1950s China, Social Media Mergers, Ultrashort Video, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 7, 2022

1950s China, Social Media Mergers, Ultrashort Video, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

George Mason University: Mason students build digital archive for victims of China’s Anti-‘Rightist’ Campaign. “Predating China’s Cultural Revolution, the Anti-‘Rightist’ Campaign was launched by Chairman Mao Zedong to purge ‘Rightists’ from the Chinese Communist Party and the entire country. Beginning in 1957 and lasting for about two years, the campaign may have affected between 500,000 and 2 million individuals. Targeted individuals were reeducated, humiliated, relocated, or executed. The main focus was on ‘intellectuals,’ which tended to mean professors, artists teachers, writers and doctors.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNBC: Deal partner for Trump’s Truth Social fails to get backing for SPAC extension: Reuters, citing sources. “The blank-check acquisition firm that agreed to merge with Donald Trump’s social media company failed to secure enough shareholder support for a one-year extension to complete the deal, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.”

USEFUL STUFF

Social Media Examiner: How to Easily Batch Videos for Reels, Shorts, and TikTok. “Do you want to use more short-form video in your marketing? Looking for an efficient cross-channel workflow? In this article, you’ll discover an easy method to turn a single short-form video into something you can use across all of the major social platforms.”

Duke University Libraries: Election Data. “You’re probably aware that voting in the United States is managed in a very decentralized manner compared to most other countries. There are limited sources that comprehensively compile local-level results or geographic data showing local voting precincts. We’ll discuss several selected projects have come about to try to pull all this data together to provide one-stop repositories, as well as state and local sources for election data. Some of these are free resources, and some are licensed by us for the use of Duke affiliates.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Encrypted app Signal just hired one of Big Tech’s sharpest critics. “Signal has hired Meredith Whittaker, a former Google manager who has been outspoken about the harms of Big Tech, as its first president, adding to the roster of tech critics leading the encrypted messaging app.”

Federal News Network: NARA looks to double down on email records approach with texts, other messages. “The National Archives and Records Administration is looking to expand a successful approach for managing email records to text messages and other digital communications as part of a bid to help agencies with an ever increasing deluge of electronic records.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Chrome extensions with 1.4M installs covertly track visits and inject code. “Google has removed browser extensions with more than 1.4 million downloads from the Chrome Web Store after third-party researchers reported they were surreptitiously tracking users’ browsing history and inserting tracking code into specific ecommerce sites they visited.”

Associated Press: Tech tool offers police ‘mass surveillance on a budget’. “Local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using an obscure cellphone tracking tool, at times without search warrants, that gives them the power to follow people’s movements months back in time, according to public records and internal emails obtained by The Associated Press.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

News-Medical: ParAqua develops an interactive database to fill the gap in knowledge about zoosporic parasites. “ParAqua COST Action, which gathers researchers, innovators, and producers of microalgae across Europe and beyond, have started the development of an interactive database on zoosporic algae parasites. In addition to the interactive database, the network is currently preparing a booklet that will serve as a guideline for methods of early detection and monitoring of zoosporic parasites.”

Creative Commons: Press Release: New Four-Year, $4 Million Open Climate Campaign Will Open Knowledge to Solve Challenges in Climate and Biodiversity. “Creative Commons, SPARC and EIFL today announce a new 4-year, $4-million (USD) grant from Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, to fund the Open Climate Campaign. This grant, which builds on $450,000 (USD) in planning funds from the Open Society Foundations, will fund a four-year campaign to accelerate progress towards solving the climate crisis and preserving global biodiversity by promoting open access to research.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 8, 2022 at 01:02AM
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RB Search Gizmos: Find and Explore the TwitterSpace of Higher Ed Institutions with Pam’s University Pin

RB Search Gizmos: Find and Explore the TwitterSpace of Higher Ed Institutions with Pam’s University Pin
By researchbuzz2

One of my favorite games lately is creating JavaScript programs where physical space intersects with social media space. It lets me carve out little portholes and see how the physical space is represented in the social media space.

That and experimenting with domain name searches were the driving forces behind Pam’s University Pin, available at https://researchbuzz.github.io/Pam-s-University-Pin/ . You’ll need a Data.gov API key to use this gizmo; you can get one for free at https://api.data.gov/signup/ .

Pam’s University Pin (we’ll refer to it as PUP) is sort of a combination of Pam’s Pin, which lets you enter a street address and get a Twitter radius search for that address, and Super Edu Search, which lets you filter .edu Web space by various university characteristics (location, ownership type, etc.).

PUP takes a zip code, a radius, and a set of university characteristics, and does two things:

1. Finds all higher education institutions matching those characteristics in the radius
2. Builds the following Twitter queries:
   1. A search for all tweets within a 2km radius of the university location
   2. A search for all verified account tweets within a 2km radius of the university location
   3. A search for tweets which include the university’s domain name (any location)
   4. A search for tweets from Twitter accounts which include the university’s domain name.

All those links are presented to you in neat lists under the Search Edu Space button.

I find that looking at the verified tweets finds a lot of news personalities, but also athletes, musicians, and politicians.

The link to find domain names in tweets does just what it says on the tin. This search tends to turn up university news, information from affiliated groups, and occasional links to research or faculty information, as you can see here:

The final link is a little wonky. It’s supposed to find the institution’s domain name in the bios of Twitter account. Sometimes it just finds the word from and the institution’s domain name in a tweet. Many times, though, it finds social media accounts of affiliated groups/institutions.

With the ubiquitous use of social media and the actual profession of performative living (as practiced by bloggers, vloggers, livestreamers, vtubers, etc), I’m surprised that there aren’t more places to explore the intersection between online spaces and our physical space.

Just imagine: as AR develops, we’ll get all kinds of apps to annotate and decorate and destroy and inform a layer of information overlaid on a physical space. Objects based on but removed from that space (like pictures) will inevitably develop some connection to the AR metadata.

Famous places like Times Square will have (metaphorically) thick layers of date-based AR details (assuming anybody bothers to archive it) that will send digital archaeologists into raptures a hundred years from now. Wondering what the general mood was in front of Bubba Gump’s Seafood Co on April 10th, 2037? Break out your text analyzer and get working – there might be a thesis in it!

September 7, 2022 at 07:26PM
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Mid-Illinois Television, Endangered Jewish Sites, Bangkok Illustration Fair, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, September 7, 2022

Mid-Illinois Television, Endangered Jewish Sites, Bangkok Illustration Fair, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, September 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Commercial-News: Quick receives broadcast pioneer award. “Doug Quick, retired TV weathercaster/news anchor, broadcaster, author and museum curator has been named Illinois Broadcasters Association’s 2022 W. Russell Withers Jr. Downstate Broadcast Pioneer…. Quick’s resume includes a 40-year career as commercial and industrial video voiceover talent, an author (Pictures on the Prairie: The First Ten Years of Mid-Illinois Television History) and created an online museum, Central Illinois’ On-Line Broadcast Museum …”

Brandeis University: Saving the World’s Synagogues from Destruction . “The [ Foundation for Jewish Heritage], which started in 2015 with [Michael] Mail as chief executive, has created an inventory of over 3,300 historic Jewish sites, many in urgent need of restoration.”

Bangkok Post: Illustration fair returns for another edition. “After its successful debut last year, the Bangkok Illustration Fair returns to please illustrators and art lovers with a myriad of creative works, from Thursday to Sunday daily from 10am to 8pm. It will take place on the 1st floor, 3rd floor and at the Main Hall on the 9th floor of Bangkok Art Cultural Centre, Pathumwan intersection. An online archive is also available…” The site is in Thai but Google Translate has no problems with it. I enjoyed the art a lot; the only downside is that this site is a bit of a slow load from America.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNBC: Apple is gaining on Facebook and Google in online ads after iOS privacy change, report shows. “The Google-Facebook online ad duopoly may be breaking up. According to a study published Tuesday by Appsumer, Apple is gaining momentum in digital ads, while Google and Facebook appear to be losing steam.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Poll: Only 20% Noticed Ranking Changes After Google’s Helpful Content Update. “As we have reported, so far, the Google helpful content update seems pretty minor in terms of what SEOs and tools are picking up, despite what we all thought would happen. Keep in mind, that the update is not done and we do expect more from it. A recent poll by Aleyda Solis confirmed that, showing that only 20% of SEOs noticed ranking changes, either positive or negative, since the update.”

Manchester Evening News: Council U-turns on removal of meetings video archive from public view after backlash. “Town hall chiefs have U-turned on a decision to remove a video archive of council meetings from public view which came under fire from residents and opposition councillors. Harry Catherall, the chief executive of Oldham council, has today confirmed that after a ‘review’ of the authority’s policies around public meetings, all previous recordings have been reinstated.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Tom’s Guide: Google Maps vs. Waze: Which navigation app is better? . “Determining which one is best isn’t an easy task, and what you pick will probably depend on your needs and preferences. But, if you throw both apps into the ring for an all-out brawl of Google Maps vs Waze, which one is going to come out on top?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: TikTok denies security breach after hackers leak user data, source code. “TikTok denies recent claims it was breached, and source code and user data were stolen, telling BleepingComputer that data posted to a hacking forum is ‘completely unrelated’ to the company. On Friday, a hacking group known as ‘AgainstTheWest’ created a topic on a hacking forum claiming to have breached both TikTok and WeChat.”

The Verge: The security flaws that make Twitter’s insider threat so scary. “Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko’s whistleblower disclosure contained a lot of alarming claims about Twitter — from confusing bot measurements to executive misconduct — but one of the most alarming claims was that the company was actively infiltrated by agents of the Indian government. For a platform that has always presented itself as a haven for journalists and activists, it’s a troubling claim and one that the company has not directly confronted in responses given to US media. But the allegations are less outlandish than it seems — and part of a much larger issue for international tech platforms.”

Wall Street Journal: Islamic State Turns to NFTs to Spread Terror Message. “A simple digital card praising Islamist militants for an attack on a Taliban position in Afghanistan last month is the first known nonfungible token created and disseminated by a terrorist sympathizer, according to former senior U.S. intelligence officials. It is a sign that Islamic State and other terror groups may be preparing to use the emerging financial technology to sidestep Western efforts to eradicate their online fundraising and messaging, they said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Maine: Artificial intelligence can be used to better monitor Maine’s forests, UMaine study finds. “Monitoring and measuring forest ecosystems is a complex challenge because of an existing combination of softwares, collection systems and computing environments that require increasing amounts of energy to power. The University of Maine’s Wireless Sensor Networks (WiSe-Net) laboratory has developed a novel method of using artificial intelligence and machine learning to make monitoring soil moisture more energy and cost efficient — one that could be used to make measuring more efficient across the broad forest ecosystems of Maine and beyond.”

PR Newswire: Americans Feel Some Relief From Robotexts As Summer Comes To An End, According To RoboKiller Insights (PRESS RELEASE). “Robotexts have far outpaced robocalls since the beginning of 2022. However, for the first time since April 2022, they declined month-over-month. While it appears scammers pumped the brakes in August, Americans can expect robotexts to ramp back up in the coming months as scammers get back to work on delivery and bank-related scams.” 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!

September 7, 2022 at 05:31PM
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Library of Congress, DMCA Takedown Notices, Google Cafeteria Workers, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 6, 2022

Library of Congress, DMCA Takedown Notices, Google Cafeteria Workers, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Library of Congress: What’s new online at the Library of Congress – Summer 2022. “The Manuscript Division has recently released the Shippen Family Papers, a collection of 6,500 items (15,666 images) digitized from 15 reels of previously produced microfilm, which document this wealthy and powerful group of Philadelphians connected by blood and marriage who reached the height of their influence in the mid-eighteenth century…. The Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve collection consists of interviews and photographs by Mary Hufford and Tom Tankersley in December 1985 for the American Folklife Center…”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TorrentFreak: Google Received DMCA Takedown Notices For 4 Million Unique Domains. “Google has reached a new milestone. Over the past several years, copyright holders have asked the search engine to remove URLs from four million unique domains. These include some egregious pirate sites but The White House, the FBI, and the Vatican have also been flagged as infringers.”

Washington Post: 4,000 Google cafeteria workers quietly unionized during the pandemic. “Unite Here, a 300,000-member union hotel and food service workers, has been steadily working to unionize Silicon Valley cafeteria workers since 2018, experiencing the most success at Google. Employed by the contract companies Compass and Guckenheimer, those unionized now make up about 90 percent of total food services workers at Google, according to the union. Workers have unionized at 23 Google offices nationwide, including in Seattle and San Jose. Now, the union is tackling new territory: the South.”

USEFUL STUFF

Amateur Photographer: How To Connect Your Camera To Your Smartphone. “If you’ve got a camera with built-in Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth, then you’ll be able to take advantage of this to quickly and easily send your images to your smartphone or tablet. From there you can edit the photos and quickly share on social media. In this guide we’ll show you what you need to connect your camera to your smartphone.”

MakeUseOf: How to Blur Parts of an Image for Free Online: 5 Tools. “If you ever share screenshots or photos online, knowing how to blur parts of your image is a handy skill to have. Whether you need to send a screenshot with confidential information to a colleague or just want to draw focus to a certain part of your image, we’ll show you how to blur the parts that you want to hide.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NiemanLab: Medium’s new CEO on the company’s journalism mistakes, bundle economics, and life after Ev Williams . “The fate of a blogging platform may have somewhat lower stakes than some of the subjects we usually discuss around here. But a key question at the intersection of tech and democracy is what sort of publishing models the internet will support. How many journalists and other writers will be able to make a living? How will their work find an audience? And will the platforms they operate on ever find long-term stability?”

Marine Corps Times: Military, veterans learn to fight disinformation campaigns. “While much of the conversation about social media and the military recently has focused on the specific concern around extremist radicalization, more garden-variety disinformation is also a growing issue. Disinformation can undermine critical thinking, sow confusion and suspicion, and threaten unit cohesion and force readiness. But the scope and unusual nature of the problem means it is difficult to protect troops.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

News@Northeastern: Now Banned By Tiktok And Others, Andrew Tate Rode Wave Of Online Misogyny, Says Northeastern Expert. “Tate, a British-American social media influencer, is well known for making misogynistic comments in his videos, which have been removed from TikTok but at one point had billions of views. In the videos, Tate referred to women as property, described how he would attack a woman who accused him of cheating, and said he doesn’t believe that depression is real (Tate says his comments were taken out of context). Following a public outcry, last week he was banned from YouTube, TikTok and Facebook. But experts say that Tate is not acting in a silo; in fact, online misogyny has been on the rise for years, and social media platforms are not built to handle it.”

Caltech: Caltech to Study How the Brain Responds to Virtual Environments. “The rise of social media has meant that social and professional interactions are increasingly carried out online. This trend is expected to continue in the coming decades, as the digital world becomes more immersive and realistic. To understand how the human brain might be affected by this shift, Dean Mobbs, professor of cognitive neuroscience, is leading a new project that will use social psychology and neuroscience to explore the relationship between social media use and mental health.”

Artnet: Two Years Ago, Museums Across the U.S. Promised to Address Diversity and Equity. Here’s Exactly What They Have Done So Far. “Museums across the U.S. publicly stated their commitments to work towards dismantling systemic racism, frequently citing intentions to listen to communities, improve hiring practices, support BIPOC staff, re-evaluate workplace culture, offer anti-racism training, and acquire and exhibit work from a more diverse range of artists. Two years on from these calls for action, are museums feeling the same urgency? Or were these promises just platitudes?” 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!

September 7, 2022 at 12:43AM
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Limerick Castles, Southeast Asia Maps, Pollen Photomicrography, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, September 6, 2022

Limerick Castles, Southeast Asia Maps, Pollen Photomicrography, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, September 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Big shout to Twitter user @osint_unleashed who found this: the Limerick castles database. From the project about page: “Joseph Lennon is an historian and a graduate of Limerick Institute of Technology and the University of Limerick, and currently based in the National University of Ireland Galway. For over a decade, Joseph has been compiling a comprehensive archive of images documenting the castles and tower houses of Limerick. This fieldwork has taken him to the four corners of the county and beyond; including to Castle Lishen and Kilbolane, once part of Limerick but now in County Cork.”

Leiden University: Online platform Historical Maps of Southeast Asia launched. “On August 30, the online platform Historical Maps of Southeast Asia was launched. The platform provides access to over 1,400 digitised maps of Southeast Asia from the collections of the National Library Board Singapore (307 maps), Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library – Yale University (150 maps), Bodleian Libraries – University of Oxford (387 maps ) and Leiden University Libraries (UBL) (593 maps).”

The Mainichi: Pollen image database at Japanese univ. offers unique microcosm of natural wonders . “An image database is now open for anyone wanting to marvel at electron microscopic images of a vast and visually eclectic range of pollens, that all appear as just tiny grains to the unassisted human eye. Dubbed ‘Kafun search’ (pollen search), the database was developed at Gifu Shotoku Gakuen University to showcase the pollens of 118 plant families, 391 genera and 634 species as of Aug. 21, and the number is rising.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: Google Docs Features to Help You Ace Your College Papers. “Google Docs can be great for writing school essays and other projects. From citations to research to collaborating with classmates, take advantage of these helpful features for your college papers.”

MakeUseOf: 4 Ways to Have Alexa Translate Languages. “Through the power of AI, Amazon Alexa has evolved to become the voice assistant that seems like it can do everything. And it’s not just limited to telling you the latest weather updates and turning your lights off. Alexa can also be used as an effective translation tool. We’ll show you a number of ways that Alexa can translate words, phrases, and even whole conversations.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Artnet: Watch John OIiver Marry a Cabbage Live on TV to Capture the Absurdity of A.I.-Generated Art . “While Open AI is researching responsible public deployment for the platform, Oliver and his show’s team took to Midjourney, one of many public-access A.I.s that have popped up recently, to demonstrate the power of the text-to-image phenomenon. And in the show’s consummately absurd fashion, they did this by envisioning a new Marvel protagonist named Roast Beef Superhero.”

University of Oxford: Oxford University project aims to preserve Second World War memories. “A project led by the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford is looking for contributions to a free online archive of family stories, anecdotes, memories, and digitized objects relating to people’s experiences of the Second World War.”

NBC News: Search for missing Native artifacts led to the discovery of bodies stored in ‘the most inhumane way possible’. “Since the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990, federal law has required institutions that receive federal funding to catalog their collections with the National Parks Service and work toward returning them to the tribal nations they were taken from. But the University of North Dakota has no entries in the federal inventory, even though its administrators acknowledge it has possessed Indigenous artifacts since its inception in 1883.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Microsoft Defender falsely detects Win32/Hive.ZY in Google Chrome, Electron apps. “A bad Microsoft Defender signature update mistakenly detects Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Discord, and other Electron apps as ‘Win32/Hive.ZY’ each time the apps are opened in Windows. The issue started Sunday morning when Microsoft pushed out Defender signature update 1.373.1508.0 to include two new threat detections, including Behavior:Win32/Hive.ZY.”

TechCrunch: A huge Chinese database of faces and vehicle license plates spilled online. “While its contents might seem unremarkable for China, where facial recognition is routine and state surveillance is ubiquitous, the sheer size of the exposed database is staggering. At its peak the database held over 800 million records, representing one of the biggest known data security lapses of the year by scale, second to a massive data leak of 1 billion records from a Shanghai police database in June. In both cases, the data was likely exposed inadvertently and as a result of human error.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Texas at Austin: Sharing on Social Media Makes Us Overconfident in Our Knowledge. “Social media sharers believe that they are knowledgeable about the content they share, even if they have not read it or have only glanced at a headline. Sharing can create this rise in confidence because by putting information online, sharers publicly commit to an expert identity. Doing so shapes their sense of self, helping them to feel just as knowledgeable as their post makes them seem.” I publicly commit only to reading really fast.

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): More so than adults, U.S. teens value people feeling safe online over being able to speak freely. “Teens and adults in the United States differ on a key issue tied to online speech and its consequences. A majority of teens ages 13 to 17 say a welcoming, safe online environment is more important than people being able to speak their minds freely online, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. A separate survey of Americans 18 and older shows that adults’ views on the same question are more evenly divided.” 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!

September 6, 2022 at 05:31PM
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Constitutional Law Journal, Midwest US Gardening, NASA Missions, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 5, 2022

Constitutional Law Journal, Midwest US Gardening, NASA Missions, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Elon University: Students launch new constitutional law journal. “Led by inaugural Editor in Chief Esther Bouquet L’23, We the People – Elon Law’s Constitutional Law Journal aspires to promote the contribution of intelligent discussion and analysis of the U.S. Constitution and constitutional law-related issues.”

Purdue University: New website places gardening solutions at users’ fingertips, regardless of thumb color . “The Purdue Plant Doctor website is a mobile-friendly one-stop shop where gardeners can navigate the bewildering maze of insect, disease and abiotic problems that affect the hundreds of landscape trees, shrubs and flowers used in Midwestern landscapes.”

EVENTS

Lifehacker: How to Watch NASA Crash a Spaceship Into an Asteroid. “In a first-of-its-kind mission, NASA is planning to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid on September 26 (Earth time), and you’ll be able to stream it live.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Associated Press: How Archives went from ‘National Treasure’ to political prey. “It was the setting for ‘National Treasure,’ the movie in which Nicolas Cage’s character tries to steal the Declaration of Independence. It has long been among the most trafficked tourist destinations in the nation’s capital. But what the National Archives and Records Administration has never been — until now — is the locus of a criminal investigation of a former president.”

BBC: Floppy disks in Japan: Minister declares war on old-fashioned technology. “Japan’s digital minister has ‘declared war’ on floppy disks and other retro tech used by the country’s bureaucrats. Around 1,900 government procedures still require businesses to use the storage devices, plus CDs and mini-discs, Taro Kono said.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: Who Pays for an Act of Cyberwar?. “THIS SUMMER MARKS the fifth anniversary of the most expensive cyberattack ever: the NotPetya malware, released by Russia in June 2017, that shut down computer systems at companies and government agencies around the world, causing upward of $10 billion in damage due to lost business, repairs, and other operational disruptions.”

The Guardian: Surrey police accused of using ‘phantom’ traffic units on Waze app. “Surrey’s police force has been accused of operating ‘phantom units’ after traffic officers admitted to providing misleading data to a satnav app. Officers said on Twitter that they falsely reported their locations as stationary on the Waze traffic app, which suggests they may be operating a speed trap, when they were in fact driving.”

Rolling Stone: The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz Would Like a Word With the FBI. “The Monkees may not be seem like the kind of band that would attract the FBI’s attention, especially during a time when groups like Country Joe and the Fish and the MC5 were leading the movement against the Vietnam War. But the Monkees were one of the most popular bands in America in 1966 and 1967, and they sprinkled anti-war sentiments into songs like ‘Ditty Diego-War Chant’ and even ‘Last Train to Clarksville,’ a song about a man headed off to war that fears he’ll never see his love again.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Arizona State University: ‘News addiction’ can cause stress, anxiety, study says. “The obsessive urge to keep up with that news can lead to stress, anxiety and worsening physical health, according to a study in the journal Health Communication. The study found that 16.5% of 1,100 people polled in an online survey showed signs of ‘severely problematic’ news consumption, which led them to focus less on school, work and family, and contributed to an inability to sleep. Just more than 73% said they experienced mental health issues ‘quite a bit’ or ‘very much,’ and 61% reported their physical health suffered.”

Washington Post: Ready or not, mass video deepfakes are coming. “While many Americans were blissfully engaging in quaint analogue activities like going to the beach, a start-up named Midjourney offered ‘AI art-generation,’ in which anyone with a basic graphics card could with a few keystrokes create stunningly real images. To spend even a few minutes with it — there’s Gordon Ramsay burning up in his Hell’s Kitchen; here’s Gandalf shredding on a guitar — is to experience a technology that makes Photoshop look like Wite-Out. Midjourney has gathered more than a million users on its Discord channel.” 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!

September 6, 2022 at 12:46AM
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Go Beyond Site:Edu With Super Edu Search

Go Beyond Site:Edu With Super Edu Search
By researchbuzz2

If I were ever limited to one search modifier on Google, I’d make it site:edu.

Why? Because edu is one of the few major domain names (along with gov and mil) that requires authentication of some sort. Edu Web space in general is less plagued with spam and bots the way general Web space is. Further, it’s filled with teachers and researchers and scientists and all manner of people in various stages of discovery. Edu Web space is a rich resource for mining.

Which makes the site:edu modifier useful for its simplicity, but also frustrating in its simplicity. You’re searching all edu Web space with no filtering at all. You can search for individual schools (site:ncsu.edu) or even groups of schools (site:ncsu | site:duke.edu | site:unc.edu) but that’s still a crude and time-consuming way to explore this marvelous space.

This search problem has bothered me for a long time and I’ve made various limited, failed attempts to address it. I hadn’t thought about it for a while and certainly not since I started learning JavaScript. Then I came across an API from the US Department of Education and thought, “You know what? I wonder…”

So I wondered all weekend and made Super Edu Search. There are two versions, a state-based version at  https://researchbuzz.github.io/Super-Edu-Search/ , and a zip/radius based version at https://researchbuzz.github.io/Super-Edu-Search/index2.html . Both versions require a free Data.gov API key, which you can get at https://api.data.gov/signup/ .

Super Edu Search uses data from the Department of Education to refine your edu Web space search. You can limit the university space you’re searching by ownership type (public, private non-profit, private for-profit), by Minority/Gender Emphasis (including HBCU, Tribal College/University, Men-Only, and Women-Only), and by religious affiliation (66 options!)

After you click the Search Edu Space button, Super Edu Search sends your parameters to the Department of Education API, which returns a JSON result of matching universities. Super Edu Search parses that, slices the returned domain names into groups of 15, and turns them into Google search URLs. When I do a search for “climate change” in the Web space of all Hawaiian universities, I get two links.

Click a link and a Google search result will open in a new tab:

These results look very different than the Web spaces of, say, all the universities in Iowa:

There are other ways you can explore this space, too. Say you’re interested in learning more about the successor of John Paul I, who was recently beafied. (Unfortunately John Paul I himself was Pope for only a short time so he’s a terrible search example.)  I did a search for intitle:”John Paul II” in the Web space of all Roman Catholic-affiliated universities in Illinois.

I get a reasonable number of results (3 pages) and they’re very information-rich.

One limitation: the total dataset at the Department of Education has something like 6500 institutions in it. I’ve limited your search results to 200, though, for two reasons: a) I don’t want Data.gov mad at me, and b) You and I both know you’re not going to go through several hundred generated URLs.

In my testing I’ve found Super Edu Search interesting for all kinds of searches. Regional things like state government legislation/controversies/concerns (search public Florida universities for “don’t say gay”), famous people in their home state, all kinds of agricultural concerns, sports – anything that might have specificity in the filtered spaces available.

The data I’m filtering by here is only a fraction of what the Department of Education offers via its API. I feel like I’ve found a shiny new toy box to play with. Stay tuned.

September 5, 2022 at 07:07PM
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