Friday, October 21, 2022

Shape Your L.A., Classical Music Recommendations, Munken Sans, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 21, 2022

Shape Your L.A., Classical Music Recommendations, Munken Sans, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 21, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Los Angeles Times: L.A. Times Launches ‘Shape Your L.A.’ Civic Engagement Tool. “The Los Angeles Times has launched a new civic engagement tool that shows Angelenos how to get involved in their communities. Dubbed ‘the people’s guide to power,’ Shape Your L.A. allows users to type in their address and get maps and relevant information about their local government and institutions, and how to contact their representatives in the state capitol and Washington, D.C.”

Cornell Chronicle: New Muses Project injects diversity into classical music choices. “The New Muses Project is a platform that provides recommendations of composers based on a person’s current preferences. The platform is backed up by a comprehensive, highly researched network database of composers and their music, including a full set of vetted external resources as well as biographies, transcriptions and other supporting material.”

It’s Nice That: New web tool Munken Creator lets you create downloadable, animated font experiments. “In 2020, Swedish paper manufacturer Arctic Paper launched Munken Sans, a free-to-use font inspired by the Swedish typeface Tratex – which was actually designed by Kåge Gustafson to be used on national road signs in the 1960s. Munken Creator is the next step in the creative project from the paper manufacturer. Working with design agency Juno and creative technologist Patrik Hübner, Arctic Paper has launched a new web-based app which allows users to create visual experiments using Munken Sans as its open-source typographic base.”

Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas: MOOCs on covering the climate crisis attract more than 3,800 and can now be taken at anytime, from anywhere. “A recent multilingual course on covering the climate crisis is now available as a self-directed course after reaching 3,810 students from 151 countries. The massive open online courses (MOOCs), ‘How to cover the climate crisis – and fight disinformation,’ ran for four weeks, from Aug. 8 to Sept. 4, 2022. They were organized by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas with support from Google News Initiative.” The course is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

FOSS Force: Ubuntu’s Kinetic Kudu 22.10 Released: What’s New for Desktop & Server. “Although Ubuntu 22.10, ‘Kinetic Kudu,’ is an interim release that will only be supported for nine months, it includes enough new features to perhaps attract some to drop their LTS to at least give it a try.”

Politico: Parler was jubilant about Kanye West buying it. Then the problems started.. “On the afternoon that Parler, a social media platform popular with conservatives, announced its acquisition by Ye, better known as Kanye West, the site emailed hundreds of VIP members to excitedly share the news. There were just two problems.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Engadget: Google launches its News Showcase program in France. “Google has launched News Showcase in France, and it has teamed up with over 65 publishers representing over 130 publications for the program’s expansion in the country. Now, users in France will see panels populated by articles from participating publications when they navigate to the News tab on Android, iOS or the web and in Discover on the mobile platforms.”

New York Times: South Korean Super App Goes Down, Putting a Halt on Life. “Millions of people had trouble getting in touch with one another. Many could not pay for everyday items at convenience stores or order food and groceries. Travelers were left stranded because they were not able to book taxis, depriving drivers of income. The chaos had one source: the Kakao suite of apps was down because of a fire at a data center.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Google sued over biometric data collection without consent. “Texas attorney general Ken Paxton has sued Google for allegedly collecting and using biometric data belonging to millions of Texans without proper consent. The Texas AG says that Google allegedly used products and services like Google Photos, Google Assistant, and Nest Hub Max to collect a vast array of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and records of face geometry since 2015.”

TechCrunch: India fines Google $162 million for anti-competitive practices on Android. “India’s competition regulator fined Google $161.9 million on Thursday for anti-competitive practices related to Android mobile devices in ‘multiple markets’ in a major setback for the search giant in the key overseas nation where it has poured billions of dollars over the past decade.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Gizmodo: Adobe Demos a Prototype Tool That Can Uncrop Photos Using AI to Recreate What’s Missing. “Have you ever prepped a photo for printing but regretted not being more generous with your framing when snapping the image? Extending the borders of a photo before digital editing was all but impossible, and it still represents a time-consuming challenge for even Photoshop masters, but a new tool teased by Adobe on Wednesday could make it impossibly easy to ‘uncrop’ a photograph.”

Harvard Medical School: How AI Can Help Diagnose Rare Diseases. “Rare diseases are often difficult to diagnose, and predicting the best course of treatment can be challenging for clinicians. To help address these challenges, investigators from the Mahmood Lab at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a deep- learning algorithm that can teach itself to learn features that can then be used to find similar cases in large pathology image repositories.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 21, 2022 at 05:26PM
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Thursday, October 20, 2022

Vintage Internet Archive Software, Science Communication in Africa, Video Content Strategy, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 20, 2022

Vintage Internet Archive Software, Science Communication in Africa, Video Content Strategy, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 20, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Motherboard: New Tool Lets You Search Tons of Old CDs and Floppy Disks for Lost Media. “DiscMaster is a new website that is sifting through the CDs and floppy disks in the Internet Archive and making it all into a searchable database. Even more incredibly, it’s taking all of the old file formats and making them viewable in a browser. As of this writing, the archive represents more than 7,000 CDs and 11 million files.”

EurekAlert: New book to help improve science communication in Africa is now available. “Script’s new book aimed at helping to improve the communication of science in Africa has now been published. The book is available for free electronically and to buy in paperback in the CABI Digital Library. ‘Science Communication Skills for Journalists: A Resource Book for Universities in Africa,’ is edited and authored by Dr Charles Wendo.”

USEFUL STUFF

Social Media Examiner: Video Content Strategy: How to Get Started. “Wondering how to produce effective video content for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and beyond? Looking for a better plan? In this article, you’ll discover how to create a video content strategy to serve marketing goals.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

KQED: This Bot Posts Rejected License Plates and It’s Amazing. “Each… post includes the applicant’s stated explanation for their license plate, the DMV’s concerns, the decision to accept or deny, and a rendering of the plate itself. If this sounds like boring government bureaucracy, may I direct you to drivers’ valiant, creative or altogether stupid attempts at deceiving the almighty DMV censors.”

Washington State University: TikTok teaching increases professor’s educational impact. “Christopher Clarke loves putting animations of his disembodied head (and impressive beard) above images of charts and data. Clarke, an assistant professor in Washington State University’s School of Economic Sciences, makes TikTok videos that explain real-world issues to lay audiences through an economic lens.”

Observer: A Legendary Erotic Archive Has Been Out of Public View For Decades. We Found It.. “Not long ago, I rolled up to the dead end of an industrial strip with a clinical sexologist named Laurie Bennett-Cook and an information-studies Ph.D. candidate named Bri Watson. Just inside a combination-controlled rolling gate, past a loudly barking dog, loomed rows of storage lockers. Bennett-Cook, 53, was letting Watson and me see some of what remained of her graduate alma mater: a colorfully unorthodox, defiantly unaccredited, for-profit graduate school in San Francisco called the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

FBI: FBI Warns Public to Beware of Tech Support Scammers Targeting Financial Accounts Using Remote Desktop Software. “The Boston Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning that as tech support fraud evolves, the number of people falling victim to the crime is on the rise, and so are financial losses. Investigators are seeing an emerging trend in which tech support scammers are convincing victims that their financial accounts have been compromised and their funds need to be moved so the fraudsters can gain control over the victims’ computers and finances.”

Washington Post: Chinese hackers are scanning state political party headquarters, FBI says. “Chinese government hackers are scanning U.S. political party domains ahead of next month’s midterm elections, looking for vulnerable systems as a potential precursor to hacking operations, and the FBI is making a big push to alert potential victims to batten down the hatches.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: Google Lamda: A glimpse at the ultra-realistic chat tech. “Google has launched a UK version of an app that lets users interact with the artificial-intelligence system one of its engineers has claimed is sentient. It is a very limited trial, with just three scenarios to choose from. And while Google wants feedback about how its Language Model for Dialogue Applications (Lamda) performs, the app users cannot teach it any new tricks.”

Popular Science: Why Google taught robots to play ping pong. “Yesterday, Google Research unveiled two new projects it’s been working on with a table tennis-playing robot. The Robotics team at Google taught a robot arm to play 300+ shot rallies with other people and return serves with the precision of ‘amateur humans.’ While this might not sound that impressive given how bad some people are at table tennis, the same techniques could be used to train robots to perform other ‘dynamic, high acceleration tasks’ that require close human-robot interaction.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 21, 2022 at 12:43AM
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FathomNet Image Database, Safe Beauty Products, England Aerial Photography, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 20, 2022

FathomNet Image Database, Safe Beauty Products, England Aerial Photography, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 20, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute: Introducing FathomNet: New open-source image database unlocks the power of AI for ocean exploration. “As scientists and engineers develop advanced robotics that can visualize marine life and environments to monitor changes in the ocean’s health, they face a fundamental problem: The collection of images, video, and other visual data vastly exceeds researchers’ capacity for analysis. FathomNet is an open-source image database that uses state-of-the-art data processing algorithms to help process the backlog of visual data.”

The Root: New Database Makes Finding Healthy Black-Owned Beauty Products Easier Than Ever. “Now, just in time for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (CSC) is doing its part to make it easier for consumers to find safe beauty products. CSC’s Non-Toxic Black Beauty Project is a searchable database of over 700 clean beauty products made and sold by Black-owned companies, including cleansers, moisturizers, anti-aging products and more.”

BBC: Aerial photographer’s England collection goes online. “Thousands of photographic negatives and prints, taken by a pioneering aerial photographer, are being made available to view for the first time. Harold Wingham, who hailed from the New Forest, took photos across south-west England between 1951 and 1963. Wingham used hand-held aerial reconnaissance cameras to produce images with excellent resolution.”

Washington Post: An online exhibit from Gallaudet recounts the stories of deaf printers. “Democracy may die in darkness but it once flourished in silence. In the not-too-distant past of the 20th century, deaf printers worked alongside their hearing colleagues to put out The Washington Post, setting type, pasting it down, assembling advertisements and working on the presses. Because those jobs are gone — obsolesced out of existence by advances in technology — those printers are gone. But they’re remembered in a new online exhibit unveiled Monday at Gallaudet University, when about a dozen deaf former Washington Post employees gathered at the college’s Chapel Hall.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

University of Hawaii News: New Hawaiian word series connects to story, culture . “Hale Kuamoʻo, the Hawaiian language center within Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikolani, College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, has launched a new weekly video series called Moʻohua featuring a ‘Word of the Week.’ Each Wednesday, an ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) word is introduced along with its meaning and an example of the word being used in a sentence.”

Search Engine Land: Google releases October 2022 spam update. “Google is rolling out a new search ranking algorithm update targeting the more spammy side of the search results. The company is calling this update the ‘October 2022 spam update.’ It should take about a week to fully roll out and be noticed in the search results.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Manage Your Group Chats on Twitter. “Twitter Group Direct Messages, or group chats, have exploded in popularity since their introduction in 2015. What began as a modest addition to the direct messaging feature, multi-user DMs have evolved into a fun and convenient way to socialize with friends, family, and followers—and are well on their way to becoming the primary use of the Twitter app for many users. Here’s how to create and manage your group chat on Twitter.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNET: Evil Wordle Knockoff Dordle Makes You Tackle Two Words at Once. “First came Wordle. Then came the endless Wordle knockoffs. Among them is Dordle, a devious word game that doesn’t let you off easy. You have to guess two five-letter words at the same time, but you can only input one word guess at a time. Play it and you’ll get it.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Naked Security: Women in Cryptology – USPS celebrates WW2 codebreakers. “The US Postal Service just issued a commemorative stamp to remember the service of some 11,000 women cryptologists during World War 2. Like their Bletchley Park counterparts in the UK, these wartime heros didn’t finish the war with any sort of hero’s welcome back into civilian life. Indeed, they got no public recognition at all for the amazing physical and intellectual effort they put into decrypting and decoding enemy intelligence.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Analytics India: Google Releases a New Text-Based Image Editing Model Called ‘Imagic’. “Google researchers recently came up with a new text-based image editing method called ‘Imagic’. Imagic uses an input image and a text prompt—describing the edit—to then produce an edited image as its output. This new method, they claim, is unlike any of their previous methods for it doesn’t require any additional inputs.”

University of Auckland: The new open home: study reveals benefits of virtual reality. “A study utilising more than 4000 housing transactions has found that virtual reality can reduce a property’s time on the market and increase physical inspections.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Penn State News: Researchers 3D bioprint breast cancer tumors, treat them in groundbreaking study. “Researchers at Penn State have successfully 3D bioprinted breast cancer tumors and treated them in a breakthrough study to better understand the disease that is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 20, 2022 at 05:32PM
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Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Ohio Judge Elections, Pennsylvania Agriculture, EU Tourism Dashboard, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 19, 2022

Ohio Judge Elections, Pennsylvania Agriculture, EU Tourism Dashboard, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 19, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Associations Now: New Website Educates Ohio Voters on Judicial Races Ahead of Election Day. “Launched earlier this month, the Judicial Votes Count website provides information about Ohio’s judicial system and judicial candidates. [Ohio State Bar Association] CEO Mary Amos Augsburger said that historically a substantial number of voters skip voting for judicial candidates because they know little about them. For instance, there was a 16 to 18 percent dropoff in the number of voters who selected a candidate in the state’s Supreme Court races in 2020.”

WBRE: PA Preferred website helps users find local produce. “Farm-to-table, Pennsylvania grown and raised is the reason behind a new state website. The PA Preferred website was launched at the Maylath Farm and Orchard in Luzerne County Tuesday morning. The goal of the website is to help people find locally grown and processed food products.”

EU Science Hub: A tourism dashboard for greener, digitally savvy and resilient EU destinations. “The Commission launches today the EU Tourism Dashboard, a new tool to help policy makers at country and regional level to steer policies and strategies in the tourism ecosystem. The aim of this tool is to improve access to statistics and policy-relevant indicators for tourism, supporting destinations and public authorities in tracking their progress in the green and digital transition.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: The ugly business logic behind Kanye West’s Parler acquisition. “According to a source familiar with the discussions, Parler’s parent company, Parlement, has been trying to offload its social media platform to potential buyers over the last few weeks. One prospective buyer described Parlement’s asking price for the platform as wildly inflated, and said they were stunned by the site’s low number of daily active users.”

USEFUL STUFF

Social Media Examiner: How to Audit Social Media Marketing: A 9-Step Checklist. “Need to develop a new social media marketing strategy? Wondering how to audit your current social actions to see what’s working and what isn’t? In this article, you’ll discover a nine-step checklist to audit and adjust your social media strategy for the future.” A really good overview of marketing metrics and what to look for/think about without getting ridiculously in the weeds.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Kotaku Australia: How Do You Preserve A Video Game?. “The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) very recently appointed Chris Arneil as their Assistant Curator in Games, which is the first time they have had someone in a full-time role regarding video game curation in their archive…. To learn a little more about what goes into the work of preserving games, as well as how the NFSA will go about archiving the history of the Australian video games industry, I decided to sit down and have a chat with Arneil.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Verizon notifies prepaid customers their accounts were breached. “Verizon warned an undisclosed number of prepaid customers that attackers gained access to Verizon accounts and used exposed credit card info in SIM swapping attacks.”

Washington Post: Buffalo massacre report seeks to punish broadcasters of homicide live streams. “The New York attorney general on Tuesday called on the state legislature to pass new laws to deter the live-streaming of homicides, following an investigation that concluded the alleged gunman accused of killing 10 people in Buffalo was radicalized online and then used social media to plan and promote his rampage.”

Missouri Independent: ‘Attempted intimidation’: Missouri AG sent five requests for MSU emails, records. “Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office said a request for a professor’s emails was ‘part of a fact-finding process.’ The professor said it felt like attempted intimidation for criticisms of Schmitt on social media.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Analytics India: Google Vizier is Now Open Source – and That’s Great News. “Blackbox optimization is a process of optimising an objective function in a case where the only available information about the objective is the output. Blackbox optimization is applied to a variety of applications like drug discovery, hyperparameter optimization, industrial engineering, and reinforcement learning. Since its release in 2017, Google’s black box optimization system Vizier has witnessed thousands of monthly users on both the research and production sides at the company.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 20, 2022 at 12:21AM
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Crowdfunding Drones, Shahed-136, Weak Goose, More: Ukraine Update, October 19, 2022

Crowdfunding Drones, Shahed-136, Weak Goose, More: Ukraine Update, October 19, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Defence Procurement International: Ukraine’s Army of Drones crowdfunding campaign. “Ukraine is taking its drone war against Russian forces to unimaginable heights with a new crowdfunding campaign for an Army of Drones. The campaign aims to raise money to procure thousands of drones to monitor the more than 2,470 km long frontline in Ukraine and provide an effective response to Russian attacks.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Institute for the Study of War: Russia’s use of Iranian-made drones is not generating asymmetric effects the way the Ukrainian use of US-provided HIMARS systems has done and is unlikely to affect the course of the war significantly. . “The deputy chief of the Main Operational Department of the Ukrainian General Staff, Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov, stated on October 6 that Russian forces have used a total of 86 Iranian Shahed-136 drones against Ukraine, 60% of which Ukrainian forces have already destroyed.”

What’s on Weibo: Why Russia Is Nicknamed the “Weak Goose” on Chinese Social Media. “While the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war are closely watched by millions of Chinese social media users, the ‘Weak Goose’ meme is becoming more popular among military bloggers and Weibo users, signaling a shift in online sentiments regarding Russia’s position and its military competence.”

BBC: Ukraine war: Czech crowdfunding buys ‘Tomas the tank’ for Ukraine. “A Czech crowdfunding campaign has successfully raised more than $1.30m (£1.17m) to buy a modernised tank for the Ukrainian army. Dubbed ‘a gift for Putin’, the campaign received donations from 11,288 individual donors, and organisers say it is the first purchase of its kind.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CBC: Ukraine accuses Russian troops of looting museums, destroying cultural sites. “In an interview with The Associated Press, Ukraine’s culture minister alleged that Russian soldiers helped themselves to artifacts in almost 40 Ukrainian museums. The looting and destruction of cultural sites has caused losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros, the minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, added.”

ABC News (Australia): Ukraine and Russia’s second front is a propaganda war. But who is winning?. “While Russian claims of great victories against Ukrainian ‘Nazis’ may be regarded as laughable in the West — where in some cases evidence to the contrary has been publicised before the claim itself — researchers say these tactics have proved highly effective within Russia and among Russian allies.”

Associated Press: Experts: Russia finding new ways to spread propaganda videos. “Russia has devised yet another way to spread disinformation about its invasion of Ukraine, using digital tricks that allow its war propaganda videos to evade restrictions imposed by governments and tech companies.”

Grid News: Fighting Russia with a laptop: Meet the women on the front lines of Ukraine’s information war. “When it comes to the information war over Ukraine, Russia has President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin’s well-resourced propaganda machine, and a hammerlock on Russian television and radio. It also has laws Putin put in place in the early days of war, which made any counternarratives a crime. For its part, Ukraine has a charismatic president and a ministry for digital information. And it has a few dozen women who run an organization called Dattalion.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: The Fight to Cut Off the Crypto Fueling Russia’s Ukraine Invasion. “AS RUSSIAN TROOPS have flooded into Ukraine’s borders for the past eight months—and with an ongoing mobilization of hundreds of thousands more underway—the Western world has taken drastic measures to cut the economic ties that fuel Russia’s invasion and occupation. But even as those global sanctions have carefully excised Russia from global commerce, millions of dollars have continued to flow directly to Russian military and paramilitary groups in a form that’s proven harder to control: cryptocurrency.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Riddle Russia: Firehose of (useless) propaganda . “To better understand the link between Kremlin propaganda and the mass sentiments of Russians, we put together a corpus of messages in the Russian traditional and social media that were in one way or another related to the war in Ukraine. The corpus comprises about 18,000 messages broadcast from February to July on television and about 400,000 messages that appeared in social media in July 2022.”

Brookings Institution: Investigative journalism is essential for Ukraine reconstruction and anti-corruption. “Any consideration of the anti-corruption aspects of Ukraine’s reconstruction should include a central focus on funding an expansion of independent investigative journalism capacities. Supported by just a small fraction of reconstruction funding, journalists can mitigate corruption by reporting on financing, procurement, project execution, and other subjects.”

Brookings Institution: U.S. podcasters spread Kremlin narratives on Nord Stream sabotage. “Using a new Brookings dashboard and database, we are able to more systematically study how popular political podcasts shape the information environment. By spreading the idea that the United States was in fact responsible for the explosions, several leading U.S. podcasters have advanced the Kremlin’s preferred narrative while staying under the radar of researchers—until now.”

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October 19, 2022 at 07:18PM
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San Francisco Landlords, Wisconsin PFAS Pollution, Scottish Football Museum, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 19, 2022

San Francisco Landlords, Wisconsin PFAS Pollution, Scottish Football Museum, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 19, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

San Francisco Examiner: New tool for housing organizers aims to reveal landlord webs in S.F.. “The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, a data-visualization and multimedia resource collective, has released a tool to uncover connections between properties, landlords and corporations. The tool, entitled Evictorbook, aims to support tenants and housing organizers in San Francisco. Oakland data is expected to be available on the tool soon as well.”

Wisconsin State Journal: PFAS: Wisconsin DNR launches one-stop map of forever chemical contamination. “Wisconsin environmental regulators have launched a new online tool to track pollution by so-called toxic ‘forever chemicals.’ The Department of Natural Resources combined information from drinking and surface water monitoring programs, health consumption advisories, and a database of contaminated sites into a single online map.”

Scottish Football Association: Scottish Football Museum announces collaboration with Google’s Arts & Culture platform. “As part of the 150th anniversary celebrations, the Scottish FA has collaborated with Google Arts & Culture to bring to life one of the world’s most impressive collections of football treasures and memorabilia through the online platform. ”

EVENTS

University of Bristol: Good Grief announces first mini-festival about ‘Grief + Memory’. “The hugely popular Grief Channel, a spin-off from the original Festival, now has its own YouTube channel, with all its content free to access and share…. In another development, later this year the team will launch a new website, the Grief Hub, providing curated resources and signposting to a host of organisations and content from charities and groups across the UK.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Google redesigns Family Link with Material You, web app, and ‘Today only’ limits. “Announced just over five years ago, Google Family Link is getting a redesign that offers a streamlined experience for parents by bringing controls to the forefront, as well as Material You and a web app.”

Reuters: Twitter locks staff stock accounts in anticipation of deal – Bloomberg News. “Twitter Inc TWTR.N has frozen equity award accounts for employees days ahead of the deadline to close its deal with Elon Musk, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, a sign that the social media firm hopes the deal will consummate.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Cyprus Mail: Sharing the secrets and treasures of Famagusta. “The Famagusta New Museum (FNM) project, created by the Pierides Foundation and the community space KP10, is based around the online museum, which acts as a kind of lost and found platform; a repository where people who lived in and have memories from Famagusta will be able to upload photographs and materials to share with the wider public.” I did not know about the “ghost town” of Famagusta in Cyprus. Business Insider has an overview here.

EurekAlert: RRCHNM receives funding for project aimed at digitally preserving Civil War graffiti houses. “The purpose of this grant is to support the planning for the creation of a digital archive of the unique Civil War graffiti covering the walls of two historic house museums in Virginia—Historic Blenheim (Fairfax) and the Graffiti House (Brandy Station)—and for the planning of the expansion of this effort to several of the other Civil War graffiti sites in the greater Northern Virginia region.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Toronto Star: Google has ‘serious’ concerns with Liberal bill requiring platforms to pay for news . “Google is raising ‘serious’ concerns about a Liberal bill that seeks to require tech giants to pay media outlets in exchange for putting their news content online.”

NBC News: ‘What are they hiding?’: Group sues Biden and National Archives over JFK assassination records. “The country’s largest online source of JFK assassination records is suing President Joe Biden and the National Archives to force the federal government to release all remaining documents related to the most mysterious murder of a U.S. president nearly 60 years ago.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Phys .org: ‘Hey Buddha’: Japan researchers create AI enlightenment tool. “The software, co-developed by a team of religion and computing academics at Kyoto University, has been programmed to memorise around 1,000 teachings from Buddhist texts such as the Sutta Nipata and Dhammapada. Users seeking enlightenment can question a Buddha avatar that pops up on their phone screen.”

University of Georgia: AI answers the call for quail information. “A new model gives wildlife managers the ability to gather the necessary data in a matter of minutes… By using artificial intelligence to analyze terabytes of recordings for quail calls, the process gives wildlife managers the ability to gather the data they need in a matter of minutes.” 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!



October 19, 2022 at 05:28PM
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Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Japan Tourism, Freeze-Date Trends, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 18, 2022

Japan Tourism, Freeze-Date Trends, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Mainichi: Kyoto launches crowding forecast map online in English, Chinese to prevent overtourism . “The Kyoto Municipal Government and the Kyoto City Tourism Association have launched an online map in English and Chinese showing crowding forecasts for the ancient Japanese capital’s sightseeing hotspots.”

Purdue University: Purdue, USDA release online freeze-date tool for specialty crop growers in 25 states. “A new interactive online tool for visualizing and exploring freeze-date trends and other climate patterns is now available, thanks to a partnership between Purdue University’s Midwestern Regional Climate Center and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Climate Hub. The tool covers 25 states in the upper Midwest, the Northeast and Appalachia.”

Google Blog: Mapping our emotions at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. “Artetik: From the Art, a new installation in the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, invites you to explore how artworks from the museum’s collection make you feel. By contributing to the experience, you will be guided to new artworks in the collection through an ever-changing visualization representing the shared emotions evoked in museum visitors. The project is a collaboration between the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Google Arts & Culture, based on research about art and emotions by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: TikTok’s livestreaming updates include adult-only broadcasts. “TikTok is once again updating its livestreaming features, and this time the biggest improvements affect the people who can’t watch. For starters, the upgrade now lets TikTok Live users host adult-only broadcasts. If a stream is likely to include lots of colorful language or tackle traumatic subjects, you can make sure the audience is mature enough to handle it.” The article notes that TikTok still prohibits sexually-explicit content.

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 10 Websites to Have Fun With Your Photos. “Getting a little bored with how your photos are presented online? How about injecting some fun and humor into it? You don’t really need to be Photoshop literate to edit and add effects to your photos. There’re some really great sites out there that allow you to add effects to your photo by using their existing effect templates. The best part is – they are free, output is shown immediately on the fly, and no installation of apps is required.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ProPublica: How the FBI Stumbled in the War on Cybercrime. “In this excerpt from ‘The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits’ Improbable Crusade to Save the World From Cybercrime,’ the authors reveal how unprepared the nation’s top federal law enforcement agency was to combat online crime.”

Canberra Times: ‘Vile’ posts cost food blogger $300k. “A food entertainer’s campaign of ‘tremendous ferocity and insult’ towards a rival Instagram identity has cost him more than $300,000. In the first matter to proceed to trial under reformed defamation law, the NSW District Court found Fouad Najem caused serious harm to a man he’d never met by falsely calling him, among other things, a pedophile and racist.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Americans’ Satisfaction With Internet Service Providers Falls, Study Shows. “When the American Customer Satisfaction Index in June announced its numbers for the broadband industry, we noted that internet service providers landed at the very bottom of all industries surveyed. Well, the news isn’t much better with the release last week of a study from J.D. Power.”

Interesting Engineering: Researchers develop edible, 3D-printed QR codes embedded inside cookies. “In general, QR codes frequently contain information for a tracker, location, or identifier that directs users to a website or application. Well, would you like a QR code embedded in your food? Because researchers from Osaka University developed ‘interiqr’ — a novel three-dimensional printing method of embedding edible QR codes — in the interior of cookies.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

BusinessWire: New Video Game Helps Young Adults Prepare for Earthquakes (PRESS RELEASE). “The player moves through a devastated city in search of their dog, Tsu (short for ‘tsunami’), who escaped in the aftermath of a massive earthquake. Along the way, they encounter situations that demand their attention: unpurified drinking water, aftershocks, gas leaks, and more. By the time the player is reunited with Tsu, they’ve encountered a wide variety of problems that arise before, during, and after a significant earthquake. Created by Lewis & Clark’s Earthquake Preparedness Project, Cascadia 9.0 takes its name from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 600-mile fault off the Pacific Coast, which has the potential to produce a magnitude 9.0 earthquake.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 19, 2022 at 12:01AM
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