New researches

Thursday, July 28, 2022

Kangaroo Island Art, Photo Scanning, Free Web Hosting, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 28, 2022

Kangaroo Island Art, Photo Scanning, Free Web Hosting, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 28, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Islander: Art Museum of Kangaroo Island takes on historical art project. “Some of the first European art of Kangaroo Island is on its way back home – in digital form – thanks to an Art Museum of Kangaroo Island project. The project is called ‘Kangaroo Island Art: Explorers and Settlers’.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Digitize Old Photos With Your Phone. “Bring memories back to life by taking your old pictures into the future. We tested three popular photo scanning apps against a scanner.”

MakeUseOf: The 6 Best Free Website Hosting Services. “Need to create your own website? It’s easier than you’d think, especially nowadays with all the handy services and platforms out there—not to mention all the free web hosts you can pick from. Keep reading to be pointed toward the best free web hosts and most popular free web hosting services currently available.”

Search Engine Journal: How To Go Live On TikTok: A Step By Step Guide. “Whether you’re an individual influencer or part of a social media team for a brand, here’s how to set up your first ever TikTok LIVE with this detailed, step-by-step guide.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Pittsburgh City Paper: Environmental watchdogs petition to remove access fee on oil and gas well database. “Environmental activists are calling on a state agency to eliminate access fees for a database containing detailed information about orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells across the commonwealth that they believe Pennsylvania taxpayers should have access to free of charge.”

Six News Australia: Why we’ve created a new Twitter account to monitor MPs on TikTok. “We hear about it almost every day – misinformation spreading on social media, and on platforms like TikTok. But while some think of it as a ‘dancing app,’ TikTok is being used by MPs and parties a lot these days. Labor, the Liberals, The Greens, One Nation & the Victorian Socialists are just some of the parties with active TikTok accounts.”

New York Times: Ties Between Alex Jones and Radio Network Show Economics of Misinformation. “Ted Anderson, a precious metals seller, was hoping to rustle up some business for his gold and silver dealership when he started a radio network out of a Minneapolis suburb a couple of decades ago. Soon after, he signed a brash young radio host named Alex Jones. Together, they ended up shaping today’s misinformation economy.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Russia fines Google $34 million for breaching competition rules. “Russia’s competition watchdog fined Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Google 2 billion roubles ($34.2 million) on Tuesday for abusing its dominant position in the video hosting market, the regulator said in a statement. The decision is the latest multi-million dollar fine as part of Moscow’s increasingly assertive campaign against foreign tech companies.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: Colorful urban environments promote wellbeing, even if they are just in virtual reality. “A new study in Frontiers in Virtual Reality tested the effects of vegetation and colorful patterns in an urban environment. Employing virtual reality, the study found that green vegetation caused volunteers to walk more slowly, while also increasing their heartrate, indicating a pleasurable experience. Meanwhile, colorful patterns increased alertness, fascination and curiosity.”

NewsWise: Rigor and Transparency Index: Large Scale Analysis of Scientific Reporting Quality. “Improving rigor and transparency measures should lead to improvements in reproducibility across the scientific literature, but assessing measures of transparency tends to be very difficult if performed manually by reviewers.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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July 29, 2022 at 12:18AM
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OSINT Twitter Tools, Community Disaster Risk, Gene Updater, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, July 28, 2022

OSINT Twitter Tools, Community Disaster Risk, Gene Updater, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, July 28, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Indiana University Bloomington: New social media tools help public assess viral posts, check for bots. “The Observatory on Social Media, or OSoMe, at Indiana University has launched three new or revamped no-cost research tools to give journalists, other researchers and the public a broad view of what’s happening on social media.” They’re very Twitter-oriented and look like a lot of fun.

NOAA: NOAA tool now brings disaster risk, vulnerability down to community level. “A comprehensive update to NOAA’s Billion Dollar Disasters mapping tool now includes U.S. census tract data – providing many users with local community-level awareness of hazard risk, exposure and vulnerability across more than 100 combinations of weather and climate hazards.”

Scientific Reports: Gene Updater: a web tool that autocorrects and updates for Excel misidentified gene names. “…we developed a web tool with Streamlit that can convert old gene names and dates back into the new gene names recommended by [HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee]. The web app is named Gene Updater, which is open source…”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Phys .org: Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria re-launches VicFlora database to help identify plants. “Today, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria re-launched its plant biodiversity website, VicFlora. The new portal features upgrades that allow users to identify Victoria’s plants more easily. It is based on a new, open-source core that allows Gardens botanists to easily add new usability and accessibility features to continually improve the user experience.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Maps May Remove Selfies, Blurry Or Poor Quality Images. “Google Maps has updated its photos and videos criteria for the Google Maps user-contributed content policy. Google added selfie photos, excessively dark or blurry images, significantly rotated compositions, and the use of filters that dramatically alter the representation of the place may be removed from Google Maps.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Comics That Read Top to Bottom Are Bringing in New Readers. “For decades, the fans who powered the comic book industry made weekly pilgrimages to their local comic shops to buy the latest issues about their favorite caped-and-cowled adventurers. These Wednesday Warriors, named for the day new installments typically land on shelves, still do. Voracious readers of printed comics, they skew older — and are mostly male. But now all it takes is a smartphone, as the world of comics is reshaped by the kind of digital disruption that has transformed journalism, music, movies and television.”

BBC: Google rules blocked children’s diabetes app. “An NHS-recommended app for managing Type 1 diabetes says Google won’t let it send text message alerts to the parents of young children using it, via the app.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Techdirt: Phishing Attacks On WordPress Site Owners Disguised As Copyright Infringement Warnings. “What makes this so devious is that, though the public has somewhat learned to filter out the common email phishing attempts, disguising all of this as a copyright infringement issue pointed at website owners is likely to ensnare more people than a common phish attempt.”

The Street: Crypto: A Bernie Madoff-Style Scheme May Have Crushed Prominent Lenders. “An unprecedented crisis of confidence has affected the crypto industry for several months. To measure it, just consider the prices of cryptocurrencies, which are often attached to a platform or a project. The cryptocurrency market has lost $2 trillion in value since hitting an all-time high of $3 trillion in early November, according to data firm CoinGecko. Prices for bitcoin, the king of cryptocurrencies, are down more than two-thirds since hitting an all-time high of $69,044.77 on November 10.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Oregon State University: Harm from blue light exposure increases with age, Oregon State University research suggests . “The damaging effects of daily, lifelong exposure to the blue light emanating from phones, computers and household fixtures worsen as a person ages, new research by Oregon State University suggests.”

Texas A&M Today: Using Historical Weather Data To Optimize Power Grid. “Weather information has been used in electric grid planning and operations since the 1880s. However, no one has yet introduced the idea of incorporating this information into the power flow, or load flow, of the grid, which is a system used to determine how the power flows from the generators through the transmission system to the distribution system (which is then used by consumers).”

Reason: You Can’t Stop Pirate Libraries. “Are the proprietors of these pirate libraries freedom fighters? Digital Robin Hoods? Criminals? That depends on your perspective, and it may also differ depending on the platform in question. But one thing is certain: These platforms are nearly impossible to eradicate. Even a greatly enhanced crackdown on them would be little more than a waste of time and resources.” Good morning, Internet…

July 28, 2022 at 05:28PM
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Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Open Jewelry, Multiracial Fashion, Passwords, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 27, 2022

Open Jewelry, Multiracial Fashion, Passwords, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Hackaday: OpenJewelry, No Pliers Required. “Whereas some people might simply lament the lack of a (stable) Thingiverse-type site for, say, jewelry designs, those people aren’t Hackaday’s own [Adam Zeloof]. With nowhere to share designs among engineering-oriented friends, [Adam] took the initiative and created OpenJewelry, a site for posting open-source jewelry and wearable art designs as well as knowledge about techniques, materials, and processes.”

ShowStudio: A New Digital Exhibition Explores Mixed-Race Identity Through Fashion. “When exploring the complexities of racial identity (let alone mixed-race identity), having context and nuance is essential. That’s why The Mixed Museum – a digital museum and archive – has partnered up with artist and designer Warren Reilly to present By The Cut of Their Cloth.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechRadar: Chrome update will soon help you stop making a huge security mistake. “Making sure you have strong passwords has been common security advice for some time, but Google Chrome is now looking to go a step further with its latest update. The browser is reportedly working on a new feature which will immediately show just how strong, or weak, your passwords are.”

TechCrunch: Google launches Street View in India after years of rejection. “Google has relaunched Street View, the Google Maps feature that allows users to explore an area through 360-degree panoramic street-level images, in India more than a decade after it first rolled out the service in the South Asian market and roughly six years after the feature was banned in the country over security concerns.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC Magazine: Document Editing on the Cheap: How to Use Microsoft Office for Free on the Web. “If you want to use Microsoft Office but don’t want to pay for it, why not try the free Office for the web? Formerly known as Office Online and now known simply as Office, the web-based apps reside online, accessible through your browser.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNBC: Why tech workers are quitting great jobs at companies like Google to fight climate change. “Tech workers are walking away from high-paying jobs with great perks to help fight what they believe is the greatest existential problem of our lifetimes: climate change. In some cases, that has meant taking a pay cut. But Sandy Anuras, who recently joined home solar provider Sunrun as its chief technology officer, says a big paycheck sometimes comes with a price.”

BuzzFeed News: TikTok Owner ByteDance Used A News App On Millions Of Phones To Push Pro-China Messages, Ex-Employees Say. “Former employees claim the company placed pieces of pro-China content in its now-defunct US news app, TopBuzz, and censored negative stories about the Chinese government. ByteDance says it did no such thing.”

University of Southern Mississippi: USM Special Collections Earns Grant for Preservation Work. “The grant – $135,828 from NHPRC, with $70,178 in-kind matching funds from USM to increase access to collections – will support processing, digitization, and development of finding aids for existing collections significant to the history and culture of Mississippi. Select material will be digitized and featured in online presentations.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: There is a lot of antisemitic hate speech on social media – and algorithms are partly to blame. “Scholar Sophie Schmalenberger found that antisemitism is expressed not just in blunt, hurtful language and images on social media, but also in coded forms that may easily remain undetected. For example, on Facebook, Germany’s radical right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, omits the mentioning of the Holocaust in posts about the Second World War. It also uses antisemitic language and rhetoric that present antisemitism as acceptable.”

University of Oxford: Seeing the light: researchers develop new AI system using light to learn associatively . “Researchers at Oxford University’s Department of Materials, working in collaboration with colleagues from Exeter and Munster have developed an on-chip optical processor capable of detecting similarities in datasets up to 1,000 times faster than conventional machine learning algorithms running on electronic processors.” Good afternoon, Internet…

July 28, 2022 at 01:03AM
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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.”

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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