Friday, June 3, 2022

TV News Visual Explorer, ASD’s Yandex Dashboard, Tech Sanctions Impact, More: Ukraine Update, June 3, 2022

TV News Visual Explorer, ASD’s Yandex Dashboard, Tech Sanctions Impact, More: Ukraine Update, June 3, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Internet Archive Blog: A New Approach To Understanding War Through Television News: Introducing The TV News Visual Explorer & The Belarusian, Russian & Ukrainian TV News Archive . “As the TV News Archive enters its third decade, it is increasingly exploring the ways in which it can preserve the domestic and international response to global events as it did with 9/11 two decades ago. As a first step towards this vision, over the last few months the Archive has preserved more than 46,000 broadcasts from domestic Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian television news channels…”

Alliance for Securing Democracy: How Russia’s Leading Search Engine Spreads Kremlin Propaganda on Ukraine: Introducing ASD’s Yandex Dashboard . “To better understand Russia’s information environment, the Alliance for Securing Democracy developed a dashboard to show what a Russian citizen or a Russian language speaker outside Russia’s borders would see on the leading Russian language search engine and news aggregator Yandex.ru. ASD’s Yandex Dashboard catalogues the information and sources that Russian speakers encounter as part of general news consumption, as well as when actively seeking information about the war in Ukraine, through Yandex’s search engine.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Google and Russia’s delicate dance. “Russia has spent months either driving out American tech firms or watching them leave of their own accord over its war in Ukraine. But the country now finds itself stuck in a stalemate with one big tech company: Google.”

Ars Technica: “Everything is gone”: Russian business hit hard by tech sanctions. “Russian companies have been plunged into a technological crisis by Western sanctions that have created severe bottlenecks in the supply of semiconductors, electrical equipment, and the hardware needed to power the nation’s data centers.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Kyiv Post: Zelenska, Caputova discuss creation of Ukrainian Cultural Center in Slovakia. “Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, has met with the President of Slovakia, Zuzana Caputova, to discuss the establishment of a Ukrainian Cultural Center in Slovakia. Zelenska wrote this on Facebook, Ukrinform reports.”

C4ISRNET: Ukraine war shows danger of unencrypted communications, says US Army secretary. “There is a lot to be learned from the war raging in Ukraine, including the value of secure communications and the hazards posed by indiscriminate cell phone use on the battlefield, the U.S. Army’s top civilian said.”

WIRED: How the Kremlin Infiltrated Russia’s Facebook . “IN DECEMBER 2021, two months before the invasion of Ukraine, the new CEO of Russia’s second-most-popular social media network sat next to an immaculate Christmas tree and introduced himself to staff in a video message. For the occasion, Vladimir Kiriyenko—a man usually only pictured in suits—donned dark jeans with New Balance trainers. Throughout the one-hour video, he mostly avoided eye contact with the camera, instead directing his comments about the company’s future to Ochir Mandzhikov, VK’s vice president of communications. But not everyone at VKontakte (VK), Russia’s equivalent to Facebook, was convinced by their new leader’s performance.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: In Chernobyl’s delicate nuclear labs, Russians looted safety systems. “Six hundred ninety-eight computers. 344 vehicles. 1,500 radiation dosimeters. Irreplaceable software. Almost every piece of firefighting equipment. The list of what Russia’s occupying forces stole, blew up or riddled with bullets in and around Chernobyl’s laboratories is still being compiled.”

New York Times: U.S. Technology, a Longtime Tool for Russia, Becomes a Vulnerability. “U.S. officials have long been proud of their country’s ability to supply technology and munitions to the rest of the world. But since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the United States has faced an unfortunate reality: The tools that Russian forces are using to wage war are often powered by American innovation. Still, while the technology made by American and European companies has been turned against Ukraine, the situation has also given the United States and its allies an important source of leverage against Russia.”

Moscow Times: Proton VPN Says ‘Likely’ Blocked in Russia. “Russian users are encountering issues accessing the Proton VPN service due to likely interference by Russian authorities and internet providers, the Swiss-based company said late Wednesday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Scientist: Professors at Bombed Kharkiv University Struggle to Continue Their Work. “In professor Nikolay Mchedlov-Petrossyan’s office at V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in eastern Ukraine, several windows are covered with wood, letting only a little sunlight in…. Kharkiv has been gravely damaged by Russian shelling, but while many professors were forced to flee the university, some have stayed behind. Mchedlov-Petrossyan, the head of the department of physical chemistry, is one of them. He recently returned to his office, where he teaches online and works on his research as best he can.”

International Centre For Defence And Security (ICDS): War in Ukraine Exposes Russia’s Influence in Africa. “Despite Ukraine’s successful political and information campaign in many western capitals, the country is struggling to win over popular support in other parts of the world, including Africa, which does not necessarily share Kyiv’s image of Vladimir Putin and his grand strategy. Of the 54 countries in Africa, 28 voted to condemn the invasion of Ukraine at the UN. While only Eritrea of those remaining 26 countries voted against the resolution, the alarming neutrality of the remaining 25 still demonstrates the effectiveness of Russian power politics and information warfare in some parts of Africa.”

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June 3, 2022 at 07:55PM
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Creem, Climate Datasets, West Virginia Foster Care, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, June 3, 2022

Creem, Climate Datasets, West Virginia Foster Care, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, June 3, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Fader: Creem returns with digital archive and new editorial staff . “Creem, a ’70s and ’80s rock rag that rivaled Rolling Stone in its heyday, has announced its relaunch as a digital publication, newsletter (‘Fresh Cream’), and quarterly print magazine. Its site will also feature a digitized version of every back issue from Creem‘s initial 20-year run, available to peruse with a 30-day free trial until August, at which point it will be bundled with subscriptions to the print quarterly.”

Environmental Analyst: Subak launches ‘Google of climate data’ portal. “Global tech accelerator Subak (which claims to be ‘the world’s first not-for-profit accelerator and data community’) has launched the Data Catalogue – a curated online portal connecting shared climate datasets around the world. The online catalogue has been built to make climate data reliable and accessible for academics, analysts, policymakers and corporations working to identify climate risks and opportunities, and measure decarbonisation efforts.”

WOWK: New foster care dashboard unveiled in West Virginia. “As of Wednesday, West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources has launched a dashboard to track all aspects of the state’s foster care system. Without violating anyone’s privacy, the site allows people to monitor aspects of the nearly 7,000 children in the foster care system in West Virginia.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: Personalize Chrome with themes from LGBTQ+ artists. “To celebrate the next generation of LGBTQ+ artists this Pride month, Chrome commissioned five LGBTQ+ artists to create themes you can select to personalize your Chrome browser and Chromebook. Available globally starting today with more options coming soon, these themes reflect the unique points of view of each individual artist.”

How-To Geek: Microsoft Is Shutting Down “Money in Excel” (and More). “Microsoft introduced ‘Money in Excel’ back in 2020, which allowed people to connect their financial data to Excel sheets. Now the functionality is being discontinued, alongside a few other Microsoft 365 features.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bloomberg: Inside Twitter, Shuffled Jobs and Elon Musk Tweets Dampen Morale. “Executives told workers of plans to pull back resources for some long-term ambitions, including audio spaces, newsletters and communities, in favor of focusing on more immediate needs, like user growth and personalization efforts, according to people familiar with the matter. That means many employees will be shuffled within the company’s consumer product group, the people said.”

New York Times: Help Wanted: State Misinformation Sheriff. “With a salary of $150,000, the person is expected to comb fringe sites like 4chan, far-right social networks like Gettr and Rumble, and mainstream social media sites to root out early misinformation narratives about voting before they go viral, and then urge the companies to remove or flag the posts that contain false information.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: India weighs panel to rule on appeals against social media takedowns. “India is considering whether to set up an appeals panel with the power to reverse the content moderation decisions of social media firms, the information technology ministry said, in what would be the first such move of its kind worldwide.”

NBC Chicago: Illinois Residents Can Now File Claim for Settlement Money in Google Lawsuit . “Illinois residents could soon receive a check as part of a new settlement in a class action lawsuit against Google, claiming the company violated a state privacy law.”

Associated Press: Wray: FBI blocked planned cyberattack on children’s hospital. “The FBI thwarted a planned cyberattack on a children’s hospital in Boston that was to have been carried out by hackers sponsored by the Iranian government, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Washington: VoxLens: Adding one line of code can make some interactive visualizations accessible to screen-reader users. “University of Washington researchers worked with screen-reader users to design VoxLens, a JavaScript plugin that — with one additional line of code — allows people to interact with visualizations. VoxLens users can gain a high-level summary of the information described in a graph, listen to a graph translated into sound or use voice-activated commands to ask specific questions about the data, such as the mean or the minimum value.”

University of Oxford: Long-distance collaboration makes scientific breakthroughs more likely. “In an analysis of data for over ten million research teams, across eleven academic fields from 1961 to 2020, a new working paper from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Work has determined that over the past decade remote collaboration between academic teams has led to more scientific breakthroughs. This is a reversal of what was observed from the 1960s to the 2000s, when remote collaboration led to fewer scientific breakthroughs and more incremental innovation.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



June 3, 2022 at 05:27PM
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Thursday, June 2, 2022

Dewey Hooper, Newspaper Collections, Apple Safari, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 2, 2022

Dewey Hooper, Newspaper Collections, Apple Safari, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 2, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Elon University: Elon launches online exhibit about WWII pilot Dewey Hooper ‘40. “This Memorial Day, the Carol Grotnes Belk Library at Elon University has launched a new online exhibit documenting the life and untimely death of alumnus Dewey Hooper ‘40, a World War II pilot who crashed off the coast of Australia in 1942.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Newspapers .com Blog: New Papers from Texas, California, Florida, Washington, and South Carolina!. “We’re excited to announce that in conjunction with our publishing partner Gannett, we’ve added 13 more papers from five states to our archives! These papers date back to 1910 and chronicle more than a century of local, national, and international news.”

AtlasVPN: Apple’s Safari browser now has more than 1 billion users. “According to the findings by the Atlas VPN team, 1,006,232,879 internet users (19.16% of all internet users) now use the Safari browser, making it the second browser with over a billion users. Nevertheless, Google Chrome firmly remains at the top as the most popular browser.”

USEFUL STUFF

Thunderbird Blog: Thunderbird + RSS: How To Bring Your Favorite Content To The Inbox. “I first discovered RSS feeds in 2004 when I fell in love with podcasting. That’s when I learned I could utilize RSS to bring my favorite web content to me, on my schedule. Whether it was weekly music podcasts, tech blogs, newspaper articles, or a local weather forecast, RSS became a way to more easily digest and disseminate the growing onslaught of content on the web. Back then, I used Google Reader (RIP). But now I use Thunderbird to manage and read all my news feeds, and I love it!”

PC World: Replace Chrome’s new tab page with this far better alternative. “This may be a weird thing to admit, but I’ve become smitten with my web browser’s new tab page. It’s not the standard one that comes with Microsoft Edge or any other browser for that matter. Instead, it’s a fantastic extension called Tabliss, available for Chrome (or other Chromium-based browsers such as Microsoft Edge) and Firefox.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Motherboard: Discord Is the World’s Most Important Financial Messenger, and a Hotbed for Scammers. “While traditional financial communications take place over protocols like the highly secure (and expensive) Bloomberg Terminal or SWIFT, which catapulted into the public consciousness when Russia was banned from it, the most important messaging service in the world of crypto is Discord, which is a powerful chat app but was not designed from the ground up with security in mind. Discord chats are not encrypted, public chat histories can be available to anyone who joins a channel, impersonation scams are common, and the security issue [Josh] Fraser found remains a problem.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: You Need to Update iOS, Chrome, Windows, and Zoom ASAP. “MAY HAS BEEN another busy month of security updates, with Google’s Chrome browser and Android operating system, Zoom, and Apple’s iOS releasing patches to fix serious vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, things have not run smoothly for Microsoft, which was forced to issue an out-of-band update after a disastrous Patch Tuesday during the month. And Cisco, Nvidia, Zoom, and VMWare all issued patches for pressing flaws. Here’s what you need to know.”

SecurityWeek: Scanning Finds Over 3.6 Million Internet-Accessible MySQL Servers. “The Shadowserver Foundation warns of the security risk associated with more than 3.6 million internet-exposed MySQL servers that accept connections on port 3306/TCP. While scanning the internet for accessible MySQL servers, the organization’s researchers identified a total population of roughly 5.4 million IPv4 and IPv6 instances on port 3306/TCP, but say that only two-thirds of these appear to accept a connection.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NewsWise: Direct sound printing is a potential game-changer in 3D printing, according to Concordia researchers. “Most 3D printing methods currently in use rely either on photo (light)- or thermo (heat)-activated reactions to achieve precise manipulation of polymers. The development of a new platform technology called direct sound printing (DSP), which uses soundwaves to produce new objects, may offer a third option.”

University of Edinburgh: Subsea cables could transform ocean monitoring. “Despite sensing technologies advancing significantly in recent years, oceans and seas remain largely unmonitored as installing permanent ocean-floor sensors is very expensive. The new technique could tap into existing networks of subsea cables that crisscross the ocean floor – spanning hundreds of thousands of miles – to create a vast array of environmental sensors, the team says.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



June 3, 2022 at 01:08AM
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Food Contact Chemicals, Synthetic Brain Images, New Mexico Voting Misinformation, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, June 2, 2022

Food Contact Chemicals, Synthetic Brain Images, New Mexico Voting Misinformation, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, June 2, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Chemical Watch: Database reveals vast numbers of food contact chemicals not on radar. “Following a systematic review process, the scientists from the Food Packaging Forum (FPF), with help from Swiss and US academics, selected information from over 1000 published studies measuring chemicals in food contact materials (FCMs) and articles, including processing equipment and tableware. The resulting database, FCCmigex, contains many food contact chemicals (FCCs) for which little is known about use and migration into foods.”

HPC Wire: Nvidia Announces Database of 100K AI and HPC-enabled Brain Images. “Researchers at King’s College in London have curated the largest database of synthetic brain images in the world using Nvidia’s Cambridge-1 supercomputer and artificial intelligence. The database contains 100,000 images of brains and is being made freely available to healthcare researchers to advance cognitive disease research.”

KRQE (New Mexico): Secretary of State launches website to combat voting misinformation. “The Secretary of State’s office has launched a new website aimed to crack down on election misinformation. The Rumors vs. Reality page addresses concerns over voter secrecy and integrity, saying ballots remain private, even to election workers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Supreme Court temporarily blocks Texas’s social media moderation law. “The Supreme Court of the United States temporarily blocked a sweeping Texas law on Tuesday that restricts the ability of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to moderate content on their platforms. By a 5-4 vote, the justices granted an emergency request from the tech industry to block a lower court order that would have allowed the law to take hold, pending legal challenges.”

9to5Google: Twitter preps ‘Search Subscribe’ notifications for new tweets matching a search term. “In the latest pre-release version of the mobile app, Twitter is preparing a way to get notifications about new tweets that match a particular search term. When it comes to tweet-related mobile notifications, the best app for the job has always been the official Twitter app, albeit limited to only new tweets from accounts you follow. Meanwhile, on desktop, TweetDeck offers an expanded suite of notification possibilities combined with the speed of still being an official Twitter application.”

How-To Geek: Vivaldi Browser Pushes Customization With Editable Toolbars. “Firefox has allowed people to customize the main toolbar for years, including adding, removing, or moving buttons and search boxes. However, Chrome only allows you to move around extension buttons, and most Chromium-based browsers can’t do much better. Vivaldi 5.3, which starts rolling out today, adds Firefox-style toolbar customization — and even goes a bit further.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

SEO Roundtable: Rumor: Apple To Announce New Search Engine Next Week. “Robert Scoble posted a bunch of items around what to expect from the Apple WWDC (aka World Wide Developer Conference) that is happening Monday, June 6th. Robert said a bunch of things but specific to search he said ‘and a new search engine is coming too.'”

The Verge: The Murena One shows exactly how hard it is to de-Google your smartphone. “An Android phone without Google. No Google apps, no Google Play Services, no peppy Google Assistant. No Google surveillance and data snooping, no incessant ad targeting, no feeling like privacy is a pointless exercise. Some companies, like Huawei, have been forced to figure out how to build this kind of device. A few others have tried for the sake of maintaining your privacy and as a way to fight back against the tyranny of Big Tech. None of it has ever really worked.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Yahoo Finance: Google and Samsung smart products easy targets for hackers, Which? study finds. “From a doorbell to a wi-fi router and a mobile phone, smart products are easy targets for hackers, new research from consumer group Which? has found. In most cases, Which? tested devices that no longer receive software security updates, leaving cybercriminals free to steal data.”

University of Central Florida: When Hurricanes Strike, Social Media Can Save Lives. “In 2011 only about 10% of the U.S. population turned to social media for information during a crisis, according to several studies. Today that number is closer to 70%. A new study from the University of Central Florida found that social media isn’t just good for communicating. It can be a critical tool for collecting intelligence in real time to better deploy resources before and after hurricanes hit.” I have a rant about emergency responder services standardizing their social media information, but I’ll spare you…

RESEARCH & OPINION

Arizona State University: Closing the gap for real-time data-intensive intelligence. “The online world fills databases with immense amounts of data. Your local grocery stores, your financial institutions, your streaming services and even your medical providers all maintain vast arrays of information across multiple databases. Managing all this data is a significant challenge. And the process of applying artificial intelligence to make inferences or apply logical rules or interpret information on such data can be urgent, especially when delays, known as latencies, are also a major issue.”

Northwestern Now: Unpaid social media moderators perform labor worth $3.4 million a year on Reddit alone. “The social networking platform Reddit relies on volunteer moderators to prevent the site from being overrun by problematic content—including hate speech—and ensure that it remains appealing for users. Though uncompensated, this labor is highly valuable to the company: According to a pair of new studies led by Northwestern University computer scientists, it’s worth at minimum $3.4 million per year, which is equivalent to 2.8% of Reddit’s 2019 revenue.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



June 2, 2022 at 05:25PM
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Wednesday, June 1, 2022

1990s Belgium Nightlife, Iceland Secondary Schools, iPhone Photos, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 1, 2022

1990s Belgium Nightlife, Iceland Secondary Schools, iPhone Photos, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 1, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Mixmag: Charlotte De Witte’s Label KNTXT Launches New Archive Dedicated To ‘90s Belgian Nightlife. “Charlotte de Witte’s label KNTXT has curated a brand new archive charting the history of Belgian nightlife through the late ‘80s and ‘90s. Époque promises to ‘bootleg, document and pay tribute to Belgian discotheque culture’ through photographs, flyers, stories, and other memoirs from Belgium’s clubbing heyday.”

Reykjavik Grapevine: New Website Shows Accessibility Performance At Secondary Schools. “The Union of Icelandic Secondary School Students has launched the Support Bank, which ranks school performance on accessibility and services for those with learning needs, RÚV reports. The website was developed with input from students with learning needs. Questionnaires were sent to schools to collect the data for the website.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 7 Ways You Didn’t Know You Could Search for Photos on Your iPhone. “If you’ve been using your iPhone for years, you’ve probably experienced the struggle of finding an old photo. Thankfully, the Photos app has a pretty powerful search feature that, if used right, can help you find the pictures you’re looking for.” It’s a slideshow, but a good slideshow.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: They Did Their Own ‘Research.’ Now What?. “‘DYOR’ is shorthand for “do your own research,” a phrase that, on its face, amounts to excellent if obvious advice — a reminder to stay informed and vigilant against groupthink. But in the context of a broad collapse of trust in institutions and the experts who speak for them, it has come to mean something more specific. A common refrain in battles about Covid-19 and vaccination, politics and conspiracy theories, parenting, drugs, food, stock trading and media, it signals not just a rejection of authority but often trust in another kind.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: FTC fines Twitter $150 million for ‘deceptive’ ad targeting. “Twitter has paid a $150 million fine to the FTC over its ‘deceptive’ use of user data for targeted advertising. The fine stems from the company’s admission in 2019 that it had for years used Twitter users’ phone numbers and email addresses provided for two-factor authentication to also serve targeted ads.”

World Trademark Review: USPTO inadvertently makes applicant emails public, responds to community concern. “Trademark practitioners reacted with concern to the discovery that, on 24 May, the USPTO made the private email addresses of up to 21,000 applicants publicly available in its Trademark Status & Document Retrieval (TSDR) system. The USPTO has subsequently confirmed that it is taking measures to address the issue and prevent it from happening again.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Brookings Institution: How can digital public technologies accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals?. “This paper focuses on ‘digital public technology’ (DPT), meaning digital assets that create a level playing field for broad access or use—by virtue of being publicly owned, publicly regulated, or open source. We consider how they could support greater progress toward the SDGs’ overarching 2030 deadline, with an emphasis on issues of extreme deprivation and basic needs.”

Ars Technica: Lidar reveals networks of pre-Columbian cities and towns in Bolivia. “An airborne lidar survey recently revealed the long-hidden ruins of 11 pre-Columbian Indigenous towns in what is now northern Bolivia. The survey also revealed previously unseen details of defensive walls and complex ceremonial buildings at 17 other settlements in the area, built by a culture about which archaeologists still know very little: the Casarabe.”

Environmental Investigation Agency UK: Groundbreaking stripe-pattern database to boost enforcement in fight against illegal tiger trade. “Our Tiger Campaign’s project aims to develop a tiger stripe detection AI tool to help identify individual tiger stripe pattern profiles. Tiger stripe patterns are as unique as human fingerprints and we plan to create a database comprising thousands of images of individual tiger stripe patterns, sourced by EIA staff and other organisations, which will allow the identification of tigers and skins seized in illegal trade.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

ScienceDaily: Just being exposed to new things makes people ‘ready to learn’. “A new study is one of the first to provide experimental evidence that people learn from incidental exposure to things that they know nothing about and aren’t even trying to understand.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!



June 2, 2022 at 12:47AM
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RB Search Gizmos: Make Location-Based Twitter Search Easy With Pam’s Pin

RB Search Gizmos: Make Location-Based Twitter Search Easy With Pam’s Pin
By ResearchBuzz

I have finally gotten far enough along with my JavaScript lessons that I could make a tool to address a frequent search annoyance: Twitter’s location-based search.

Did you know you could do a Twitter search by location? You might not know about it because as a search feature it’s unwieldy; you have to enter a lat/long pair to specify a specific address you want to search. Few people wander around with lots of lat/long pairs in their head. Sure, you can go look up a lat/long for an address but that’s time-consuming and, as I said, annoying. So Pam’s Pin (named for its inspiration, Pam Baker) does it for you. Pam’s Pin is available at https://pams-pin.glitch.me/ .

 

Enter an address, and the radius (in km) around the address that you’d like to search for tweets. It is possible to spoof location information, so you can also specify that your tweet results come only from verified Twitter accounts.

Once you click the button, Pam’s Pin will use an API call to translate the address you entered to a lat/long pair, will populate a Twitter search URL with the location data and your other options, and finally will open the Twitter search URL in a new window:

Pam’s Pin is the project I applied to the Bellingcat Tech Fellowship with. As far as features are concerned this is version .0000001. In Google Sheets, where I can just install APIs without worrying about code, I have a much more sophisticated version of Pam’s Pin that includes local features as noted by Wikipedia, street maps and links to various location-based data collections. I was also figuring out how to use map APIs to build lists of local street names for a hyperlocal news search. Still working on that.

I would like to bring all that to a Web-based tool, but I have to get some more learning under my belt if I’m going to do it on my own. I suspect this is going to be something I tinker with occasionally and update you on as I get more features to work.  In the meantime I find just being able to directly search Twitter by address instead of having to go look up a lat/long to be pretty useful in itself!

I need to think about organizing, too. The tools I’ve been creating are things that I make  because I want to use them. I do many searches a day — dozens? hundreds? I’m sure it’s hundreds sometimes — and I’m always thinking about little shortcuts and geegaws to make my life easier. Everything I’ve made has gone straight to my bookmarks bar, but since I’ve got about three dozen more ideas waiting in the wings, I need to either put them somewhere or get a bigger bookmarks bar. WordPress is not very embedded-JavaScript friendly and I don’t need to host everything on Glitch. I also need to make them look nicer.

Have you hipped to the fact that I have no damn idea what I’m doing? Still, maybe this little bit of appified knowledge will make your search life easier.

 

 



June 1, 2022 at 07:25PM
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Language Clubs, Stolen Camera Photography, Propaganda Bloopers, More: Ukraine Update, June 1, 2022

Language Clubs, Stolen Camera Photography, Propaganda Bloopers, More: Ukraine Update, June 1, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Trucking simulator shelves Russia-themed expansion after Ukraine invasion. “Euro Truck Simulator 2 has shelved an upcoming Russia-themed expansion pack after the country’s invasion of Ukraine, its developer SCS Software has announced. In a blog post, the Czech Republic-based developer said that it has cancelled the imminent release of the Heart of Russia DLC pack ‘so that it is not perceived in any way as being in support of or tolerance of the aggression.'”

Google Blog: Spotlight: The first Google for Startups Ukraine Support Fund recipients. “To help Ukrainian entrepreneurs maintain and grow their businesses, strengthen their community and build a foundation for post-war economic recovery, in March we announced a $5 million Google for Startups Ukraine Support Fund to allocate equity-free cash awards throughout 2022. Selected Ukraine-based startups will receive up to $100,000 in non-dilutive funding as well as ongoing Google mentorship, product support, and Cloud credits. Today, we are proud to announce the first cohort of recipients of the Google for Startups Ukraine Support Fund.”

BBC: Ukraine war: Eurovision trophy sold to buy drones for Ukraine. “Kalush Orchestra, the Ukrainian band which won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, have sold their trophy for $900,000 (£712,000; €838,000) to raise money for the war in Ukraine. The crystal microphone was auctioned on Facebook, with the aim of buying drones for Ukraine’s military.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

PetaPixel: Ukrainian Family’s Stolen Camera Found with Photos of Russian Soldiers. “Ukrainian soldiers recently found a digital camera in a destroyed Russian armored vehicle. Apparently looted from a Ukrainian family, the camera’s memory card contained both photos by the family as well as casual snapshots revealing the lives of Russian soldiers as they invade Ukraine.”

Daily Beast: Ukrainian Intel Blasts Cringey Bloopers From Russian Military Propaganda. “Fighters from the Russian republic of Chechnya who have been recruited to fight in the war in Ukraine have been making videos of their attempts to look courageous and mighty in the war. But the videos appear to be staged, according to outtakes Ukrainian intelligence officials have obtained from one of the fighters.”

Notes from Poland: Russia using disinformation to stir hostility between Ukrainians and Poles, warn security services. “Russia is using disinformation to stir animosity between Poles and Ukrainians, warns the spokesman for Poland’s security services. As an example, he pointed to the response to a recent killing in Warsaw, which the Polish far right falsely sought to blame on Ukrainians.”

BBC: Students accuse lecturer of sharing Russia war lies. “In a lecture obtained by the BBC, Prof [Tim] Hayward outlined an argument that the renowned aid organisation, the White Helmets, may have helped fake a chemical attack in Syria. Russia has said the attack was ‘staged’. It comes after he and a number of other academics were accused of spreading misinformation about the war in Ukraine by MPs in the House of Commons in March – something Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said the government would ‘crack down on… hard’.”

New York Times: For Russian-Speaking Ukrainians, Language Clubs Offer Way to Defy Invaders. “Since Russia’s invasion, a number of language clubs have opened in cities in western Ukraine. Teachers and volunteers are reaching out to millions of displaced people who have fled to the relative safety of western cities like Lviv from the Russian-speaking east — encouraging them to practice and embrace Ukrainian as the language of their daily lives. An estimated one in every three Ukrainians speaks Russian at home, according to researchers, and many of them — outraged by the violence of Russia’s invasion — are enthusiastically making the switch as a show of defiance.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

RTL Today: High-tech race to map Ukraine’s damaged historic buildings. “Many of Ukraine’s historic monuments have been destroyed in the three months since Russia invaded, but cultural experts are working to conserve their memory using cutting-edge technology and 3D scans. One of them is volunteer French engineer Emmanuel Durand, a specialist in 3D data acquisition, who is assisting a bevy of architects, engineers, historic building experts and a museum director to record buildings in Kyiv, Lviv, Chernigiv and Kharkiv.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Top10VPN: Russian VPN Spending Since the Invasion of Ukraine . “The Russian Federal Treasury has published over 200 official procurement documents for VPN technology with a combined value of almost $10 million since the invasion of Ukraine. The documents reveal state officials’ need to circumvent their own government’s censorship of the internet in Russia.”

Brown Political Review: Russia and the New Disinformation Regime. “The current Russian disinformation strategy is much different than propaganda of the past; it works in incredibly high volume, it’s so drastically detached from the truth, and it aims to confuse its citizens and enemies. Primed for the modern day, this strategy offers Russia an easy tool to achieve its goals while leaving few solutions to address it.”

New York Times: Russian Academics Aim to Punish Colleagues Who Backed Ukraine Invasion. “Some academic researchers in Russia are quietly working to prevent colleagues who have supported their country’s invasion of Ukraine from being elected to the Russian Academy of Sciences this month. If they succeed, they will deny those who back the war a prized credential that confers prestige in Russian institutions of higher learning. Their campaign could also show that some acts of protest remain possible despite a government crackdown on dissent.”

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June 1, 2022 at 06:48PM
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