CISA Elections Security Kit, Tennessee Education Dashboards, Google Lens, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 12, 2022

CISA Elections Security Kit, Tennessee Education Dashboards, Google Lens, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 12, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA): CISA Releases Toolkit Of Free Cybersecurity Resources For Election Community. “The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released its ‘Protecting U.S. Elections: A CISA Cybersecurity Toolkit’ today, a one-stop catalog of free services and tools available for state and local election officials to improve the cybersecurity and resilience of their infrastructure.”

Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury: Updated Mapping Tennessee Education Site Provides New Insights. “The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office has released new interactive online dashboards on K-12 education. The dashboards provide updated education data on schools and school districts for the 2020-21 school year. There are two dashboards: one for public schools and one for non-public schools. The dashboards include data on teacher salaries, student enrollment, school building quality, and state and local funding.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Inspiration: How to Calculate the Percentage Score in a Google Forms Quiz. “When someone takes the quiz and submits the form, the responses are recorded in a Google Sheet that is set as the response destination for your Google Form. There’s something interesting here as well. If the associated form is a quiz, Google Sheets will automatically add an extra column in the response sheet titled ‘Score’ and this column will be populated with the total marks obtained by respondent in the quiz.”

9to5 Google: How to search any image on Chrome desktop using Google Lens. “Chrome is a great browser with tons of tools and functionality; one feature that many users aren’t familiar with is the desktop version of Google Lens that’s fully integrated into Google Chrome. Follow along to learn how you can use Google Lens on Chrome desktop to search for any image on the web.” The translation feature comes in surprisingly handy.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Conversation: Minor Google Meltdown Exposes The World’s Utter Reliance on a Single Tech Company. “There are few things we completely rely upon in our modern lives, but for many people, Google is one. Its brief disappearance from the internet felt, for many, like an almost-apocalyptic moment – underscoring how deeply ‘googling’ has been integrated into our lives.”

The New Yorker: Google’s Caste-Bias Problem. “A talk about bigotry was cancelled amid accusations of reverse discrimination. Whom was the company trying to protect?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gizmodo: A Linux Zero-Day Was Finally Patched After Half a Decade of Inaction With Help From Google. “Google’s Threat Analysis Group revealed new details today about its efforts to identify and help patch a zero-day exploit impacting Android devices built by a commercial surveillance vendor and dating back to at least 2016.”

Tubefilter: Lawsuit from Grammy winner claims that YouTube’s copyright systems “reduce the value of all works”. “On August 1, A California judge denied YouTube‘s request to throw out a 2020 lawsuit filed by jazz musician Maria Schneider. The suit, which argues that YouTube fails to protect smaller creators from infringement, will now be allowed to move forward.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Hospital and Drugmaker Move to Build Vast Database of New Yorkers’ DNA.”Patients will be asked if their genetic sequence can be added to a database — shared with a pharmaceutical company — in a quest to cure a multitude of diseases.”

The Verge: We live in notification hell. “The apps never shut up. They’re hungry for engagement. They want you to know that your favorite items are on sale, that you haven’t practiced your Spanish today, that your delivery driver is five stops away, that your child at daycare just had a blowout — all day, all at once. Welcome to a place we all live, a place called notification hell.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 13, 2022 at 12:44AM
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Texas Oil And Gas Production Records, Georgia Higher Education, USGS Geologic Maps, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, August 12, 2022

Texas Oil And Gas Production Records, Georgia Higher Education, USGS Geologic Maps, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, August 12, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

No ResearchBuzz yesterday because I was putting together a Web site for my ResearchBuzz Search Gizmos. There are currently ten tools there and I’m adding two more today. Love to hear what you think: https://researchbuzz.github.io/

NEW RESOURCES

Railroad Commission of Texas: Millions of Historic Oil and Gas Production Records Now Online on Railroad Commission Website. “The Historical Imaged Annual Production Records database includes oil production dating back to 1931 and gas production going back to 1937. More than 1,300 rolls of microfilm containing about 2.2 million images housed in RRC’s Central Records were digitized for the project.”

CBS 46: University System of Georgia introduces new college comparison tool. “It’s called Georgia Degrees Pay. The tool, announced at the August Board of Regents meeting on Tuesday, allows users to compare all 26 public universities and colleges in the University System (USG). Many of the features allow users compare up to two schools at a time – and include categories like cost of attendance, future earnings, and student success rates.”

EVENTS

USGS: Public and media invited to attend a live, virtual lecture on how to access over 100,000 geologic maps covering the U.S.. “David Soller, a USGS geologist, will talk about the National Geologic Map Database. Geologic maps help identify potential earthquake hazards, inform environmental studies, and guide energy and mineral research.” It doesn’t look like registration is required. However, when I followed the URL to where the lecture would be, I got a security warning because the certificates are mismatched. As far as I can tell it’s just a misconfiguration.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Google’s Search AI now looks for general consensus to highlight more trustworthy results. “Google’s Search AI can now check snippet callouts — those are the information with larger fonts that serve as heading for featured snippets — against other high-quality sources online.”

USEFUL STUFF

Chrome Unboxed: How to create your own indie game for free on your Chromebook using Godot. “For those of you who are interested in getting into game development and only own a Chromebook, I’m starting a series of posts which will show you how to use different software and web applications to begin dabbling in the world of indie game dev. These will mostly be teaching you what options are available to you and how to get them up and running.”

KnowTechie: APPS5 best webcam face filter apps for streaming. “Webcam face filters apps are thriving, so here’s our detailed comparison of market-leading products with their benefits, drawbacks, and ready-made features.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

University of Maine: New exhibit featuring 3D-printed replica of 19th-century helmet opens at Hudson Museum. “The original Tlingit Frog Clan Helmet, carved out of yellow cedar, painted in green and red pigments and inlaid with abalone shell discs that were previously attached to a textile, sits alongside its identical replica. The 3D printed model was created by engineers from UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center and graduate students from the Intermedia Programs. Both helmets are surrounded by photos depicting the stages in the process to create the replica and panels describing how the original helmet came to the museum, what sparked the efforts to recreate it, who worked on the project and their roles.”

Army Times: Army schoolhouses dive into new social media trainings. “New training tools, classes and exercise scenarios are coming into play at all levels of the professional military education system, from basic training to special courses tailored for general officers. To get a sense of where the Army might go next with social media in its schoolhouses, Army Times interviewed TRADOC Command Sgt. Maj. Daniel Hendrex and other officials developing social media training programs across the command.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The East African: Kenya election: Deep fakes, propaganda, libel inundate social media . “The final stretch of the campaigns has witnessed outright propaganda and manipulated videos and audios online spaces, signalling a rebound of fake news. From fabricated videos made to misrepresent a candidate’s opinion to invented phone calls alleging plans to rig elections and fake statements claiming foreign support for a specific candidate, the ‘deep fakes’ have increased these final two weeks as they seemingly target the less informed.”

Associated Press: Social media addiction bill fails in California Legislature. “California lawmakers on Thursday rejected a proposal that could have forced some popular social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok to pay fines for using features they know can harm children.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Caltech: New research “UNCOVERS” hidden objects in high resolution. “The technology, developed in the laboratory of Changhuei Yang, Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Medical Engineering; and Heritage Medical Research Institute investigator, is a form of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) sensing—or sensing that detects an object of interest outside of the viewer’s line of sight. The new method, dubbed UNCOVER, does this by using nearby flat surfaces, such as walls, like a lens to clearly view the hidden object.”

Rensselaer: Rensselaer Researchers to Address Big Data Challenges. “Simply put, [Dr. Yangyang] Xu’s team will develop groundbreaking algorithms that allow multiple computers to work efficiently together as one. They will also focus on maintaining the security of distributed personal information, and on methods to improve the speed and accuracy of deep learning.” Good morning, Internet…

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

August 12, 2022 at 05:31PM
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ResearchBuzz Gizmos Update

ResearchBuzz Gizmos Update
By researchbuzz2

Hey y’all! You may have noticed there was no ResearchBuzz this morning. That’s because I’ve been spending the last day working on my collection of ResearchBuzz Search Gizmos. I found a template, did the best with my HTML and CSS skills, and now these tools should be a lot easier to use. You can find them at https://researchbuzz.github.io/ .

Any requests or ideas, leave them in the comments. Criticism about my programming abilities? I know already, no need for a comment.

New Additions Since The Last Writeup

Politician Parade (Twitter) – https://researchbuzz.github.io/politician-parade-Twitter/

This tool requires a free ProPublica Congress API key; you can get it at https://www.propublica.org/datastore/api/propublica-congress-api . To use this tool you specify a Twitter query and a state. Politician Parade generates a Twitter search for that query limited to the accounts of current members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the state you specified.

Politician Parade (Google News) – https://researchbuzz.github.io/politician-parade/

Instead of limiting itself to Twitter space, this tool tries to integrate the names of current congresspeople into a Google News search. It’s kind of sloppy and doesn’t work great. I’m thinking about adding filters for the timeliness of the news, and possibly for seniority (either including or excluding long-term representatives.)

Time-Sliced News Search:  – https://researchbuzz.github.io/Time-Sliced-News-Search/

Date-specific searching on news searches is great but it’s fiddly and setting up the searches can be time-consuming. The TSNS tool takes your query and a year you specify and builds queries for Google News, Google Books (Books, Magazines, and Newspapers are all searched separately), Newspapers.com, and Chronicling America. The queries cover the year you specify, a time radius around which you’d like to search, and the whole decade. For example, you might search for “Cold remedy” in the year 1951 with a search radius of 2. TSNS will generate the following searches for each resource:

“Cold remedy” mentions spanning 1951

“Cold remedy” mentions spanning 1950-1952

“Cold remedy” mentions spanning 1950-1959

Kebberfegg, Keyword-Based RSS Feed Generator – https://researchbuzz.github.io/Kebberfegg/

A reboot of a tool I made – uh – over fifteen years ago. I’M OLD, KIDS! Anyway, Kebberfegg asks you for a query and then offers you an array of keyword RSS feeds based on the query. Sources for RSS feeds include Bing, Bing News, Google News, Reddit, Hacker News, and the US Federal Register.

Other Tools

Twitter Receipts: — https://researchbuzz.github.io/Twitter-Receipts/index.html

Twitter Receipts has you enter a Twitter handle and a date, then queries The Wayback Machine for the closest snapshot of the Twitter handle to that date. The Wayback Machine page opens in a new URL. Sometimes the API is a little slow so give it a few seconds.

Back That Ask Up: — https://researchbuzz.github.io/Back-That-Ask-Up-/

Enter a Google News query and the number of days/months/years’ worth of the most recent news items you want to eliminate. BTAU will construct a date-restricted search query in Google News and open it in a new window.

The Anti-Bullseye Name Search: — https://researchbuzz.github.io/The-Anti-Bullseye-Name-Search/

TABNS takes a name and generates a Google search that searches for the name in reverse order (Lastname Firstname) and specifically excludes the most common expression of firstname lastname. It changes the tenor of the search results completely, surfacing many more legal- and data- based results. It also removes a lot of commercial clutter from your search (Amazon, eBay, Pinterest, etc) and gives you the option of adding focusing keywords to the name search.

Sinker Search: — https://researchbuzz.github.io/sinker-search/index.html

Sinker Search takes full advantage of Google’s 32-word query limit by letting you choose an emphasized word in your search which will be repeated until Google’s query limit is reached.

Blogspace Time Machine: — https://researchbuzz.github.io/blogspace-time-machine/index.html

A Google filter for exploring recently-created (current month) content in blogspace, with the option of seeing the same search in blogspace from one, three, five, ten, or fifteen years ago.

Blog Shovel: — https://researchbuzz.github.io/Blog-Shovel/index.html

A Google filter unearthing blog content, from the early days of the Web until now. For much older content than the Blogspace Time Machine (goes back to 1995.)

August 11, 2022 at 11:56PM
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Renewable Energy Regulations, American Congress Digital Archives Portal, Patch Tuesday, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 10, 2022

Renewable Energy Regulations, American Congress Digital Archives Portal, Patch Tuesday, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 10, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National Renewable Energy Laboratory: NREL Releases Comprehensive Databases of Local Ordinances for Siting Wind, Solar Energy Projects . “NREL released two new databases of state and local wind and solar energy zoning laws and ordinances in the United States. The data sets are machine-readable so geospatial analysts and researchers can readily analyze siting impacts. This work is part of ongoing research at NREL to explore the dynamics of land use and clean energy deployment.”

West Virginia University: WVU Libraries receives second LYRASIS grant to support portal for congressional archives. “West Virginia University Libraries has been awarded a $39,300 LYRASIS Catalyst Fund grant to support the American Congress Digital Archives Portal, congressarchives.lib.wvu.edu, the first-ever online portal that brings together congressional archives from repositories throughout the United States.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Krebs on Security: Microsoft Patch Tuesday, August 2022 Edition. “Microsoft today released updates to fix a record 141 security vulnerabilities in its Windows operating systems and related software. Once again, Microsoft is patching a zero-day vulnerability in the Microsoft Support Diagnostics Tool (MSDT), a service built into Windows. Redmond also addressed multiple flaws in Exchange Server — including one that was disclosed publicly prior to today — and it is urging organizations that use Exchange for email to update as soon as possible and to enable additional protections.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Block Spam Calls and Text Messages. “LIFE IS BUSY enough without wasting time on spammers, scammers, and telemarketers. Whether you are suffering insistent injury lawyers, fraudulent car warranty representatives, or a drunk-dialing ex, there is a way to stop the endless calls and messages. The major carriers and phone manufacturers have upped their game against unwanted calls and messages in recent years, so let’s look at how you can effectively block them.”

CNET: Free Apps You Need to Download Before Starting College. “Based on my own college experience, and aided by some informal crowdsourcing on Slack, these are the apps that will help you be prepared and successful during the school year. And in true college fashion, all of them are free to download and will help students save time and money.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Internet Archive Blog: Colgate University Libraries Donates to Expanding Government Document Microfiche Collection. “In July, the Internet Archive arranged for the twelve cabinets of microfiche, each in excess of 600 pounds, to be loaded onto pallets and shipped to the Internet Archive for preservation and digitization. Materials include Census data, documents from the Department of Education, Congressional testimony, CIA documents, and foreign news translated into English.”

Reuters: India Partition: After 75 years, tech opens a window into the past. “The partition of colonial India into two states, mainly Hindu India and mostly Muslim Pakistan, at the end of British rule triggered one of the biggest mass migrations in history…. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since then, and relations remain tense. They rarely grant visas to each others’ citizens, making visits nearly impossible – but social media has helped people on either side of the border connect.”

Arizona State University: Unsung heroes of civil rights movement tell their stories. “Curtis Austin, an associate professor of history in Arizona State University’s School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, believes it’s important that the men and women who served both on the front lines and in the background of the civil rights movement have their stories told. To that goal, Austin, along with Matthew Barr, a professor at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, are collaborating on an oral history and book project titled ‘The Unsung Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: DOJ Is Preparing to Sue Google Over Ad Market as Soon as September. “The US Justice Department is preparing to sue Google as soon as next month, according to people familiar with the matter, capping years of work to build a case that the Alphabet Inc. unit illegally dominates the digital advertising market.”

The Verge: TikTok moderators say they were shown child sexual abuse videos during training. “Employees of a third-party moderation outfit called Teleperformance, which works with TikTok among other companies, claim it asked them to review a disturbing spreadsheet dubbed DRR or Daily Required Reading on TikTok moderation standards. The spreadsheet allegedly contained content that violated TikTok’s guidelines, including ‘hundreds of images’ of children who were nude or being abused.” 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!

August 11, 2022 at 12:38AM
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Design Card Decks, California Groundwater Projects, Snapchat, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, August 10, 2022

Design Card Decks, California Groundwater Projects, Snapchat, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, August 10, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation: IPLC Launches the Design Card Decks for Ideation and Exploration Web Archive. “The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation is pleased to announce the launch of the Design Card Decks for Ideation and Exploration Web Archive, curated by librarians at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University. Card decks are used in design fields as a game-based methodology for ideation and stakeholder participatory collaboration.”

California Department of Water Resources: DWR Launches New Web-Based Mapping Tool Showing Nearly 3,000 Groundwater Sustainability Projects. “The California Groundwater Projects Tool is an interactive mapping tool that allows users to explore a database of nearly 3,000 projects initiated in California over the last decade to protect groundwater resources.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Snapchat Now Lets Parents See Who Their Kids Are Messaging. “Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, launched a set of parental control tools on Tuesday that allow adults to see who their children are contacting on the messaging app.”

PC Magazine: Google’s ‘Read Along’ Learning Tool Now Available on the Web. “The app, which is supposed to help children learn how to read, has been exclusive to Android since it was released in India in 2019. (It was called Bolo at the time; Google changed the name for its global launch in 2020.) Now it’ll finally be available to kids without Android devices.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 20 Desktop Tools to Generate & Manage Passwords – Best Of. “Here are 20 desktop tools to generate and manage passwords. From ‘one password for all accounts to generating hundreds of passwords in seconds, these tools offer a gamut of features to benefit from. Let’s check the full list below.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Lifehacker: Do You Need Locket, the Latest Trendy Photo-Sharing App?. “The latest hot photo-sharing app, Locket, recently raised $12.5 million in funding, making it potentially worth checking out even though it’s still relatively unknown. After launching on New Year’s Day this year, it did rack up over 20 million downloads, but it’s still nowhere as well-known as its peers, Instagram or BeReal…. But what makes Locket different?”

SF Gate: Google says data center ‘electrical incident’ unrelated to Monday’s Google outage. “Three electricians who were transported to a local hospital with burn injuries after an arc flash outside a Google data center are now in stable condition, according to a Google spokesperson.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot. “Twitter yesterday slammed Elon Musk’s response to the company’s lawsuit in a 127-page filing in the Delaware Court of Chancery that says Musk’s claims are “contradicted by the evidence and common sense.” Twitter’s court filing also said Musk’s spam analysis relied on a tool that once called his own Twitter account a likely bot.”

Bleeping Computer: Thousands of hackers flock to ‘Dark Utilities’ C2-as-a-Service. “Security researchers found a new service called Dark Utilities that provides an easy and inexpensive way for cybercriminals to set up a command and control (C2) center for their malicious operations.”

PC Magazine: South Korea Will Investigate Google, Apple Over In-App Payments (Again). “South Korea will once again investigate Google and Apple over their in-app payment policies. The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) says it’s launching an investigation into the companies—as well as the One Store marketplace that recently expanded(Opens in a new window) beyond South Korea—to ‘identify violations of prohibited acts by app market operators” within the country.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Knowledge At Wharton: Who Is Falling for Fake News?. “New research from Wharton’s Ken Moon and Senthil Veeraraghavan recommends a data-driven solution for social media platforms to deal with fake news.”

Engadget: People spent much less time watching gaming streams this spring, report says. “The number of hours streamed and watched across Twitch, YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming have dropped significantly over the last year, according to the latest Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet report on the landscape of livestreaming. Between April and June, streamers on the three platforms were live for 273 million hours. That’s down 19.4 percent from Q2 2021 and 12 percent from the previous quarter.” Good morning, Internet…

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

August 10, 2022 at 05:29PM
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ACLU Of Delaware, Michigan Algae Blooms, Equiano Internet Cable, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 9, 2022

ACLU Of Delaware, Michigan Algae Blooms, Equiano Internet Cable, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 9, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WBOC: ACLU of Delaware Launches Public Archive to Highlight Their Civil Impact on Delaware’s History. “The American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU of Delaware has been advocating for civil liberties and civil rights in Delaware since 1961. Earlier this month the organization launched a public archive to preserve records and highlight the ACLU of Delaware’s involvement in the civil rights history of Delaware.”

State of Michigan: New tool available to track harmful algal bloom reports. “The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS), Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) are reminding Michiganders to be aware of the potential for harmful algal blooms (HABs) in bodies of water. To help the public know where HABs have been reported, a new Michigan Harmful Algal Bloom Reports map is now available online at Michigan.gov/HABsMap.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tech Central: Google’s giant Equiano Internet cable has landed in South Africa. “The Equiano subsea Internet cable was landed at Melkbosstrand north of Cape Town on Monday, the last stop on the route south for the 12-fibre-pair system that promises to drive down Internet costs in South Africa when it comes online in the coming months.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tom’s Guide: The best photo storage and sharing sites in 2022. “Some have free tiers of service, while others are geared more towards professionals. Whatever your needs, there’s sure to be a photo storage site for you; we’ve rounded up our favorites below.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

A Current Affair (Australia): Warning over ‘fake’ Google reviews. “A Melbourne dentist has denied deceiving the public, after her clinic was found to be receiving glowing five-star online reviews from patients that likely do not exist. It comes as A Current Affair can reveal the extent that consumers are being fooled by bogus testimonials.”

News@Northeastern: How TikTok Made Reading Fun Again. “Thanks to TikTok users posting reviews of their favorite books with the hashtag #BookTok, a crop of books has skyrocketed in popularity, and some Gen Zers are discovering that reading can be fun.”

International Journalists’ Network: New tool helps media in Kenya combat spread of false information. “To address the spread of disinformation during the 2022 election season and beyond, the Media Council of Kenya (MCK) in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme launched the iVerify Network of Fact-checking Desks, a digital platform that newsrooms and journalists can use to fact-check information before they publish or broadcast. New to Kenya, iVerify has in the past been used successfully elsewhere in Africa.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Scientists hid encryption key for Wizard of Oz text in plastic molecules. “Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin sent a letter to colleagues in Massachusetts with a secret message: an encryption key to unlock a text file of L. Frank Baum’s classic novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The twist: The encryption key was hidden in a special ink laced with polymers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Nature: A deep learning approach to fight illicit trafficking of antiquities using artefact instance classification. “We approach the task of detecting the illicit movement of cultural heritage from a machine learning perspective by presenting a framework for detecting a known artefact in a new and unseen image. To this end, we explore the machine learning problem of instance classification for large archaeological images datasets, i.e. where each individual object (instance) is itself a class that all of the multiple images of that object belongs.”

Stanford Daily: Is Google’s AI sentient? Stanford AI experts say that’s ‘pure clickbait’. “Following a Google engineer’s viral claims that artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ‘LaMDa’ was sentient, Stanford experts have urged skepticism and open-mindedness while encouraging a rethinking of what it means to be ‘sentient’ at all.” 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!

August 10, 2022 at 12:40AM
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Facebook Roundup, August 9, 2022

Facebook Roundup, August 9, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: Meta quieter on election misinformation as midterms loom. “Facebook owner Meta is quietly curtailing some of the safeguards designed to thwart voting misinformation or foreign interference in U.S. elections as the November midterm vote approaches.”

Bloomberg: Meta Among Companies Making Summer Interns Nervous About Job Offers. “Internships at Meta Platforms Inc., the Facebook and Instagram owner, are coveted for their selectivity, high compensation, lavish perks — and most of all, the potential job offer waiting at the end of the summer. This year, that’s more elusive.”

Bloomberg: Metaverse Jobs Are Disappearing as Hiring Slows at Google, Facebook . “Meta Platforms Inc., grappling with its first-ever quarterly sales slump, now has another problem: Jobs in the metaverse are disappearing.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BusinessWorld (Philippines): Facebook took down 5 million pieces of content leading up to PHL elections — Meta. “Facebook, the Meta-owned social media platform, removed five million pieces of content on Facebook and Instagram in the four months leading up to the Philippine national elections and the week following (Jan. 9–May 16).”

Poynter: How Facebook pages exploit Russia’s war in Ukraine with false videos. “Twin Facebook pages advertise themselves as providing newsy and up-to-the-minute coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine. But on a given day, their followers might see videos claiming Norwegians raided Russian ships, Vladimir Putin was defeated on ‘all fronts,’ or that a single British ship blocked a Russian fleet. None of those headlines are true. But that doesn’t stop the pages Fios Vinks and Fiosl Liesi from earning clicks, views and a monetizable following through false reporting on the war.”

Engadget: Facebook faces suspension in Kenya over ethnic-based hate speech. “Kenya’s National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), a government agency that aims to eradicate ethnic or racial discrimination among the country’s 45 tribes, has given Facebook seven days to tackle hate speech related to next month’s election on its platform. If the social media fails to do so, it faces suspension in the country.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

San Diego Union-Tribune: Administrators of popular Facebook page Tijuana 664 gunned down outside their home . “Anonymous Facebook pages in Tijuana often purport to be offering news, but the content can run the gamut from memes to copy-and-pasted stories from mainstream news organizations to insider crime blogs that offer explicit details about violence in the border city. Many local journalists have publicly spoken out about how the existence of these anonymous pages puts their safety at risk by both encouraging violence and by creating confusion among the public about the role of journalists.”

Bloomberg: Meta Asks Court to Force Snap to Hand Over Data as It Fights FTC Antitrust Lawsuit. “Meta Platforms Inc. is asking a judge to force Snap Inc. to hand over data it says is needed to help the Facebook owner defend against a US government antitrust lawsuit.”

Bleeping Computer: Meta, US hospitals sued for using healthcare data to target ads. “A class action lawsuit has been filed in the Northern District of California against Meta (Facebook), the UCSF Medical Center, and the Dignity Health Medical Foundation, alleging that the organizations are unlawfully collecting sensitive healthcare data about patients for targeted advertising.”

Ohio Attorney General: Ohio Selected as Lead Plaintiff in Class-Action Lawsuit Against Facebook. “A federal judge in California yesterday agreed to consolidate a series of lawsuits against Facebook and appointed Ohio the lead plaintiff in the securities class-action case against the social-media giant. Attorney General Yost will lead the class action on behalf of Ohio and any other affected investors.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

San Diego Union-Tribune: Opinion: Instagram is a cult by every measure. Here’s why you’re not going anywhere.. “I’ve personally been on Instagram for about 11 years — starting at the age of 13 — and I now have a career that requires me to run numerous social media accounts. I’m somebody who’s unhappy with their weekly screen time, my tendency to ‘doom scroll’ and the way social media impacts my self-perception. I know my life would be better if I deleted it, but I don’t. And I won’t.”

Washington Post: Facebook wants to be more like TikTok. That’s a bad idea.. “The thing about network effects is that they work both ways. When your network is growing, it keeps getting steadily more valuable. But if it starts to shrink, each departing user makes the service slightly less attractive to those who remain. This is why Facebook has been so aggressive (too aggressive, the trustbusters murmur) about acquiring potential competitors and adding features that are popular on other apps. It needs to protect that nice, wide moat — which is frankly looking a bit stagnant.”

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August 9, 2022 at 07:13PM
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