Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Medieval Europe Isotopes, Occupied Lublin WWII, Data Journalism, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 22, 2022

Medieval Europe Isotopes, Occupied Lublin WWII, Data Journalism, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, June 22, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Scientific Data: Presenting the Compendium Isotoporum Medii Aevi, a Multi-Isotope Database for Medieval Europe . “Here we present the Compendium Isotoporum Medii Aevi (CIMA), an open-access database gathering more than 50,000 isotopic measurements for bioarchaeological samples located within Europe and its margins, and dating between 500 and 1500 CE.”

The First News: Haunting WWII photos taken by Wehrmacht soldier in Lublin reveal ‘ordinary lives’ of Hitler’s occupying forces. “Newly released photographs taken by a Wehrmacht soldier stationed in Poland during WWII throw a fascinating light on life during the war from a German perspective. The majority of the 69 photographs in the collection depict the life of the German occupiers in Lublin, showing amongst others their daily work, life in the barracks, integration events and walks through the city.”

EVENTS

Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas: Add mapping skills to your journalist toolkit with new online course from the Knight Center. “Maps are a powerful visual tool for journalists to analyze geographical data, identify patterns, and make sense of an overwhelming amount of data. We’ll explore their practical application in our new course, ‘Hands-on Mapping for Journalists: How to use geographical data to improve your stories’ which runs for four weeks from July 7 to Aug. 11, 2022.” This is not a free MOOC; it’s a smaller, more advanced course that costs $95.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

GlobeNewswire: Historical Big Wave Surf Television Archive Acquired by Opper Films (PRESS RELEASE). “Opper Films, home of the world’s largest historical surf film library, is stoked to announce the acquisition of twenty-two rare legendary surfing event titles and film footage from Larry Lindberg Productions, New York. Lindberg, a pioneer in sports television coverage in the early 1960s, was the first to package and produce televised surf competition for the major national television networks beginning with the 1965 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational Championships, the first event held at Sunset Beach, Hawaii.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Quickly Make a Resume on Your Phone. “If you do things the right way, there’s no way for a recruiter to tell whether your resume was created using your mobile phone or from your PC.”

How-To Geek: How to Track Projects and Reviews in Google Docs With Table Templates. “When using Google Docs, you might add a table to neatly organize information so that you can share it with your company or audience. To speed up the creation process, try a table template instead. A table is a terrific tool for structuring data, but what makes it even better is when the table is created for you. All you have to do is pop in your own details. In Google Docs, you can use table templates for products, reviews, projects, and content.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Google Chrome extensions can be fingerprinted to track you online. “A researcher has created a website that uses your installed Google Chrome extensions to generate a fingerprint of your device that can be used to track you online.”

New York Times: When Customers Say Their Money Was Stolen on Zelle, Banks Often Refuse to Pay. “While banks argue that they shouldn’t have to refund customers who inadvertently granted a scammer permission to use their accounts, they have also often been reluctant to refund customers like Mr. Oriach whose money was stolen. That could be a potential violation of the law.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ZME Science: Who gets fired from social media posts? These researchers scoured hundreds of cases to find out. “The new study surveyed 312 news stories about people who had been fired because of a social media post. It didn’t just include people who were fired because of the content of their own social media posts, but also people who were fired based on others’ posts like for instance, videos of police engaging in racial profiling, which ultimately led to the policemen being fired.”

90 Min: FIFA racism study names Marcus Rashford & Bukayo Saka as biggest targets of social media abuse. “FIFA’s study into racist abuse on social media during Euro 2020 and this year’s Africa Cup of Nations has revealed nearly half of the players who made it to each competition’s semi-final were targeted.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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June 23, 2022 at 12:27AM
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Posterwar, Air Raid Alerts, Sponsoring Refugees, More: Ukraine Update, June 22, 2022

Posterwar, Air Raid Alerts, Sponsoring Refugees, More: Ukraine Update, June 22, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

It’s Nice That: Posterwar supports Ukraine with a downloadable archive of 80 posters and counting. “As it stands today (21 June), the Posterwar archive features 82 posters from countries across the world – Sreenihal [Pouka] counts submissions from: Ukraine, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Lithuania, Latvia, Germany, Bulgaria, India, Brazil, Colombia, Iceland, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and the US. But this extensive selection looks likely to expand quickly, with the campaign also allowing visitors to submit their artwork directly to the site (after downloading the correct templates). What’s more, Posterwar lets anyone download their preferred poster – or posters – to publicly display their support of Ukraine, either online or in person.”

Jerusalem Post: Israel’s Red Alert inspires new site that helps Ukrainians stay safe in war . “Ukrainians wanting to keep track of air raid siren alerts, maps of ongoing battles and damaged infrastructure, and searching for shelters and Wi-Fi will soon have a new website and alert system to use to stay safe and informed amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.”

Fast Company: This new platform matches Ukrainian refugees with American sponsors. “Two months ago, as millions of Ukrainians had been displaced by the Russian invasion, the U.S. government announced a unique new program: Any American can sponsor a Ukrainian for temporary refuge, with room for as many as 100,000 placements. In the past, similar ‘humanitarian parole’ programs were often limited to immediate family. Most of the first applicants, unsurprisingly, had personal connections to the people they sponsored—friends, family, employees. But a new website is designed to now help connect potential sponsors with Ukrainians they’ve never met.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

iNews: How Russia’s propaganda machine has adapted to a long war in Ukraine, explained by data. “Just like the country’s military, Russia’s vast propaganda machine has had to adapt to the realities of a long and protracted war in Ukraine rather than the lightning-fast victory the Kremlin expected.”

TechCrunch: Yandex shifts focus to ya.ru as it heads for media exit in Russia. “TechCrunch has learned that Russia search giant Yandex is to switch from using yandex.ru as its main front page for Russian-speaking users to ya.ru — a less trafficked domain it’s owned since 2000 that, historically, has only hosted a basic search engine page. Imagine if Google decided to de-emphasize google.com in favor of a less popular domain it also owns and you’ll get an inkling of how big a shift this looks to be for the Russian internet landscape.”

Politico: Google Russia files for bankruptcy . “Google’s local subsidiary in Russia filed for bankruptcy because Moscow’s measures against the U.S. firm have made it impossible to do business, the firm said Friday.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Russian palaces, villas and yachts linked to Putin by email leak – in pictures, maps and video. “An investigation by the the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and the news website Meduza has identified a group of 86 apparently unconnected companies or not for profit organisations that appear to hold over $4.5bn (£3.7bn) of assets where a common private email address, LLCInvest.ru, appears to be in use.”

BBC: Ukraine to ban music by some Russians in media and public spaces. “Ukraine’s parliament has voted in favour of banning some Russian music in media and public spaces. The ban will not apply to all Russian music, but rather relates to music created or performed by those who are or were Russian citizens after 1991. Artists who have condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine can apply for an exemption from the ban.”

Poynter: No, CNN did not fake Ukrainian war footage. “Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine beginning Feb. 24, misinformation about the situation has spread rapidly. For example, this tweet claims that CNN was faking war footage in Ukraine.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: How Russia’s vaunted cyber capabilities were frustrated in Ukraine. “A quiet partnership of the world’s biggest technology companies, U.S. and NATO intelligence agencies, and Ukraine’s own nimble army of hackers has pulled off one of the surprises of the war with Russia, largely foiling the Kremlin’s brazen internet hacking operations.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: How Ukraine Is Winning the Propaganda War. “As the conflict in Ukraine drags on, the country’s communications strategy has become slicker and more professional, say academics studying information warfare. Ukraine has also shifted its strategy away from amplifying exaggerated myths to focusing on the courage of ordinary people who are committing small, achievable acts of bravery in the face of the Russian invasion.”

Latvia Posts English: Latvian experts have returned from work in Ukraine to digitize cultural heritage in wartime. “The Ministry of Culture, in cooperation with the Riga Technical University (RTU), has provided assistance to Ukraine in the preservation of cultural monuments. From June 6 to 16, Dr. UNCHCO expert, member of the board of SIA ‘ARCHItrāvs’ Dr. Bruno Deslandes, Associate Professor, Department of Geomatics, RTU Faculty of Civil Engineering Maris Kalinka and Kirill Gorovojs, PhD student at RTU Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology (DITF).”

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June 22, 2022 at 07:01PM
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Manitoba Indigenous Tuberculosis History Project, Virginia Cold Cases, Luxembourg Online Dictionary, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, June 22, 2022

Manitoba Indigenous Tuberculosis History Project, Virginia Cold Cases, Luxembourg Online Dictionary, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, June 22, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Winnipeg Free Press: Portal into Indigenous tuberculosis history puts stories in new light. “On Tuesday, the [Manitoba Indigenous Tuberculosis History Project’] launches … a collection of resources that brings the history of Manitoba’s Indigenous sanatoriums and Indian hospitals to light, and aims to help communities track down information that has long eluded them.”

Virginian-Pilot: First version of Virginia cold-case database includes killings unsolved for years — with plans to expand. “The tool defines cold cases as a homicide, missing person or unidentified person case that has remained unsolved for at least five years. The cases on the website date back as far as 1973. The website only details cases investigated by state police but will later include cold case submissions from local law enforcement agencies, [Danica] Roem said.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

RTL Today: Luxembourg Online Dictionary launches new website . “According to the latest statistics, an average of 2,700 people visit the Luxembourg Online Dictionary (LOD) on a daily basis. To improve the user experience, the website’s content and accessibility have recently been redesigned.”

Poynter: Fact-checkers extend their global reach with 391 outlets, but growth has slowed. “Since last year’s census, we have added 51 sites to our global fact-checking map and database. In that same 12 months, another seven fact-checkers closed down. While this vital journalism now appears in at least 69 languages on six continents, the pace of growth in the international fact-checking community has slowed over the past several years.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 8 Zoom Alternatives to Make a Free Conference Call. “Zoom works great for conference calls, but you’re limited to 100 people and just 40 minutes in the free version. This isn’t always ideal, especially for longer meetings. Luckily, there are a variety of Zoom alternatives that don’t have as many restrictions in their free versions. Plus, some don’t even require people calling in to have an account.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Cannabiz: Google and Facebook urged to drop ban on cannabis advertising. “David Beckham-backed UK firm Cellular Goods has launched a petition urging Google, Facebook, Instagram and others to end the ban on the sale and advertising of CBD and CBG on their platforms. The company, which specialises in wellness consumer products formulated with lab-made cannabinoids, has joined forces with seven other firms to call for an end to the ban.”

The Guardian: ‘The worst person you know’: the man who unwittingly became a meme. “Josep Maria García got the shock of his life when he found his image associated with the phrase online.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: German Competition Regulator Launches Probe Into Google Maps. “Germany’s cartel office said it was launching proceedings against Google Germany and parent company Alphabet Inc on Tuesday to examine possible anti-competitive restrictions imposed by the Google Maps platform.”

Bloomberg: Google Avoids More Fines After Ending French Dispute Over News. “The French competition authority said Google significantly improved commitments it initially offered last year, which now address its concerns and have been made binding, ending the case. The Alphabet Inc. unit made promises last year in the wake of a 500 million euro ($527 million) fine for failing to follow an earlier order to thrash out fair deals with publishers. The company also agreed to withdraw its challenge against the penalty.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: Sex Creators – A New Marginalized Profession that needs to be understood. “Don’t be quick to judge the marginalized ‘Sex Creator’ profession! A lecturer at Chula’s Faculty of Law urges all parties to understand the changing social context, and the government to regulate rather than suppress those in this profession while ensuring protection for all genders, and promoting sexual health and legal freedom of expression.”

Phys .org: Algorithm finds that thousands of artificial levees are missing from US database. “To better understand how artificial levees affect modern rivers in the United States, it is important to have a reliable, updated database of levee locations. However, the existing National Levee Database developed in 2006 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fails to capture many of the nation’s smaller structures. In a new study, Knox et al used machine learning to detect the artificial levees that are missing from the database.”

Tech Xplore: A model for the automatic extraction of content from webs and apps. “Content management systems or CMSs are the most popular tool for creating content on the internet. In recent years, they have evolved to become the backbone of an increasingly complex ecosystem of websites, mobile apps and platforms. In order to simplify processes, a team of researchers from the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) has developed an open-source model to automate the extraction of content from CMSs.” Good morning, Internet…

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June 22, 2022 at 05:34PM
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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…

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



June 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…

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



June 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…

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



June 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…

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June 20, 2022 at 05:32PM
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