New researches

Sunday, June 19, 2022

Business Spinoffs, Goodbye Sciblogs, LinkedIn, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, June 19, 2022

Business Spinoffs, Goodbye Sciblogs, LinkedIn, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, June 19, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Chemical & Engineering News: New database on university spinouts highlights dissatisfaction. “A new open source database on university technology spinouts, also referred to as spin-offs, detailing terms negotiated between academic institutions and research entrepreneurs indicates a high level of dissatisfaction among company founders, especially those spinning out of universities in the UK.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Sciblogs: Bidding farewell to Sciblogs. “For 13 years, Sciblogs has been a staple in New Zealand’s science-writing landscape. Our bloggers have written about a vast variety of topics from climate change to covid, and from nanotechnology to household gadgets. But sadly, it’s time to close shop. Sciblogs will be shutting down on 30 June.”

Search Engine Land: The LinkedIn Funny emoji is here. “LinkedIn has finally added one of the most requested features. The Funny emoji started rolling out to LinkedIn users at some point in the last couple of hours.”

TechCrunch: Reddit is buying machine learning platform Spell. “Spell was founded by former Facebook engineer Serkan Piantino in 2016 to provide a cloud computing solution to allow anyone to run resource-intensive ML experiments without the high end hardware that would normally be necessary. The company defines its mission as the pursuit of ‘the best possible platform for anyone looking to develop powerful, reliable, and safe software using Machine Learning and AI,’ according to their website.”

USEFUL STUFF

Search Engine Journal: SEO For Non-Profits: 7 Tips To Help Your Organization Get Found. “I have had the opportunity to work with many spanning focuses and missions aimed at healthcare, education, performing arts, adoption, orphanages, and more. Within each non-profit, I have found tips that help regardless of most focuses and circumstances. From solid funding to grassroots organizations, there’s a lot to be gained by focusing on seven SEO tips to help your organization get found.” As I have said before, I hate SEO. But I realize it’s important, and I will share articles that have a high useful-to-garbage ratio. SEJ is always quality.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ProPublica: Google Says It Bans Gun Ads. It Actually Makes Money From Them.. “For roughly two decades, Google has boasted that it doesn’t accept gun ads, a reflection of its values and culture. But a ProPublica analysis shows that before and after mass shootings in May at a New York grocery store and a Texas elementary school, millions of ads from the some of the nation’s largest firearms makers flowed through Google’s ad systems and onto websites and apps — in some cases without the site or app owners’ knowledge and in violation of their policies.”

Deutsche Welle: Google’s data plans in Saudi Arabia ‘will risk lives’: activists. “Internet giant Google is creating a ‘cloud region’ in Saudi Arabia. It says it will protect users there. But digital rights activists argue the firm will be putting the lives of government critics at risk.”

CNBC: TikTok exec: We’re not a social network like Facebook, we’re an entertainment platform. “TikTok is fully aware that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is retooling the Facebook and Instagram apps to be more like its own popular short video service. But TikTok has no interest in mimicking Facebook.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Publishers Weekly: Internet Archive, Publishers to Seek Summary Judgment in Book Scanning Lawsuit. “A federal court in New York has ordered motions for summary judgment by early summer in a lawsuit filed by four major publishers against the Internet Archive over its scanning and lending of print library books, putting the fate of the closely watched copyright case on track to be in the court’s hands by early fall.”

Ars Technica: Tsunami of junk traffic that broke DDoS records delivered by tiniest of botnets. “A massive flood of malicious traffic that recently set a new distributed denial-of-service record came from an unlikely source. A botnet of just 5,000 devices was responsible, as extortionists and vandals continue to develop ever more powerful attacks to knock sites offline, security researchers said.”

Techdirt: New Report Offers Solutions For Our Never Ending Robocall Hell. ” Every single month U.S. residents receive an estimated 4 billion robocalls. About a billion of those are illegal, outright scammers. That’s more than 33 million illegal scam robocalls every day. As a result, 70% of Americans no longer answer the phone if it’s an unrecognized number. We’ve just ceded a major tech platform to scumbags. The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) has spent years providing insights and solutions on this problem. They’ve issued a new report that’s worth a read if you’re at all curious why we’ve allowed a major communications platform to be hijacked by garbage merchants and snake oil salesmen.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Analytics India: Amazon Prime video: The little search engine that couldn’t. “Interestingly, Amazon accounts for 54 percent of all product searches on the internet and has one of the best recommendation systems and search engines in the business. However, Amazon Prime Video–available in nearly 200 countries– has a bad search engine. To make matters worse, Prime Video’s clunky UI is a real pain in the neck.”

Iowa State University: Engineers develop cybersecurity tools to protect solar, wind power on the grid. “Solar panels and wind turbines, now projected to produce 44% of America’s electricity by 2050, present cybersecurity challenges. They have sensors, controllers, actuators or inverters that are directly or indirectly connected to the internet. They’re distributed far and wide across the country and the countryside. Many have insecure connectivity to legacy electric grid systems. They have complex physics. They’re subject to advanced persistent threats. And there will be more and more of them going online.” Good morning, Internet…

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June 19, 2022 at 05:31PM
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Saturday, June 18, 2022

Finding Baby Formula, India Textiles, Google AI, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 18, 2022

Finding Baby Formula, India Textiles, Google AI, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Mashed: A New Website Is Hacking The Baby Formula Shortage. “[The site], which launched on June 16, compiles inventory data from major retailers and allows parents to search for the closest supply of baby formula by state, zip code, preferred formula brand, and other specifiers, a rep told Mashed.” I tried it briefly. It’s running very, very slowly.

Microsoft News: This museum is using AI to remind us of all the threads we have in common. “On the INTERWOVEN website, a single click on the image of a mid-19th-early 20th century Kashmiri shawl fragment with the paisley motif leads one on a cultural odyssey that takes you to dozens of places where the motif appears. This includes a church in Britain, a chasuble from Italy, and a cloth panel from ancient Persia among others.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Business Insider: The transcript used as evidence that a Google AI was sentient was edited and rearranged to make it ‘enjoyable to read’. “A Google engineer released a conversation with a Google AI chatbot after he said he was convinced the bot had become sentient — but the transcript leaked to the Washington Post noted that parts of the conversation were edited ‘for readability and flow.'”

Engadget: Twitch opens up ads program to more streamers and increases payout. “More Twitch streamers will find invites to join the platform’s Ads Incentive Program now that the company is opening up the opportunity to welcome ‘more… Partners than ever.’ In addition, Twitch will stop paying streamers in the program using a fixed CPM structure — instead, it will use a percentage-based revenue share model to increase ad payouts.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Register: Telegram criticizes Apple for ‘intentionally crippling’ web app features on iOS. “A week after confirming plans for Telegram Premium, the messaging platform’s CEO, Pavel Durov, is again criticizing Apple’s approach to its Safari browser for stifling the efforts of web developers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

AFP: Google Fined $245 Million By Mexican Court Over Defamatory Blog. “A court in Mexico City on Friday ordered Google to pay $245 million to a Mexican lawyer who said the US tech giant allowed the dissemination of a blog that accused him of money laundering.”

TechRadar: Over a billion Google Play Store app downloads could be infected by malware. “Banking apps for the Android ecosystem have more than a billion downloads between them, and according to a new report from the mobile security platform Zimperium, all of these at risk from dangerous trojans.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Guardian: Researchers use whale photo archive to help protect important WA calving site. “Researchers are combing through thousands of whale photos to help protect a calving site off Western Australia’s coast that was severely impacted by the whaling industry. The researchers believe that Geographe Bay off south-west WA is an important calving ground in need of environmental protection, and are using a 30-year archive of images to determine how many southern right whales have visited the area over time.”

WWF: WWF kickstarts ShellBank – a global genetic database to trace and protect sea turtles from poaching and the illegal trade. “Building off the success of a ground-breaking pilot in Australia called ‘Surrender Your Shell’, where over 300 tortoiseshell products were donated to help trace the illegal trade, WWF’s ShellBank is gearing up for uptake across Asia Pacific and globally.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

The Spaces: A London art installation is preserving Beirut’s at-risk buildings. “Architect Annabel Karim Kassar has brought a life-size recreation of one of old Beirut’s Ottoman-Venetian homes to the V&A Museum in London. Part of an exhibition entitled The Lebanese House: saving a home, saving a city, the installation pays homage to the many historic homes destroyed or damaged in the 2020 explosion – caused by badly stored ammonium nitrate chemicals in the Lebanese capital’s port.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 19, 2022 at 12:42AM
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University of Michigan Black Student Database, COVID-19 Government Policies, Snapchat, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, June 18, 2022

University of Michigan Black Student Database, COVID-19 Government Policies, Snapchat, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, June 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Michigan: U-M Black student database through 1970 is now public. “A new public database of African American students created by the University of Michigan documents students who attended U-M between 1853 and as recently as 1970. A comprehensive compilation of this nature did not previously exist at the university and remains very rare for universities across the country. In the process, hundreds of compelling stories have been uncovered surrounding segregated housing, relocation after slavery and ‘segregation scholarships,’ which originated in the 1920s.”

EurekAlert: Massive dataset reveals which governments have best responded to COVID-19 pandemic. “[Olga] Shvetsova’s lab compiled a massive database comparing pandemic-related governmental policies in 82 countries on both the national and subnational levels, as part of the COVID-19 Protective Policy Index (PPI) project. The data covers the entire year of 2020, and is publically available for researchers’ use.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Snap is working on a paid subscription called Snapchat Plus. “Snap is doing internal tests of a paid subscription called Snapchat Plus, which will apparently give users early access to features, as well as other abilities.”

Genealogy’s Star: MyHeritage adds 1.3 BILLION historical records in 37 collections in April and May. “Yes, you did read that right. MyHeritage.com did add an additional 1.3 billion records in April and May, 2022.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Find Public Google Docs (and Slides, Forms, Sheets, and Drawings too). “Similarly, you can easily find public Google Docs, Slides, Forms, Drawings, and Sheets using some easy but Advanced Search operations and tools. In this article, we’ll show you some simple tricks to help you find public Google Drive files including Slides, Forms, Sheets, and Drawings.” Joy Okumoko does it again. I didn’t know about Heystack.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WKSU: The Cleveland Press folded 40 years ago. Can the history in its pages be preserved?. “The Plain Dealer is still printed a few days each week, and its archive is also online. But The Cleveland Press is mostly offline. That’s a problem, said Kristen Hare, who is part of the local news faculty at the Poynter Institute. ‘I don’t know how future generations will understand us if they’re just looking at our TikToks,’ she said. ‘That’s not going to be enough.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: Police Linked to Hacking Campaign to Frame Indian Activists. “POLICE FORCES AROUND the world have increasingly used hacking tools to identify and track protesters, expose political dissidents’ secrets, and turn activists’ computers and phones into inescapable eavesdropping bugs. Now, new clues in a case in India connect law enforcement to a hacking campaign that used those tools to go an appalling step further: planting false incriminating files on targets’ computers that the same police then used as grounds to arrest and jail them.”

Axios: Sweeping reporting failures may compromise the FBI’s 2021 crime data. “Nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies nationwide, including the New York City Police Department and Los Angeles Police Department, failed to report their 2021 crime data to the FBI, according to data provided to Axios Local from a partnership with The Marshall Project.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

FTC: FTC Report Warns About Using Artificial Intelligence to Combat Online Problems . “The use of AI, particularly by big tech platforms and other companies, comes with limitations and problems of its own. The report outlines significant concerns that AI tools can be inaccurate, biased, and discriminatory by design and incentivize relying on increasingly invasive forms of commercial surveillance.”

Brown University: Brown Library, Together with Emory University, Releases Report on Digital Scholarly Publishing. “Report presents key findings of a summit on digital monographs; calls for an increase in access, equity, and inclusion in the digital development and dissemination of humanities scholarship.”

Newswise: Spending Time Online Can Boost Children’s Well-Being – Depending on Their Social Framework . “The concern that media access may be harmful to children and adolescents has been a topic of public debate since long before the existence of the smartphone.This debate has picked up pace with the increased use of digital technology. The researcher Jean Twenge, for example, wrote a book in 2014 that would become very influential, in which she argued that smartphones contribute towards lowering the quality of life of adolescents. A new study indicates that this is incorrect.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Amateur Photographer: Brian May Reveals Plans For First International Stereoscopy Day. “The event is planned to be a new international celebration of the birth of stereoscopic 3D. It will celebrate the inventor of stereoscopy, the British genius and polymath Sir Charles Wheatstone (who revealed his stereoscope in 1838), its early pioneers and their successors up to the present day.” Good morning, Internet…

June 18, 2022 at 05:28PM
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Friday, June 17, 2022

New York Internet Access, Destination Distillery, Discord, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 17, 2022

New York Internet Access, Destination Distillery, Discord, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WKBW: Governor Hochul’s office unveils interactive broadband service map. “The state’s new interactive broadband service map is part of a $1 billion initiative called ConnectAll. The map provides detailed information on the broadband infrastructure of neighborhoods around the state by allowing users to search their addresses and see which providers are available, the technology those providers use and what speeds are available in their area.”

BusinessWire: Distilled Spirits Council Launches DestinationDistillery.com Providing Interactive Map of U.S. Distilleries, Their Stories & the History of Spirits (PRESS RELEASE). “The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS) today launched Destination Distillery (https://ift.tt/k8XhqBr), a new website providing a tourism-driven experience and educational journey into the cultural heritage and history of spirits in America. Visitors to the website will be able to explore many of America’s most famous distilleries as well as up-and-coming ones, state-by-state trails, economic impact of the spirits industry by state, and important sites connected to the history of distilling and spirits in our country.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Digital Trends: Discord’s new content moderation tool will automatically block words and phrases. “In an effort to help its own moderators out, Discord has developed a new automated content moderation tool. Content moderation can be an exhausting, burnout-inducing task that requires community moderators to view upsetting content and then decide how best to handle such content and the user who posted it. Discord’s new tool, called AutoMod, is meant to help with that task.”

Android Central: Google finally shutters this long-defunct messaging service. “Google has completely pulled the plug on Talk, a legacy messaging service that you probably haven’t used in a very long time. Google Talk has remained operational for quite some time, even after it was retired a few years ago, but that officially ends today.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Government Executive: The EPA is Getting Rid of Its Online Archive and Groups Are Unhappy. “Content from the archive will be moved elsewhere when the archive is retired in July. The agency argues it is not compromising transparency by doing so, but a range of groups have voiced their concerns.” I mentioned this a while ago; this is a bit of an update.

RFI: RIP Internet Explorer: South Korean engineer’s browser ‘grave’ goes viral. “In honour of the browser’s ‘death’, a gravestone marked with its signature ‘e’ logo was set up on the rooftop of a cafe in South Korea’s southern city of Gyeongju by engineer Kiyoung Jung, 38. ‘He was a good tool to use to download other browsers,’ the gravestone’s inscription reads.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: How a Religious Sect Landed Google in a Lawsuit. “In a tiny town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, a religious organization called the Fellowship of Friends has established an elaborate, 1,200-acre compound full of art and ornate architecture. More than 200 miles away from the Fellowship’s base in Oregon House, Calif., the religious sect, which believes a higher consciousness can be achieved by embracing fine arts and culture, has also gained a foothold inside a business unit at Google.”

Security Week: 2,000 People Arrested Worldwide for Social Engineering Schemes. “As part of this operation, which ran between March 8 and May 8, police raided more than 1,700 locations, identified roughly 3,000 suspects, and arrested 2,000 individuals believed to be involved in illicit activities. Authorities also froze approximately 4,000 bank accounts and intercepted $50 million worth of illegal funds.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Fast Company: This new AI-powered paint tool helps you create custom colors with your voice. “If an architect wanted to create a building that matched the color of a New York City summer sunset, they’d have to pore over potentially hundreds of color cards designed for industry to get anything close, and still it’d be a tall order to find that exact match. But a new AI-powered, voice-controlled tool from Sherwin-Williams aims to change that. The paint brand recently launched Speaking in Color, a tool that allows users to tell it about certain places, objects, or shades in order to arrive at that perfect color.”

The Conversation: When texts suddenly stop: Why people ghost on social media. “I am a professor of psychology who studies the role of technology use in interpersonal relationships and well-being. Given the negative psychological consequences of thwarted relationships – especially during the emerging adulthood years, ages 18 to 29 – I wanted to understand what leads college students to ghost others, and if ghosting has any impact on mental health.” Good afternoon, Internet…

June 18, 2022 at 01:04AM
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Words Without Borders, Air Quality, LinkedIn, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 11, 2022

Words Without Borders, Air Quality, LinkedIn, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 11, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Facebook Is Changing Its Algorithm To Take On Tiktok, Leaked Memo Reveals. “In an internal memo from late April obtained by The Verge, the Meta executive in charge of Facebook, Tom Alison, spelled out the plan: rather than prioritize posts from accounts people follow, Facebook’s main feed will, like TikTok, start heavily recommending posts regardless of where they come from. And years after Messenger and Facebook split up as separate apps, the two will be brought back together, mimicking TikTok’s messaging functionality.”

Mashable: Instagram seems to have completely stopped caring about its users. ” When it comes to ads on platforms, there’s a point at which a user inevitably will throw their hands up in the air and say: enough. This level is different for everyone, but for me, Instagram has not only reached it — it’s running circles around it.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNET: Meta’s Investigation of Sheryl Sandberg Goes Back Several Years, Report Says. “The investigation is reportedly into whether Sandberg used Facebook staff to work on her personal projects, including her second book, her Lean In foundation and her second wedding. The scrutiny has been ongoing since last fall, the report said, with multiple Meta employees being questioned.”

Associated Press: Facebook fails again to detect hate speech in ads. “[Global Witness] created 12 text-based ads that used dehumanizing hate speech to call for the murder of people belonging to each of Ethiopia’s three main ethnic groups — the Amhara, the Oromo and the Tigrayans. Facebook’s systems approved the ads for publication, just as they did with the Myanmar ads. The ads were not actually published on Facebook.”

Washington Post: Facebook’s ban on gun sales gives sellers 10 strikes before booting them. “Facebook prohibits gun sales on its service. But buyers and sellers can violate the rule 10 times before they are kicked off the social network, according to internal guidance obtained by The Washington Post. The policy, which has not previously been reported, is much more lenient than for users who post child pornography, which is illegal, or a terrorist image on Facebook, which prompts immediate removal from the platform.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Tubefilter: The FTC says social media is rife with crypto scams—and victims are losing hundreds of millions of dollars. “The majority of people encountering crypto scams on social media did so on a platform owned by Meta. The FTC’s data shows that 32% of people who fell prey to a crypto scam last year originally found it because of a post on Instagram. A further 26% of victims encountered scams on Facebook, and another 9% did so on WhatsApp, the messaging platform Meta bought for $19 billion in 2014.”

Reveal: Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on Would-Be Patients. “Facebook is collecting ultra-sensitive personal data about abortion seekers and enabling anti-abortion organizations to use that data as a tool to target and influence people online, in violation of its own policies and promises. In the wake of a leaked Supreme Court opinion signaling the likely end of nationwide abortion protections, privacy experts are sounding alarms about all the ways people’s data trails could be used against them if some states criminalize abortion.”

The Guardian: Meta banned firearms sales. Why are they still available on Facebook and Instagram?. “Meta policy since 2016 has banned the ‘sale or use of weapons, ammunition or explosives’ between individuals, including ‘firearms parts’. However, the study from Media Matters for America, a non-profit tech watchdog group, shows users of Instagram and Facebook can buy materials from unregulated sources to build high-powered, automatic weapons in just a few clicks.”

IANS: UK appeals court upholds ruling to block Meta’s Giphy acquisition. “An appeals tribunal in the UK has upheld a previous ruling directing Meta (formerly Facebook) to unwind its $315 million acquisition of online database and search engine Giphy.”

Fox 11 Los Angeles: Cybercriminal steals 1 million Facebook account credentials over 4 months, firm says. “Phishing scams are an ongoing problem for unsuspecting users on social media platforms when their personal information is stolen or compromised. Hundreds of Facebook users fell victim to this scam after an intelligence company discovered a cybercriminal stole one million Facebook account credentials in four months.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Slashgear: Meta Is In Serious Trouble. Here’s Why. “Meta is not exactly in the best shape right now. Reports suggest that the social network Facebook isn’t growing like it once was, and Meta’s other businesses in advertising, VR, and the metaverse aren’t doing particularly well at the moment. It would appear that the biggest hurdle that Meta faces is slowing revenue growth, something that has already started to show its effects on Meta’s plans.”

ZDNet: Why you can’t trust Instagram . “About once a day I get a message from someone asking for my help with restoring their Instagram account. Like me, they did all the right security things. They used two-factor authentication (2FA). They jumped through the hoops to restore their hacked Instagram account. None of it worked, so they ask me if I have a fix. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

June 17, 2022 at 08:23PM
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Ukraine Artists, International Business, Wikimedia Foundation, More: Ukraine Update, June 17, 2022

Ukraine Artists, International Business, Wikimedia Foundation, More: Ukraine Update, June 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

UNESCO: Ukraine: UNESCO launches programme to support Ukrainian artists. “UNESCO will provide financial support to Ukrainian artists to support the continuation of artistic creation and access to cultural life, under a pilot programme launched by the Organization in partnership with the Ukrainian NGO Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).”

Yale School of Management: Over 1,000 Companies Have Curtailed Operations in Russia—But Some Remain. “Over 1,000 companies have publicly announced they are voluntarily curtailing operations in Russia to some degree beyond the bare minimum legally required by international sanctions — but some companies have continued to operate in Russia undeterred. Originally a simple ‘withdraw’ vs. ‘remain’ list, our list of companies now consists of five categories—graded on a school-style letter grade scale of A-F for the completeness of withdrawal.”

The Verge: Wikimedia Foundation appeals Russian fine over Ukraine war articles. “The Wikimedia Foundation is challenging a Russian court’s ruling that it violated disinformation laws in articles about the invasion of Ukraine. The organization filed its appeal last week, arguing that the articles contained ‘well-sourced, verified knowledge’ and that Russia did not have jurisdiction over the globally operating Wikimedia Foundation.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Reuters: Russian lawmaker expects Google to stay in Russia. “The deputy head of the State Duma parliamentary committee on information policy, Anton Gorelkin, said on Thursday he expected Google would remain in Russia.”

New York Times: Tracking the War in Real Time. “In this conflict, the gains by either side can be small, and claims of captured territory can be difficult to verify. These are instances when the expertise of the [Institute for the Study of War] comes in handy. To better understand how these assessments come together — drawing on satellite images, orbiting heat sensors and social media — I spoke to Mason Clark, a team leader at the institute, and George Barros, one of its analysts.”

WIRED: Russia Is Taking Over Ukraine’s Internet. “WEB PAGES IN the city of Kherson in south Ukraine stopped loading on people’s devices at 2:43 pm on May 30. For the next 59 minutes, anyone connecting to the internet with KhersonTelecom, known locally as SkyNet, couldn’t call loved ones, find out the latest news, or upload images to Instagram. They were stuck in a communications blackout. When web pages started stuttering back to life at 3:42 pm, everything appeared to be normal. But behind the scenes everything had changed: Now all internet traffic was passing through a Russian provider and Vladimir Putin’s powerful online censorship machine.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: U.S. probing how American electronics wound up in Russian military gear. “Federal agents have begun questioning U.S. technology companies on how their computer chips ended up in Russian military equipment recovered in Ukraine. Commerce Department agents who enforce export controls are conducting the inquiries together with the FBI, paying joint visits to companies to ask about Western chips and components found in Russian radar systems, drones, tanks, ground-control equipment and littoral ships, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive investigations.”

The Guardian: Specialist gang ‘targeting’ Ukrainian treasures for removal to Russia. “A specialist gang is smuggling valuable historic artefacts out of Ukraine and into Russia, according to an international team of academics and digital technology experts who are tracking thefts.”

NPR: Open source intelligence methods are being used to investigate war crimes in Ukraine. “We’ve heard about so-called open-source intelligence for a few years now. It’s where publicly available information – things like satellite imagery, phone videos, social media – can be pieced together to reveal secrets about wars or threats. Now it’s being used to track down war crimes and war criminals in Ukraine. It is painstaking work carried out by an army of internet sleuths. NPR’s Deborah Amos reports from Berlin, where some of them are based.”

CNN: Exclusive: A crypto-based dossier could help prove Russia committed war crimes. “Starling [Lab]’s dossier isn’t a typical exhibit. Instead, the group’s submission will feature publicly available online information that’s been preserved and verified using the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrencies, in what it says is the first submission of evidence of its kind to any court of law.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

National Academies: Action Steps for Rebuilding Ukraine’s Science, Research, and Innovation. “We, the leadership of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, the ALLEA European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities, and the Royal Society of the United Kingdom, met in Warsaw, Poland on June 2, 2022. The aim of the meeting was to discuss and agree on steps to build a strong science, innovation, research, and training system in Ukraine.”

Radio Prague International: Number of Czechs who think their country is target of Russian information war falling. “The number of people in the Czech Republic who believe that their country is the target of an information war waged by Russia against the West fell from May’s 51 percent to 46 percent in June, according to a newly released survey conducted by the Ipsos agency in cooperation with the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO). Most of those who do believe that the Czech Republic is a target of a Russian information war are men, young people and those with a university education.”

June 17, 2022 at 07:01PM
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Ford Motors History, Cross-Linguistic Datasets, Gilberto Gil, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, June 17, 2022

Ford Motors History, Cross-Linguistic Datasets, Gilberto Gil, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, June 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Drive: Waste the Workday Looking Through Ford’s New Online Heritage Vault. “The collection features various articles from Ford’s past, officially stated as spanning from 1903 to 2003. However, there’s plenty of more recent material available too. It includes model brochures, information sheets, and various other documents from Ford’s archives. The historical assets are being made available to the public as free downloads for personal use.”

Scientific Data: Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features . “Inspired by the GenBank database, where scholars can deposit nucleotide sequences publicly, we have created Lexibank, a collection of cross-linguistic datasets in standardized formats, which offers access to word forms, sound inventories, and lexical features for more than 2000 language varieties derived from 100 individual high-quality datasets. The Lexibank wordlist collection is a first attempt to integrate the wealth of language data assembled during the past centuries.”

Google Blog: Gilberto Gil: Our largest retrospective of a living artist. “Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian singer, songwriter and cultural icon, once said that ‘Brazil was, is, and will be in fashion.’… To celebrate Gil’s 80th birthday, Google Arts & Culture is launching the largest online retrospective dedicated to a living artist. In The Rhythm of Gil, you’ll find a wealth of unique material – including an album believed to be lost forever, over 140 stories, over 900 newly digitized videos and tapes, and exclusive illustrations by artist Raiana Britto.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Microsoft’s Defender online security tool is now available to consumers. “It took awhile, but Microsoft Defender is now generally available for all your personal devices, not just Windows PCs and businesses. The new Defender for individuals gives Microsoft 365 subscribers an online tool that bolsters the existing malware and phishing security measures you’re (hopefully) using.”

Daily Beast: ‘Techno-King’ Elon Musk Sounds Off on Aliens, Politics in Rambly Twitter Townhall. “Appearing via a crappy cell phone camera feed, Elon Musk addressed Twitter employees on Thursday for the first time since the company accepted his $44 billion buyout offer in April. In the meandering call, which lasted about an hour, Musk at times took bizarre tangents, including briefly discussing aliens and noting that he had dubbed himself the ‘techno-king’ of Tesla, according to a person who heard him speak.”

USEFUL STUFF

Smashing Magazine: Web Design Done Well: Delightful Data Visualization Examples. “All the data in the world won’t do anyone any good if we can’t make sense of it. Or better yet, make it sing. Here are some stunning examples of data visualization in the wild, and some pointers on how to start making your own.” Smashing Magazine with their usual good work.

Lifehacker: This App Is Like a Homing Device for Bluetooth Signals. “There are plenty of Bluetooth devices in your world that can go lost without a clear solution for finding them. Luckily, there are apps designed to help you track these items down, similar to how Apple’s U1 chip works, no matter what smartphone you happen to own.”

WordPress: 7 Best Security Plugins to Protect Your WordPress Site. “f your website is running on WordPress and you haven’t invested in a robust security plugin, your site could be next on the hit list. Thankfully, there are a number of reliable and highly adaptable plugins available for WordPress sites (you can browse a few of the options available at Envato) but how do you know which one is right for your business?”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Search Engine Journal: Has Google’s SEO Office Hours Lost Its Spark?. “Previously the SEO Office Hours format permitted live questions and answers. That’s gone now. What Google is presenting are pre-screened questions with pre-screened answers. The new format gives Mueller time to choose questions and research good answers ahead of time. The answer Mueller provided is good but it also highlights a downside of Google’s new Q&A format that feels scripted and safe to the point that the information closely mirrors Google’s official documentation.”

Slashgear: Why The Crypto Crash Is Great News For Gamers. “Crypto miners, who keep the blockchain going and receive cryptocurrency as a reward for their efforts, have also seen profits tank. Some of them are now making less than a dollar a day once costs are factored in, and may not see the point of continuing in the current climate … which is fantastic news for the PC gaming community.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Massachusetts Amherst: Geoscientist Awarded $2.1m Grant To Create Global Open-source Software System For Tracking Water And Sediment In Earth’s Rivers Using NASA Satellite Data. “University of Massachusetts geoscientist and engineer Colin Gleason has received a $2.1 NASA million grant to work with computer science colleagues at UMass Amherst and the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., to create a cloud-based software system providing unprecedented public access to satellite data on Earth’s water quantity and quality.”

Concordia University: Women are making strides in artificial intelligence but are still underrepresented, according to new Concordia research. “Overall, the study shows, the number of women working in AI has increased since the beginning of the century, but in terms of percentage makeup, representation has remained roughly constant at around 27 per cent. However, a noticeable increase in female-male and female-female collaboration is encouraging, write the researchers.” Good morning, Internet…

June 17, 2022 at 05:32PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/gi5qD7U