New researches

Thursday, May 26, 2022

RB Search Gizmos: Eliminate Recent Articles from Your Google News Search With “Back That Ask Up”

RB Search Gizmos: Eliminate Recent Articles from Your Google News Search With “Back That Ask Up”
By ResearchBuzz

I didn’t get the Bellingcat Tech Fellowship, but I kept myself occupied while I was waiting to hear back. After I reviewed my application I realized I knew nothing about front-end development and that was a big weakness. I looked around, got my bearings, and enrolled in a JavaScript class. What I really want to do is work with API data, but as I’m learning that I need to practice what I do know.

So in the meantime I got a Glitch account and have started to figure out how to practically apply the JavaScript I’m learning. My first effort is a tool to eliminate recent articles from a Google News search. It’s embedded below – give it a try. If you don’t see it, make sure you don’t have any content blockers active. You can also access it directly at https://google-news-back-that-ask-up.glitch.me .

Stay tuned – learning JavaScript is giving me ideas and I’ve already got three other apps bubbling in the back of my head. If you can think of one of your search problems that might be solved with an app, leave a comment.

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May 26, 2022 at 06:28PM
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Climate Justice Resources, Argentina Genealogy, PopSign, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2022

Climate Justice Resources, Argentina Genealogy, PopSign, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Museums Association: Julie’s Bicycle launches climate justice hub. “A free online library of climate justice resources has been launched to support organisations such as museums that want to understand the systemic causes of the climate crisis and how it intersects with issues of social, economic and environmental injustice. The Creative Climate Justice Hub, which has been created by the climate action non-profit Julie’s Bicycle, will also examine how arts and culture are responding creatively to the environmental emergency.”

Buenos Aires Times: New ancestry archive allows Argentines to track ancestors’ arrival. “CEMLA has now made the historical records of immigrant arrival in Argentina available online…. Those wishing to search need the full name of the person being investigated, and the database (with information from 1800 to 1960) will reveal the ship on which their relatives sailed to Argentina, or the person’s line of work. This database comprises over 4.4 million people in total, featuring information on 200 countries of origin, over 75 years of records up to 1960, and over 3,500 vessels where they travelled to settle in this country.”

RIT / National Technical Institute for the Deaf: Parents of deaf children can more easily learn sign language thanks to powerful tech collaboration. “The Center on Access Technology at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, in partnership with Google and Georgia Institute of Technology, is creating PopSign, which provides an extensive, interactive learning experience that parents can use anytime, anyplace.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: WordPress 6.0 ‘Arturo’ Is Here With Nearly 1,000 Changes. “WordPress 6.0, named ‘Arturo,’ is launched and ready to go. This update introduces nearly 1,000 updates and enhancements that make WordPress more intuitive to use for both developers and end users.”

Protocol: Clearview expands sales of its facial recognition tools. “Barely more than two weeks after it agreed to stop selling its existing collection of face prints to private entities, facial recognition firm Clearview AI has a brand new plan to sell its software to private companies instead.”

PC World: OneNote is evolving into the near-perfect app for students. ” For years, Microsoft OneNote has allowed you to record the audio of a meeting, then take notes, syncing the audio to your inked or typed notes for later review. Now Microsoft is doing that feature one better by adding transcription, too. Microsoft also unveiled sweeping aesthetic and functional changes that are coming to OneNote, part of a plan to unify the OneNote apps in Windows.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: From lake science to bones to snails, these TikTok accounts are STEM treasure troves. “Since its inception, TikTok has quickly become an arbiter of culture, memes, and even political organizing, all while curating eerily specific For Your Pages for its users full of dancing videos, funny filters, and viral songs. But one of its most promising uses is connecting more people to fun, educational accounts, spanning the range of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).”

MakeUseOf: The 4 Best Online Tools to Write Musical Notation. “If you’re tired of writing out musical notation and writing scores by hand, then you’ve no doubt looked to the internet to try and find a better solution. Most solutions, however, require you to download programs in order to work with them, which can be a problem if you work from multiple PCs running multiple operating systems. Luckily, there are plenty of online writing tools available that you can use entirely for free. Here are some of the best.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: 6 Podcasts About the Dark Side of the Internet. “Despite the connectedness and convenience it allows, the internet’s tightening grip on every aspect of life isn’t without costs, like when a young man turned to YouTube for direction and found himself pulled into the far-right, as shown in The Times’s narrative audio series Rabbit Hole. These six shows tap into some of those dangers, exploring cybercrime, cryptocurrency and the many flavors of horror that lurk on the dark web.”

WIRED: Proton Is Trying to Become Google—Without Your Data . “SINCE ITS FOUNDING in 2014, ProtonMail has become synonymous with user-friendly encrypted email. Now the company is trying to be synonymous with a whole lot more. On Wednesday morning, it announced that it’s changing its name to, simply, Proton—a nod at its broader ambitions within the universe of online privacy. The company will now offer an ‘ecosystem’ of linked products, all accessed via one paid subscription.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Alberta: App uses artificial intelligence to track healing wounds in real time. “Three U of A engineering students have developed a mobile app that tracks the progress of a healing wound. The app calculates whether treatments are working as they should based on descriptions of size, depth and shape along with more subjective impressions of pain and irritation, says programmer Connor Povoledo. Accurate tracking can predict infection and other complications and allow patients, particularly in remote areas, to decide whether urgent care is needed.”

University of North Carolina: South Carolina and Virginia to join University Libraries’ On the Books project. “The University Libraries has selected the University of South Carolina and the University of Virginia to be partners for On the Books: Jim Crow and Algorithms of Resistance, funded by the Mellon Foundation. On the Books uses text mining and machine learning to identify racist language in North Carolina legal documents during the Jim Crow era (1866-1967). Libraries at the partner institutions will work with the project team at UNC-Chapel Hill to compile machine-readable versions of their states’ laws and identify Jim Crow language in them.” Good morning, Internet…

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May 26, 2022 at 05:35PM
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Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Ukrainian Refugees in the UK, Cryptocurrency Fundraising, New Commemorative Stamps, More: Ukraine Update, May 25, 2022

Ukrainian Refugees in the UK, Cryptocurrency Fundraising, New Commemorative Stamps, More: Ukraine Update, May 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Irish News: Ukrainian refugees in the UK have made calls to a slavery and exploitation helpline. “Unseen said millions of Ukrainians need support to keep them safe from trafficking. The charity, along with a coalition of anti-slavery and human rights groups, has launched a new website… The website aims to provide a one-stop shop of useful websites, helplines, and information including where to get basic travel and housing advice to opening a bank account and understanding your rights as a worker in the UK.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: Cryptocurrency crash devalues Ukraine’s government crypto fundraise. “Cryptocurrencies have fallen sharply in recent weeks. Bitcoin has lost more than 20% of its price so far in May, following a 17% drop in April, highlighting the risks faced by holders of the highly volatile assets. All the funds raised in the ‘Aid for Ukraine’ fund were stored in cryptocurrency but the government was able to spend $45 million of it on equipment for Ukraine’s army before the crash, Bornyakov said in written responses to Reuters questions.”

Publishers Weekly: Efforts for Ukrainian Publishers, Refugee Children Expand. “In the months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the international publishing community has come together with a number of initiatives aimed at offering support to children’s authors, publishers, and aid organizations. Here, we continue to cover these ongoing efforts.”

Washington Post: Ukraine issues stamp commemorating sinking of Russian warship. “The previous set of six stamps featured a Ukrainian service member making a rude hand gesture at a Russian warship from the shore. The latest set includes three of those same stamps as well as three modified stamps showing the service member still standing, but not the ship.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Poynter: This college ‘nerd’ investigates the Ukraine war from the digital front lines. “Until earlier this year, The Intel Crab, which has more than 250,000 followers and a reach in the tens of millions, was among the latter. But Justin Peden, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Alabama-Birmingham who only recently switched his major to journalism, revealed his identity earlier this year. ‘I’m no longer anonymous for one simple reason: I want to be held accountable for my work,’ Peden told me. ‘Both positively and negatively.'”

iNews: ‘How to steal a Russian tank’: The extraordinary resistance tips the Ukrainian government is giving civilians. “The determination of Ukrainians to repulse the Kremlin’s invasion has taken many forms but few can sum it up better than the entry on an official website aimed at citizens living behind enemy lines. It reads: ‘How to start and steal a Russian tank.’ The online guidance comes complete with diagrams of a tank crew compartment and detailed instructions on how to get a T-72 moving, as well as information on accessing the fuel cap.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Exclusive-Russian hackers are linked to new Brexit leak website, Google say. “A new website that published leaked emails from several leading proponents of Britain’s exit from the European Union is tied to Russian hackers, according to a Google cybersecurity official and the former head of UK foreign intelligence.”

Coda Story: Social media companies are facing pressure to start archiving war crimes evidence. How will that work?. “Long before politicians caught on, Alexa Koenig, the executive director of the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley, was working on how social media can be used as evidence in international courts — and how companies can do a better job of preserving it. In the report Digital Lockers: Archiving Social Media Evidence of Atrocity Crimes, Koenig and her team outlined how social media platforms can transform from ‘accidental and unstable archives for human rights content’ to vaults of evidence accessible to investigators and prosecutors. Going a step further, the team at the Human Rights Center created a framework for using digital open source information in international courts.”

ABS-CBN News: Russia orders blogger’s arrest over Ukraine videos. “A Moscow court on Tuesday ordered the detention in absentia of Russian blogger Michael Nacke, accusing him of discrediting the Russian army and its offensive in Ukraine. Nacke, a 28-year-old Kremlin critic, hosts a YouTube channel with more than 700,000 subscribers that discusses Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. A citizen of Russia, he is currently in Lithuania, he told AFP, after Moscow’s Basmanny court ordered his detention.”

Associated Press: Pro-Russian Hackers Spread Hoaxes to Divide Ukraine, Allies. “As Ukrainians flooded into Poland earlier this year to flee Russian invaders, a hacking group aligned with the Kremlin sought to spread rumors that criminal gangs were waiting to harvest the organs of child refugees. The network, known to cybersecurity experts as Ghostwriter, seemingly aimed to sow distrust between Ukraine and Poland. It’s one of several tactics outlined in a new report that outlines how Russia has used disinformation, fear and propaganda alongside bullets, tanks and soldiers in an effort to demoralize Ukraine and divide its allies.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

War on the Rocks: The Dubious Prospects For Cargo-Delivery Drones In Ukraine. “A frenzy of drone experimentation is already underway in Ukraine. Faine Greenwood has collected more than 400 references to drone usage in Ukraine, primarily for surveillance, journalism, targeting, and documentation. Ukrainian forces have also demonstrated the ability to use small drones to drop grenades and other small explosives on Russian troops — a use case that, technologically speaking, is almost identical to airdropping aid.”

NewsWise: Statistical Physics Rejects Theory of ‘Two Ukraines’. “When reading news and analyses of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, researchers in Spain perceived many conflicting messages being transmitted. The most notable one is the theory of ‘two Ukraines’ or the existence of ideologically pro-West and pro-Russian regions. This doesn’t match the unity of Ukrainians against the Russian invasion, so they wondered if they could provide any solid proof to support or reject such a theory via data analysis tools?”

May 26, 2022 at 02:35AM
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Cincinnati Activism, TikTok, Google Street View, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2022

Cincinnati Activism, TikTok, Google Street View, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

Well, I didn’t get the Bellingcat Tech Fellowship. I’m going to keep my eye out for other opportunities that don’t require any academic standing. Thank you for your encouragement.

NEW RESOURCES

Cincinnati Public Library: 50 Years of Protest Posters, Photos, and Flyers Scanned for the Library’s Digital Collection. “The images, part of the upcoming Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) exhibit, Artist Run Spaces, include protest posters, photos, slides, and flyers from fifty years of organizing work by the community organization Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement. The images are now available for high resolution viewing on the Library’s Digital Library, opens a new window.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: TikTok’s launching Twitch-like subscriptions in beta on Thursday. “TikTok has announced a program that lets viewers pay to subscribe to specific live streamers they want to support. Dubbed Live Subscription, it gives fans access to perks like a subscriber-only chat, creator-specific emotes, and badges that differentiate them from non-subscribers (via TechCrunch).”

Google Blog: Street View turns 15 with a new camera and fresh features. “Today, we’re unveiling Street View’s newest camera, giving you more ways to explore historical imagery, and taking a closer look at how Street View is powering the future of Google Maps.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: The 21 best binge-worthy podcasts that tell one hell of a story. “With definitive beginnings, middles, and ends, the limited-series podcast as we define it is a contained story told over five or more episodes. Many of those on our list have other seasons tackling different subject matters. But we’re highlighting the best of the best.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Brown University: Brown University Library Awarded Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to Create New Frameworks to Preserve and Publish Born-Digital Art. “Brown University Library has been approved for a $20,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts to support ‘New Frameworks to Preserve and Publish Born-Digital Art.’ This project will develop new frameworks for the long-term preservation and presentation of born-digital art.”

The Mainichi: Tokyo’s only wooden traditional vaudeville theater seeks funds to survive pandemic . “The Shinjuku Suehirotei theater is likely to go bankrupt if the revenue decline it has suffered from the pandemic continues. The theater in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward with its classic atmosphere is a precious venue where top-notch masters of the Showa era (1926-1989) vied with each other. It recently also became the model for the Uchikutei theater featured in the popular manga series ‘Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: New Jersey Attorney General also investigating Discord and Twitch after Buffalo shooting. “New Jersey’s Acting Attorney General has launched a probe into Twitch and Discord to see if the platforms broke laws on hateful and extremist content following a recent mass shooting in Buffalo. In an announcement published Monday, New Jersey’s Acting Attorney General Matthew Platkin wrote that the purpose of the investigation was to find out if policy or moderation failures allowed the platforms to become vectors for spreading extremist content, especially among young people.”

Associated Press: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction. “California could soon hold social media companies responsible for harming children who have become addicted to their products, permitting parents to sue platforms like Instagram and TikTok for up to $25,000 per violation under a bill that passed the state Assembly on Monday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

KNDO: Washington launches new website to track recovery efforts for orca population. “The Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office created a new website to track recovery efforts for endangered Southern Resident orcas. The website has information on putting in places the recommendations made by the governor’s Southern Resident Killer Whale Task Force, general information about the whales and suggestions for how people can help save the orcas and resources for school curriculum.”

New York Times: Selfies Further Endanger Rare Phallic Plant, Conservationists Fear. “In Cambodia, video of women suggestively joking around with a protected carnivorous specimen prompted a government admonition: Hands off, people.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 26, 2022 at 12:35AM
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World Agricultural Production, Digital Inclusion Navigator, Hospital Data, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2022

World Agricultural Production, Digital Inclusion Navigator, Hospital Data, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: FAO unveils new public tool based on agricultural census data. “The new domain allows rapid access to knowing how many farms exist in a given country, what their sizes are, the tenure typology determining its ownership, the farmer’s gender, and how many people live and work on them, all sourced to national Agricultural Censuses.”

World Economic Forum: Digital Inclusion Navigator: A platform to help bridge digital divide for billions. “The Forum’s EDISON Alliance has launched a new tool to share best practices in expanding digital inclusion: the Digital Inclusion Navigator. The Navigator is open to all, and will ultimately convene and share the best ideas and practices of the digital inclusion policymaking community the world over.”

PR Newswire: Employers’ Forum of Indiana Introduces Sage Transparency, Built Using New RAND Hospital Price Study (PRESS RELEASE). “Using data from the upcoming RAND 4.0 Hospital Price Transparency Study, Employers’ Forum of Indiana today launched Sage Transparency, a publicly accessible and customizable dashboard to demonstrate hospital value…. Sage Transparency is a free-to-use, customizable dashboard which allows the user to compare metrics of hospital price and quality across states, health systems, and facilities.” The fact that Employers’ Forum of Indiana did it makes you think it might be Indiana-only, but I was able to look up hospital information all over America.

City of Philadelphia: New Online Tool Helps Navigate City Health Trends. “Lots of different things can determine just how healthy we are. For instance, where we were born or where we live now can impact our overall health…. A new online tool called PhilaStats is ready to help users compare these various factors – sometimes referred to as social determinants of health – across different areas of Philadelphia. The interactive dashboard highlights trends in population, along with information about births and deaths in the city between 2011 and 2019. It will be updated as additional years of data become available.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Search for YouTube Comments. “Looking for a specific comment on YouTube can be tricky if you don’t know how to search properly. It gets worse when you have to search through a thread of comments that goes on for pages. This can be frustrating, but there is a way to search through YouTube comments more effectively. In this article, we will show you how to search through YouTube comments, so you can find what you’re looking for.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

It’s Nice That: Dive into the random, genius, alphabetically-organised world of HejHelloHalloAnnyeong’s web design experiments. “Since the pandemic the collective have been meeting every fortnight to create innovative web-based experiments inspired by their random word selector.”

Input Magazine: Meet the amateur archivists streaming old VHS tapes online. “The tape collectors have different approaches. [Pete] Dillon-Trenchard provides a wry, Beavis and Butthead-style director’s commentary to whatever’s going on in the tapes in front of him. He typically focuses on advertisements rather than movies and TV shows — a decision taken to avoid any copyright issues, he says. [Jackson] Bedenbaugh doesn’t do much beyond clipping key moments from the tapes he finds, the equivalent of panning for gold within his analog tape mines. Meanwhile, FORGOTTEN_VCR — a Twitch streamer who asked to remain anonymous because he wants his work to speak for him — does something slightly different.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBS News: Debt firms used social media to “smear” and harass people, feds say. “A group of debt collectors in upstate New York went after their targets by calling friends, family and employers and orchestrating ‘smear campaigns’ against people they claimed owed money, federal regulators said. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the New York Attorney General on Monday said they shut down a ring of debt collection firms who were going after debtors using illegal techniques.”

The Verge: Florida’s social media moderation ban is probably unconstitutional, says court. “A US appeals court says Florida’s ban on much social media moderation likely violates the First Amendment, setting up a legal showdown over social networks’ speech rights. Today, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of an earlier court order blocking Florida’s SB 7072 while a lawsuit proceeds. It directly contradicts a recent ruling over Texas’ similar moderation ban, setting up a split that the Supreme Court could step in to resolve.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Elephants in Mourning Spotted on YouTube by Scientists. “For a paper published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the scientists used YouTube to crowdsource videos of Asian elephants responding to death.”

Stat News: Are smartphones making us miserable? A Google-backed study aims to find out. “Like a similar program run by its competitor Apple, Google Health Studies aims to beef up the company’s health bona fides among consumers, researchers, and care providers. In this case, Google has chosen to tackle a question that’s been the subject of great public concern as well as increasing academic study: Are smartphones really making us miserable?”

Smart Energy International: Google and UK Power Networks chart AI-driven electric cable maps. “Google’s DeepMind engineers have partnered with UK Power Networks, which delivers electricity across London, the East and South East, to create digital versions of maps covering more than 180,000km of electricity cables in the UK. The work involves new image recognition software scanning thousands of maps – some of which date back decades – and using artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically remaster them into a digital format for future use.” Good morning, Internet…

May 25, 2022 at 05:29PM
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Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Topological Materials, National Book Festival, Platinum Jubilee, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 24, 2022

Topological Materials, National Book Festival, Platinum Jubilee, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 24, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

MIT News: Is it topological? A new materials database has the answer. “In 2007, researchers predicted the first electronic topological insulators — materials in which electrons that behave in ways that are ‘topologically protected,’ or persistent in the face of certain disruptions. Since then, scientists have searched for more topological materials with the aim of building better, more robust electronic devices. Until recently, only a handful of such materials were identified, and were therefore assumed to be a rarity. Now researchers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered that, in fact, topological materials are everywhere, if you know how to look for them.”

EVENTS

Library of Congress: Live and In Person! Come to the 2022 National Book Festival on Saturday, Sept. 3. “The 2022 Library of Congress National Book Festival website is live. With the launch of this year’s site, you can explore past National Book Festivals, prep for the Festival with helpful information and more. If you can’t join us in Washington, D.C. this September, a selection of programs will be livestreamed, and video of all presentations can be viewed online after the Festival concludes.”

British Library: Picture Perfect Platinum Jubilee Puddings on Wikimedia Commons. “The UK Web Archive is looking for nominations for websites to be archived to a special Jubilee collection that will commemorate the event. You can nominate a website using this form here. Inspired by the Platinum Jubilee Pudding Competition, in Digital Scholarship we are encouraging you to upload images of your celebratory puddings and food to Wikimedia Commons.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Saving The Sounds Of An Ancient City. “For the past several years, Youssef Sherif, 28, and Nehal Ezz, 26, have wandered the Egyptian capital in search of the cries of street vendors, the tap tap tap of metal workers in their shops, the cacophony of chaotic traffic. Their goal is to capture in recordings what Cairo sounds like — right here, right now — before these noises disappear. They are collecting the sounds to share on an Instagram account and eventually hope to establish a searchable database of sounds.”

The Verge: Why We Need A Public Internet And How To Get One. “For weeks, tech news has been dominated by billionaire Elon Musk’s attempts to buy (and subsequently avoid buying) Twitter. And since Musk announced his plans in April, people have debated whether it’s better for online social spaces like Twitter to remain publicly traded companies — where they’re under pressure from shareholders — or be owned by a single wealthy figure like Musk. But Ben Tarnoff, author of the upcoming book Internet for the People, believes there’s a better way.”

Deccan Herald: Online museum to archive stories about Kodavas. “The project is called Sandooka, the Living Museum of Kodava Culture. Sandooka means treasure chest in Coorgi language, and the museum strives to be a repository of stories ranging from the traditional costumes to present-day experiences of the Kodavas, native inhabitants of Kodagu in Karnataka.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: How GDPR Is Failing. “ONE THOUSAND FOUR hundred and fifty-nine days have passed since data rights nonprofit NOYB fired off its first complaints under Europe’s flagship data regulation, GDPR. The complaints allege Google, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram forced people into giving up their data without obtaining proper consent, says Romain Robert, a program director at the nonprofit. The complaints landed on May 25, 2018, the day GDPR came into force and bolstered the privacy rights of 740 million Europeans. Four years later, NOYB is still waiting for final decisions to be made. And it’s not the only one.”

PA Media: Paramilitaries in NI ‘using social media to incite violence and issue threats’. “Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland are increasingly using social media to incite violence and issue threats, MPs have been warned. Members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee heard how the illegal groups are using the internet to stoke community tensions and organise disorder in the region.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Showcasing 27 Published Experiments in AR Storytelling. “Spatial data, real-scale explainers, interactive visual stories, 3D art, and immersive environments can enhance our readers’ understanding of the world. Since 2020, R&D has experimented with dozens of these stories in collaboration with the newsroom using Instagram’s Spark AR platform.”

Ubergizmo: China To 3D-Print A 590-Foot Dam, Without Human Workers. “Regular people are barely using 3d-printers at home, and 3D-printed homes are not yet commonly printed, but China is already planning to 3d-print a massive dam in Tibet, with an AI-powered design and no human laborers. The endgame is to deliver 5 billion kWh of electricity per year.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 25, 2022 at 01:06AM
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YouTube Content Takedowns, Cultural Warfare, Hyperlocal Disinformation, More: Ukraine Update, May 24, 2022

YouTube Content Takedowns, Cultural Warfare, Hyperlocal Disinformation, More: Ukraine Update, May 24, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Guardian: YouTube removes more than 9,000 channels relating to Ukraine war. “YouTube has taken down more than 70,000 videos and 9,000 channels related to the war in Ukraine for violating content guidelines, including removal of videos that referred to the invasion as a ‘liberation mission’.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

WIRED: Volodymyr Zelensky and the Art of the War Story. “A culture has no budget, no government, no army. It collects no taxes; it has no CEO, bible, or headquarters. If it can’t be precisely identified, how can a nation’s whole culture, which is made up of innumerable artifacts and practices, be loathed? And yet the constant warning of the far right in Russia—and France, and the US—is that someone, somewhere, hates your culture and thus deserves to die. No one but Zelensky has ever dissolved this hollow alarmism with such dispatch.”

WIRED: Open Source Intelligence May Be Changing Old-School War. “Open source intelligence is information that can be readily and legally accessed by the general public. It was used in war and diplomacy long before the internet—alongside information stolen or otherwise secretly obtained and closely held. But its prevalence today means what was once cost-prohibitive to many is now affordable to myriad actors, whether North Korea, the CIA, journalists, terrorists, or cybercriminals.”

US Embassy & Consulates in Italy: War in Ukraine damages major cultural sites. “Russia’s barbaric treatment of Ukrainian cultural sites is not new. Russia has demolished gravesites and seized 4,095 Ukrainian national and local monuments in Crimea since 2014, when it forcibly occupied Crimea and instigated conflict in areas of the Donbas region.”

Global Voices: How Russians are protesting the war in Ukraine from a totalitarian state. “The rare independent sources, for instance, student journal DOXA and the Telegram channel of journalist Roman Super, publish collections of protest photos every day showing readers that within Russian society there is more than the ‘unified’ around the lies of propaganda. Global Voices, with the permission of the authors, is publishing a selection of photos of everyday forms of protesting from around the country.”

Washington Post: Goodbye, Pushkin. Ukrainians target Russian street names, monuments.. “The onset of war has hastened Ukraine’s efforts to remove the names of famous Russian and Soviet figures from metro stations, streets and landmarks. There’s even an app. The only reason more Russian statues haven’t been toppled lately, [Serhii] Sternenko said, is that Ukrainians have been too busy fighting a war.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Putin Promises to Bolster Russia’s IT Security in Face of Cyber Attacks. “President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the number of cyber attacks on Russia by foreign ‘state structures’ had increased several times over and that Russia must bolster its cyber defences by reducing the use of foreign software and hardware.”

Reuters: Pro-Russian hackers attack institutional websites in Italy – police. “Pro-Russian hackers have attacked the websites of several Italian institutions and government ministries, the police said on Friday. At 0800 GMT it was still not possible to access the websites of the Italian foreign ministry and its national magistrates association.”

ProPublica: Why It’s Hard to Sanction Ransomware Groups. “The Russia-linked ransomware gang Conti avoided the sanctions that hit Russian banks and businesses after the invasion of Ukraine, spotlighting the difficulty of reining in cybercriminals. Meanwhile, confused victims face uncertainty.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CyberScoop: Network of hyperlocal Russian Telegram channels spew disinformation in occupied Ukraine. “The Russian disinformation effort in Ukraine is so extensive that it now includes a hyperlocal Telegram network which spews disinformation customized to resonate in individual towns across occupied Ukraine, according to recent research published by the Ukrainian think tank Detector Media.”

Center for European Policy Analysis: The Sky’s Not the Limit: Space Aid to Ukraine. “Despite the signal sent by Russia’s blunt-force space weapons test in November — signaling at the very least its keen interest in the military aspects of space — it is the West that has employed a wide array of government and private sector space technology to aid Ukraine, including satellite platforms providing vital open-source intelligence (OSINT), diplomatic, and humanitarian support.”

New Eastern Europe: The war in Ukraine and historical revisionism. “The Kremlin has been eager to draw parallels between its ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the Second World War. Stressing the idea that it is fighting Nazism much like in its ‘glorious’ past, the country’s controversial ideology has been in development ever since Putin came to power.”

May 24, 2022 at 06:33PM
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