arriving when the country was still divided into West and East Germany. They are from 28 countries in Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East or Eastern Europe.”

Vietnam+: HCM City’s museums launch online exhibitions. “Ho Chi Minh City’s museums are offering online exhibitions and virtual tours as part of their effort to develop business amid the COVID-19 pandemic.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: Teaching with Google Arts & Culture. “Whether it’s taking art selfies, playing puzzle parties with friends, or diving into richly documented resources about US Black History or Inventions and Discoveries in history, Google Arts & Culture has been a valuable learning companion to people of all ages and backgrounds. And today, we are releasing a new Teacher Guide – a dedicated resource for educators to make learning with Arts & Culture and using the platform in class easier than ever.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 5 Tools to Discover the Best Twitter Threads, Reddit Comments, and Discussions. “Twitter, Reddit, and other platforms on the internet have given anyone and everyone a soapbox. In this constant barrage of voices, it’s hard to sift the grain from the chaff. However, a few tools and people are doing this for you, especially for Twitter threads and Reddit posts and discussions.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNET: The original voice of Siri is now advocating for a more accessible web. “Even if you’re not familiar with the name Susan Bennett, you’d likely recognize her voice. As the original Siri, Bennett became a dependable presence in many iPhone users’ lives, responding to various inquiries and fulfilling spoken commands. Her voice work has also been helpful to smartphone users with disabilities, she says.”

The Guardian: ‘The kids loved it’: using digital delivery to bring our archive to life. “In the Guardian’s Bicentenary year, the GNM Archive and The Guardian Foundation Education Centre (now Behind the Headlines) collaborated on a project to bring the history of the paper into classrooms across the country.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

MarketWatch: As Facebook faces fire, U.S. laws protecting kids online languish behind Europe . “The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, was passed in 1998 — when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was 14 and still six years away from creating the social network. COPPA requires the Federal Trade Commission to issue and enforce regulations concerning children’s online personal information, but little has changed in the law since smartphone apps like Facebook and Instagram changed the way humans interact with the internet.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Facebook Is Weaker Than We Knew. “Facebook is in trouble. Not financial trouble, or legal trouble, or even senators-yelling-at-Mark-Zuckerberg trouble. What I’m talking about is a kind of slow, steady decline that anyone who has ever seen a dying company up close can recognize. It’s a cloud of existential dread that hangs over an organization whose best days are behind it, influencing every managerial priority and product decision and leading to increasingly desperate attempts to find a way out.”

Washington Post: Opinion: It’s time to stand up to Facebook. “The courts may address whether Facebook overstepped existing laws, but it is up to Congress and the White House to decide if it is time to remove social media’s legal exemption from liability for posts on its platform. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act specifies, ‘No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.’ The question now is: If the companies are unable or unwilling to stop churning disinformation and hate in service of profits, why should they get this legal free ride?” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 5, 2021 at 01:25AM
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Frances Haugen, virusMED, Disabled Gamers, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 4, 2021

Frances Haugen, virusMED, Disabled Gamers, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 4, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

I am noticing that most issues of ResearchBuzz are ending up in my Gmail spam filter. I don’t know what to do about that. Besides the feeble Patreon and tip jar pleas at the bottom, RB hasn’t had advertising in many years.

Putting this up at the top because I really want you to read it. Please pay close attention to the part where European politicians complained that they had to take more extreme policy positions to get online engagement. That should have our collective hair fully on fire.

CBS News: Highlights from 60 Minutes’ Interview with the Facebook Whistleblower. “Data scientist Frances Haugen secretly copied tens of thousands of pages of Facebook’s internal research while she worked for the company, and gave them to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to Congress. The 37-year-old from Iowa claims evidence shows the company is lying about making significant progress against hate, violence. These were some of the revelations from her interview with Scott Pelley.”

NEW RESOURCES

University of Virginia: Scientists Target Next Pandemic With ‘Map’ To Victory Over Viruses. “University of Virginia School of Medicine researcher Wladek Minor and collaborators in China and Poland have developed an internet information system, called virusMED, that lays out all we know about the atomic structure and potential vulnerabilities of more than 800 virus strains from 75 different virus families, including SARS-CoV-2, influenza, Ebola and HIV‑1. Several of the collaborators, including the lead investigator, Heping Zheng, are former students and members of Minor’s lab at UVA.”

PC GamesN: A new online tool provides detailed accessibility info for disabled gamers. “A new online tool has launched today that provides detailed accessibility information on a growing list of modern games. The Accessible Games Database, created by games accessibility platform DAGERSystem, allows users to select the accessibility options they need and then view a list of games that include those features.”

EVENTS

Grand Island Independent: UNL’s annual BugFest event goes virtual this year “The online event is designed to create a comfortable space for families and friends to learn about insects and science through family-oriented activities. Attendees can learn about bee biology, learn how to draw insects, view Nebraska insects, see insects with a blacklight and participate in at-home, hands-on activities. All activities and videos were created by entomology students, faculty and staff.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Amazon, Google and Microsoft team up on cloud computing principles. “Amazon, Google and Microsoft on Friday unveiled a new industry initiative that aims to establish basic commitments and protections for companies that store and process data in the cloud. The tech giants, along with several other enterprise companies, have agreed to a series of principles related to customer data and government regulations.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: Speed Up Chrome with These Extensions. “Chrome is known as the fastest browser, but for some people even fastest isn’t enough. Moreover, Chrome is also a huge memory hog and may lead to a slower browsing experience on low-end devices. Thankfully, there are many Chrome extensions available that will speed things up for you exponentially.”

ReviewGeek: You Can (and Should) Learn Almost Anything for Free. “People with a bit of spare time and access to a smartphone or PC can pick up anything—from an interesting new hobby to skills that could take their career to the next level— without spending a penny. It can also be a handy way to kill some time. Despite most recreational travel prospects being out of the window, language learning app Duolingo saw a massive increase in its userbase last year. Below are a few examples of skills you can pick up without picking up your wallet first.” An ambitious headline that delivers a resource-filled article.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Wolfram Blog: Exploring Social Networks, Communication Systems, Clustering and More with the Wolfram Language in These New Books. “The Wolfram Language is utilized across a variety of fields for many different purposes. We’re proud of our products’ broad applications in multiple disciplines and are excited to share seven of the latest books by Wolfram Language users. These draw upon topics ranging from social networks and communications to computational origami to the biosciences. We also had the privilege of speaking to two authors about their projects and experiences with Mathematica and the Wolfram Language.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Recovering locked Facebook accounts is a nightmare. That’s on purpose.. “Hackers target social media accounts because they want to spread scams, phishing links or misinformation, said Jon Clay, vice president of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Trend Micro. When bad actors get their hands on social media account credentials, it’s often through phishing attacks that trick people into entering their passwords or by buying stolen credentials in shady corners of the Internet, Clay said. But sometimes, they exploit the very tools that help people get back into hacked accounts. That’s why the account recovery process is so complex, according to Facebook Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher.”

Gothamist: NYCLU Sues NYPD For Still Keeping Full Set Of Disciplinary Databases Away From Public View. “In their complaint filed Thursday in State Supreme Court, attorneys for the NYCLU said the NYPD had illegally denied a request for more disciplinary records of officers the group made through the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) in April. The group claimed last year’s repeal of the state’s 50-a provision—which protected officers from having their disciplinary records made public—allowed such access.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Wired: Humans Can’t Be the Sole Keepers of Scientific Knowledge. “Writing scientific knowledge in a programming-like language will be dry, but it will be sustainable, because new concepts will be directly added to the library of science that machines understand. Plus, as machines are taught more scientific facts, they will be able to help scientists streamline their logical arguments; spot errors, inconsistencies, plagiarism, and duplications; and highlight connections. AI with an understanding of physical laws is more powerful than AI trained on data alone, so science-savvy machines will be able to help future discoveries. Machines with a great knowledge of science could assist rather than replace human scientists.” I have so many conflicting thoughts about this article that I gave myself a headache. Be warned.

The Pantagraph: Documents that survived the Great Chicago Fire are held in state archives. But it will take special technology to decipher them.. “What could be among the oldest surviving Chicago city records sit inside a special climate-controlled vault at the Illinois State Archives, largely indecipherable. These are volumes that survived the Great Chicago Fire 150 years ago. Some appear to contain early property assessments or official confirmations. One is in a box labeled ‘General Ordinances A, March 4, 1837 to July 8, 1851,’ potentially dating back to Chicago’s incorporation as a city. But they are blackened and damaged from the fire, and what exactly they contain remains unknown. It could take infrared technology to read their contents and determine their legal, genealogical and historic implications.” Good morning, Internet…

October 4, 2021 at 05:25PM
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Sunday, October 3, 2021

International Coaching Federation, Ozy Media, TweetDeck, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 3, 2021

International Coaching Federation, Ozy Media, TweetDeck, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 3, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

PR Newswire: ICF Thought Leadership Institute Launches Global Digital Library (PRESS RELEASE). “The International Coaching Federation (ICF) Thought Leadership Institute today announced the launch of its Global Digital Library, which houses its growing body of knowledge, rooted in insights from researchers and artists in fields as diverse as economics, anthropology, education, coaching, and even poetry. These uncommon experts tackle critical issues ranging from the future of work, to the effects of technological change, to the future of cities in a post-COVID-19 world.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Ozy Media shuts down just one week after most of us found out it exists. “In the space of six days and five New York Times reports from media columnist Ben Smith, Ozy Media has gone from a largely unknown content producer to closing its doors. The eight-year-old media startup was unrecognizable to most. It operated in anonymity despite a roster including some well-known journalists, the high-profile guests who appeared on CEO Carlos Watson’s show, or NYC subway riders who were occasionally inundated with advertisements for its Ozyfest event.”

Search Engine Journal: Twitter Rolls Out 7 Updates to TweetDeck. “Though Twitter owns and maintains TweetDeck, its first priority is always Twitter-dot-com. When new features get added to the main version of Twitter they aren’t brought to TweetDeck until sometime afterward, if at all. As Twitter plays catchup to appease its loyal TweetDeck users, here’s an overview of all the updates on the way.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BBC: Pandora Papers: Secret wealth and dealings of world leaders exposed. “The secret wealth and dealings of world leaders, politicians and billionaires has been exposed in one of the biggest leaks of financial documents. Some 35 current and former leaders and more than 300 public officials are featured in the files from offshore companies, dubbed the Pandora Papers.”

New York Times: Whistle-Blower to Accuse Facebook of Contributing to Jan. 6 Riot, Memo Says. “The whistle-blower, whose identity has not been publicly disclosed, planned to accuse the company of relaxing its security safeguards for the 2020 election too soon after Election Day, which then led it to be used in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, according to the internal memo obtained by The New York Times. The whistle-blower planned to discuss the allegations on ’60 Minutes’ on Sunday, the memo said, and was also set to say that Facebook had contributed to political polarization in the United States.”

Lookout Local Santa Cruz: Free broadband service is available to many Californians. Here’s how to apply. “As of Sunday, 732,201 households in the state had enrolled in the program, according to the FCC. As large as that number may seem, it’s only about 20% of the households that are likely to be eligible. And Sunne Wright McPeak, chief executive of the California Emerging Technology Fund, said the bulk of the Californians who have signed up appear to be people who already had broadband through the internet service providers’ discount programs for low-income residents — not people with no access to the internet. The problem, McPeak said, is that eligible Californians don’t know about the program, “and nobody is telling them.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Conversation: The rise of dark web design: how sites manipulate you into clicking. “Dark design has proven to be an incredibly effective way of encouraging web users to part with their time, money and privacy. This in turn has established ‘dark patterns’, or sets of practices designers know they can use to manipulate web users. They’re difficult to spot, but they’re increasingly prevalent in the websites and apps we use every day, creating products that are manipulative by design, much like the persistent, ever-present pop-ups we’re forced to close when we visit a new website.”

The Register: Brit law firm files suit against Google and Deepmind over use of hospital patients’ data. “A UK law firm is bringing legal action on behalf of patients it says had their confidential medical records obtained by Google and DeepMind Technologies in breach of data protection laws. Mishcon de Reya said today it planned a representative action on behalf of Mr Andrew Prismall and the approximately 1.6 million individuals whose data was used as part of a testing programme for medical software developed by the companies.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ubergizmo: Ophthalmologist Uses The iPhone 13 Pro’s Macro Camera To Check On Patients’ Eyes. “In a post on LinkedIn, Dr. Tommy Korn, an ophthalmologist has shared how he actually manages to use the iPhone 13 Pro’s Macro mode when looking into the eyes of his patients. It turns out that Macro mode might have more uses beyond capturing close up photos of flowers and insects, because based on the sample photos he attached to his post, the details are actually surprisingly good.”

Women Love Tech: Ada Twist, Scientist Encourages Kids to Enjoy Science with Netflix. “Netflix has released Ada Twist, Scientist with the goal of making science fun and accessible for everyone. The animated show follows 8-year-old Ada, a small scientist with a big sense of curiosity. She explores science to discover the truth about everything from chain reactions to evaporation. The series encourages children to be curious about their surroundings and take an active interest in why things happen and how things work.” Good afternoon, Internet…

October 4, 2021 at 12:57AM
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Chicago Neighborhoods Photography, South Africa Constition, Queer Archives, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 3, 2021

Chicago Neighborhoods Photography, South Africa Constition, Queer Archives, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 3, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Chicago Public Library: A Changing City: Chicago Department of Urban Renewal Photographs. “The nearly 16,000 images in this digital collection depict Chicago neighborhoods considered and targeted for improvement, including buildings and neighborhoods that were subsequently razed. The collection also includes images of events, including meetings, hearings, groundbreakings and public art installations related to various urban renewal and development projects.”

OpenGlobalRights: The challenges of sharing the unknown history of the South African constitution. “A new online archive and exhibition tells the little-known stories and behind-the-scenes challenges of the country’s constitution.”

EVENTS

Illinois State University: Queer Talks: The future of queer archives, October 18. “Travis L. Wagner will present ‘The Algorithm Led Me Here: Using Contemporary LGBTQIA+ to Understand the Future of Queer Archives’ at 6 p.m. Monday, October 18 via Zoom. The event, sponsored by Illinois State University’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, is free and open to the public.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: Chrome tests Google side search in the browser. “Google Chrome is now testing side search, a new feature that makes it easier to compare search results on a single browser page. ‘We’re experimenting with a new side panel in the Chrome OS Dev channel, so you can view a page and the search results at the same time,’ Google announced on the Chromium blog.”

USEFUL STUFF

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Mashable: The soothing relatability of Emily Mariko, TikTok’s latest food influencer. “There’s nothing all that difficult about her food — her most famous dish involves reheated rice, leftover salmon, and seaweed wrappers. She’s not pitching a diet. She’s not doing anything stunty or putting off bug-eyed, pick-me energy like men who’re budding influencers. Hell, she hardly even talks in most TikToks and went super viral for leftovers. And yet, Emily Mariko is the food internet’s latest Thing.”

Al Jazeera: Social media giants accused of ‘silencing’ Kashmir voices. “A report by a Kashmiri diaspora group has accused social media giants Twitter, Facebook and Instagram of silencing Kashmiri voices in the digital spaces through the frequent suspension of the accounts of artists, academics, and journalists based in and outside the disputed region, a move termed by experts as ‘reprehensible’.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google tells court ‘staggering’ $5 bln EU antitrust fine flawed. “A 4.34 billion euro ($5 billion) European Union antitrust fine was based on flawed calculations, Alphabet’s Google said on Thursday, urging Europe’s second-highest court to scrap or reduce what it said was not an appropriate penalty.”

Axios: First look: Rick Scott probes LinkedIn, Microsoft on censoring U.S. journalists in China. “Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Microsoft and LinkedIn leadership on Thursday questioning why LinkedIn censored the profiles of U.S. journalists from the company’s China-based platform this week, according to a letter obtained by Axios.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Clearly, Facebook Is Very Flawed. What Will We Do About It?. “I’ve spent the last six years researching how platforms govern speech online, including a year inside Facebook following the development of its Oversight Board. While the ‘factory floor’ of the company is full of well-intentioned people, much of what the series has reported confirmed what I and other Facebook watchers have long suspected.”

Associated Press: Scientists decipher Marie Antoinette’s redacted love notes. ” ‘Not without you.’ ‘My dear friend.’ ‘You that I love.’ Marie Antoinette sent these expressions of affection — or more? — in letters to her close friend and rumored lover Axel von Fersen. Someone later used dark ink to scribble over the words, apparently to dampen the effusive, perhaps amorous, language. Scientists in France devised a new method to uncover the original writing, separating out the chemical composition of different inks used on historical documents.”

Techdirt: Top Publishers Aim To Own The Entire Academic Research Publishing Stack; Here’s How To Stop That Happening. “Techdirt’s coverage of open access — the idea that the fruits of publicly-funded scholarship should be freely available to all — shows that the results so far have been mixed. On the one hand, many journals have moved to an open access model. On the other, the overall subscription costs for academic institutions have not gone down, and neither have the excessive profit margins of academic publishers. Despite that success in fending off this attempt to re-invent the way academic work is disseminated, publishers want more. In particular, they want more money and more power.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

Boing Boing: Atari ST in daily use since 1985 to run campground. “Here’s an Atari ST that’s been in daily use since 1985 as a general-purpose business machine at a campground, complete with software written by its single careful owner, Frans Bos. Victor Bart interviews him about his decades of happy computing.”

October 3, 2021 at 05:31PM
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Saturday, October 2, 2021

Wyoming Missing Persons, Facebook, Twitter for Professionals, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 2, 2021

Wyoming Missing Persons, Facebook, Twitter for Professionals, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 2, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Oil City News: Photos: Wyoming Launches New Missing Persons Database, Listing 71 Cases Dating Back To 1974. “The new database has 71 missing persons cases dating back to 1974 listed as of 4:15 p.m. Thursday, September 30. The earliest case is for Larry Marvin Morris, who was 24 years old at the time his disappearance in Fremont County. The most recent missing persons case listed is for Darren Mark Thunehorst, 39, who was reported missing out of Natrona County on August 29, 2021.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar Over Instagram’s Effect on Teens. “Inside Facebook, top executives have been engulfed by the crisis, with the fallout spreading through parts of the company and disrupting its ‘Youth Group,’ which oversees research and development for children’s products like Messenger Kids, according to interviews with a dozen current and former employees, who were not authorized to speak publicly. To navigate the controversy, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg have approved decisions on how to respond but have deliberately kept out of the public eye, said two people with knowledge of the meetings. The company has leaned on its ‘Strategic Response’ teams, which include communications and public relations employees.”

TechCrunch: Twitter for Professionals will begin to roll out this week for businesses and creators . Since it’s Twitter, I hope you’ll forgive me that my first reaction was “Professional whats?” “Twitter classifies anyone who uses Twitter for work as a professional — to qualify for a professional account, users must have no repeated history of violating guidelines, and they must be authentic, with an account name, bio and profile picture. That means no fictional characters, parody accounts or pet accounts allowed (but some pets do have enough of a social following to make their owners money, in which case… is the dog a professional? ).”

BNN Bloomberg: Google Shelves Plans for Bank Accounts in Revamped Pay App. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google is shelving plans to add bank accounts to its payment app, becoming the latest tech giant to dial back its ambitions for financial services. For years, Google has said it’s working on adding bank accounts from partners such as Citigroup Inc. and Bank of Montreal to its revamped app. The idea was that Google Pay users would be able to use the app to apply for so-called Plex checking and savings accounts from 11 banks.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CBS: Sunday on 60 Minutes: The Facebook Whistleblower. “A former Facebook employee says tens of thousands of pages of internal company research she has provided to the Securities and Exchange Commission prove Facebook is lying to the public and investors about the effectiveness of its campaigns to eradicate hate, violence and misinformation from its platforms. That former employee, who anonymously filed the complaints with federal authorities against Facebook last month, will reveal her identity and speak her mind in an interview airing Sunday night on 60 Minutes.”

The AFRO: Afro Charities receives $535K grant to fund archive digitization efforts. “The grant, which was issued in July, will support the digitization of the AFRO’s full photo archive, help build new tools to increase access to an exhaustive database of images and support the creation of an artificial intelligence informed online research interface…. The AFRO’s full photo collection, spanning more than a century of media coverage that told stories from a unique Black perspective, includes approximately 3 million photographs, [Savannah] Wood highlighted, also estimating that the Afro Charities’ digitization project will take somewhere from five to 10 years.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: Nigeria says it will lift Twitter ban if the company meets certain conditions. “Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said Friday that he would lift the country’s ban on Twitter if the company met certain conditions. Nigeria’s government suspended Twitter ‘indefinitely’ in June, accusing the social media platform of “activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.” The ban followed a few days after Twitter removed a threatening tweet by Buhari that it said violated its policy against abusive behavior.”

Talos: A wolf in sheep’s clothing: Actors spread malware by leveraging trust in Amnesty International and fear of Pegasus . “Amnesty International recently made international headlines when it released a groundbreaking report on the widespread use of Pegasus to target international journalists and activists. Adversaries have set up a phony website that looks like Amnesty International’s — a human rights-focused non-governmental organization — and points to a promised anti-virus tool to protect against the NSO Group’s Pegasus tool. However, the download actually installs the little-known Sarwent malware.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WBUR: Search Engines Like Google Are Powered By Racist, Misogynist Algorithms, Says MacArthur Fellow. “Safiya Noble burst out in tears upon hearing the news of her MacArthur Fellowship — when she finally answered the phone after a week of believing the Chicago number was robocalling her. Noble studies internet bias, and how search engines like Google or Yahoo exacerbate racism and bias against women. She’s founder and co-director of the University of California Los Angeles’ new Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

University of Virginia: The Big Reveal In Fossil Research. “While an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, Caitlin Wylie worked in the lab of well-known paleontologist Paul Sereno – a prolific discoverer of dinosaur skeletons – preparing fossils for research by carefully scraping rock off bones and gluing broken bones together…. Although Wylie loved the job, it wasn’t the dinosaurs, but the preparators who captured her imagination. Years later, she recently published a book, ‘Preparing Dinosaurs: The Work Behind the Scenes,’ which, among other things, explains how those magnificent museum displays of dinosaur skeletons are assembled.” Good afternoon, Internet…

October 3, 2021 at 12:48AM
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High School Newspapers, Los Angeles County, Georgia Archives, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 2, 2021

High School Newspapers, Los Angeles County, Georgia Archives, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 2, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

DigitalNC: New Issues of High Life Now Available. “Thanks to our partner, Greensboro History Museum, new issues of Greensboro High School’s (now Grimsley High School) student newspaper High Life are now available on our website. This batch fills in previous holes from 1921 all the way to 1974. A majority of the articles in the newspaper discuss school related news such as band concerts, athletics, student council elections, fundraisers, student achievements, opinions on life at GHS, and more.”

I don’t normally cover county-specific resources, but the population of Los Angeles county is a bit smaller than the population of North Carolina – just over 10 million. Los Angeles County: Centralized Resource Hub for Older Adults in LA County. “The Los Angeles County Department of Workforce Development, Aging and Community Services (WDACS), in collaboration with 18 other County departments and agencies, is pleased to announce a new centralized resource hub for older adults, linking residents to 120+ unique senior services available throughout L.A. County.”

EVENTS

Henry Herald: Georgia Archives hosting virtual Archives and Genealogy Day. “The Georgia Archives is hosting its annual Archives and Genealogy Day Oct. 9. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the event will be held virtually. The event will begin at 9 a.m. Participants should download the free Microsoft Teams app prior to the start of the event, then register.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

South Street Seaport Museum: South Street Seaport Museum Announces Expanded Digital Galleries In Collections Online Portal . “In March 2021, the Museum launched a Collections Online Portal, which today features over 2,000 pieces on virtual display, allowing audiences to explore New York City’s past through the archives, artifacts, and photographs of the South Street Seaport Museum. This third iteration includes over 400 newly digitized works of art and historic objects covering a variety of mediums, historical subjects, and themes relating to the growth and changing physical fabric of New York City as a world port.”

Ars Technica: “Wayforward Machine” provides a glimpse into the future of the web. “What could the future of the Internet look like? With the digital world of the 21st century becoming a pit of unwanted ads, tracking, paywalls, unsafe content, and legal threats, ‘Wayforward Machine’ has a dystopian picture in mind. Behind the clickbaity name, Wayforward Machine is an attempt by the Internet Archive to preview the chaos the world wide web is about to become.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Auburn University: Auburn professors’ Selma ‘Bloody Sunday’ project gaining momentum through social media, public support. “Auburn University professors Richard Burt and Keith Hébert are turning to social media and the Selma, Alabama, community for help in making progress on their ‘Bloody Sunday’ passion project. The interdisciplinary tandem is enlisting a group of Auburn Honors College students to help expand the project’s reach to the social media realm, and they have established a Facebook page where visitors can connect and help identify marchers who participated in one of the seminal moments in civil rights history—Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965, in Selma.”

Associated Press: Africa internet riches plundered, contested by China broker. “Millions of internet addresses assigned to Africa have been waylaid, some fraudulently, including through insider machinations linked to a former top employee of the nonprofit that assigns the continent’s addresses. Instead of serving Africa’s internet development, many have benefited spammers and scammers, while others satiate Chinese appetites for pornography and gambling. New leadership at the nonprofit, AFRINIC, is working to reclaim the lost addresses. But a legal challenge by a deep-pocketed Chinese businessman is threatening the body’s very existence.”

Stanford Daily: Stanford Libraries hosts first JEDI Fair. “Green Library housed the first Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) Fair on Thursday, giving a platform to historically marginalized communities at Stanford to enhance their activism and advocacy efforts while allowing Stanford Libraries to present a wide range of justice-related resources. The event, coordinated by Racial Justice and Social Equity Librarian Felicia Smith and User Experience Designer Astrid Usong, featured speakers, art exhibits and collections from Stanford Libraries highlighting diversity and social justice.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: ‘Stalkerware’ Apps Are Proliferating. Protect Yourself.. “Flash Keylogger is part of a rapidly expanding group of apps known as ‘stalkerware.’ While these apps numbered in the hundreds a few years ago, they have since grown into the thousands. They are widely available on Google’s Play Store and to a lesser degree on Apple’s App Store, often with innocuous names like MobileTool, Agent and Cerberus. And they have become such a tool for digital domestic abuse that Apple and Google have started in the last year acknowledging that the apps are an issue.”

Ars Technica: Neiman Marcus data breach impacts 4.6 million customers . “American luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group (NMG) has just disclosed a major data breach impacting approximately 4.6 million customers. The breach occurred sometime in May 2020 after ‘an unauthorized party’ obtained the personal information of some Neiman Marcus customers from their online accounts. Neiman Marcus is working with law enforcement agencies and has selected cybersecurity company Mandiant to assist with the investigation.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): Charting Congress on Social Media in the 2016 and 2020 Elections. “The 2020 election occurred in a cultural and political climate that was vastly different than that of the 2016 race. The unique nature of each election cycle was also visible in the ways members of Congress used Facebook and Twitter to engage with the public in the months before and after election day. Most obviously, the 2020 election was much more online than the preceding presidential cycle. Lawmakers shared tens of thousands more posts – and received orders of magnitude more engagement from other social media users – than was the case in 2016.”

The Conversation: Old, goopy museum specimens can tell fascinating stories of wildlife history. Finally, we can read them. “In response to the extinction crisis, the call is out to scour Australia’s collections for data to fill knowledge gaps. For many species, however, recovering historical genetic data has been severely impeded, not by a lack of specimens but by the methods used to preserve them. This is where my new research comes in. Our paper shows how natural history collections around the world can squeeze every last drop of historical genetic data out of their specimens, from dried iridescent wings of butterflies to platypus bills floating in alcohol.” Good morning, Internet…

October 2, 2021 at 05:44PM
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Friday, October 1, 2021

Eiko Ishioka, Mi’kmaw Elders, JShelter Project, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 1, 2021

Eiko Ishioka, Mi’kmaw Elders, JShelter Project, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 1, 2021
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

e-flux: Online archive of Eiko Ishioka: Blood, Sweat, and Tears—A Life of Design . “The archive of the exhibition Eiko Ishioka: Blood, Sweat, and Tears—A Life of Design is available to view online for a limited period until March 31, 2022. The retrospective exhibition of acclaimed art director Eiko Ishioka was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo from November 2020 to February 2021, and caused a major sensation across generations. On this occasion, the entire exhibition with its comprehensive showcasing of work is once again brought to life through high quality 360°VR and exhibition highlights.”

CBC: New archive featuring interviews with Mi’kmaw elders launches online, aims to expand. “That project is a new online archive that holds hours and hours of audio and video featuring Mi’kmaw elders relating memories and history, participating in cultural activities and sharing their knowledge about language, residential schools and politics, among other topics.”

Free Software Foundation: FSF announces JShelter browser add-on to combat threats from nonfree JavaScript. “The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the JShelter project, an anti-malware Web browser extension to mitigate potential threats from JavaScript, including fingerprinting, tracking, and data collection. The project is supported by NLnet Foundation’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) Zero Privacy & Trust Enhancing Technologies fund. Collaborators include Libor Polčák and Bednář Martin (Brno University of Technology), Giorgio Maone (NoScript), and Ana Isabel Carvalho and Ricardo Lafuente (Manufactura Independente). The JShelter browser add-on is in development and the first release is available.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

ThreatPost: Google Emergency Update Fixes Two Chrome Zero Days. “Google has pushed out an emergency Chrome update to fix yet another pair of zero days – the second pair this month – that are being exploited in the wild. This hoists this year’s total number of zero days found in the browser up to a dozen.”

BetaNews: Microsoft releases KB5005611 update to fix numerous Windows 10 problems. “Ahead of Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has released a preview of its KB5005611 update for Windows 10. The patch includes numerous fixes, such as addressing Outlook crashes and the unwanted appearance of ‘News and interests’.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Creative Boom: Dive into Zara Picken’s treasure trove of illustration ephemera from the mid-20th century . “The treasure trove of print, which Zara has titled Ephemerama!, is available for all to see on a dedicated Instagram account. With postal stamps and travel information leaflets, booklets and advertisements, these retro pieces come from anywhere between the 1950s through to the mid-1970s.”

Pappas Post: Hellenic Heritage Foundation Gifts $1.4 Million for Greek Archives. “York University in Toronto will expand its physical archive and establish a digital archive highlighting the experiences and history of the Greek diaspora in Canada, thanks to a $1.4 million CAD gift from the Hellenic Heritage Foundation. The university will change the name of its archives from the Greek Canadian History Project to the Hellenic Heritage Foundation Greek Canadian Archives in recognition of the donation, which will last over five years.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ubergizmo: China Announces Plans To Regulate Algorithms Tech Companies Use. “A lot of technology today relies on algorithms. We can see this in social media where posts from people we interact with more tend to be shown at the top. This is under the assumption that since we interact with it, we want to see more of it. Then we also see how algorithms are used to help display relevant ads while shopping. All of this is designed in a way to get us to spend more time or more money on a platform, but apparently that’s something China’s government doesn’t want. So much so that the Cyberspace Administration of China has announced that in the next three years, they want to set up governance rules for algorithms that tech companies use to attract users.”

CNET: FCC aims to crack down on SIM card swapping scams. “Citing a litany of complaints from consumers who’ve suffered significant distress, inconvenience and financial harm, the US Federal Communications Commission launched a rule-making process Thursday aimed at cracking down on SIM card swapping scams. Key among the new proposals: stronger authentication standards, and notification procedures whenever someone tries to redirect a phone number to a new device or carrier.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Texas at Austin: Ransomware Attacks Are Another Tool in the Political Warfare Toolbox. “Strategic inaction on the Kremlin’s part is an inducement to experiment with malicious software aimed at Western targets. There are documented instances of individuals and groups being co-opted by Russian security and intelligence services. The state provides them legal protection and occasional targeting guidance in exchange for information and corrupt material gains. In this way, ransomware has entered the Gray Zone. This is a realm where plausible deniability is achieved because of the cooptation and weaponization of private proxies.” Good afternoon, Internet…

October 2, 2021 at 01:19AM
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