New researches

Sunday, October 30, 2022

WWII UK Records, Great Ghoul Duel Doodle, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2022

WWII UK Records, Great Ghoul Duel Doodle, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Fold3 Blog: New Collection of Military Notices from the London Gazette!. “We are pleased to announce a new collection of UK records on Fold3®. The UK, London Gazette WWII Military Notices 1939-1945 contains 1.3 million indexed records for service members found in the Military Notice sections or supplements of the London Gazette newspaper.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Google Scares Up New Great Ghoul Duel Doodle for Halloween. “Like the original, released in 2018, Great Ghoul Duel 2 challenges players to form two teams of four ghosts to collect as many wandering spirit flames as possible. The team that collects the most spirit flames and returns them to your home base within two minutes wins.”

Business Insider: Use of N-word on Twitter jumped by almost 500% after Elon Musk’s takeover as trolls test limits on free speech, report says. “The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a research group that analyzes social media content to predict emerging threats, said that use of the N-word on Twitter increased by nearly 500% in the 12 hours immediately after Musk’s deal was finalized.”

New York Times: Elon Musk Is Said to Have Ordered Job Cuts Across Twitter. “The layoffs at Twitter would take place before a Nov. 1 date when employees were scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation. Such grants typically represent a significant portion of employees’ pay. By laying off workers before that date, Mr. Musk may avoid paying the grants, though he is supposed to pay the employees cash in place of their stock under the terms of the merger agreement.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: Elon Musk’s Twitter is already less safe. These tools will help you protect yourself. . “Given that Musk has already done away with top executives who guided moderation strategy and won’t make any decisions on the matter until convening his own council, it’s unlikely that he’ll be coming down on that kind of language any time soon. In the meantime, we’ve gathered a few quick tips for controlling your Twitter experience and steering clear of hateful language and ideas.”

How-To Geek: 9 Alexa Tricks to Try This Halloween Season. “If you’re one of the millions of people with an Echo speaker, Ring doorbell, or both, there are plenty of smarthome tricks for you to take for a spin this Halloween.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ReviewGeek: How to Play Reddit’s ‘Spooky Bananas’ Halloween Game. “If you’re in the mood for a lighthearted Halloween scare, maybe it’s time to visit Reddit. A new game hiding in Reddit’s menu bar, called Spooky Bananas, lets you control the ghost of Snoo as he floats around eating bananas.”

Moneycontrol: A Google Maps blunder in Chennai – CEO Sundar Pichai’s hometown – has internet in splits. “A Chennai resident tweeted about how Google Maps has been mispronouncing the name of a major road in the Chennai suburb of Adyar in Tamil Nadu. The Lattice Bridge Road is popularly shortened to LB Road, which has become the root cause of confusion for Google Maps. According to the Twitter user, Google Maps pronounces LB Road as ‘Pound Road’ – a blunder that certainly occurs because ‘pound’, a unit of mass, is abbreviated as ‘lb’.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Cointelegraph: Google still promoting crypto phishing sites, warns Binance boss. “Despite Google’s strict policies on crypto marketing for its ads service, scammers have still been slipping through the cracks over the past few years. At times, scam websites have even been displayed higher than legitimate crypto and blockchain projects.”

SiliconANGLE: Thomson Reuters exposes 3TB+ of sensitive data on unsecured ElasticSearch database. “Discovered by researchers at Cybernews and announced today, the data was found on public-facing ElasticSearch databases. The content of the databases, which surprisingly also included plaintext passwords to third-party servers, primarily consisted of logging data collected through user-client interactions. The data collected includes documents with corporate and legal information about specific businesses and individuals.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Business School: How Paid Promos Take the Shine Off YouTube Stars (and Tips for Better Influencer Marketing). “Influencers aspire to turn ‘likes’ into dollars through brand sponsorships, but these deals can erode their reputations, says research by Shunyuan Zhang. Marketers should seek out authentic voices on YouTube, not necessarily those with the most followers.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: A Collection Of Websites That Look Like Desktops. “Web design has come a long way since those halcyon days of Web 1.0. There are plenty of rules about how to make a clean and efficient website, but sometimes it’s more fun to throw them out and just be creative instead. In that vein, [Simone] has curated a wonderful collection of websites that emulate the computer desktop experience online.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 30, 2022 at 05:29PM
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Saturday, October 29, 2022

Diocese of St. Augustine, Virtual Great Pyramid Tour, South Carolina Food Access, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2022

Diocese of St. Augustine, Virtual Great Pyramid Tour, South Carolina Food Access, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Diocese of St. Augustine: Lost Voices from America’s Oldest Parish Archive. “One of the most valuable treasures in the archives of the Diocese of St. Augustine is now available for anyone to see and, more importantly, to use. Sacramental records from 1594 to 1821, including the Golden Book of the Minorcans, have been transcribed, translated and registered in a biographic database by a team led by Dr. J. Michael Francis, Hough Family Chair of Florida Studies at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.”

Boing Boing: 3D tour: explore the Great Pyramid. “Inside the Great Pyramid is a 3D tour of Khufu’s enormous tomb, painstakingly scanned by Luke Hollis. It works just like the ones on real estate websites, but this one’s not for sale at any price (besides, it looks like tweakers already stripped it for copper and anything else shiny).” VERY cool. Click the “Free Explore” link on the top right if you don’t want the tour and you just want to run around in the Pyramid by yourself.

Greenville Journal: New interactive online map shows needy people where they can get reliable food and resources. “The Food Access Map can direct people to food pantries, community organizations and social-service offices, giving them access to safe, reliable and healthy food. Users can search the map by zip code, address and city. Organizations show up as various colored dots on the map, and clicking on the dot will yield info, such what’s available, what services are offered and hours of operation.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: GM suspends advertising on Twitter to evaluate its direction under Elon Musk. “General Motors has temporarily stopped paying for advertisements on Twitter after Elon Musk closed the $44 billion deal to take over the website, according to the CNBC.”

Bureau of Transportation Statistics: BTS Updates Datasets to National Transportation Atlas Database. “The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics today released its fall 2022 update to the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD), a set of nationwide geographic databases of transportation facilities, networks, and associated infrastructure.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ProPublica: How Google’s Ad Business Funds Disinformation Around the World. “The company has publicly committed to fighting disinformation around the world, but a ProPublica analysis, the first ever conducted at this scale, documented how Google’s sprawling automated digital ad operation placed ads from major brands on global websites that spread false claims on such topics as vaccines, COVID-19, climate change and elections.”

CNET: Election Misinformation Is Thriving — When It’s In Spanish. “Media Matters, a progressive nonprofit watchdog group, released a report earlier this month pointing out that dozens of videos filled with election misinformation, with more than a million views total, are still on YouTube since being posted in 2020. This is the third report released by Media Matters in three months focusing on Spanish-language videos and channels making debunked claims but facing minimal repercussions from YouTube.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MENAFN: Amateur Archaeologists Use Google Earth To Identify A Roman-Era Villa In The U.K.—Complete With Central Heating. “Members of the community-based Kent Archaeological Society were using the publicly available software, which is based on satellite imagery, to conduct a remote survey of their history-rich county, as part of the ongoing Trosley Heritage Project. As they were looking through the aerial views, linear crop markings on farmland near Trosley quickly caught the group’s attention.”

Hackaday: How The Art-generating AI Of Stable Diffusion Works. “[Jay Alammar] has put up an illustrated guide to how Stable Diffusion works, and the principles in it are perfectly applicable to understanding how similar systems like OpenAI’s Dall-E or Google’s Imagen work under the hood as well. These systems are probably best known for their amazing ability to turn text prompts (e.g. ‘paradise cosmic beach’) into a matching image. Sometimes. Well, usually, anyway.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Purdue University: Developing game-based tech to detect and intervene against stress and anxiety. “A high-tech startup that uses game-based interventions to help users identify stress- and anxiety-related events in real time and receive a personalized intervention has been awarded a federal grant to partially develop its technology through research at Purdue University’s College of Engineering.” Good afternoon, Internet…

October 30, 2022 at 12:54AM
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Ireland Pottery, Spritacular, Image Creator, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2022

Ireland Pottery, Spritacular, Image Creator, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Wicklow News (Ireland): Arklow Pottery digital archive goes live. “The ‘Arklow Pottery Online’ project was initiated in May 2022 to create a digital pattens database, backstamp reference guide, photo & video archive, and oral history record capturing the stories of some of those who worked in Arklow Pottery. The project was completed recently, and all of these resources are now accessible via a new website where it will be available for future generations to engage with and learn about the heritage of one of the Potteries.”

NASA Science: Spritacular: NASA’s New Citizen Science Project to Capture Elusive Upper Atmospheric Electrical Phenomena on Camera. “NASA’s newest citizen science project, Spritacular (pronounced sprite-tacular), leverages the power of crowdsourcing to advance the study of sprites and other Transient Luminous Events, or TLEs. TLEs include a range of electrical phenomena that occur above thunderstorms and produce brief flashes of light. The new citizen science project aims to connect professional scientists with members of the public who would like their camerawork to contribute to scientific studies.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bing Blog: Image Creator now live in select countries for Microsoft Bing and coming soon in Microsoft Edge. “Image Creator allows you to create an image that doesn’t exist, limited only by your imagination. Simply type in a description of something, any additional context like location or activity, and an art style, and Image Creator will make it for you.”

USEFUL STUFF

Ars Technica: How to download a backup copy of your Twitter data (or deactivate your account). “Big changes are underway at Twitter as we speak—including new leadership—and some people are nervous about what the future might bring for the social network. Things may end up completely fine, but even in tranquil times, it’s good to know how to get a copy of your Twitter data for local safekeeping—or to deactivate your Twitter account if you choose. This puts control of your data in your hands.”

Fast Company: Looking for Twitter alternatives? Here’s how to use Mastodon. “Mastodon hews close to Twitter’s overall style, with ‘toots’ instead of tweets and ‘boosts’ instead of retweets, along with mentions, hashtags, and a chronological feed. The key difference is that Mastodon has no ads, no creepy data mining, and no centralized ownership. It can be a little tricky to set up, though, and you may quickly discover that its attempts to clone Twitter are at odds with its decentralized nature. But don’t let that discourage you from giving it a try.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Craig Press: Museum of Northwest Colorado project preserves local newspapers for public access . “The Museum of Northwest Colorado is working toward digitizing an archive of newspapers from 1945 to 1982 in an effort to better preserve that period of local history and make the records more available for research. The museum is home to more than a century’s worth of original newspapers, containing local records of happenings and history that are often requested by different kinds of researchers.”

Futurism / The Byte: Departed Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey Is Launching A New Social Network. “Looking for an alternative to the now Elon Musk-owned Twitter? The original Twitter architect himself, Jack Dorsey, might just have something for you: Bluesky Social, a new ‘decentralized social network’ that allegedly seeks to reclaim user data.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Hacker News: Google Issues Urgent Chrome Update to Patch Actively Exploited Zero-Day Vulnerability. “Google on Thursday rolled out emergency fixes to contain an actively exploited zero-day flaw in its Chrome web browser. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-3723, has been described as a type confusion flaw in the V8 JavaScript engine.”

Reuters: Google plans legal challenge to India’s antitrust crackdown on Android-sources. “Google is planning a legal challenge to block a ruling by India’s antitrust watchdog to change its approach to its Android operating system, concerned that it will restrict how it promotes the platform, sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters.”

CNET: Europe Warns Twitter’s Elon Musk: The Bird Flies by Our Rules. “After apparently closing the $44 billion sale of Twitter on Thursday, Musk tweeted: ‘the bird is freed.’ But within hours, European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton retweeted Musk with a reminder: ‘In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.’ Breton added the hashtag #DSA, referencing the incoming Digital Services Act, which lays out the rules for social media companies operating in Europe.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Verge: Welcome to hell, Elon. “Twitter, the company, makes very little interesting technology; the tech stack is not the valuable asset. The asset is the user base: hopelessly addicted politicians, reporters, celebrities, and other people who should know better but keep posting anyway. You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars.”

University of Washington: These factors have the biggest impact on influencer marketing effectiveness. “Recently published online and forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, the study is one of the first to include cost data in its examinations of influencer marketing. Researchers found that if firms spent 1% more on influencer marketing, they would see a nearly 0.5% increase in engagement. They also concluded that reallocating spending based on the study’s insights could result in a 16.6% increase in engagement.” Good morning, Internet…

October 29, 2022 at 05:32PM
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Friday, October 28, 2022

Kentucky Minority-Owned Businesses, Photosemiconductors, NARA, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2022

Kentucky Minority-Owned Businesses, Photosemiconductors, NARA, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Kentucky Bottom Line News: Kentucky Minority-Owned Business Database Now Available Through the Kentucky Chamber Foundation . “In partnership with various certifying organizations, including the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the Kentucky Finance and Administration Cabinet, and the City of Louisville, the Kentucky Minority-Owned Business Database has now centralized the listing of more than 1,100 minority-owned businesses…. The database features a searchable platform where users can find and filter minority-owned businesses by name, certification type, industry, service provided, location, and more.”

IDW: Battery research – First online database on photocharged materials developed. “Dr. Aleksandr Savateev, group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, has developed a unique online database. To do so, he has analyzed and standardized research data from 300 papers published over the past forty years in the field of photocharged semiconductors. The database could be used to find suitable photosemiconductors for designing new batteries, rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors more quickly and in a more targeted manner.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Archives: National Archives Tops 200 Million Digitized Pages in Online Catalog. “The National Archives Catalog now contains more than 200 million digitized pages. The Office of Innovation collaborated with offices across the National Archives, as well as external partners like Ancestry and FamilySearch, to reach this milestone in August.”

Politico: National Archives denies Trump referral to DOJ was connected to Dems. “The National Archives is denying Republican accusations that its decision to refer Donald Trump’s handling of classified records to the Justice Department had anything to do with an inquiry from a top House Democrat.”

TechCrunch: Google acquires Twitter-backed AI avatar startup Alter for $100 million. “Google has acquired Alter, an artificial intelligence (AI) avatar startup that helps creators and brands express their virtual identity, for about $100 million, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in a push to boost its content game and better compete with TikTok.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 10 New Google Docs Features Worth Trying Out. “While the fundamentals are the same (why fix what ain’t broken?), Google continues to add new features to the mix. But they aren’t all obvious, and some of them are hidden behind a nest of menus. As reported by Zapier, there are plenty of features new to 2022. Here are 10 of them worth exploring.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Guardian: ‘I vote for chaos’: Twitter aflutter as users contemplate Musk era. “Elon Musk appeared to have taken control of Twitter on Thursday, after months of legal wrangling over the billionaire’s $44bn bid to take over the social media site. People familiar with the matter said Musk completed the deal on Thursday afternoon, and terminated several top executives at the company, including the chief executive, Parag Agrawal.”

NPR: False information is everywhere. ‘Pre-bunking’ tries to head it off early. “Officials in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Union County, North Carolina, and Contra Costa County, California, are posting infographics on social media urging people to ‘think critically’ about what they see and share about voting and to seek out reliable election information.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google Play in EU antitrust sights as Android fine appeal pending. “Alphabet unit Google’s Google Play Store is the target of an EU antitrust investigation, the company said in a regulatory filing, a move that could expose the U.S. tech giant to another billion-euro fine. Over the last decade, Google has incurred 8.25 billion euros ($8.24 billion) in EU antitrust fines following three investigations into its business practices.”

Rest of World: Social media gossip is fueling mass arrests in El Salvador. ” The rise of social media-driven arrests in El Salvador came about as a result of [President Nayib] Bukele’s push to get citizens involved in his crackdown by reporting suspected crime. In May, the Salvadoran police (PNC) opened an official, dedicated phone line to receive tips from citizens who suspected others of being so-called terrorists, as the government refers to gang members. Law enforcement soon began to get reports through public and private messages on its social media.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: AI is plundering the imagination and replacing it with a slot machine. “These tools represent the complete corporate capture of the imagination, that most private and unpredictable part of the human mind. Professional artists aren’t a cause for worry. They’ll likely soon lose interest in a tool that makes all the important decisions for them. The concern is for everyone else. When tinkerers and hobbyists, doodlers and scribblers—not to mention kids just starting to perceive and explore the world—have this kind of instant gratification at their disposal, their curiosity is hijacked and extracted.” And here is my periodic reminder that I include articles in this section with which I do not necessarily agree.

Cornell Chronicle: Online microaggressions strongly impact disabled users. “In person, people with disabilities often experience microaggressions – comments or subtle insults based on stereotypes. New types of microaggressions play out online as well, according to new Cornell-led research.” Good morning, Internet…

October 28, 2022 at 05:27PM
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Thursday, October 27, 2022

People Not Property Project, Twitter, iPhone Charging, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2022

People Not Property Project, Twitter, iPhone Charging, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

EVENTS

Stanly News & Press: State Archives to host a virtual program on the People Not Property project. “Discover records of enslavement from across North Carolina through the People Not Property project. The virtual presentation will 1-2 p.m. Nov. 7 as part of the Friends of the Archives annual meeting.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Elon Musk Says He Doesn’t Actually Plan to Cut Twitter Staff by 75%: Report. “Elon Musk, who’s reportedly on track to finalise his purchase of Twitter this week, doesn’t actually plan to cut the social media company’s staff by 75%, according to a new report from Bloomberg News. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be significant pain at the social media company after Musk shells out $US44 ($61) billion in the highly publicized deal.”

The Verge: Apple confirms the iPhone is getting USB-C. “Apple has given its most direct confirmation yet that a USB-C-equipped iPhone will happen now that the European Union is mandating that all phones sold in its member countries use the connector if they have a physical charger.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Wall Street Journal: Elon Musk Will Face an Early Twitter Challenge: Preventing Advertiser Flight. “Mr. Musk said this spring that as owner of Twitter he would reinstate former President Donald Trump’s account, which the platform suspended indefinitely after linking Mr. Trump’s comments to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That would be a red line for some brands, said Kieley Taylor, global head of partnerships at GroupM, a leading ad-buying agency that represents blue-chip brands. About a dozen of GroupM’s clients, which own an array of well-known consumer brands, have told the agency to pause all their ads on Twitter if Mr. Trump’s account is reinstated, Ms. Taylor said.”

Homeland Security Today: From Physical Maps to Online Lookups: DHS S&T and NOAA Transition Harmonized Waterway Database to Coast Guard. “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is delivering a harmonized geospatial dataset of national waterways to all federal agencies that comprise the U.S. Committee on the Marine Transportation System (CMTS)…. The Coast Guard will host and maintain this geospatial dataset and make this information available online, at no cost to the public.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Krebs on Security: Battle with Bots Prompts Mass Purge of Amazon, Apple Employee Accounts on LinkedIn. “On October 10, 2022, there were 576,562 LinkedIn accounts that listed their current employer as Apple Inc. The next day, half of those profiles no longer existed. A similarly dramatic drop in the number of LinkedIn profiles claiming employment at Amazon comes as LinkedIn is struggling to combat a significant uptick in the creation of fake employee accounts that pair AI-generated profile photos with text lifted from legitimate users.”

Washington Post: Kia cars are being stolen nationwide as how-to videos swirl online. “For months, Kia owners across the United States have been reporting the same problem: Their cars keep getting stolen by thieves using just a USB cord. Police departments from New York to Los Angeles are growing increasingly concerned about the Kia thefts — which are spiking because of a vulnerability in earlier models that has been shared widely in social media videos, outlining exactly how to steal the vehicles in seconds.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

USC Rossier School of Education: Does bias exist in online learning?. “As remote learning becomes commonplace amid the COVID-19 pandemic, little research has explored teacher bias in these virtual spaces. But a published study led by USC Rossier Associate Professor Yasemin Copur-Gencturk now suggests educators’ unconscious judgments in an online environment can deepen inequities.”

Penn Today: The language of loneliness and depression, revealed in social media. “By analyzing Facebook posts, Penn researchers found that words associated with depression are often tied to emotions, whereas those associated with loneliness are linked to cognition.” Good afternoon, Internet…

October 28, 2022 at 12:28AM
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Search .Edu Space Near A Birthplace With Backyard Scholarship

Search .Edu Space Near A Birthplace With Backyard Scholarship
By ResearchBuzz

I don’t know what to call these little things I’m making with JavaScript. I am reluctant to call them computer programs since I have been told that what I am doing is not real programming because it isn’t sufficiently complicated or something. So let me keep calling them Gizmos.

Anyway, when I think of a Gizmo it usually comes in three phases: I think of a search issue it would be nice to have a tool for, I find the resources that could make the tool, and then I work through all the steps that need doing and turn them into puzzles – first I need to get THIS data, and then I need to evaluate it THAT way, after that it needs to go to THE OTHER API, etc. So it usually works out that each Gizmo is a series of puzzles, and if I solve all the puzzles I get a Web tool at the end as my prize.

As I’ve learned things and discovered more tools, I’ve found that the puzzle method works well when setting challenges for myself. Yesterday’s challenge was “Put three APIs together in a useful way.” I failed the challenge because Wikipedia’s data was too unformatted, but I finished Backyard Scholarship anyway. It’s available at https://searchgizmos.com/backyard/ and requires a free Data.gov API key.

What was SUPPOSED to happen was that you enter a Wikipedia figure’s name, and Backyard would get the birthplace of the person from the Wikipedia API, translate the place to a zip with the Zippopotam.us API, and finally use the Data.gov API to find all higher education institutions within a 30-mile radius of that location. The domain names of the institutions are then aggregated into a Google site: search.

But Wikipedia’s birthplace data is really weird (that’s a separate rant) so I ditched that API and made it so users can enter the birthplace themselves. (I suspect a future challenge will be figuring out a way to make Wikidata’s horrible P19 attribute useful somehow.)

The idea behind Backyard Scholarship is that higher education institutions often focus especially on famous people who were born nearby. By creating a Google site: search limited to only those institutions within a radius of a birthplace, that focused attention and research pops right out. Here’s what the results for the default search, Mark Twain, look like:

Much more focus on local people and events then you’ll get with a more general “Mark Twain” site:edu search.

That’s not to say that a Backyard Scholarship search is better than a regular Google site:edu search. It’s not. Instead I think they’re complementary, because they provide completely different results. For example, let’s take Robert J Conley, a Cherokee who’s my favorite author of westerns next to Elmer Kelton. Here’s a Google search for “Robert J. Conley “site:edu search:

Information-rich, useful results. Now let’s do the same search with Backyard Scholarship, adding in Conley’s birthplace of Cushing, Oklahoma:

Also relevant results, but much more local!

Of course, you’re not limited to searching only by birthplace. Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown Pennsylvania but is more commonly associated with Concord Massachusetts. If you search for her name and that city/state, you get a lot of interesting results from Boston University:

There are a couple of little bugs –occasionally Backyard insists it doesn’t recognize a zip code – but other than that it’s fun to play with.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to intersect whatever information a searcher has – a name, a place – with commonly -used and -understood data points relevant to that topic (birthplace, location, occupation, dates, etc) with the intention of guiding and informing a search in a transparent way. It’s an interesting road to go down and I’m looking forward to evolving more complex puzzles.

October 27, 2022 at 10:39PM
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Common App Assistance, Ohio Career Development, City Development, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2022

Common App Assistance, Ohio Career Development, City Development, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 27, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

PRWeb: The AXS Companion to Common App, a New Tool Developed by IECA and Oregon State University, Helping Thousands of Students Apply to College (PRESS RELEASE). “Developed by the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) in partnership with Oregon State University’s Ecampus, the AXS Companion includes 50-plus explanatory videos for each Common App section as well as helpful tips, a glossary of terms, and links to additional resources. It is designed to be used side-by-side with Common App as students complete their applications.” (The resource is free.)

Business Journal: Ohio’s New Career Resource Navigator Aims to Help Job Seekers Overcome Barriers. “An individual, career counselor, workforce professional or others looking for support need only to answer a few questions and a list is created of programs and resources tailored to assist them or someone they are helping, said [Matt] Damschroder. Assistance is available in a variety of areas such as managing a disability, obtaining education or skills and locating support such as childcare or transportation.”

Brookings Institution: Introducing the Smart Growth Cities tool. “Every region faces unique challenges while benefiting from unique advantages, which is part of what makes successful economic and workforce development planning so difficult, as there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The Smart Growth Cities tool recognizes this and provides a powerful, location-specific guide that applies research insights and detailed data sources to help planners along this difficult road to achieving economic and workforce outcomes that align with local priorities.”

KUNR: Catholic Church ‘dumped’ abusive priests onto tribal communities, database shows. “Over the past 70 years, 96 priests of the Jesuits West Province of the Society of Jesus have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. Nearly half of them – 47 priests – spent time on tribal lands. That’s according to a database called ‘Desolate Country: Mapping Catholic Sex Abuse in Native America,’ which a pair of researchers built from the Catholic Church’s own list of “credible claims of sexual abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult” by priests and brothers across much of the West dating back to 1950.”

USDA: USDA Launches Loan Assistance Tool to Enhance Equity and Customer Service. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched a new online tool to help farmers and ranchers better navigate the farm loan application process.”

EVENTS

USC Shoah Foundation: Public Launch of the New Visual History Archive. “Join us on campus or on Zoom for the public launch of USC Shoah Foundation’s new Visual History Archive (VHA) platform. With advanced new search functions and robust project management tools, the new VHA enables scholars, researchers and educators to connect with the 55,000 testimonies of Holocaust and genocide survivors and witnesses in a way that has never been possible until now.” November 9th, virtual and in-person. Admission is free but you have to register.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Matt Mullenweg: Open Source Podcasting Client. “Automattic acquired Pocket Casts last July, and since we’ve been tapping away trying to make the best podcast client for people who love listening to podcasts. And! The team has been working really hard to make those clients totally open source and available to the world, and it’s now happened.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Twitch’s Relationship With Its Streamers Shows Its Cracks. “…Twitch has mostly maintained the good will of the streamers who are its lifeblood. But that has been changing, and streamers say they are increasingly worried that they’re being forgotten by the platform in the name of profits. More than a dozen star Twitch streamers have switched to YouTube in recent years, and the service risks losing more to other livestreaming platforms.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Stanford University: A New Law Designed for Children’s Internet Safety Will Change the Web for Adults, Too. “While directed toward children’s safety and well-being, the impact of the law could be much broader, says Stanford HAI Privacy and Data Policy Fellow Jennifer King…. ‘What we’re seeing is a shift toward a world where you get more choices over what and how you want things given to you that isn’t simply the company’s version of personalization.’ In this conversation, she explains the implications of the new law, how it will impact AI developers, and what happens next in the U.S. privacy and AI regulatory landscape.”

Ars Technica: Company that makes rent-setting software for landlords sued for collusion. “Renters filed a lawsuit this week alleging that a company that makes price-setting software for apartments and nine of the nation’s biggest property managers formed a cartel to artificially inflate rents in violation of federal law. The lawsuit was filed days after ProPublica published an investigation raising concerns that the software, sold by Texas-based RealPage, is potentially pushing rent prices above competitive levels, facilitating price-fixing, or both.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

News@Northeastern: Northeastern Researcher Pledges To Unlock Power Of Cellphone-generated Mobility Data To Benefit Neighborhoods. “In a joint effort funded by the National Science Foundation, scientists from Northeastern University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology plan to build a public mobility data platform for the Boston area that will help neighborhoods and communities use cellphone-generated data to address issues of social equity, racial and socioeconomic segregation, economic development and climate resilience.”

WIRED: How Google Alerted Californians to an Earthquake Before It Hit. “ANDROID PHONES AROUND San Francisco’s Bay Area buzzed with an alert on Tuesday morning: A 4.8 magnitude earthquake was about to hit. ‘You may have felt shaking,’ some of the messages read. More than a million Android users saw the alert. And for some, it arrived seconds before the ground even started moving.” Good morning, Internet…

October 27, 2022 at 05:29PM
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