New researches

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Laos Bombings, Pepperdine Libraries, UFO Hearings, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 17, 2022

Laos Bombings, Pepperdine Libraries, UFO Hearings, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NBC News: Preserving the history of America’s ‘secret war’ in Laos. “A new initiative is aimed at raising awareness about a dark and often forgotten chapter of U.S. history: the secret bombing of Laos during the Vietnam War. Nearly half a century later, most Americans — and even many young Laotian Americans — know little about the clandestine, nine-year, CIA-led military campaign informally called the ‘secret war.’…The mission of the Legacies Library, a project of the Washington, D.C.-based group Legacies of War, is to keep the secret war from being lost to time.”

Pepperdine University: Pepperdine Libraries Adds Leigh Wiener and Frederick R. Weisman Museum Collections to Digital Collections. “Pepperdine Libraries has announced the addition of two new digital collections to its growing list of online resources. Scholars worldwide can now easily access photos from influential twentieth-century photographer Leigh Wiener and a selection of digitized artworks previously displayed at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Congress’ First Public Hearing on UFOs in 50 years Is Tuesday: How to Watch. “Few things capture the public imagination quite like UFOs and sci-fi suggestions that aliens might be vacationing on our humble little planet. And on Tuesday, May 17, the US House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee plans to shed some light on UFOs — more formally known as unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP — with an open hearing.”

Search Engine Journal: Edge Browser Will AI Improve All Web Images. “Microsoft Bing announced a new AI technology that will bring 4K image experience to websites through Microsoft Edge, automatically enhancing website images. The technology, called Turing Image Super-Resolution, makes images display at a high resolution, no matter how poor the original image is.”

Digital Trends: A new Twitter feature could separate the lurkers from the super-users. “According to a screenshot tweeted on Thursday by Jane Manchun Wong, Twitter has yet another in-progress feature — this time, it’s a tiny bit of text located just under the Tweets tab on a user’s profile page. But this text tells everyone something you may not want others to know, which is how often you tweet.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 7 of the Best RSS Readers for Windows. “While RSS readers might not be as popular as they once were, they’re still invaluable tools for pulling together all the various content you like to read from numerous sources into a single feed. As you may expect, RSS readers don’t all work the same (find out what is RSS here). That’s why you have to compare and find the best RSS reader for Windows for your needs.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The National Archives (UK): The National Archives and Arts Council England embark on a new three-year collaboration. “The National Archives and Arts Council England are pleased to announce that they have signed a collaboration agreement until 2024, building on a long history of mutual support. Archives, libraries and museums are closely connected in their work and our two organisations have many shared values and goals.”

WA Today: The Google Maps route that leads WA tourists into the forest. “If you’re planning to visit the Valley of Giants treetop walk in Western Australia’s Great Southern region, your intention is likely to walk atop the forest, not end up in your humble sedan accidentally off-roading through it. But for the 140,000 people who travel to the tourist attraction each year, many are finding their satellite navigation is leading them astray.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBC: Google warns online news bill could make it subsidize biased news outlets. “Google is warning that the federal government’s online news bill could force it to subsidize non-authoritative or biased news sources, such as the Russian state-sponsored news agency Sputnik. But the organization representing Canada’s news media industry says the wording of the bill is tight and specifically excludes outlets that promote the interests of an organization.”

Lawfare Blog: How to Fight Foreign Hackers With Civil Litigation. “Since 2010, Microsoft alone has won court orders to seize command and control (C2) servers and sinkhole malicious traffic in 24 cases, seizing a total of more than 16,000 malicious domains. Mechanically, these cases work a lot like the Justice Department’s botnet takedowns: Both entities compile evidence that particular domains are being used to control botnets and use that evidence to obtain court orders requiring U.S.-based domain registries to redirect those domains to servers controlled by the entity that sought the order, among other possible court-authorized remedies.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

City Journal: Big Data Can Save Kids. “The Carnegie Mellon researchers’ work raises an interesting question about algorithms: Why would we want to judge their success on any metric besides accuracy? Isn’t it the goal of predictive analytics to give us a better sense, in this case, of which kids are most at risk, rather than which decisions will make people feel better about racial outcomes? This isn’t to argue that we should make decisions based on algorithms alone.”

GIM International: Creating a 3D Model of the Famous Budapest Chain Bridge. “Two Hungarian companies designed a three-step data collection workflow to overcome the challenges in this urban surveying project, which included the use of UAVs and remote-controlled boats for Lidar and photogrammetry data. The result: a digital 3D BIM-compatible model of Budapest’s iconic bridge over the River Danube to assist in preparations for restoration and renovation work.” Good morning, Internet…

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May 17, 2022 at 05:31PM
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Monday, May 16, 2022

Portuguese Architecture, Open Maps for Europe, Digital Storytelling, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 16, 2022

Portuguese Architecture, Open Maps for Europe, Digital Storytelling, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 16, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

e-flux Architecture: The Digital Building: Casa da Arquitectura. “Portuguese Centre for Architecture is delighted to announce the launch of the Digital Building on May 13, in a presentation event that will be broadcast online…. The Digital Building is a set of three online platforms that will make available, free of charge and in a bilingual version—Portuguese and English—progressive access to scanned materials from the collections and estates of architects such as Eduardo Souto de Moura, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, João Luís Carrilho da Graça and Lucio Costa, among many others.”

From late September but I missed it. GIM International: Open Maps For Europe Releases First Datasets. “Users can now access the first free-to-use maps via the Open Maps For Europe online gateway. Four open datasets created using official national map, geospatial and land information from members of EuroGeographics are included in this first release.”

EVENTS

Europenana Pro: Get inspired by examples of digital storytelling in action. “This month, Europeana and the Heritage Lab are running the digital storytelling festival, encouraging people to tell stories with digital cultural heritage. Members of the Europeana Communicators Community Steering Group share examples of the stories told online and in digital formats that excite them – and can inspire you!”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Turn Any Document Into a PDF . “PDFs remain ubiquitous and straightforward to use, and it’s not difficult to generate them from just about any app without expensive tools or complicated processes. If you want or need to deal in PDFs, follow the steps below to see what your options are, depending on the files and platforms you’re working with.”

Digital Inspiration: How to Auto-Download Podcasts to Google Drive with Google Sheets. “This tutorial describes how you can use Google Sheets to build your own podcast manager. You can specify a list of your favorite podcast shows in Google Sheets and it will automatically download new episodes to your Google Drive in neatly organized folders. The setup is very simple, the app is completely open-source and you need no programming language.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

BuzzFeed News: BYU’s “Black Menaces” Are Quizzing Fellow Students About Their Problematic Opinions. “A group of TikTok creators at Brigham Young University, a predominantly Mormon college, call themselves the Black Menaces — even if those watching simply see them as doing god’s work. In one of their first videos, Rachel Weaver, who is Black, asks a white BYU student if he believes that God approved the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints banning Black people from joining the priesthood until 1978.”

Irish Times: Sinn Féin’s targeting of voters through social media has paid off. “In a campaign dubbed safe and lacklustre by many commentators, Sinn Féin’s targeting of younger and disconnected voters through videos on platforms such as TikTok – where it has 80,000 followers alone – Instagram and Facebook has been linked in part to its historic win.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: After Buffalo Shooting Video Spreads, Social Platforms Face Questions. “Mass shootings — and live broadcasts — raise questions about the role and responsibility of social media sites in allowing violent and hateful content to proliferate. Many of the gunmen in the shootings have written that they developed their racist and antisemitic beliefs trawling online forums like Reddit and 4chan, and were spurred on by watching other shooters stream their attacks live.”

CNN: Dissection by TikTok: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial posts are making accidental influencers out of some, targets out of others. “Sophie Doggett, whose TikTok was previously populated by videos on everyday things such as herself or her pets, posted to her TikTok account on April 25 a clip of Heard’s lawyer asking a question of a witness and then immediately objecting to the response. It is one of many moments in the trial that has been seized upon by people like Doggett, as clips of testimony and references to the case have pervaded TikTok in a way that no trial has before…. Doggett, who paired the clip to playful music, said she gained 30,000 followers seemingly overnight from the post which has, to date, been viewed more than 5 million times.”

JD Supra: UK Considers How to Tackle Trend of Social Media Influencers Promoting Counterfeit Products. “The United Kingdom’s intellectual property laws provide to rights owners important protections, which encourage creativity and drives the free market economy. However, changing attitudes around counterfeits, the growth of the digital economy, and the continued influence of social media have culminated in ever-increasing violations of such rights, potentially resulting in direct harm to the market, stalled development, and the undermining of public welfare. More recently, influencers have come under scrutiny for facilitating trade in counterfeit products.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 17, 2022 at 01:02AM
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Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map, Children in Pro-War Demonstrations, Digital Cultural Property, More: Ukraine Update, May 16, 2022

Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map, Children in Pro-War Demonstrations, Digital Cultural Property, More: Ukraine Update, May 16, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Centre for Information Resilience: Eyes on Russia: Documenting conflict and disinformation in the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. “The Centre for Information Resilience’s Eyes on Russia project has operated since January 2022 with one simple goal: provide timely and reliable information to the world. The CIR team, assisted by the wider open source community, created and now runs the Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map. The map serves as an archive of verified information that can be used by justice, accountability and advocacy groups. It is the heart of the project.”

Radio Free Europe: ‘The Future Of The Country’: Russian Activist Creates Database Of Schools That Use Children In Pro-War Demonstrations. “The Telegram channel, Oni Za Voinu! (They Are For The War!), is the brainchild of 36-year-old Dmitry Tsibiryov, a former coordinator for imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny from the Saratov region, on the Volga River. Tsibiryov left Russia in 2021, shortly after the organizations connected with Navalny were banned as ‘extremist’ and law enforcement began opening criminal cases against people who had worked for them.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: Meta withdraws Ukraine war content policy guidance request. “Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc said on Wednesday it has withdrawn a request for policy guidance from its Oversight Board about the content moderation of posts related to Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine.”

Novaya Gazeta: Russian streaming service Yandex Music removes Mediazona’s ‘Fuck War’ podcast . “Russian streaming service Yandex Music has removed a podcast by independent news outlet Mediazona dubbed ‘Khuy Voyne’ (‘Fuck War’) on request of censorship agency Roskomnadzor.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Beacon: Irish extremist Telegram channels are sharing pro-Russia disinformation from sources directly linked to Kremlin security services. “No country has escaped Russia’s Information War, least of all the various shades of conspiracy theorists and far-right extremists. Having all but abandoned focusing on COVID-19 and the associated lockdowns, our own assortment of conspiracy theorists and extremists here in Ireland jumped on the war as their latest hobby horse. From the beginning of the war Russian disinformation was rife in their ecosphere. Nearly three months on, though, has that changed?”

National Defense: JUST IN: Marine Corps to Study Information Warfare in Ukraine. “As military operations continue in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Marine Corps officials say the conflict could be a useful case study for its modernization process. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger has asked leaders to analyze the use of drones and information warfare in the war in Ukraine to inform Force Design 2030 — the modernization strategy that was released in 2020, according to the deputy commandant for information.”

Ars Technica: How a French satellite operator helps keep Russia’s TV propaganda online. “More than a decade on, Russia once again finds itself trying to consolidate its information hegemony in the region. And, once again, Eutelsat is making it possible. But two experts on the satellite industry say it’s time that Ukraine’s allies step up and force Eutelsat to prioritize real reportage on the situation in Ukraine over Russia’s state-backed disinformation.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

UPI: House Dems urge social media platforms to keep evidence of war crimes in Ukraine. “High-ranking House Democrats have called on the four major social media companies of Meta, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok to preserve and archive content shared on their platforms that could be used as evidence of Russian war crimes committed against Ukraine.”

Lieber Institute West Point: Ukraine Symposium – The Ukraine Conflict And The Future Of Digital Cultural Property. “Various international instruments explicitly provide for the protection of cultural property in armed conflict. As conceived, the law was formulated to protect physical works from damage or destruction in war. Events in Ukraine, however, have demonstrated that armed conflict can endanger digital material as well. Some digital creations might even qualify as a digital form of cultural property—that is, digital cultural property. Given the growing prevalence of digital material and the threat posed to all forms of cultural works in war, how should States approach their legal obligation to protect digital cultural property in the event of armed conflict?”

BBC: Eurovision 2022: Russian vote hacking attempt foiled, police say. “Police in Italy, where this year’s contest was staged, said the Killnet hacker group targeted the first semi-final – in which Ukraine performed – as well as Saturday’s grand final. But they said their cybersecurity division blocked the attacks.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CBS News: Bellingcat: The online investigators tracking alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine. “Since 2014, Bellingcat investigations have exposed Russia’s undercover hit squads and tied Russian troops to atrocities. Suffice to say the Russian government denies everything you are about to see in this story. But that’s exactly where Bellingcat comes in. Bellingcat’s founder, Eliot Higgins, has created a method of mining online data and social media to put the lie to disinformation and unmask Vladimir Putin.”

The Conversation: Ukraine’s information war is winning hearts and minds in the West. “As a scholar of armed conflict and security, I also find a compelling explanation for why the West is so focused on Ukraine in the Ukrainian government’s ability to provide information about the war in a way that appeals to Western sensibilities.”

May 16, 2022 at 06:43PM
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Girmitiyas Boarding Passes, 35mm Film Trailers, WHO Mortality Database, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, May 16, 2022

Girmitiyas Boarding Passes, 35mm Film Trailers, WHO Mortality Database, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, May 16, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Fiji Village: Database launched to view boarding passes of Girmitiyas. “Descendants of Girmitiyas can now go online to look at the boarding passes of their ancestors who came to Fiji… Developer, Akhilesh Shiuram says they wanted to create a database that has records of passes of more than 60,000 Girmityas that came to Fiji in the 37 years of the indentured labour system.” Girmityas were indentured laborers who came to Fiji (and other places) from British India. You can learn more about them at https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/03/the-agreement-and-the-girmitiya/ . (There’s a Web site devoted to Girmityas and their history but it is inaccessible at this writing.)

The Film Stage: Watch: Hundreds of 35mm Film Trailers Will Induce Untold Nostalgia. “YouTube user Denis-Carl Robidoux has uploaded, across two playlists, more than a thousand videos—largely trailers spanning 2000-2007 studio films, but with the occasional trash-bin salvation or ad.”

World Health Organization: WHO launches new Mortality Database visualization portal. “Since its founding in 1948, WHO has required all Member States to report mortality data and collected this information in the WHO Mortality Database. Today, this unique database is the oldest and largest of its kind, containing data from over 120 countries and areas by cause, year, sex, and age. The portal is a significant step towards ensuring mortality data is used to drive impact in countries. Among other features, users can now filter and compare information by disease category or age group. They can also use interactive visualizations to view the data by number of deaths, death rates per 100 000, or as a percentage of total deaths.”

Dublin City University: Updated Placenames of Ireland website launched by Minister Jack Chambers . “The updated… website provides a searchable database of the official Irish-language versions of approximately 100,000 places throughout the country. The new Placenames Database of Ireland site features interactive maps, aerial photography and better ease of navigation for those looking to find out the origins of place names from Arklow to Zion Road.”

EVENTS

Library of Congress: Registration Now Open for IIPC’s 2022 Web Archiving Conference. “We are excited to announce that registration is now open for the 2022 Web Archiving Conference! The event, which the Library of Congress is hosting in partnership with the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) will be held virtually on May 23-25, 2022. The conference is free and open to everyone with an interest in web archiving, but space is limited so we recommend registering now to reserve your spot.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Washington Post: How Twitter lost the celebs. “Interviews with 17 people who represent, consult and tweet for celebrities show that Twitter is viewed as a high-risk, low-reward platform for many A-list entertainers. It’s a place where the discourse has become so politicized that many prefer not to engage personally at all, delegating tweeting duties to underlings or outside agents who post anodyne promotional messages. They have also been turned off by harassment or abuse.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CoinDesk: Lighthouse Raises $7M to Be the Search Engine of the Metaverse. “Lighthouse allows users to search through a database of all the active events going on in metaverse games like Decentraland and The Sandbox, while also being able to search for where users themselves are in these virtual worlds.”

Techdirt: The Internet Has Opened Up The Creator Economy To New Heights. “Until recently, writers, musicians, artists and filmmakers collectively formed a relatively select group that was hard to enter as a professional. Today, anyone with an Internet connection can spread the word about their work and make money from it. In effect, everyone who is online, to a greater or lesser degree, is a digital creator – even with the most ephemeral of posts on social media.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Hollywood Reporter: Twitch Says It’s Deleted Livestreamed Video of Mass Shooting Posted by Gunman. “Livestream service Twitch has deleted video posted by an 18-year-old who authorities say opened fire with a rifle Saturday at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people and wounding three others. A representative for Twitch told The Hollywood Reporter that the company removed the livestream less than two minutes after the shooting began at the Tops Friendly Market.”

Marine Corps Times: New social media, electronics policies likely on the way for Marines. “The Marine Corps is about to release a document codifying ‘information’ as a war-fighting function ― and that’s likely to have direct implications for how Marines are told to conduct themselves online. As Russia and Ukraine wage a conflict in which misinformation and disinformation play a central role, top-echelon Marine leaders want troops and commanders to be clear on how information affects every part of war-fighting and decision-making.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Engadget: Fewer Americans want the government to regulate Big Tech, Pew study says. “Last year, more than half (56 percent) of Americans wanted more regulation of Big Tech. Now, only 44 percent of Americans want to see more government enforcement of tech companies. And the number of respondents who want less government regulation of the tech industry has doubled this year, from nine percent to 20 percent. But those results shouldn’t suggest that the public has a rosier view of Big Tech or trusts that tech companies are getting it right.”

The Conversation: Language matters when Googling controversial people. “Our recent research showed how Google’s search engine normalizes conspiracy theorists, hate figures and other controversial people by offering neutral and even sometimes positive subtitles. We used virtual private networks (VPNs) to conceal our locations and hide our browsing histories to ensure that search results were not based on our geographical location or search histories. We found, for example, that Alex Jones, ‘the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America,’ is defined as an ‘American radio host,’ while David Icke, who is also known for spreading conspiracies, is described as a ‘former footballer.'” Good morning, Internet…

May 16, 2022 at 05:32PM
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Sunday, May 15, 2022

Resin 3D Printing, Open-Source Jobs, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, May 15, 2022

Resin 3D Printing, Open-Source Jobs, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, May 15, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Hackaday: Open Database Shares Resin 3D Printing Settings. “3D printing is much like CNC milling or welding or just about any physical manufacturing process, in that good results fundamentally come down to having the right settings. In an effort to aid those working in the resin printing space, [Adam Bute] has put together a community database of resin printing settings. The site has sections relevant to a variety of resin 3D printers, sorted by manufacturer.”

ZDNet: A new job site just for open-source jobs opens its doors. “There are many online job sites for technologists. They include Dice, The Ladders, and Crunchboard. But, while there are open-source programs for job sites, such as Jobberbase, there are only a handful of sites specializing in open-source jobs. Now, there’s a new entry trying to become The site for open-source technology jobs: Open Source JobHub.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Twitter CEO pushes out top execs, freezes hiring. “Twitter is shaking up its top leadership. The first move came as consumer product leader Kayvon Beykpour announced on Twitter that current CEO Parag Agrawal ‘asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction.’ Bruce Falck, the general manager of revenue and head of product for its business side, confirmed in a (now deleted) tweet that he was also fired by Agrawal.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How to Stop Annoying YouTube Bots From Spamming Everyone. “Bots and spam comments are nothing new on YouTube, but lately the website is overrun with fake accounts trying to scam viewers commenting on their favorite channels. These scam accounts use the same name and profile image as the YouTube channel they’re exploiting, and the bots attempt to trick other users into thinking they won a special prize, asking them to click a link or contact them via DMs or texting an external messaging app like WhatsApp or Telegram.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Border Report: Say ‘no’ to coyotes: DHS turns to social media to keep migrants from coming to U.S.. “The U.S. government is using social media to deter people in Honduras and Guatemala from giving in to smugglers who promise them easy access to the United States. This week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began distributing digital ads in platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp.”

LifeSavvy: There’s Now a Wordle Game for Food Lovers. “By now, you’ve likely played Wordle at least once. The Hangman-esque game took the internet by storm earlier this year, and now there are all kinds of iterations, including one for foodies. Created by Julie Loria, a cookbook author, Phoodle works much like its predecessor. You guess the daily food-related word and get a new one tomorrow.”

BBC: The long struggle to return Cambodia’s looted treasures. “Cambodia is calling on the UK government to help it recover antiquities it says were stolen from its temples. The country’s culture minister says the Victoria & Albert and British Museums both have looted objects.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Tech groups urge Supreme Court to block Texas social media law. “Two lobbying groups for Big Tech companies like Google, Meta and Twitter have asked the US Supreme Court to block a Texas law that prohibits large social media sites from banning users or removing posts based on political viewpoints.”

Ars Technica: Some top 100,000 websites collect everything you type—before you hit submit. “Researchers from KU Leuven, Radboud University, and University of Lausanne crawled and analyzed the top 100,000 websites, looking at scenarios in which a user is visiting a site while in the European Union and visiting a site from the United States. They found that 1,844 websites gathered an EU user’s email address without their consent, and a staggering 2,950 logged a US user’s email in some form. Many of the sites seemingly do not intend to conduct the data-logging but incorporate third-party marketing and analytics services that cause the behavior.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT News: Technique protects privacy when making online recommendations. “Algorithms recommend products while we shop online or suggest songs we might like as we listen to music on streaming apps. These algorithms work by using personal information like our past purchases and browsing history to generate tailored recommendations. The sensitive nature of such data makes preserving privacy extremely important, but existing methods for solving this problem rely on heavy cryptographic tools requiring enormous amounts of computation and bandwidth. MIT researchers may have a better solution.”

The Next Web: DeepMind’s astounding new ‘Gato’ AI makes me fear humans will never achieve AGI. “DeepMind today unveiled a new multi-modal AI system capable of performing more than 600 different tasks. Dubbed Gato, it’s arguably the most impressive all-in-one machine learning kit the world’s seen yet.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

New York Times: Catalan Pop? Corsican Rock? It’s Europe’s Other Song Contest.. “Around 200 million people will tune into the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday to hear music from around the continent. The 25 pop stars who will compete in the final include those performing in Italian, Spanish and Ukrainian. Yet the millions of people in Europe who speak one of its many regional and minority languages are unlikely to find themselves represented on the Eurovision stage, let alone in their country’s pop charts. Since 2002, Liet International has been offering a platform to musicians from these communities — though it is a world away from the showy spectacle of a Eurovision final.” Good morning, Internet…

May 15, 2022 at 05:46PM
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Saturday, May 14, 2022

Southern Appalachian Archives, Fold3, Google I/0, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, May 14, 2022

Southern Appalachian Archives, Fold3, Google I/0, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, May 14, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Western Carolina University: WCU, UNCA partnership leads to new digital Southern Appalachian archive. “The new site showcases multiple collections, particularly photographic collections of mountain vistas, intimate portraits of families and individuals, glimpses into the daily life of residents and Cherokee crafts and traditions. Additionally, oral history collections allow visitors to connect on a personal level, whether it be listening to interviews with local drag queens or reminiscing about building the Fontana Dam during World War II.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Fold3: Introducing the New Fold3® Gallery and Tags!. “We’ve launched a beta version of a new Fold3® Gallery and Tag experience! The new Gallery and Tag feature gives researchers a powerful new tool to organize Fold3 records, Memorials, photographs, and documents. Now you can create custom tags that allow you to tag records and organize them into groups that can be quickly recalled.”

Chrome Unboxed: Google Search advancements take center stage at Google I/O. “There were so many product announcements yesterday at Google I/O that one would be forgiven to think it was a hardware event instead of the software-focused developer conference that it actually is. However, one of the areas that Google chose to spend quite a bit of time on was Search and how far it’s come during the past year.”

Engadget: Netflix is developing livestreaming features. “Deadline suggests the streaming giant could use the technology to hold live voting for competitive shows like the upcoming Dance 100 and air sets from its annual Netflix Is A Joke festival, among other use cases. The feature doesn’t have a rollout date yet, with only a small team within the company reportedly in the ‘preliminary’ stages of developing the tech.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Stars and Stripes: Detailed ‘open source’ news investigations are catching on. “One of the more striking pieces of journalism from the Ukraine war featured intercepted radio transmissions from Russian soldiers indicating an invasion in disarray, their conversations even interrupted by a hacker literally whistling ‘Dixie.’ It was the work of an investigations unit at The New York Times that specializes in open-source reporting, using publicly available material like satellite images, mobile phone or security camera recordings, geolocation and other internet tools to tell stories.”

Mashable: New online campaign reminds us that street harassment isn’t a rite of passage. It’s a public health concern.. “[Candice] Cho’s story is just one representation of a diverse array of tales shared through the #SaferPlace social media campaign, a new effort by advocates to document the frequent harassment that women, people of color, and LGBT and gender nonconforming people face in public spaces. As May is Asian and Pacific Islander (API) Heritage Month, the social media effort adds a sense of heightened, nuanced awareness of the intersectional public safety issues faced by members of these diverse communities.”

BuzzFeed News: Autistic People Are Using TikTok To Connect And Advocate For Neurodivergent Communities. “Autistic people didn’t always have a platform or readily available community. Now, they’re using TikTok to make connections and teach others about neurodiverse communities.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Federal News Network: Spy agencies look to standardize use of open source intelligence. “Intelligence agencies are starting to coalesce around a set of common standards and data for using open source intelligence, but challenges remain in boosting the use of OSINT throughout the intelligence community.”

Krebs On Security: DEA Investigating Breach of Law Enforcement Data Portal. “The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says it is investigating reports that hackers gained unauthorized access to an agency portal that taps into 16 different federal law enforcement databases. KrebsOnSecurity has learned the alleged compromise is tied to a cybercrime and online harassment community that routinely impersonates police and government officials to harvest personal information on their targets.”

Washington Post: The next book ban: States aim to limit titles students can search for. “Republican lawmakers across the country are proposing legislation that would target online library databases and library management technology — tools built by a half-dozen large companies that catalogue millions of books, journals and articles that students peruse for assignments.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Melbourne: The Hidden Stories In Australia’s Cultural Data. “The widespread digitisation of art and culture means data science is now being used to reveal fresh cultural stories and connections that would otherwise have been impossible to uncover. Researchers are detecting surprising trends, telling the micro-biographical histories of artists and asking new questions about the connection between the environment, the economy, and Australia’s arts and cultural life.”

The Ohio State University: The deadly impact of urban streets that look like highways. “Serious auto crashes in urban areas are more likely on city streets that look to drivers like highways, new research suggests. The study used a novel approach: Ohio State University researchers applied machine learning techniques to analyze more than 240,000 images of road segments in Columbus, Ohio, taken from Google Street View. The goal was to see what the roads looked like to drivers and whether that was linked to serious and deadly crashes.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 15, 2022 at 12:09AM
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Asia Disinformation Efforts, Exiled Activists, Information War Failures, More: Ukraine Update, May 14, 2022

Asia Disinformation Efforts, Exiled Activists, Information War Failures, More: Ukraine Update, May 14, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: US intelligence community launches review following Ukraine and Afghanistan intel failings. “The US intelligence community is carrying out a sweeping internal review of how it assesses the fighting power of foreign militaries amid mounting pressure from key lawmakers on Capitol Hill who say officials have failed twice in one year on the two major foreign policy crises faced by the Biden administration in Ukraine and Afghanistan.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Meaww: Who was Petro Dziuba? Russia uses UKRAINIAN pilot on propaganda poster after bombing cemetery where he’s buried. “A Russian poster celebrating Victory Day on Monday, May 9, reportedly depicted a Ukrainian pilot from the Soviet era who shot down 16 German planes in World War II. The photos made the rounds on social media and sparked outrage amid claims that Russia had bombed the Kharkiv cemetery where airman Petro Dzubia was buried.”

StopFake: Russia-Ukraine War through the Prism of Mass Communications. “Ukraine’s struggle for independence from Russia has become truly global from the perspective of mass communications. This war is universally covered in the world media. It is extremely visible. It is a war that demands the expression of public judgment, thus becoming a point of political identification. The current confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian media discourses is not an ordinary clash of warring parties propaganda rhetoric. In this war, Western civilization is searching for an answer to a question of utmost importance: can it withstand within its own value framework – or is it no longer able to do so.”

Fulcrum: The Russia-Ukraine War: Unpacking Online Pro-Russia Narratives in Vietnam. “Pro-Russia narratives in Vietnam’s cyberspace are the result of cross-pollination between sentimental attachment since the Soviet era, psychological bias towards Russia embedded in Vietnam’s education and propaganda system, and the overriding imperative to preserve the Vietnamese state’s political and ideological interests.”

The Guardian: China’s pro-Russia propaganda exposed by online activists. “A number of Chinese government-linked media outlets and pro-Russia social media accounts are spreading pro-Kremlin sentiment on the Chinese internet by mistranslating or manipulating international news about the war in Ukraine.”

Waging Nonviolence: ‘Poison for the people’ — How an exiled activist is countering Russia’s propaganda machine. “Environmental activist Evgeniya Chirikova once helped save a forest in Moscow. Now she’s trying to give voice to Russian activists and journalists resisting Putin’s regime.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Ukraine war: The stolen faces used to promote Vladimir Putin. “Indian influencer ER Yamini has never tweeted in her life – she prefers to cultivate her big fan bases on Instagram and YouTube. But in early March, a Twitter account using her picture tweeted: ‘#IStandWithPutin. True Friendship’ accompanied by a video showing two men hugging – one representing India, the other, Russia. Yamini says she doesn’t support either country in the Russia-Ukraine war, and worries about her fans.”

Bleeping Computer: Google Chrome updates failing on Android devices in Russia. “A growing number of Android Google Chrome users in Russia are reporting errors when attempting to install the latest update for the web browser. The number of complaints is increasing every day but so far, the cause of the problem remains unknown and is still unsolved.”

Bleeping Computer: Dell, Apple, Netflix face lawsuits for pulling services out of Russia. “A Moscow Arbitration Court has reportedly seized almost $11 million belonging to Dell LLC after the company failed to provide paid-for services to a local system integrator. IT systems integrator Talmer sued Dell early last month when the American computer giant declined to provide technical support services for VMware as previously agreed. Dell is the representative of VMware in Russia and was reselling these services until March 1, 2022.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

USC Center on Public Diplomacy: Why Russia Is Losing The Information War . “Given Russia’s apparent preeminence in information warfare, taking control of Ukraine seemed well within the Kremlin’s grasp. This year, as its troops massed along the Russia-Ukraine border, Russia’s information attacks were relentless, claiming that Ukraine was riddled with corruption, was run by Nazis, and was not really a nation. Once again, with this messaging as a foundation, Russia rolled into Ukraine. Despite its past successes, Russia’s information strategy did not work this time. The reason, in a word: pushback.”

Small Wars Journal: Are We Informationally Disadvantaged? The Realities of Information War in Ukraine. “Since the first mention of information advantage in the Joint Concept for Operations in the Information Environment in 2018, the Army struggled to understand what achieving information advantage really means. Much of the Army’s focus is on network degradation, systems, processes, and formations, which claim to all ensure information advantage. These discussions fail to comprehend the activities taking place in Ukraine and their implications. In essence information advantage isn’t about a unit, a computer, or even a doctrine; it’s all about the narrative. The narrative is the backbone of any information advantage, and its why Ukraine dominates Russia in the information environment currently.” This is excellent.

Brookings Institution: Putin’s internet plan: Dependency with a veneer of sovereignty. “Cut off from Western technology suppliers, Russia is moving to build an increasingly autarkic economy. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin created a new commission on internet and technological ‘sovereignty’ in Russia and placed Dmitry Medvedev, former president and current deputy chairman of the Security Council, as its head. According to The Moscow Times, the goal of this commission is to find substitutes for the critical IT supplies the Russian economy desperately needs. In short, Moscow is leaning into techno-isolationism more than ever before.”

May 14, 2022 at 10:54PM
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