New researches

Monday, November 14, 2022

World Food Insecurity, Mass Transit Video Games, Archiving Web Links, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 14, 2022

World Food Insecurity, Mass Transit Video Games, Archiving Web Links, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 14, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

World Bank: New Dashboard to Track Food and Nutrition Security and Global Response. “The Global Alliance for Food Security (GAFS), jointly convened by the German Group of Seven (G7) Presidency and the World Bank Group, today launched the Global Food and Nutrition Security Dashboard as a key tool to fast-track a rapid response to the unfolding global food security crisis.”

Streetsblog USA: How a ‘City Bus Manager’ Video Game Could Become an Advocacy Tool. “A new video game releasing today will challenge players to successfully run a virtual version of their city’s bus network — and the developers behind it hope it can create a new generation of transit advocates, even as they acknowledge that the complex realities of a transportation network can’t be gamified.”

USEFUL STUFF

Snopes: A Guide to Archiving on the Internet. “Here at Snopes, archiving web links is key to our fact-checking practice. And thanks to numerous archival resources on the internet, that practice has become easier than ever. Keeping records on the internet is essential to understanding not just the history of the web, but also to help us track whether a tweet was ever deleted, or if someone amended a statement on a web page.”

Search Engine Land: Mastodon: The new way to connect with other SEO pros. “Although you can use Mastodon as an alternative to Twitter, there is no such requirement. This article will discuss how digital marketers can join Mastodon, what to expect, and how to use it. I will also highlight a few tips to make it easier for you to absorb the flow of information in Mastodon.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: The Man Behind Mastodon Built It for This Moment. “EUGEN ROCHKO LOOKS exhausted. The 29-year-old German programmer is the founder of Mastodon, a distributed alternative to Twitter that has exploded in popularity in recent weeks as Elon Musk’s ownership of the platform has rained chaos on its users.”

Unseen Japan: As Twitter Goes Down, Japan Teases a Return to Mixi. “The big social media news of the week has been the Twitter brouhaha. Elon Musk’s confusing plan for converting Twitter to a paid service has many talking about jumping ship. In response, Japanese Twitter users have floated dusting off a social service that’s seen barely any activity since the mid-2010s.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Toronto Sun: Thai blogger facing jail time for eating bats in soup. “A Thai blogger could be jailed for up to five years for taping herself eating a whole bat in a bowl of soup. Phonchanok Srisunaklua uploaded the one minute and 40 second clip to her Gin Zap Bep Nua Nua (Eat spicy and delicious) YouTube channel where the dead animals are seen floating in a mud-coloured soup with cherry tomatoes, according to the Daily Mail.” You are welcome to Google the last name if you don’t like my sourcing; this is the only article I could find that didn’t include nauseating screen captures of her meal.

NSA: NSA Releases Guidance on How to Protect Against Software Memory Safety Issues. “The National Security Agency (NSA) published guidance today to help software developers and operators prevent and mitigate software memory safety issues, which account for a large portion of exploitable vulnerabilities.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Government Technology: Digitized Kaktovik Numerals Engage Native American Students. “The international encoding standard Unicode has included Kaktovik numerals, designed by Iñupiaq students almost 30 years ago, in its latest version. Teachers in Alaska say it has spurred an interest in math.”

Brigham Young University: BYU nursing professors unearth disturbing trends in sexual assault cases connected to dating apps. “In the first large-scale study of the relationship between dating apps and sexual assault, researchers find violent sexual predators use dating apps to target vulnerable victims.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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November 15, 2022 at 01:58AM
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Soil Carbon Maps, European Social Innovation, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, November 14, 2022

Soil Carbon Maps, European Social Innovation, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, November 14, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

USGS: For the first time, national-scale maps of carbon stored in wetland soil across all interior and coastal settings were created from harmonized public datasets. “Scientists created three-dimensional maps of soil carbon stored across the conterminous United States in inland and tidal wetlands of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Land Cover Database and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coastal Change Analysis Program. The resulting maps identify 1) wetland soil carbon storage at high resolution, and 2) issues of spatial bias among approaches used for different public datasets, and 3) strategic approaches to improve assessment of vulnerability of wetland carbon storage.”

Scientific Data: Building the European Social Innovation Database with Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning . “ESID is based on the idea of large-scale collection of unstructured web site text to classify and characterise social innovation projects from around the world. We use advanced machine learning techniques to extract features such as social innovation dimensions, project locations, summaries, and topics, among others. Our models perform as high as 0.90 F1. ESID currently includes 11,468 projects from 159 countries. ESID data is available freely and also presented in a web-based app.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Numerous social apps see gains in wake of Twitter chaos, new data shows. “The drama at Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition has seen some users looking for an exit. In recent days, alternative social apps and microblogging platforms have seen strong gains, including, most notably, the open source decentralized Twitter alternative Mastodon.”

CNBC: Twitter cuts a large number of contract workers without giving internal teams a heads up. “A large number of Twitter’s contract workers discovered they were suddenly terminated this weekend after they lost access to Slack and other work systems, according to internal communications shared with CNBC by full-time Twitter employees. An estimated 4,400 of its 5,500 contract workers were cut, according to Platformer, which first reported on the cuts. CNBC has not confirmed the total number.”

Engadget: Twitter will soon let organizations verify related accounts. “Less than two days after Twitter’s first attempt to charge for account verification ended in disaster, Elon Musk announced the company is working on a new way to authenticate users. On Sunday afternoon, he tweeted the social media website would soon begin rolling out a feature that will allow organizations to identify accounts that are ‘actually’ associated with them.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Conversation: What is Mastodon? A social media expert explains how the ‘federated’ network works and why it won’t be a new Twitter. “Like Twitter, Mastodon allows users to post, follow people and organizations, and like and repost others’ posts. But while Mastodon supports many of the same social networking features as Twitter, it is not a single platform. Instead, it’s a federation of independently operated, interconnected servers.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Setting a Kahlo Drawing Aflame in Search of an NFT Spark. “It’s tough to profit in the struggling market of blockchain assets right now. Burning a purported drawing from Frida Kahlo’s personal diary didn’t help a businessman’s cause.”

USC Shoah Foundation: Past, Present and Future: Redesigned Visual History Archive to Expand Global Access to Holocaust and Genocide Testimonies . “USC Shoah Foundation today releases a complete redesign of its Visual History Archive (VHA), the world’s largest collection of primary source video testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Politico: ‘Serious risk of breach’ at Musk’s Twitter. “Elon Musk’s turbulent Twitter takeover is undercutting the platform’s defenses while introducing new security risks, and cyber security experts fear users and the public will soon suffer the consequences.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Noema Magazine: How Online Mobs Act Like Flocks Of Birds. “A growing body of research suggests that human behavior on social media — coordinated activism, information cascades, harassment mobs — bears striking similarity to this kind of so-called ’emergent behavior’ in nature: occasions when organisms like birds or fish or ants act as a cohesive unit, without hierarchical direction from a designated leader. How that local response is transmitted — how one bird follows another, how I retweet you and you retweet me — is also determined by the structure of the network.”

University of Kansas: New Approach Could Help Protect Consumer Data Exposed In Purchase Transactions. “Whether they are shopping at Costco or watching Netflix, consumers are consistently exposing personal data. Even though companies may be taking reasonable precautions to protect customers (including those provisions required by law), the distinctiveness of purchasing patterns creates a privacy vulnerability.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Laughing Squid: Artist Builds Giant Concrete Sarcophagus for a Bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos for Future Generations to Find. “Seattle artist Sunday Nobody built a giant concrete 3,000 pound sarcophagus for a single bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos that future generations can dig up and look back on to see what kind of junk food was popular in our time. He also added a shiny plaque on top with the ingredients of the popular snack food.” Good morning, Internet…

November 14, 2022 at 08:03PM
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Sunday, November 13, 2022

Pinterest, Google, Mastodon, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 13, 2022

Pinterest, Google, Mastodon, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 13, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Pinterest launches its collage-making app Shuffles to the general public. “Pinterest’s new collage-making app Shuffles is now available to the general public, after entering an invite-only test phase earlier this summer.”

Google Blog: New feature to help people navigate the energy crisis in Europe. “In times of uncertainty, people turn to Google for help and information. As people look for new ways to stay on top of their energy consumption and keep costs manageable, we’re launching a new feature in 29 countries and 22 languages across Europe to enable people to find relevant and actionable information to help them navigate this crisis and save energy.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Trends: How to use Mastodon: create your account, join servers, and more. “The best part about Mastodon is that you can follow users in other Mastodon instances, even if you are not a member of that instance. Think of it as being able to talk with a person in a Facebook Group or a WhatsApp group chat without having to join that group. The rest is a familiar affair. You can write posts worth up to 500 characters in length, share photos and videos, repost someone’s else content, and more.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

PetaPixel: The Personal Photo Curator: A New Profession is Born. “The average family may shoot four thousand photos in a year. If you have been taking pictures since the iPhone 3G came out in 2008, it means that now, after 14 years of a trigger-happy existence, you are inundated with over 50,000 photos. And you probably cannot find a perfect shot from a vacation you took just three years ago. Enter personal photo curator Isabelle Dervaux, who can make sense of your photo mess and get your collection organized and, more importantly, functional.”

Mediaite: Twitter Flags Mediaite Post Critical of Elon Musk as ‘Potentially Spammy’. “Twitter deemed a Mediaite article that is critical of the company’s new owner Elon Musk as ‘potentially spammy’ on Friday night, and diverted users to a warning page when they click the post. The warning had been removed as of Saturday morning after multiple media outlets – including this one – reported on it.”

William & Mary News: W&M Libraries partners with local Black churches to preserve important church records. “More than a decade ago, William & Mary began the work of reconciling the institution and community with its history regarding the exploitation of African Americans through the eras of slavery, Jim Crow and segregation. Its reconciliation efforts include The Lemon Project, Center for Racial and Social Justice Speaker Series and Hearth: Memorial to the Enslaved, to name a few. Understanding the importance of the effort, the staff at W&M Libraries looked for ways to contribute.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wall Street Journal: Alameda, FTX Executives Are Said to Have Known FTX Was Using Customer Funds . “Alameda Research’s chief executive and senior FTX officials knew that FTX had lent its customers’ money to Alameda to help it meet its liabilities, according to people familiar with the matter. Alameda’s troubles helped lead to the bankruptcy of FTX, the crypto exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. Alameda is a trading firm also founded and owned by Mr. Bankman-Fried.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Vanderbilt University: Vanderbilt researchers develop app that promotes shared responsibility between parents and teens to manage family online safety and privacy. “…Vanderbilt researchers, with collaborators from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and the University of Cincinnati, developed a mobile app—Community Oversight of Privacy and Security (‘CO-oPS’)—and tested it with parents and teenagers to see whether working collaboratively would help resolve some of the tech-centered disputes while enhancing the safety and privacy of all family members.

University of Chicago: UpDown project aims to speed up data processing a hundredfold. “With a $9.2 million grant from Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), Prof. Andrew A. Chien will lead a team of University of Chicago computer science researchers building the UpDown Systema—a new approach that could speed up graph analytics a hundredfold. Graph analytics is at the heart of some of today’s most exciting computational applications in science and technology…. However, today’s computing architectures were not designed for graphs, and struggle with efficiency and scalability.” Good afternoon, Internet..

November 14, 2022 at 01:36AM
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Mastodon Tools Part II: 1 Updated Resource & 41 New Ones

Mastodon Tools Part II: 1 Updated Resource & 41 New Ones
By ResearchBuzz

There was a lot of interest in the Mastodon resources list I put together last weekend, so I took today and made another. I carried over the “Academics on Mastodon” resource because it’s been growing a lot, and added another 41 resources.

If you know of anything I missed leave a comment, or tag me on Mastodon at researchbuzz@researchbuzz.masto.host .

Primers

An intro to Mastodon from a relative newcomer! | Skulls in the Stars – Imagine you and your friend meet at the pub for root beer and french fries. You’re supposed to be there for fifteen minutes so they can set up a Mastodon account for you. Instead you get two hours of Mastodon background, asides, useful tips, and that conversational information that never seems to get transmitted any other way AND you get your Mastodon account set up. Also the fries are good. That’s this article.

How to switch from Twitter to Mastodon | Opensource.com – If you started reading the article above and thought “JUST TELL ME HOW TO PICK A SERVER” then you want this primer. Succinct, no-nonsense, plenty of screenshots.

Coming to grips with Mastodon — MATH VALUES – Some math/science resources but mostly an extended look at how Mastodon works, with focus on the norms and expectations of that platform.

How-To

Screen Rant has a walkthrough showing how to transfer from one Mastodon instance/server to another.

How Mastodon Search Works: Why Can You Only Use Hashtags? – Does Mastodon have the big, powerful, oh-so-useful search reach that Twitter has? Alas, no. And that’s intentional. (I think we’ll see that change over time; Mastodon’s open structure and RSS feeds have me suspecting we’ll see all kinds of search options).

Add a verified website to your Mastodon account • barrd.dev – Some steps to turn the links in your profile green. A couple of additional resources if you’re on WordPress.

Linking from GitHub to Mastodon – Three different options for verification with the pros and cons of each. (Or in the third case, just the cons.)

How to get your Wix website verified on Mastodon – It’s simple but fiddly. Simon Cox unfiddles it for you.

Finding People to Follow

Fedified – Fedified is a project managing a spreadsheet of 207 (at this writing) Mastodon accounts of Twitter verified users. You can download the spreadsheet, edit out the people you don’t want to follow, then import the edited sheet into your Mastodon account. That gives you a follow list to start with.

Fedi.Directory fedi.directory – A searchable subject index of interesting accounts to follow on Mastodon/ the Fediverse. “Fedi.Directory generally lists public accounts about specific topics.”

Trunk for the Fediverse – A huge list of people to follow by topic, from 3D Printing to Writing. I looked at the Geology topic and found it had 7 people on it. (This list looks pretty seriously vetted so I would assume they are high-quality.) This site is for English-language content but there are other sites available for Dutch, Spanish, and French content.

If you prefer ongoing suggestions, follow https://mastodon.online/@FediFollows .

Google Sheets / Google Docs / Lists of People in Various Communities

I mentioned the GitHub project Academics on Mastodon in my first article, but it’s very busy and has grown a lot, especially with new topic lists. If you’re part of Academic Twitter take a look.

New to Mastodon? Here Are 10 Fun Accounts to Follow – If you just want to follow some basic accounts while you get your feet under you, this is a good way to get started.

Mastodon servers for journalists – Information about instances and even a verification service.

These are all Google Sheets / Docs.

TechInfoSecMastodon – 285 listings at this writing .

Queer Studies Mastodon – 35 listings at this writing (I have not seen this one shared as much as other lists.)

The Therapist List – Very new list, not much here yet. For mental health professionals.

Progressives on Mastodon – 90 listings at this writing.

Idaho tweeps on Mastodon – 35 listings at this writing.

Finding Conversations

Guppe Groups – A tool to make topic-based conversation groups on Mastodon and in the greater Fediverse. The two busiest groups at this writing are Classical Music and Actually Autistic.

Apps

8 Best Free and Open Source Graphical Mastodon Clients – LinuxLinks – Each client gets its own page with a ton of details about each program. I think for the most part these are oriented towards desktop computing.

Tools for End Users and Non-Technical Users

Will Mastodon replace Twitter? Sее for yourself with Inoreader! – RSS feed reader Inoreader is taking advantage of Mastodon’s open structure to integrate it into its product. You can even share to Mastodon from Inoreader.

Republish from Mastodon to Twitter – IFTTT – A recipe for IFTTT. Add a little JavaScript and you have a nice filtered crossposter.

Mastodon – Simplified Federation! – Get this Extension for Firefox (en-US) – “Simplifies following or interacting with other users on remote Mastodon instances in the Fediverse.” Open source, last updated in June.

How to schedule a Mastodon post | Tech Help Knowledgebase – Slightly clunky but easy way to schedule posts for Mastodon.

Tools for Technical Users and Programmers

TuM’Fatig – Read RSS feeds on Mastodon – A bot, a little Python, some RSS feeds, and voila.

rtoot: Collecting and Analyzing Mastodon Data | R-bloggers – an introduction to rtoot with instructions on how to install and use it.

mastodon-bot – Dmitri Sotnikov – “A bot for mirroring Twitter/Tumblr accounts and RSS feeds on Mastodon”

Python bot for cross-posting reddit posts to Mastodon. – tootbot – Codeberg.org – Part of MarvinsMastodonTools.

i.j / Mastodon timeline feed · GitLab – Simple setup to embed Mastodon timelines in your Web site. Looks like the project is maybe a year old.

GitHub – kensanata/mastodon-backup: Archive your statuses, favorites and media using the Mastodon API (i.e. login required) – “This tool allows you to make an archive of your statuses, your favourites, bookmarks and the media in both your statuses, your favourites and your bookmarks.” Created several years ago, still actively maintained.

Curated list of awesome Mastodon-related stuff! – A big list, not a lot of annotation.

Twitter Transfer / Archive Tools

GitHub – timhutton/twitter-archive-parser: Python code to parse a Twitter archive and output in various ways – Makes the archive you download from Twitter a lot easier to use. Also has a list of a bunch of other similar tools in case you don’t like this one.

GitHub – shawnhooper/twitter-archive-to-wp: Import Twitter Data Archive using WP-CLI – “This plugin contains a custom WP-CLI command to import a Twitter data archive into WordPress.”

Security

Mastodon Safety: How To Protect Against Security and Privacy Risks – The Mac Security Blog . Ignore the blog title; you need to read this no matter what your platform is. Lays out the various security risks and privacy considerations you should be aware of when using Mastodon. (Also, unlike many articles I’ve seen, it recommends against deleting your Twitter account.)

How to enable two-factor authentication on your Mastodon account – Uses authenticator apps instead of physical keys like a YubiKey.

Hosting

How to Set Up Your Own Mastodon Instance – A thorough overview of setting up your own Mastodon instance using a “droplet” from DigitalOcean, courtesy FreeCodeCamp. You will have to have some other chops to completely set up your instance (setup for a cloud storage, SMTP server, etc.)

Setting up a personal Mastodon instance – If you looked at the previous article and considered it a bit basic for your taste, check this offering from has_many :codes. This bypasses the DigitalOcean “droplet” in favor of more hands-on codes, settings, and Terminal work.

Your organization should run its own Mastodon server – An argument in favor from Julien Deswaef, with a few resources thrown in.

Scaling Mastodon in the Face of an Exodus | Nora Codes – This article is far too technical for me so I’m going to reproduce its TL;DR: “Mastodon’s Sidekiq deferred execution jobs are the limiting factor for scaling federated traffic in a single-server or small cluster deployment. Sidekiq performance scales poorly under a single process model, and can be limited by database performance in a deployment of the default Dockerized configuration.”

Twitter’s Impact

Mapping the Mastodon Migration: Is It a One-Way Trip or an Each-Way Bet for Science Twitter? – Absolutely Maybe – A deep dive from PLOS blog Absolutely Maybe on Twitter’s importance to the science community, and how that community might be moving to Mastodon.

November 14, 2022 at 01:25AM
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Greenwich Village History, Tobacco Industry Allies, 1903 Chile, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, November 13, 2022

Greenwich Village History, Tobacco Industry Allies, 1903 Chile, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, November 13, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Village Preservation: Civil Rights and Social Justice Map Revised and Relaunched. “Village Preservation’s acclaimed Civil Rights and Social Justice Map has been revised and relaunched. Containing hundreds of sites connected to civil rights history found in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo, we’ve streamlined the format, added images and entries, and made it easier and more engaging than ever to learn how the course of history changed and the cause of social justice advanced in our neighborhoods.”

New-to-me, from Tobacco Tactics: STOP adds 25 new organisations to its Tobacco Industry Allies database. “An investigation carried out by global tobacco industry watchdog STOP [Stopping Tobacco Organizations & Products] has resulted in the addition of 25 new organisations to its Tobacco Industry Allies database. The database, launched in 2019, now includes 135 groups across 33 countries. Each of the allies listed in the database is categorised as ‘Third Party’, ‘Front Group’ or ‘Astroturf’ using the definitions outlined by STOP.”

Phys.org: Deconstructing Chile’s colonization: Digital re-edition of Indigenous language textbook. “At first glance, it is merely a printed textbook for religious education in a foreign language. But the genesis of the 1903 edition of ‘Kurze biblische Geschichte für die unteren Schuljahre der katholischen Volksschule’ (short biblical history for the lower years of Catholic elementary school), published in the language of the Indigenous Mapuche, provides special insights into the time of missionary work by the Bavarian Capuchins in Chile.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bloomberg: Brazil’s loudest election deniers are kicked off social media. “Even as Jair Bolsonaro begins to give up power, his staunchest supporters refuse to accept defeat in Brazil’s presidential election, crying foul on the Internet and in the streets. For nearly two weeks they’ve protested President-elect Luiz Inacio da Silva’s Oct. 30 victory, rallying around unproven claims of fraud. And the most social-media savvy are blasting conspiracies about vote rigging to millions of followers. Electoral authorities are hitting back.”

CNET: Twitter Disables Ability To Change Account Names, Remove Blue Checkmarks. “Twitter appears to have disabled the ability for people to change their account names following a rash of impersonation attempts by trolls who paid $8 to the company for a blue check mark verification badge. Twitter had earlier disabled the ability to change user display names too, in response to trolls.”

USEFUL STUFF

ZDNet: How to collaborate on Google Keep lists and why you should. “Google Keep has been my note-taking app for some time now. It’s simple, effective, and works with both web browsers and mobile devices. With Google Keep, I can save quick thoughts, add lists, add images, format text, pin notes to the top, and even collaborate with notes.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Big Technology: Twitter’s Turbulent Year, As Seen Through One Fired Employee’s Cartoons. “With dozens of cartoons, [Manu] Cornet depicted the feeling inside as Musk acquired the company. As the person behind some of the tech world’s best-known cartoons — including an all-timer on big tech org charts — Cornet was perfectly placed to document the wild 2022 Twitter experience. Now suing Twitter, Cornet isn’t speaking publicly, but he did give Big Technology permission to reprint his Twitter cartoons (which he calls ‘twittoons’) with attribution.”

Yorkshire Bylines: Musk’s reader suppression about voter suppression. “In the latest twist of logic for Elon Musk, his chaotic version of Twitter has now decided to flag Byline Times as an ‘unsafe’ site. Worse still, the article selected as ‘potentially spammy or unsafe’ is an article by Josiah Mortimer on voter suppression, entitled ‘VOTER ID “It’s Far Worse than Any US State”‘. Mortimer’s article examines the rushed roll out of mandatory voter ID for next May’s local elections, which have been widely condemned as voter suppression, particularly when it comes to young people.”

Nikkei Asia: Vinyl production finds groove in Japan, thanks to social media . “As ‘city pop,’ a type of Japanese pop music produced in the 1970s and ’80s, wins a new generation of fans around the world, production of phonograph records, the principal medium for recorded music at the time, has more than quadrupled over the past decade in Japan. As city pop gains more exposure through TikTok and other video hosting apps, it has drawn young people to vinyl records, which offer a listening experience that differs from digital music. More artists these days are also releasing new music on records.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Georgia Tech: New Research Gives Users Another Reason to Hate Unwanted Ads. “New research released this week reveals the process used by third party advertisers to target online users can be viewed or manipulated by online adversaries using only their target’s email address.”

New York Times: Internal Documents Show How Close the F.B.I. Came to Deploying Spyware. “During a closed-door session with lawmakers last December, Christopher A. Wray, the director of the F.B.I., was asked whether the bureau had ever purchased and used Pegasus, the hacking tool that penetrates mobile phones and extracts their contents. Mr. Wray acknowledged that the F.B.I. had bought a license for Pegasus, but only for research and development.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Imperial College London: Smartphone users to help simulate cyclones and predict effects of climate change. “The Vodafone Foundation’s DreamLab app harnesses the computing power of smartphones while their users sleep. With over two million downloads across 17 countries to date, the network of smartphones created by DreamLab is equivalent to a virtual supercomputer capable of processing billions of calculations, without collecting or disclosing any user data. In the first phase of the project, the Imperial College Storm Model (IRIS) will be fed with existing historical data on cyclones in different regions of the world.”

Stanford University: Is This a Deer I See? Socially Aware AI Adapts by Asking Questions of Humans. “… artificial intelligence agents are still largely only as good as the data upon which they were trained. They don’t know what they don’t know. In the real world, people faced with unfamiliar situations and surroundings adapt by watching what others around them are doing and by asking questions… Experts in educational psychology call this ‘socially situated learning.’ Until now, AI agents have lacked this ability to learn on the fly, but researchers at Stanford University recently announced that they have developed artificially intelligent agents with the ability to seek out new knowledge by asking people questions.” Good morning, Internet…

November 13, 2022 at 06:30PM
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Saturday, November 12, 2022

Jewish Service in the Civil War, Jazz Musicians in Norway, Australia WWI Diaries, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 12, 2022

Jewish Service in the Civil War, Jazz Musicians in Norway, Australia WWI Diaries, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 12, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: What I learned about antisemitism from a remarkable new archive about Jewish Civil War soldiers . “[Max] Glass was not the only Jewish soldier to be cruelly mistreated when serving in the Union Army. But as the new Shapell Roster of Jewish Service in the Civil War demonstrates, his experience was far from typical. I explored the Shapell Roster while working on my new book, on the experience of Jewish soldiers in the Union army. What I learned from the vast collection of documents and data was that indifference, benign curiosity and comradeship appear to have been much more common than conflict for the majority of Jewish soldiers in the Union army.”

Jazzed: National Library of Norway Releases Thousands of Intimate Photographs of Jazz Greats. “The Norwegian music journalist Randi Hultin (1926–2000) opened her home to many of the great jazz legends. She documented her life in the company of artists such as John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Count Basie in the form of tens of thousands of photographs – pictures which are now held in the National Library of Norway…. A large number of pictures have also been digitised and uploaded to the online archives.”

Australian War Memorial: First World War diaries and letters get new life online. “Eyewitness accounts of the end of the First World War, as recorded in diaries and letters, are now available online as part of a major digitisation project led by the Australian War Memorial. These diaries and letters give an intimate insight to this globally significant day, as Australians gather to mark Remembrance Day and commemorate the Armistice of the First World War, which was signed at 11 am on 11 November 1918.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: Twitter drama too much? Mastodon, others emerge as options. “While it’s not clear if the drama is causing many users to leave — in fact, having a front-row seat to the chaos may prove entertaining to some — lesser-known sites Mastodon and even Tumblr are emerging as new (or renewed) alternatives. Here’s a look at some of them.”

Bloomberg: Renault, Google Expand Pact to Make Cars ‘Like Mobile Phones’. “Renault SA is deepening its collaboration with Alphabet Inc.’s Google in a bid to extend capabilities on remote software updates to new models such as the electric Megane E-Tech and Austral.”

USEFUL STUFF

Fast Company: How to create a mini-website in 10 minutes. “You need a presence online. If you don’t yet have one, consider starting with a ‘link-in-bio’ page—a mini-website that lists your most important links. You can include a brief bio and social links. Later you can build a fuller site with multiple sub-pages, if necessary. Read on for why a mini-site is useful, what to use it for, and recommendations for good free services.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Apple Insider: Key staff driving Apple search engine leave to rejoin Google. “Four years after Laserlike was acquired by Apple to boost its web search technology, the founders have quit to rejoin Google. Prior to forming Laserlike in 2015, Anand Shukla, Srinivasan Venkatachary and Steven Baker were all Google employees. Their work at Apple is one reason the company has been predicted to launch its own search engine equivalent to Google’s.”

CNBC: Sharing your layoff on LinkedIn isn’t an ‘act of shame’ anymore—and it could be a smart career move. “Spend any amount of time on LinkedIn these days and you’ll see workers are increasingly leveraging the platform to announce their layoffs — just as quickly as they’d announce a new job or promotion. The vulnerability is ‘tremendous’ to see, says Albert Ko, the director of sales at AngelList Talent who’s been through five rounds of layoffs in his 15-year career (including two where he lost his job).”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: At least $1 billion of client funds missing at Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. “At least $1 billion of customer funds have vanished from collapsed crypto exchange FTX, according to two people familiar with the matter. The exchange’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried secretly transferred $10 billion of customer funds from FTX to Bankman-Fried’s trading company Alameda Research, the people told Reuters. A large portion of that total has since disappeared, they said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Swansea University: Samaritans And University Report Reveals Dangers Of Social Media’s Self-Harm Content. “Social media sites are still not doing enough to tackle self-harm content being pushed to users on their sites, says Samaritans. The warning comes as new research from the charity and Swansea University found 83 per cent of social media users surveyed were recommended self-harm content on their personalised feeds, such as Instagram’s ‘explore’ and TikTok’s ‘for you’ pages, without searching for it.” Good afternoon, Internet…

November 13, 2022 at 01:25AM
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Samizdat App, Help Me Grow Maine, Fake Eli Lilly, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, November 12, 2022

Samizdat App, Help Me Grow Maine, Fake Eli Lilly, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, November 12, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Meduza: Five investigative journalism projects, including Team Navalny, release mobile app to bypass Russia’s censors. “The independent media outlets Proekt, iStories, The Insider, and Bellingcat, as well as jailed opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s investigative team, have launched a new mobile app to publish their investigations in a format accessible to Russian readers.”

State of Maine: Maine DHHS Launches Help Me Grow Maine to Connect Families to Resources That Help Young Children Thrive. “Initiated by the Department and supported with the passage of PL 2021, Ch. 457 (PDF) sponsored by Senate President Troy Jackson, the free service for children up to eight years of age and their families aims to improve access to early developmental screening, diagnostic, and treatment services and referrals to early intervention services.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Investor’s Business Daily: Eli Lilly Dives After Fake Twitter Account Promises Free Insulin; Takes Novo Nordisk, Sanofi With It. “The tweet went live around 1:30 p.m. on Thursday from an account claiming to be Eli Lilly. It remained online for several hours, gaining steam from hundreds of retweets and thousands of likes. As of Friday morning, the fake account is no longer verified and its tweets are now private. But that didn’t stop LLY stock from falling 2.2% near 360.70 in morning trades on today’s stock market.” (Right now, as I index this article, Eli Lilly is trading down 5.38%.)

BBC: Twitter drama continues with blue-tick confusion. “People on and off the platform have been raising concerns about the direction Twitter is going in under its new billionaire leader. The grey ‘Official’ badges returned less than two days after being removed. And it’s now being reported that Twitter has paused letting people sign up to it’s Twitter Blue subscription.”

USEFUL STUFF

KQED: 7 Edtech tools to connect students to a global community. “There are many edtech tools that help foster community building while providing global perspectives and engagement for students, both inside and outside of the classroom. Incorporating global community connections into community building helps students form bridges between all the communities they participate in. It may also open new avenues for students to see themselves as part of a larger global community and give them new awareness and understanding of their place in the world.”

Nature: Should I join Mastodon? A scientists’ guide to Twitter’s rival. “Bolstered by positive news coverage, it’s becoming the most popular alternative to Twitter. Since 27 October, almost half a million new users have flocked to the service, roughly doubling its user base. As Twitter users wonder whether, and when, they should make the leap, Nature looks at the benefits and drawbacks for researchers.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Mainichi: Google to digitally archive Mainichi Shimbun’s prewar, WWII-era papers . “In total, about 230,000 pages of the Mainichi Shimbun’s morning and evening editions from 1872 to 1945 will be digitally archived. The content of these pages will be analyzed and their text will become searchable. The partnership comes 150 years after the Mainichi Shimbun was first published. Google aims to complete the project by the fall of 2023.”

MIT Technology Review: Twitter’s potential collapse could wipe out vast records of recent human history. “Almost from the time the first tweet was posted in 2006, Twitter has played an important role in world events. The platform has been used to record everything from the Arab Spring to the ongoing war in Ukraine. It’s also captured our public conversations for years. But experts are worried that if Elon Musk tanks the company, these rich seams of media and conversation could be lost forever. Given his admission to employees in a November 10 call that Twitter could face bankruptcy, it’s a real and present risk.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Twitter’s lead EU watchdog for data protection has fresh questions for Musk. “In parallel with the FTC’s ominous warning to Elon Musk’s Twitter yesterday — that ‘no CEO or company is above the law‘ — the microblogging platform’s lead regulator in the European Union is on its case in the wake of senior staffers in charge of security and privacy compliance walking out the door.”

The New Stack: The Dropbox GitHub Data Breach. “In a recent breach, 130 private Dropbox GitHub repos were opened up and copied. Here’s what happened.”

Fortune: Twitter lawyer to employees fearing a FTC crackdown over privacy violations: No, you won’t go to jail. “Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro, who is guiding the legal team following the billionaire’s acquisition, sought to reassure employees that they would not go to jail if the company is found in violation of a Federal Trade Commission consent decree, according to a message viewed by Bloomberg.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ABC News (Australia): Federal government to partner with CSIRO and Google on carbon sink research project. “The federal government will partner with the CSIRO and Google to study how marine ecosystems in the Indo-Pacific are absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.” Good morning, Internet…

November 12, 2022 at 06:24PM
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