Universe Mapping, Internet Archive, Minnesota Court Records, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, August 17, 2022

Universe Mapping, Internet Archive, Minnesota Court Records, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, August 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Hawaii at Mānoa: UH astronomers produce catalog to extensively map universe. “What does our universe look like at the largest size scales? A team of researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (IfA) and Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary has produced a massive new catalog of high-fidelity distance estimates to more than 350 million galaxies, revealing the soap-bubble structure of the universe in detail.”

Internet Archive: New additions to the Internet Archive for July 2022. “Many items are added to the Internet Archive’s collections every month, by us and by our patrons. Here’s a round up of some of the new media you might want to check out. Logging in might be required to borrow certain items.” Far more new content than I can summarize here.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Minnesota Judicial Branch: Hearing and Judgment Search Now Available Through Minnesota Court Records Online. “The Minnesota Judicial Branch today announced two new search functions have been added to Minnesota Court Records Online (MCRO). A Hearing Search now allows users to search for individual court hearings, and a Judgment Search allows users to search for docketed monetary judgments and related information.”

Poynter: Australia’s news media bargaining code pries $140 million from Google and Facebook. “More than a year after Australian political parties across the spectrum united around a law that pushed Google and Facebook to pay for the news they distribute, a further 24 smaller media outlets will now receive money from Google. This means that Google has made deals with essentially all qualifying media companies. These deals, and those struck with Facebook, have injected well over $200 million AUD into Australian journalism each year according to Rod Sims, the former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission who initiated the Code.”

USEFUL STUFF

Washington Post: From W-2s to nudes, here’s how to hide sensitive photos. “Maybe you snapped an image of your Social Security card, birth certificate or W-2 form. Maybe you want to keep your kids’ bathtub photos in a safe place. Maybe you’re not quite ready to hit ‘delete’ on those vacation photos with your ex. Or maybe you’re one of the way-too-many people who accidentally showed a sexy photo to a restaurant host while looking for their vaccine cards. Whatever your inspiration, here’s how to hide sensitive photos from prying eyes and ruthless auto-generated slide shows.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

University of Cambridge: Do not try this at home: Medieval medicine under the spotlight in major new project. “Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries – a new two-year project to digitise, catalogue and conserve over 180 medieval manuscripts – has launched at Cambridge University Library. It will focus on manuscripts containing approximately 8,000 unedited medical recipes and will bring together unique and irreplaceable handwritten books from across the world-class collections of the University Library, the Fitzwilliam Museum and a dozen Cambridge colleges.”

Drive: Google Maps blamed for family left stranded in outback. “A family rescued from outback New South Wales has blamed Google Maps for sending their Hyundai Tucson down an inaccessible track, according to 9News. Despite a single asphalt road connecting the remote towns of Tibooburra and Packsaddle in the north west of NSW, it’s understood the Hyundai Tucson was located about 50km southeast of Tibooburra.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: I’m a security reporter and got fooled by a blatant phish . “I also have long held the belief that phishers aren’t all that bright, else they’d rely on more technical means of breaching a target’s security. That gave me a sense of invincibility. The person behind the DM almost certainly relied on a script that either monitored new Twitter verifications or my timeline and swooped in almost immediately after the verification went into effect, probably with the use of an automated script. In retrospect, that’s an obvious thing for a phisher to do, but it hadn’t occurred to me before that someone would be this determined and resourceful.”

CNET: Oracle Starts Auditing TikTok’s Algorithms Amid Security Concerns. “Axios, citing an unnamed source, reported Tuesday that Oracle began the review last week and that the company will help ensure that Chinese authorities aren’t manipulating TikTok’s algorithms. TikTok’s algorithms help determine what videos the platform recommends to its more than 1 billion monthly active users. In June, TikTok announced it routed all US user traffic to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.”

ProPublica: What Happened When Twitter and Other Social Media Platforms Cracked Down on Extremists. “In a Q&A with ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson, former intelligence officer and data scientist Welton Chang explains how conspiracy theorists and violent racists fled to smaller platforms. Once there, their remarks festered and spread.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: Google Search Is Quietly Damaging Democracy. “Google’s latest desire to answer our questions for us, rather than requiring us to click on the returns and find the answers for ourselves, is not particularly problematic if what you’re seeking is a straightforward fact like how many ounces make up a gallon. The problem is, many rely on search engines to seek out information about more convoluted topics. And, as my research reveals, this shift can lead to incorrect returns that often disrupt democratic participation, confirm unsubstantiated claims, and are easily manipulatable by people looking to spread falsehoods.”

Government Accountability Office: Breaking Down Barriers to Broadband Access. “What would your life be like without broadband internet? For many people, it’s hard to imagine not having critical services and resources at their fingertips on a daily basis. But millions of people—mostly in rural areas—still don’t have broadband access…. Federal efforts to provide broadband access to all span multiple presidential administrations. Today’s WatchBlog post explores our work about some of the ongoing challenges to achieving this goal.” Good morning, Internet…

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August 17, 2022 at 05:27PM
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Alabama Department of Archives and History, Google Doodles, Gmail, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 16, 2022

Alabama Department of Archives and History, Google Doodles, Gmail, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 16, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WSFA: New user-friendly website highlights Alabama Department of Archives and History resources. “The new website includes robust databases for conducting historical and genealogical research in the ADAH’s extensive archival collections. Those resources are curated by ADAH staff and include an events calendar for at-a-glance information about ADAH programs, a new database of retention schedules and other helpful resources on records management for state and local government offices.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Business Insider: Why Google employees fear the worst as the company quietly extends its hiring freeze. “Google employees are on edge as the company has yet to reverse what was meant to be a two-week hiring freeze, and some have described a ‘real vibe change.'”

CNET: Teen’s Google Doodle Highlights Importance of Having Support. “Sometimes, caring for yourself means recognizing that there are others in the world who are also there to help you. That realization is the cornerstone of a Doodle created by high schooler Sophie Araque-Liu. Google announced Tuesday that her Doodle, titled Not Alone, is the winner of the 2022 Doodle for Google competition, an annual contest open to school kids across the US.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Get the Old Gmail Design Back. “Google is switching up the design for Gmail to bring it more in line with changes across the company’s other services. But if you see the new look and hate it, you can still hold on to the old look for a little longer. It’s unclear how long this option will last, but for now you can switch back to the previous design with just a couple of clicks.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Yale News: Digital project supports ‘bibliographic turn’ in Black literary studies. “Yale’s Jacqueline Goldsby and Meredith McGill of Rutgers University recently received a $1.7 million grant from The Mellon Foundation to support the development of The Black Bibliography Project (BBP), an initiative that aims to revive and transform descriptive bibliography for African American and Black Diaspora literary studies.”

Associated Press: From Mecca to the Vatican, exploring sacred sites with VR. “Click and gape at the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel ceiling up close. Click again and join thousands of pilgrims praying and circling around the cube-shaped Kaaba at Islam’s most sacred site. Or strap on a headset and enter the holy city of Jerusalem. There you’ll hear the murmur of Jewish prayers at the Western Wall or thousands of worshippers saying amen in unison at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. You can even light a virtual candle at the site where Christians believe Jesus rose from the grave. All without ever leaving home.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Hackers attack UK water supplier with 1.6 million customers. “South Staffordshire Water, a company supplying 330 million liters of drinking water to 1.6 consumers daily, has issued a statement confirming IT disruption from a cyberattack. As the announcement explains, the safety and water distribution systems are still operational, so the disruption of the IT systems doesn’t impact the supply of safe water to its customers or those of its subsidiaries, Cambridge Water and South Staffs Water.”

Los Angeles Times: Column: Shame, suicide attempts, ‘financial death’ — the devastating toll of a crypto firm’s failure. “To hundreds of Celsius’ 1.7 million customers, the value of the $11.7 billion in assets they deposited with the firm might as well be zero. ‘[Alex] Mashinsky always talked very confidently about how strong Celsius was and how much better than banks,’ recalls Harold M. Lott, 35, a Nashville-area nurse who had as much as $14,000 in cryptocurrency assets deposited at Celsius at the peak of the crypto market. ‘He never gave any indication that there was a problem,’ Lott says. ‘But suddenly, out of the blue, they just stopped all transfers.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Iowa State University: Researchers explore how people adapt to cybersickness from virtual reality. “In health care, VR has been used to prepare surgeons for complicated operations and help burn patients better manage their pain. In education, it’s opened doors for students to tour world famous museums, historical sites – even the human brain. But Jonathan Kelly, a professor of psychology and human computer interaction at Iowa State University, says the biggest barrier to VR becoming mainstream is cybersickness. Previous studies show more than half of first-time headset users experience the phenomenon within 10 minutes of being exposed to VR.”

Stanford Engineering: How to design algorithms with fairness in mind. “In this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything, computer science professor Omer Reingold explains how we can create definitions of fairness that can be incorporated into computer algorithms. Reingold and host, bioengineer Russ Altman, also discuss how flawed historic data may result in algorithms making unfair decisions and how a technique called multi-group fairness can improve health predictions for individuals.” Audio link and YouTube video with excellent captions. 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 17, 2022 at 12:50AM
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Search US Senator Twitter Space by Party, Gender, Generation… and Zodiac Sign?

Search US Senator Twitter Space by Party, Gender, Generation… and Zodiac Sign?
By researchbuzz2

Last week I wrote an article about making my GitHub collection of search gizmos easier to use and got some nice feedback. That’s good, because I find building these things scratches an itch in my brain; it’s like search engines, computing, and Lego all at the same time. It’s also so absorbing that it gives me some temporary relief from my anxiety, for which I’m very grateful.

Of course, me being me, my programs sometimes get a little odd. Say hello to Senator Social Slices (Twitter Edition), which you can try for yourself at  https://researchbuzz.github.io/Senator-Social-Slices-Twitter/

Senator Social Slices lets you search the Twitter accounts of current US Senators after filtering them by a number of parameters: birth decade/generation, Zodiac sign, gender, political party, percentage of votes missed, and percentage of times that they voted against their home party. You’ll need a ProPublica API key, but they’re free. You can get one from https://www.propublica.org/datastore/api/propublica-congress-api .

Once you choose your filters, enter your API key, and hit the button, you’ll get a list of your filtered choices and links to Twitter searches.

Click the link and you’ll go straight to a Twitter search result:

This was fun but I did it mostly as a proof-of-concept – could I extract Senator characteristics from the ProPublica API and apply them to a filtered Twitter search? Resounding yes. The problem is that tweets are short. There’s not a lot of text to search so you can’t get too sophisticated with your queries when you’re exploring this space.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could apply this same kind of filtering to a larger pool of posted politician text?

Someplace like, say, Facebook?

Stay tuned.

And thanks for reading.

August 16, 2022 at 06:51PM
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Javanese Manuscripts, 1947 Partition, Elections Misinformation, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, August 16, 2022

Javanese Manuscripts, 1947 Partition, Elections Misinformation, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, August 16, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

British Library Blog: 40 more Javanese manuscripts now accessible online . “In May 2022 the Bollinger Javanese Manuscripts Digitisation Project was launched, aiming to digitise a further 120 Javanese manuscripts from the British Library collection. We are delighted to announce that 40 more Javanese manuscripts have now been published online, and can be accessed directly through the live hyperlinks on the Digital Access to Javanese Manuscripts page or via the Digitised Manuscripts portal.”

Youth Journalism International: Preserving memories of the 1947 partition that divided India and Pakistan into separate nations. “Memories of the August 14, 1947 partition of India and Pakistan ‘nearly disappeared into the abyss of time,’ said the founder of an online archive dedicated to preserving oral histories of the time so that ‘history will not be forgotten.'”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: On TikTok, Election Misinformation Thrives Ahead of Midterms. “In Germany, TikTok accounts impersonated prominent political figures during the country’s last national election. In Colombia, misleading TikTok posts falsely attributed a quotation from one candidate to a cartoon villain and allowed a woman to masquerade as another candidate’s daughter. In the Philippines, TikTok videos amplified sugarcoated myths about the country’s former dictator and helped his son prevail in the country’s presidential race. Now, similar problems have arrived in the United States.”

University of Hawaii News: $148K project to digitize thousands of rare, native plant specimens . “The three-year, $148,882 grant will help School of Life Sciences Assistant Professor Karolina Heyduk and her team to digitize and catalog more than 55,000 plant specimens, many of which are extinct, to preserve and improve access worldwide to one of the oldest collections of Pacific plants.”

BuzzFeed News: Medical Experts Are Becoming Influencers Amid All The Anxiety Over Monkeypox. “COVID introduced us to the virus influencer: doctors and science writers on Twitter and Instagram who built huge social profiles — many of which translated into media appearances — by sharing news, information, and takes on an unknown virus during a history-defining pandemic. And now, with monkeypox having been declared a public health emergency, we’re seeing a similar shift, and many sensationalist medical experts have dominated the conversation as people search for answers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

AFP: China’s Taiwan drills accompanied by wave of misinformation. “China raged against a visit to Taipei by United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sending warships, missiles and jets into the waters and skies around its self-ruled neighbour. At the same time pro-China posts flooded social media with false and misleading claims about Pelosi and her Taiwanese hosts. Many were posts sharing old military footage alongside claims they showed real military drills, mainly by China.”

WIRED: A New Jailbreak for John Deere Tractors Rides the Right-to-Repair Wave. “At the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas on Saturday, the hacker known as Sick Codes is presenting a new jailbreak for John Deere & Co. tractors that allows him to take control of multiple models through their touchscreens.”

BBC: Chinese internet giants hand algorithm data to government. “Chinese internet giants including Alibaba, Tiktok-owner ByteDance and Tencent have shared details of their algorithms with China’s regulators for the first time.” WOW.

RESEARCH & OPINION

Penn State: Deepfakes expose vulnerabilities in certain facial recognition technology. “Mobile devices use facial recognition technology to help users quickly and securely unlock their phones, make a financial transaction or access medical records. But facial recognition technologies that employ a specific user-detection method are highly vulnerable to deepfake-based attacks that could lead to significant security concerns for users and applications, according to new research involving the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology.”

University of Florida News: What job applicants need to know about AI in hiring. “Artificially intelligent programs now routinely screen job applications, often before a human hiring manager ever sees a single resume. Companies are also increasingly turning to AI job interviews, a kind of recorded interview that can screen for job knowledge and even analyze body language. At the end of the day, the same skills that work for the traditional hiring process can be applied to this brave new world. Here are some simple tips on how to sail through the AI systems so you can land your dream job.”

Bellingcat: These are the Tools Open Source Researchers Say They Need. “Researchers told us that the tools they are most likely to use need to be free, clearly describing what they are capable of doing and how they can be used. Given that only a quarter of our respondents knew how to use the command line, tools which do not require more advanced technical skills are particularly welcome. Nearly 200 of our respondents provided concrete suggestions for tools which could help them in their work, which we have provided in a publicly-accessible spreadsheet.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Phys .org: Listen to the call: Scientists recreate the song of a 150-year-old insect that could help rediscover its species. “A museum specimen has been heard for the first time in 150 years after scientists digitally recreated its song. The body shape and song of Prophalangopsis obscura could help give researchers clues about where the insect might still be living after being lost for over a century.” 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 16, 2022 at 05:33PM
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Bee-Friendly Pollinator Plants, Mailchimp, Midjourney, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 15, 2022

Bee-Friendly Pollinator Plants, Mailchimp, Midjourney, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 15, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Phys .org: New online resource can help users ‘bee’ friendly when it comes to planting for pollinators. “An online database developed at the University of Sussex which documents pollinator-plant interactions, could help the public understand how to plant for pollinators and support biodiversity.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Decrypt: Mailchimp Resumes Crackdown on Crypto Newsletters Including Messari, Edge. “The email marketing platform Mailchimp has been suspending the accounts of crypto-related content creators and media outlets this week. The list of affected customers includes self-custody crypto wallet Edge, crypto intelligence firm Messari, and Decrypt, which had been using Mailchimp for its newsletter for more than four years.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: How to Create Synthetic AI Art With Midjourney. “AI-based image generators like DALL-E 2 have boomed in popularity. People love to enter bizarre prompts and see what gets spit out. Midjourney is one of the more advanced tools for this, and you can try it now.”

Consumer Reports: Best Music Streaming Services. “Music streaming is one of the rare corners of the tech industry where multiple companies have a decent shot at attracting the same customers. That forces the streaming giants into a constant race to add features, match competitors’ perks, and keep prices low to hold on to subscribers. Listeners get to enjoy the benefits of services that just keep getting better.” I use Tidal and can definitely tell the difference in sound quality, even through my basic desktop speakers.

Social Media Examiner: How to Create and Promote Idea Pins on Pinterest. “Pinterest launched idea pins in May 2021, giving businesses and creators a brand-new option to build multi-page video content. Idea pins can include up to 20 pages of videos, images, or a combination of the two.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNN: How a tiny nonprofit with no full-time employees became the foremost tracker of gun violence in America. “Yet for all its influence in providing that data, the Gun Violence Archive is remarkably small-scale. The organization is funded almost entirely by a single octogenarian donor, has no office space or any full-time employees, and is led by a bushy-bearded Kentucky gun owner who sold several of his firearms to help launch the group. That this bare-bones organization informs the highest levels of power underscores the startling lack of timely, standardized data on American gun violence.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mother Jones: “It’s Potentially Illegal”: As Crypto Crashed, Coinbase Stopped Some Notifications. “Coinbase’s decision to stop email notifications in the middle of a dramatic cryptocurrency crash has not been previously reported. But academics who spoke to Mother Jones note that Coinbase’s decision likely contributed to losses for retail crypto investors who may otherwise have sold their holdings ahead of further devaluation. The change to price updates could run afoul of federal or state consumer protection laws, they said, particularly if it hurt the wallets of any of the relatively inexperienced traders who flocked to crypto in droves during the pandemic.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Motherboard: Widely Mocked Anti-Piracy Ads Made People Pirate More, Study Finds. “An infamous anti-piracy ad from 2004 tried to convince us all that downloading a pirated movie is no different than stealing a car. We’ve all seen it, but according to a new study published in The Information Society, we were not convinced. In fact, the study found that by hugely overstating the negative impact of piracy, the ad may have caused people to pirate even more.”

The Conversation: Don’t be too quick to blame social media for America’s polarization – cable news has a bigger effect, study finds. “…when scientists investigated social media echo chambers, they found surprisingly little evidence of them on a large scale – or at least none on a scale large enough to warrant the growing concerns. And yet, selective exposure to news does increase polarization. This suggested that these studies missed part of the picture of Americans’ news consumption patterns. Crucially, they did not factor in a major component of the average American’s experience of news: television.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

PSU Vanguard: The monks behind the books. “If you’ve ever walked the stacks of Portland State’s Branford Price Miller Library, you’ve likely noticed the distinctive hard-cloth bindings on a number of books on the shelves. From academic journals to dissertations, many of the library’s specialty bookbinding needs are performed by a community of Trappist monks from the Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey in Carlton, Oregon.” 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 16, 2022 at 12:18AM
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Video Playlist For ‘120 Minutes’, Oral History How-Tos, Yorescape, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 14, 2022

Video Playlist For ‘120 Minutes’, Oral History How-Tos, Yorescape, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 14, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Laughing Squid: An Amazing Playlist of the Entire MTV ‘120 Minutes’ Catalog Featuring Over 2,500 Music Videos. “Chris Reynolds put together an amazing video playlist featuring every alternative music video that was played on the classic MTV series 120 Minutes. The series first ran from 1986 to 2003 and was resurrected for a short time in 2011. This remarkable archive includes 2,512 music videos and was made with Tune My Music, a service that transfers playlists from other resources to YouTube.”

The Canadian Encyclopedia: How to Make an Oral History Podcast. “This toolkit has been created to help you through the steps of creating an oral history podcast: how to conduct research, how to interview subjects, and how to incorporate an interview into a script that tells a story. It introduces activities, in-person or virtual, that guide students in planning their own podcast episodes.” A 12-page resource presented as a digital booklet. Looks like it would be useful for teachers, but also for genealogists; it provides lots of ideas about interviewing people for their oral histories.

New-to-me, from MakeUseOf: How to Explore Ancient Landmarks With Yorescape. “Flyover Zone is a ‘virtual tourism company’ that digitally reconstructs world history sites in 360-degree virtual environments. They’ve been at this for a while now, but a platform and app system called Yorescape collects all of their content and publishes it all in one place.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNN: How Google found itself under pressure from all sides after Roe’s demise. “In mid-June, one week before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, more than 20 Congressional Democrats wrote a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. In it, they urged the company to prevent searches for abortion clinics from returning results and ads that direct users to facilities that actually oppose the procedure, noting it could put women’s health at risk. The next month, 17 Republican attorneys general wrote a letter to Pichai pushing for the opposite.”

TechCrunch: Dropbase can help turn your messy spreadsheet into queryable SQL database. “It’s not unusual for a tech company to be born by accident. Famously, Slack was created as a byproduct of a now defunct gaming company. Similarly, when Dropbase founders Jimmy Chan and Ayazhan Zhakhan were in the Y Combinator Winter 20 batch, they were testing the product they had built at the time and accidentally stumbled upon the thing that would become Dropbase.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ABC News (Australia): Google fined $60 million for misleading some Australian mobile users about collection of location data. “Google has been slapped with a $60 million fine for some misleading consumers about the collection and use of their personal location data on Android phones between January 2017 and December 2018.”

CNN: Account bearing Ohio FBI standoff suspect’s name encouraged violence against the agency in posts on Trump social media platform. “An account bearing the name of Ricky Shiffer, the man authorities say they killed after he tried Thursday to breach an FBI field office in Cincinnati, made posts on the social media platform founded by Donald Trump referencing the attempt to storm the office and encouraging others online to prepare for a revolutionary-type war.”

NBC News: A pro-Johnny Depp YouTuber was sent a cease-and-desist after she targeted an employee of Amber Heard’s PR team. “A pro-Johnny Depp YouTuber was spreading lies and conspiracy theories about an employee of the public relations firm that works with Amber Heard, a law firm said in a cease-and-desist letter.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: AI algorithm that detects brain abnormalities could help cure epilepsy. “An artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that can detect subtle brain abnormalities which cause epileptic seizures has been developed by a UCL-led team of international researchers.”

The Next Web: Ask the suspect to turn sideways. “Researchers have discovered a surprisingly simple way to detect deepfake video calls: ask the suspect to turn sideways. The trick was shared this week by Metaphysic.ai, a London-based startup behind the viral Tom Cruise deepfakes.” 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 15, 2022 at 12:35AM
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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…

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August 14, 2022 at 05:32PM
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