New researches

Friday, October 7, 2022

Virginia Unclaimed Property, TikTok, Ubuntu, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 7, 2022

Virginia Unclaimed Property, TikTok, Ubuntu, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WDBJ: Virginia has new unclaimed property program. “The Virginia Department of the Treasury Unclaimed Property Division has launched its new KAPS program and website to manage the administration, reporting and claiming of unclaimed property, according to Governor Glenn Youngkin, who says, ‘This new user-friendly website makes it easier for citizens to identify and more quickly claim their unclaimed property.'”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: TikTok’s New Editing Tools Let You Adjust Video, Sound and Text, Add Sound Effects. “TikTok has rolled out a suite of new editing tools that allow users to more easily adjust video, sound, text and more, the company announced Thursday. The updates are available now to US users and most TikTokers around the world.”

How-To Geek: What’s New in Ubuntu 22.10 ‘Kinetic Kudu’. “Canonical has released the beta build of Ubuntu 22.10, the next release of their Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ahead of its October 20, 2022 release, we check out the Kinetic Kudu to see what’s new.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Texas Public Radio: San Antonio Philharmonic makes deal to save Symphony archives, recordings and instruments . “The San Antonio Philharmonic announced on Tuesday that it made a deal to secure the assets of the San Antonio Symphony…. When the San Antonio Symphony filed for bankruptcy last June, all the symphony’s assets were seized so that they wouldn’t disappear.”

Vice: Trump’s Social Media Platform Is Now Showing Ads Targeting QAnon Believers. “Former President Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social has become such a hive of QAnon activity that even advertisers are now trying to take advantage.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Roblox sued for allegedly enabling young girl’s sexual, financial exploitation. “Through the pandemic, the user-created game platform that’s so popular with kids, Roblox, expanded its user base and decided to go public. Within two years, its value shot from less than $4 billion to $45 billion. Now it’s being sued—along with Discord, Snap, and Meta—by a parent who alleges that during the pandemic, Roblox became the gateway enabling multiple adult users to prey on a 10-year-old girl.”

Christian Science Monitor: Meet the amateur art sleuths helping bring back Asia’s stolen heritage. “Illicit trade of cultural property is the third-largest international criminal activity, surpassed only by drug and arms trafficking. In recent years, there has been a burgeoning movement to bring back the stolen art, and hobbyists like Mr. [Vijay] Kumar are the backbone of these efforts. Collaborating over Facebook groups, he and other heritage enthusiasts spend their spare time scouring virtual museum catalogs and auction listings to identify stolen items, as well as urging authorities to hold the art world accountable.”

ProPublica: Authorities Raid Alleged Cyberscam Compounds in Cambodia. “Human traffickers who have forced workers to engage in investment scams that defrauded victims out of millions have been disrupted, at least temporarily. Meanwhile, Apple’s app store has removed an app that frequently facilitated the frauds.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): The Role of Alternative Social Media in the News and Information Environment. “These newer sites have created a small but satisfied community of news consumers, many of whom say one of the major reasons they are there is to stay informed about current events, according to a new Pew Research Center study. The study included a survey of U.S. adults along with an audit of seven alternative social media sites – BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Parler, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social – and a detailed analysis of prominent accounts and content across them.”

CogDogBlog: The More You Dig Into Google Search Results, the Worse the Smell. “Having made the call for the broken state of Google’s touted ability to locate open licensed images getting some notice (my peak Hacker News hit) and followed up with what looks like improvement is even not, and sad for how wrong and terrible Google’s delivered results turns out to be. I could not resist going back in to look more closely. That sensation when you open the refrigerator door and smell something rotten?” 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!

October 8, 2022 at 12:38AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/h4x9YoC

Facebook Roundup, October 7, 2022

Facebook Roundup, October 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Electronic Frontier Foundation: How to Ditch Facebook Without Losing Your Friends (Or Family, Customers or Communities). “Today, we launch ‘How to Ditch Facebook Without Losing Your Friends’ – a narrated slideshow and essay explaining how Facebook locks in its users, how interoperability can free them, and what it would feel like to use an ‘interoperable Facebook’ of the future, such as the one contemplated by the US ACCESS Act.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Independent: Meta employees revolt over plan to force them to share desks: ‘Complete and utter disconnect from reality’. “Meta staff have publicly voiced their frustration with the Facebook parent company after it announced a new desk sharing policy. It told staff that it would be testing a ‘new workplace experience’ as part of an ‘evolving workplace’. Most staff will not have their own place in the office, and instead be asked to reserve desks before they come in, Meta said.”

Semafor Media: Semafor Interview: Facebook could lift Trump’s suspension in January, Nick Clegg says. “Former President Donald Trump could be allowed back on Facebook once a suspension of his account expires in 2023, Nick Clegg of parent company Meta Platforms, said Thursday at an exclusive Semafor Exchange event in Washington, DC.”

Bloomberg: Amid job cuts, Meta is closing a New York office . “Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to close one of its offices in New York after scaling down its expansion plans in the city, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is exercising its option to terminate its lease at 225 Park Ave. South in Manhattan, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information was private.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

MarketWatch: Almost 100 Facebook janitors laid off as Silicon Valley’s dreaded service-worker cuts continue. “Nearly 100 Facebook janitors were laid off from the tech giant’s California offices Friday, two months after being told their jobs would be safe. The number of job cuts was actually supposed to be closer to 120, but about 30 janitors are being placed elsewhere, according to workers who spoke with MarketWatch as well as the union that represents them, SEIU United Service Workers West.”

BBC: Anti-vax groups use carrot emojis to hide Facebook posts. “Facebook groups are using the carrot emohttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/09/lawsuits-say-meta-evaded-apple-privacy-settings-to-spy-on-millions-of-users/ji to hide anti-vax content from automated moderation tools. The BBC has seen several groups, one with hundreds of thousands of members, in which the emoji appears in place of the word ‘vaccine’. Facebook’s algorithms tend to focus on words rather than images. The groups are being used to share unverified claims of people being either injured or killed by vaccines.”

New York Times: Meta Will Freeze Most Hiring, Zuckerberg Tells Employees. “In May, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, froze hiring for engineers and low-level data scientists. In July, Mr. Zuckerberg warned employees to buckle up for an ‘intense period’ of 18 to 24 months, and asked managers to start identifying weak performers. This week, he told his employees that the company would freeze hiring and reduce budgets across most teams at Meta, leading to layoffs in parts of the company that have previously seen unchecked growth.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Unsealed docs in Facebook privacy suit offer glimpse of missing app audit. “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up… The scandal-hit company formerly known as Facebook has fought for over four years to keep a lid on the gory details of a third party app audit that its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally pledged would be carried out, back in 2018, as he sought to buy time to purge the spreading reputational stain after revelations about data misuse went viral at the peak of the Cambridge Analytica privacy crisis. But some details are emerging nonetheless — extracted like blood from a stone via a tortuous, multi-year process of litigation-triggered legal discovery.”

WIRED: A Sprawling Bot Network Used Fake Porn to Fool Facebook. “IN NOVEMBER 2021, Tord Lundström, the technical director at Swedish digital forensics nonprofit Qurium Media, noticed something strange. A massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was targeting Bulatlat, an alternative Phillippine media outlet hosted by the nonprofit. And it was coming from Facebook users.”

Ars Technica: Coroner lists Instagram algorithm as contributing cause of UK teen’s death [Updated]. “In a London court this week, coroner Andrew Walker had the difficult task of assessing a question that child safety advocates have been asking for years: How responsible is social media for the content algorithms feed to minors? The case before Walker involved a 14-year-old named Molly Russell, who took her life in 2017 after she viewed thousands of posts on platforms like Instagram and Pinterest promoting self-harm.”

CNET: These 400 Apps Might Have Stolen Facebook Usernames and Passwords “A million Facebook users might have provided their usernames and passwords to harmful apps designed to help scammers take over their accounts, Facebook parent company Meta said Friday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Associated Press: Rohingya seek reparations from Facebook for role in massacre. “For years, Facebook, now called Meta Platforms Inc., pushed the narrative that it was a neutral platform in Myanmar that was misused by malicious people, and that despite its efforts to remove violent and hateful material, it unfortunately fell short. That narrative echoes its response to the role it has played in other conflicts around the world, whether the 2020 election in the U.S. or hate speech in India. But a new and comprehensive report by Amnesty International states that Facebook’s preferred narrative is false.”

October 7, 2022 at 07:44PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/XGyBemO

Chicago Sun-Times, Neuromaps, Google Pixel, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 7, 2022

Chicago Sun-Times, Neuromaps, Google Pixel, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Chicago Sun-Times: The Sun-Times’ new chapter: Our digital content is now free for everyone. “…today, we are dropping our paywall and making it possible for anyone to read our website for free by providing nothing more than an email address. Instead of a paywall, we are launching a donation-based digital membership program that will allow readers to pay what they can to help us deliver the news you rely on. It’s a bold move: Reporting the news is expensive, and the converging market forces of inflation and an anticipated (or possibly already here) recession could further endanger local newsrooms like ours. But we know it’s the right thing to do.”

News-Medical: New database brings together multiple brain maps in one place. “The database, called neuromaps, will help scientists find correlations between patterns across different brain regions, spatial scales, modalities and brain functions.”

EVENTS

The Verge: Google’s Pixel 7 and Pixel Watch event live blog. “About Google’s latest phones, which it hopes can use machine learning and artificial intelligence to help you take better photos and get more stuff done. About Google’s first-ever smartwatch, which better be good if Google wants to take a run at the Apple Watch. Maybe even about the tablet Google mentioned at I/O — you know, the one with the huge bezels. There could be more surprises, too, as Google continues to try and make a name for itself as a hardware company. Whatever’s in store, we’re covering it all live, and we’d love it if you’d hang out with us to see what’s new.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Yahoo Finance: Judge postpones Twitter-Musk trial after company accuses him of ‘mischief and delay’. “News emerged Tuesday that Musk was willing to go through with the $44 billion deal under its original terms after his decision to back out in July prompted a lawsuit from Twitter seeking to force him to go through with the deal. While Twitter confirmed that it intended to close the deal, negotiations grew acrimonious on Thursday after the company objected to Musk’s proposal to halt the trial.”

TechCrunch: Twitter is making its crowdsourced fact-checks visible to all U.S. users with Birdwatch expansion . “After last month’s expansion of Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-checking program known as Birdwatch, Twitter announced this morning the notes fact-checkers leave on tweets will now be visible to all U.S. users. That doesn’t mean everyone in the U.S. will be able to participate in Birdwatch, however.”

BusinessWire: Nextdoor Celebrates the 10th Anniversary of Treat Map With New, Pet-friendly Halloween Features (PRESS RELEASE). “Neighbors have the ability to pin their home on the Treat Map and can then explore the interactive local guide to find their favorite streets for treats and Halloween decor. For the first time, a unique pet-friendly pin will be available to neighbors in the U.S., ensuring pet owners or pet-welcoming neighbors can include their furry friends in the trick-or-treating fun.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NiemanLab: Way back in 1989, USA Today launched an online sports service. I found it at Goodwill. “In 2006, one of the most memorably bad ideas to emerge from Bristol, Connecticut came to life in the form of Mobile ESPN, a service that aimed to convince people to sign up for a specialized mobile phone service, at a time when it was hard to imagine subscribing to a mobile company dominated by one brand. At the time, most people already owned a phone, and they weren’t going to shell out extra for one that shouted sports scores at you.”

Poynter: How memes can fuel political strategy. “Memes, like jokes, are often depicted as mostly harmless and incapable of exerting political influence. But recent elections have demonstrated organizers can easily leverage them to build political movements, spread group narratives and influence voters.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: Are You Sure You Know What Revenge Porn Is?. “In nearly every state, there are significant, largely overlooked limitations in the scope of criminal and civil revenge porn laws. Such limitations exclude from protection a wide range of sexual expression that is extremely common in the digital age, yet doesn’t conform to dominant understanding of moral propriety and sexual privacy.”

Daily Beast: Internet Trolls Have Tormented This Sci-Fi Writer for Years—and He Can’t Stop Them. “Four years ago, Patrick Tomlinson tweeted out that he never found Saturday Night Live legend Norm Macdonald funny. That largely innocuous hot take has since resulted in a yearslong mass harassment campaign, culminating in the sci-fi author receiving countless death threats and being on the receiving end of multiple ‘swatting’ attempts—hoaxing a serious law-enforcement emergency at a target’s home—the last of which was just days ago. Worse yet, his anonymous tormentors are protected by the law.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UK Web Archive Blog: WARCnet Special Report: Skills, Tools and Knowledge Ecologies in Web Archive Research, 2022. “The WARST team are delighted to announce the publication of a WARCnet Special Report, titled: Skills, Tools and Knowledge Ecologies in Web Archive Research… The study focuses on individuals around the globe who participate in web archive research, in the context of web archiving, curation, and the use of web archives and archived web content for research or other purposes.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: Adafruit’s Cheekmate gets to the bottom (ahem) of chess cheating controversy. “Figuring out how to communicate with a player mid-match was tricky since any kind of visible LED or audible speakers would be far too obvious. The Adafruit team opted to use a tiny vibration motor similar to those used in cell phones, along with a small driver board to supply a bit more current. And because the receiving device must be concealed on (or in) a sweaty human body, it needed to be encased in something sufficiently moisture-proof to protect the electronics.” Good morning, Internet…

October 7, 2022 at 05:32PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/PXV9AT0

Thursday, October 6, 2022

Velma, Vivaldi, Test-Making Tools, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 6, 2022

Velma, Vivaldi, Test-Making Tools, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Independent: Google pays tribute after Scooby Doo character Velma ‘comes out’ ahead of new film. “Google has celebrated Scooby Doo character Velma Dinkley officially coming out as lesbian with a joyful animation. On Wednesday (5 October), Prime Video released a clip of Velma’s first encounter with her crush, villain Coco Diablo, in the newest iteration of the beloved franchise titled Trick or Treat Scooby Doo!.”

How-To Geek: Vivaldi Borrows a Feature From Outlook and Thunderbird. “Vivaldi started as a power user alternative to browsers like Chrome and Firefox, but these days, it’s a full-featured suite of productivity tools. Now there’s a new feature that improves upon the existing calendar functionality.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: These 4 Sites Make Test-Making Easier. “Being a teacher isn’t easy, and making resources can be some of the most difficult work that you have to do. Printing tests can be time-consuming, difficult, and not to mention has an environmental impact as well. If you want to share tests digitally, however, it can be overwhelming with all the different options available for you to choose from. Fortunately, you don’t have to trawl through all the available options yourself.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Newsfile: Canadian Federation of Library Associations Calls for the Release of all Outstanding Residential School Records. “The Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA) has sent an open letter to federal Cabinet Ministers calling on their support for the full public release of outstanding residential school records currently being withheld by the Catholic Church and other orders of government.”

Bloomberg: Green Search Engine Ecosia Invests in Wind Farms Via Ripple. “Ecosia GmbH, a search engine that donates its profits toward planting trees, said it would spend 250,000 euros ($239,110) in renewable infrastructure with Ripple Energy, a UK startup that lets people and companies buy shares in green energy projects like wind-farms.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Snopes: How Max Polyakov Hides His Financial Interest in an International Web of Online Deception . “Simply put, Polyakov sits atop a massive, internationally significant digital empire that incentivizes overtly deceptive advertising, and that allows him and his associates to profit in multiple ways from the scams pushed by that deception. By uncovering the mechanics of this ecosystem in forensic detail, Snopes hopes to highlight the technical, financial, and legal schemes required both to profit from internet scams and — perhaps — to stop their proliferation.”

Krebs on Security: Glut of Fake LinkedIn Profiles Pits HR Against the Bots. “A recent proliferation of phony executive profiles on LinkedIn is creating something of an identity crisis for the business networking site, and for companies that rely on it to hire and screen prospective employees. The fabricated LinkedIn identities — which pair AI-generated profile photos with text lifted from legitimate accounts — are creating major headaches for corporate HR departments and for those managing invite-only LinkedIn groups.”

TechCrunch: Popular censorship circumvention tools face fresh blockade by China. “Tools helping China’s netizens to bypass the Great Firewall appear to be facing a fresh round of crackdowns in the run-up to the country’s quinquennial party congress that will see a top leadership reshuffle. Greater censorship is not at all uncommon during countries’ politically sensitive periods, but the stress facing censorship circumvention tools in China appears to be on a whole new level.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: Talking with a virtual human might help to reduce negative emotions. “There is a common idea that technology can replace humans in regard to workplace labor, but could they take over the task of emotional support? A study published in Computers in Human Behavior suggests that people felt support and closeness after speaking to a virtual human.”

WIRED: Biden’s AI Bill of Rights Is Toothless Against Big Tech. “The White House’s blueprint for AI rights is primarily aimed at the federal government. It will change how algorithms are used only if it steers how government agencies acquire and deploy AI technology, or helps parents, workers, policymakers, or designers ask tough questions about AI systems. It has no power over the large tech companies that arguably have the most power in shaping the deployment of machine learning and AI technology.” Good afternoon, Internet…

October 7, 2022 at 12:12AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/KGkXzdg

Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas, Food Safety, Twitter, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 6, 2022

Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas, Food Safety, Twitter, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Brown University: Confronting Indigenous enslavement, one story at a time. “In 2015, in an effort to advance collaboration in the nascent effort, [Professor Linford] Fisher created Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas, an online repository that contains more than 4,400 records of Indigenous enslavement — and counting.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Wolfram Blog: Should I Eat That? Food Safety with Wolfram Language. “Foodborne illness, or food poisoning, is something many of us have experienced. According to the World Health Organization, almost 1 in 10 people in the world fall ill each year after eating contaminated food. Luckily, by following recommended food safety practices, we can do our best to avoid getting sick. September is Food Safety Education Month. To highlight the importance of food safety, we have introduced two new properties in Wolfram Language that can help users make smart choices about food storage.”

New York Times: Elon Musk Offered to Buy Twitter at a Lower Price in Recent Talks. “In the weeks before Elon Musk declared that his bid to own Twitter was back on the table, his representatives spoke with the company several times about redoing the deal at a lower price, four people familiar with the discussions said. Mr. Musk sought a discount of as much as 30 percent, three of the people said, a proposal that would have valued the company at roughly $31 billion. Twitter rebuffed the proposal, said the people, who requested anonymity because the talks were confidential.” This story is important on a macro level, but ridiculous on a day-to-day level, and I apologize if I inadvertently index an article that’s irrelevant by the time you see it in this newsletter.

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Inspiration: Formulas in Google Sheets Disappear When New Rows Are Added – The Solution. “The formulas in Google Sheets may get deleted when new rows are added in the sheet or when new responses come in through Google Forms. The fix is simple!”

Make Tech Easier: 5 of the Best Solutions for Monitoring Website Changes. “One of the quickest ways to check a website for new updates is to add the site to your favorite RSS reader and let the tool notify you of any new content. However, an RSS reader can only check for updates within the confines of RSS-formatted code. This limitation means RSS readers won’t work on any static webpages or dynamic websites without RSS components. Fortunately, you can use third-party tools to monitor website changes and receive notifications for any new changes.”

Mashable: 10 ways to watch movies online for free — legally, of course. “In the modern age of the internet, there are ways to watch movies for free that are completely legal. Yes, you read that correctly. There’s no need to visit any shady sites or jump around YouTube in order to watch free movies. Free (and legal) movies are waiting for you only a few clicks away, and there’s a pretty easy hack to get you there. It all hinges on one crucial step: Get creative with utilizing free trials, and you’ll have hundreds of free movies right at your fingertips.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Motherboard: Publishing Company Starts School Year by Removing Over 1,000 E-Textbooks. “Since late August, academic librarians in the U.S. and abroad have been scrambling to identify alternative textbook options for students and instructors after a major publishing company pulled a large amount of e-book and e-textbook titles from circulation.”

Daily Inter Lake: Saving the history carved into landscape of Canada’s Waterton Lakes National park. “Archaeologists and preservationists are working together to record information on a group of culturally modified trees (CMT) in Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park. Using cutting edge laser scanning technology, archaeologists with the University of Calgary have created an extremely detailed model of the human-carved trees surrounding the original site of a cabin once inhabited by Waterton Lakes’ first park ranger, John George ‘Kootenai’ Brown.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: The battle of narratives on Iran is being fought on social media. “As anti-government protests enter their third week in Iran, the Islamic Republic has imposed a near total blackout of independent information coming out of the country. A fierce battle to control the narrative is now being fought online, where supporters and opponents of the government alike are taking to social media to tell their version of the truth and, in some cases, go beyond the truth.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

News@Northeastern: Machine Vision Breakthrough: This Device Can See ‘Millions Of Colors’. “An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Northeastern have built a device that can recognize ‘millions of colors’ using new artificial intelligence techniques—a massive step, they say, in the field of machine vision, a highly specialized space with broad applications for a range of technologies.”

Ars Technica: Google’s newest AI generator creates HD video from text prompts. “Today, Google announced the development of Imagen Video, a text-to-video AI mode capable of producing 1280×768 videos at 24 frames per second from a written prompt. Currently, it’s in a research phase, but its appearance five months after Google Imagen points to the rapid development of video synthesis models.”

The Hill: Social media engagement increases government action, reduces pollution: study . “Citizen engagement through social media leads to a significant improvement in government response and a decrease in water and air pollution, a new study has found.” Good morning, Internet…

October 6, 2022 at 05:33PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/MuNAaVo

Book of Mormon Art, Royal Opera House, Biden Administration, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 5, 2022

Book of Mormon Art, Royal Opera House, Biden Administration, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

LDSLiving: 2,000+ pieces of Book of Mormon art now available in new digital database. “The first permanent and comprehensive online database of Book of Mormon art is now available and provides searchable access to more than 2,000 pieces of visual art from public and private collections, museums, and the holdings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Royal Opera House: Royal Opera House Stream – world-class performances now available online. “Launching today, the brand-new streaming service from Royal Opera House offers 45 stunning works from the rich archives of The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera, and over 85 behind-the-scenes features, trailers, talks and Insights.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: White House Restores Arts Commission Dissolved Under Trump .”President Biden on Friday issued an executive order re-establishing the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, an advisory board that was dissolved five years ago after its members resigned in protest over President Donald J. Trump’s reaction to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.”

USEFUL STUFF

Gizmodo Australia: Become a Productivity Gun With These 10 Google Chrome Extensions. “Whether it’s help with focusing on your assignment, sharing video with work colleagues or just trying to maximise your own productivity, we’ve rounded up 10 Google Chrome extensions we reckon will make your life easier.” It’s a solid collection, but even better, it’s NOT a slideshow.

Noupe: Shutterstock alternatives: Best Vector Websites to Find Free Illustrations . “It’s no doubt that when it comes to design, having more options, and more inspiration is never wrong. In this post, I am going to list the 10 best vector websites to find and download free illustrations as Shutterstock alternatives.” I am making a Halloween Gizmo and using Flaticon for the graphics. Recommended.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNET: Election Misinformation in English Is Bad. In Other Languages, It’s Out of Control. “Misinformation in English is a pressing issue causing concerns about the upcoming midterm elections and the potential damage to the institutions of democracy and responsible for numerous deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media companies continue to update their policies to address the problem. As much as social media companies have worked to curb the spread of disinformation and misinformation, content in different languages remains a critical blind spot.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: This Chatbot Aims to Steer People Away From Child Abuse Material. “THERE ARE HUGE volumes of child sexual abuse photos and videos online—millions of pieces are removed from the web every year. These illegal images are often found on social media websites, image hosting services, dark web forums, and legal pornography websites. Now a new tool on one of the biggest pornography websites is trying to interrupt people as they search for child sexual abuse material and redirect them to a service where they can get help.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ars Technica: Better than JPEG? Researcher discovers that Stable Diffusion can compress images. “Last week, Swiss software engineer Matthias Bühlmann discovered that the popular image synthesis model Stable Diffusion could compress existing bitmapped images with fewer visual artifacts than JPEG or WebP at high compression ratios, though there are significant caveats.”

XDA: If Google wants to be taken seriously, it needs to find ways to assure users it won’t kill new products. “Google’s biggest issue is that its own brand is now associated with killing services that don’t start on the right foot. If people are afraid to invest in Stadia (for fear of it shutting down), then it’s only going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Obviously, people wouldn’t want to invest in a service that everyone sees is doomed to fail. It’s clear that Google needs to find a way past that perception. The problem is: how?”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

MIT News: MIT engineers build a battery-free, wireless underwater camera. “The high cost of powering an underwater camera for a long time, by tethering it to a research vessel or sending a ship to recharge its batteries, is a steep challenge preventing widespread undersea exploration. MIT researchers have taken a major step to overcome this problem by developing a battery-free, wireless underwater camera that is about 100,000 times more energy-efficient than other undersea cameras. The device takes color photos, even in dark underwater environments, and transmits image data wirelessly through the water.” Good afternoon, Internet…

October 6, 2022 at 01:49AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/2WfiM3Y

Wednesday, October 5, 2022

Iowa Laws, OpenBibArt, Twitter, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 5, 2022

Iowa Laws, OpenBibArt, Twitter, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

KGAN: New website launches, striving to help Iowans easily navigate and understand Iowa’s laws. “A new collaboration between the State Library of Iowa and the UI Law Library tries to give Iowans easy access to the state law.”

Getty Library Blog: A Century of Western Art Bibliography Now Available Online. “Researchers may freely search OpenBibArt in French or English to discover a wide range of citations from among nearly 1.2 million journal articles, books, and exhibition and auction sales catalogues published between 1910 and 2007 on topics in the arts and archeology from late Antiquity to the mid-2000s.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Everything we know about Elon Musk’s messy new Twitter offer. “Elon Musk has changed his mind again: he does want to buy Twitter, actually. This, after months of drama! He signaled his intent in a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission — but there’s a catch: Twitter has to drop its lawsuit. We understand if you have questions about the whole situation; honestly, we do too. So we talked to some legal experts in hopes that would give us at least a fighting chance at providing some answers. Let’s get into it.”

C4ISRNET: GI Gmail: US Army launches Google Workspace for troops . “The U.S. Army is rolling out Google Workspace for soldiers new and old, months after the service quietly began testing the software suite as a potential solution to previous information technologies issues.”

WordPress: WordPress 6.1 Beta 3 Now Available. “The current target for the final release is November 1, 2022, which is about four weeks away.”

USEFUL STUFF

Global Investigative Journalism Network: Simple Tips for Verifying if a Tweet Screenshot Is Real or Fake. “Sharing screenshots of tweets is a common way of sharing information on Twitter. But unlike a quote tweet, in which the actual tweet posted by an account is accessible, screenshots rely on audiences trusting that the post seen in the screenshot is real. Unfortunately, as we know far too well, that’s not how the internet works. Screenshots of tweets can easily be faked using simple tricks and used to mislead audiences for a variety of purposes.”

MakeUseOf: The 6 Best Employee Review Sites to Learn More About a Company . “You can learn first-hand from employees currently working for the company or who are past employees. Some sites have rankings based on various categories, such as the best companies that practice diversity or the best companies for jobs in particular industries.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NARA: National Archives Seeks Feedback on Draft Customer Research Agenda . “The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has posted a draft Customer Research Agenda and requests feedback from public and government customers, stakeholders, staff, and colleagues in the archival, historical, and records management communities.”

Tubefilter: Jack in the Box hunts for a “Head Twitch Creator” to stream on its behalf. “If you’re excited about streaming on Twitch but less excited about sharing your face with the internet, Jack in the Box has a solution for you. It is hiring a Head Twitch Creator, who will don a round, smiling head, put on a conical hat, and go live as Jack Box, the fast food brand’s mascot.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

San Francisco Chronicle: Google to pay $85 million to settle claims it deceptively tracked users. “Google will pay $85 million in a settlement with the State of Arizona to settle claims it deceptively captured people’s location data and used it to increase its advertising revenues. The settlement is one of the largest ever paid by the Mountain View tech giant in a consumer fraud lawsuit, the Arizona Attorney General’s office said in a statement.”

Oxford Mail: Cannabis farmer’s lawyer forced to use Google Translate to talk to client as interpreter fails to show. “Prosecutors dropped charges against a cannabis farmer who claimed to have been enslaved into the drugs trade – and whose lawyer was forced to use Google Translate after an interpreter failed to show-up for a second time. Pham Hoang, 18, was found in a flat in Underhill Circus, Barton, on July 19. The flat had been converted into a commercial-scale cannabis farm, with 270 plants growing in the property.”

Observer: Every Art Collector Needs This Database. But Is it Being Manipulated by Thieves?. “The Art Loss Register has been utilized by museums and auctions alike for the past three decades — but it also provides a tool for art traffickers to cover their tracks.” Good morning, Internet…

October 5, 2022 at 05:29PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/N94YDVE