New researches

Friday, February 18, 2022

The Anti-Racism Lab, IU Bloomington Graduates, Roboto Serif, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, February 18, 2022

The Anti-Racism Lab, IU Bloomington Graduates, Roboto Serif, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, February 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Alberta: New website offers a worldwide hub for research on decolonization and anti-racism. “A new online hub is bringing together scholars and students from around the world to share research, amplify voices and encourage conversations about decolonization and anti-racism in universities. The Anti-Racism Lab is a collaborative international network of researchers in Finland, Sweden, South Africa, Brazil, the United States, Canada and the Métis Nation, showcasing the work of the researchers involved, Tate explained. The unifying factor in the collaboration is that universities involved in the research project are in settler-colonial states.”

WBIW: Did your ancestors graduate from IU? The new database will tell you | WBIW. “The IU Bloomington Degree Compendium contains the names, graduation years, and degrees awarded to graduates from the classes of 1830 to 1890. The database will eventually be expanded to include information about all IU Bloomington graduates.”

9to5 Google: Google commissions and releases ‘Roboto Serif’ as new font ideal for reading. “Google introduced Roboto in 2011 as Android’s new system font and gave it a big upgrade three years later. ‘Roboto Serif’ is now the newest variation ‘designed to make reading more comfortable at any size, in any format.'”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: TikTok’s ban on misogyny and misgendering attempts to clean up For You Pages. “TikTok has long prohibited hate-speech and violence on its social video platform, but a recent update is getting more specific about what can and can’t be posted on videos. The China-based tech firm ByteDance, which created and owns TikTok, updated its community guidelines with new ban-worthy offenses on Tuesday. The change targets content that’s aimed at offending LGBTQ users broadly as well as trans users specifically.”

CNET: Twitter Expands Beta for Safety Mode Autoblocking Feature. “Twitter is greatly expanding the size of the beta for its Safety Mode feature, which aims to limit ‘unwelcome interactions’ in your feed. Previously available only to a small feedback group, the feature will now be available to about 50% of users in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, Twitter said Tuesday.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Techradar Pro: Taking on Google: Meet the challenger search engine trying to break the monopoly. “Google benefits from almost every advantage any company could ever hope for; it has the most advanced technology, broadest talent pool, greatest lobbying power and some of the deepest pockets. Most importantly, it has a vice-like grip on many of the markets in which it operates, particularly browsers and search. Some might think it impossible to overthrow a company in this position, especially in its core areas of business. But not Gabriel Weinberg, who is patiently twirling his sling in anticipation of an opportunity to bring down the internet’s Goliath.”

Yale Daily News: Collection of Musical Instruments plans for major renovation. “The Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments — a leading institution that acquires, preserves and exhibits musical instruments from antiquity to the present — is one of many Yale museums currently closed to the public due to the pandemic. It will use the period of closure to develop its online presence and make plans for an extensive renovation.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): More members of Congress, especially Democrats, are talking about Black History Month on social media. “A growing share of congressional lawmakers have taken to social media each February to commemorate Black History Month, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of their Facebook and Twitter activity. Nearly two-in-three members of Congress (64%) mentioned Black History Month on Facebook or Twitter in February 2021, up from just 29% in 2015.”

The Orion: Social media algorithm designed to be toxic. “With the number of social media users nearing 4 billion in 2022, it’s safe to say that these platforms are not going anywhere in spite of the damage they cause. Platforms should make an effort to be transparent about the true, altered nature of pictures and videos by providing a disclaimer. Sadly, it does not seem to be a likely possibility because it goes against the influencers that draw traffic and increase the site’s popularity. Therefore, it is up to users to educate themselves on the harmful effects of social media.”

WIRED: Google Stadia Is a Failure. The Company Should Kill It. “Much has happened between the 2018 “Project Stream” beta, the official Stadia launch in 2019, and today. You could arguably call Google a leader in the second wave of cloud gaming, after the early debuts of services like PS Now and OnLive. Now, though, there is more competition, and the demands of the market are crystallizing. Google tried to make a case that it could bring market advantages to cloud gaming, but the company’s vision has not borne fruit. Today, Stadia is languishing and has few prospects of success.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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February 19, 2022 at 03:53AM
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Michigan Air Pollution Permits, Nelson Mandela, Environmental Inequality, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, February 18, 2022

Michigan Air Pollution Permits, Nelson Mandela, Environmental Inequality, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, February 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Detroit Free Press: Free Press releases database of air pollution permits. “The Free Press is making air permit data available for the first time to improve access and to help build on our work examining air pollution in communities with long-standing racial and socioeconomic disparities. Last year, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy approved 309 permits for air pollution that remained active at year’s end. A Free Press analysis of the one-year snapshot alone found a relationship among site location, race and poverty in Michigan communities.”

Free Press Journal: Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory launches digital archive for greater public access . “A new digital archive was launched on Friday by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory to allow greater public access to the archives of the global icon who became the first democratically-elected president of South Africa after serving 27 years as a political prisoner under the white minority apartheid regime. Razia Saleh, Head of Archive and Research at the centre, explained that the closure of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory (NMCM) for almost two years due to the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions had given the team time to come up with ideas to widen access to the resources, which have been physically available in the past.”

Washington Post: Biden officials launch ‘screening tool’ to help identify disadvantaged and polluted communities. “As part of its effort to address historic environmental injustices, the Biden administration launched an online screening tool Friday to identify ‘communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.’ The administration is calling on residents to use a “beta version” of its Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool over the next 60 days to upload data that will reveal communities with multiple pollution sources and health threats such as tainted water, poor air quality, dirty roadways and nearby Superfund sites.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tom’s Hardware: No PC Needed: How to Install Raspberry Pi OS Over the Internet. “As any experienced Raspberry Pi user can tell you, the popular single-board computer does not come with an OS preloaded. Unless you buy a third-party kit / card that comes with Raspberry Pi OS on it, you must download the operating system on a PC or Mac and write it to a microSD card or USB storage device for the Pi. We have articles on how to set up a Raspberry Pi and how to create a headless Raspberry Pi that show you how to do this. But what if you don’t have access to a computer (or don’t have a card reader)?”

Wired: What Is Google Workspace Individual, and How Does It Work?. “ANDY WARHOL ONCE said a big part of Coke’s appeal is that everyone has the same version. ‘A Coke is a Coke,’ he said, ‘and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.’ Google’s email and calendar services, Gmail and Google Calendar, used to be the same way—everyone had access to the same tool. Not anymore, thanks to Google Workspace Individual. You can now buy a better Coke (OK you’ve been able to buy superior Mexican Coke for a long time now, but let’s ignore that so my metaphor works.)”

USEFUL STUFF

Wish I’d found this a bit earlier, but you’ve still got over a week. Business Insider: Scribd, an online reading platform, is making all its books free for 30 days in response to recent book bans. “While book bans aren’t new, they’ve recently been making the news more often…. In response to the rising trend, the reading app Scribd is offering free access to its digital library of millions of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, documents, and podcasts for 30 days if you sign up by February 28. (No credit card information is required to sign up).”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Eleven strangers watched me write this article. Is this the answer to our productivity crisis?. “I have been randomly assigned to work with Ben on a website I use every day called Focusmate, which uses a sense of accountability to help you focus. The homepage kind of looks like a Google calendar: you book in a 50-minute session and the site matches you with someone else who wants to work in that time slot (this is mostly done randomly, although brand new users are matched with more experienced ones). When the time comes, you and your buddy get placed on a video call. You politely and briefly tell each other what you’re planning to use the time to do – and then you get on with it.”

Daily Beast: After FBI Raid, Dem. Congressman Feels the Love – From a Network of Trolls. “[Henry] Cuellar, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, had never seen much engagement before the raids, with his tweets normally only drawing a half dozen or so replies. But after the FBI came knocking, Cuellar’s replies teemed with critics calling on him to resign, reminding him of the investigation, and taunting the nine-term congressman with the thought of prison. Within a week, those replies were matched with missives from ostensible supporters swooping in to battle the haters.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: I Used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS Tracker to Watch My Husband’s Every Move. “I’ve been covering privacy for more than a decade, and have found that the best way to concretely explain the dystopian implications of new technologies is to immerse myself in them, guinea pig-style. My husband has lived on Bitcoin with me, been spied on by our “smart home,” and watched me give up the tech giants. (He would not give them up himself, saying, ‘I have a job,’ but he agreed to unplug our Amazon Echo.) He also happens to be a professional press freedom advocate, so I was fairly certain he’d be game.”

Bleeping Computer: WordPress force installs UpdraftPlus patch on 3 million sites. “WordPress has taken the rare step of force-updating the UpdraftPlus plugin on all sites to fix a high-severity vulnerability allowing website subscribers to download the latest database backups, which often contain credentials and PII. Three million sites use the popular WordPress plugin, so the potential for exploitation was substantial, affecting a significant share of the internet, including large platforms.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Washington: Google’s ‘CEO’ image search gender bias hasn’t really been fixed. “The researchers showed that for four major search engines from around the world, including Google, this bias is only partially fixed, according to a paper presented in February at the AAAI Conference of Artificial Intelligence. A search for an occupation, such as ‘CEO,’ yielded results with a ratio of cis-male and cis-female presenting people that matches the current statistics. But when the team added another search term — for example, ‘CEO + United States’ — the image search returned fewer photos of cis-female presenting people. In the paper, the researchers propose three potential solutions to this issue.”

NIST: VTTI, NIST Provide Tool for Quantifying Automated Driving Conditions. “The tool helps researchers and industry practitioners to understand and quantify automated driving operating conditions in a city, community, or region. These conditions are described in the Operational Design Domain (ODD) in which an automated vehicle is designed to operate. The ODD of an automated vehicle provides a description of its environmental, geographical, and other restrictions, as well as applicable constraints, such as permissible speeds, geographic areas, road types, and environmental conditions.” Good afternoon, Internet…

February 18, 2022 at 11:48PM
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Thursday, February 17, 2022

Facebook Roundup, February 17, 2022

Facebook Roundup, February 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Meta rolls out vanish mode, payment splitting for US Messenger users. “Facebook Messenger rolled out new features — including splitting payments, vanishing messages and improved voice message recording controls — to iOS and Android users in the US on Wednesday, according to Meta.”

Bloomberg: Meta’s Clegg Promoted as Zuckerberg Steps Back From Policy. “Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has promoted his top policy executive, Nick Clegg, to an even greater role inside the company — a move that will mean less involvement in future policy decisions for the CEO and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.”

The Verge: Facebook rebrands News Feed after more than 15 years. “Meta is changing the name of Facebook’s News Feed, the primary part of the service that users scroll through to see what their friends and family have shared. Going forward, it’ll just be called the ‘Feed,’ according to a tweet from the company on Tuesday. The ‘News Feed’ name had been in place since the feature was first introduced more than 15 years ago.”

New York Times: Out With the Facebookers. In With the Metamates.. “So past Facebook values like ‘Be bold’ and ‘Focus on impact’? They are gone. In their place are ‘Live in the future,’ ‘Build awesome things,’ ‘Focus on long-term impact’ and ‘Meta, Metamates, me,’ Mr. Zuckerberg said on Tuesday.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TIME: Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop. “Here in Nairobi, Sama employees who speak at least 11 African languages between them toil day and night, working as outsourced Facebook content moderators: the emergency first responders of social media. They perform the brutal task of viewing and removing illegal or banned content from Facebook before it is seen by the average user.”

New York Times: Meta and Salesforce present differing takes on the metaverse.. “Real world or virtual world? Take your pick. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, set its Super Bowl ad in the metaverse. In the ad, an animatronic dog and its friend, a pink-tentacled monster, are separated in their physical reality but reunited via the company’s Quest 2 virtual reality headsets.”

BuzzFeed News: Meta Wouldn’t Tell Us How It Enforces Its Rules In VR, So We Ran A Test To Find Out. “Facebook’s parent company declined to answer our questions about how it moderates content in VR, so we created a test Horizon World filled with content banned from Facebook and Instagram. Content moderators said the world was fine — until we told Meta’s PR team about it.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Texas Sues Facebook Over Its Use of Facial Recognition. “Texas is suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook, over the social network’s past use of facial recognition technology. The suit, filed Monday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, accuses Facebook of violating the state’s privacy laws by capturing biometric data on tens of millions of Texans without properly obtaining consent.”

Reuters: Meta’s Facebook to pay $90 million to settle privacy lawsuit over user tracking. “Facebook agreed to pay $90 million to settle a decade-old privacy lawsuit accusing it of tracking users’ internet activity even after they logged out of the social media website. A proposed preliminary settlement was filed on Monday night with the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, and requires a judge’s approval. The accord also requires Facebook to delete data it collected improperly.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: How to ruin the metaverse? Build it around profit and centralization. “Reading back through a transcript from Facebook’s investor-disappointing fourth-quarter earnings call has solidified my perspective that we need a third-party, benevolent central entity for the metaverse. A sort of central digital clearinghouse that can transport me from place to place, inclusive of the platform-locked areas that will inevitably come to constitute a portion of our online selves.”

New York Times: Facebook Has an Innovation Problem. “Facebook can’t seem to do it. The company just doesn’t appear to know how to invent successful new stuff. Most of its biggest hits — not just two of its main products, Instagram and WhatsApp, but many of its most-used features, like Instagram Stories — were invented elsewhere. They made their way to Facebook either through acquisitions or, when that didn’t work, outright copying. But buying and copying other ideas is becoming increasingly difficult for Facebook.”

George Washington University: Study: Corrections on Facebook News Feed Reduce Misinformation. “Factual corrections published on Facebook’s news feed can reduce a user’s belief in misinformation, even across partisan lines, according to a new paper co-authored by a George Washington University assistant professor published this month in the Journal of Politics.”

February 17, 2022 at 08:20PM
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NC ENVIROSCAN, International Council of Museums, Black Fashion Database, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, February 17, 2022

NC ENVIROSCAN, International Council of Museums, Black Fashion Database, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, February 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of North Carolina: UNC researchers develop mapping tool to protect populations from environmental chemicals. “NC ENVIROSCAN, a new online interactive mapping tool, helps North Carolina communities increase awareness of key environmental and societal factors that can impact health. Developed through a collaboration between the UNC Superfund Research Program (UNC SRP) and the Institute for Environmental Health Solutions (IEHS) in partnership with the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), this tool allows users to visualize trends across the state.”

: Launch of ICOM’s Online Library. “From the outset, the founders of ICOM wanted to create a resource centre specialising in museums and museology, with a twofold objective: to bring together all the documentation available on the subject and to make it available to museum professionals. Thanks to the contributions of ICOM members, the centre’s collections were rapidly expanded.”

The Eyeopener: Fashion Prof Creates Database For Black Designers In Canada. “The Black Fashion Database website is a virtual project that documents the successes of Black creators across Canada. From in-depth profiles with stylists, designers and professionals to historical photos of Black fashion in Canada, the link to the stand-alone site will reside on the community directory page of Fashion and Race database.”

Estes Park Trail Gazette: Estes Park Historian Laureate’s ‘From the Archives’ made available online. “From the Archives is a volume of essays on the early history of Rocky Mountain National Park and its adjacent community. The manuscript is based on documents from the National Archives in College Park Maryland, the Rocky Mountain National Park Research Facility, and other places, including the collections of the Estes Park Museum.”

Saskatchewan Polytechnic: Innovative digitization toolkit preserves Indigenous history. “When Chasity Berast, program head and instructor for the Saskatchewan Polytechnic Library & Information Technology program, was approached by Harry Lafond of Muskeg Lake Cree Nation to assist with creating a digital archive for their analog records, an idea was born. Rather than sending a student to archive Muskeg Lake Cree Nation’s records, Berast wanted to collaborate with the First Nation to create a digitization toolkit on best practices. Through this process Berast could test best practices while creating the toolkit and helping digitize Muskeg Lake Cree Nation’s archives.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google will shut down Currents, the work-focused Google Plus replacement. “Google has announced that it’ll shut down Currents, which was introduced in 2019 as a replacement for Google Plus for G Suite. In a blog post, the company says it’s ‘planning to wind down’ Currents, and that it’ll push the people who were using it to Spaces, which is sort of like Google Chat’s version of a Slack channel or Discord room.”

Screen Rant: How To Find Concerts & Other Live Events On Snapchat. “Snapchat is a great app for chatting with friends and watching funny videos, but did you know it can also help you find concerts and other live events with the help of Ticketmaster? If there’s one certainty in the tech space, it’s that smartphone apps are constantly changing. In a neverending attempt to hold the attention of as many users as possible, it’s crucial for apps to keep the experience fresh and lively.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Balkan Insight: Time Running Out for North Macedonia’s Priceless Video Archive. “Many of the video tapes stored in the archive of North Macedonia’s national broadcaster, Macedonian Television, MTV, could become useless in the next few years if they are not digitalised. Kiril Pancevski, who has been caring for the archives for some 40 years, told BIRN that some 15,000 hours of the archive have been digitalised. But, according to his estimate, another 33,000 hours, about two-thirds of the archive, must either be transferred into digital format or possibly lost forever.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Inside the Bitcoin Laundering Case That Confounded the Internet. “The arrests of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan left the world of cryptocurrency incredulous: Could this goofy young couple have been Bitcoin’s Bonnie and Clyde?”

Washington Post: George Washington University apologizes for data project monitoring student and staff locations on campus. “George Washington University interim president Mark S. Wrighton apologized Friday to the campus community for the university’s failure to inform it in advance of a data analytics pilot program that monitored locations — though not individualized data — of students, faculty and staff last fall.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

City AM: Former Google boss launches $125m philanthropic fund to tackle AI issues. “Former Google boss Eric Schmidt has launched a $125m philanthropic fund to tackle so-called ‘hard problems’ in artificial intelligence including bias, harm and misuse, and conflict. The new fund, AI2050, will back reseach projects over the next five years, with the fuunds being offered to individual academics who specialise in the space.”

The Hindu: Ambedkar University launches centre for research on Indian languages. “The university said that CRA-ILIKS [Centre for Research and Archiving in Indian Languages and Indic Knowledge Systems] will have four components. It will build a Bhasha archive, a vast, multi-pronged and constantly growing digital collection propelled by a multilingual search engine and user-friendly interface on the web. It will be accompanied by a substantial programme of translation, transcription and curation. The multidisciplinary academic research and a publication programme will make the other two necessary components.” Good morning, Internet…

February 17, 2022 at 06:29PM
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Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Chrome OS Flex, Android Privacy, Google Drive, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, February 16, 2022

Chrome OS Flex, Android Privacy, Google Drive, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, February 16, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Ars Technica: Google turns old Macs, PCs into Chromebooks with Chrome OS Flex. “Chrome OS Flex is basically the official Google version of CloudReady, which Google acquired when it bought Neverware in 2020. Flex allows individuals, schools, or businesses to download Chrome OS onto a USB drive for free (CloudReady charges a fee and annual subscription rate to schools and businesses, respectively) and install it onto their Mac or Windows PC. The OS could also be booted from a USB drive instead of installed or launched via network deployment by an IT department.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: Introducing the Privacy Sandbox on Android. “Today, we’re announcing a multi-year initiative to build the Privacy Sandbox on Android, with the goal of introducing new, more private advertising solutions. Specifically, these solutions will limit sharing of user data with third parties and operate without cross-app identifiers, including advertising ID. We’re also exploring technologies that reduce the potential for covert data collection, including safer ways for apps to integrate with advertising SDKs.”

The Verge: Google Drive’s new filters that make search easier are rolling out to everyone. “Search chips, a feature that’s supposed to make it easier to search for files in Google Drive, is becoming available to all Workspace users, including G Suite Basic and Business users. It was first released as a beta in November and should let you narrow down your search results by location, file type, date modified, people, tasks, and shared label.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BuzzFeed News: Lyra Health, Which Provides Therapy For Google And Facebook Employees, Is Facing Concerns Over Privacy And Treatment. “In interviews with BuzzFeed News, 18 users, therapists, and former Lyra employees voiced concerns about some of the company’s business practices, including its productivity-based bonus structure for therapists and its use of patient data. Some of the people who spoke to BuzzFeed News for this story did so under the condition of anonymity because they feared repercussions from their employers or former employers.”

TIME: Why a Russian Invasion of Ukraine Would Be a Big Test for Google Maps. “With the prospect of a major European war greater now than at any point in recent memory, Google needs to be every bit as—if not more—aware of its response to the potential impacts of a Russian invasion of Ukraine as any sovereign nation. As one of the most powerful companies in the world, Google Maps is often treated as the ultimate authority in mapping. Google has the potential to legitimize the illegal actions of hostile nations.”

TechCrunch: Shortwave wants to bring back Google Inbox. “Google’s Inbox experiment was a glorious thing while it lasted. Launched as an invitation-only service in 2014, it was the company’s next-gen email client. Because it was so good, it’s no surprise Google shut it down in 2019. Thankfully, though, a group of ex-Google/Firebase employees is now resurrecting the Inbox experience — with a bit of the Slack user experience mixed in, too.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Dutch foundation seeks consumer damages over Apple, Google app payments . “Apple… and Google face a potential class action lawsuit in the Netherlands over app store charges, after a foundation headed by Dutch entrepreneur Alexander Klöpping began gathering claimants. The action, which still faces legal hurdles before any court hearing, reflects growing criticism over how much the two firms charge developers for payments on their app stores, while the Netherlands has become increasingly popular as a jurisdiction to pursue complaints against multinational firms.”

Washington Post: Senators unveil children’s online safety bill after months of pressure on Silicon Valley. “Co-sponsored by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), the Kids Online Safety Act would require online platforms to provide parents and minors younger than 16 with ‘easy-to-use’ tools to keep them safe, limit screen time and protect their data. It would demand companies create tools to allow parents to track how much time their kids spend on a service, or to opt out of features such as autoplay that might extend time online. Companies would also have to offer parents and minors the ability to modify tech companies’ recommendation algorithms, allowing them to limit or ban certain types of content.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NiemanLab: “It’s O.K. to abandon ship”: How to critically evaluate scientific claims before pursuing a story. “Our inboxes are full of them — press releases, pitches, and other media calling some scientific event ‘a breakthrough,’ ‘a game-changer,’ or ‘a paradigm-shifter.’ Scientists, investors, and analysts flood our Twitter feeds, cheerleading a preprint or singing some company’s praises, even when there is little to no data to back up those claims. Figuring out whether something is newsworthy can be hard. But, as science journalists, we need to examine these statements, and decide: Is this worth covering? If so, how do we do so objectively, without accidentally becoming a mouthpiece for hyperbolic claims?”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Mashable: 11 extraordinary underwater photographs that bring the depths to you. “The winners of the annual Underwater Photographer of the Year competition have been announced, annually diving into the dark depths to introduce us to a world beneath the surface of oceans, pools, rivers, and lakes. Celebrating underwater photography since 1965, the UK competition features 13 categories including wrecks, portrait, wide angle, macro, behaviour, and marine conservation.” Good afternoon, Internet…

February 17, 2022 at 01:30AM
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Mission Messenger, Unredacter, 2022 Tax Season, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, February 16, 2022

Mission Messenger, Unredacter, 2022 Tax Season, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, February 16, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Digital Library of Georgia: Issues of the Mission Messenger Now Available Freely Online. “19th and 20th-century issues from the journal of the largest group of Protestant women in the world have just been digitized. Mercer University Special Collections and Archives have partnered with the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) to digitize Mercer’s run of the Mission Messenger from 1895-1921, published monthly by the Woman’s Baptist Missionary Union of Georgia (WBMU), more commonly known today as simply the Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU).”

Daily Swig: New tool can uncover redacted, pixelated text to reveal sensitive data. “The tool, called Unredacter, was released by Bishop Fox today (February 15). To demonstrate that pixilation is ‘a no-good, bad, insecure, surefire way to get your sensitive data leaked’, it was designed to take redacted pixelized text and reverse it back into its reveal the supposedly hidden ‘clear text’.”

KDKA: IRS Launches Resource Page That Offers Latest Guidance On Tax Filing Season. “The page provides you with the latest information affecting the 2022 tax season, and provides updates on the efforts by the agency to address the inventory of previously filed tax returns.”

Tennessean: Enslaved people’s records show a grim, but needed, look at what made Nashville | Opinion. “The spreadsheet, more than 14,000 rows deep with data, might bore you – until the names stop you cold: Eliza, age 3; Peter, 11; Martha Foster, 1. After each, it reads ‘child of Albert and Betsy.’ On Nov. 1, 1852, it says, John Nichol sold Albert and Betsy, along with Eliza, Peter, Martha Foster and their other five children to Bradford Franklin. Davidson County legally recorded this enslaved family as property, bought and sold. Metro Archivist Ken Fieth has spent some 25 years compiling a searchable spreadsheet, available here. Transaction by transaction, it lists buyer, seller, enslaved person’s name, gender, age and relatives (if known).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Windows Central: ‘No politics’ button now exists in LinkedIn, other new features coming soon. “LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky recently spoke to the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern in a video interview, wherein the networking platform was discussed in-depth and a feature you may not even know you had was focused on. Midway through the WSJ’s video, Stern details how you can find the ‘allow political content’ button.”

KSHB: Prosecutor won’t charge reporter who uncovered database flaw. “A Missouri prosecutor will not charge a St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist who exposed a state database flaw that allowed public access to thousands of teachers’ Social Security numbers.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Daily Beast: Russian Sock Puppet Crew Faked Texas Guv Tweet About Biden Blackmail. “Since 2014, Secondary Infektion, a disinformation crew attributed to Russia by cybersecurity officials at Facebook and Reddit, has littered the internet with fake government documents and forged screenshots of nonexistent social media posts. Despite the group’s long pedigree and deep catalog of content, its forgeries and fakes have largely failed to move public opinion or organic engagement on social media. The content, however, offers a glimpse of how Moscow has tried to undermine Ukraine’s pro-Western government with provocation forgeries similar to those now expected by U.S. intelligence.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: French watchdog says Google Analytics poses data privacy risks. “Google Analytics, the world’s most widely used web analytics service developed by Alphabet’s Google (GOOG), risks giving U.S. intelligence services access to French website users’ data, France’s watchdog CNIL said on Thursday.”

Mashable: Crypto ‘romance scammers’ stole $139 million from victims in 2021. “‘A newly released data spotlight shows that in 2021 reported losses to romance scammers were up nearly 80 percent compared to 2020, and the total reported lost over the past five years has now reached $1.3 billion,’ cautions the FTC. ‘According to the spotlight, consumers who paid romance scammers with cryptocurrency reported losing $139 million in total in 2021, more than any other payment amount.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Thank you Wordle, it’s been fun. “I know many people play Wordle and don’t share their scores at all. I like the sharing because it makes it into a game within a game. One old friend started trying to guess my words by working backwards from my grid pattern. He’s amazingly good at it. The puzzles calm me. They’re a milestone, a marker in what still feels like endless days waiting for my life to feel more on-track. Wordle is a game I’ve been playing on my infinite pandemic commute. My personal waiting game.”

Analytics India: Google AI researchers present a new method to train models, ‘DeepCTRL’. “Google Cloud AI researchers have offered a unique deep learning training approach that incorporates rules so that the strength of the rules may be controlled at inference. DeepCTRL (Deep Neural Networks with Controllable Rule Representations) combines a rule encoder and a rule-based objective into the model, allowing for a shared representation for decision-making. Data type and model architecture are unimportant to DeepCTRL.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

MakeUseOf: What Is RF Energy Harvesting? . “While many innovations have sought to improve this experience through things like solar panels, they’re typically not the most effective or aesthetically pleasing option. Here’s why RF harvesting technology can be the key to the cordless smart home experience.” Good morning, Internet…

February 16, 2022 at 06:29PM
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Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Chrome, AirTags, YouTube Playlists, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, February 15, 2022

Chrome, AirTags, YouTube Playlists, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, February 15, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bleeping Computer: Google Chrome emergency update fixes zero-day exploited in attacks. “Google has released Chrome 98.0.4758.102 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, to fix a high-severity zero-day vulnerability used by threat actors in attacks.”

KnowTechie: Apple is covering its ass by introducing new AirTag safety features. “Apple’s AirTags have been the target of some controversies over the last few months. Users have been complaining that the tracking devices are being used for malicious, stalking purposes. The company has responded with the announcement of several new upcoming AirTag safety features.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 6 Free Tools to Improve YouTube Playlists and Create Playlists Without an Account. “Once you master the basics of making YouTube playlists, you’ll want to do more with these compilations. These tools let you do more with YouTube, like creating a playlist when you don’t have an account, copying someone else’s playlist to make it your own, search within any playlist, or even to create playlists with friends for a party.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Mashable: There were almost two internets. Then, the CIA destroyed one.. “In Mashable’s new three-part episode of our series on the digital age’s dark side, Kernel Panic, we explore a startlingly advanced computer network developed in Salvador Allende’s Chile of the 1970s. Called Project Cybersyn, the network was a centerpiece of Allende’s effort to modernize the Chilean economy. It was developed in parallel with the American networks that would become the internet, at a moment in time in which President Nixon was trying to undermine the Chilean economy and overthrow Allende, the first democratically elected Marxist leader in Latin America.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Roblox: The children’s game with a sex problem. “A naked man, wearing just a dog collar and a lead, is led across the floor by a woman in a bondage outfit. Two strippers dance next to a bar. A group has gathered around a couple openly having sex, watching and occasionally commenting. One man is wearing a Nazi uniform. This isn’t happening in the real world, it’s taking place on a children’s gaming platform.”

CNN: Google’s advertising tech targeted in European publishers’ complaint. “Google (GOOG) on Friday was targeted in an antitrust complaint by the European Publishers Council over its digital advertising business, potentially strengthening EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager’s investigation into the issue.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Fox 17: New Mexico to house federal database on wildfire research and information. “Throughout the last few years, we’ve witnessed firsthand the devastation that wildfires can do in this country. However, when the fires aren’t active, there are people on the ground researching and studying ways to restore our forests, but also prevent devastation. Now, that information will be shared through a federal database based in New Mexico.”

Yale Insights: The Digital Tool That Helps Robert Shiller Understand the Past. “We asked the Nobel Prize-winning Yale economist to reflect on an unexpected source of research information and inspiration. He writes that Google Ngram Viewer can provide important insights about how people saw economic events as they unfolded.”

New York University: NYU team releases open-source database from Woven Planet to help visually impaired pedestrians navigate cities. “A new dataset released by a New York University Tandon School of Engineering research team and Woven Planet Holdings, Inc., a Toyota subsidiary dedicated to building the safest mobility in the world, promises to help visually impaired pedestrians and autonomous vehicles (AVs) alike better navigate complex urban settings.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

CNET: Three new Frank Lloyd Wright houses built for the internet. “Three houses Frank Lloyd Wright designed but never built have been brought to digital life. The home contractor review site Angi had the houses modeled, and it published the results online in January, as reported by Wallpaper Magazine on Wednesday.” Good afternoon, Internet…

February 16, 2022 at 01:47AM
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