Sunday, August 14, 2022

Massachusetts Criminal Justice, Environmental Justice Index, YouTube, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, August 14, 2022

Massachusetts Criminal Justice, Environmental Justice Index, YouTube, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, August 14, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WWLP: Massachusetts Criminal Justice database open to the public. “The Baker Administration has announced a new online dashboard aimed at consolidating data from the state’s criminal justice system. It was initially part of 2018’s criminal justice reform law and is designed to increase transparency and public access to this type of data. The dashboard records inmate populations both in individual counties and the state’s department of corrections.”

Department of Health and Human Services: Federal Health Agencies Unveil National Tool to Measure Health Impacts of Environmental Burdens . “Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), in partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Environmental Justice, announce the release of the Environmental Justice Index (EJI). The EJI builds off existing environmental justice indexes to provide a single environmental justice score for local communities across the United States so that public health officials can identify and map areas most at risk for the health impacts of environmental burden.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: YouTube is reportedly planning to launch a ‘channel store’ for streaming services. “YouTube has been working on an online store where you can purchase subscriptions for various streaming services, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Google-owned video streaming platform has reportedly been developing a ‘channel store’ for at least the past 18 months and is currently in talks with potential partner companies.”

ZDNet: Canonical releases Ubuntu 22.04.1. “Linux is always evolving and improving. So Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company, releases point upgrades about twice a year to deliver the latest software, improvements, and security fixes. Now you can easily update your Ubuntu release or download and install Ubuntu 22.04.1.”

USEFUL STUFF

Larry Ferlazzo: Kapwing Just Made Their “Pro” Plan Free For Educators And Students. “Kapwing, a cool multimedia tool that includes video-editing features and easy ways to produce memes, just announced that their ‘Pro’ plan would now be free to educators and students.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WAAY: Alabama archives to return Native American remains, burial objects. “The remains of Native American people who once lived in Alabama were dug up a century ago — often by amateur archeologists — and given to the state along with the jewelry, urns and other objects buried with them.”

Internet Retailing: Lovehoney hits back as Google SafeSearch sees 250,000 of its customers unable to shop . “Lovehoney – the UK’s largest retailer for sexual wellness products and two-time Queen’s Award for Enterprise holder – has created an instructional guide to both raise awareness of the Google feature and help those over 18s that it is unintentionally obstructing.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Android Police: Google wants to remind you that using 2FA doesn’t have to be a… drag . “Google has enlisted the help of drag personality Trixie Mattel to promote the use of two-factor authentication through the company’s Safer with Google initiative. The spot highlights one of the most straightforward 2FA methods — sending a notification to your phone to approve or reject a login request — to show that it doesn’t need to be an overly complicated ordeal.” I’m a Trixie fan but I think I’ll stick with my YubiKey.

Krebs on Security: It Might Be Our Data, But It’s Not Our Breach. “A cybersecurity firm says it has intercepted a large, unique stolen data set containing the names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, Social Security Numbers and dates of birth on nearly 23 million Americans. The firm’s analysis of the data suggests it corresponds to current and former customers of AT&T. The telecommunications giant stopped short of saying the data wasn’t theirs, but it maintains the records do not appear to have come from its systems and may be tied to a previous data incident at another company.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Semiconductor Engineering: Tradeoffs In Archiving Data. “For the semiconductor industry, the great irony of digital preservation is that we may not be able to trust the technology we’ve created. Electronics fail and companies get bought or go out of business. Moreover, storing data has an economic component, whether that is measured in memory, energy costs, real estate, or simply maintaining a database that allows data to be accessed whenever it’s needed. And the more data that is stored, the greater the likelihood that something could go wrong.”

USC Viterbi: Busting Anti-Queer Bias in Text Prediction. “A team of researchers from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Information Sciences Institute and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, led by Katy Felkner, a USC Viterbi Ph.D. in computer science student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship recipient, has developed a system to quantify and fix anti-queer bias in the artificial intelligence behind text prediction.”

Freethink: Text-to-image AIs are changing art forever . “The beta launch of DALL-E 2 is the latest big move in the growing text-to-image AI space. Here’s more about the industry-leading system, its competitors, and the impact this tech could have on the world of art.” I got my beta invitation Saturday morning. DALL-E is amazing and exciting and intriguing and an ENORMOUS timesink. 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 14, 2022 at 05:32PM
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Saturday, August 13, 2022

Pokémon Trading Cards, Julia R. King Collection, Google, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 13, 2022

Pokémon Trading Cards, Julia R. King Collection, Google, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 13, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Nintendo Wire: Online exhibition lets you explore the world of Pokémon Trading Card Game illustrations. “The Pokémon Trading Card Game has been going strong for well over 20 years now and it’s showing no signs of stopping. The illustrations on each card play a large part in the game’s lasting appeal – whether you collect old favorites or seek out Full Art cards, there’s plenty to appreciate. Now a new website has opened up in partnership with Anique that lets you interactively explore the world of Pokémon Trading Card Game illustrations.”

Digital Library of Georgia: Family Papers Documenting The Lives Of Enslaved People In Liberty County, Georgia, Dating Back To The 1700s, Are Now Available Online.. “In partnership with the Midway Museum, the Digital Library of Georgia has just made the Julia R. King Collection available online…. The collection includes essential documents related to slavery, including estate appraisals and inventories that include the first names of enslaved African Americans. It will be of particular interest to those doing family research on people enslaved in Liberty County, Georgia.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Google is testing a way to start streaming games from search results. “One thing that will help bolster adoption of cloud gaming is by making it as easy as possible to fire up a game. To that end, Google is testing a way to start playing something with a single click from search results, even if it’s not on the company’s own Stadia platform.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: How Nokia ringtones became the first viral earworms. “Today, Fusoxide is behind the popular @ringtonebangers Twitter account. With others, like @OldPhonePreserv, he helps to maintain Andre Louis’ phonetones directory — a repository of phone software, sound banks, ringtones, and audio ephemera from a bygone era.”

Ars Technica: Excel esports on ESPN show world the pain of format errors. “The Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC) hosts regular international competitions, both invitational and open to anyone, in which Excel pros strive to solve as many questions as possible from a complex task. You can download all three of the tasks used in last weekend’s battle for free. ESPN showed a 30-minute edited version of the full two-hour-and-48-minute all-star battle between previous champions.”

CNET: A Healthy Relationship With Social Media Is Hard to Define for Gen Z. “Plenty of young people, equipped with ample knowledge of how to quash social media use, and an awareness of the pitfalls of constantly being online, continue to sink huge amounts of time into the platforms. That dynamic underscores a more connected reality for members of Gen Z, roughly those born between 1997 and 2012, who rely more on social media than older generations for friendship, knowledge or a sense of community that they lack in physical spaces.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Scam loan apps extorting Mexicans thrive in Google Play Store. “[Pedro] Figueroa is one of more than 2,230 people who fell prey to fraudulent loan apps in Mexico between June 2021 and January 2022, according to data compiled by the Citizen Council for Justice and Security, an advocacy group based in Mexico City. The Thomson Reuters Foundation found 29 loan apps with millions of downloads in the Google Play Store that have been reported to the authorities for extortion, fraud, violation of Mexican privacy law, and abusive financial practices.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Penn State: Lessons on nutrition easy to digest in virtual reality spaces. “Virtual reality (VR) may provide nutrition teachers and dietitians with an entirely new way to serve real lessons on healthy eating, according to a team of Penn State researchers. In a study, students learned about nutrition both through an interactive VR lesson, as well as during a more traditional lecture that was hosted in a VR environment. The research also showed that nutrition educators might not even need all the bells and whistles of VR interactivity for those lessons to be effective.”

EurekAlert: Social media helps scientists monitor rarely sighted whales. “Social media posts helped scientists to monitor one of New Zealand’s rarest whale species, the infrequently sighted southern right whale, or tohorā.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

WIRED: The Creators of ‘King’s Quest’ Are Back With a New Game. “Ken and Roberta Williams are the cofounders of Sierra Online, the company behind such classic computer games as King’s Quest, Space Quest, and Quest for Glory. Their latest project, Colossal Cave: Reimagined by Roberta Williams, is a remake of the genre-defining Colossal Cave Adventure by Will Crowther and Don Woods.” 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 14, 2022 at 12:42AM
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LGBTQ Central Pennsylvania, Vermont Music Album Art, Tennessee Black History, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, August 13, 2022

LGBTQ Central Pennsylvania, Vermont Music Album Art, Tennessee Black History, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, August 13, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Dickinson University: LGBT History Project Housed at Dickinson College Celebrates 10th Anniversary by Unveiling Digital Exhibit. “The LGBT Center of Central PA History Project is marking its 10th anniversary in August with the unveiling of an extensive digital archive for the public that opens a window on LGBTQ+ history in central Pennsylvania. The Project, which can be explored online, is a collaboration between Dickinson College’s Archives and Special Collections and the LGBT Center of Central PA.”

Vermont Biz: National Digital Archive project absorbs Vermont music album art. “Vermont Business Magazine The ‘Green Mountain Digital Archive’ (VT-GMDA) is a collaborative statewide initiative to bring Vermont’s digital cultural content to a highly visible national platform, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Big Heavy World, with the generous expert support of staff at Middlebury College, recently channeled digital images of approximately 5,000 Vermont-made musical recordings into this national digital collection.”

Middle Tennessee State University: Places and Perspectives: MTSU library collaborates on African American communities digital history project. “Long-lost history does not have to stay lost, as long as people are willing to work together to pinpoint the past. ‘Places, Perspectives: African American Community-building in Tennessee, 1860–1920’ is an ongoing project that combines the resources and expertise of James E. Walker Library with help from the Department of Geosciences, MTSU’s Center for Historic Preservation (CHP), and a dedicated group of community historians.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 5 Sites to Discover the Best YouTube Channels and Creators Recommended for You. “You’ve probably subscribed to a few channels already. Then YouTube has recommended a few others you might like based on that. But let’s face it, these are often quite bad. So if you’re sick of irrelevant YouTube recommendations for channels, you need to go away from its algorithm and find other ways to discover creators.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Asbarez: Project SAVE Photograph Archives Announces Artist and Research Residencies. “As part of its ongoing new initiatives, Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives is launching residencies for artists and researchers. The residencies will take place twice a year and are by invitation only, for the time being. The first residency is planned for this fall.”

Engadget: Your favorite podcast might be making thousands for inviting guests. “Bloomberg has learned that podcast guests are routinely paying big money to appear on popular podcasts. Guestio, a marketplace for these deals, has seen huge transactions in the past six months. Four podcasters made $20,000 from charging for appearances, while one made $50,000. The most profitable show, Entrepreneurs on Fire, regularly charges $3,500 for guest spots and has sometimes taken a cut of product sales.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: FTC aims to counter the “massive scale” of online data collection. “The Federal Trade Commission has kicked off the rulemaking process for privacy regulations that could restrict online surveillance and punish bad data-security practices. It’s a move that some privacy advocates say is long overdue, as similar Congressional efforts face endless uncertainty.”

NSW Government (Australia): National defamation reform for search engines and social media opens for comment. “Australians are invited to have their say on new proposals released today to modernise national defamation law for search engines and social media sites. NSW Attorney General Mark Speakman said the reforms, led by NSW, focus on the extent to which internet intermediaries should be liable for reputation-damaging material published by third party users online.”

BBC: Tiktok: Suspected gangs tout English Channel migrant crossings on platform. “Suspected people smugglers are using TikTok to advertise illegal entry into the UK via the English Channel. The BBC has found a number of people claiming they can guarantee safe passage and calm waters for £5,000. The Home Office said posts which ‘promote lethal crossings’ were unacceptable, but there are calls for more to be done to stop people-smuggling being advertised online.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

VentureBeat: University of Michigan data platform eases collecting, storing and securing information. “Imagine a data platform that can help improve community resilience to natural disasters, avoid potential supply chain disruptions and accurately predict infectious disease outbreaks. Those are among the goals of a new data platform being developed by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR), which was awarded a $38 million investment from the National Science Foundation (NSF) earlier this year.”

Newswise: UCLA researchers use artificial intelligence tools to speed critical information on drug overdose deaths. “An automated process based on computer algorithms that can read text from medical examiners’ death certificates can substantially speed up data collection of overdose deaths – which in turn can ensure a more rapid public health response time than the system currently used, new UCLA research finds.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Los Alamos National Laboratory: Math error: A new study overturns 100-year-old understanding of color perception. “A paradigm shift away from the 3D mathematical description developed by Schrödinger and others to describe how we see color could yield more vibrant computer displays, TVs, printed materials, textiles and more.” 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 13, 2022 at 05:28PM
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Friday, August 12, 2022

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…

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 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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Thursday, August 11, 2022

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/ .

Screenshot from 2022-08-11 13-34-38

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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Wednesday, August 10, 2022

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…

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August 11, 2022 at 12:38AM
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