New researches

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Elizabeth Cotten, Prison Newspapers, Mozilla Thunderbird, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 18, 2022

Elizabeth Cotten, Prison Newspapers, Mozilla Thunderbird, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of North Carolina Libraries: Elizabeth Cotten: Resource and Subject Guide. “With the recent announcement of Elizabeth Cotten’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I thought today would be the perfect time to release this resource guide.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

JSTOR Daily: The Angolite Comes to the Reveal Digital American Prison Newspapers Collection. “The Angolite is one of the most famous prison newspapers in history, having won multiple awards and changed the popular conception of what prison journalism could be. The paper is produced by the people incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, colloquially known as Angola for the slave plantation that preceded it…. At present, the sprawling prison farm is 28 square miles, 18,000 acres. It is the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, and the state of Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the nation.”

How-To Geek: Here’s How Mozilla Thunderbird Is Making a Comeback in 2022. “Thunderbird has been around since 2003, but it has stalled in recent years due to dwindling interest from Mozilla and limited funds. However, the project is now making a resurgence, and it might be worth your time to try Thunderbird.”

USEFUL STUFF

If you haven’t had a good swim around Larry Ferlazzo’s site you’re missing out. The man himself: Three Accessible Ways To Search For & Find My “Best” Lists. “As regular readers know, I have about 2,200 categorized and regularly updated ‘Best’ lists. You can find all of them in broad categories here. The link to that page can also be found at the top right of my blog: My Best Of Series I also have them all on another page where they are listed in the chronological order in which I originally posted them.”

Digital Photography Review: LensKit is a new iOS app that helps you pick the right camera, lens for your next video shoot. “Zak Ray, a cinematographer, colorist and developer who creates apps for filmmakers, has released LensKit, a new tool that makes it easy to plan a video shoot. LensKit consists of a comprehensive database of adapters, cameras and lenses that work together to show you what lenses can be used on what cameras, what their equivalent focal length will be based on the camera’s format and more.”

Lifehacker: You Should Know How to Scan a QR Code From a Screenshot. “While the iPhone directly integrates QR code scanning in the Camera app, it doesn’t have an option for scanning QR codes from a screenshot. But that’s where trusted third-party apps and websites come in.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNET: Don’t Just Tour That Home Online. By All Means Judge It. “Whatever you love in a house, there’s a huge world for you beyond endless episodes of House Hunters and housing sites like Zillow and Trulia. There’s also a dedicated online community passionate about real estate, architecture or both who spend hours finding the most bizarre, incredible and horrifying homes in America and delivering them to their thousands of followers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

KXAN: Almost 2 million Texans affected by Texas Department of Insurance data breach. “The department said the personal information of 1.8 million workers who have filed compensation claims — including Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and information about workers’ injuries — was accessible online to members of the public from March 2019 to January 2022.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: Arcadia Fund supports Plazi in its endeavor to rediscover known biodiversity. “The Swiss-based Plazi NGO has received a grant of EUR 1.5 million from Arcadia Fund – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin – to further develop its Biodiversity Literature Repository (BLR) established in collaboration with Zenodo, the open science repository hosted and managed by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and the open-access scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft.”

Phys .org: Scientists provide more than 57,000 camera trap images for massive study on Amazon wildlife. “Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) scientists working in the vast Amazon Basin have contributed more than 57,000 camera trap images for a new study published in the journal Ecology by an international team of 120 research institutions.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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May 19, 2022 at 12:51AM
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Hull-House, In the Key of She, The Covid Archive, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, May 18, 2022

Hull-House, In the Key of She, The Covid Archive, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, May 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Illinois Chicago: Online library collection celebrates Hull-House on anniversary of founder’s death. “To help commemorate the life of Jane Addams on the 87th anniversary of the Nobel Laureate’s death, the University of Illinois Chicago Library has released digitized yearbooks and annual reports from the settlement house she co-founded. The collection is now available online to students, researchers and the public. Addams, who died on May 21, 1935, co-founded Chicago’s Hull-House with her partner, Ellen Gates Starr, in 1889. The home on the densely populated Chicago’s Near West Side was the first settlement house in the United States that offered social services to the communities. These services included legal aid, an employment office, child care, crafting and domestic skills training.”

DJ Magazine: Directory Of Women, Trans And Non-Binary Producers Launches Online, In The Key Of She. “A directory of women, trans and non-binary producers, In the Key of She (ItKoS), has launched online. Compiled by DJ, producer, and academic Samantha Parsley, aka Dovetail, the directory gathers over 250 artists and is categorised by genre, with everything from footwork to psy-trance making the cut.”

DPLA: DPLA releases The Covid Archive as free ebook. “Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce the publication of a free ebook, The Covid Archive: A finding aid to government documents related to the Covid19 Pandemic. The Covid Archive is a digital finding aid for the digital archive of government documents related to the response of U.S. federal and state governments to the Covid 19 pandemic. The finding aid provides an index to more than 3,000 government documents related to the pandemic response that were identified by the Covid Tracking Project and digitally preserved by DPLA.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Google lets personal users stay on ‘no-cost Legacy G Suite’ with custom Gmail domain. “Back in April, Google delayed when G Suite legacy free-edition users had to start paying for Workspace. The company will now let you stay on a ‘Free Legacy Edition of G Suite for personal use’ as the “no-cost” alternative in a rather notable policy change.”

Ars Technica: Apple and Google’s outdated apps ban would cut each store by a third. “Both members of our favorite mobile duopoly, Google and Apple, recently announced plans to cull outdated apps in their respective app stores. Last month, both companies decided any app that hadn’t been updated in two years would be removed. Early in April, Google announced a two-year cutoff plan that would kick-in in November, and later in the month, Apple started emailing developers, giving them 30 days’ notice to update or be removed. It’s hard to know what culling two-year-old apps will look like, so exactly how many apps are we talking about?”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Current Affairs: Why This Computer Scientist Says All Cryptocurrency Should “Die in a Fire”. “One of cryptocurrency’s most vocal skeptics is Nicholas Weaver, senior staff researcher at the International Computer Science Institute and lecturer in the computer science department at UC Berkeley. Weaver has studied cryptocurrencies for years. Speaking with Current Affairs editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson, Prof. Weaver explains why he views the much-hyped technology with such antipathy. He argues that cryptocurrency is useless and destructive, and should ‘die in a fire.’ The interview transcript has been lightly edited for grammar and clarity.”

Washington Post: Followers are a valuable currency. Who should own them?. “The new group, called My Friends My Data Coalition (MFMD), is a group of start-up founders working to push tech giants to adopt a new industry-wide standard that would allow users to transfer their followings from one app to another, thereby creating more competition between platforms.”

Vox: The YouTubers are not okay. “For years, digital creators have been trying to convey the ennui of this supposed dream job: they’re lonely, they’re burnt out, they’re built up then tossed aside by unfeeling algorithms and corporate bureaucracy. They feel stuck between the kinds of content that makes them money and the content they actually want to produce.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Sky News: Google sued for using the NHS data of 1.6 million Britons ‘without their knowledge or consent’. “Google is being sued over its use of confidential medical records belonging to 1.6 million individuals in the UK. The company’s artificial intelligence arm, DeepMind, received the data in 2015 from the Royal Free NHS Trust in London for the purpose of testing a smartphone app called Streams.”

Associated Press: Ransomware gang threatens to overthrow Costa Rica government. “A ransomware gang that infiltrated some Costa Rican government computer systems has upped its threat, saying its goal is now to overthrow the government.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

News@Northeastern: In Light Of The Mass Shooting In Buffalo, Is It Time To Impose New Rules On Livestreaming?. “As it stands, social media and livestream platforms operate under a shared content moderation framework—namely that they are not responsible for user content or behavior, says John Wihbey, associate professor of media innovation and technology at Northeastern. But, as more perpetrators are inspired to commit acts of violence by being able to publicize them in real-time, it might be time to impose a new set of rules on the online platforms, Wihbey says.”

Hack A Day: Silence Of The iPods: Reflecting On The Ever-shifting Landscape Of Personal Media Consumption . “On October 23rd of 2001, the first Apple iPod was launched. It wasn’t the first Personal Media Player (PMP), but as with many things Apple the iPod would go on to provide the benchmark for what a PMP should do, as well as what they should look like. While few today remember the PMP trailblazers like Diamond’s Rio devices, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t know what an ‘iPod’ is.” Not the kind of content I normally associate with Hack A Day, but very good. Good morning, Internet…

May 18, 2022 at 05:28PM
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Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Pakistan Antique Cars, UK Political Parties, Maynooth University Library Lunchtime Talk, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 17, 2022

Pakistan Antique Cars, UK Political Parties, Maynooth University Library Lunchtime Talk, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Dawn: Pakistan’s first online Antique Cars Museum launched. “Shoaib Qureshy, the owner of the online museum, said the idea came to him some two-and-a-half years ago during the Covid-19 lockdowns. ‘We often do classic car shows to share our hobby and our beautiful cars with the general public but we wanted a single platform for this purpose where most of our cars could be showcased. This is the first Pakistan online museum for antique cars where we can show the best of these cars in not just our country but also to the world,’ he said.”

University of Exeter (UK): Track which political parties represent your views with new online tool. “Partymeter has been designed with the cooperation of 150 experts on political parties across the UK. By completing a survey on a range of issues people can see how closely their views align with the policies of the Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and others. It is hoped as many people as possible will now take part in the survey so academics can discover more about the connection between voters and political parties.”

EVENTS

Maynooth University Library: Maynooth University Library Lunchtime Talk: Using radio documentaries and podcasts to highlight significant library collections. “Award-winning freelance journalist Bairbre Flood, is in conversation with Helen Fallon, Deputy Librarian, Maynooth University on the topic of using library collections as the basis of documentaries and podcasts. Bairbre produced the documentary ‘Silence Would be Treason’ for BBC Radio 4. This is based on the MU Ken Saro-Wiwa Archive.” The event is free.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New Zealand Herald: Google fails to deliver campaign promise to fix Māori pronunciation on Google Maps. “Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (the Māori Language Commission) told Te Ao with Moana this week that Google didn’t have the right technology to fulfil promises made in a 2017 campaign to improve Māori pronunciation in the Google Maps app.”

Search Engine Journal: LinkedIn Updates Include Improvements To Search Results. “As part of its goal of providing users with more valuable content, LinkedIn has made changes to its search and discovery functions. People using the professional networking site will now be able to see news, topics and trends from their connections, as well as relevant posts from other creators outside their network.”

Deadline: YouTube Unveils Slate Of Black Voices Fund Content. “YouTube has ordered five new original projects as part of its Black Voices Fund.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Irish Times: Documents saved from 1922 public record office fire to be conserved. “Precious documents relating to Dublin port, which were saved from the Public Record Office fire in the city’s Four Courts in the opening engagement of the Civil War, are set to be restored. In the aftermath of the fire on June 30th, 1922, more than 25,000 sheets of paper and parchment were retrieved from the rubble. These records, which date from the 14th to the 19th centuries and are known as the ‘1922 salved records’, are now held at the National Archives.”

Firstpost: These Indian museums are working to spread the message of climate change . “A new initiative called Indian Museums Against Climate Change (IMACC), is spearheading this movement in our country. Launched by Bengaluru-based non-profit organisation ReReeti, it brings together eight museums around the country to work for this common cause.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

AFP: China database reveals the thousands of Uighurs detained in Xinjiang. “A leaked list of thousands of detained Uighurs has helped Ms Nursimangul Abdureshid shed some light on the whereabouts of her missing family members, who have disappeared in China’s sweeping crackdown on Xinjiang.”

Washington Post: U.S. issues charges in first criminal cryptocurrency sanctions case. “The Justice Department has launched its first criminal prosecution involving the alleged use of cryptocurrency to evade U.S. economic sanctions, a federal judge disclosed Friday. In an unusual nine-page opinion, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui of Washington, D.C., explained why he approved a Justice Department criminal complaint against an American citizen accused of transmitting more than $10 million worth of bitcoin to a virtual currency exchange in one of a handful of countries comprehensively sanctioned by the U.S. government: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria or Russia.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 18, 2022 at 12:41AM
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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…

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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