New researches

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Facebook Roundup, July 27, 2022

Facebook Roundup, July 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Axios: Meta provides another $150 million in funding for its Oversight Board. “Meta on Friday said it approved a new three-year, $150 million commitment to fund its global content oversight board, which it has designed to be independent and provides money for via a separate trust…. The board was created to help Meta make tough calls on content moderation, but the group’s power has been challenged at times by the company’s unwillingness to outsource some of its decisions.”

Axios: Sweeping changes remake Facebook app in TikTok’s image. “Meta announced major changes Thursday to the Facebook app that will transform its experience into a more TikTok-like selection of algorithmically chosen videos — and shunt off content posted by family, friends and groups into a separate side feed.”

CNN: Meta considers easing its Covid-19 misinformation policy. “The social media giant on Tuesday asked its independent Oversight Board for an opinion on whether its tougher pandemic policies are still warranted, citing higher vaccination rates around the world as well as the company’s own efforts to promote authoritative information about Covid-19.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Verge: Zuck Turns Up The Heat. “Facebook went public in 2012, riding what became the longest US stock market bull in history. When the government lowered interest rates in the pandemic and investors flooded into tech stocks, the company’s valuation surpassed $1 trillion for the first time. It rebranded to Meta in October of last year, just a few months before its stock price would enter the free fall it’s in now. Now, Zuckerberg isn’t the only one sounding the alarm about potentially worse times ahead.”

Slate: Facebook May Be on the Cusp of an Embarrassing Milestone. “Meta may report its first ever revenue decline when it releases its second-quarter earnings next week, a potentially stunning slowdown for a business that once seemed to have no ceiling.”

Reuters: Facebook’s growth woes in India: too much nudity, not enough women. “On Feb. 2, when Meta Platforms reported Facebook’s first-ever quarterly drop in daily users, its finance chief identified higher mobile data costs as a unique obstacle slowing growth in India, its biggest market. On the same day, the U.S. tech group posted the findings of its own research into Facebook’s business in India on an internal employee forum. The study, conducted over the two years to the end of 2021, identified different problems.”

Washington Post: Facebook workers fear cuts after blunt warnings from Zuckerberg, leaders. “Facebook executives have issued a dizzying number of directives, outlining a new era of higher performance expectations and slowed hiring as the company emerges from the pandemic with a growing list of economic challenges.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TorrentFreak: Meta Hit With Massive Piracy Lawsuit Over Epidemic Sound Royalty-Free Music. “Meta has been hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit demanding at least $142 million in damages. Epidemic Sound, a company that provides royalty-free music to YouTubers and other creators, claims that Meta hosts 94% of Epidemic’s music in its own library, none of it licensed. According to Epidemic, this has resulted in billions of illegal views across Facebook and Instagram.”

Bleeping Computer: LinkedIn phishing target employees managing Facebook Ad Accounts. “A new phishing campaign codenamed ‘Ducktail’ is underway, targeting professionals on LinkedIn to take over Facebook business accounts that manage advertising for the company.”

CNN: First on CNN: Human smugglers peddle misinformation to US-bound migrants on Facebook, watchdog says. “Human smugglers frequently misrepresent immigration policies and conditions along the US-Mexico border in Facebook and WhatsApp social media posts targeting US-bound migrants, according to a report released Wednesday by a tech transparency group.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

VoxEU: Social media and mental health . “Using the gradual expansion of the website across US colleges as a natural experiment, the authors find that students were more likely to report that mental health issues negatively affected their academic performance after Facebook was introduced at their college, with evidence suggesting that the effects operated through unfavourable social comparison.”

Washington Post: My video criticizing the Iranian government went viral. Then Instagram restricted my account.. “What did I do wrong? I still don’t know. Instagram didn’t initially offer any explanation. I might guess that my offense was giving voice to the voiceless in Iran. My 7 million followers on Instagram make for a powerful platform.”

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July 27, 2022 at 07:59PM
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Heat.gov, Latine Writers, Zoom, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 27, 2022

Heat.gov, Latine Writers, Zoom, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NOAA: Biden Administration launches Heat.gov with tools for communities facing extreme heat. “Today, the Biden Administration through the interagency National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) launched Heat.gov, a new website to provide the public and decision-makers with clear, timely and science-based information to understand and reduce the health risks of extreme heat. Heat.gov will provide a one-stop hub on heat and health for the nation and is a priority of President Biden’s National Climate Task Force and its Interagency Working Group on Extreme Heat.”

Broadway World: The Latine Musical Theatre Lab Launches A Database Of Latine Writers . “The database currently features 100 Latiné musical theatre writers – librettists, lyricists, and composers. Each artist has an individual profile that shares their base city, pronouns, identities, social media handles, and a link to their personal website that directs the user to learn more about each writer, their music, and the stories they tell.” I wasn’t sure what “Latiné” indicated, but apparently it’s an alternative to Latinx.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Zoom brings end-to-end encryption to its cloud phone service. “Zoom is bolstering its privacy and security protections by expanding end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to more of its services. First up is Zoom Phone, its cloud phone system.”

Yahoo Finance: Alphabet earnings miss estimates, ad revenue beats, stock pops. “Google parent company Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) reported earnings that missed Wall Street estimates after the closing bell on Tuesday. The technology giant said adjusted earnings per share hit $1.21 during the second quarter, compared to $1.32 expected by analysts, according to Bloomberg data.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Duke University Libraries: Duke Libraries Partners with the Civil Rights Movement Archive to Sustain Activist Centered History. “Duke University Libraries is pleased to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Civil Rights Movement Archive (CRMA) that designates the Duke Libraries as the stewards who will preserve and sustain the CRMA when the current managers are no longer able to carry the work forward.”

How-To Geek: What Is the AVIF Image Format?. “Move over JPEG, there’s a new image file format in town that wants to be king. Powered by the latest media compression techniques, AVIF is finding its way into browsers, software, and operating systems. So what is it, and do you need to do anything?”

The Verge: The Great Fiction of AI. “In order to survive in a marketplace where infinite other options are a click away, authors need to find their fans and keep them loyal. So they follow readers to the microgenres into which Amazon’s algorithms classify their tastes, niches like ‘mermaid young adult fantasy’ or ‘time-travel romance,’ and keep them engaged by writing in series, each installment teasing the next, which already has a title and set release date, all while producing a steady stream of newsletters, tweets, and videos.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

GPO: GPO Releases Five-Year Strategic Plan Focused on Modernizing and Innovating. “U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) has released its strategic plan for fiscal years 2023–2027. Outlined in the plan are the Agency’s new mission, vision, and values, as well as the four key goals for the next five years: achieve operational excellence; modernize and innovate; ensure financial stability; and develop the workforce.”

Ars Technica: Discovery of new UEFI rootkit exposes an ugly truth: The attacks are invisible to us. “Researchers have unpacked a major cybersecurity find—a malicious UEFI-based rootkit used in the wild since 2016 to ensure computers remained infected even if an operating system is reinstalled or a hard drive is completely replaced.”

The National News: UK and US sign data access pact to share social media and phone data to tackle terrorism. “The UK and US have signed a data access agreement to share social media and phone information to tackle major crimes, including terrorism. The new agreement will come into force in October and will allow either nation to immediately access phone and social media data to help in major investigations, Britain’s Home Office said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Business School: Burgers with Bugs? What Happens When Restaurants Ignore Online Reviews. “Negative Yelp reviews hold more sway with consumers than restaurateurs might think. A machine learning study by Chiara Farronato reveals how online platforms amplify the customer voice, and why business owners should listen.”

Brookings Institution: Misinformation is eroding the public’s confidence in democracy. “The National Intelligence Council has found no indications that any foreign actor has interfered in the technical aspect of voting, such as voter registration, voting and casting ballots, vote tabulation or in the reporting of election results, which is great. However, the spread of false information about the voting systems on social media destabilizes the public’s trust in election processes and results.” Good morning, Internet…

July 27, 2022 at 05:33PM
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Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Online Meeting Platforms, Seeing Speech, New Mexico Missing Persons, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 26, 2022

Online Meeting Platforms, Seeing Speech, New Mexico Missing Persons, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Virtual Events Group: collection of online meeting platforms. They’re divided into several categories including metaverse, networking event, Webinar, and trade show. Alfred P. tells me there are over 200 different platforms described here. The annotations are moderate but every platform I looked at had a “best feature” notation that I liked very much. They all had videos, too.

Lancaster University: Gaelic ultrasound videos shed new light on mechanics of tongue movements during speech. “A research team, led by Lancaster University, made video recordings of people’s tongues while they spoke Gaelic and Western-Isles English to investigate what kinds of movements are used to produce different consonants…. A selection of the videos are now available in a new section of a website dedicated to videos of speech sounds, Seeing Speech, created by speech and language experts at the University of Glasgow and Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.”

Albuquerque Journal: New database lists missing Native Americans from New Mexico, Navajo Nation. “The FBI on Monday unveiled a new database listing the names of 177 missing Native Americans from New Mexico and throughout the Navajo Nation, as part of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives initiative, Raul Bujanda, special agent in charge of the Albuquerque FBI Division, said at a news conference.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PR Newswire: Zillow’s new tool powers home searches in up to five areas at once, letting shoppers move as fast as the market (PRESS RELEASE). “Now available on the Zillow app, the multi-location search feature makes the home shopping experience faster, simpler and easier by allowing shoppers to find available homes in up to five different areas at once; it also gives users the option to easily sift through the listings on the map or all in the same results feed. In addition, users can save their multi-location searches and opt to receive email and push notifications with results and recommendations.” Zillow is planning a number of other search enhancements. They’re mentioned in the release.

TechCrunch: Google is adding new Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Keep optimizations for tablets. “Google introduced Android 12L earlier this year to make tablets easier to use, and at I/O, the company announced plans to update more than 20 Google apps on tablets to optimize them for larger screens. Today, Google said it’s adding several new features for Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Keep to get started on this promise.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Recorder (Amsterdam, New York): Sticker Mule launches what it hopes will be a different social media platform. ” Local e-commerce company Sticker Mule is trying to make its mark in another corner of the digital universe with a new social media platform. ‘Stimulus’ is still in its beta phase, but in its soft launch it has gained about 10,000 verified users and 30,000 casual users.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Boing Boing: YouTube copyright trolls claim public domain footage of Apollo moon landing. “Film archivist Fran Blanche posted content featuring the Apollo moon landings to YouTube, and reported being besieged by frauds using ContentID, the platform’s private copyright enforcement and monetization system.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MercoPress: A first international database on Leopard seals’ births and pups, shows they roam well beyond Antarctica. “Leopard seals remain mostly a mystery given the limited information and research on the species and its range of action. However, an international study shared by several Antarctic institutes and universities identifies leopard seal births and pups in the first database of its kind and reveals evidence that these sightings are not limited to the Antarctic.”

New Security Beat: Delaying the Inevitable? The Uncertain Future of the EPA’s Online Archive. “Imperfect as the platform might be at present, many of the hundred thousand documents on the EPA archive simply aren’t available elsewhere. For instance, one essential record that will vanish is the 2003 Clear Skies Initiative, which was proposed during the presidency of George W. Bush.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

South China Morning Post: A stunning 16th-century Chinese ‘magic mirror’ was found in a US art museum after being tucked away in storage. “Buddhist magic mirrors, also called ‘transparent’ and ‘light-penetrating’ mirrors, were first made in China during the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) and were also a notable artefact from Japan’s Edo period (1603–1867)….When the mirror is held to light from the correct angle, the bronze reflects the light to reveal the secret image, a buddha in the case of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s relic.” Good afternoon, Internet…

July 27, 2022 at 12:23AM
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Mental Health Support, Internet Censorship, Crowdsourcing Drones, More: Ukraine Update, July 26, 2022

Mental Health Support, Internet Censorship, Crowdsourcing Drones, More: Ukraine Update, July 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

InfoMigrants: EU, Red Cross launch mental health program for Ukrainians. “The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the European Union have launched a project to offer mental health services to over 300,000 people from Ukraine. The project aims to support those who have been exposed to trauma and conflict.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

WIRED: Russia Is Quietly Ramping Up Its Internet Censorship Machine. “SINCE 2019, VLADIMIR Putin has supercharged his plan to separate Russia from the global internet. The country’s sovereign internet law, which came into force that November, gives officials the power to block access to websites for millions of Russians. The law was used to hit Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter with blocks and followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Since then, Russian officials have continuously dripped out new policies and measures to further control the internet, boosting the state’s censorship and surveillance powers.”

Reuters: Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine block Google search engine. “Russian-backed separatists in a breakaway region of eastern Ukraine have blocked access to the search engine Google, their leader said on Friday, citing what he calls ‘disinformation.'”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Next Web: Here’s how you can help build Ukraine’s drone army. “Earlier this month, Ukraine launched a campaign to assemble the world’s first ‘Army of Drones.’ It called on the international community to donate funds towards new drones or to ‘dronate’ their own recreational and commercial drones. That’s because Ukraine’s military doesn’t have an official drone unit, so drones supplied and funded globally will play a critical part in protecting the country against Russian occupation.”

The Moscow Times: New Novaya Gazeta Site Blocked in Russia. “Russia on Sunday blocked the website of a new editorial project by independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, which was forced to suspend publication in March amid repression of critics of the offensive in Ukraine.”

New York Times: Inside Ukraine’s Thriving Tech Sector. “The hassles never end for Yuriy Adamchuk, a Ukrainian executive who spends most of his waking hours coaxing 3,000 software coders to deliver projects on time, despite the obstacles and occasional horrors of war and a never-ending series of interruptions. Sitting in his office, he starts to elaborate, then is interrupted. The sounds of air raid sirens fill the streets of this historic, elegant city and an automated voice is heard, from loudspeakers in all directions, urging citizens to head to the nearest bomb shelter.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Fordham News: Ukraine Cybersecurity Officials Describe Defense Against Cyber War. “From the moment a group of Ukrainian officials entered the room for a July 20 panel on Ukraine’s virtual front line amidst Russian aggression, the mood palpably shifted. Here, after two days of discussions on previous hacks and potential threats, sat four people who left a war-torn nation for the first time since Russia attacked them on Feb. 23 to discuss the lethal threats of cyberattacks.”

CyberScoop: Cyber criminals attack Ukrainian radio network, broadcast fake message about Zelensky’s health. “Cyber criminals attacked a Ukrainian company that operates nine ‘major’ radio stations to spread a message that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in critical condition and under intensive care, Ukrainian officials announced Thursday.”

Motherboard: Inside Ukraine’s Decentralized Cyber Army. “Ever since it was launched just two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the IT Army has claimed several victims, including Mvideo, a large Russian consumer electronics chain; QIWI, a popular Russian payment service provider; Asna, a network of more than 10,000 pharmacies in Russia; and EGAIS, the Russian government’s unified state automated alcohol accounting information system. The group has been a central figure in the fight that Ukraine and Russia are waging in cyberspace, and it’s breaking new ground in terms of what a volunteer, quasi-hacktivist group can do in the context of a war.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

War on the Rocks: Assess Russia’s Cyber Performance Without Repeating Its Past Mistakes. “Moscow has long cultivated a view of information and technology that is informed in part by its own assessments of U.S. military operations. Their takeaways have historically assigned intentionality and orchestration to events far beyond the remit of U.S. capability, resulting in grand but unrealistic expectations about how information can be weaponized — both against and on behalf of the state. Against this historical backdrop, U.S. strategists should measure Russia’s cyber performance in Ukraine by its own yardstick.”

C4ISRNET: Why Isn’t Russia jamming GPS harder in Ukraine?. “The importance of GPS as a military tool was underscored by Kremlin media in November as troops were massing along the Ukraine border. After Russia demonstrated it could destroy a satellite in space, a television commentator known to be an unofficial mouthpiece of President Vladimir Putin said the nation could ‘blind NATO’ by shooting down all GPS satellites. Despite this, Russian interference with GPS in Ukraine has not been nearly as aggressive as many observers had expected.”

Middle East Monitor: Russia using attractive women to spread propaganda in Arabic, study finds . “Autocrats, dictators and serial human rights abusers employ some of the most sophisticated techniques to execute their war propaganda, which in recent years has been waged through social media. The latest example of such disinformation campaign was uncovered by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) which uncovered Twitter accounts posting pro-Kremlin narratives in Arabic by using attractive female to increase their followers.”

July 26, 2022 at 06:59PM
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Digital Heritage Archive, Higher Education Options, YouTube, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 26, 2022

Digital Heritage Archive, Higher Education Options, YouTube, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 26, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from CBC: University of Calgary profs digitally preserve endangered heritage site in B.C.. “For Prof. Peter Dawson, digital preservation is the next best thing when a site cannot be preserved physically due to cost or environmental factors. Using a terrestrial laser scanner, Dawson and his team capture data on heritage sites to create virtual replicas that can be accessed online by the public. The Digital Heritage Archive focuses on ‘grassroots’ heritage sites like the Swiss village. These are sites meaningful to individuals and communities despite not having official designations of significance.”

PR Newswire: CCsmart.org Helps Americans Understand the Value of a Community College Education (PRESS RELEASE). “CCsmart is an evidenced-based and data driven website designed to make it easier to find reliable information about higher education pathways, from workforce training to associate degrees to transfer options to bachelor’s degrees. It also provides easy to understand information about financial options for various credential and degree options and aid options beyond just Pell Grants and the FAFSA.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: YouTube will start removing misinformation related to abortion. “YouTube on Thursday said it will no longer allow misinformation related to abortion on its platform, including false claims about the safety of the procedure and potentially unsafe instructions about how to self-induce an abortion.”

CNET: TikTok Now Lets Viewers Turn Captions On or Off on Any Video. “TikTok, the popular video sharing social media platform, said Thursday that viewers can now choose to turn auto-generated captions on or off on all videos. Before, creators had to enable captions on their videos in order for people to use them.”

USEFUL STUFF

Smashing Magazine: Powerful Image Optimization Tools. “Optimizing the size of images can have a bigger impact on performance than all other areas combined. In this article, Louis Lazaris covers different tools available for reducing the size of images.” Another excellent roundup from Smashing Magazine.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: Bookstagram Is Fueling an Unnerving Trend. “Readers and reviewers have never been more able to get their voices heard. The rise of Bookstagram and more recently BookTok have enabled bibliophiles to share recommendations, point out plot holes, and discuss fan theories on an unprecedented scale. Yet writers want you to know that it’s one thing to tell the world that you don’t like a book, and another thing entirely to tell its author.”

Library of Congress: “Wow, it’s WordStar!” Exploring a Beloved Early Word Processor and its Many Formats . “Over the course of our Junior Fellowship this summer, we have focused on a variety of streams of work around the Library of Congress’ Sustainability of Digital Formats website. The site contains an extensive list of commonly used file formats, wrappers, and encodings. There are thousands of these created by legacy equipment and software that present challenges in identification, preservation, and use. Among these is the file format produced by the now-defunct word processing platform WordStar.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CitizenLab: Hooking Candiru: Another Mercenary Spyware Vendor Comes into Focus. “Candiru is a secretive Israel-based company that sells spyware exclusively to governments. Reportedly, their spyware can infect and monitor iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs, and cloud accounts. Using Internet scanning we identified more than 750 websites linked to Candiru’s spyware infrastructure.”

Daily Dot: EXCLUSIVE: Anti-vax dating site that let people advertise ‘mRNA FREE’ semen left all its user data exposed. “After the Daily Dot set up a test account on the platform, GeopJr was able to change the account’s private email address, username, and profile picture. GeopJr was also able to edit a public post made by the Daily Dot and change its wording. Other data such as the site’s backups could be downloaded or deleted. GeopJr was able to give away $15 per month subscriptions to Unjected as well as reply to and delete help center tickets and reported posts.”

Ars Technica: Two senators propose ban on data caps, blasting ISPs for “predatory” limits. “US Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) want to ban Internet data caps. The senators today introduced the ‘Uncap America Act,’ which would ‘prohibit predatory data caps that force families to pay high costs and unnecessary fees to access high-speed broadband,’ they said in a press release.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Johns Hopkins: AI Speeds Sepsis Detection To Prevent Hundreds Of Deaths. “Patients are 20% less likely to die of sepsis because of a new AI system developed at Johns Hopkins University that catches symptoms hours earlier than traditional methods, an extensive hospital study demonstrates.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Central Florida: UCF Faculty Combines Harry Potter with Pharmacology Course to Improve Student Outcomes . “Incorporating interactive games in the course has proven to enhance academic success; the number of students who earned an ‘A’ in the class improved by almost 200% in the past three years, and there has been a 73% decline in the number of non-pass students (students who earn a ‘D’ or an ‘F’ in the class).” Good morning, Internet…

July 26, 2022 at 05:31PM
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Monday, July 25, 2022

Medieval Manuscripts, Michigan Monkeypox Information, Library of Congress, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 25, 2022

Medieval Manuscripts, Michigan Monkeypox Information, Library of Congress, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Otago Daily Times: Medieval manuscripts enter 21st century. “A cache of medieval manuscripts, once owned by former publisher AH Reed, have been transferred to the digital age, writes Simon Henderson.”

Monroe News: State of Michigan creates monkeypox information website. “Created by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), the site provides information about the signs and symptoms of MPV, the number of cases in the state by county, treatment, and resources for the public.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Library of Congress: What’s new online at the Library of Congress – Summer 2022. New and updated collections, new datasets, over 500 new open access ebooks, newly-digitized books, and crowdsourced transcriptions.

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: BeReal Basics: How to Use the ‘Unfiltered’ Social Media App. “BeReal sends users a prompt at a random time each day, urging them to snap a picture and send it to their friends. You only have two minutes to respond, and a two-image collage is captured from your front and back cameras.”

Tom’s Hardware: How to Connect Your Raspberry Pi Pico W to Twitter via IFTTT. “We’ve already covered how to pass data to and from a Raspberry Pi Pico W to another web service, Anvil. But what if you just want to collect some data and send it off into the world? There are many ways to do this, but the simplest has to be IFTTT.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Balkan Transitional Justice: Fractured History: Why Kosovo Has No Proper Wartime Archive. “The Council for the Defence of Human Rights and Freedoms is still the main repository for records produced by various individual human rights activists in Kosovo from 1989 to 1999. Over the last two decades, very little has been done to collect archive materials related to the war. Since the war ended, the Kosovo State Archives hasn’t managed to create any proper archival collection. The head of the State Archives, Bedri Zyberaj said that the materials it holds related to the war are photographs and some articles from foreign newspapers about the conflict.”

TechRadar: I came across this unloved browser and now Google Chrome looks even worse. “From controlling how much of any given resource websites can use to built-in adblocker to its tight integrations with Discord, YouTube Music, and more directly through the browser interface, there are near endless ways users can augment their experience with Opera GX.”

CNET: How An NFT Trader Lost $150K Trying to Troll Twitter Bots. “Scams and frauds are ubiquitous in crypto, but sometimes the biggest losses are those people inflict upon themselves. On Wednesday, one NFT trader suffered a spectacular loss of 100 ether, or $150,000, because of a joke gone wrong.” It was a silly thing for them to do, but much respect to this person for 100% owning it.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Axios: Exclusive: White House cyber office taps Google exec. “The White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director has named Google executive Camille Stewart Gloster as a deputy national cyber director focused on workforce programs and supply chain security issues, according to an administration official familiar with the hire.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Augusta University: New collaboration teaches empathy via virtual reality. “LIVE [Learning through Interprofessional Virtual Experiences] uses virtual reality to train nurses through end-of-life simulation, which teaches them empathy and helps them practice techniques to better support their future patients and families.”

Search Engine Journal: $115M In Ad Spend Lost To Clickbait Sites, Report Finds. “Media investment analysis company Ebiquity found that clickbait and made-for-advertising (MFA) sites captured $115 million of their clients’ $1.47 billion ad budget from January 2020 to May 2022. This translates to 7.8% of their clients’ ad budget, rising to 9.8% for US clients.” Good afternoon, Internet…

July 26, 2022 at 12:08AM
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Promise Programs, DALL-E, DoReCo Linguistics Database, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, July 25, 2022

Promise Programs, DALL-E, DoReCo Linguistics Database, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, July 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Diverse Issues In Higher Education: College Promise Launches Searchable Nationwide Database for Promise Programs. “The tool, MyPromise, has information about the more than 350 local and state Promise programs in the U.S., including funding levels, eligibility requirements, and number of semesters the Promise covers. The tool offers an interactive map and a comparison tool.”

OpenAI: DALL·E Now Available in Beta. “DALL·E, the AI system that creates realistic images and art from a description in natural language, is now available in beta. Today we’re beginning the process of inviting 1 million people from our waitlist over the coming weeks.”

EVENTS

Informationsdienst Wissenschaft: Big data on small languages: Release of the DoReCo online database. “On July 29, linguists working all over the world will gather in Berlin at Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft to celebrate the online release of the DoReCo data base, which provides access to audio recordings from more than 50 languages, along with their transcriptions, translations, and detailed linguistic analyses. Admission to the hybrid event is free, but registration is required.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Google Search’s built-in timer and stopwatch have disappeared. “Google Search has long featured a collection of simple tools, but the stopwatch and timer has mysteriously disappeared in the past day or so. Searching for those terms today just returns a list of results, including a Knowledge Panel, for websites offering online timers and stopwatches. Previously, there would be a box underneath the search field with two tabs.”

MyHeritage Blog: 22 Historical Record Collections Added in June 2022. “We are proud to announce that we added 22 record collections with 12.8 million historical records from across the globe, including the U.S., Canada, Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Ukraine.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Conversation: Celebrity deepfakes are all over TikTok. Here’s why they’re becoming common – and how you can spot them. “Although deepfakes are often used creatively or for fun, they’re increasingly being deployed in disinformation campaigns, for identity fraud and to discredit public figures and celebrities. And while the technology needed to make them is sophisticated, it’s becoming increasingly accessible, leaving detection software and regulation lagging behind. One thing is for sure – deepfakes are here to stay. So what can we do about them?”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NilePost: UPPC to digitize Uganda’s national archive. “The Uganda Publishing and Printing Corporation (UPPC) has said it is in the process of digitizing the vast amount of information and documents in our stores and will build a national archive.”

Washington Post: Popular block game ‘Minecraft’ says no to NFTs and the blockchain. “Mojang Studios, the Microsoft-owned developer behind the wildly popular procedurally generated sandbox game “Minecraft,” announced Wednesday that NFTs and other blockchain products would not be supported by the studio or allowed in the game.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Doxxing: a new tool of repression against Arab women. “In Tunisia and other Arab states, the malicious posting of personal information on social media – known as doxxing – is increasingly being used to harass and intimidate women, anti-government protesters and LGBTQ+ activists.”

Bleeping Computer: Convincing ‘YouTube’ Google ads lead to Windows support scams. “A scarily realistic-looking Google Search YouTube advertisement is redirecting visitors to tech support scams pretending to be security alerts from Windows Defender.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Michigan: Open source platform enables research on privacy-preserving machine learning. “The biggest benchmarking data set to date for a machine learning technique designed with data privacy in mind has been released open source by researchers at the University of Michigan. Called federated learning, the approach trains learning models on end-user devices, like smartphones and laptops, rather than requiring the transfer of private data to central servers.”

Newswise: Which Companies Could Become Maestros of the Metaverse?. “IFI CLAIMS – a Digital Science company dedicated to providing the world’s most trusted patent data for research, innovation and technology – says patent applications provide telling insights into the leaders of innovation.” Good morning, Internet…

July 25, 2022 at 05:29PM
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