New researches

Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Black Women Directors, Mechanical Engineering OER, Feedly, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 21, 2022

Black Women Directors, Mechanical Engineering OER, Feedly, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 21, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from the Roger Ebert site: Subscribe to the Black Women Directors Newsletter. “Black Women Directors is an online digital library I first created as a Tumblr in 2015 and later migrated to a standalone site. I created BWD as a way to highlight the contributions of Black women and nonbinary filmmakers from around the globe to the cinematic canon.”

Also New-to-me, from Penn State: Mont Alto professor creates open educational resources textbook online. “Called the Mechanics Map Digital Textbook, [Professor Jacob] Moore’s site contains written explanations, video lectures, worked examples and homework problems. The licensed materials are free for online visitors to use, share or rework. They include a table of contents with links to all the available topics, plus information for those who want to learn more about the project in general.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 6 Feedly Tips Every User Should Know About. “If you just started using Feedly, it might be a little hard at first to get the hang of it. But don’t worry; it’s pretty straightforward to use. To get you started, here are some basic tips you need to know to get the most out of Feedly.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Post and Courier: Oral history project aims to connect recent activism to larger civil rights movement. “About a year ago, local filmmaker Joshua Parks wanted to interview activists who were affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement in Charleston. He approached two staff members of the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston — Erica Veal and Daron Calhoun. Veal, an archivist, and Calhoun, coordinator of public programming and the Race and Social Justice Initiative, demurred. They weren’t eager to revisit the challenges and traumas of the recent past, Veal said. They told Parks, then a graduate assistant at the Avery, to circle back.”

Core77: The Viral TikTok Channel That Reviews Public Bathroom Sinks. “Bored out of his gourd, during the pandemic Dean Peterson started a TikTok where he earnestly reviewed public bathroom sinks…. It’s strangely compelling, no? Other’s thought so too. Peterson, a then-unemployed NYC filmmaker, continued populating the channel, and Sink Reviews went viral.” Note to historians: you will never appreciate how weird this era is. Seriously, we’re all nuts. A lot of genius will come out of this, though. You better appreciate it, you unborn ungrateful whippersnappers.

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: Stolen goods sold on Amazon, eBay and Facebook are causing havoc for major retailers. “For the U.S. Government’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, organized retail crime probes are on the rise. Arrests and indictments increased last year from 2020, along with the value of stolen goods that was seized. While data is imprecise about the perpetrators, there’s growing consensus that an entirely different group should be held accountable: e-commerce sites.”

WUWF: Fight over Florida social media law heads to Supreme Court. “Attorneys for the state and online-industry groups plan to go to the U.S. Supreme Court in a battle about a 2021 Florida law that would crack down on social-media giants such as Facebook and Twitter, according to new court filings. The filings effectively seek to put proceedings on hold in a federal district court and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the case goes to the Supreme Court.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NewsWise: Study: Design Tricks Commonly Used to Monetize Young Children’s App Use. “The majority of apps preschool-aged children use are designed to make money off their digital experiences, a new study suggests. And children whose parents had lower education were more likely to use apps incorporating manipulative methods that increase advertising exposure, such as by keeping them playing games longer or encouraging in-app purchases.”

MedicalXPress: Social media use sheds light on dads’ mental health. “Deakin University researchers have mined Reddit posts and discovered that dads’ posting behaviors in the period surrounding their child’s birth can be a warning sign for depression. Their results were published in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: Picasso‘s favorite pigment may one day recycle metals from your cell phone. “Gold and certain other precious metals are key ingredients in computer chips, including those used in consumer electronics such as smart phones. But it can be difficult to recover and recycle those metals from electronic waste. Japanese researchers have found that a pigment widely used by artists called Prussian blue can extract gold and platinum-group metals from e-waste much more efficiently than conventional bio-based absorbents, according to a recent paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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June 22, 2022 at 12:36AM
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In Their Moccasins, The Commercial Sewing Pattern Archive, Veterans Fraud Center, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, June 21, 2022

In Their Moccasins, The Commercial Sewing Pattern Archive, Veterans Fraud Center, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, June 21, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Toronto Metropolitan University: Choose your own adventure game takes users into the lives of Indigenous youth. “Developed by a team of Indigenous staff and students, In Their Moccasins is a digital tool designed for non-Indigenous faculty, administrative staff, and students at post-secondary institutions to learn about the lived experiences of Indigenous students.”

New-to-me, from The Verge: The Archive Saving Home Sewing History From The Trash. ” The Commercial Pattern Archive is one of the few projects in the world that safeguards these documents that are fragile, easily forgotten, and born to die. A labor of love and insistence on the part of a small team of historians, costume designers, archivists, and hobbyists, the archive began in the 1990s and includes a physical stash and digital database of English-language patterns unparalleled in its scope and depth. CoPA is home to around 56,000 physical patterns going back to the 1800s, along with books, pamphlets, journals, and other related material.”

US Department of Veterans Affairs: AARP launches free online hub to help Veterans fight fraud. “AARP’s Veterans Fraud Center offers free information on the latest scams targeting the military community, tips for spotting other types of consumer fraud, and specially tailored resources to help protect Veterans and military families.”

Globe and Mail: Introducing the Black Fashion Canada Database. “Launched this week, [the site] hosts a profile of each individual, breaking down their early life and career and how they broke barriers in the fashion world. [Charmaine] Gooden and her team have prepared stories on legendary Black models, actors and performers from across Canada, including Hondo Flemming, Linda Carter, Denise McLeod and Ethne Grimes de Viennes, many of whom are alive and agreed to be interviewed for the series.”

USEFUL STUFF

Popular Science: You might be missing DMs on social media. Here’s how to fix it.. “Social media can be a bit of a messaging mess, with DMs sliding in from anybody and everybody to make your account feel like the world’s worst suggestion box. Tech companies know that, so they’ve armed a lot of their apps with the ability to automatically filter out communications that don’t seem to be from people you know. By moving these messages to a ‘hidden’ inbox, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram aim to prevent you from getting overwhelmed with random messages.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: Why Twitter Can Be a Perfect Portfolio for Artists. “Beneath Twitter’s reputation as a shitposter’s heaven, art lovers often prefer it to platforms that promote other forms of content (like Instagram, which pivoted away from photos and art to video, chasing TikTok’s success), and artists use it as a portfolio and work-in-progress platform to showcase everything from drawings and pixel art to vector-based illustration and video game development.”

Search Engine Journal: Could TikTok Be A Search Engine? For Many Users, It Already Is. “TikTok was spotted testing a new search feature, raising questions about its viability as a search engine. Interestingly, many people already use it as one.”

PRWeb: ‘Legiteem8’ App Authenticates and Appraises Vintage T-Shirts Through Crowdsourcing (PRESS RELEASE). “Award-winning vintage authority Defunkd and U.S. apparel company Citees have announced the launch of Legiteem8, a new vintage t-shirt authentication and appraisal app. The app is the first of its kind to harness the power of a global community of experts to verify and value vintage tees. Users have free access to a social-based experience that invites other vintage enthusiasts and experts to vote and comment on an item’s legitimacy and price.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: Fed up with endless cookie consent boxes? The UK plans to kill them off. “Britain wants an end to the barrage of cookie consent pop-ups. The government says new data reforms will heavily reduce the number of banners that appear on websites asking people to consent to cookies. The plans are part of a broader package of reforms from the U.K. seeking to diverge from EU data protection rules.”

BuzzFeed News: Leaked Audio From 80 Internal TikTok Meetings Shows That US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China. “For years, TikTok has responded to data privacy concerns by promising that information gathered about users in the United States is stored in the United States, rather than China, where ByteDance, the video platform’s parent company, is located. But according to leaked audio from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings, China-based employees of ByteDance have repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users — exactly the type of behavior that inspired former president Donald Trump to threaten to ban the app in the United States.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Bath: Fears over technology ‘addictions’ and ‘disorders’ may be unjustified, shows research. “Questionnaires and scales measuring how we interact with smartphones, social media and gaming should not be used to demonstrate links with mental health and wellbeing, according to research from the Universities of Bath and Lancaster.”

EurekAlert: Researchers reconstruct the genome of centuries-old E. coli using fragments extracted from an Italian mummy. “An international team led by researchers at McMaster University, working in collaboration with the University of Paris Cité, has identified and reconstructed the first ancient genome of E. coli, using fragments extracted from the gallstone of a 16th century mummy.” Good morning, Internet…

June 21, 2022 at 05:31PM
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Monday, June 20, 2022

UCL MotionInput Version 3, DuckDuckGo, Adding Site Search, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 20, 2022

UCL MotionInput Version 3, DuckDuckGo, Adding Site Search, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 20, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University College London: Students develop software to revolutionise computer use for millions. “The software could revolutionise the way that millions of people use computers by allowing those with mobility issues to easily interact with their PCs without the need to buy adapted computers and use pointer devices. It has already been endorsed by charities including the International Alliance of ALS/MND Associations, which supports people with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) around the world and is making a positive impact on people’s daily lives.” And it’s free for individual users.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: DuckDuckGo On The Decline In 2022. “Looks like DuckDuckGo, the privacy focused search engine, is on the decline. In January 2021 it broke the 100 million searches per day mark but since April 2022 of this year, it has dipped below that mark each month. I plotted the average queries per day by month from DuckDuckGo’s traffic numbers and you can see, the big dip started to happen in March 2022 with April for the first time going below the 100 million mark since 2021.” When I saw they were allowing Microsoft trackers I DuckDuckWent.

USEFUL STUFF

Smashing Magazine: Adding Search To Your Site In 15 Minutes. “Do you need search for your site, but haven’t found the time to add it? Within 15 minutes, Leonardo Losoviz explains how you can add a super powerful search that also looks super good. In this article, you’ll learn how to go from 0 to 100 with search.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NBC News: How one young history buff is preserving the Gullah Geechee community on TikTok . “The Gullah Geechee people make up one of the oldest and most extraordinary communities in the United States. But if you’ve never heard of them, it might be because their history is often sifted out of textbooks, and the longevity of their culture is now in danger. This distinctly African American community began on the eastern coastal islands — spanning from Florida all the way up to North Carolina in the 1600s. Slaves, mostly from West Africa, lived in complete isolation from the continental United States, separated by rivers, swamps and waterways that weren’t easy to cross.”

Times of India: E-archive To Collate Data On Ancient, Colonial Indian Laws For Easy Access And Awareness. “To make sources of legal history easily available to scholars, lawyers and judges, and to raise awareness among present and future generations about ancient and medieval Indian laws, the Centre for Studies In Legal History of the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), Kolkata, will establish an electronic archive on legal history comprising ancient, medieval and colonial Indian laws up to 1947 that are still being used in the country.”

New York Times: Google Says It’s Time for Longtime Small-Business Users to Pay Up. “While the cost of the paid service is more of an annoyance than a hard financial hit, small-business owners affected by the change say they have been disappointed by the ham-handed way that Google has dealt with the process. They can’t help but feel that a giant company with billions of dollars in profits is squeezing little guys — some of the first businesses to use Google’s apps for work — for just a bit of money.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Japan set to fine Twitter, Meta, Google if they neglect domestic registry – Nikkei. “The Japanese government is set to levy fines against 48 tech companies… for failing to register their headquarters in the country, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Monday.”

CNBC: FBI says fraud on LinkedIn a ‘significant threat’ to platform and consumers. “Fraudsters who exploit LinkedIn to lure users into cryptocurrency investment schemes pose a ‘significant threat’ to the platform and consumers, according to Sean Ragan, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the San Francisco and Sacramento, California, field offices.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Google AI Blog: Scanned Objects by Google Research: A Dataset of 3D-Scanned Common Household Items. “Historically, deep learning for computer vision has relied on datasets with millions of items that were gathered by web scraping, examples of which include ImageNet, Open Images, YouTube-8M, and COCO. However, the process of creating these datasets can be labor-intensive, and can still exhibit labeling errors that can distort the perception of progress. Furthermore, this strategy does not readily generalize to arbitrary three-dimensional shapes or real-world robotic data.”

The Atlantic: Is Google Dying? Or Did the Web Grow Up?. “The internet has grown exponentially and Google has expanded with it, helping usher in some of the web’s greediest, most extractive tendencies. But scale is not always a blessing for technology products. Are we wringing our hands over nothing, or is Google a victim of its own success, rendering its flagship product—Search—less useful?” This essay made me swear out loud, shake my head repeatedly, and throw a pillow across the room. It posits arguments with which I do not agree. It is still worth reading. Good afternoon, Internet…

June 21, 2022 at 12:41AM
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The Black Curation, Watergate Trial Records, Adobe Photoshop, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, June 20, 2022

The Black Curation, Watergate Trial Records, Adobe Photoshop, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, June 20, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Arizona State University: ASU alumna creates resource to find Black-owned galleries. “In February 2021, [April Hobby] founded The Black Curation, a website that focuses on highlighting Black-owned art galleries and art experiences. Specifically, she created a map and directory of Black-owned art galleries worldwide. Hobby sourced these galleries through researching online publications and receiving feedback from artists, gallery owners, art collectors and art enthusiasts.”

NARA: Watergate Trial Records Digitized Ahead of Scandal’s 50th Anniversary. “For the first time since the Watergate scandal broke nearly 50 years ago, the paper records, exhibits, and artifacts from the United States v. G. Gordon Liddy trial are digitized and available to view in the National Archives Catalog.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Adobe plans to make Photoshop on the web free to everyone. “Adobe has started testing a free-to-use version of Photoshop on the web and plans to open the service up to everyone as a way to introduce more users to the app.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Poynter: News organizations have a social media problem. “News outlets often ask their journalists to promote their work and to engage with their audience on Twitter and other social media platforms. Some even use social media to promote their own ‘brand.’ (That’s a whole other topic, but I generally get it, because it helps the news outlet, too.) However, when you’re interacting with people on Twitter, for instance, and writing about controversial issues, someone is eventually going to tweet something that someone might find offensive or confrontational.”

Global News: Google apologizes to B.C. business owner after maps error sends customers to wrong location. “[Gerry] O’Neil’s horse drawn tours have been a fixture in Vancouver’s Stanley Park for 40 years. His business is located at 735 Stanley Park Drive. However, O’Neil said about a year ago, customers would enter his business address into the Google Maps app only to arrive at another location in the park.”

Canada NewsWire: Government of Canada invests in over 800 projects to advance social sciences and humanities research (PRESS RELEASE). “Projects will explore a range of topics, including inclusive policing, the transition to a sustainable economy, First Nations self-determination, and achieving Canada’s net-zero emissions target. Other funded projects will examine motor skill intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder, domestic violence prevention, and partnerships to prevent and end homelessness.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Krebs on Security: Ransomware Group Debuts Searchable Victim Data. “Cybercrime groups that specialize in stealing corporate data and demanding a ransom not to publish it have tried countless approaches to shaming their victims into paying. The latest innovation in ratcheting up the heat comes from the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group, which has traditionally published any stolen victim data on the Dark Web. Today, however, the group began publishing individual victim websites on the public Internet, with the leaked data made available in an easily searchable form.”

CNN: US is worried about Russia using new efforts to exploit divisions in 2022 midterms. “Homeland and national security officials are worried about how Russia could significantly exploit US divisions over the November midterms, considering scenarios like Russia staging smaller hacks of local election authorities — done with the deliberate purpose of being noticed — and then using that to seed more conspiracies about the integrity of American elections.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: New study examines the link between Trump’s offline speeches and QAnon-related Twitter discourse on January 6. “New research sheds light on how Donald Trump’s offline rhetoric might have mobilized online political discussions related to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The findings have been published in the journal Frontiers in Sociology.”

Route Fifty: State Turns to Data Tools to Root Out Social Services Fraud. “The Texas Health and Human Services Department’s inspector general is turning to data modeling and visualization tools to investigate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cases with an increased risk of fraud. Using funds from the SNAP Fraud Framework Implementation Grant, the Texas Office of Inspector General’s Benefits Program Integrity (BPI) division recently developed a data visualization dashboard that will help unit managers oversee high-volume investigative caseloads.”

Wilson Center: Canada, a Country Without a History?. “Stacks of archival records from the Cold War remain inaccessible at Library and Archives Canada. Take, as just one example, this run of folders on the Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian states, starting with the first one in 1955. Open the tabs in the online catalogue and there’s a list of 32s. In other words, even though it’s been 67 years since the first conference, we still can’t see Canadian assessments regarding how and why this gathering might have mattered from Ottawa’s vantage point. By the time we are into records from the 1970s and 1980s, the situation is far worse.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

NASA: New Images Using Data From Retired Telescopes Reveal Hidden Features. “New images using data from ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA missions showcase the dust that fills the space between stars in four of the galaxies closest to our own Milky Way. More than striking, the snapshots are also a scientific trove, lending insight into how dramatically the density of dust clouds can vary within a galaxy.”Good morning, Internet…

June 20, 2022 at 05:32PM
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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…

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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