New researches

Thursday, September 15, 2022

Electric Vehicles, Society of Biblical Literature, Autism Research, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, September 15, 2022

Electric Vehicles, Society of Biblical Literature, Autism Research, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, September 15, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Verge: The Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits are confusing, so the White House launched a website to help. “The Biden administration launched a new website… aimed at helping Americans navigate the new green energy tax credits contained in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA). That could especially be useful for people looking to buy a new electric vehicle but finding themselves confused by the litany of new requirements about assembly and battery materials.”

Religion Prof: Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers Digitized!. “Great news from the Society of Biblical Literature! I suspect that every New Testament scholar is aware of and has benefited from things that were published in the SBL Seminar Papers – and that I am not the only one who has at times wished that some of the volumes were more readily available or accessible. Well, now they’ve been digitized!”

Autism Science Foundation: ASF Launches Novel ‘Participate in Research’ Website Directory. “The Autism Science Foundation (ASF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding innovative autism research and supporting families facing autism, today announced the launch of the ‘Participate in Research’ directory on the ASF website. The new searchable directory is intended to increase participation in autism research by making it easier for families to find and enroll in studies. Families who use this new directory can search by age, topic of interest or geographical location.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: What we learned when Twitter whistleblower Mudge testified to Congress. “A ticking bomb of security vulnerabilities. Covering up security failures. Duping regulators and misleading lawmakers. These are just some of the allegations when Twitter’s ex-security lead turned whistleblower, Peiter Zatko, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, less than a month after the release of his explosive whistleblower complaint filed with federal regulators…. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.”

Ars Technica: Twitter shareholders approve the $44B merger Musk is trying to get out of. “Twitter shareholders voted to approve Elon Musk’s purchase of the company, weeks ahead of a trial over Musk’s attempt to exit the merger deal. Though a specific vote tally wasn’t available today, multiple news reports said investors backed the Twitter board’s recommendation to approve the $44 billion deal that Musk agreed to in April before changing his mind.”

How-To Geek: Winamp 5.9 Is the First Stable Update in Four Years. “Winamp was a popular media player application in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it has received infrequent updates in recent years to address compatibility issues. Winamp 5.9 has now been released, marking the first major update since 2018.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Tech Edvocate: Product Review Of Teachingbooks.net. “TeachingBooks.net is an online book database, assisting educators, parents, and librarians with finding multimedia resources, lesson plans, and links to extend curriculum in the classroom around books. The database features a huge number of fiction and nonfiction books and associated resources, with a heavy focus on materials useful for author studies and introductory lessons as well as supporting the diversification of what books and authors are taught.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Google Must Face Most of Texas’ Antitrust Lawsuit on Ads. “Google will have to face the bulk of a multistate antitrust lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of reaching an illegal deal with online ad rival Facebook.”

Engadget: Google fails to overturn EU Android antitrust ruling but reduces its fine by 5 percent. “Google has failed to convince Europe’s General Court to overturn the Commission’s ruling on its Android antitrust case and its decision to slap the company with a €4.3/US$4.3 billion fine.”

CoinDesk: S. Korean Court Issues Arrest Warrant Against Terra Co-Founder Do Kwon. “A South Korean court has issued an arrest warrant against Do Kwon, the co-founder of the now defunct stablecoin issuer Terraform Labs, according to the Financial Crimes Unit of the Supreme Prosecutors Office. The warrant included five additional persons, Bloomberg News reported, citing a text message from the prosecutor’s office.” I don’t want to get too deep into cryptocurrency in RB, but I feel it’s a very sketchy tech integrated into a lot of current Web stuff, and I want to keep an eye on it.

RESEARCH & OPINION

News Medical: Social media use puts teens at risk of developing drug and alcohol issues . “New research has found adolescents who are active on social media are being exposed to content that could put them at risk of developing drug and alcohol issues. The study, led by University of Queensland PhD student Brienna Rutherford from UQ’s National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research, examined how drug and alcohol use content was portrayed across social media.”

Bloomberg: Climate Change is making people angrier online. “Climate change is making us angrier online. A lot angrier. Hateful comments spike on social media when temperatures rise above 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research have found.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 15, 2022 at 05:28PM
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Wednesday, September 14, 2022

Ohio Red Tape, AI Image Generators, YouTube Shorts, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 14, 2022

Ohio Red Tape, AI Image Generators, YouTube Shorts, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 14, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Center Square: New Ohio website gives public voice in business regulations. “In the works since 2018, the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review’s Cut Red Tape Ohio website – which launched Monday – gives the public opportunities to flag business regulations that might be cumbersome or outdated and provides a review that could eliminate or change those rules.”

USEFUL STUFF

PetaPixel: The Best AI Image Generators in 2022. “At the start of 2022, there were hardly any AI text-to-image generators available to the public, but with DALL-E finally becoming available in beta in July and Stable Diffusion being released a month later, there are now suddenly an array of AI image generators vying to be the best software on the market. So if you’re feeling confused about which AI Image generator you should use in 2022, this is a complete guide to the best options out there.”

Social Media Examiner: How to Easily Make YouTube Shorts With Your Longer Videos. “Want to do more with YouTube Shorts? Looking for an easy way to turn your YouTube videos into shorts? In this article, you’ll discover how to create YouTube shorts using your long-form videos.”

How-To Geek: How to Comment on PDFs (or Any Other File) in Google Drive. “You might already know that when sharing documents using Google’s own office apps you can leave comments to make collaboration easy. But did you know Google Drive offers the same comment feature for virtually any file, not just Google documents?”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle: A Twitter ‘Repentance Bot’ teaches people how to apologize for real. “‘Repentance Bot’ allows users to tag the account when they see an apology that they believe falls short. The bot then replies to the apology with encouragement to do better and a comic strip laying out five steps to take to do so.”

Brown University Library News: John Hay Library Receives Grants to Digitize Materials of Dissenting U.S. Politics. “Through its Divided America project, the John Hay Library will digitize and make available material representing extremes of political thought from 1946 through the 1990s in the United States.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: U-Haul discloses data breach exposing customer driver licenses. “Moving and storage giant U-Haul International (U-Haul) disclosed a data breach after a customer contract search tool was hacked to access customers’ names and driver’s license information. Following an incident investigation started on July 12 after discovering the breach, the company found on August 1 that attackers accessed some customers’ rental contracts between November 5, 2021, and April 5, 2022.”

Krebs on Security: Transacting in Person with Strangers from the Internet. “Communities like Craigslist, OfferUp, Facebook Marketplace and others are great for finding low- or no-cost stuff that one can pick up directly from a nearby seller, and for getting rid of useful things that don’t deserve to end up in a landfill. But when dealing with strangers from the Internet, there is always a risk that the person you’ve agreed to meet has other intentions.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Cornell Chronicle: Report shows near-total erasure of Armenian heritage sites. “A new report from the Cornell-led Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) has compiled decades of high-resolution satellite imagery to document the complete destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan beginning in the late 1990s. Moreover, the latest finding of CHW’s heritage monitoring project suggests that the same policy of cultural erasure now threatens Armenian monuments in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Columbia Climate School: Scientists Are Mapping New York City Wildlife. And We Don’t Mean Rats, Squirrels or Pigeons.. “There are possums, raccoons, deer, coyotes (one turned up last year in Central Park), foxes, rabbits, groundhogs and skunks. In the waters, river otters and beavers (after a nearly 200-year absence, one was recently seen running along a promenade near the Williamsburg Bridge). In the air, peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks, bats and rare native bees.” Good afternoon, Internet…

September 15, 2022 at 12:20AM
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Tracking Ballot Measures, Disability Voting Index, Creative Commons, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, September 14, 2022

Tracking Ballot Measures, Disability Voting Index, Creative Commons, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, September 14, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

OpenSecrets: OpenSecrets launches new tool to track ballot measures across the country . “OpenSecrets has launched a new tool to track ballot measures across the country as part of a continuing effort to integrate state level data following the merger with the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in Politics.”

Microsoft Blog: Because every vote counts: making elections more accessible. “Today, the Microsoft Accessibility and Democracy Forward teams also celebrate the launch of the Center for Civic Designs’ Disability Voting Index. This new tool offers a single, centralized location that makes it easy to quickly search and understand accessibility options in all 50 states so that more people with disabilities can participate in the electoral process.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Creative Commons: New FAQ on NFTs and CC0. “To help clarify how NFTs are already leveraging CC legal tools, we have added a new section to our FAQ on using CC licenses and the CC0 public domain dedication with NFTs. This FAQ is intended to provide basic guidance for those who are already using NFTs and want to know how to use CC licenses and legal tools with NFT projects. We will continue to update our FAQ as our understanding and interpretation develops.”

Search Engine Journal: Google Announces September 2022 Core Algorithm Update. “Google announced a Core Algorithm Update on September 12, 2022. The official Google list of announced updates stated that it will take up to two weeks to finish rolling out. The initial response from the search community was generally positive although some affiliate marketing Facebook groups were noticeably muted.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hackaday: Organise Your Hacks With Treesheets: An Open Source Hierarchical Spreadsheet. “TreeSheets is described as a hierarchical spreadsheet, which is intended as a replacement for several distinct tools; think spreadsheets, mindmaps and text editors and similar.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

University of Toronto: Student project creates accessible database of Canada’s first newspapers. “Led by Sébastien Drouin, an associate professor in the department of language studies at U of T Scarborough, the bilingual project, ‘Early Modern Canadian Newspapers Online’ is a collection of newspapers from the second half of the eighteenth century – from 1752 to 1810 – printed in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Québec and Ontario.”

Loop T&T News: Wedding nothing: Google Maps loses Penal couple in forest. “The duo hoped to attend a wedding in Guayaguayare Village on Saturday. They wanted to get there in the shortest possible time so they used Google Maps. However, the route they followed wasn’t quite what they expected as they were taken through approximately 19 kilometres of abandoned oilfield road, called the Guayaguayare Road.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: Google faces €25bn lawsuit in UK and EU over digital advertising. “Google faces a €25bn (£21.6bn) lawsuit in the UK and EU that accuses the tech firm of anticompetitive conduct in the digital advertising market. The company, which is a key player in the online ad market as well as being a dominant force in search, is accused of abusing its power in the ad tech market, which coordinates the sale of online advertising space between publishers and advertisers.”

Reuters: EU regulators widen Google adtech probe to include Portuguese case. “EU antitrust regulators have broadened the scope of their investigation into Alphabet unit Google’s digital advertising business by taking over the Portuguese competition watchdog’s probe into the same issue.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNBC: Google spins out secret hi-speed telecom project called Aalyria, and keeps stake in startup. “Inside Google, a team of techies has been working behind the scenes on software for high-speed communications networks that extend from land to space. Codenamed ‘Minkowski’ within Google, the secret project is being unveiled to the public on Monday as a new spinout called Aalyria.”

CNET: The Bizarre Way Kids Use Memes Is Melting My Brain. “Much like the olden days, where urban legends spread from older sibling to savvy younger brother and beyond, children are constantly proliferating preexisting memes utterly divorced from the context of their origins. They’re consumed by osmosis, via a family member or YouTube streamer, then rapidly co-opted. Quickly they become part of a bizarre shared language. Nonsensical words that are simply shouted on the playground yet make no literal sense.”

Harvard Gazette: New research alliance brings quantum internet closer to reality. “Harvard University and Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday launched a strategic alliance to advance fundamental research and innovation in quantum networking. This effort provides significant funding for faculty-led research at Harvard and will build capacity for student recruitment, training, outreach, and workforce development in this key emerging technology field.” Good morning, Internet…

September 14, 2022 at 05:30PM
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Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Invasive and Vector Mosquitoes, IRS Accessibility, Women’s Self-Care, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 13, 2022

Invasive and Vector Mosquitoes, IRS Accessibility, Women’s Self-Care, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 13, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National Science Foundation: Researchers develop dashboard to track invasive and vector mosquitoes. “Researchers at the University of South Florida, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, created the Global Mosquito Observations Dashboard to surveil mosquito-borne diseases with automated mosquito identification. The dashboard makes use of data from other apps that use citizen scientists to capture photos of mosquitoes. The approach offers international data on a scale otherwise prohibitive due to expense and logistics.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Taxpayer Advocate Blog: NTA Blog: Improving Services to Taxpayers With Visual Disabilities. “Millions of U.S. taxpayers are visually impaired and unable to read print material in a standard font size. As a result of a settlement agreement between the IRS and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) on July 10, 2020, the IRS agreed to develop a process for taxpayers to request post-filing tax notices in a variety of acceptable formats, including Braille and large print.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 8 Emotional Support and Self-Care Apps and Resources for Women. “There is an ever-increasing collection of apps to provide self-care and emotional support to help cope with the stresses and strains of modern living. Some of these are designed especially for women. Here are some of the best apps and online resources providing women with aid and support to help with all stages of life.” I thought this was going to be a cheesy list where everything was pink and all worries could be fixed with a glass of wine in a hot bath. It’s much better than that.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NOLA: Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, historian renowned for research into Louisiana slavery, dies at 93. “Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, a New Orleans-born historian who revolutionized teaching about slavery in Louisiana by applying computer technology to information she unearthed in musty archives and courthouse records throughout the state, died Monday at her home in Guanajuato, Mexico. She was 93.”

Michigan Daily: Social media presence brings positive reviews for UMich president-elect. “From replying to direct messages to reposting community content, University president-elect Santa Ono is social media savvy, and the student body is here for it. Since he was announced as the next president in July, Ono’s Twitter and Instagram have been filled with content about University events and student stories, making his passion for the community relatable.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Politico: Digital great game: The West’s standoff against China and Russia. “The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) — a 150-year-old body that sets rules for how much of the global telecom and tech infrastructure works — will gather at end of September in Bucharest for a three-week conference. The more than 190 member countries will elect a new secretary-general and other top brass, as well as set the policy goals for the U.N. agency for the next four years. The two candidates for the top job, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, an American, and Rashid Ismailov, a Russian, have crisscrossed the globe to rally support from telecom policymakers and regulators.”

CoinDesk: Celsius Resembled Ponzi Scheme at Times, Vermont Regulator Says. “Crypto lender Celsius Network misled investors about its financial health, using its CEL token to bolster its balance sheet and at times using new investor funds to repay old investors, the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation alleged in a new filing Wednesday.”

LA Taco: A New Twitter Bot Will Tell You An Officer’s Name, Rank, And Race By Putting In Their Serial Number. “WhosThatCop is a Twitter bot created by user @NN35007 that allows users to enter the serial number of an officer they’ve encountered, which then reveals the name of the officer, their job, gender, and race.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ars Technica: Runway teases AI-powered text-to-video editing using written prompts. “In a tweet posted this morning, artificial intelligence company Runway teased a new feature of its AI-powered web-based video editor that can edit video from written descriptions, often called ‘prompts.'”

Boing Boing: Creating an AI-generated comic book in Midjourney. “I really enjoyed watching filmmaker Elvis Deane talk about his experience in creating a comic book using the Midjourney AI art program. I love some of the analogies he uses—that working with a current AI is kind of like trying to communicate with your dog, or like having an infinite number of monkey artists who aren’t giving you exactly what you want, but sort of.” Good afternoon, Internet…

September 14, 2022 at 12:34AM
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Caribbean Artists, AI Image Search Engine, Lab Carbon Footprints, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, September 13, 2022

Caribbean Artists, AI Image Search Engine, Lab Carbon Footprints, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, September 13, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Loop News: Kingston Creative launches database of 370 Caribbean artists. “Kingston Creative has launched the Caribbean Creative Network (CCN), a public, searchable online database of artists and cultural and creative industry stakeholders.”

How-To Geek: This AI Art Gallery Is Even Better Than Using a Generator. “Lexica is a search engine and art gallery for artwork created with Stable Diffusion, one of the more popular AI art models. The site was created by Sharif Shameem, who hopes it ‘makes Stable Diffusion prompting a bit less of a dark art and more of a science.'” If my RB queue is any indication, we’re going to be seeing LOTS of AI art collections. I’ll try to avoid them overrunning the newsletter.

Physics World: Open-source tool allows researchers to calculate their lab’s carbon footprint. “Researchers in France have developed a new open-source tool to help scientists understand and reduce the carbon footprint of their labs. From the 500 or so labs that have already used the tool – called GES 1point5 – the researchers have discovered that heating, travel and commuting are the main factors that contribute to a lab’s carbon footprint.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: Google Updates Its Guide on Preventing Spam and Abuse. “In a welcome update for website owners, Google made clear changes to its spam and abuse resource center on Google Search Central. The biggest updates include more robust suggestions to prevent abuse and identify spam accounts, instead of focusing on how to monitor for it.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: The Tricky Ethics of Being a Teacher on TikTok. “The hashtags #teacher and #teachersoftiktok have a combined 72.1 billion views on TikTok. While many of these videos feature educators simply discussing their job, others take place inside the classroom and include children’s voices, faces, and schoolwork. And even though many teachers on the platform clearly understand how to safeguard their students, the rise of these accounts does raise a number of ethical questions: Should educators really be filming while they’re teaching?”

ABC News: Google workers battle company over ‘life and death’ abortion policies. “The Alphabet Workers Union, or AWU, an advocacy group made up of more than 1,000 employees, has called on Google to strengthen its approach to abortion-related issues or risk an escalation in employee pressure. The AWU functions as a ‘minority union,’ which means it pressures the company through worker organizing but does not formally represent workers in collective bargaining.”

Mashable: The real meaning behind the crab emoji is darker than you think. “Each time a prominent public figure dies, you might see more crab emoji on Twitter, Reddit, and the comment section of Instagram posts. It’s a not-so-subtle nod in celebration of the passing of the reign, influence, or life of a particularly controversial character.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CTV News: B.C. business’ lawsuit against client who posted negative Google review allowed to proceed. “A B.C. judge has decided to let a jury decide whether a single, negative online review of a dentistry practice was defamation, dismissing a bid to have the lawsuit tossed. In a decision posted online last week, Justice Gordon S. Funt outlined his reasons for letting the case proceed.”

Bleeping Computer: Google says former Conti ransomware members now attack Ukraine. “Google says some former Conti cybercrime gang members, now part of a threat group tracked as UAC-0098, are targeting Ukrainian organizations and European non-governmental organizations (NGOs). UAC-0098 is an initial access broker known for using the IcedID banking trojan to provide ransomware groups with access to compromised systems within enterprise networks.”

CNN: Hackers actively supporting Iran’s domestic and foreign spying efforts, researchers warn. “A group of prolific Iranian hackers has likely been key to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps efforts to track its domestic and foreign adversaries in recent years by targeting US government officials, Iranian dissidents and journalists, according to new research published Wednesday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Clark University: Listening to the Whispering World of ASMR with Professors Shuo Niu and Hugh Manon. “Some people feel an unusual tingle in their brain after watching someone whisper in a YouTube video. On this episode of Challenge. Change., Hugh Manon, professor of screen studies and chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, and Shuo Niu, professor of computer science, dig into the social media phenomenon that is ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response.” No transcript available, but a brief article accompanies the podcast.

University of Edinburgh: Experts assess digital impact on Muslim lives. “Experts will seek to build a clearer picture of the way online platforms are affecting traditional structures within Islam across the continent…. Researchers say that while digital platforms have strengthened ties among Europe’s Muslim communities, this has widened inter-generational differences within these groups.” Good morning, Internet…

September 13, 2022 at 05:32PM
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Monday, September 12, 2022

Political Podcasts, Wolfram|Alpha for iOS, Google, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 12, 2022

Political Podcasts, Wolfram|Alpha for iOS, Google, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 12, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Brookings Institution: A new data set for better monitoring of the political podcast ecosystem. “To help policymakers, researchers, and the tech community better understand podcasting’s role in the information ecosystem, we have developed a dashboard that aggregates political podcast episode data into a single, easy-to-use format and provides an overarching look at the medium in near real time. This data set represents the first publicly available, centralized collection of podcast episode data describing the political podcasting industry in a ready-to-use, downloadable format.”

Wolfram|Alpha: Wolfram|Alpha, iOS and Math OCR. “Wolfram|Alpha for iOS is now available for free. The free app has all of the features from the previous paid app, minus basic step-by-step solutions, plus a few new features available with an active Wolfram|Alpha Pro subscription, including math optical character recognition (OCR) and the assistant apps previously available as separate apps.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: Google Appoints Top Washington Post Exec as General Manager of News. “Alphabet Inc’s Google has picked the Washington Post’s longtime chief information officer to help run its news division as general manager, the tech giant said on Wednesday. Shailesh Prakash, who also led the news publisher’s design, product and tech teams for over a decade, will join Google in November.”

TechCrunch: Google okays fantasy sports and rummy apps in India in a pilot. “Google plans to run a pilot to permit daily fantasy sports apps and rummy games on Play Store in India, addressing a request from the local community that has long expressed frustration at the Android-maker for not welcoming services on its store in the world’s second-largest market that it allows in many parts of the world.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: A Spotlight on the Art of Video Games. “It’s hard, walking around MoMA’s exhibit, not to think of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a novel about the making of video games and the way a group of people creates them together—and then plays them together. I also couldn’t shake the memory of something Zevin told my colleague Will Bedingfield: Nowadays, almost everyone is a gamer. ‘If you’re playing Facebook, if you’re playing Instagram, if you’re playing on a social media network—as in, using one—you are playing a game,’ she said, ‘it’s just a sort of dull game with no end.'” Unless you’re on Twitter, then it’s an endless game of bumper cars, only the cars are on fire and have rocket launchers.

KGOU: Archivist begins preserving KGOU audio in a race against time. “Magnetic audiotape was the workhorse of radio in the 1980s, in KGOU’s early days of serving the campus community at the University of Oklahoma with music and a few NPR programs. Local news and feature interviews, and sometimes whole radio shows were recorded on reels of tape and saved for future use, or erased and recorded over with the next episode. But audiotape begins to deteriorate after about 10 years, depending on how and where it is stored. If properly cared for, it can last longer, but is likely to start to disintegrate or suffer severe loss of audio quality with the passage of time.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Los Angeles Times: FBI, DHS join probe into massive LAUSD cyberattack as school goes on . “The cyberattack that disabled computer systems across the Los Angeles Unified School District school was criminal in nature, but by Tuesday most online services — including key emergency systems — were operating safely.”

Lad Bible: Man arrested after uploading social media video of his dog driving his car. “A 35-year-old man from Ein Naqquba, west of Jerusalem, posted the video of his small pooch on his lap as he placed his paws behind the steering wheel. However, this stunt proved to be a little too fast and furious for police, who saw the video online and promptly arrested the man.” My favorite part of this story is that the man didn’t have a license either.

RESEARCH & OPINION

Arizona State University: Smelling strawberries, smoke and space in virtual reality. “LiKamWa, an associate professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and an assistant professor in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, leads a multidisciplinary team of students and faculty from across ASU departments to incorporate realistic, environmentally-sensitive smell into VR for more than just entertainment. He and his team see possibilities for VR to be a valuable tool in a variety of scenarios in which smells represent vital information and are a powerful emotional tool.”

Phys .org: Do art museums prioritize visitor well-being enough?. “By design, art museums are meant to showcase beautiful objects and their creators, offer insight into history, and elicit wonder and awe. A recent study by Penn’s Katherine Cotter and James Pawelski revealed that people who visit art museums experience a range of benefits from doing so. But when it comes to visitor well-being, how do art museum professionals think their institutions are faring?” Good afternoon, Internet…

September 13, 2022 at 12:32AM
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Easy Name Variant Searching with Carl’s Name Net

Easy Name Variant Searching with Carl’s Name Net
By researchbuzz2

This tool is thanks to one of my longtime Patreons, Carl. We’ve been trading email for years and he’s always been generous with encouraging words. A couple of weeks ago he gave me a great idea as well!

Recently we were chatting about some research he was doing. Part of it involves name searching; we were talking about how to do searches on a proper name and make sure you find all possible results.

Now, the thing about me and searching is that if I hear about a searching problem I am 100% a dog with a tennis ball. I will chase it down and figure it out, or if not figure it out unravel it as much as possible. The output of such activity used to be generally confined to offering search suggestions (or just thinking out the problem if that wasn’t possible).

But now? Now I’m getting a better grip on JavaScript and I can MAKE things. So I made Carl’s Name Net, which is available at https://researchbuzz.github.io/Carls-Name-Net/ .

Carl’s Name Net makes name variants and searches for name variants with one click. It works with three-name monikers (Louisa May Alcott) or two if you don’t know the middle name.

Let’s use Louisa May Alcott as an example. Enter her full name on the form. If you’re getting too many irrelevant results (unlikely in this case, but stay with me) you can add additional query terms. Those should be kept general: France instead of Paris, professor instead of Notre Dame.

After you click the Generate Name Variants button, CNN generates a set of links for you underneath.

There are separate searches for regular Google, Google Scholar, and Google Books searches. For those resources, the searches for three-word names are divided into two searches, one with more common name variants:

(“Louisa May Alcott” | “Louisa M Alcott” | “Louisa Alcott” | “LM Alcott”)

and one with uncommon variants:

— with the understanding that uncommon vs common is entirely subjective, of course!

Click on an URL and you’ll go to a page of search results.

The Internet Archive’s search works a little differently, and because of that each name gets its own Internet Archive link.

I loved playing with this because you will find the most random stuff when you do name variant searches. The fourth result here is a 1909 publication from London that’s advertising a lot of LMA books on its front page.

Finally, you’ll get a list of name variants so you can see what was searched for (and copy/paste if you want to use something elsewhere).

How does Carl’s Name Net work when you have only a first and last name? Very much the same, only it generates four possible name variations.

You might find yourself in the situation when you know an initial but not the entire middle name. Go ahead and use it; you’ll get a slightly different set of names to search but it should work fine.

I made this with Carl in mind, which is why I chose the resources that I did. But if you do a lot of work that involves name searching (genealogy, prospect research?) and would like to see this tool applied to other resources, drop a comment. I could even hook it up to Super Edu Search!

September 12, 2022 at 08:19PM
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