New researches

Thursday, April 7, 2022

Science Near Me, Land Use Finance Impact Hub, Bosnian War, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, April 7, 2022

Science Near Me, Land Use Finance Impact Hub, Bosnian War, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, April 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

From January, but too good to ignore. Discovery Magazine: Introducing Science Near Me, Your Place to Find Accessible, Engaging Science Experiences. “Together, we’re going to explore all the ways people around the U.S. can find and get involved with science. On this blog, and the new Science Near Me companion website (currently in beta), you’ll find opportunities to engage with science content, activities, events and programs in your community, whether that’s visiting a new exhibit at your local museum, planning a night out with friends at an Astronomy on Tap event, or participating in a national science policy forum.”

UN Environment Programme: UNEP Launches New Sustainable Land Use Finance Impact Directory. “The Land Use Finance Impact Hub and its Positive Impact Indicators Directory – launched today by UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Climate Finance Unit and the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) – has been developed with and for impact funds and sustainably focused financial institutions, and aims to support the rollout of effective industry frameworks to track the environmental and social impacts of land-use investments.”

Balkan Transitional Justice: BIRN Presents Database as Tool to Educate and Counter Revisionism. “[Balkan Investigative Reporting Network]’s new database of adjudicated facts on the 1992-5 war in Bosnia is designed as an educational tool that will also counter revisionist narratives and genocide denial.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google is adding a privacy settings walkthrough to Chrome. “Google is adding a new ‘step-by-step guided tour’ of privacy and security settings in Chrome to sift through the many available controls, the company announced Wednesday. The new guide will include separate pages about some settings, each containing descriptions of what happens when a feature is turned on.”

Globe Newswire: Indigenous Watchdog launches new website (PRESS RELEASE). “The site has expanded considerably beyond the Truth and Reconciliation 94 Calls to Action with new content in Suicide Prevention, Drinking Water Advisories, Housing, Food Insecurity, Environment, Urban Commitments to Reconciliation and Treaties and Land Claims. Add the 1500+ embedded links to primary source data and Indigenous Watchdog delivers a one-stop site with a wealth of information: white papers, articles, reports, statistics, budgets, press releases, media reports – including detailed recommendations and solutions.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

TechCrunch: Twitter is wiping embeds of deleted tweets from the web. “Previously, a deleted tweet embedded in a web page would still display the text content of a tweet. Now that text is gone, showing only a blank box. Twitter is altering web pages with deleted embedded tweets by hiding the text with JavaScript — a choice that has many developers and open web advocates up in arms.”

San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco gardeners use TikTok to share unconventional planting methods. “Call them guerrilla gardeners, ‘petal-punks’ or TikTok horticulturists. Phoenix and Shalaco McGee of SF in Bloom are sowing native wildflower seeds in neglected plots of land and sharing their blooming adventures on social media. The San Francisco pair’s informational gardening videos and unconventional planting techniques have garnered more than 200,000 followers and 5 million likes on TikTok. The McGees take to San Francisco streets, spreading native, non-invasive wildflower seeds with pink, plastic guns and Parmesan cheese shakers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Elon Musk delayed filing a form and made $156 million . “Elon Musk was eleven days late in publicly declaring he had amassed a large stake in Twitter. That omission may have earned him $156 million, according to a half dozen legal and securities experts. That’s because of a 50-year-old law that requires investors notify the Securities and Exchange Commission when they surpass a 5 percent stake in a company. Musk reached that benchmark on March 14, according to the filings. But he only made his public disclosure on Monday.”

Law.com: 5th Circuit Raises Bar for Introducing Historical Snapshots of Websites Into Evidence | National Law Journal. “In Weinhoffer v. Davie Shoring, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit addressed the novel issue of when district courts can properly take judicial notice of contract terms evidenced only by a ‘snapshot’ of a web page from a web archive such as the Internet Archive’s ‘Wayback Machine.’ The case, decided in January, arose from an online auction conducted in connection with a bankruptcy liquidation proceeding.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Guardian: US zoo fears teen gorilla’s exposure to phones is behind anti-social behavior. “Amare, a 415-pound gorilla at Chicago’s Lincoln Park zoo, has been staring a little too frequently at the screens of cellphones from visitors who show him pictures and videos through the glass wall – including selfies, family photos, pet videos and even footage of Amare himself. He has apparently become so distracted as a result that last week, when another teenage gorilla rushed at him in a show of aggression, Amare did not appear to notice.”

Grist: The little-known open-source community behind the government’s new environmental justice tool. “In February, the White House published a beta version of its new environmental justice screening tool, a pivotal step toward achieving the administration’s climate and equity goals…. But this new screening tool is not only essential to environmental justice goals. It’s also a pioneering experiment in open governance. Since last May, the software development for the tool has been open source, meaning it was in the public domain — even while it was a work in progress.”

New York Times: Meet DALL-E, the A.I. That Draws Anything at Your Command. “At OpenAI, one of the world’s most ambitious artificial intelligence labs, researchers are building technology that lets you create digital images simply by describing what you want to see.” Good morning, Internet…

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April 7, 2022 at 05:28PM
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Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Refugees in British Columbia, Starlink Terminals, Elena Bunina, More: Ukraine Update, April 6, 2022

Refugees in British Columbia, Starlink Terminals, Elena Bunina, More: Ukraine Update, April 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Global News (Canada): New website to help Ukrainians in B.C.. “On the website, Ukrainians can access free services such as assistance in finding housing, signing up for health-care coverage, job postings, signing children up for school and learning about other community services. British Columbians can sign up to volunteer to house refugees, offer employment, or donate to the cause as well.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

USAID: USAID Safeguards Internet Access In Ukraine Through Public-private-partnership With SpaceX. “The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has delivered 5,000 Starlink Terminals to the Government of Ukraine through a public-private partnership with the American aerospace manufacturer, SpaceX. The Starlink satellite terminals will enable unlimited, unthrottled data connectivity from anywhere in Ukraine.”

Times of Israel: Report: Jewish CEO of ‘Russia’s Google’ leaves country for Israel over war. “Elena Bunina, a Russian-Jew who in recent years headed top Russian tech company Yandex, has stepped down as the firm’s CEO and has moved to Israel due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, according to media reports.”

Bloomberg: Twitter restricts Russian accounts, bars prisoner-of-war content. “Twitter Inc will stop amplifying Russian government accounts and ask other government-affiliated media to remove posts featuring prisoners of war, it said in a blog post on Tuesday (April 5) that cited international humanitarian law. It’s the latest example of how social media platforms are attempting to strike a balance that honours freedom of expression amid a flood of harrowing and often manipulative images and accounts being shared from the front line of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

Bleeping Computer: Intel shuts down all business operations in Russia. “US chipmaker Intel announced Tuesday night that it had suspended all business operations in Russia, joining tech other companies who pulled out of the country due to the invasion of Ukraine. Intel had already suspended all shipments to customers in Russia and Belarus last month after the US government issued sweeping sanctions that prevented the export of technology to the countries.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Coda Story: How to document war crimes in the digital age. “OSINT has been crucial for documenting atrocities in Syria and Yemen, but it has its limitations. In many cases, the person who shot a video either can’t be identified or can’t be found, so they can’t be called to testify in court. When videos are uploaded to social media, crucial metadata that often accompanies video files — like the time and precise geographical location where a video was shot — are either obfuscated or can’t be trusted, making those videos harder to authenticate. Anything that makes OSINT evidence easier to dispute can allow Russia to manipulate narratives in its favor.”

Vanity Fair: Russia Denied A Massacre. News Outlets Had Satellite Images To Prove They Did It.. “Using satellite imagery and eyewitness accounts, news outlets are rebutting Russia’s claims that the civilian massacre in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and other recently liberated areas around Kyiv, happened after Russian forces had already left the towns. More than 400 civilian bodies have been discovered since Russian troops withdrew from the area, according to Ukrainian officials—atrocities Moscow has refused to take responsibility for.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

openDemocracy: Belarus is locking up Wikipedia editors over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Over the past month, the authorities have detained two Wikipedia editors in the country. The reason for their arrest appears to be editing articles about the Russian invasion, as well as editing articles about Lukashenka and Belarusian opposition politicians. Mediazona, a media outlet that focuses on the law and justice system in Belarus, Russia and Central Asia, has reported on the two editors, who made 300,000 edits between them and are now behind bars for their voluntary work.”

Associated Press: US charges Russian oligarch, dismantles cybercrime operation. “The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it had charged a Russian oligarch with sanctions violations and that officials have dismantled a cybercrime operation controlled by a Russian military intelligence agency.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Atlantic: Who’s Behind #IStandWithPutin?. “The fact that we don’t see information warfare doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, and it doesn’t mean we’ve won. It might just mean that ours is not the battleground on which it’s being fought.”

New York Times: Hackers’ Fake Claims of Ukrainian Surrender Aren’t Fooling Anyone. So What’s Their Goal?. “Since Russia’s invasion began in late February, hackers have repeatedly broken into the social media accounts and broadcasting systems of trusted information sources in Ukraine, like government officials and prominent media outlets. They used their access to spread false messages that Ukraine was surrendering, sometimes using fake videos to bolster their claims. And while there is no evidence that the misinformation campaign has had any discernible effect on the conflict, experts say the hackers’ intentions might not be to actually trick anyone.”

ADL: Unmasking ‘Clandestine,’ the Figure Behind the Viral “Ukrainian Biolab” Conspiracy Theory. “The ADL Center on Extremism has, with a high degree of confidence, identified ‘Clandestine,’ the man behind the viral biolab conspiracy theory, as Jacob Creech, a self-described former restaurant manager and Army National Guard veteran living in rural Virginia. The discovery highlights how a fringe QAnon figure, harnessing the power of social media, sparked a viral conspiracy theory that – in just a few weeks – made its way from QAnon to the world stage, amplified by Tucker Carlson, white supremacists Nick Fuentes and Vincent James, members of the Proud Boys, and Steve Bannon – and even the Kremlin.”

April 7, 2022 at 02:25AM
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Digital Arabic Lexicon, TikTok, Google Maps, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 6, 2022

Digital Arabic Lexicon, TikTok, Google Maps, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Bahrain News Agency: Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre launches Digital Arabic Lexicon Website . “The website features the most common Arabic expressions as per digital Arabic blogs, boasting an innovative design including advanced features and illustrations that go with each term, audio features to learn correct pronunciations, and other options to clarify ideas and provide detailed explanations for non-Arabic speakers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Biden group launches TikTok account to boost the president’s agenda. “The Biden-affiliated nonprofit group Building Back Together plans to launch its own TikTok account on Wednesday as part of the group’s latest effort to engage young people with the president’s agenda ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.”

Tom’s Guide: Google Maps is about to get even better — especially if you use iPhone. “Nothing is ever final at Google Maps, and no matter how many new features or improvements come to the app there are always more around the corner. A few more upgrades are on the way, including new mobile design and iOS-exclusive features for those of you rocking an Apple phone.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Guardian: From grief to paw prints, people share Ireland census ‘time capsule’ messages. “Some were funny, some were angry, some were utterly heartbreaking and all were written in the same blank space of Ireland’s census form, a ‘time capsule’ section. In what Ireland’s Central Statistics Office says is a world first, the official census left a blank space for people to leave messages for future generations. The voluntary section of the 27-page form is to be made public in 100 years but many people have shared their messages on social media.”

Travel+Leisure: This Airline Made for Social Media Influencers Is Taking Creators to Coachella — How to Snag a Ticket. “It’s all about the likes for this new airline, which is designed to fly social media influencers to the most Instagram-friendly events throughout the country. Willa Air — which was launched by Willa, a payment platform for freelancers — is offering influencers free tickets on a private jet along with enviable perks for those who apply. And its inaugural flight is to — appropriately — Coachella.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

SecurityWeek: Google Doubles Rewards for Nest and Fitbit Vulnerabilities. “Google on Tuesday announced that security researchers submitting eligible Google Nest and Fitbit vulnerability reports through its bug bounty program can now receive double the usual bounty payouts.”

Reuters: German consumer group files legal complaint against Google over cookie banners. “A German consumer office has submitted a legal complaint against Google over its use of cookie banners, which the office argues are designed in a way that violates data protection rules.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Bloomberg: Google Paper Cites Research at Center of Its Staff Firestorm. “Google in 2020 and 2021 dismissed the two co-heads of its artificial intelligence ethics team in a dispute over research that was critical of the company’s work. Now, Google Research has published another paper on the same topic that cites the original work that led to the removal of the two leaders, Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell.”

EFF: Google Fights Dragnet Warrant for Users’ Search Histories Overseas While Continuing to Give Data to Police in the U.S.. “Keyword search orders are becoming increasingly common in the U.S.—but Google seemingly hasn’t fought nearly as hard to protect the privacy of its U.S. users. We aren’t aware of any cases in which Google has pushed back against keyword search warrants in the U.S. In fact, we have no idea how many keyword warrants Google receives or how it responds to them at all, because Google has kept that information entirely secret.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 7, 2022 at 12:41AM
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ASPCA History, Museum of Popular Culture, Jonathan Daniels, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, April 6, 2022

ASPCA History, Museum of Popular Culture, Jonathan Daniels, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, April 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

PR Newswire: ASPCA Collaborates with the NC State University Libraries to Digitize Over 150,000 Pages of Historical Animal Welfare Archival Material (PRESS RELEASE). “Today, the ASPCA® (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®) and the NC State University Libraries announced the completion of a three-year, grant-funded project to digitize the ASPCA Historical Archive – a curated collection of more than 150,000 pages of archival material, including annual reports, journals, scrapbooks, photos, and publications that provide a timeline of the work and influence of the ASPCA since its founding on April 10, 1866.”

MyNorthwest: MoPOP is ‘reflecting popular culture right now,’ and it’s doing it online. “Seattle Center’s Museum of Popular Culture’s (MoPOP) curatorial director Jacob McMurray is spearheading a project to move the beloved museum’s contents into an accessible online format.”

Keene Sentinel: Newly digitized Daniels archive helps local civil rights hero’s legacy live on. “Civil rights martyr Jonathan Daniels’ name is enshrined in several institutions in Keene, his 1939 birthplace, but only recently have local archivists digitized materials associated with his life — and it’s thanks in part to state moose license plates….Daniels was murdered by a police officer in small-town Hayneville, Ala., on Aug. 20, 1965, while protecting a young Black civil rights activist, Ruby Sales.”

Anash: New App To Release Thousands Of The Rebbe’s English Letters. “On the new state-of-the-art app, users will be able to view over 5,000 letters addressing every topic imaginable. 2,000 of them are being published on the app for the first time. The app is slated to launch in the beginning of next week, bringing this inaccessible part of the Rebbe’s Torah to thousands in time for the Rebbe’s 120th birthday.” This is one of those items that came with a minimum of context and I couldn’t find more extensive information. I’m 99% sure this app covers the letters of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and if I’m in error I sincerely apologize in advance.

Salt Lake Tribune: New database gives widest look ever at LDS Church landholdings. See what it owns and where.. “From thousands of acres of farmlands to thousands of places of worship and from shiny commercial enclaves in urban centers to flowing fields in swelling suburbs, a newly released list shows The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owns U.S. properties valued at nearly $16 billion and ranks the Utah-based faith among the nation’s top private landholders.”

EVENTS

Georgia Tech Libraries: Revisiting and Archiving Civil Rights and Atlanta in the 1960s: Introducing the Mayor Ivan Allen Digital Archive. “This one-day symposium will formally introduce the Mayor Ivan Allen Digital Archive, while at the same time exploring the intersection of archives, Atlanta history, and art. The sessions will showcase how communities are preserving their experiences in ways that encourage us to creatively think about the future of archives.” This event does not seem to have a virtual component; I note it here because of the launch of the digital archive.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Twitter is adding an edit button. “It’s a feature that Twitter users have been requesting for so long that it’s become a meme, but now the mythical ‘edit button’ is actually becoming a reality. Twitter has announced that it’s working to allow users to edit their tweets after posting them.”

USEFUL STUFF

Austin American-Statesman: History is a click away: The best digital tools for Texas history buffs. “Although I dearly love a good library or archive — and goodness knows I cherish taking road trips to talk to historical witnesses or experts in person — some of the sharpest tools for Texas history research are as close as your favorite digital device. Today’s column is devoted to some of the most reliable digital resources.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WRBL: Rosalynn Carter Institute leads way to the first caregiver database. “The Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers is one step closer to leading the way as the nation’s first caregiver database. The institute is located in Americus, Georgia and hopes its creation will help compile information to better know, understand, and serve caregivers in Georgia and all across the country.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Block confirms Cash App breach after former employee accessed US customer data. “The information in the reports included users’ full names and brokerage account numbers, and for some customers the accessed data also included brokerage portfolio value, brokerage portfolio holdings, and stock trading activity for one trading day. The San Francisco-based company declined to say how many Cash App customers were impacted by the breach but said it’s contacting approximately 8.2 million current and former customers about the incident.”

The Guardian: Victim’s iPhone hacked by Pegasus spyware weeks after Apple sued NSO. “New evidence has revealed that an Apple iPhone was successfully hacked by a government user of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware in December, weeks after the technology giant sued the Israeli company in a US court and called for it to be banned from ‘harming individuals’ using Apple products.”

Bleeping Computer: Germany takes down Hydra, world’s largest darknet market. “The servers of Hydra Market, the most prominent Russian darknet platform for selling drugs and money laundering, have been seized by the German police. The police were also able to seize 543 bitcoins from the profits of Hydra, which are currently worth a little over $25 million.” Good morning, Internet…

April 6, 2022 at 05:33PM
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Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Kelp Watch, Hospital Cost Transparency, Flickr’s Change of Heart, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 5, 2022

Kelp Watch, Hospital Cost Transparency, Flickr’s Change of Heart, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Nature Conservancy: World’s Largest Dynamic Kelp Map Launched, Uncovering Unprecedented Declines in Key Areas of California. “A groundbreaking open-source web tool, Kelpwatch.org harnesses the power of machine learning and cutting-edge remote sensing science to analyze nearly 40 years of Landsat satellite data and interactively display kelp forest canopy. Kelpwatch.org users can select a region, time frame and seasons of interest to animate the changes in kelp canopy over time and freely download data.”

PR Newswire: Understanding Hospital Costs– New Tool Makes Data More Transparent and Accessible (PRESS RELEASE). “The [Hospital Cost Tool] identifies different cost measures including hospital revenue, cost to charge ratios, and profitability across more than 4,600 hospitals nationwide from 2011 through 2019. It is interactive, allowing users to examine data for an individual hospital or specific health system, by state or users can compare data across hospitals and states. The tool is based on NASHP’s Hospital Cost Calculator that uses Medicare Cost Report data annually submitted to the federal government by hospitals. Data for 2020 will be added to the tool after more hospitals have completed their reports for that year.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Input: Flickr deleted, and then undeleted, 5 million archival images. “After a Twitter thread by Danish designer Jonas Lönborg brought attention to the heartbreaking erasure, Flickr CEO Don MacAskill responded that Flickr’s recommendation for the Internet Archive to delete the account had been ‘a mistake.’ He explained that the 5 million book images ‘were drowning out the rest of the Commons members’ and announced a new solution: Flickr will restore the account but move it out of the Commons.”

CNBC: Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors. “Elon Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors after taking a 9.2% stake in the social media company, according to a release filed with the SEC.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Fashionista: The Internet’s Favorite Fashion Archivist Has Aspirations Beyond the Feed. “The popularity of archival accounts reflects a really ‘zeitgeisty’ moment in fashion where vintage is king and spotting a reference is a form of cultural currency. Accounts like [Kim] Russell’s have turned archives into open access platforms that allow fans to engage with images or garments that previously required a more rigorous search to accurately ID a piece. Her work is a starting point for anyone who wants to explore vintage, but still leaves room for the audience to engage with the content on their terms.”

CNET: How Social Media Became a Force for Digital Activism. “Social media has gained a reputation over the years for misinformation and distrust, but it’s also an important tool for activists and advocacy groups. With its nonstop nature and widespread reach, social media isn’t something they could ignore anyway. Instead, many have embraced it and rethought their strategy around recruiting and getting their message out.”

Reuters: India blocks 22 YouTube news channels citing national security. “India’s government on Tuesday said it has banned 22 YouTube channels, including four of Pakistani origin, for disinformation on subjects concerning national security and public order, the latest such federal crackdown in the country. The country’s Ministry of Information & Broadcasting said the blocked YouTube channels had a combined total of 2.6 billion viewers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Techdirt: Why Moderating Content Actually Does More To Support The Principles Of Free Speech. “Lawyer Akiva Cohen recently had a really worthwhile thread that explains why the entire concept of a ‘philosophical commitment to free speech’ is somewhat meaningless if you think it’s distinct from government consequence. The key point that he makes is that once you separate the ‘principles’ or the ‘philosophy’ of free speech from legal consequences, you’re simply down to debating competing speech and associations.”

Washington Post: The FBI is spending millions on social media tracking software. “Social media users seemed to foreshadow the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and the FBI apparently missed it. Now, the FBI is doubling down on tracking social media posts, spending millions of dollars on thousands of licenses to powerful social media monitoring technology that privacy and civil liberties advocates say raise serious concerns.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Creative Commons: CC publishes policy paper titled Towards Better Sharing of Cultural Heritage — An Agenda for Copyright Reform. “Over the past few months, members of the Creative Commons (CC) Copyright Platform along with CC friends from around the world have worked together to develop a policy paper addressing the key high-level policy issues affecting access and sharing of cultural heritage, notably by galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs). In this blog post, we provide some background on the paper and share a few highlights.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 6, 2022 at 02:42AM
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Endangered Cultural Heritage, NFT Fundraising, Spanish-Language Disinformation, More: Ukraine Update, April 5, 2022

Endangered Cultural Heritage, NFT Fundraising, Spanish-Language Disinformation, More: Ukraine Update, April 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bloomberg: Ukraine Raises $600,000 Through Museum NFT Sales to Help Rebuild. “Ukrainian MetaHistory NFT-Museum sold 1,282 artworks on its first day of sales, raising 190 Ether cryptocurrency tokens for the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, the museum said in an email. The NFTs are meant to document the war through artwork that features rubble and destruction, Ukrainian soldiers, fires burning and the Ukrainian flag.”

Coda Story: Russians face grim options on social media. “Evgenny Domozhiroff, an opposition politician in Vologda, Russia, had not been blocked on VKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook, during the 11 years he conducted anti-corruption investigations. Nor had he been shut down in a decade of posting outspoken criticism of Vladimir Putin and local officials. But on March 26, Domozhifoff was blocked. He wasn’t surprised.”

Ars Technica: World of Tanks maker closes studios in Russia, Belarus. “Wargaming, the developer behind the massively popular military MMO World of Tanks and its spin-offs, has decided to close its offices in Russia and Belarus amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: A lab in rural Virginia is racing to preserve Ukraine’s cultural heritage. “Housed in the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville, the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab is the museum world’s version of a war room: a network of computers, satellite feeds and phones that represents one of the newest tools being employed to protect national treasures threatened by natural disasters or geopolitical events. Created last year in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution Cultural Rescue Initiative — a world leader in this field — the lab is compiling imagery of Ukraine’s cultural sites to help track attacks on them.”

NBC News: Russia disinformation on Ukraine spreads on Spanish-speaking social media. “As that war rages, Russia is launching falsehoods into the feeds of Spanish-speaking social media users in nations that already have long records of distrusting the U.S. The aim is to gain support in those countries for the Kremlin’s war and stoke opposition against America’s response.”

Los Angeles: Column: Gen X TikTok is recycling the culture of the late Cold War, and what’s old is new again. “As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine passed the month mark, and reports emerge that Russia’s nuclear forces have been placed on high alert, the culture of the late Cold War has made a swinging comeback. Think of it as Cultural Cold War 2.0, with Russia as stand-in for the former Soviet Union.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: UK links “malign cyber activity” to 3 Russian intelligence services. “Britain attributed malign cyber activity to parts of three Russian intelligence services: the FSV, SVR and GRU, publishing a factsheet on Tuesday that set out what it said were organizational details of Russia’s cyber capabilities.”

The Times: Explicit photos sent to Ukrainian refugee women looking for shelter. “Ukrainian women seeking safety in the UK say they have been sent explicit images by men exploiting the Homes for Ukraine programme. Women who posted on Facebook groups set up to connect refugees with British households said they had also been verbally abused by men. They added that messages they had received from men on Facebook’s Messenger app had deterred them from coming to Britain.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ukrainian Institute: Call to suspend cultural cooperation with Russia and international presentation of Russian culture. “The Ukrainian Institute reiterates its call to international and Ukrainian cultural institutions and individual professionals, academic community, and civil society organisations to suspend any cooperation with Russia. We consider this a necessary step to push back the aggressor that launched a violent and unjustified invasion against Ukraine, a sovereign and peaceful European country, and has long instrumentalised culture and soft power for political propaganda and manipulation of public opinion.”

The Conversation: Guns, tanks and Twitter: how Russia and Ukraine are using social media as the war drags on . “Information warfare is no longer an additional arm of strategy, but a parallel component of military campaigns. The rise of social media has made it easier than ever before to see how states use mass communication as a weapon.”

The Conversation: Cyberattacks have yet to play a significant role in Russia’s battlefield operations in Ukraine – cyberwarfare experts explain the likely reasons. “As the war has evolved, it’s clear that analysts on both sides of the debate got it wrong. Cyber operations did not replace the military invasion, and as far as we can tell, the Russian government has not yet used cyber operations as an integral part of its military campaign. We are political scientists who study the role of cybersecurity and information in international conflict. Our research shows that the reason pundits on both sides of the argument got it wrong is because they failed to consider that cyber and military operations serve different political objectives.”

Bellingcat: Russia’s Bucha “Facts” Versus the Evidence. “Initial reports from human rights organisations on the actions of Russian forces have detailed violence targeting civilians. Interviews with local residents, meanwhile, have accused Russian troops of carrying out summary executions of unarmed men over suspicions they had fought for Ukrainian armed forces in the Donbas in 2014, or even ‘simply for having a tattoo of Ukraine’s national emblem’. Russian officials have pushed back against these claims.”

April 5, 2022 at 07:04PM
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ReproZip-Web, Vermont Diaries, RealityScan, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, April 5, 2022

ReproZip-Web, Vermont Diaries, RealityScan, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, April 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Grand Valley Lanthorn: GV alum and current NYU librarian working to preserve the dynamic web. “Grand Valley State University alum and current New York University Librarian for Journalism, Media, Culture and Communication, Katy Boss, is working with a team dedicated to preserving the dynamic web. Boss, along with co-principal investigator Vicky Rampin and lead developers Remi Rampin and Ilya Kreymer, is developing a tool called ReproZip-Web that preserves dynamic web apps and websites. ReproZip-Web is an open-source program that bundles together all the files necessary to run dynamic web apps and saves them as a downloadable .rpz file.”

University of Vermont Libraries: Special Collections Launches a New Digital Collection. “Silver Special Collections is pleased to announce the launch of our latest digital collection, Diaries. The collection provides access to more than thirty digitized and transcribed Vermont diaries from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, with three-fourths of the diaries authored by women.”

9to5 Mac: ‘RealityScan’ is a new app from Epic Games that uses the iPhone camera to create 3D models. “Epic Games announced on Monday a new app called ‘RealityScan,’ which will let anyone use the iPhone camera to scan objects and turn them into high-fidelity 3D models. The app was developed using technologies from Capturing Reality, a company specializing in photogrammetry that was acquired by Epic in 2021.” The app is free but is currently in a limited iOS beta.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Podnews: Exclusive: YouTube’s plans for podcasting. “Despite no announcement from YouTube’s director of podcasting, Kai Chuk, at Podcast Movement Evolutions last week, Podnews has been sent an 84-page presentation produced by YouTube, intended for podcast publishers. In it, three slides marked ‘Looking Ahead’ allow us a view into what YouTube is planning…”

Search Engine Journal: Google Introduces Retail Search For Ecommerce Sites. “A new solution for ecommerce sites provides Google-quality search and recommendations on retailers’ digital properties. Google Cloud has announced the release of Retail Search, a tool designed to give retailers the capabilities of Google’s search engine on their own domains.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: 6 Free Ways to Practice Sign Language Online . “Although studying ASL online cannot replicate the nuanced experience of in-person communication, curious students who are willing to invest time do not need to pay money for beginner lessons. All of the learning options on our list are either completely free or offer a generous amount of content in front of their paywalls.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Gathering Watch-World Heritage in One URL. “Imagine if the world’s horological archives — and their cache of pamphlets, drawings, reports, photographs, letters and other primary sources — were accessible to anyone with an internet connection. To make that possible, the universe of analog ephemera documenting the history of watchmaking would need to be digitized and organized into a Big Data repository, an effort almost too big to contemplate. And yet, over the past two years, a team of horological specialists has begun to do just that, creating what it calls the Watch Library.”

Techdirt: Game Jam Winner Spotlight: Mr. Top Hat Doesn’t Give A Damn!. “There were quite a few entries this year that did ambitious things with their visuals — always a bold challenge to undertake in a 30-day game jam. That’s just not enough time to make something graphically polished, but it’s plenty of time to do something graphically creative, and that’s just what Josh from Dirtbug Games did with Mr. Top Hat Doesn’t Give A Damn! The game mines what is increasingly one of the richest veins of visual assets and inspiration that can be found amidst the material entering the public domain right now: American animation.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: Hackers breached Mailchimp to phish cryptocurrency wallets. “Mailchimp, the veteran email marketing platform, has confirmed that hackers used an internal tool to steal data from more than 100 of its clients — with the data being used to mount phishing attacks on the users of cryptocurrency services. The breach was confirmed to the press by Mailchimp on Monday, but it had come to light over the weekend when users of the Trezor hardware cryptocurrency wallet reported being targeted by sophisticated phishing emails.”

CNET: State Department Launches New Cybersecurity Bureau. “The State Department on Monday launched a new cybersecurity bureau in an effort to make digital security a part of US foreign policy at a time when authoritarian regimes in Russia and China are increasingly trying to influence the internet.”

The Guardian: Stolen Darwin journals returned to Cambridge University library. “Two Charles Darwin manuscripts that were reported as stolen from Cambridge University library have been anonymously returned in a pink gift bag, with a typed note on an envelope wishing a happy Easter to the librarian. The items were found to be missing in 2001, but at the time staff believed they may have been misshelved.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Hack A Day: Monitor Space Weather And The Atmosphere With Your Cellphone!. “Above our heads, the atmosphere is a complex and unpredictable soup of gasses and charged particles subject to the influence of whatever the Sun throws at it. Attempting to understand it is not for the faint-hearted, so it has for centuries been the object of considerable research. A new project from the European Space Agency and ETH Zurich gives the general public the chance to participate in that research in a small way, by crowdsourcing atmospheric data gathering to a mobile phone app.” Good morning, Internet…

April 5, 2022 at 05:25PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/LzQROEP