Thursday, August 18, 2022

University of Georgia Speakers, Microsoft PowerToys, TikTok, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 18, 2022

University of Georgia Speakers, Microsoft PowerToys, TikTok, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Digital Library of Georgia: Fifty Years of Speakers Honored at the University of Georgia School of Law Now Available Online. “The collection features photographs of U.S. and Georgia political and legal figures during the latter part of the 20th century. Former President Jimmy Carter; U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas; and U.S. Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Dean Rusk are among the prominent national figures. Important legal leaders include Lawrence Lessig, Brooksley Born, and Sarah Weddington. Georgia politicians include former Governors Carl Sanders, Roy Barnes, and Zell Miller; U.S. Senators Max Cleland and Sam Nunn; among others.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Windows Central: Microsoft PowerToys adding tool for extracting text from images. “A new tool for Microsoft PowerToys will allow the app to extract text from images. The feature, referred to as PowerOCR on GitHub, is in its early stages.”

TechCrunch: A new TikTok feature lets creators share TikTok Stories to Facebook and Instagram. “TikTok confirmed to TechCrunch it’s launching a new sharing feature that will allow users to publish their TikTok Stories — a feature it has been piloting since last year — to rival social networks, including both Facebook and Instagram.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Spot a Bot on Twitter . “Unfortunately, amid the thousands of Tweets that come up on your Twitter timeline, a sizable portion of them could be artificial opinions, created to mislead the Twitter community. These engineered opinions—typically spread by bots—can cause a lot of damage. So, how can you identify these bots in order to protect yourself from being misled?”

TechRepublic: How to use Google Data Studio: A beginner’s guide with examples. “Try this free, browser-based data visualization tool that connects to hundreds of data sources and lets you create, collaborate and share interactive charts and reports.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Gen Z TikTok creators are turning against Amazon. “A coalition of top TikTok stars is pledging to cease all work with Amazon — including shutting down storefronts and halting new partnerships with the e-commerce platform — until the company meets the demands of the Amazon Labor Union.”

BBC: Ewen Bain’s Angus Og cartoons to be digitised and conserved. “A collection of Angus Og cartoons that appeared in newspapers from the 1960s to 1989 are to be digitised and conserved. The Angus Og character was created by cartoonist Ewen Bain and his adventures were based on the fabled Isle of Drambeg in the Utter Hebrides.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Malicious browser extensions targeted almost 7 million people. “Almost 7 million users have attempted to install malicious browser extensions since 2020, with 70% of those extensions used as adware to target users with advertisements. The most common payloads carried by malicious web browser extensions during the first half of 2022 belonged to adware families, snooping on browsing activity and promoting affiliate links.”

CNN: Arizona Republican secretary of state nominee kept ‘Treason Watch List’ and posted about stockpiling ammunition on Pinterest. “The Republican nominee for secretary of state in Arizona is a self-proclaimed member of the far-right extremist group the Oath Keepers who repeatedly shared anti-government conspiracies and posts about stockpiling ammunition on social media.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Newswise: Baylor Study Combines Lithophane, 3D Printing to Enable Blind Individuals to “See” Data. “In an article published today in Science Advances, the researchers detail how they used lithophane – an old-fashioned art form – and 3D printing to turn scientific data into tactile graphics that glow with video-like resolution, enabling universal visualization of the same piece of data by both blind and sighted individuals.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 19, 2022 at 12:50AM
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UK Movie Accessibility, TikTok Elections Center, Texas Economic Development, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, August 18, 2022

UK Movie Accessibility, TikTok Elections Center, Texas Economic Development, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, August 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Film Stories: New website to support accessible film screenings for deaf and blind audiences launches in the UK. “A new website for the UK, which is the first of its kind, aims to make cinema accessible to all. Sidecard is a searchable database, which records details relating to film access materials, such as subtitle and audio description files.”

TechCrunch: TikTok launches an in-app US midterms Elections Center, shares plan to fight misinformation. “The new feature will allow users to access state-by-state election information, including details on how to register to vote, how to vote by mail, how to find your polling place and more, provided by TikTok partner NASS (the National Association of Secretaries of State).”

Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts: Texas Comptroller’s Office Announces Local Economic Agreement Database is Now Online. “Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar today announced his agency has created an online database for local governments to report their economic development agreements authorized by either Chapter 380 or Chapter 381 of the Local Government Code. The searchable database allows the public to search for agreements by local government, business entity and agreement type.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Reddit launches a new developer portal to give third-party apps and bots a boost. “Reddit is announcing today that it will open up a waitlist for developers who want to build software for the platform using a new toolkit from the company. The company plans to pair the new toolkit with a directory of third-party software extensions that moderators and Redditors alike can browse from to craft a custom Reddit experience. The new portal will offer tools and other resources to empower devs to build software extensions to enhance the social network’s existing experience.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

IANS: Cabinet approves widening access to traditional knowledge digital library database. “The Union Cabinet in its meeting held on Wednesday, approved a proposal to widen the database of traditional knowledge digital library (TKDL) for users. Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur said at a press conference that opening up of the TKDL database for users would help in providing greater access to Indian traditional knowledge.”

New York Daily News: Boston Children’s Hospital condemns right-wing lies about treatments for transgender minors. “Boston Children’s Hospital has been forced to publicly deny that its doctors are performing hysterectomies for minors after far-right anti-LGBTQ groups spread false reports online.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Update Chrome now to patch actively exploited zero-day . “The exploit was reported by Ashley Shen and Christian Resell of the Google Threat Analysis Group, and that’s all the information we have for now. Details of the exploit are currently tucked behind a wall in the Chromium bugs group and are restricted to those actively working on related components and registered with Chromium. After a certain percentage of users have applied the relevant updates, those details may be revealed.”

Department of Defense: DOD Releases First Departmentwide Social Media Policy. “The Defense Department today released a policy that for the first time spells out, from the highest levels of the defense community, how DOD military and civilian personnel should use official social media accounts to best advance the mission of the U.S. military and further instill trust in the credibility of the DOD.”

Washington Post: Swizz Beatz, Timbaland sue Triller for $28 million in missing payments. “Music artists Swizz Beatz and Timbaland sued Triller Tuesday, alleging the social media platform owes them more than $28 million after acquiring their live-streaming music series Verzuz.” Some October 2020 background on Triller from the NYT.

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Florida: My Tutor is an AI: The Effects of Involvement and Tutor Type on Perceived Quality, Perceived Credibility, and Use Intention. “Artificial Intelligence is now being used to help tutor students at all educational levels. AI tutors can enhance learning outcomes such as facilitating various teaching-learning practices within and outside the classroom, supporting students 24/7, and providing students from economically disadvantaged areas access to all kinds of learning materials without being in the same geographical location. Yet, despite the now somewhat ubiquitous nature of AI tutoring, many students, teachers, and parents are skeptical of their efficacy.”

PR Newswire: CyberRatings.org Announces New Web Browser Test Results for 2022 (PRESS RELEASE). “CyberRatings.org, the non-profit entity dedicated to providing transparency on cybersecurity product efficacy, has published the results of its 2022 Web Browser Security Test. Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox were tested for Phishing Protection and Malware Protection running on Windows 10 and 11.”

Virginia Tech: Historical costume descriptors bridge gap between past and present. “The objective is to compare language from the past with new language that we use today to describe costume artifacts across different time periods. The Oris Glisson Historic Costume and Textile Collection will be digitized and made available to the public, increasing accessibility and access.” 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 18, 2022 at 05:31PM
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Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, TikTok, Google Sheets, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 17, 2022

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, TikTok, Google Sheets, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Boing Boing: New BB series! “Updating the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction”. “The HDSF — based on the OED Science Fiction Citations Project, a 2001 effort to crowdsource quotations for the Oxford English Dictionary — is a full-fledged dictionary of SF on historical principles, meaning that every entry is illustrated with contextual quotations showing exactly how a term has been used over time.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Chrome “Feed” is tantalizing, but it’s not the return of Google Reader. “Does Google enjoy teasing and sometimes outright torturing some of its products’ most devoted fans? It can seem that way. Tucked away inside a recent bleeding-edge Chrome build is a ‘Following feed’ that has some bloggers dreaming of the return of Google Reader. It’s unlikely, but never say never when it comes to Google product decisions.” NewsBlur and Feedly are both excellent RSS readers.

Engadget: TikTok adds an AI image generator, but it’s no DALL-E. “The Verge notes TikTok has introduced a rudimentary ‘AI greenscreen’ effect in its Android and iOS apps that turns your text descriptions into artwork. It’s much simpler than OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, producing abstract blobs rather than photorealistic depictions, but it might do the trick if you want an original background for your latest video.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: 6 Effective Ways to Use Explore in Google Sheets. “The Explore feature works differently in Google Sheets than in Google Docs. You can use it to get useful details about your data to help you analyze it. You can also use pieces that the tool provides in your spreadsheet. If you’re looking for a handy way to learn more about the data in your Google Sheet, here are various ways to use the Explore feature.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WPXI: University of Pittsburgh Library System receives $1M grant from the Hillman Foundation. “The $1 million grant, a gift of the Henry L. Hillman Foundation, will support the final preparations in the library’s efforts to open the August Wilson archives to the public. The library system acquired the archive in 2020 and has been working to process and share the archive with the public over the past two years. The archive will open in Jan. 2023, and a week-long celebration of the legacy of Pittsburgh-born playwright August Wilson, in collaboration with local cultural organizations, is slated for March 2023.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: How Frustration Over TikTok Has Mounted in Washington. “National security concerns over the Chinese-owned viral video app remain unresolved. Lawmakers and regulators are increasingly pushing for action.”

Australian Associated Press: High Court rules Google not a publisher. “Australia’s highest court has ruled Google is not legally responsible for defamatory news articles as it is not the publisher of such content. A majority of High Court justices on Wednesday found Google was not the publisher of a defamatory article by The Age about a Victorian lawyer, as it was a search engine that only provided hyperlinks to news stories.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Berkeley News: Machine translation could make English-only science accessible to all. “Machine learning using artificial intelligence has improved computer translation over the past decade, but scientific articles employing specialized jargon are still a challenge for machine translation. Nevertheless, scientists should prioritize translating articles into multiple languages to provide an equitable landscape for budding scientists worldwide, UC Berkeley researchers argue.”

The Guardian: Online cultural events can benefit lonely older people, study shows. “We remember it all too well from the first lockdown. The obligatory weekly Zoom quizzes and the stream of cultural events held online. While most of us can head down to the local pub again and delight in the return of good old Sunday quizzes, some people are still stuck at home. And research suggests online cultural activities such as museum tours can significantly improve the mental and physical health of elderly people who are homebound.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Sputtering Daguerreotypes, Batman!. “The earliest Daguerreotype plates were made physically, by rolling a copper-silver plate thinner and thinner until the silver layer was just right. Good luck finding a source of Daguerreotype plates made this way in 2022…. On the other hand, magnetron sputtering is a process of depositing pure metal in thin layers using plasma, high voltages, and serious magnets, and [Koji Tokura] is making his own sputtered Daguerreotype plates this way, giving him the best of both worlds: the surreal almost-holographic quality of the Daguerreotype with the most difficult film preparation procedure imaginable.” 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 18, 2022 at 12:47AM
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Supporting Ukrainian Grandparents, Yandex, Saving Cultural Heritage, More: Ukraine Update, August 17, 2022

Supporting Ukrainian Grandparents, Yandex, Saving Cultural Heritage, More: Ukraine Update, August 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

GlobalNews: Adopt a Ukrainian grandparent: online portal launches to help Kharkiv’s most vulnerable. “As well as organizing evacuations from the Luhansk, Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, Rescue Now has created an online database of elderly and vulnerable locals that features a brief bio, photo and fundraising goals for each of them for each month, depending on their needs. It’s almost like hundreds of GoFundMe pages accumulated in one place.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bloomberg: Putin Aide Leads Talks on Fate of Russia’s Top Internet Company Yandex. “One of President Vladimir Putin’s top Kremlin aides is leading negotiations to decide the fate of Russia’s most popular search engine, whose founder was sanctioned over Yandex NV’s portrayal of the war in Ukraine, according to three people familiar with the talks.”

New York Times: Rescuing Art in Ukraine with Foam, Crates and Cries for Help. “Many cultural institutions were not prepared to protect their collections and buildings before the Russian invasion, so ad hoc groups of arts workers and leaders stepped in to fill the breach.”

The Scotsman: How Ukraine’s librarians mobilised to fight the Russian culture war. “When war broke out in Ukraine, it was not only the troops who mobilised – but the librarians too. Within days, libraries across the country had set up initiatives to supply books to citizens sheltering in underground Metro stations, had created centres for refugees displaced within Ukraine in library buildings and diversified to set up to act as hubs to supply military equipment and essentials to the hastily-formed army.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNN: He was abducted and tortured by Russian soldiers. Then they started using his Instagram to push pro-Kremlin propaganda. “[Igor] Kurayan, who was freed in a prisoner exchange in late April after nearly a month of detention, is one of several Ukrainians to be abducted from occupied areas of the country’s southeast in recent months and then sucked into the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. Some of their social media pages have been used to promote pro-Kremlin talking points, while others have appeared in staged TV interviews in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.”

Daily Beast: How NASA Is Accidentally Helping People Spy on Putin’s War. “For people trying to track the conflict only from public sources, FIRMS can be a lifesaver. Social media coverage of the war in Ukraine is a deluge of claims, counterclaims, unattributed or misattributed footage of fighting, as well as actors pushing their own agendas.”

AFP: The curators saving Ukraine’s heritage at all costs. “When she understood Russian troops were advancing in the region of Zaporizhzhia, Natalya Chergik helped to fill a truck with a ton of paintings, antique firearms and 17th-century ceramics.”

Poynter: How ‘War on Fakes’ uses fact-checking to spread pro-Russia propaganda. “War on Fakes claims to be a fact-checking service…. But a review by PolitiFact shows that its ‘fact-checks’ are actually pieces of disinformation that use well-known techniques of Russian propaganda — incoherence, a high volume of claims, repetition and the statement of obvious falsehoods— to confuse readers trying to understand what is happening in Ukraine.”

New York Times: How Russian Propaganda Is Reaching Beyond English Speakers. “Social media companies have taken steps to restrict Russian state media accounts. But posts from those accounts still spread in Spanish, Arabic and other languages and in places outside the West.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: From the Workshop to the War: Creative Use of Drones Lifts Ukraine . “Ukraine still uses advanced military drones supplied by its allies for observation and attack, but along the frontline the bulk of its drone fleet are off-the-shelf products or hand-built in workshops around Ukraine — a myriad of inexpensive, plastic craft adapted to drop grenades or anti-tank munitions.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Defense Post: How Zelensky Seized Control Over the Narrative in Ukraine. “This conflict is about information as much as kinetic warfare. Zelensky understands that and is playing the role of president to the hilt. Battles are won in the heart, but warfare is fought by balancing values, historical experience, ideals, and practical reality. Zelensky has balanced these adroitly. He intuitively grasps the nature of information warfare: the use of information and electronic communication technology to conduct warfare, and how to use it.”

The Conversation: Social media provides flood of images of death and carnage from Ukraine war – and contributes to weaker journalism standards. “Photos of civilians killed or injured in the Russia-Ukraine war are widespread, particularly online, both on social media and in professional news media. Editors have always published images of dead or suffering people during times of crisis, like wars and natural disasters. But the current crisis has delivered many more of these images, more widely published online, than ever before.”

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 07:14PM
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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…

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 05:27PM
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Tuesday, August 16, 2022

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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