New researches

Friday, June 10, 2022

Mobile Networked Creativity Repository, Minnesota Water Quality, EU Device Standards, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 8, 2022

Mobile Networked Creativity Repository, Minnesota Water Quality, EU Device Standards, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 8, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

North Carolina State University: Creativity as Survival: Crowdsourcing Unexpected Ways We Use Technology. “I’m part of a team of researchers that is collecting examples of how people are using mobile, networked technologies to accomplish unexpected things – from improving local transportation in low-income communities to sharing information about public health. To identify examples of these innovative efforts, we are enlisting the public’s help. We’ve created a website called the Mobile Networked Creativity Repository to crowdsource examples from around the world.”

State of Minnesota: State rolls out dashboard showing PFAS monitoring results for drinking water . “Minnesota residents who get their drinking water from a community public water system will now be able to find out if their system’s water has any level of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), through an interactive online dashboard unveiled today by the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: EU reaches deal to make USB-C a common charger for most electronic devices. “Europe has reached a deal to make USB-C a common charger for all phones and electronic devices, with the aim to reduce e-waste and inconvenience with incompatible chargers.”

CNET: TikTok Adds Avatars Similar to Apple’s Memoji. “TikTok users can now animate themselves with the latest app feature, TikTok Avatars, the short-form video platform said Tuesday.”

USEFUL STUFF

Gizmodo: It’s Time To Clean Up Your Social Media Profiles. “Here we’ll take you through the steps needed to update your profiles on most of the major social networks, and guide you through the options that are available—some of which you may not be aware of. We’re going to concentrate on the web interfaces, where there’s more room to operate on a bigger screen, but these options are available on mobile too.”

Search Engine Journal: Tips For Avoiding Misinformation In SEO Resources & Conversations. “For every idea proposed, there are others in the SEO industry who disagree. Turning to Google for help isn’t always helpful because Google ranks information about SEO that Googlers themselves are on record saying is wrong. There is a way to cut through the noise and figure out which information is likely valid and which information is smoke and mirrors.” I can’t stand SEO because so much of what’s out there is garbage. This is a helpful article for cutting through the junk.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

South China Morning Post: China and US locked in new infowar after Chinese social media claims American manipulation over Xinjiang. “Beijing and Washington are locked in another round of narrative wars over an unsubstantiated claim that US diplomats had admitted human rights issues in Xinjiang were made up to undermine China. In a statement emailed on Tuesday, a spokesperson for the US embassy urged China to stop attributing false statements to American officials that could make them targets for harassment.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: The Hacker Gold Rush That’s Poised to Eclipse Ransomware. “At the RSA security conference in San Francisco on Monday, longtime digital scams researcher Crane Hassold will present findings that warn it would be logical for ransomware actors to eventually convert their operations to business email compromise (BEC) attacks as ransomware becomes less profitable or carries a higher risk for attackers. In the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has repeatedly found that total money stolen in BEC scams far exceeds that pilfered in ransomware attacks—though ransomware attacks can be more visible and cause more disruption and associated losses.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Concordia University: Government websites and apps use the same tracking software as commercial ones, according to new Concordia research. “It’s no secret that the commercial websites and mobile apps we use every day are tracking us. Big companies like Facebook and Google depend on it. However, as a new paper by a team of Concordia researchers shows, businesses are not the only ones gathering up our private data. Governments across the world are incorporating the same tracking tools and empowering large businesses to track users of government services, even in jurisdictions where lawmakers are enacting legislation to restrict commercial trackers.”

Vox EU: Mobile internet access and the desire to emigrate. “The mobile internet has changed how people live, work, and exchange information. Fast broadband can boost household income and affect political awareness. This column examines how 3G mobile internet rollout affects people’s desire and plans to emigrate. Increases in 3G coverage raise individuals’ desire and plans to emigrate, especially for those who do not have networks abroad, while it negatively affects perceptions of relative financial wellbeing and trust in the government. Internet access may be boosting the desire to emigrate while reducing the costs of finding information on opportunities abroad.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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June 9, 2022 at 12:14AM
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WordPress Plugins, South London Gay Community Centre, Photogrammetry for Journalists, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, June 8, 2022

WordPress Plugins, South London Gay Community Centre, Photogrammetry for Journalists, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, June 8, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WP Tavern: rtCamp Launches WordPress Plugin Compare Project. “The team behind rtCamp, a 125-person agency and a WordPress VIP Gold agency partner, has launched a new tool called WordPress Plugin Compare Project (WPPC) to help users extend WordPress with the right plugins for their needs. WPPC lets users search for plugins to compare and customize each selection displayed on [a] chart.”

Brixton Buzz (no relation): Revolting Gays: new website documents the South London Gay Community Centre and the Brixton gay squatting scene, 1970s – early1980s. “Telling the story of the South London Gay Community Centre and the Brixton gay squatting community from the 1970s to the early 1980s, the website documents a seemingly disparate group of gay men and their attempts to live together communally. Containing written text, photographs, podcasts, videos and art works, the Revolting Gays website will go live on June 24th this year.”

EVENTS

Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas: Learn how to capture the world in 3D: Sign up for this free online course on photogrammetry for journalists. “Photogrammetry allows journalists to tell stories about the world around them by creating three-dimensional replicas from photographs. Learn more about the photogrammetric process and how it can be used for journalism in a new free online course from the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC World: Best remote desktop software: From casual use to business deployment. “The fascinating and incredibly useful remote-desktop software that allows you to operate another computer over a long distance as if it were your own is now two decades old. But while it’s not new, faster networking and broadband has rendered the remote desktop experience far speedier and more enjoyable. Under optimal conditions, it’s nearly as facile as being there in person.”

From MakeUseOf, for a given value of “Useful”: The 5 Best Free Random Decision Makers. “If you’re trying to make a light-hearted, a random decision maker can help you to more easily make an unbiased decision. It can save you time and prevent overthinking. Of course, they won’t be suitable for large, life-altering decisions–you’ll need to ponder over those, sorry!”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Don’t Believe Everything You Read About the Man in This Photo. “There is no ‘Bernie,’ he’s not a crisis actor, and news organizations are not behind the posts. And the photo? It is of a 36-year-old online gamer, Jordie Jordan. He’s alive, and he had nothing to do with the posts. Instead, the posts are part of a yearslong harassment campaign against him, taking place on online platforms like Twitter, Reddit and Discord.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Crypto Scams Have Cost Consumers More Than $1 Billion, FTC Says. “Crypto scams have cost consumers more than $1 billion since the start of 2021, according to a new Federal Trade Commission analysis. The numbers, which are based on losses reported by consumers from January 2021 through March 2022, also show that crypto is becoming the payment of choice for many scammers, accounting for about one in every four dollars lost to fraud, the FTC says.”

Politico: Discord hires first lobbyists. “The popular online text, video and voice chat app Discord has hired its first federal lobbyists. Monument Advocacy’s Stewart Verdery, Ashley Hoy, Andrew Howell, Joseph Hoefer and Jeff Gary will lobby on privacy and content moderation issues for the platform, which initially found a huge base among gamers but exploded in popularity during the pandemic.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: ‘Civic Fan Fiction’ Makes Politics a Dysfunctional Team Sport. “Stories bind us together, and woe betide anyone who forgets it; there is no perfectly rational and coldly logical way to replace the role of narrative in our lives. We’re meaning-making machines. More than anything else, that is what makes us human: the ability to imbue the inherently meaningless with the most elaborate and consequential of meanings. When it comes to politics, that means storytelling is often at the heart of it, and stories need heroes, villains, and narrative arcs. It’s easier and more satisfying.”

Michigan Daily: TikTok: Proof that we’re living in a simulation. “While it’s fun to imagine that there is a conspiracy behind TikTok’s apparent telepathy, the reality is I have zero proof of a simulation and plenty of proof of the existence of my very real and very human brain, which is simply recognizing a pattern between events in my own life and the things that I observe online. But I do concede that whenever an oddly specific TikTok pops up on my For You page, it feels too accurate to just be chance. So what’s really going on?”

Engadget: Oregon is shutting down its controversial child welfare AI in June. “A number of states across the country have already implemented, or are considering, similar algorithms within their child welfare agencies. But as with Northpointe’s COMPAS before them, their implementation have raised concerns about the transparency and reliability of the process as well as their clear tendency towards racial bias. However, the Allegheny developers did note that their tool was just that and was never intended to operate on its own without direct human oversight.” Good morning, Internet…

June 8, 2022 at 05:27PM
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Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Animal Traits, Espacio Latino, WWDC, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 7, 2022

Animal Traits, Espacio Latino, WWDC, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Nature: AnimalTraits – a curated animal trait database for body mass, metabolic rate and brain size. “Trait databases have become important resources for large-scale comparative studies in ecology and evolution. Here we introduce the AnimalTraits database, a curated database of body mass, metabolic rate and brain size, in standardised units, for terrestrial animals. The database has broad taxonomic breadth, including tetrapods, arthropods, molluscs and annelids from almost 2000 species and 1000 genera.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Deadline: Roku Channel Launches Free Hispanic Streaming Hub Espacio Latino. “Roku is launching Espacio Latino, a free streaming hub for Hispanic programming, on the Roku Channel. With more than 61 million active accounts as of March 31, Roku is a leading gateway for streaming, and one of its most popular offerings is the Roku Channel, a mix of free and paid on-demand and linear services with reach to some 80 million households.”

TechCrunch: Here’s everything Apple just announced at the WWDC 2022 keynote. “It’s WWDC keynote time! Each year Apple kicks off its Worldwide Developer Conference with a few hours of back-to-back-to-back announcements, generally covering things from iOS to watchOS to — sometimes! — new hardware. Didn’t have time to tune in? We get it! We’ve wrapped up all of the biggest news in an easy-to-skim digest.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Brown University: Grant to support Brown-led global oral history project on slavery’s legacy . “With support from the grant, researchers at Brown’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice will collaborate with an international network of scholars in Senegal, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Belgium, Brazil and beyond to host public conversations, capture video narratives and record oral histories that seek to answer two important questions: How did slavery and colonialism shape these places, and how did they shape the world as a whole?”

The Verge: Google Contractors Say A Recruiting Company Has Been Systematically Skimming Their Pay . “A group of Google contractors says they’ve been underpaid by the agency that recruited them, resulting in thousands of dollars in unpaid wages per affected worker. The earliest reports occurred as long ago as 2019, and workers say the payroll errors are happening so regularly that they believe it to be a kind of systematic wage theft.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Italian city of Palermo shuts down all systems to fend off cyberattack. “The municipality of Palermo in Southern Italy suffered a cyberattack on Friday, which appears to have had a massive impact on a broad range of operations and services to both citizens and visiting tourists. Palermo is home to about 1.3 million people, the fifth most populous city in Italy. The area is visited by another 2.3 million tourists every year. Although local IT experts have been trying to restore the systems for the past three days, all services, public websites, and online portals remain offline.”

South China Morning Post: Tech war: Chinese database software vendor shrugs off sanctions risk on using open-source code from Oracle’s MySQL system. “A Chinese software vendor has brushed aside speculation that its enterprise product, which uses code from Oracle Corp’s MySQL open-source relational database management system, faces the risk of sanctions amid simmering tensions between Washington and Beijing.”

CBS DFW: Texas AG Ken Paxton launches investigation against Twitter. “Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation against Twitter, saying the social media platform may have falsely reported its fake bot accounts, which is a violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Johns Hopkins University: Black Beyond Data. “This is one of [Jessica Marie] Johnson’s passions as a historian. To tell the stories of Black people—particularly Black women—in the Atlantic African diaspora during the centuries of slavery. She highlights the relationships, warmth, and intimacy they created despite the harshest of circumstances, as well as the ways in which they wielded intelligence, creativity, and interpersonal skills to strive for freedom. But Johnson is equally committed to opening access to the myriad amounts of data that contain information about Black life and Black people, both historical and contemporary.”

Purdue University: An edible QR code takes a shot at fake whiskey. “The days of fake whiskey could be numbered, thanks to a team of biomedical engineers from Purdue University and South Korea. The team, led by Young Kim, associate head for research and an associate professor in Purdue’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, has developed an QR code on an edible silk tag that manufacturers can place in bottles of whiskey. Consumers can use a smartphone app to confirm the whiskey’s authenticity.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 8, 2022 at 12:31AM
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Search Engines in Russia, Electronic Warfare, Destroyed Cultural Heritage, More: Ukraine Update, June 7, 2022

Search Engines in Russia, Electronic Warfare, Destroyed Cultural Heritage, More: Ukraine Update, June 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

WIRED: Google’s Russian Empire Faces an Uncertain Future. “In 2021, there were more than 91 million YouTube users in Russia, a country of 144 million people, according to data analytics company Statista. But Google’s commercial empire is crumbling. On March 10, the company announced it would suspend all its paid-for services in Russia due to ‘payment system disruption’ linked to Western sanctions. The same month, Google started relocating staff from its Moscow office to other countries, with many moving to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, according to employees’ LinkedIn profiles. In May, Google’s Russian subsidiary filed for bankruptcy after a court order froze its main bank account.”

The Art Newspaper: Ukraine misses out on UK cultural protection money. “The UK’s Cultural Protection Fund has not got an allocation of money for emergency assistance for Ukraine in the current financial year, The Art Newspaper can disclose…. Although the fund was able to allocate £60,000 for Ukraine in March, no money has been made available in the current financial year, despite the tragic and widespread destruction of heritage buildings and museums which continues unabated.”

Search Engine Land: Yandex CEO and founder resigns following sanctions. “Arkady Volozh, Yandex’s CEO and executive director, resigned from his position, the company announced today. The European Union imposed sanctions on Volozh personally. Yandex has not been sanctioned by the EU, U.S., or UK. Volozh had a 45.3% voting and 8.6% economic interest in Yandex.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

WIRED: Volodymyr Zelensky on War, Technology, and the Future of Ukraine. “In this wide-ranging interview, which has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity, Zelensky called on Big Tech to do more to pull out of Russia, praised Elon Musk’s Starlink, and explained why modern leaders have to appeal to the distracted social media generation. ‘We just live in another time, no longer the time of postmen,’ he said.”

International Business Times: Ukraine Discovers Russian Army’s Propaganda Materials To ‘Achieve Russia’s Goals’ . “Ukrainian officials gained access to several documents where employees of the 5th unit of the Kremlin’s FSB admitted that many Russians still do not understand why the invasion of Ukraine was needed to achieve Russia’s goals. The documents also laid out a plan to justify the war to Russians, including making more propaganda videos.”

Military.com: Meet the Guardsman Helping Ukrainians Blow Up Russian Tanks over the Phone. “Sgt. 1st Class Chris Freymann never thought he’d have such a direct role in the fight against Russian forces invading Ukraine. But as the war raged, he became a kind of ad hoc, over-the-phone tech support for Ukrainians trying to use Javelin missiles while under fire. They messaged with questions; Freymann sent answers. In return, he got photos and videos of the Russian tanks they destroyed.”

Ukrinform: Russia destroyed over 370 cultural heritage sites after 100 days of war – Tkachenko. “Russia has destroyed 370 cultural heritage sites after 100 days of its all-out invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine’s Minister of Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko said this at a briefing at the Media Center Ukraine – Ukrinform.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Deadly secret: Electronic warfare shapes Russia-Ukraine war. “On Ukraine’s battlefields, the simple act of powering up a cellphone can beckon a rain of deathly skyfall. Artillery radar and remote controls for unmanned aerial vehicles may also invite fiery shrapnel showers. This is electronic warfare, a critical but largely invisible aspect of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Military commanders largely shun discussing it, fearing they’ll jeopardize operations by revealing secrets.”

OCCRP: Criminal Proxies Offer ‘Perfect Cover’ for Russian Cyber Offensive. “As the West warns of imminent Russian assaults against critical infrastructure, cybersecurity researchers say the Kremlin is likely to rely on criminal rather than state hackers in launching such attacks.”

The Register: Even Russia’s Evil Corp now favors software-as-a-service. “The Russian-based Evil Corp is jumping from one malware strain to another in hopes of evading sanctions placed on it by the US government in 2019. You might be wondering why cyberextortionists in the Land of Putin give a bit flip about US sanctions: as we understand it, the sanctions mean anyone doing business with or handling transactions for gang will face the wrath of Uncle Sam. Evil Corp is therefore radioactive, few will want to interact with it, and the group has to shift its appearance and operations to keep its income flowing.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Observer Research Foundation: The Russia–Ukraine War: Ukraine’s resistance in the face of hybrid warfare. “Almost everyone expected that the Russian war on Ukraine would feature extensive use of cyber weapons. And so it has, but often in ways that were not quite anticipated. In cyber issues, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. So, we hear a great deal about how Russian tanks have been blown up by American Javelin missiles, or the activities of the Turkish Bayraktar drones, but don’t get too many details about the intense digital war which has played a significant role in shaping the conflict.”

National Academies: International Science Academies Meet in Poland to Explore How to Support Ukrainian Science and Researchers. “Yesterday, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Polish Academy of Sciences brought together leaders from the National Academy of Sciences Ukraine (NASU) and several other national science academies for a meeting in Warsaw to identify concrete actions the international science community can take to support Ukrainian researchers and science capabilities.”

June 7, 2022 at 07:07PM
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California Water Watch, January 6 Hearings, Computational Art, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, June 7, 2022

California Water Watch, January 6 Hearings, Computational Art, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, June 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

California Department of Water Resources: State Federal Water Managers Prepare for Dry Summer Conditions. “Californians can now access current water conditions in real time at California Water Watch, a new website launched by DWR. This website will help Californians see their local hydrological conditions, forecasts, and water conditions down to their address or their local watershed.”

Brookings Institution: Trump on Trial: A Guide to the January 6 Hearings and the Question of Criminality. “The report goes beyond prior analyses to provide the first in-depth treatment of the voluminous publicly available evidence and the relevant law, including possible defenses. It reviews the evidence as to whether Trump as a matter of law conspired with his outside counsel John Eastman, administration lawyer Jeffrey Clark, and others to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371 by scheming to block the electoral count on January 6, 2021 and to subvert the Department of Justice’s election enforcement work. The report similarly reviews the evidence as to whether Trump and Eastman violated 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) with their scheme to obstruct the congressional count.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Wolfram Blog: Computational Art: 2022 Wolfram Language Winners. “The Wolfram Language is incredibly versatile, and while it is most closely associated with mathematics, it has powerful features in a range of areas. As a challenge to our users on Wolfram Community, the 2022 Wolfram Computational Art Contest prompted participants to use Wolfram technology to flex their creativity to generate art.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Tests Search Filters On Left Side Bar. “We recently spotted Google testing the search bar navigation on the left hand side and now Google is testing different search filters on the left side bar. These are for product related queries that let you filter by feature, brand, department, size, etc.” Google’s looking more and more like Amazon.

USEFUL STUFF

CNET: Best Slack Features: Where to Find Them and How to Use Them. “Communication platform Slack is used by more than 10 million people every day. The service has helped businesses, companies and organizations stay connected during the pandemic as they adjust to hybrid workspaces. Over the last two years, Slack has added several new features to meet user needs. Here’s a list of Slack’s best features to help the app work best for you.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

TubeFilter: TikTok’s reportedly trying to get back into India. “TikTok reportedly wants to get back into India. According to a report from Economic Times, the platform’s parent company, ByteDance, is in the ‘exploratory stage’ of developing a partnership with Mumbai-headquartered realty developer Hiranandani Group.”

US Department of Defense: Veterans in Medical, Emergency Fields Sought for Oral History Collection. “It has often focused on the experiences of veterans in war, including Medal of Honor recipients and many who made the ultimate sacrifice. But in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s now looking to highlight stories from the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service — officers defined as veterans when they’ve completed their service — as well as Armed Forces service members who were deployed to natural disasters, national emergencies and public health crises.”

HuffPost: Google Has A New Job Interview Practice Tool You Should Try ASAP. “If you can’t practice with another human for an upcoming job interview, Google has a new solution: Talk to its computer. The company just launched an artificial intelligence-powered job interview prep tool called Interview Warmup that asks you common interview questions and gives feedback on your answers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: Friendlyjordies: John Barilaro to be paid $715,000 by Google over YouTube videos. “Google has been ordered to pay former New South Wales deputy premier John Barilaro more than $700,000 over a series of ‘racist’ and ‘abusive’ videos published on YouTube channel Friendlyjordies.”

NBC News: Lakota elders helped a white man preserve their language. Then he tried to sell it back to them.. “The Lakota Language Consortium had promised to preserve the tribe’s native language and had spent years gathering recordings of elders, including Taken Alive’s grandmother, to create a new, standardized Lakota dictionary and textbooks. But when [Ray] Taken Alive, 35, asked for copies, he was shocked to learn that the consortium, run by a white man, had copyrighted the language materials, which were based on generations of Lakota tradition.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Monash University: Crowdsourcing to combat child abuse. “Launched today, AiLECS researchers are asking persons aged 18 and above to contribute photographs of themselves as children through the My Pictures Matter crowdsourcing campaign. These pictures will be used to train AI models to recognise the presence of children in ‘safe’ situations, to help identify ‘unsafe’ situations and potentially flag child exploitation material.”

Techish Kenya: Google needs to properly remap the Nairobi Metropolitan Area. “For millions of people living in the Nairobi Metropolitan Area, moving between work and home, and between different parts of the city requires the daily use of Google Maps. This is both for directions and for traffic data. However, I’ve noticed that Google doesn’t really understand the city as it is now, and will at times fail you in three ways.” Good morning, Internet…

June 7, 2022 at 05:28PM
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Monday, June 6, 2022

Ancestors Know Who We Are, RSS Readers, Syrian War Crimes, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 6, 2022

Ancestors Know Who We Are, RSS Readers, Syrian War Crimes, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Smithsonian: National Museum of the American Indian To Launch “Ancestors Know Who We Are” June 15. “The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian will launch the digital exhibition ‘Ancestors Know Who We Are’ June 15. The exhibition features works by six contemporary Black-Indigenous women artists that address issues of race, gender, multiracial identity and intergenerational knowledge.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The 4 Best Free RSS Readers. “If you spent a lot of time browsing the internet, then you no doubt understand that there are simply too many websites out there to check on regularly. RSS readers can help solve this problem by condensing your online browsing all into one feed, but how can you know which RSS reader to go with?”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

TRT World: 40 thousand gigabytes: An archive of Assad’s war crimes in Syria. “Tamer Turkmani stares at his laptop screen for hours every day. A Syrian national, Turkmani has been collecting photographic and video evidence of people who have been killed in the course of the Syrian civil war. Turkmani’s goal is to maintain a digital archive of the victims who have been shot dead by the troops loyal to Bashar al Assad.”

NiemanLab: How self-publishing, social media, and algorithms are aiding far-right novelists. “Far-right extremists have complex and diverse methods for spreading their messages of hate. These can include through social media, video games, wellness culture, interest in medieval European history, and fiction. Novels by both extremist and non-extremist authors feature on far-right ‘reading lists’ designed to draw people into their beliefs and normalize hate. As literary studies scholars, our research grew out of exploring these reading lists and investigating why extremists write fiction. In 2020, we began looking at how someone who casually encountered a reading list online might access the books and pursue the ideas they contain.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Evelyn Perloff: Created database that assists thousands of researchers, students. “In an age when women rarely worked outside of the home — much less earning a Ph.D, — Evelyn Perloff blazed a trail as a formidable research psychologist and scientist. The sole woman professor in the Psychology Department at Purdue University in the 1960s, the centenarian was also the creator of an innovative database that provides reliable and valid methods to measure everything from levels of pain to depression, anxiety, and quality of life.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mashable: Bored Ape Yacht Club hacked, loses $360,000 worth of NFTs in phishing attack. “The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT was hacked Saturday, losing upwards of 200 ETH (about $360,000) worth of NFTs, according to reports. According to data from blockchain security firm PeckShield, one BAYC and two Mutant Apes tokens were stolen in the scam.”

CoinDesk: New York State Senate Passes Bitcoin Mining Moratorium. “The New York State Senate passed a bill targeting proof-of-work (PoW) mining early Friday morning in an effort to address some of the environmental concerns about cryptocurrencies.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: New Jersey Health Data Project Tackles State’s Pressing Health Needs. “Research scholars and policy experts from throughout the state came together Wednesday for a virtual Research Consortium that marked the project launch. The event showcased how the iPHD aims to inform public health policymaking in New Jersey by using administrative data in research to promote a more complete understanding of the factors that impact population health and efficiency of government programs.”

Mozilla Blog: Mozilla releases local machine translation tools as part of Project Bergamot. “In January of 2019, Mozilla joined the University of Edinburgh, Charles University, University of Sheffield and University of Tartu as part of a project funded by the European Union called Project Bergamot. The ultimate goal of this consortium was to build a set of neural machine translation tools that would enable Mozilla to develop a website translation add-on that operates locally, i.e. the engines, language models and in-page translation algorithms would need to reside and be executed entirely in the user’s computer, so none of the data would be sent to the cloud, making it entirely private.”

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.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 7, 2022 at 12:24AM
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Cooper Union Great Hall, Environmental Inequality, Open Access Immunology Data, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, June 6, 2022

Cooper Union Great Hall, Environmental Inequality, Open Access Immunology Data, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, June 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Cooper Union: New Online Archive Offers A Glimpse Into More Than A Century Of American History. “Voices from the Great Hall is a digital archive, free and accessible to anyone, and generously supported by The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. This growing collection presents all known sound and video recordings made in Cooper Union’s historic Great Hall dating back to 1941 and continuing to the present, as well as 8,900 objects, such as photographs, tickets, and fliers, related to more than 3,000 Great Hall programs dating to 1859.”

Johns Hopkins University: Tool Visualizes The Public Health Impact Of Redlining. “‘Environmental Racism: A Tool for Exploring the Enduring Legacy of Redlining on Urban Environments’ enables users to visualize the correlation between 14 contemporary environmental metrics and the practice of ‘redlining’ that took place in the 1930s.” Never heard the term redlining? Encyclopedia Britannica has an overview.

PR Newswire: A new open-access portal for human immunology data and tools (PRESS RELEASE). “Launched today, the Human Immune System Explorer is the Allen Institute for Immunology’s data-sharing portal to the broader community. Built using de-identified and anonymized data, the site allows scientists to delve into the methods and resources the immunology team is using to analyze and manage their studies on human immunology. As the team’s long-term studies of immune health and diseases are completed, those data will be deposited on the public portal as well.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Clubhouse lays off some employees amid strategic shift. “Clubhouse has laid off some of its employees, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. It’s unclear exactly how many staff the company let go, but at least some now-former workers left voluntarily to pursue opportunities outside of Clubhouse. Among one of the more high-profile departures was Nina Gregory, a former National Public Radio editor who joined the company to head up its news partnerships initiative. Clubhouse also lost its community and international leads.”

CNET: Welcome to Plugged In, Your New Home for Everything EVs and More. “Vehicles with plugs made up 12.5% of all registrations in California last year. Other states won’t be far behind. And so, for those readers we’d like to introduce CNET Cars Plugged In, a new, curated selection of content specifically for those with an eye towards electrified transportation. The focus will be on EVs, but we’ll also mix in some of the more interesting developments on plug-in hybrids and fuel-cells, plus the latest on the micromobility front, like scooters and e-bikes.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Set Up Search Alerts in Google Scholar. “Email alerts are a useful tool to use to stay updated with new content. Even though annoying promotional emails might make alerts seem like something to avoid, there are times when you might want to be alerted on the latest information. If you love to consume academic content, and you don’t want to miss out on newly published articles, you can create Google Scholar alerts for your email.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: Glasses or no glasses, this year’s WWDC is all about AR. “It’s now fairly clear that AR and VR are Apple’s next big thing, the next supposedly earth-shakingly huge industry after the smartphone. Apple’s not likely to show off a headset at WWDC, but as augmented and virtual reality come to more of our lives, everything about how we experience and interact with technology is going to have to change.”

State of Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission Awards 47 Keystone Historic Preservation Grants. “The Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC) has awarded $2.6 million in Keystone Historic Preservation Grants to assist historical and heritage organizations, museums and local governments in 20 counties. PHMC awarded 47 grants selected from 93 eligible applications. Grant amounts ranged from $5,000 to $25,000 for project grants and $5,000 to $100,000 for construction projects. All grants require a 50/50 cash match and were awarded through a competitive selection process.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Racist and Violent Ideas Jump From Web’s Fringes to Mainstream Sites. “As the number of mass shootings escalates, experts say many of the disturbing ideas that fuel the atrocities are no longer relegated to a handful of tricky-to-find dark corners of the web. More and more outlets, both fringe and mainstream, host bigoted content, often in the name of free speech. And the inability — or unwillingness — of online services to contain violent content threatens to draw more people toward hateful postings.”

Bleeping Computer: Conti ransomware targeted Intel firmware for stealthy attacks. “Researchers analyzing the leaked chats of the notorious Conti ransomware operation have discovered that teams inside the Russian cybercrime group were actively developing firmware hacks. According to messages exchanged between members of the cybercrime syndicate, Conti developers had created proof-of-concept (PoC) code that leveraged Intel’s Management Engine (ME) to overwrite flash and gain SMM (System Management Mode) execution.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: It’s Time to Bring Back the AIM Away Message . “I miss Away Messages. This nostalgia is layered in abstraction; I probably miss the newness of the internet of the 1990s, and I also miss just being … away. But this is about Away Messages themselves—the bits of code that constructed Maginot Lines around our availability. An Away Message was a text box full of possibilities, a mini-MySpace profile or a Facebook status update years before either existed. It was also a boundary: An Away Message not only popped up as a response after someone IM’d you, it was wholly visible to that person before they IM’d you. Nothing like this exists in our modern messaging apps.”

Newswise: Data Ethicist Cautions Against Overreliance on Algorithms. “Pigeons can quickly be trained to detect cancerous masses on x-ray scans. So can computer algorithms. But despite the potential efficiencies of outsourcing the task to birds or computers, it’s no excuse for getting rid of human radiologists, argues University of Oregon philosopher and data ethicist Ramón Alvarado.” Good morning, Internet…

June 6, 2022 at 05:32PM
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