Ireland Historical Records, UK Public Art, EXIF Metadata, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 5, 2022

Ireland Historical Records, UK Public Art, EXIF Metadata, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Europeana Pro: Digitally recovering Ireland’s history: Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland connects millions of lost records. “This week sees the launch of the innovative new digital archive, the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, which makes a rich array of historical documents available for research, education and enjoyment.”

BBC: ArtUK: Six strange statues from new photographic database. “The charity ArtUK has created a photographic database of 13,500 works of public art. Queen Victoria is the most honoured person with 175 works dedicated to her. The data also shows 77% of people depicted are male, 17% female and the rest a mixture of the sexes.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: How to See EXIF Metadata in Photos on iPhone. “Every photo you take on your iPhone includes EXIF metadata, which records information about how, when, and where you took the photo. Previously, you needed a special utility to see EXIF metadata on iPhone, but with iOS 15 and up, you can see it directly in the Photos app. Here’s how.”

The Verge: Your internet life needs a Feeds Reboot — here’s how to do it. “Odds are, some of what’s in your feeds — the creators on YouTube, the out-there old friends on Facebook, the inescapable dance crazes on your TikTok For You page — is the result of something you commented on, liked, or just happened to watch many months or years ago. The reboot gives you a chance to start fresh, to declare to the internet that you are no longer the person you once were, and to take more control over the algorithms that run so much of your life.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Slate: False Flag. “[Bob] Heft’s story—which many reputable sources cite as a historical fact—is false. While he did make a 50-star flag for his history class, and [Stanley] Pratt may even have agreed to change the grade if it were accepted by the government, everything else in the usual account is a lie that Heft embellished for nearly half a century. If the origin story of the nation’s most recognizable symbol is untrue, it illustrates how misinformation about the American past can be deliberately invented and uncritically perpetuated. The real question is how and why Heft did it—and why so many people wanted to believe that it was the truth.”

New York Times: Family Recipes Etched in Stone. Gravestone, That Is.. “At his home in Washington, D.C., Charlie McBride often bakes his mother’s recipe for peach cobbler. As he pours the topping over the fruit, he remembers how his mother, aunts and grandmother sat under a tree in Louisiana, cackling at one another’s stories as they peeled peaches to can for the winter. Mr. McBride loved this family recipe so much that when his mother, O’Neal Bogan Watson, died in 2005, he had it etched on her gravestone in New Ebenezer Cemetery in Castor, La., a town of about 230 people.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

US Department of Justice: Justice Department Announces Enforcement Action Charging Six Individuals with Cryptocurrency Fraud Offenses in Cases Involving Over $100 Million in Intended Losses. “The Department of Justice, together with federal law enforcement partners, today announced criminal charges against six defendants in four separate cases for their alleged involvement in cryptocurrency-related fraud, including the largest known Non-Fungible Token (NFT) scheme charged to date, a fraudulent investment fund that purportedly traded on cryptocurrency exchanges, a global Ponzi scheme involving the sale of unregistered crypto securities, and a fraudulent initial coin offering.”

PetaPixel: Photographer Sues Google, Says YouTube Ignores Copyright Theft. “A photographer has sued Google for copyright infringement alleging that YouTube failed to remove his unauthorized images from the website. The lawsuit was filed against Google, LLC by Doniger Burroughs on behalf of photographer Alexander Stross in the U.S. District Court for the Central Court California on June 28.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ProPublica: How We Fight Back When Officials Resist Releasing Information You Have a Right to Know. “All told, as of June 15, we and our partners at the Texas Tribune had filed about 70 records requests related to the shooting and hadn’t gotten any records back; we’ve gotten a few things since then. We weren’t just denied by the city, but also by Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Marshals Service.”

NewsWise: The Art of Getting DNA Out of Decades-Old Pickled Snakes. “Many of these specimens are decades or even centuries old, near-perfectly preserved by a combination of formalin and alcohol. But the process that preserves tissues often destroys or at least makes acquiring DNA for modern studies very difficult, which is bad news for scientists who study genetic relationships between organisms. A new study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, however, reveals new approaches for getting and maximizing usable DNA from decades-old pickled specimens, and uses these techniques to solve a long-standing mystery about a small snake from the island of Borneo.” 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!

July 6, 2022 at 12:46AM
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Keep Your RSS Fresh With Keyword-Based Feeds

Keep Your RSS Fresh With Keyword-Based Feeds
By ResearchBuzz

Over the weekend I found an interesting article at The Verge. In Your internet life needs a Feeds Reboot — here’s how to do it, David Pierce explores the ways you can give your algorithmic timelines a bit of a reset to make your social media better.

He even, to my vast appreciation, mentioned RSS feeds! But that’s all it was: a mention. RSS appears precisely once in the article, in the phrase “look at all the sources you follow on RSS.” That’s excellent advice and I recommend it to anyone, but a little later in the paragraph he adds the sentence “Don’t worry about adding better stuff since that tends to happen naturally over time.” I agree with him that it’s true for social media. I disagree when it comes to RSS feeds.

On social media platforms, the name of the game is keeping you engaged with the content. You don’t like that news source? Here, try this one. We think you’ll like this. Hey, you liked that thing, here’s something similar. As long as you show the faintest flicker of interest, social media platforms will try to understand you (at least enough to pigeonhole you for advertising) and constantly feed you content in an attempt to profile your interests.

When it comes to RSS feeds there isn’t really anything similar. RSS feed readers like NewsBlur will recommend feeds or list interesting feeds,  but there’s no algorithm pushing you to try PC World because you like ZDNet. (The closest I’ve found is Feedly, which has an “Explore” feature. It’s fine, but I find it’s too general to bring me a steady stream of useful content.) You’re responsible for curating your own experience. Instead of up- or down-voting content, though, you should be constantly evaluating your feeds.

For maximum efficiency, you should have some kind of threshold of how much non-useful content an RSS feed generates before you abandon it, and you should use it. You should be regularly deleting RSS feeds; if you hang on to a lot of feeds that contribute nothing to your curation you’ll end up spinning your wheels and wasting time going through them. (As someone who reads literally thousands of RSS feeds AND who has as her special interest “everything,” I wrestle with this. But ResearchBuzz is better when I am ruthless while pruning my RSS feeds.)

Here’s the snag, though; you might struggle with finding new sources. If you’ve been around the Internet a while you’ll know how to winkle out an RSS feed from a Web site. Even if you’re new to RSS, you might stumble across a site that promotes its feed (that seems to happen less and less these days.) But either way, you will not be offered a plate of algorithmically-generated feed suggestions to browse through. Some feeds, like mine, link to lots of other sites, but most feeds focus on their own content. How do you find new RSS to replace the ones that don’t provide relevant content?

Here’s the secret: keyword-based RSS feeds.

Usually when we talk about RSS feeds, we’re usually talking about a feed associated with one Web site. There’s the “CNN RSS feed,” for example. But you can also get keyword-based feeds – search results for a given query that are delivered in RSS format.

I use keyword-based feeds constantly. I can’t possibly monitor every RSS feed that might mention “archive,” but I can use Google News alerts (which you can get as an RSS feed.) I can’t monitor all international news for the word “database,” but I can get Bing News RSS feeds for that keyword with a focus on specific countries.

When I use keyword-based RSS feeds, I’m discovering new resources that are least peripherally-related to my interests. (This is more true with very specific keywords, but even for a general query like “database” the news resources are somewhat relevant.) Of course, just because an article appears in a keyword-based RSS feed doesn’t mean that the article source itself has an RSS feed, but I find that they generally do.

I also find that keyword-based feeds can act as “auditions” for sources. Sometimes you’ll find that a source ends up in your keyword-based feeds over and over and over with excellent content until you have to give in and subscribe directly to the source’s RSS feed. (Looking at you, Arizona State University.)

If regular RSS feeds are difficult to find, then keyword-based feeds must be impossible right? Not so – like regular RSS feeds, they’re mostly right there in the open. You just have to know where to look. Here are three places to find keyword-based RSS feeds.

Google Alerts – https://www.google.com/alerts

Google Alerts are mostly associated with email alerts, but any Google Alert can be an RSS feed as well. Just change the last option from deliver to email to RSS feed. I also recommend you leave the “How Many” option at “only the best results” because keyword-based feeds can easily get gummed up with spam.

Once you’ve generated the RSS feed, you’ll see an RSS icon next to the feed name in your Google Alerts list. Click on that and you’ll get your feed.

I’ve written a few articles about Google Alerts that might help you when setting them up:

The Importance of Excluding Words When Setting Up Google Alerts

Tips for Angelina Jolie: How to Set Up a Google News Alert on a Famous Person

Anatomy of an Information Trap, Part II: Setting Up and Sharing Google Alerts

Bing / Bing News – https://www.bing.com/news

You might have noticed that a Google Alert as an RSS feed looks like this:

https://www.google.com/alerts/feeds/00000000000000000000/00000000000000000000

Only instead of all zeroes it’s a string of numbers. Google generates those feeds when you create an alert, but they’re not created in a pattern (at least not one that I can find) that lets you create the feeds outside of Google Alerts. Update from the future: This is wrong. Stay tuned.

Bing and Bing News’ formats for RSS feeds are much easier to understand and recreate. In fact, you can use the Bing URL patterns to create RSS feeds in bulk. Here’s what a Bing search looks like:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=cow

If you want to turn that into an RSS feed, just add &format=rss to the end:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=cow&format=rss

A Bing News search works the same way:

https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=cow&format=rss

I find Bing News’ RSS feeds find me news stories that I don’t get from Google Alerts, especially international news. There’s some overlap but not as much as you’d think! I’ve done a lot of writing about using Bing and its feeds:

How To Make Non-English Bing News RSS Feeds (And Review Them Before You Commit)

Backstop Your Google Alerts With Bing News RSS Feeds

Cooking Up Lots of RSS To Feed Your News-Monitoring Needs

WordPress.com – https://www.wordpress.com

WordPress.com generates huge amounts of content. According to its stats page, “Users produce about 70 million new posts and 77 million new comments each month.”

That’s a lot, and happily it’s as easy to create feeds for as Bing News. The most basic RSS feed format for WordPress is a feed for a tag. A tag search on WordPress looks like this:

https://wordpress.com/tag/database

To turn that into an RSS feed, just add /feed/ to the end:

https://wordpress.com/tag/database/feed/

This is the most basic way to create a WordPress RSS feed, but there are a number of tricks you can use to make really focused RSS feeds using other aspects of a blog’s content, like category or keyword. Even better, you can apply these searches to WordPress.com in toto or to individual blogs. I wrote an article about how to keep your ResearchBuzz RSS feeds super-focused using WordPress; check it out here.

RSS feeds are a critical part of monitoring the Internet for information, but it’s hard to get good feed recommendations. Whip up some keyword-based feeds, though, and you’ll have a constant source of new sites to keep your RSS feeds fresh and relevant.

.

July 5, 2022 at 06:47PM
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McKinsey Opioid Consulting, Forensic Research Library, Smartphone AI, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 5, 2022

McKinsey Opioid Consulting, Forensic Research Library, Smartphone AI, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Johns Hopkins University: New documents show McKinsey’s role in fueling opioid epidemic. “The Opioid Industry Documents Archive, a project of Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, San Francisco, today released more than 114,000 documents related to McKinsey & Company’s work as a management consulting firm for the opioid industry over a 15-year period. The documents show how McKinsey advised opioid makers Purdue Pharma, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, and Mallinckrodt to help them increase sales, despite the growing public outcry over the opioid epidemic.”

Big thanks to Jeffrey T for bringing this to my attention. Florida International University: FIU launches open-access Forensic Research Library. “Florida International University (FIU) has launched a first-of-its-kind resource for forensic science practitioners, students, researchers, and the general public. The Research Forensic Library provides access to thousands of articles and reports in the scientific literature, a critical step in the forward momentum required of forensic science and its varied applications.”

USEFUL STUFF

New York Times: Use That Everyday A.I. in Your Pocket. “Virtual assistants usually hog the spotlight when it comes to talk of artificial intelligence software on smartphones and tablets. But Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, Samsung’s Bixby and company aren’t the only tools using machine learning to make life easier — other common programs use the technology, too. Here’s a quick tour through some common A.I.-driven apps and how you can manage them.”

MakeUseOf: 6 Truly Free Online Image Editors for Photoshop Effects (No Limitations). “Plenty of free image editors online do wondrous things like remove backgrounds from photos or upscale picture sizes. But usually, these have some restrictions. You’ll find limitations like only editing five images in the free account or exporting images at a really low resolution. So we set out to find free online image editors with no restrictions or limitations that don’t affect a normal user.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: One woman dominated a local fair’s food contest. The internet went looking for her. “The competition at the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair began innocently enough when a woman named Linda Skeens entered her many baked treats, canned goods and other items for the judged contest. Then she won — and she won huge. The fair posted a list of winners on Facebook showing that Skeens dominated the June 13 competition, winning more than 25 of 80 contest categories. That’s when things took on a life of their own. Her online fans wanted to find her.”

Houston Chronicle: Chinese posed as Texans on social media to attack rival companies. “An English-language social media propaganda effort that previously criticized Hong Kong protesters and other foes of the Chinese government and has been linked to China has taken the rare step of going after private companies in a strategic industry, researchers said Tuesday.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google targeted in fresh EU consumer groups’ privacy complaints. “Alphabet unit Google has been targeted by a French consumer group and its peers in complaints to privacy watchdogs over its vast trove of users’ personal data harvested via their Google accounts, European consumer organisation BEUC said on Thursday. In addition to the French consumer group, others in Greece, the Czech Republic, Norway and Slovenia have taken their gripes to their data protection authorities, BEUC said.”

Springfield News-Leader: Missouri court documents will be available online to anyone starting next summer. “Rule changes announced by the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday will allow anyone to access public court records through the state judiciary’s online database, Case.net, starting on July 1, 2023. Currently, only summaries of cases are available online; to access documents and other filings, you need to find a public access terminal at your nearest courthouse.”

KPVI: Open records bill would mean major changes for Pennsylvania ‘state related’ universities. “Senate Bill 488 would require state-related universities (University of Pittsburgh and Temple, Penn State, and Lincoln universities) to disclose salary, budget, and contract information in a user-friendly online database. Donor privacy would be unaffected and remain confidential. The bill passed first consideration in the Senate State Government Committee on Tuesday. If it’s signed into law, it would align Pennsylvania’s transparency rules with the majority of other states.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Twitter Could Take These Steps to Slow Viral Misinformation, Researchers Say. “Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are rife with misinformation that can easily go viral. One study looked at millions of tweets and found that a handful of steps could be taken to slow the spread of false information on Twitter.”

NASA: NASA Selects 5 Proposals to Provide New Insights from Openly Available Data in the Physical Sciences Informatics System. “Researchers will investigate important problems with existing data from NASA’s Physical Sciences Informatics (PSI) system. The online database contains data from completed physical science reduced-gravity flight experiments conducted on the International Space Station, Space Shuttle flights, free flying spacecraft, commercial cargo flights to and from the space station, or from related ground-based studies.”

TechXplore: Study finds toxicity in the open-source community varies from other internet forums. “A team of researchers from the Institute for Software Research (ISR) in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science recently collaborated with colleagues at Wesleyan University to take a first pass at understanding toxicity on open-source platforms like GitHub.” 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!

July 5, 2022 at 05:33PM
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Oregon Mental Health, Working Lands for Wildlife, Seabed 2030, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 4, 2022

Oregon Mental Health, Working Lands for Wildlife, Seabed 2030, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 4, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

KGW8: Oregon Department of Education launches website addressing mental health. “School may be out but students’ mental health needs are still front and center for a lot of educators and parents after such a tough couple years. Now there’s a new resource to help identify ways to help young people who are struggling. The Oregon Department of Education launched a new website called Oregon Classroom WISE this week to help people better address mental health issues in kids, teens and school staff.”

USDA: Working Lands for Wildlife Launches Literature Gateway. “USDA just launched a new research and visualization tool that summarizes published scientific research on bird species-vegetation relationships in the Eastern and Boreal Forests of North America. The tool, Literature Gateway: A Systematic Map of Bird-Vegetation Relationships in Eastern and Boreal Forests, can be used to identify science-need gaps and guide habitat restoration and forest management practices on the ground.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Almost a quarter of the ocean floor is now mapped. “Roughly 25 percent (23.4 percent to be exact) of the Earth’s sea floor has been mapped, thanks to an international initiative known as Seabed 2030. Relying largely on voluntary contributions of bathymetric data (or ocean topography) by governments, companies and research institutions, the project is part of a larger UN-led initiative called The Ocean Decade.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times Magazine: The Accidental Media Critics of YouTube. “Even in a world with no gatekeepers and limited moderation, a certain savvy will assert itself. YouTube even has its equivalents of tabloids and trade publications, covering salacious online drama or niche interests. But it’s the commentary YouTubers in particular who have become, in some cases, as popular as the stars they react to, leading to strange conflicts between fame and critical integrity — plus literal run-ins in the influencer-infested studios of Los Angeles.”

New Indian Express: ASI faces uphill task of cataloguing and preserving piles of its archival treasure . “The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has started an uphill task to catalogue and preserve piles of archival records lying in disarray in its offices across states. Historical documents are being searched through and evaluated to fast-track the setting up of the Archive Division at ASI headquarters in Delhi.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Free smartphone stalkerware detection tool gets dedicated hub. “Kaspersky has launched a new information hub to help with their open-source stalkerware detection tool named TinyCheck, created in 2019 to help people detect if their devices are being monitored. Stalkerware is software explicitly created to spy on people via their smartphones by monitoring their whereabouts, communications, photos, browsing history, and more.”

Washington Post: You scheduled an abortion. Planned Parenthood’s website could tell Facebook.. “The Supreme Court’s decision last week overturning the nationwide right to an abortion in the United States may have sent worried people flooding to Planned Parenthood’s website to learn about nearby clinics or schedule services. But if they used the organization’s online scheduling tool, it appears Planned Parenthood could share people’s location — and, in some cases, even the method of abortion they selected — with big tech companies.”

The Verge: New York denies air permit to Bitcoin mining power plant. “Bitcoin miners in New York state faced a regulatory blow today as the state denied air permits for a gas-fired power plant used to mine Bitcoin. It’s the latest step that New York has taken to crack down on crypto mining as it tries to meet its goals on climate change.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): The Metaverse in 2040 . “Hype? Hope? Hell? Maybe all three. Experts are split about the likely evolution of a truly immersive ‘metaverse.’ They expect that augmented- and mixed-reality enhancements will become more useful in people’s daily lives. Many worry that current online problems may be magnified if Web3 development is led by those who built today’s dominant web platforms.”

Ars Technica: Smart contact lens prototype puts a Micro LED display on top of the eye. “Since 2015, a California-based company called Mojo Vision has been developing smart contact lenses. Like smart glasses, the idea is to put helpful AR graphics in front of your eyes to help accomplish daily tasks. Now, a functioning prototype brings us closer to seeing a final product.” 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!

July 5, 2022 at 12:18AM
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Moral Majority Collection, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Historical North Carolina, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, July 4, 2022

Moral Majority Collection, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Historical North Carolina, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, July 4, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

JSTOR: The Moral Majority: Collection of Primary Sources. “The Moral Majority collection, curated by Liberty University, contains materials generated during the ten years the organization was in existence. These include fundraising appeals, radio broadcast transcripts, issues of Moral Majority Report and the Liberty Report newsletter, theological statements by Elmer L. Towns (then Dean of Liberty Baptist Seminary), and diverse policy documents.”

National Museum of Industrial History: Museum Receives Grant To Digitize Bethlehem Steel Photo Collection. “Dozens of industrial photographers were employed by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation to capture iron and steelmaking activities in the plants, in the mines, on construction projects, in maritime and rail industries, and inside the largest steelmaking research and development facility in the world, at one time. This digitized collection is the result of a two year long process of identifying and selecting negatives, in an aim to represent the full extent of corporate operations during the first three quarters of the 20th century.”

State Archives of North Carolina: New Digital Collection: Revolutionary War Era. “The Digital Access Branch of the State Archives of North Carolina is pleased to announce the newest collection in the North Carolina Digital Collections, the Revolutionary War Era…. The Revolutionary War Era digital collection consists primarily of court records, legal documents, correspondence, reports, and journals from selected government and private collections.”

San Francisco Chronicle: Lost landmarks of the Bay Area. “In a city that has gone to war against sugary sodas, residents still took the 2020 loss of a Coca-Cola billboard hard, like someone was tearing down one of the Painted Ladies. When the Cliff House sign was removed — the art deco sign, not the actual Cliff House — hundreds arrived to mourn. So we’re building a virtual museum, tracking the most prominent lost landmarks of the last 50 years (including, sadly, more than a few that came down during the pandemic).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

UNESCO: UNESCO welcomes the signing of a historic agreement between Germany and Nigeria for the return of 1,130 Benin bronzes . “The declaration goes beyond a mere restitution and provides for ambitious cultural cooperation. Under the terms of the declaration, Germany is expected to participate in archaeological exploration work, provide training for Nigerian museum staff, help build a new museum in Benin and return looted Benin Bronzes from German museum collections, while promoting international travelling and joint exhibitions.”

Bing Blogs: New Bing Map Experiences: Distance Calculator, Gas Prices and Parking Finder. “Let’s take a little trip. It is raining in Seattle today (surprise, surprise), so we have decided to head to San Diego for the weekend as the weather should be better there. The first thing we want to do is figure out how far it is from Seattle to San Diego, as well as find nearby gas stations with an easy map experience. We’ve heard the drive is beautiful, especially along the Oregon coast, so let’s calculate the driving distance using the Bing Maps Distance Calculator.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Take Incredible Fireworks Photos Using a Smartphone: 10 Tips. “Smartphone photography is a convenient way to get great photos without being weighed down with a heavy and bulky DSLR. You might think you need a professional camera setup to get amazing fireworks shots, but the camera in the palm of your hand is good enough. By using these smartphone photography tips, you can enjoy any fireworks display and get great photos without dragging a large camera bag along with you. Let’s jump right in.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: A News Revolution for Young People Takes Root in France. “With 1.6 million subscribers on his main channel on YouTube, 2 million followers on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok, HugoDécrypte has become a leading news source for young French people. Mr. Travers has interviewed Bill Gates, President Emmanuel Macron of France and 10 of the 12 candidates in the country’s presidential election this year. His success, which has spawned several imitators, comes as interest in the news among young French people has fallen to the lowest level in 20 years, according to one poll.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Read Max: What’s the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?. “Over the next several months, alongside the spam calls and texts, I kept getting mysterious wrong-number texts, all of them clearly from scammers, but without an obvious angle. Nevertheless, they shared with the original charity-gala text a literary sense of narrative tension.”

NBC New York: NY Says Google Maps Search Is Sending Abortion Seekers to Anti-Abortion Clinics Instead. “New York Attorney General Letitia James is calling on Google to correct search results she says are directing abortion seekers to dangerous and misleading anti-abortion clinics in the state, her latest action to shore up abortion rights in the Empire State.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: I watched hundreds of flat-Earth videos to learn how conspiracy theories spread. “By studying how flat Earthers talk about their beliefs, we can learn how they make their arguments engaging to their audience, and in turn, learn what makes disinformation spread online. In a recent study, my colleague Tomas Nilsson at Linnaeus University and I analysed hundreds of YouTube videos in which people argue that the Earth is flat. We paid attention to their debating techniques to understand the structure of their arguments and how they make them appear rational.”

The Hindu: India adds 540 species to its faunal database, 315 taxa to its flora in 2021. “India added 540 species to its faunal database in 2021 taking the total number of animal species to 1,03,258. The country also added 315 taxa to the Indian flora during 2021, taking the number of floral taxa in the country to 55,048. Of the 540 faunal species, 406 are new discoveries and 134 new records to India. Thirteen new genera were also discovered in 2021. Among the new species discovered is one species from mammal, 35 reptiles and 19 species of pisces.” 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!

July 4, 2022 at 05:29PM
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Armenians of Whitinsville, Raspberry Pi Pico, YouTube, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 3, 2022

Armenians of Whitinsville, Raspberry Pi Pico, YouTube, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 3, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Armenian Mirror-Spectator: Armenians of Whitinsville Website Unveiled at Project SAVE Webinar. “On June 16, Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archive delved into the world of Whitinsville, a small town in central Massachusetts with one of the oldest Armenian communities in the state. This presentation was cosponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research and the Armenian Cultural Center.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

ReviewGeek: New Raspberry Pi Pico W Adds Wi-Fi and Costs $6. “Now available for just $6, the Raspberry Pi Pico W uses an Infineon CYW43439 wireless chip for Wi-Fi support. This enables wireless internet support, which is particularly useful for IoT projects. Notably, the CYW43439 chip also supports Bluetooth 5.2 and Bluetooth LE, though these features aren’t enabled at launch.”

Engadget: YouTube introduces new tools to battle comment spam and account imitators. “YouTube is enacting more measures in its battle to cut down on comment spam and channel impersonation. Creators now have access to a new setting for comments in YouTube Studio. They’ll be able to select an ‘increase strictness’ option. YouTube says this builds on the ‘hold potentially inappropriate comments for review’ setting and will reduce the number of spam and identity abuse comments.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

African News Agency: Seychelles’ National Archives To Be Housed In A New Building Soon, SINCHA Says. “The Seychelles National Institute for Culture, Heritage and the Arts (SINCHA) is looking for an alternative place to house the country’s National Archives following the announcement recently that it will no longer be in the same building as the National Library.”

Texas Exes: Digital Archive at the Ransom Center Shows How the Theatre Industry Made It Through the Pandemic. “March 12, 2020, was the night the lights went out on Broadway. The curtain came down on London’s West End a few days later. By the end of the month, theatres large and small all over the world had shuttered due to COVID-19. No one knew how long the virus would keep seats empty. But Eric Colleary was busy. His phone was ringing off the hook with calls from theatre artists across the county. They wanted to know: How had previous generations of thespians dealt with such situations? Could the past help them understand how to respond to this present crisis?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

MakeUseOf: What Is Leakware? Here’s What You Need to Know. “Leakware attackers will threaten to release the confidential information they’ve stolen from the victim(s) if their demands are not met. These demands are usually financial and come in the form of a typical ransom (which is why leakware is a kind of ransomware). Leakware attackers will often ensure that the data they steal is highly sensitive to put as much pressure on the victim as possible.”

CNN: Descendant of enslaved people can sue Harvard University over photos of half-naked ancestors, state supreme court rules. “Massachusetts’ highest court has ruled that a woman claiming to be the descendant of enslaved people can proceed with some of the claims in her lawsuit against Harvard University. The June 23 ruling from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court allows Tamara Lanier to seek damages from Harvard for mistreating her when using photographs of her ancestors — images known as daguerreotypes.”

Reuters: Crypto crash threatens North Korea’s stolen funds as it ramps up weapons tests. “The nosedive in cryptocurrency markets has wiped out millions of dollars in funds stolen by North Korean hackers, four digital investigators say, threatening a key source of funding for the sanctions-stricken country and its weapons programmes. North Korea has poured resources into stealing cryptocurrencies in recent years, making it a potent hacking threat and leading to one of the largest cryptocurrency heists on record in March, in which almost $615 million was stolen, according to the U.S. Treasury.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: National Sample Survey: How India taught the world the art of collecting data. “Indian data is staring at a credibility crisis with official numbers on a range of subjects – from Covid deaths to jobs – being questioned by independent experts. But not too long ago, the country was seen as a world leader in data collection, writes author and historian Nikhil Menon.”

CNET: The World’s Biggest NFT Festival vs. the Crypto Crash of 2022. “This year’s convention, the fourth ever, took place from June 21 to 23, amid the biggest crypto market crash in years. It’s a crucial time for the burgeoning industry, and not just because of crypto’s collapse. We’re in the gestation period of NFTs evolving from blockchain oddities to real-life entertainment brands. Events like NFT.NYC give ‘Web3’ teams a chance to prove that NFT culture can produce more than scams and that legitimate companies creating real products can be built in this space.” Or not. Good afternoon, Internet…

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July 4, 2022 at 12:49AM
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British Columbia Geoscience, Virginia Firearm Injuries, Eugene Oregon, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, July 3, 2022

British Columbia Geoscience, Virginia Firearm Injuries, Eugene Oregon, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, July 3, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Geoscience BC: Mining Geoscience Data to Put It on the Map. “Data for hundreds more mineral exploration and development reports in British Columbia can now be searched by location for the first time, thanks to a new Geoscience BC minerals project.”

Virginia Department of Health: Virginia Department of Health Launches Firearm Injuries in Virginia: Emergency Department Visits Dashboard. “Today, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) launched a new data dashboard on firearm injuries in Virginia showing the number and rate of emergency department (ED) visits from 2016 to 2022. The dashboard shows firearm injury data by year, health district, age group, sex, and race/ethnicity across Virginia.”

KGW: Historians document Oregon’s unique ‘lesbian mecca’. “A new living history archive is now online to show a unique slice of Oregon life. The ‘Outliers and Outlaws’ project showcases communities of lesbians who made Eugene and southern Oregon home in the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

James Webb Space Telescope: How To See Webb’s First Images! . “The public release of Webb’s first images and spectra is July 12 – now less than two weeks away! The Webb team has confirmed that that 15 out of 17 instrument modes are ready for science, with just two more still to go. As we near the end of commissioning, we wanted to let you know where you can see the first Webb science data and how to participate in the celebration of Webb science!”

VentureBeat: Google announces big update to Password Manager . “Today, Google released a blog post announcing some key changes to Password Manager. The new changes will enable users who have multiple passwords for the same sites or apps, to automatically group them on Chrome and Android devices.”

USEFUL STUFF

Search Engine Land: 11 Google Sheets formulas SEOs should know. “While it’s not great at plotting ranking data (inverting the y-axis is always ugly), there are numerous ways to use Google Sheets for SEO. Here are 11 of the formulas and tips I find myself using for SEO on an almost daily basis – for keyword management, internationalization, content/URL management and dashboards.” Just ignore the SEO part. This is an excellent roundup of Google Sheets functions with quick, digestible examples.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Motor1: Ford Ends Print, Digital New Vehicle Brochures Starting July 1. “New vehicle brochures have been a staple in the auto industry for decades, but that long tradition could be coming to an end at Ford starting July 1. The automaker is reportedly ending the creation of brochures in both print and digital format, leaving Ford’s official website as the only source for current vehicle information.”

Rest of World: Diaspora communities reframe history, one Instagram post at a time. “Marwan Kaabour has always been a collector. The London-based designer traces the hobby back to his childhood in Beirut, Lebanon. ‘Perhaps the most serious collection was an insanely well-organized collection of Spice Girls merchandise,’ he remembers with a laugh. Today, Kaabour is collecting photographs, video clips, and other rare visual media on the Instagram account Takweer, a digital archive with 16,000 followers that maps the intersections of queerness and Arab history.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Billing fraud apps can disable Android Wi-Fi and intercept text messages. “Android malware developers are stepping up their billing fraud game with apps that disable Wi-Fi connections, surreptitiously subscribe users to pricey wireless services, and intercept text messages, all in a bid to collect hefty fees from unsuspecting users, Microsoft said on Friday.”

WIRED: Young Thug and What Happens When Prosecutors Use Social Media. “YOUNG THUG AND Gunna are two of music’s most prolific, playful talents. Despite their mainstream rap stardom, they remain unafraid to shape-shift. For years now, by force of will and pure joy, they have kept the radio interesting. On May 11 they were arrested and charged in Georgia’s Fulton County Superior Court with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.”

TechCrunch: Amazon agrees to drop Prime cancellation ‘dark patterns’ in Europe. “Amazon has agreed to simplify the process required for cancelling its Prime membership subscription service across its sites in the European Union, both on desktop and mobile interfaces, following a series of complaints from regional consumer protection groups. The coordinated complaints about Amazon’s confusing and convoluted cancellation process for Prime were announced back in April 2021 — so it’s taken just over a year for the e-commerce giant to agree to change its ways.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: Okay, Google: To protect women, collect less data about everyone. “A search for ‘Plan B,’ a ping to Google Maps at an abortion clinic or even a message you send about taking a pregnancy test could all become criminal evidence. There is something Google could do about this: stop collecting — and start deleting — data that could be used to prosecute abortions. Yet so far, Google and other Big Tech companies have committed to few product changes that might endanger their ability to profit off our personal lives. Nor have they publicly committed to how they might fight legal demands related to prosecuting abortions.” Google has announced that it will be deleting some location data. 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!

July 3, 2022 at 05:27PM
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