New researches

Sunday, June 5, 2022

2019 Malta Protests, Snapchat, Twitter, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 5, 2022

2019 Malta Protests, Snapchat, Twitter, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Shift (Malta): Documenting the ‘sudden awakening from a deep sleep’ – Book on 2019 protests launched. “Local human rights NGO aditus foundation on Friday launched a photobook and online archive that brings together photographs taken by citizens, participants and onlookers of the political protests that took place in Malta between November 2019 and January 2020, in the hope of preserving the memory of the protest.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Digitaltrends: Snapchat now has restaurant reviews. Here’s how to view them. “On Friday, Snapchat announced a new map layer it has added to its existing Snap Map. The new layer was created in partnership with The Infatuation, a restaurant review site. Basically, the layer shows you recommended restaurants that are closest to you. With the new feature, you can view restaurant reviews from The Infatuation about the restaurants around you, save them to your favorites, or share them with your friends.”

AFP: Campaign launched to stop Musk buying Twitter . “Advocacy groups on Friday launched a campaign to stop Elon Musk from buying Twitter as the proposed purchase cleared review by US antitrust authorities. Twitter said that the deal for Musk to acquire the company was a step closer to being sealed with the passing of a deadline for it to be challenged under a US antitrust law.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 10 Lightweight Linux Distributions to Give Your Old PC New Life. “Many Linux distros are designed to be lightweight, with versions of Linux under 500MB and even under 100MB available. If you’re looking for a resource-light operating system for your PC, try these compact, lightweight Linux distros.” I continue to recommend Zorin. I used Puppy Linux about fifteen years ago when I had plenty to do and junk hardware to do it with. It was great.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Prolific North: Footballers launch crowdfunding campaign for new app tackling social media abuse. “Four professional footballers, including Sheffield Wednesday’s Josh Windass, have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise £250,000 for a new social platform tackling online abuse.”

NBC News: Photographer Naima Green is creating an archive of queer representation. “Green’s ongoing archival project, ‘Jewels From the Hinterland,’ features Black and brown people in urban green spaces. At work on the project since 2013, she wrote in a piece for The New York Times that she ‘wanted these photographs to assert and insert our presence in these tranquil landscapes, to interrupt the predominant narratives about people of color surrounded by urban decay. Beauty here is an entry point — it makes us stop and look, but it isn’t the whole story.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: Congress is finally taking medical cybersecurity seriously. “Years of alarm bells from cybersecurity experts about the vulnerabilities of medical devices are finally being heard by Congress. Senators proposed a new bill this week that would require the Food and Drug Administration to issue cybersecurity guidelines more regularly, and share information about vulnerable devices on its website.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: Social media giants are failing women, finds Ofcom. “Ofcom, the U.K.’s soon-to-be social media harms watchdog under incoming online safety legislation, has warned tech platforms that they are failing to take women’s safety seriously. Publishing new research (PDF) into the nation’s online habits today, Ofcom said it has found that female internet users in the U.K. are less confident about their online safety than men, as well as being more affected by discriminatory, hateful and trolling content.”

ZDNet: Google’s massive language translation work identifies where it goofs up. “What do you do after you have collected writing samples for a thousand languages for the purpose of translation, and humans still rate the resulting translations a fail? Examine the failures, obviously. And that is the interesting work that Google machine learning scientists related this month in a massive research paper on multi-lingual translation, ‘Building Machine Translation Systems for the Next Thousand Languages.'”

Associated Press: California child abuse database lacks half of county reports. “More than half of substantiated California child abuse reports in recent years were not in the state’s database, which could result in child abusers being allowed to care for children, state auditors said Tuesday.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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June 6, 2022 at 12:47AM
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New York Electric Vehicles, YouTube, Ancestry, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, June 5, 2022

New York Electric Vehicles, YouTube, Ancestry, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, June 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

State of New York: Governor Hochul Announces New Online Resource Center for New York’s Continued Expansion of Electric Vehicle Infrastructure . “Governor Kathy Hochul today announced the launch of New York’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program website. The newly launched website provides additional background on the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure funding program, and includes a short survey to collect user feedback in order to assist the State in the development of its National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Plan that will advance New York’s nation-leading climate agenda.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

KnowTechie: YouTube now lets you use your phone as a second screen. “You can now use your mobile device as a second screen when watching YouTube on TV. The feature will be perfect for people wanting to interact with the video without having to back out of the actual video on the screen.”

PetaPixel: Ancestry.com Now Lets You Automatically Colorize Historical Photos. “Ancestry, the largest for-profit genealogy website on the planet, has integrated an automatic colorization feature that it says lets users bring make black and white photos more lifelike.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 5 More Websites to Discover Free Documentaries to Stream Online. “In the past, we’ve covered several places to watch documentaries for free, whether streaming them on websites or dedicated apps for non-fiction content. Well, that’s not the end of the list, though. These sites find documentaries by going to sources others don’t venture or redefine what a documentary is.”

Digital Inspiration: How to Auto Format Google Form Responses in Google Sheets. “Learn how to automatically preserve the formatting in Google Sheet when new Google Form responses are submitted.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Rest of World: Inside the risky world of “Migrant TikTok”. “Speaking to Rest of World, experts pointed to migrant TikTok as a new entry point for young people into the world of irregular migration. The absence of reliable information means that social media has long played a role in helping people share advice, with Facebook groups and other private channels acting as informal hubs for knowledge: how to travel, whom to contact. But with the rise of apps like TikTok where posts are public, compounded by recommender algorithms that repeatedly suggest similar content, virality has given this information greater reach among people who aren’t actively searching for it.”

Every: The Internet Encyclopedia of Memes. “For the past 15 years, Know Your Meme has documented internet culture from across the web—from 4chan and Reddit to Twitter and TikTok. For nearly 12 of those years—or what he describes as ‘an eternity in internet years’—Don Caldwell has been at the forefront at Know Your Meme, most recently as the Editor-in-Chief. He’s made nearly 100,000 contributions to the site, slowed only by moving into a managerial role at the company.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Frontier Myanmar: Pro-military death squad rallies openly on social media. “After tea shop owner U Khin Maung Thein was abducted and killed in April, pictures of his body were uploaded to the social media platform Telegram. Hanging around his neck, over his bloodstained shirt, was a lanyard with a strange symbol: a red circle with an image of an ancient Burmese warrior holding two swords. This is the calling card of Thwe Thauk Apwe, a new pro-military vigilante group whose violent rise has played out over social media, particularly Facebook and Telegram.”

WIRED: The Race to Hide Your Voice. “As machines become better at understanding you through your voice, companies are cashing in. Voice recognition systems—from Siri and Alexa to those using your voice as your password—have proliferated in recent years as artificial intelligence and machine learning have unlocked the ability to understand not just what you are saying but who you are. Big Voice may be a $20 billion industry within a few years. And as the market grows, privacy-focused researchers are increasingly searching for ways to protect people from having their voice data used against them.”

NHK World Japan: Japan govt. planning to set up comprehensive copyright database. “The Japanese government is preparing a bill that will establish a comprehensive database of copyrighted material. The aim is to enable individuals and businesses to use music, video and other content more easily.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NiemanLab: Should Google pay for news in Brazil? It’s complicated. “No solution is ideal. The worst thing that journalists can do, however, is to step aside and let media owners and platforms decide among themselves. The solution should not allow Big Tech to remain free and unregulated, nor should it force it to pay the same media owners that have lobbied against diversity in media. Somewhere in between — and with ample and public and transparent debate — there is a middle ground to be found.”

Washington Post: I tried to read all my app privacy policies. It was 1 million words.. “Let’s abolish the notion that we’re supposed to read privacy policies. I’m not suggesting companies shouldn’t have to explain what they’re up to. Maybe we call them ‘data disclosures’ for the regulators, lawyers, investigative journalists and curious consumers to pore over. But to protect our privacy, the best place to start is for companies to simply collect less data.” Good morning, Internet…

June 5, 2022 at 05:38PM
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Saturday, June 4, 2022

Internet Archive, Chinatown NYC, 1992 LA Uprising, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, June 4, 2022

Internet Archive, Chinatown NYC, 1992 LA Uprising, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, June 4, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Internet Archive Blog: New additions to the Internet Archive for May 2022. “Many items are added to the Internet Archive’s collections every month, by us and by our patrons. Here’s a round up of some of the new media you might want to check out. Logging in might be required to borrow certain items.”

NPR: A new app guides visitors through NYC’s Chinatown with hidden stories. “Composer George Tsz-Kwan Lam has always liked writing music inspired by places. ‘There are all these places in Chinatown that are both hidden and meaningful,” he says, stepping out of the way of passersby while leading a tour of the neighborhood. “To uncover some of those hidden things in a city walk that you might not ordinarily notice — I wondered, is there a piece in that?’ It turns out there’s not just a piece, but a whole app.”

UCLA: New website offers Korean American view of 1992 L.A. uprising. “Compiled by a group of researchers, editors and students, the site contains hundreds of articles, images, and videos from the past 30 years that can help anyone better understand Sa I Gu in a way that centers the viewpoints of Korean Americans. The project was inspired by Pulitzer-nominated Korean American journalist K.W. Lee, who has been a trailblazer in American media during the past 50 years. It was made possible with the support of Jerry Kang, Korea Times-Hankook Ilbo Endowed Chair in Korean American Studies and Law.”

EVENTS

Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas: Free online course on mental health and journalism: Learn how to take care of yourself and responsibly report on mental health issues. “In a recent survey of nearly 1,000 Canadian media workers, 69% reported having anxiety and 46% reported suffering from depression. Fifty-three percent have sought out health professionals to deal with work-related stress and mental well-being. In response to this pervasive issue in our global journalism community, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, the Carter Center and The Self-Investigation are offering the free online course, ‘Mental health and journalism: How journalists can responsibly report on it and take care of themselves.'”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Google Reportedly Backs Down on Office Demands as Contractors Threaten to Strike. “Google Maps contractors were told they had to return to office on June 6, but received a 90-day extension three hours after telling management they were going on strike, according to a tweet Thursday by the Alphabet Workers Union. The 200-plus contractors, working for IT consulting company Cognizant Technology Solutions, say that the current return to office demands by Google are unsafe, according to the AWU.”

9to5Google: Google Assistant is losing the ability to set location-based reminders. “This removal comes as the system behind Assistant reminders has long been quite basic. Interactions done via voice are fine, but the list UI showing you everything is quite bad on Android. It certainly looks and feels like an afterthought. In fact, the banner telling users that Google Assistant’s location reminders are going away is not even legible with the new dark theme.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Who won the Depp-Heard trial? Content creators that went all-in.. “The trial offered a potential glimpse into our future media ecosystem, where content creators serve as the personalities breaking news to an increasing numbers of viewers — and, in turn, define the online narrative around major events. Those creators can also bring in major personal profits in the process. In this new landscape, every big news event becomes an opportunity to amass followers, money and clout. And the Depp-Heard trial showed how the creator-driven news ecosystem can influence public opinion based on platform incentives.”

Fast Company: ‘If we grow Reddit, we are going to make the world a better place’ . “Founded by Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005, Reddit has long been one of the most-visited websites in the U.S. But its user base of 50 million daily active users does not rival Twitter’s 229 million daily users or Snapchat’s 332 million, let alone Facebook’s 1.96 billion. That would seem to leave plenty of room for [Pali] Bhat to instigate product improvements that result in more growth—a critical goal as Reddit works its way toward an IPO.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Hacker News: YODA Tool Found ~47,000 Malicious WordPress Plugins Installed in Over 24,000 Sites. “As many as 47,337 malicious plugins have been uncovered on 24,931 unique websites, out of which 3,685 plugins were sold on legitimate marketplaces, netting the attackers $41,500 in illegal revenues. The findings come from a new tool called YODA that aims to detect rogue WordPress plugins and track down their origin, according to an 8-year-long study conducted by a group of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ars Technica: 1.1 quintillion operations per second: US has world’s fastest supercomputer. “The US has retaken the top spot in the world supercomputer rankings with the exascale Frontier system at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee.”

University of North Carolina: Preserving endangered Islamic manuscripts. “Scholars from the department of African, African American and diaspora studies and a University Libraries digitization specialist traveled to Senegal and Mali to preserve and digitize 6,000 pages of handwritten Islamic manuscripts.”

France24: Scientists produce chimp genetic map to combat trafficking. “Scientists have produced the first genetic map of chimpanzees in the wild, offering a detailed reconstruction of the endangered species’ past migrations, and a new tool to combat illegal trafficking. The genomic catalogue, which includes 828 individuals from across their vast African range, can now be used to link kidnapped chimpanzees — or their meat and body parts — to their place of origin within 100 kilometers.” Good morning, Internet…

June 4, 2022 at 05:31PM
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Friday, June 3, 2022

Monkeypox Ebook, Digital Storytelling, PACER, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 3, 2022

Monkeypox Ebook, Digital Storytelling, PACER, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 3, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

PR Newswire: GIDEON’s Monkeypox eBook Offered Free of Charge to Help Fight the Outbreak (PRESS RELEASE). “GIDEON, the leading infectious diseases database, released their monkeypox eBook at no cost. GIDEON exists to advance the fight against infectious diseases; the timely release of the eBook is another step toward its mission. The ‘Monkeypox: Global Status’ eBook is authored by top infectious disease specialists and doctors, including Stephen Berger MD, the co-founder of GIDEON.” The ebook will be available free for 30 days.

EVENTS

Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas: Digital Storytelling for the Next Generation of Latinx Journalists: Apply now for free online course offered by Knight Center and Microsoft. “To improve representation of Latinx storytellers in the media industries, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and Microsoft are teaming up to offer a free online course for Latinx college and university students in the United States. ‘Digital Storytelling for the Next Generation of Latinx Journalists’ runs for four weeks from June 20 to July 17, 2022.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Above the Law: Free PACER Searches Coming! Federal Judiciary Boldly Steps Into Early 2000s!. “Move over “Free Hugs,” there’s a new slogan capturing the hearts and minds of America’s youth: ‘Free PACER Searches.’ Probably not, but work with me here.” A much more cynical assessment than Reuters that will scissor-kick your welling bubble of open records happiness.

Popular Science: Tweeting a spoiler? Put a content warning on it.. “Twitter’s content warnings conceal a video or photo with a black layer that users will have to click or tap to reveal what’s underneath. The feature was designed to protect people from seeing unwanted violent, adult, or otherwise sensitive content while scrolling through their feed, but you can use it to protect your followers from whatever you want—including spoilers.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 10 Podcasts to Help You Find Your Next Favorite Book. “On this list, explore podcasts like Chelsea Devantez’s Celebrity Book Club, Barnes & Noble’s Poured Over, and an audio book matchmaking program. These shows will tell you about which new things to read, which classics you shouldn’t, which celebrity memoirs worth checking out, and more. All of them will make your TBR pile a little more exciting.” Slideshow.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Google’s plan to talk about caste bias led to ‘division and rancor’. “Longtime observers of Google’s struggles to promote diversity, equity and inclusion say the fallout fits a familiar pattern. Women of color are asked to advocate for change. Then they’re punished for disrupting the status quo.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Hundreds of Elasticsearch databases targeted in ransom attacks. “Hackers have targeted poorly secured Elasticsearch databases and replaced 450 indexes with ransom notes asking for $620 to restore contents, amounting to a total demand of $279,000. The threat actors set a seven-day deadline for the payments and threaten to double the demand after that. If another week passes without getting paid, they say the victim would lose the indexes.”

Slate: All Their Apes Gone. “Since April 2021, when the Bored Ape Yacht Club collective auctioned its first NFTs, large corners of Twitter and other spaces have resembled a sillier planet of the apes. Celebrities like Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton showed off their BAYC-created apes on national TV. Shaq made his ape his Twitter profile picture. Justin Bieber got an ape, though he probably didn’t pay for it….Then came the hacks.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: Tension Inside Google Over a Fired AI Researcher’s Conduct. “IN LATE 2018, Google AI researchers Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini got the go-ahead to test an elegant idea. Google had invented powerful computer chips called tensor processing units, or TPUs, to run machine learning algorithms inside its data centers—but, the pair wondered, what if AI software could help improve that same AI hardware?”

LitHub: How Empirical Databases Have Changed Our Understanding of Early American Slavery. “In historical scholarship during the early 21st century, some of these new methods and tools of truth-seeking have been put to work on a large scale in the history of slavery and race in America. Among the most important and useful of these tools are the careful construction of empirical databases. Increasingly, this work has been done by teams of scholars, who combine traditional sources with digital methods on a new scale.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 4, 2022 at 12:53AM
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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.”

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…

June 3, 2022 at 05:27PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/HzpdKeL

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…

June 3, 2022 at 01:08AM
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