New researches

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Free Software Development Courses, USS Drum, FTX, More: Tuesday Evening ResearchBuzz, November 15, 2022

Free Software Development Courses, USS Drum, FTX, More: Tuesday Evening ResearchBuzz, November 15, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Search Engine Journal: LinkedIn + GitHub Launch 40+ Free Courses. “LinkedIn is teaming up with GitHub to launch over 40 software development courses through LinkedIn Learning, all of which are free until March 2023. The courses combine educational videos from LinkedIn with GitHub Codespaces, and cover today’s most popular programming languages.” The courses are free until the end of February.

Auburn University: Auburn research project allowing world to see inside USS Drum submarine like never before. “[Junshan] Liu, [Danielle] Willkens and their team used 360-degree cameras and Lidar scanners to capture images of the interior of the eight-compartment submarine and put together a highly interactive virtual tour accessible to anyone and everyone through the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park’s website.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: New York Times Runs Bizarre Softball Article on FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried. “FTX filed for bankruptcy on Friday, leaving reasonable people to wonder how a cryptocurrency platform founded in 2019, which reached a valuation of $32 billion in 2021, could plummet to zero in such a short time. There’s a new piece in the New York Times which gained exclusive access to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, but if you’re looking for answers, you’re not going to find it there.” I was wondering about the NYT article, which has a “What a scamp, boys will be boys” vibe. Gizmodo breaks down why it’s so weird.

Engadget: Twitter fired employees who publicly called out Elon Musk. “At least three Twitter employees who survived the mass layoffs that cut the company’s workforce in half have been fired after calling out their new boss on the platform. One of them is Eric Frohnhoefer, who responded to Elon Musk’s tweet apologizing for Twitter being slow in many countries.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

University of Maryland Baltimore County: Historical Lens: Preserving the photography of social documentarian Lewis Hine . “The photographer Lewis Hine secured a place in history as a documentarian of early 20th century life, including a transformational investigation into the conditions for child laborers…. This year, the Special Collections team at UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library received a Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support conservation of this groundbreaking collection.”

NBC News:
False claim about Iran protester executions goes viral with help from celebrities and politicians . “An image that has circulated widely on social media falsely states that 15,000 protesters have been sentenced to death. That claim is not true, but has been amplified by major public figures including the actresses Viola Davis and Sophie Turner and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Representatives for Davis did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives for Turner declined to comment.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBS News: Janet Yellen says FTX collapse shows cryptocurrencies are ‘risky… even dangerous’ investments. “Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has told CBS News that the spectacular collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which sent shockwaves through the crypto world last week with its bankruptcy filing, should serve as a warning to Americans about investing their money in ‘extremely risky’ financial products traded in a space lacking ‘appropriate supervision and regulation.'”

Washington University in St. Louis: NSF grant supports development of GPS-free, secure communication. “Part of modern-day encryption requires precise synchronization of devices. Currently, that’s done using GPS satellites; devices can stay in sync by pinging a satellite at regular intervals. When there is no access to GPS, or if a GPS signal is maliciously jammed or tampered with, there can be no guarantee of secure communications.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: AI transforms smartwatch ECG signals into a diagnostic tool for heart failure. “Two health tech advances are at the heart of a study published in Nature Medicine: an app and backend infrastructure to let patients remotely share smartwatch ECG data with their clinicians in an easy and secure way, and the modification of a proven 12-lead ECG artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to enable it to run on a single-lead watch ECG recording.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Core 77: An Amusing Backup Camera Hack for Precision Parking. “Backup camera images typically feature red and green lines overlaid on the screen to give you a sense of the car’s boundaries: Green is a polite distance to leave between you and the car you’re parallel parking in front of, red is the closest you can get without trading paint. But this Reddit user, seeking to park right up to the wall of his garage, was unsatisfied with the lines. He worked up his own (impractical, but funny) hack for greater precision.” The thing is once he has the parking spot and background he doesn’t need the car. I think it’s great. Good evening, Internet…

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November 16, 2022 at 04:45AM
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Local-Level Bird Ecology, Armenian Yearbooks, May 2022 Buffalo, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, November 15, 2022

Local-Level Bird Ecology, Armenian Yearbooks, May 2022 Buffalo, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, November 15, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Cornell Chronicle: ‘Think globally, act locally’ with new bird conservation tool. “For the first time, people around the world, including conservationists, can zoom in to within an 8-mile radius to see exactly where each of 586 bird species is increasing or decreasing – providing localized insights needed to restore rapidly declining bird populations and habitats.”

Armenian Weekly: NAASR digitizes collection of yearbooks. ” The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) has digitized and is making accessible through its online library catalogue a collection of more than 100 rare and fascinating taregirks (տարեգիրք) or ‘yearbooks’ and taretsoyts (տարեցօյց) or ‘almanacs’ from the holdings of its Mardigian Library…. The collection of digitized volumes spans from the 1890s to the 1960s and includes titles published in Alexandria, Athens, Beirut, Boston, Constantinople, Paris, Tehran, Venice and elsewhere.”

Niagara Frontier Publications: ABC News Digital announces ‘Buffalo: Healing From Hate’. “ABC News Digital debuts ‘Buffalo: Healing From Hate,’ a series that chronicles the aftermath of the horrific mass shooting at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, which claimed the lives of 10 people. The project tells the story of the Buffalo community’s path to recovery since the racially motivated attack on May 14. ABC News Digital published a collection of stories, videos and photographs on Nov. 14 to mark the six-month anniversary.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Vivaldi Blog: Introducing Vivaldi Social, your new federated social-networking home. “just as Vivaldi seeks to advance alternatives in the browser space, we’re also interested in supporting social networks that aim for something better. That is why we are launching Vivaldi Social – an open discussion hub supporting federated social media for members of the Vivaldi Community & beyond.” I think for a while it will be newsworthy when institutions and companies build Mastodon instances (as opposed to merely creating accounts.) If it looks like this kind of news is overwhelming the newsletter I’ll start (yet another) infrequent one.

New York Times: Twitter Users, Sensing the End of an Era, Confess Their Secrets. “In the chaos that followed Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, one user, thinking the platform might not be around much longer, revealed a secret from her college days. Another made a last-minute plea to crowdfund her medical bills. Another admitted she bit into whole Kit Kat bars without breaking them apart first.”

Bloomberg: Balenciaga Is Latest Twitter Quitter Amid Exodus Under Musk. “Balenciaga has joined other brands in quitting Twitter after billionaire Elon Musk acquired the social-media platform last month and upended content rules.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: Don’t Delete Your Twitter Account (Do This Instead). “If you’re thinking of deleting your Twitter, I wouldn’t blame you (I’d only ask what took you so long). Things are wild over there right now, and stability sure isn’t on the horizon. However, before you take the nuclear option and say goodbye to Elon Musk and his ilk, consider not deleting your account: Don’t stay, mind you—just leave in a safer way.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

StateScoop: Musk’s changes create Twitter blues for government agencies. “Since its emergence in the late 2000s, Twitter has become a standard component in state and local governments’ messaging toolboxes, particularly for agencies that need to get information out as quickly as possible. By 2010, 81% of states were using Twitter regularly, according to a survey published that year by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. Since then, its use by the public sector has only grown, from traffic and weather alerts to statewide accounts making cheeky jokes.”

AV Club: After nine years of dutiful tweeting, SimpsonsQOTD has pulled the plug. “Though it’s hard to tell how this mess will resolve itself in the end, certain news makes it clear that Twitter will never really go back to how it once was. For instance: Long-standing institution SimpsonsQOTD has now closed shop after nearly a decade of tweeting jokes from the show.”

Ars Technica: As more brands pull out of Twitter, SpaceX buys big Twitter ad package. “Yesterday, CNBC reported that SpaceX purchased one of Twitter’s premium advertising packages—when typically SpaceX rarely invests in Twitter advertising—as Musk’s other company plans to begin advertising Starlink satellite Internet to customers in Spain and Australia. According to internal documents CNBC reviewed, SpaceX has so far spent $160,000 on the Twitter ad campaign and in total could end up investing up to $250,000.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Google Agrees to $391.5 Million Privacy Settlement With State AGs. “Google agreed to pay $391.5 million in a privacy settlement with 40 state attorneys general over its location tracking practices, according to the Oregon state Department of Justice on Monday.”

TechCrunch: Is Elon Musk’s Twitter about to fall out of the GDPR’s one-stop shop?. “Helmed by erratic new owner Elon Musk, Twitter is no longer fulfilling key obligations required for it to claim Ireland as its so-called main establishment under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a source familiar with the matter has told TechCrunch. Our source, who is well placed, requested and was granted anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the issue — which could have major ramifications for Twitter and for Musk.”

Bleeping Computer: Chinese hackers target government agencies and defense orgs. “A cyberespionage threat actor tracked as Billbug (a.k.a. Thrip, Lotus Blossom, Spring Dragon) has been running a campaign targeting a certificate authority, government agencies, and defense organizations in several countries in Asia. The most recent attacks were observed since at least March but the actor has been operating stealthily for more than a decade and it is believed to be a state-sponsored group working for China.” Good morning, Internet…

November 15, 2022 at 06:25PM
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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…

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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