Wednesday, July 20, 2022

StoryCorps, Inflation Resources, BBC Rewind, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 20, 2022

StoryCorps, Inflation Resources, BBC Rewind, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 20, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

StoryCorps: Press Release: New StoryCorps Mobile App Launches July 18. “StoryCorps, the nonprofit organization dedicated to recording, preserving, and sharing humanity’s stories, today launches a new free mobile app, available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. From one device, the StoryCorps App allows anyone, anywhere, to conveniently prepare for and record a high-quality interview for preservation in the online StoryCorps archive and eventually at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.”

Utah State University: New USU Extension Website Offers Inflation Resources. “Website topics include budgeting for emergencies, combating panic buying during inflation, teaching children about money management, positive conversations about money, and other topics.”

Radio Times: BBC Rewind shares thousands of hours of archive content for centenary. “BBC Rewind, which has been established to mark 100 years of the BBC, is now the home of ‘tens of thousands of audio-visual recordings’, reflecting the life and events of the UK throughout the decades, making it the largest release of digital archive content in BBC history. Over 30,000 pieces of uncovered content will be publicly available on the website, with the oldest footage dating back to the 1940s.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 8 Web-Based Teleprompter Tools for Seamless Reading. “Whether you’re speaking in a live session or recording a video, it makes little sense to memorize your script. Especially when several teleprompter tools are available online that work perfectly within your browser. Using these tools, you can keep eye contact with the camera without having to memorize your lines. So, here are the eight online teleprompter tools for seamless reading and recording.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Rolling Stone: Exclusive: Fake Accounts Fueled the ‘Snyder Cut’ Online Army. “For a time, rival studios and digital marketing executives were intrigued by the SnyderVerse fan mobilization, wondering how they, too, might better harness the power of social media. But soon many came to question what appeared to be suspect activity: Hashtags like #ReleaseTheSnyderCut saturated social media beginning in late 2019, racking up hundreds of thousands of tweets a day to pressure Warner Bros. to release the director’s version of the film.”

WIRED: TikTok Starts Layoffs in Company-Wide Restructuring. “The restructuring announced internally today includes layoffs and the closing of some vacant roles, one staff member said, and affects TikTok’s businesses in the US, EU, and UK. Plans to expand some teams inside the company have been put on hold.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Congressional Democrats Ready Net Neutrality Bill. “Democrats on Capitol Hill are crafting legislation that could restore net neutrality and the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to regulate broadband, according to a report published Monday by The Washington Post.”

TechCrunch: Amazon sues admins from 10,000 Facebook groups over fake reviews. “Amazon filed a lawsuit Monday against the administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups that coordinate cash or goods for buyers willing to post bogus product reviews. The global groups served to recruit would-be fake reviewers and operated in Amazon’s online storefronts in the U.S., the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and Italy.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Fast Company: The secretly powerful little app that you could write an entire book in. “I started writing a novel one evening a week when my oldest child was a baby. I’ve just completed a big rewrite and finally feel ready to take the next steps toward getting my story out into the world….. My lifeline: Google Keep, a simple note-taking app. For anyone else writing a book in the few minutes scattered throughout your day, here’s how I did it—and how you can, too.”

Georgia Tech: Georgia Tech to Help Expand Research at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. “Georgia Tech’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) was recently awarded a $995,550 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to enable network and research enhancements for nearby historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The NSF grant will fund at 100 percent a two-year project titled Promoting Research and Education at Small Colleges in the Atlanta University Center and at Tuskegee University Through Network Architecture Enhancements.”

Florida International University: Improving science literacy means changing science education. “A large body of research shows that traditional science education, for both science majors and non-majors, doesn’t do a good job of teaching science students how to apply their scientific knowledge and explain things that they may not have learned about directly. With that in mind, we developed a series of cross-disciplinary activities guided by a framework called ‘three-dimensional learning.'”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Princeton University: Scientific field research and the arts come together in a Princeton course using motion-capture cameras to record campus wildlife. “The visual arts/environmental studies course was taught by Jeff Whetstone, professor of visual arts and director of the Program in Visual Arts. Students watched nature in person and learned techniques of wildlife surveillance photography, using remote still and video cameras to observe animal populations and their behavior. They then used this ‘found’ content from their ecological field research to create works of art with a focus on what can be discovered by looking closely at the wildlife around us.” Good morning, Internet…

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July 20, 2022 at 05:29PM
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Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Boston Archaeology, YouTube Advertising, BookTok, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 19, 2022

Boston Archaeology, YouTube Advertising, BookTok, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 19, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

City of Boston: Boston Archaeology Program Announces Completion Of NEH-funded Digital Archaeology Project. “In March 2019, the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the City of Boston Archaeology Program a $350,000 Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant to re-process, re-catalog, digitally photograph and place online in a database the complete archaeological assemblages excavated from five important Boston historical sites…. With this project, the collections are fully documented and anyone from anywhere in the world can see these collections online or study them in person at the City Archaeology Program.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: Google allows Election Ads on YouTube and updates its Political Content Policy. “Next month the Google Ads Political Content Policy will be updated and advertisers will be required to further clarify the ‘Paid for by’ disclosure directly in the ad.”

Mashable: #BookTok rejoice: TikTok launches official Book Club . “In the cluttered world of TikTok, #BookTok emerged as a favorite long ago: a cozy, sprawling community with a hashtag that has over 64.3 billion views and counting. The social media giant is well aware of this popularity, seizing upon that long-embedded love for literature with by launching an official book club on the platform. The TikTok Book Club will be open to everyone, much like #BookTok is, but with an organized structure.”

WIRED: Twitter Has Entered the Elon Musk Twilight Zone . “Manu Cornet joined Twitter last year after 14 years at Google, where he used his hobby of drawing cartoons to poke fun at his employer’s culture and scandals. His latest three-panel drawing depicts an anthropomorphized version of Twitter’s bird logo delivering a monologue. ‘Your strategy is a model of hypocrisy and bad faith,’ it says, seemingly addressing Musk. ‘You’ve trashed me, disrupted my operations, and destroyed shareholder value.’ The angry bird then pivots to a plaintive question: ‘Will you now finally agree to adopt me?’ Cornet’s cartoon gets to the heart of the illogical situation that has ensnared Twitter.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Vice: MetaMask Co-Founders: ‘We Can’t Stop People From Making Ponzis on Blockchains’. “With tens of millions of users, the digital wallet system has become the main access point to Ethereum, the blockchain that has given rise to stablecoins like Tether, play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity, metaverses like Decentraland, and NFT projects like the Bored Ape Yacht Club. But after a precipitous crypto crash that has affected projects and people alike, the co-founders of MetaMask are now warning that the crypto ecosystem they helped create is currently an unsafe casino prone to Ponzi-like operations and exploitation.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBS News: Report finds online campaign of “widespread targeted harassment” against supporters of Amber Heard. “[Ella] Dawson was one of many Heard supporters on the receiving end of an organized campaign of ‘widespread targeted harassment,’ according to a report published Monday by the research firm Bot Sentinel. The firm analyzed more than 14,000 tweets that included at least one of four viral anti-Heard hashtags seeking to characterize Heard as a liar or an abuser, and found that nearly 1 in 4 accounts tied to the tweets, 24.4%, were created in the last seven months.”

HackRead: Hackers can spoof commit metadata to create false GitHub repositories. “Checkmarx security researchers have warned about an emerging new supply chain attack tactic involving spoofed metadata commits to present malicious GitHub repositories as legit.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: Microsoft launches simulator to train drone AI systems. “Microsoft has launched a platform to train the artificial intelligence (AI) systems of autonomous aircraft. Project AirSim is, in effect, a flight simulator for drones, which companies can use to train and develop software controlling them.”

IEEE Spectrum: Does MetaHuman’s Digital Clone Cross the Uncanny Valley?. “Creating your virtual clone isn’t as difficult as you’d think. Epic Games recently introduced Mesh to MetaHuman, a framework for creating photorealistic human characters. It lets creators sculpt an imported mesh to create a convincing character in less than an hour.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

News@Northeastern: Can Listening To The Beatles Improve Your Memory? New Research Says Music Just Might Stir The Brain. “Published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, Loui found that for older adults who listened to some of their favorite music, including The Beatles, connectivity in the brain increased. Specifically, [Psyche] Loui—and her multi-disciplinary team of music therapists, neurologists and geriatric psychiatrists—discovered that music bridged the gap between the brain’s auditory system and reward system, the area that governs motivation.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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July 20, 2022 at 12:35AM
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Cultural Heritage at Risk, Fanny Lechevalier Lafon Art, Medical Supply Fundraising, More: Ukraine Update, July 19, 2022

Cultural Heritage at Risk, Fanny Lechevalier Lafon Art, Medical Supply Fundraising, More: Ukraine Update, July 19, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

International Council of Museums: ICOM is Preparing an Emergency ICOM Red List of Cultural Heritage at Risk for Ukraine. “ICOM, in close cooperation with its National Committee in Ukraine, is preparing an Emergency Red List of Cultural Objects at Risk for Ukraine to combat illicit traffic following the invasion.”

Boing Boing: French artist collages war photos from Ukraine into classical paintings. “Fanny Lechevalier Lafon is a French artist trained in classical painting techniques at the School of Fine Arts, Rennes. She also does digital collage. Feeling like she wanted to do something in response to the horrors of the Russian invasion of Ukraine she saw daily on French media, she decided to do what she does best: make art.” The first image in the article made me go “meh” but the other ones were much more striking, especially the William Banks Fortescue combination.

Enfield Independent: London hospitals launched website to help donate urgent supplies to Ukraine. “People are being invited to visit the new website and purchase items that will then be packaged and dispatched to the war-torn country. Medical supplies needed in Ukraine include ventilators, crutches, walking frames, respiratory masks, scrubs, bandages and wound kits.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

World Monuments Fund: WMF Announces New Projects to Protect Ukraine’s Cultural Heritage with Local and International Partners. “World Monuments Fund (WMF) today announced the launch of four new projects as part of its recently established Ukraine Heritage Response Fund to address the immediate, critical needs of heritage professionals in Ukraine and to lay the groundwork for the future rehabilitation and long-term recovery of cultural heritage in the country.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: The War in Ukraine Is the True Culture War. “The appalling damage to theaters, libraries and religious sites (above all in Mariupol, the occupied city in Ukraine’s southeast) in these past four months alone broadens a horrendous tide of cultural destruction this century, in Syria, Iraq, Ethiopia, Mali, Armenia and Afghanistan. But the risks to Ukrainian culture are more than mere collateral damage.”

Washington Post: Ukraine wants social media to up its game against Russian propaganda. “Tech companies took aggressive steps to weed out misinformation and disinformation in the early days of the war, developing policies to limit Russian state media and supercharging their fact-checking teams. But as the Russians’ tactics are evolving, officials say the tech companies aren’t keeping pace.”

Jerusalem Post: Ukraine’s unexpected social media weapon: Patron the dog. “An unlikely fighter for Ukraine emerged on social media in the months since Russia’s invasion on February 24: Patron the dog. Patron was recently presented with Medal for Dedicated Services by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Russia fines Google $370 million for repeated content violations, regulator says. “Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google was fined 21.1 billion roubles ($373 million) on Monday by a Moscow court for a repeated failure to remove content Russia deems illegal, such as ‘fake news’ about the conflict in Ukraine, Russia’s communications regulator said.”

Financial Times: TikTok resists calls to preserve Ukraine content for war crime investigations . “TikTok is resisting calls to preserve and hand over access to its content for war crime investigations, as lawyers and activists warn that the Chinese-owned app is a major data challenge in prosecuting atrocities in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

Bloomberg: Russia Seeks to Punish Expats Who Criticize War on Social Media. “While the exact number of Russians charged in absentia is difficult to quantify, Moscow is already using the fake news law, passed in March, to stifle independent voices on social media platforms where many young people consume their news, according to Stanislav Seleznev, a lawyer at Net Freedoms Project. Besides [Michael] Nacke, Russia has charged several other expatriates who have criticized the war on social media.”

WIRED: Russian ‘Hacktivists’ Are Causing Trouble Far Beyond Ukraine . “In recent months Killnet has targeted a growing list of countries that have supported Ukraine but are not directly involved in the war. Attacks against websites in Germany, Italy, Romania, Norway, Lithuania, and the United States have all been linked to Killnet.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT Technology Review: Why business is booming for military AI startups . “NATO announced on June 30 that it is creating a $1 billion innovation fund that will invest in early-stage startups and venture capital funds developing ‘priority’ technologies such as artificial intelligence, big-data processing, and automation. Since the war started, the UK has launched a new AI strategy specifically for defense, and the Germans have earmarked just under half a billion for research and artificial intelligence within a $100 billion cash injection to the military.”

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July 19, 2022 at 09:09PM
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Facebook Roundup, July 19, 2022

Facebook Roundup, July 19, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

WIRED: Meta Was Restricting Abortion Content All Along. “…Meta denies changing its policies after the decision—and pro-choice activists say that the censorship has been going on for years. Activists who spoke to WIRED say they have seen the company’s AI moderation system tag abortion content, in many cases about abortion pills, as ‘sensitive,’ decrease its visibility, or remove it altogether.”

Techdirt: Now That Rupert Murdoch Has Convinced Governments To Force Facebook To Pay For News, Facebook No Longer Wants Anything To Do With News. “This should surprise no one, but Joshua Benton, over at Nieman Lab, has a really fantastically well-reported article about how Facebook basically wants out of the news business entirely. It goes through multiple reasons why this is the case, but a big one is that Rupert Murdoch’s decade-long demands that Facebook and Google simply fork over some cash to news organizations (for sending them traffic) has finally had some modicum of success in Australia, and is now being considered elsewhere around the globe.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Verge: Meta warns employees of ‘serious times’ in internal memo listing key product bets. “Meta is warning of ‘serious times’ and preparing for a leaner second half of 2022, according to an internal memo circulated to employees this week. The note comes from chief product officer Chris Cox and outlines the company’s priorities and challenges to its business going forward.”

CNET: Meta’s Novi Service to Be Phased Out: What you need to know. “What little is left of Meta’s once-ambitous cryptocurrency project is limping to an end. A pilot program for Novi, a money-transfer service that uses a cryptocurrency wallet of the same name, will cease operating on September 1, according to a notice on its website. Novi operates only in Guatemala and the US.”

Gizmodo: Fired Employee Claims Facebook Created Secret Tool to Read Users’ Deleted Messages. “How ‘forgotten’ are your deleted internet posts anyway? That question has come under renewed scrutiny this week thanks to a new lawsuit filed by a fired Meta employee who claims the company set up a ‘protocol’ to pull up certain users’ deleted posts and hand them over to law enforcement. If the former employee’s claims ring true, the practice could call into question Meta’s previous communications about how it accesses certain user data.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Meta sues a site cloner who allegedly scraped over 350,000 Instagram profiles. “Meta is taking legal action against two prolific data scrapers. On Tuesday, the company filed separate federal lawsuits against a company called Octopus and an individual named Ekrem Ateş. According to Meta, the former is the US subsidiary of a Chinese multinational tech firm that offers data scraping-for-hire services to individuals and companies.”

WIRED: How to Avoid the Worst Instagram Scams . “SINCE MARK ZUCKERBERG snapped up Instagram for a mere $1 billion in April 2012, the app has grown into a social media juggernaut and one of Meta’s biggest assets. More than a billion people use Instagram every month, with influencers relying on it as a key source of their income. Any online congregation of this size is naturally a target for hackers and scammers looking to take advantage of people and make a quick buck.”

New York Times: An Irish regulator puts Facebook data policies back in spotlight.. “A draft decision by Irish regulators on Thursday threatened to block Facebook and Instagram from moving data about European Union users to the United States, the latest round in a yearslong dispute about protecting the data of European citizens from American spying.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Flinders University: Instagram pressure rising. “Flinders University body image experts are urging all Instagram users to apply a more conscious ‘filter’ to monitor their health and fitness posts. The researchers say people who follow in the footsteps of high-profile social media influencers and upload regular #fitspo and #cleaneating Instagram posts may be placing increased pressure on girls and women, as the posts may exacerbate bad feelings about themselves and their bodies.”

The Verge: Meta open sources early-stage AI translation tool that works across 200 languages. “Social media conglomerate Meta has created a single AI model capable of translating across 200 different languages, including many not supported by current commercial tools. The company is open-sourcing the project in the hopes that others will build on its work.”

Engadget: Meta’s first human rights report defends the company’s misinformation strategy. “Meta has released its first yearly human rights report, and you might not be shocked by the angle the company is taking. As CNBC notes, the 83-page document outlines the Facebook parent’s handling of human rights issues during 2020 and 2021, with a strong focus on justifying the company’s strategies for combatting misinformation and harassment.”

News@Northeastern: Facebook Ad Algorithms May Be Harmful To Well-informed Democratic Society, Northeastern Research Scientist Tells European Parliament. “Northeastern University research scientist Piotr Sapiezynski recently told the European Parliament that Facebook’s ad delivery algorithms may be harmful both to political campaigns and to society at large. Sapiezynski testified during a hearing on draft legislation concerning transparency and targeting of political advertising in Brussels.”

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July 19, 2022 at 06:54PM
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Digital Equity Data Dashboard, Josquin des Prez, Global Brands Database, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 19, 2022

Digital Equity Data Dashboard, Josquin des Prez, Global Brands Database, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 19, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Microsoft Blog: A street-by-street view of digital inequity in the United States. “Today, Microsoft is releasing a new Digital Equity Data Dashboard to help create better understanding of the economic opportunity gaps in towns, cities and neighborhoods across the United States. The new tool was developed by our Chief Data Science Officer Juan Lavista Ferres and the Microsoft AI for Good Lab, and aggregates public data from the Census Bureau, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), BroadbandNow and Microsoft’s own Broadband Usage Data.”

Stanford News: Stanford professor of music unravels centuries-old authorship mystery. “Rodin, associate professor of music in the School of Humanities and Sciences, recently evaluated the authorship of the 346 pieces of music attributed to Josquin [ des Prez] (1450–1521) using an approach that blends scientific rigor with methods from the arts and humanities. As part of this massive undertaking, Rodin created the Josquin Research Project, a searchable, online database of music by Josquin and his contemporaries.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

UK Government: UK Intellectual Property Office joins WIPOS global brands database. “The Global Brands Database is an online resource made freely available by WIPO. It provides access to more than 50 million records, from some 71 national and international collections, in one place…. Initially, the UK will add around 3 million records, starting with existing registered trade marks.”

CNBC: Snapchat is finally coming to the web after more than a decade as a mobile app. “Snap, the parent of the popular photo and messaging app, said Monday that it’s debuting Snapchat for Web, allowing users to send messages and make video calls to their contacts from their computers.”

USEFUL STUFF

NPR: How to protect your privacy when using mental health care apps. “With online mental health services providing a convenient alternative to traditional methods of in-person therapy for many people, NPR asked digital privacy experts to weigh in on what you should know about protecting your privacy when using these types of platforms. The privacy tips here can apply to more than just online therapy services, but experts say these steps can help with privacy related to therapy apps as well.”

Online Journalism Blog: Twitter Spaces: a how-to guide for newsrooms. “Twitter’s new Spaces feature allows journalists to build a close connection with their audiences while expanding stories coverage. In a guest post for OJB, Catalunya Ràdio’s Carla Pedret shares her tips for using the platform.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Bend Bulletin: The Hen Party helped these women gain independence decades before the liberation movement. “From its start in the 1930s, the Hen Party was an early and localized precursor to the women’s rights movement that would sweep the nation 30 years later. Now, nearly 50 years after [Jean] Birnie’s death, her three adopted grandchildren — sisters Melissa Over, 68; Sharon Mascia, 78; and Sally Flury-Deitchler, 77 — want to make the Hen Party archive public. Their biological grandmother, a friend of Birnie’s, passed away before the sisters were born, and Birnie — whose only child died at a young age from a horseback-riding accident — unofficially became part of their family.”

Washington Post: Preservationists say Library of Congress makeover plan is ‘vandalism’. “A proposed change to the ornate Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress that critics say would remove the symbolic and functional heart of the 1897 Beaux-Arts masterpiece has landed the library on the D.C. Preservation League’s 2022 list of Most Endangered Places.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Vice: From Industrial-Scale Scam Centers, Trafficking Victims Are Being Forced to Steal Billions. “From industrial-scale scam centers in Southeast Asia, criminal syndicates have spent the pandemic perfecting an intricate romance-meets-investment fraud called Shāzhūpán (pig butchering scams). Teams of scammers use sophisticated scripts to ‘fatten up’ their targets, grooming individuals like [Cindy] Tsai and enticing them into investment schemes increasingly centered on cryptocurrency, before going in for the ‘slaughter’ and stealing their money.”

Morocco World News: Indonesia Threatens to Block Whatsapp, Facebook, and Google. “Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information has threatened to ban all online services and sites, including digital giants like Whatsapp, Facebook, and Google, on July 21 if they fail to register with the country’s government.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: No, submitting junk data to period tracking apps won’t protect reproductive privacy. “As researchers who develop and evaluate technologies that help people manage their health, we analyze how app companies collect data from their users to provide useful services. We know that for popular period tracking applications, millions of people would need to input junk data to even nudge the algorithm.”

NewsWise: Life Gets Easier with ReadMe Program that Digitizes Documents and Images Developed Right Here in Thailand. “A team from Chula’s Faculty of Engineering have made use of AI Deep Tech to develop a program that scans documents and images into OCR documents. The program is more than 90% accurate when reading Thai scripts and Chula’s UTC is now ready for a spin-off to the market through Eikonnex AI Co. Ltd.” Good morning, Internet…

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July 19, 2022 at 05:26PM
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Monday, July 18, 2022

Residential Sustainable Products Database, Phone Call Apps, AI-Based Chatbots, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 18, 2022

Residential Sustainable Products Database, Phone Call Apps, AI-Based Chatbots, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

GlobeNewswire: EEBA Launches Residential Sustainable Products Database in Partnership With Ecomedes (PRESS RELEASE). “The EEBA & ecomedes Sustainable Products Database allows builders, architects, engineers, and designers to search and compare products by category, brand, certifications, ecolabels, and performance criteria. Once selected, users can calculate the materials’ environmental impacts to evaluate how they help achieve their projects’ specific green rating systems, including the US Green Building Councils’ LEED programs, the International Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge, the Department of Energy’s Zero Energy Ready Homes program, and more.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 8 Calling Apps to Make Free Phone Calls From Anywhere. “Ditch mobile calling plans and opt for calling apps to make free calls over Wi-Fi. They’ll also work over mobile data, but make sure you’ve got unlimited data so you don’t get hit with overages. While some of these apps give you your own number, others require both parties to have the same app. Either way, they’re free and you can call, text, and even video chat as much as you want.”

MakeUseOf: 8 Virtual AI Companions to Chat and Have Fun With . “Most of us already use AI assistants like Siri or Alexa for carrying out simple tasks. But, in case you don’t know, you can have a virtual AI companion and chat with them as you do with your friends. These AI chatbots can be fun to talk to and help you overcome loneliness. Below, we list the eight AI companion chatbots you should try out.” These chatbots are fun to play with, but please remember you should not assume any kind of privacy to your conversations.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: By signing stars, YouTube aims to replicate Twitch’s secret weapon: culture. “Despite stacking its deck with big names, YouTube accounted for just 14 percent of streaming hours watched in the first quarter of this year according to a report published by analytics firms Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet. Twitch, a vastly smaller platform than YouTube overall, nonetheless claimed 76 percent.”

New York Times: In Rome, a New Museum for Recovered Treasures Before They Return Home. “Last month, Italian officials inaugurated a new museum here whose title sets a lofty agenda: the Museo dell’Arte Salvata, or the Museum of Rescued Art. Rescued art is a broad term, it turns out, and the museum will showcase the myriad ways in which artworks can be salvaged — from thieves, from the rubble of earthquakes and other national disasters, from ancient shipwrecks in the Mediterranean or from the ravages of time by Italy’s expert restorers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ABC News: California social media addiction bill drops parent lawsuits. “A first-of-its-kind proposal in the California Legislature aimed at holding social media companies responsible for harming children who have become addicted to their products would no longer let parents sue popular platforms like Instagram and TikTok.”

KnowTechie: Ring is giving your camera footage to police without a warrant. “Ring has been giving out its users’ camera footage to law enforcement, even without the owners’ consent or a court-ordered warrant. The Amazon subsidiary is apparently very friendly with law enforcement, giving out unwarranted user footage to cops at least 11 times this year.”

BBC: Firms ‘going to war’ against rivals on social media. “A growing number of unscrupulous companies are using bots or fake accounts to run smear campaigns against their competitors on social media, it is claimed. That’s the warning from Lyric Jain, the chief executive of Logically, a high-tech monitoring firm that uses artificial intelligence (AI) software to trawl the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to find so called ‘fake news’ – disinformation and misinformation.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NewsWise: Gender Plays Key Role in Influencer Call-Outs. ” Social media influencers stake their claim in the pop culture landscape by crafting aspirational personas and sharing intimate details of their lives with online audiences. … But in addition to their loyal fans, there is a legion of equally passionate ‘anti-fans,’ whose self-appointed mission is to hold these influential people accountable by calling out inauthenticity, unrealistic portrayals of ‘real life,’ and outright deception. Anti-fandom can serve a social function by allowing people to critique norm transgressions, but it can also be a destructive force, a Cornell-led research team proposes.”

The Next Web: Scathing study exposes Google’s harmful approach to AI development. “A study published earlier this week by Surge AI appears to lay bare one of the biggest problems plaguing the AI industry: bullshit, exploitative data-labeling practices.” 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 19, 2022 at 12:52AM
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Western Fire Chiefs Association Fire Map, Voter Digital Literacy, Chrome OS Flex, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, July 18, 2022

Western Fire Chiefs Association Fire Map, Voter Digital Literacy, Chrome OS Flex, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, July 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Western Fire Chiefs Association: The Western Fire Chiefs Association Introduces Its Wildland Fire Map to Communities and News Sources, Protecting Lives and Land. “The WFCA Fire Map pulls data from the US Forest Service via National Interagency Fire Center IRWIN feed, and 911 Dispatch data via PulsePoint to track the location of the wildfire as they start and while they’re burning. The WFCA Fire Map is the first map of its kind to pull such data from 911 Dispatch in relevant areas.” The map seems to cover a lot of western America – I saw fires denoted in several states including Wyoming, New Mexico, and California.

Poynter: MediaWise launches a free text message course to help voters prepare for the US midterms. “With less than four months until the U.S. midterms, the social-first digital media literacy initiative MediaWise at the nonprofit Poynter Institute has launched Find Facts Fast, a free multimedia messaging service that teaches voters how to quickly discover reliable and trustworthy information online.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google’s Chrome OS Flex is now available for old PCs and Macs. “Google is releasing Chrome OS Flex today, a new version of Chrome OS that’s designed for businesses and schools to install and run on old PCs and Macs. Google first started testing Chrome OS Flex earlier this year in an early access preview, and the company has now resolved 600 bugs to roll out Flex to businesses and schools today.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNN: Filipinos are buying books to preserve the truth about the Marcos regime. “Filipinos living abroad are snapping up books about the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, not just to read about history but to preserve it. The rush to buy books documenting Marcos’ destructive 21-year reign comes as his son, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr., assumes office after a landslide election victory in May.”

Thoroughbred Daily News: Behind the Lens: Two Million Photographs, One Passionate Historian. “Two summers ago, when six-time Eclipse Award-winning photographer Barbara D. Livingston acquired the entire five-decade archive of noted 20th Century racetrack photographer Jim Raftery, she thought the hard part would be getting the 300 oversized boxes from Florida to New York in the middle of a pandemic.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC Sports: New Twitter account tracks Dan Snyder’s superyacht. “Commanders owner Dan Snyder, who possibly has opted to run out the clock with the House Oversight Committee by remaining on his superyacht through at least the November election or at most the commencement of the new Congress in January, cannot secure shelter from the prying eyes of social media. A new Twitter account tracks Snyder’s massive boat, the Lady S, wherever it may be.”

Texas A&M Today: Researchers To Enhance Security Of Next-Generation Wireless Systems. “Guofei Gu, professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, is the lead principal investigator of a research team that has received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Resilient and Intelligent Next-Generation Systems (RINGS) program to enhance the security of future wireless and mobile network systems.”

Reuters: South Africa’s Competition Watchdog Says Google’s Ad Practices Distort Competition. “South Africa’s Competition Commission, which has been probing online markets for over a year, has provisionally found that Google’s paid search results distort competition, making it a ‘de facto monopolist’ in general search.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Vox EU: Social media influences the mainstream media. “This column reports on a new research project, relying on nearly two billion tweets and an innovative empirical approach, which shows that not only does Twitter set the agenda of media coverage in a quantitatively meaningful way, it also influences mainstream media due to short-term considerations generated by advertising revenue-bearing clicks.”

NewsWise: Data Governance Mapping Project Finds Most Countries Struggle to Govern Data . “A new report from the George Washington University’s Digital Trade and Data Governance Hub finds that some 68 countries and the European Union struggle to govern various types of data in a comprehensive, democratic and accountable manner. The researchers argue that this failure has huge implications for governance of technologies — such as artificial intelligence and augmented/virtual reality — which comprise the next phase of the internet.”

WIRED: How I Accidentally Broke My Doomscrolling Habit. “AS READERS OF this column know, there’s no shame in a mobile game. Despite the fact that at one point in my not-too-distant past I’d been embarrassed about my consumption of corny phone games, Merge Mansion captured my soul and in the process transformed my relationship with mobile gaming and social media. Tuning in to Merge Mansion made it possible for me to tune out doomscrolling.” Currently on level 3125 of Kitten Match and not ashamed.

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: A Home Made Sewing Machine May Be The Only One. “The sewing machine is a tool that many of us will have somewhere around our workshop. Concealed within it lies an intricate and fascinating mechanism. Some of us may have peered inside, but very few indeed of us will have gone to the effort of building our own. In case you had ever wondered whether it was possible, [Fraens] has done just that, with what he claims may be the only entirely homemade sewing machine on the Internet.” Good morning, Internet…

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July 18, 2022 at 05:28PM
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