New researches

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Organocatalysts, Mastodon, Google, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, November 23, 2022

Organocatalysts, Mastodon, Google, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, November 23, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Chemistry World: Gigantic database of building blocks will help artificial intelligence uncover new organocatalysts. “Researchers have constructed a public database of 4000 experimentally derived organocatalysts. The database also contains several thousand molecular fragments and combinatorially enriched structures based on the experimentally derived entries.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: An official Google social account is now on Mastodon. “The Twitter upheaval has affected everyone from end users to advertisers and brands. It will be interesting to see where the latter group lands, but Google — via its Search Liaison account — now has an official presence on Mastodon.”

Search Engine Journal: Google Publishes Guide To Current & Retired Ranking Systems. “A new guide to Google’s ranking systems will keep you informed about which systems Google uses to rank search results and which ones are retired. Additionally, Google introduces new terminology in its latest guide, distinguishing between ranking ‘systems’ and ranking ‘updates.'”

IANS: Google’s parent company Alphabet ‘prepares’ to lay off 10,000 employees . “Alphabet, Google`s parent company, is reportedly gearing up to lay off about 10,000 “poor performing” employees, or 6 per cent of its workforce, in the Big tech layoff season kicked off by Meta, Amazon, Twitter, Salesforce and more amid the rough global conditions.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Rolling Stone: All the Celebrities Who’ve Quit Twitter Because of Elon Musk . “From (failed) paid Twitter verification to the reinstatement of accounts run by bigots to the layoffs of hundreds, Musk’s drastic changes to the platform have caused several celebrities to say goodbye to the platform….Here’s a growing list of celebrities who’ve decided to no longer use Twitter… all because of Musk.”

Wall Street Journal: How Elon Musk’s Twitter Faces Mountain of Debt, Falling Revenue and Surging Costs . “Analysts and academics have been able to piece together a picture of the company from information Mr. Musk has offered as well as details of the deal and the company’s last regulatory filings. Bankruptcy could be one result. Mr. Musk, the world’s richest person, could also raise new funds, or buy back debt from lenders, giving Twitter a buffer to turn around its business. Here is a look at their assessments of Twitter’s financial situation and prospects.”

MarketWatch: My bad: The YouTube financial influencer network paid to pump FTX. “Kevin Paffrath, a 30-year-old YouTube star with 1.85 million followers to his real estate and financial tip page Meet Kevin, says he was paid $2,500 every time he mentioned FTX in one of his videos. And he believes he had one of the smaller deals with the crypto exchange; others have claimed six-figure deals with the firm.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

University of Washington: Q&A: UW researchers find privacy risks with 3D tours on real estate websites. “The team examined 44 3D tours on a real estate website. Each tour was for a home in a different state and had at least one personal detail — such as a letter, a college diploma or photos — visible. The researchers concluded that the details left in these tours could expose residents to a variety of threats, including phishing attacks or credit card fraud.”

US DOJ: Two Estonian Citizens Arrested in $575 Million Cryptocurrency Fraud and Money Laundering Scheme. “Two Estonian citizens were arrested in Tallinn, Estonia, yesterday on an 18-count indictment for their alleged involvement in a $575 million cryptocurrency fraud and money laundering conspiracy. The indictment was returned by a grand jury in the Western District of Washington on Oct. 27 and unsealed today.”

Radio Prague International: Recordings from trial with “chief symbol” of Nazi occupation K. H. Frank being restored. “Archivists at Czech Radio have discovered 1,300 discs of recordings from the 1946 trial with Karl Hermann Frank, who was in charge of the Nazi security forces during the wartime occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. The discs are currently in the process of digitisation, making it possible to play the sounds for the first time in more than 70 years.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

George Washington University: The National Science Foundation Awards $5 Million to IDDP Team to Continue Work Assisting Journalists Facing Online Harassment. “As part of the 2021 cohort of the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator, a team led by Rebekah Tromble, director of the George Washington University’s Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics, received a grant award to develop a rapid response system that will aid experts facing coordinated campaigns of online harassment.”

The Register: Swiss bankers warn: Three quarters of retail Bitcoin investors are in the red. “Somewhere between 73 and 81 percent of retail Bitcoin buyers are likely to be into the negative on their investment, according to research published Monday by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). In other words: the Bitcoin they bought is now worth less. Bitcoin is down 73 percent in the past year, and up 155 percent in the past five years. Losses are only realized upon sale.” Good morning, Internet…

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November 23, 2022 at 06:29PM
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Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Geopipe, Twitter, Identifying Languages, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 22, 2022

Geopipe, Twitter, Identifying Languages, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 22, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

I am still publishing ResearchBuzz updates on Twitter but I have moved most of my “looking-for-interesting-stuff” activity to Mastodon (researchbuzz@researchbuzz.masto.host if you care to drop by.) The Web site Geopipe ( https://www.geopipe.ai/download ) is the second RB item I’ve found on that site. It’s a company that makes digital twins of cities to be used in gaming, virtual environments, etc. At the moment they’re giving away a digital twin of New York City for free. You’ll need to register, but you can download sample models of Rockerfeller Plaza and Columbus Circle without providing any personal information. Sample models are downloadable in .fbx, .dae, and .glb formats.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Wall Street Journal: Twitter Lays Off Some Sales Employees After They Committed to Twitter 2.0. “Elon Musk extended his job-cutting at Twitter Inc., laying off some employees in sales after they had signed on to the billionaire’s vision for the social-media platform, people familiar with the matter said. The exact scope of the latest cuts couldn’t be learned immediately. One employee said he found out early Monday that he had been laid off and was told in an email his role was no longer necessary.”

The Hill: Twitter’s head of France resigns amid Musk’s shakeup. “Twitter’s head of France, Damien Viel, announced his resignation from the social media platform in a tweet saying it was ‘over.'”

Coindesk: UC Berkeley Suspends Stadium Naming Rights Deal With FTX. “The deal was originally planned for 10 years and lasted just 450 days. The sponsorship was inked in August 2021 for $17.5 million. It was paid entirely in cryptocurrency and was the exchange’s first partnership in college sports. With the deal, Cal’s football stadium was named FTX Field at California Memorial Stadium.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: What Language Is This? 5 Tools to Identify Unknown Languages. “If you’ve come across a language you can’t identify, it might drive you crazy until you figure out what it is. Even if you don’t speak multiple languages, it’s useful to know what a language is just by looking at it. Let’s look at some language finder services to help you identify which language you’re looking at in an image or text.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Smithsonian: National Museum of American History Adds Key Blues Archive. “The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has accepted the donation of the late Robert ‘Mack’ McCormick’s significant blues and folklore archive as a gift from his daughter, Susannah Nix. The extensive collection consists of 590 reels of sound recordings and 165 boxes of materials, totaling more than 70 cubic feet of unpublished manuscripts, original interviews and research notes, thousands of photographs and negatives, playbills, posters, maps, booking contracts and business records.”

Al Jazeera: In Brazil, Twitter users fear effect of Musk’s rule. “It was Easter, and Lola Aronovich, a Brazilian literature professor, was enjoying a break at a beach with no internet access, totally unaware of the defamation campaign being orchestrated against her on Twitter. That day in April 2015, the son of Geraldo Alckmin, the former São Paulo governor and currently Brazil’s vice-president-elect, tragically died in a helicopter crash. Aronovich saw the events unfold on TV and headed home three days later – only to find thousands of vitriolic posts directed at her on Twitter for something she hadn’t done.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: Twitter Africa employees accuse Elon Musk of discrimination over severance terms. “Laid-off employees at Twitter’s Africa headquarters are accusing Twitter of ‘deliberately and recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana’ and trying to ‘silence and intimidate’ them after they were fired. The team has hired a lawyer and sent a letter to the company demanding it comply with the West African nation’s labor laws, provide them with additional severance pay and other relevant benefits, in line with what other Twitter employees will receive.”

TechCrunch: Musk’s impact on content moderation at Twitter faces early test in Germany. “A German law requiring social media platforms to promptly respond to reports of hate speech — and in some cases remove illegal speech within 24 hours of it being brought to their attention — looks like it will provide an early test for whether Elon Musk-owned Twitter will face meaningful legal consequences over how recklessly he’s operating the company.”

New York Times: Inside a Crypto Nemesis’ Campaign to Rein In the Industry. “In March, eight months before his cryptocurrency empire imploded, Sam Bankman-Fried joined a video call with Gary Gensler, a longtime financial regulator who now leads the Securities and Exchange Commission. The meeting didn’t go well.” Good afternoon, Internet…

November 23, 2022 at 01:08AM
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New Mexico Public Television, Native Cinema Showcase, Google Doodles, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, November 22, 2022

New Mexico Public Television, Native Cinema Showcase, Google Doodles, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, November 22, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Albuquerque Journal: NMPBS digitizes its archive of over 8,000 items. “Two years and a half-million dollars. That’s what it has taken for New Mexico PBS to get their archive digitized…. Michael Kamins, supervising project manager at NMPBS, says the project brings together more than 8,000 items from public media stations across the state, including full television and radio programs, as well as interviews and footage documenting New Mexico’s social, political, artistic and cultural history between 1963 and 2020.”

EVENTS

Smithsonian: Online Native Cinema Showcase Brings Indigenous Films to Audiences Worldwide. “The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s Native Cinema Showcase returns to an online format Nov. 18–25 for American Indian Heritage Month. An annual celebration of the best in Indigenous film, the selections show how filmmakers are embracing their communities’ oral histories, knowledge and ancestral lands to seek guidance from the past and envision new paths for the future.” All films are free and available on demand. Two films require registration to view.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Google Celebrates 2022 World Cup With Doodle, New Game. “The animated Doodle features a pair of multi-colored cleats practicing their passing skills with a ball as the world turns its attention to the biggest tournament in global football. Fans who want to get into the action themselves can Google ‘World Cup Qatar 2022’ on their mobile device to compete with other fans around the world.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Declutter Your Home Screen. “The home screen of your Android phone or iPhone probably shows evidence of this growing clutter: apps you forgot about, widgets you barely use, and shortcuts you’re not 100 percent sure about the origin of. Mobile home screens aren’t unlike the desktop screens of Windows and macOS computers, with a tendency to attract all kinds of digital detritus that builds up over time. With that in mind, it’s worth committing yourself to some regular home screen decluttering.”

Make Tech Easier: How to View Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and More Without an Account. “Popular apps like Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit now prevent non-account holders from freely accessing content on their networks. Luckily, there are a few workarounds that can help you bypass the restriction. In this tutorial, we show you how to view posts and more without signing up.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: How Colleges and Sports-Betting Companies ‘Caesarized’ Campus Life. “In order to reap millions of dollars in fees, universities are partnering with betting companies to introduce their students and sports fans to online gambling.”

New York Magazine: Where Have the FTX Depositors Gone to Panic? Distraught users — and scammers — are flooding Telegram.. “In the good times, FTX’s official presence on Telegram helped the company cultivate a reputation for responsive customer service. When things were falling apart at FTX, they fell apart here, too, as thousands of panicked users flooded its support channels.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Teen Vogue: John Fetterman and Social Media: How His Campaign Built a Winning Strategy. “If you’ve been entertained by Senator-elect John Fetterman’s social media presence and trolling of his Trump-backed opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz, you partly have Sophie Ota to thank. At 26, Ota serves as the digital director of Fetterman for PA, a campaign that has harnessed the power of humor and authenticity to set a new standard for the use of social media in politics — and managed to flip a Senate seat in purple Pennsylvania.”

Mashable: Twitter’s copyright system seemingly broken as full-length movies are posted on platform. “Cracks are starting to show on Twitter as users have begun to post entire movies on the platform, with many yet to be taken down. A sign that the social media giant’s copyright violation policy is not properly being enforced.”

Wall Street Journal: FTX Auditors Doubled as Crypto Industry Cheerleaders. “There is a race among crypto brokers, lenders and exchanges to calm their anxious clients by getting the blessing of an auditor. But the type of audits they are getting and the collapse of an audited firm such as FTX shows how far that sector is from a traditional regulated, scrutinized industry.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Diggit Magazine: How Google Arts & Culture is challenging and reproducing ‘The Museum’. “Google launched the Google Arts & Culture project — ‘GAC’ from now on — in 2011 in collaboration with 17 museums (Delacroix, 2018). Today, the project contains content from over two thousand museums and has expanded its activities towards archives, heritage sites and other cultural organizations.” To say that this is a deep dive is to describe Niagara Falls as a bit damp.

UC Irvine: UCI-led study finds virtual green space exposure beneficial to pregnant women. “Pregnant women exposed to a green space environment in a virtual reality setting experienced decreases in blood pressure and improvements in mental health and well-being, according to a study led by the University of California, Irvine.” Good morning, Internet…

November 22, 2022 at 06:32PM
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Monday, November 21, 2022

CalAgroClimate, Massachusetts BioMap, FTX, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 21, 2022

CalAgroClimate, Massachusetts BioMap, FTX, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 21, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of California Fruit & Vegetable Preservation Resources: New interactive web tools help growers cope with climate change. “Growers and crop consultants can use CalAgroClimate’s crop and location-specific tools and resources to help make on-farm decisions, such as preparing for frost or untimely rain and taking advantage of expected favorable conditions. CalAgroClimate currently includes heat advisory, frost advisory, cropphenology and pest advisory tools.” That’s “crop phenology” the science and not CropPhenology the R package.

State of Massachusetts: MassWildlife and The Nature Conservancy Announce Launch of BioMap. “The web portal delivers the latest scientific data and resources to help state and local governments, land trusts, non-government organizations, and other conservation partners strategically plan projects to conserve wildlife and their habitats.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NPR: Sensing an imminent breakdown, communities mourn a bygone Twitter. “Users on the site have been steadily eulogizing the social network in the chaotic days since Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform. But the death knell sounded louder by Thursday, which saw yet another exodus from what’s left of Twitter’s workforce. That night, the top five Twitter trends in the U.S. all related to what people see as the imminent end of the site as they know it. Among the flood of tributes, a consensus has emerged about what makes the platform worth mourning: Twitter has been a uniquely accessible space where otherwise marginalized groups have felt heard and built community.”

Mozilla Accessibility Blog: Significant Improvements for Screen Readers Now in Nightly Firefox. “A couple of months ago, we shared an update on our Cache the World project, covering the ongoing re-write of the Firefox accessibility engine. The project aims to improve Firefox’s overall performance for users of assistive technologies (ATs) like screen readers and to reduce crashes and hangs. It will also make the accessibility engine easier to maintain and simplify adding new features going forward.”

TechCrunch: Google rolls out new features across Maps, Search and Shopping. “Google announced today that it’s introducing a slew of new Maps, Search and Shopping features. The company revealed a majority of the new features during its Search On event in September and is now starting to roll them out to users.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: The Arc browser is the Chrome replacement I’ve been waiting for . “Arc wants to be the web’s operating system. So it built a bunch of tools that make it easier to control apps and content, turned tabs and bookmarks into something more like an app launcher, and built a few platform-wide apps of its own. The app is much more opinionated and much more complicated than your average browser with its row of same-y tabs at the top of the screen.”

Engadget: Elon Musk is reportedly considering cutting more of Twitter’s workforce. “According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk is considering new layoffs that would target the company’s sales and partnerships teams. The scale of the potential cuts is unclear but come after a large number of employees rejected Musk’s Twitter 2.0 ultimatum. On Friday, Musk reportedly asked Robin Wheeler, Twitter’s head of ad sales, and Maggie Suniewick, the firm’s partnerships chief, to fire more employees. Both were terminated after pushing back.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: Not patched Log4j yet? Assume attackers are in your network, say CISA and FBI. “Almost a year on from Log4j’s disclosure, a joint alert by CISA and the FBI warns organizations that if they haven’t protected their systems against it yet, they really need to now.”

CNN: Singapore writes down $275 million in FTX, calls belief in Sam Bankman-Fried ‘misplaced’. “In a statement on Thursday, state-owned investment company Temasek said it had decided to write down the value of its full investment in the exchange to zero, ‘irrespective of the outcome of FTX’s bankruptcy protection filing.’ Temasek said it had invested $275 million in the crypto exchange, which was once considered one of the biggest and most reputable players in the market for digital assets.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Google Blog: Using AI to study 12 years of representation in TV. “See It, Be It: What Families are Seeing on TV is a new study that analyzes trends in the screen and speaking time of the visually presenting attributes of the characters — gender, skin tone and age — in scripted television over the last 12 years.” Good afternoon, Internet…

November 22, 2022 at 01:57AM
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Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing, Manchester Accents, Opera Browser, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, November 21, 2022

Lithium-Ion Battery Manufacturing, Manchester Accents, Opera Browser, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, November 21, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Collaborative Database Maps Lithium-Ion Supply Chain Landscape. “The Lithium-Ion Battery Supply Chain Database [is] an ongoing collaboration between NAATBatt International and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to identify every company in North America involved in building lithium-ion batteries from mining to manufacturing to recycling. First released in September 2021 and funded by NAATBatt International, this database is the first comprehensive directory of its kind. A recent update in 2022 significantly expands on the database.”

Manchester World (England): Manchester Voices: New Central Library installation celebrates diversity in Greater Manchester accents. “Researchers gained extensive insight into how different accents are perceived throughout Manchester. Participants were asked to mark on maps where they thought had the friendliest accent, the poshest and the most ‘authentic’ Mancunian, to name just a few categories. And the results are highlighted in a series of interactive maps available on the Manchester Voices website.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: Opera Wants You to Come Back, so It Made a TikTok Sidebar. “Opera used to be one of the most popular web browsers around, but over time it has fallen behind Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox. Now the browser is rolling out a new feature that could change all that: a TikTok sidebar. No, really.”

NBC News: MrBeast surpasses PewDiePie as the most-followed individual YouTuber. “Jimmy Donaldson, better known online as MrBeast, has surpassed Felix Kjellberg, also known as PewDiePie, to become the most-followed individual YouTuber in the world. Donaldson, who is known for doing expensive stunts and viral charity projects, officially reached 112 million subscribers as of Wednesday, according to his YouTube page.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: The Best YouTube Extensions Everyone Should Use. “Like every other popular website, YouTube has its share of missing features and annoyances. We have to wade through clickbait thumbnails and endless ad reads that get in the way—fortunately, there are plenty of browser extensions that fix these issues, so you can focus less on problem-solving and more on video-bingeing. Before you download these extensions, keep in mind that installing too many extensions is bad for your browser. They can slow things down, and sometimes affect your privacy. Make sure you’re comfortable with the permissions each extension asks for and only install those you really need.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Cape Talk: Robben Island calls on former political prisoners to maintain historic database . “The Robben Island Museum (RIM) is asking for EPPS or their relatives to update their contact details and other key information on the latest records held by the Department. Initially compiled in 1997, the RIM ex-Political Prisoner Database (EPPD) is a living document that requires public contribution and input to ensure it remains true to South Africa’s struggle heroes, both known and unknown.”

New York Times: Help! I Was Banned From Lyft and No One Will Tell Me Why.. “An app user was barred after just two uneventful trips, and the company wouldn’t explain or reinstate him. Our columnist gets him riding again, but transparency remains elusive.”

University of New Hampshire: UNH to Map Current and Planned Broadband to Improve Coverage in Granite State. “NH GRANIT, a mapping agency for the state based at the University of New Hampshire, is receiving close to a million dollars from the N.H. Department of Business and Economic Affairs (BEA) to inventory and map statewide broadband coverage that is currently available as well as what is proposed for the state’s businesses, educators and citizens.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Collapsed FTX owes nearly $3.1 billion to top 50 creditors. “Cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which has filed for U.S. bankruptcy court protection, said it owes its 50 biggest creditors nearly $3.1 billion. The exchange owes about $1.45 billion to its top ten creditors, it said in a court filing on Saturday, without naming them.”

Deutsche Welle: El Salvador takes risks for Chinese investments. “This week, FTX, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms in the world, announced it had filed for bankruptcy. The news caused a sharp drop in the price of bitcoin over the past days — and caused all eyes to turn to El Salvador. The president of the Central American nation, Nayib Bukele, made bitcoin legal tender in 2021 and also invested a large part of the country’s fiscal reserves in it.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Using CFPB complaint data to help cities and counties protect the public. “We wanted to increase the impact of our complaint data by sharing it with cities and counties so they can increase their efforts to protect consumers at the local level. Engaging with local governments is a win-win for consumers and the CFPB. It helps protect as many consumers as possible from predatory lending, barriers to credit, and other consumer harms.”

The Guardian: Twitter fails to delete 99% of racist tweets aimed at footballers in run-up to World Cup. “New research shows the platform failed to act on 99 out of 100 racist tweets reported to it in the week before the World Cup…. Of those, 11 used the N-word to describe footballers, 25 used monkey or banana emojis directed at players, 13 called for players to be deported, and 25 attacked players by telling them to ‘go back to’ other countries. Thirteen tweets targeted footballers over their English skills.” Good morning, Internet…

November 21, 2022 at 06:29PM
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Sunday, November 20, 2022

AI Time Machine, Atlas of Surveillance, Twitter, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 20, 2022

AI Time Machine, Atlas of Surveillance, Twitter, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 20, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

PetaPixel: AI Time Machine Allows You to Picture Yourself in any Historical Period. “AI Time Machine is a new tool that allows users to create images of a person in different time periods throughout history using AI-image generator technology.”

Electronic Frontier Foundation: EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance Database Now Documents 10,000+ Police Tech Programs. “With this project, we are creating a searchable and mappable repository of which law enforcement agencies in the U.S. use surveillance technologies such as body-worn cameras, drones, automated license plate readers, and face recognition…. The Atlas of Surveillance has now hit 10,000 data points. It contains at least partial data on approximately 5,500 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states, as well as most territories and districts.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: Public safety accounts urge caution on Twitter after changes. “Government agencies, especially those tasked with sending messages during emergencies, have embraced Twitter for its efficiency and scope. Getting accurate information from authorities during disasters is often a matter of life or death.”

Fortune: Scammers are targeting desperate FTX customers by pretending to be the DOJ, promising access to funds. “FTX customers around the world no doubt regret their decision to sign on with the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange. Adding insult to injury, they’re now the targets of scammers pretending to be the U.S. Department of Justice.”

CNBC: Elon Musk says he will reinstate Twitter account of former President Donald Trump after online poll. “New Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk announced that he will reinstate the Twitter account of former President Donald Trump on Saturday.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Engadget: Governments vote to retire the leap second by 2035. “Introduced in 1972 as a way to adjust Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to reconcile discrepancies that can come up between atomic time and observed solar time, the leap second has been the bane of tech companies for decades. In 2012, for instance, Reddit was down for about 40 minutes when the addition of a leap second that year confused the company’s servers. More recently, Cloudflare saw part of its DNS services affected due to a time change in 2016.”

The Guardian: Twitter has ‘50% chance’ of major crash during World Cup, says insider. “Twitter stands a 50% chance of a major outage that could take the site offline during the World Cup, according to a recently departed employee with knowledge of how the company responds to large-scale events.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Google clamps down on illegal loan apps in Kenya, Nigeria. “Google is requiring loan apps in Kenya to submit proof of license to operate in the country, failure to which they risk removal from Play Store, its digital distribution service. Those that have applied for licensing by Central Bank of Kenya, and can produce evidence of the same, may also be spared.”

Reuters: Italy court rejects Google’s appeal against watchdog fine, accepts Apple’s one. “An Italian administrative court rejected an appeal by Alphabet’s Google against a decision by Italy’s antitrust authority to fine the group, but accepted Apple’s appeal against the watchdog’s ruling.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Twitter Was Influential in the Pandemic. Are We Better for It?. “When I wanted immediate feedback on an epidemiological model at 2 a.m., colleagues in Australia were awake and online to help. Twitter helped me to reach hundreds of thousands of concerned people, online and via news media, and help them understand what was happening. My Twitter following exploded from just over 10,000 to over 100,000 followers in six months. Many of my colleagues could tell a ‌‌similar story. And they could tell another as well.” Good afternoon, Internet…

November 21, 2022 at 01:31AM
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Twitter, CBS News, US Broadband Access, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, November 20, 2022

Twitter, CBS News, US Broadband Access, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, November 20, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Boing Boing: Keep up with the latest Twitter meltdown news at this site dedicated to monitoring Musk’s daily f*ckups. “You can filter the news by tag (Bye-Bye, Call the Lawyers, Elon the Engineer, General Mayhem, Line Go Down, No-One Minding the Store, Rise of the Robots, Sickening Sycophants, Sleeping Under the Desk, and Twitter Blue) or elect to read the full firehose.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Variety: CBS News Suspends Twitter Posting ‘In Light of the Uncertainty’ About Musk-Owned Social Platform. “CBS News is halting its activity on Twitter over Elon Musk’s turbulent and potentially devastating moves following his takeover of the company.”

Ars Technica: FCC unveils big update to broadband map—and wants you to help correct errors . “Today, the FCC released the long-awaited National Broadband Map update based on the most detailed data the commission has ever collected from ISPs. There’s still plenty of work to do, as this first version will undergo a challenge process to correct errors, and there are indications it will have many inaccuracies.”

Radio New Zealand: Difficulty accessing archive documents angers historians “Mounting difficulties getting hold of critical historical documents at the national Archive are sparking government infighting and threats of legal action. A high court Justice has noted cases are being severely impeded. To make matters worse, the $9 million IT system used to search the country’s history files has had to be shut down over a security breach of restricted documents.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeTechEasier: How to Create a Web Archive With Archivebox. “Archivebox is an easy-to-use archival program that allows you to create an accurate snapshot of any website. This can be helpful for archivists and users that want to preserve information online. Not only that, Archivebox is also incredibly simple and easy to use.”

IP Watchdog: How to Use the USPTO Patent Public Search Tool. “Do you want a simple way to search for specific patents and to get PDF copies of those patents? And do you want those PDF files to come straight from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), so you can be confident that they contain any Certificates of Correction? Our first article in a series about the USPTO’s Public Patent Search (PPS) web page shows you how.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Fierce Pharma: Pharma must stay the course on Twitter as docs are not abandoning the platform yet: Report. “Like it or loathe it, and whatever its new direction, Twitter is still a powerful platform for doctors, and pharma should not abandon the troubled social media site yet, according to a new report from healthcare consultants at ZoomRx.”

BBC News: Alan MacMasters: How the great online toaster hoax was exposed. “For more than a decade, a prankster spun a web of deception about the inventor of the electric toaster. His lies fooled newspapers, teachers and officials. Then a teenager flagged up something that everyone else had missed.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

News@Northeastern: Adversaries Are Ready To Strike Us Infrastructure, Warn Cybersecurity Experts At Northeastern Event. “Enemies are situating themselves within the cyber operations of U.S. infrastructure sites with the potential of striking at any time, warned Brandon Wales, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).”

RESEARCH & OPINION

RMIT University: Nine in 10 adults have been cyberbullies, study finds. “Educated and married people, irrespective of their gender, are most likely to commit cyberbullying more frequently, according to the research, but demographics are not the only factors at play. The study found other characteristics such as being outgoing or deceptive ultimately contributed to a person’s likelihood of becoming a cyberbully.”

Stanford Graduate School of Education: A new approach to teaching science can help inoculate against misinformation, Stanford researchers say. “In a new essay published in the journal Science, [Jonathan] Osborne and [Daniel] Pimentel argue that new approaches to science education could help inoculate society against scientific misinformation in all of its forms, from the misguided to the malicious.”

Garowe Online: EDITORIAL: Why Africa should worry about new Twitter policies. “In Somalia, where information sharing has been traditionally oral, Twitter offered government officials the to narrate events, receive flak or praise from citizens, and debate on issues around security, culture, and economy…. Nothing could hurt Africa more than a dilution of a platform people have come to see as credible, available, and free and which has challenged authorities in most autocracies to conform or at least pretend to.” Good morning, Internet…

November 20, 2022 at 06:31PM
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