New researches

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Evicted in Oregon, Northern Ireland Declassified Documents, Proton Calendar, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 7, 2022

Evicted in Oregon, Northern Ireland Declassified Documents, Proton Calendar, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Oregon Public Broadcasting: PSU researchers track Oregon eviction data on new website. “Over 16,000 Oregon renters have had evictions filed against them this year. And in recent months, eviction filings have surpassed pre-pandemic levels. That’s according to ‘Evicted in Oregon,’ a new project led by Portland State University researchers who have been collecting court data on Oregon evictions and publishing it online.”

Belfast Telegraph: State papers: NI records office lifts lid on Good Friday Agreement peace talks. “From Good Friday Agreement negotiations to parades and security — the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland has lifted the lid on previously unreleased files giving us a glimpse into our history. Each year, PRONI releases previously declassified government files under its 20-year rule and makes them available to the public. This year’s files have now been made public online, providing an insight into some of the key events from 1997 to 1998.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Proton Calendar rounds out security-focused Big Tech alternative on iOS. “Proton Calendar, which claims to be the ‘world’s only’ calendar using end-to-end encryption and cryptographic verification, has arrived on iOS, giving those seeking a more secure work suite an alternative to Google, Apple, and the like.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Amazon, Uber ads appear on Twitter pages of white nationalists restored by Musk. “Ads for more than three dozen brands including major corporations appeared on the Twitter pages of white nationalist accounts in recent days after Twitter owner Elon Musk restored hordes of banned users to the social media platform.”

New York Times: Twitter’s Rivals Try to Capitalize on Musk-Induced Chaos. “Apart from employees at Meta, former Twitter workers have begun projects for what they say could be the next Twitter. Start-ups like Post and niche services like Mastodon and Hive Social have also reared their heads, as has the microblogging platform Tumblr.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: FTX Implosion Prompts Call by DOJ Arm for Independent Probe. “The US Justice Department’s bankruptcy watchdog is calling for an independent probe into the collapse of FTX Group, saying a neutral party should investigate the cryptocurrency empire’s downfall.”

Associated Press: Maryland bans TikTok in state agencies, latest state to act. “Maryland is banning the use of TikTok and certain China and Russia-based platforms in the state’s executive branch of government, Gov. Larry Hogan said Tuesday, the latest state to address cybersecurity risks presented by the platforms.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Edinburgh: Social media aids quest for beauty perfection. “Influencers on social media have contributed to an uptake of people using cosmetic procedures to enhance their appearance, research suggests. Instagram influencers who have had procedures – such as botox, and lip and face fillers – tend to promote the benefits of the enhancements without disclosing the downsides, the study found.”

Dallas Innovates: Why Are There 750,000 Unfilled Job Openings in Cybersecurity? UNT Researchers Are Getting Up to $750K to Find Out. “The grant award supports a new online platform to find out why cyber jobs are going unfilled—and make it easy for employers to find talent through an online database.”

MIT News: A faster way to preserve privacy online. “MIT researchers have now developed a scheme for private information retrieval that is about 30 times faster than other comparable methods. Their technique enables a user to search an online database without revealing their query to the server. Moreover, it is driven by a simple algorithm that would be easier to implement than the more complicated approaches from previous work.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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December 8, 2022 at 01:46AM
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District Readiness Index, Clean Energy PNW, North Dakota Newspapers, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, December 7, 2022

District Readiness Index, Clean Energy PNW, North Dakota Newspapers, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, December 7, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The 74: Is Your CA District Ready to Fix Learning Loss? New Database Has Some Answers. “A new tool from Pivot Learning called the District Readiness Index offers a way for education stakeholders, including parents, teachers and policymakers, to identify which districts are well positioned to implement substantial changes and which must address systemic issues that will hamstring recovery.”

Washington State Department of Natural Resources: DNR Releases Interactive Map for Clean Energy Development on State Lands. “The mapping project gives DNR the opportunity to use existing detailed information about the lands it manages to improve outreach to stakeholders, protect habitat and tribal heritage, and better serve the needs of utilities and clean energy developers. The tool is the State of Washington’s first published map for locating potential properties for solar and wind energy development.”

KFYR: State Historical Society adds digitized newspapers to web site. “The State Historical Society of North Dakota says it has added more than 50,000 additional newspapers to its digital archives. The papers date as far back as 1883 and run through the 1930s.” I didn’t see a release about this at the State Historical Society of North Dakota Web site, so I’m not sure, but I suspect that’s 50,000 pages, and not 50,000 newspapers. I could be wrong though.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Twitter Notifications Keep Breaking in Wake of Elon Musk’s Mass Layoffs. “Have you gone to your notifications tab on Twitter, only to see nothing there? You’re not alone. Users have increasingly reported broken notifications in recent days. And while Twitter didn’t respond to questions about why, it’s hard not to see a possible correlation with the mass layoffs of software engineers instigated by new owner Elon Musk, who took over the social media company in late October.”

Ars Technica: New Winamp update adds features, fixes, and (sigh) support for ‘music NFTs’. “If you’d asked me in January to make some predictions about what 2022 would bring, I don’t think “multiple significant updates to the Winamp player” would have been on the list. But the release candidate for version 5.9.1 of the software builds on the groundwork laid by August’s 5.9 update to fix some bugs and add new features to the reanimated music player.”

Android Police: Google Photos tests a new image search button that’s arguably more useful than Lens. “The most game-changing thing about Photos is probably the search prowess it launched with, allowing you to view images with specific objects, places, or people in them just like you would search through text. Google long expanded this functionality with the option to search for similar results around the web with a Google Lens shortcut in the image viewer, but it looks like the company might change the way this image search tool works within Photos.”

USEFUL STUFF

HuffPost: How To Spot A PR Cycle On Instagram And TikTok. “While the phrase ‘public relations’ may have a negative connotation for some people, it’s not inherently bad, and PR cycles occur on social media a lot more frequently than you might think. But it is good to be able to spot one so that you can properly decide whether or not a product or angle is worth your buy-in.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Reuters: Google launches anti-misinformation campaign in India. “Google’s Jigsaw subsidiary is launching a new anti-misinformation project in India, aimed at preventing misleading information that has been blamed for inciting violence, a top executive said.”

MarketWatch: Pinterest is the latest social-media company to cut staff. “Pinterest Inc. has laid off some of its recruiting team and plans to slow hiring for the rest of the year, a representative said, making the online image and idea-sharing platform the latest social-media company to let go of staff amid a wobbly digital-ad market.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: Iran’s Protests Reveal What’s Lost If Twitter Crumbles. “Twitter—and social media in general—has been awash in videos appearing to show protesters being attacked by police forces, the bodies of those killed, and people’s injuries. For more than a decade, the social network, now owned by Elon Musk, has been used as a way to document protests and human rights abuses around the world. However, as Musk’s chaotic takeover unravels and key safety teams have been cut, the Iranian protests put fresh light on Twitter’s importance as a platform for information sharing and chronicling events globally.”

ARTnews: Restitution Organization Sues to Keep Smithsonian’s Benin Bronzes From Returning to Nigeria. “The New York–based organization Restitution Study Group (RSG) is spearheading a lawsuit against the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. to stop the return of the museum’s 29 Benin bronzes to Nigeria. The group argues that returning the bronzes denies the descendants of enslaved people in America the chance to experience their heritage.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Olive Oil Times: Researchers Use AI to Identify EVOO Provenance. “A new way to determine the authenticity of extra virgin olive oil has been devised by a group of researchers in Italy. Their study, published by Food Chemistry, details a method that includes training artificial intelligence to identify the provenance of an extra virgin olive oil using its phenolic compounds and sterols.” Good morning, Internet…

December 7, 2022 at 06:31PM
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Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Goblin Mode, Google, Cryptocurrency Losses, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 6, 2022

Goblin Mode, Google, Cryptocurrency Losses, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NPR: How ‘goblin mode’ became Oxford’s word of the year. “It’s mindlessly binge-watching television without worrying about the time. It’s eating snacks in bed without a care about leftover crumbs. And it’s wearing the same pair of pajamas all week while working from home. Welcome to ‘goblin mode.'”

Search Engine Land: Google brings continuous scroll to desktop search results. “Google is now rolling out continuous scroll on the desktop search results. Google initially brought continuous scroll to mobile search in October 2021 and now it is here for the desktop search results. Continous scroll is like infinite scroll but it does not go on infinitely, it stops after a few pages or so – which is why Google does not call it infinite scroll but rather continuous scroll.” Probably showing my age here, but bleah.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Wall Street Journal: Clashes Over FTX Bankruptcy Go Global. “Proponents say the cross-border nature of crypto makes sending money to someone on the other side of the world as easy as sending an email, and many crypto firms have offered their services to customers all over the world and have established headquarters in offshore jurisdictions. But laws meant to protect customers when things go wrong—and the bankruptcy regime in particular—are deeply tied up with national boundaries, and cross-border cooperation is never a guarantee.”

Vogue: What Is Social Media Doing to Our Concept of Pregnancy?. “There is a body of research showing that engagement with Instagram momfluencers is associated with an increase anxiety in a subset of women who already tend towards social comparison and those who have low self-esteem. There’s nothing magical about social media, per se — researchers have long found that comparing ourselves to unattainable ideals makes us feel bad. But the ubiquity of imagery is new; we are now bombarded with media in a way that has no precedent.”

WNEP: Social media trend contributing to diabetes medication shortage. “…if you search #Ozempic on TikTok, you’d have no idea it’s a medicine to treat Type 2 diabetes. The drug can also curb your appetite and has often been prescribed for people who are obese or struggling with a weight-related condition. But it doesn’t take much scrolling on social media to discover plenty of people, including celebrities who are not obese and not diabetic, are taking Ozempic or something similar to lose weight.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: Time to update: Google Chrome browser patches high-severity security flaw. “Google has released a security update for for Chrome that protects users against a newly discovered, high-severity vulnerability in the browser that it’s warned is already actively being exploited by cyber attackers.”

WIRED: I Lost $17,000 in Crypto. Here’s How to Avoid My Mistake. “Although most people don’t have thousands in forgotten cryptocurrency, everyone relies on passwords to manage their digital lives. And as more and more people buy crypto, how can they protect their assets? We talked to a host of experts to figure out how to create the best passwords for your digital accounts, and, if you have crypto, what your basic storage tradeoffs are. Let’s dive in.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

USC Viterbi School of Engineering: Rescuing Local Journalism, One AI Tool At A Time. “A USC Information Sciences Institute Ph.D. student uses artificial intelligence to develop models that streamline the process of building news stories from start to finish.”

Scientific American: NASA’s Plan to Make JWST Data Immediately Available Will Hurt Astronomy. “NASA, as a federal agency that funds and conducts research, is onboard with the idea of freely accessible data. But it has a plan that goes much further than the White House’s and that is highly problematic. The agency currently gives a proprietary period to some scientists who use particular facilities, such as a 12-month period for the powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), so that those scientists can gather and analyze data carefully without fear of their work being poached. NASA is looking to end this policy in its effort to make science more open-access. Losing this exclusivity would be really bad for astronomy and planetary science.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

ITV: ITVX launches world-first British Sign Language channel. “When ITVX officially launches on 8 December, Deaf viewers will have access to what is a worldwide streaming first – a British Sign Language channel, solely featuring signed programming, which will include a range of shows like the Emmerdale and Coronation Street omnibus episodes, Cilla, Alan Carr’s Epic Gameshow, Vera, Lewis, and The Saint. The channel will be regularly updated and will evolve to include both recent and archive programming from a wide variety of genres.” Good afternoon, Internet…

December 7, 2022 at 01:22AM
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Quote This Woman+, Civic Rights Luxembourg, International Museum Day 2023, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, December 6, 2022

Quote This Woman+, Civic Rights Luxembourg, International Museum Day 2023, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, December 6, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from International Journalists’ Network: This South African initiative helps newsrooms access women experts. “A South Africa-based nonprofit media company called Quote This Woman+ (QTW+) has curated a database of women experts in Africa for journalists to reach out to…. The database, which started in 2019 as a spreadsheet with 40 sources, now has over 600 African female experts and other experts from underrepresented groups.”

RTL Today (Luxembourg): ‘Myrights.lu’ to help people in matters of civic rights. “The new website on civic rights, called myrights.lu, now unites close to 100 contact points relating to issues of housing, employment, asylum, and healthcare in the Grand Duchy. The site outlines around 140 individual topics and is available in five languages, including French, English, German, Luxembourgish, and Portuguese.”

EVENTS

International Council of Museums: International Museum Day 2023 to focus on sustainability and well-being. “Museums are key contributors to the well-being and to the sustainable development of our communities. As trusted institutions and important threads in our shared social fabric, they are uniquely placed to create a cascading effect to foster positive change. There are many ways in which museums can contribute to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals: from supporting climate action and fostering inclusivity, to tackling social isolation and improving mental health.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Motherboard: Stack Overflow Bans ChatGPT For Constantly Giving Wrong Answers. “Stack Overflow, a coding website that has long served as the internet’s go-to Q&A forum for programming advice, has temporarily banned OpenAI’s new chatbot, ChatGPT. The forum’s moderators say the site has seen an influx of responses generated by the new tool, which uses a complex AI model to give convincing, but often incorrect answers to human queries.”

New York Times: Ordinary Investors Who Jumped Into Crypto Are Saying: Now What?. “In early November, Adrian Butkus, a 43-year-old father of two, put $600,000 — much of his life savings — into an account at BlockFi, a cryptocurrency trading firm. BlockFi had marketed the account as risk free, yielding 6.5 percent interest, more than Mr. Butkus could get anywhere else. Just days later, as the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX shook the entire crypto industry, Mr. Butkus asked BlockFi for his money back. But the firm had suspended customer withdrawals, citing its close financial ties to FTX.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

TechCrunch: Third-party Twitter app makers turn their attention to Mastodon. “Open source Twitter alternative Mastodon has gained a bit of attention in the wake of Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition. Now, it’s gaining interest from third-party Twitter app developers, as well. The makers of popular Twitter clients, including Aviary and Tweetbot, have recently set their sights on building similar clients for the growing Mastodon user base.” Hopefully with Mastodon’s open ecosystem they can get creative with these clients!

WIRED: The Twitter Files Revealed One Thing: Elon Musk Is Trapped. “Musk’s moderation assignments will only get more complicated from here. The longer he owns the site, the more likely he is to face a challenge with political entanglements. And research has suggested that hate speech has already become more visible on Musk-run Twitter.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Exclusive: Musk’s Neuralink faces federal probe, employee backlash over animal tests. “Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations.”

Make Tech Easier: FBI Warns of Tech Support Scams through Remote Desktop Software. “This week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a warning about tech support scams that are conning people into giving away access to their financial accounts through remote desktop software. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the report is the bureau’s admission that the numbers are probably higher than what they reported.”

Human Rights Watch: Iran: State-Backed Hacking of Activists, Journalists, Politicians. “Hackers backed by the Iranian government have targeted two Human Rights Watch staff members and at least 18 other high-profile activists, journalists, researchers, academics, diplomats, and politicians working on Middle East issues in an ongoing social engineering and credential phishing campaign, Human Rights Watch said today.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Georgia Tech: New Computing Approach May Save At-Risk Carnival Costume Making Tradition. “Wire-bending has been a traditional method of constructing costumes for the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival since the 1930s, but Vernelle A.A. Noel, a joint professor with the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing and School of Architecture in the College of Design, has been conducting research on this at-risk practice.”

University of Rochester: National Science Foundation Grants $1.8 Million to Build Foundation for New Music Production Ecosystem: Researchers from the University of Rochester and Northwestern University Collaborate. “A team of researchers from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music, Warner School of Education & Human Development, Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, and School of Arts & Sciences, along with Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, are collaborating to leverage and better utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) to empower musicians to produce and disseminate their art more effectively and independently.” Good morning, Internet…

December 6, 2022 at 06:29PM
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Monday, December 5, 2022

ChatGPT, Photo Management, Robux, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 5, 2022

ChatGPT, Photo Management, Robux, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

USEFUL STUFF

Bleeping Computer: OpenAI’s new ChatGPT bot: 10 coolest things you can do with it. “From precisely spotting security vulnerabilities in your code, to writing an essay or an entire block of functional code on a whim, to opening portals to another dimension, OpenAI’s newly launched ChatGPT is a game changer with its possibilities seeming limited only by your limitedness.”

Gizmodo: The Best Ways To Find and Organize Your Phone’s Forgotten Photos. “Many of us are now carrying around so many digital images that they can easily get forgotten and ignored, gathering dust or whatever the virtual equivalent is as we move on to new adventures and new photos—after all, when is the last time you actually took a moment to browse back through your media library? This is a problem that the best photo apps know about, and there are ways to resurface classic images and videos from the past, without having to spend hours scrolling through brightly colored thumbnails.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Wall Street Journal: Kids Don’t Want Cash Anymore–They Want ‘Robux’. “Roblox and other virtual economies are changing families’ conversations about money, and helping solve the perennial parenting problem of controlling how kids spend online.”

Internet Archive Blog: Public Domain Day 2023 Remix Contest: The Internet Archive is Looking For Creative Short Films Made By You!. “Public Domain Day is a celebration of all the rich materials that will be newly available to the public free of copyright restrictions. On January 1, 2023, most works published in 1927 will ascend into the Public Domain in the United States. We want artists to use this newly available content to create short films using resources from the Internet Archive’s collections from 1927.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Hit With Multiple Vulnerabilities In Versions Prior To 6.0.3. “WordPress published a security release to address multiple vulnerabilities discovered in versions of WordPress prior to 6.0.3. WordPress also updated all versions since WordPress 3.7.”

Bloomberg: Google Play Fee Suit by Consumers Grows to 21 Million Users. “Google now faces more than 21 million customers, instead of just a handful, in a lawsuit alleging its app store collects exorbitant fees. A federal judge exponentially increased the Alphabet Inc. unit’s damages exposure by granting class-action status… in a suit alleging that Google Play has abused its power over the sale and distribution of Android mobile applications.”

The Diplomat: The Implications of FTX’s Collapse for North Korea. “Some of America’s biggest banks are devising a plan to compensate customers who fall victim to scams on their Zelle payment network.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

VentureBeat: Quantum progress: How IBM, Microsoft, Google and Intel compare. “Established enterprise leaders like IBM, Microsoft and Google continue to make progress in quantum computing. As a result, quantum computers are getting bigger and achieving advantages over traditional tech in limited circumstances.”

Quanta Magazine: Crucial Computer Program for Particle Physics at Risk of Obsolescence. “Developed by the Dutch particle physicist Jos Vermaseren, FORM is a key part of the infrastructure of particle physics, necessary for the hardest calculations. However, as with surprisingly many essential pieces of digital infrastructure, FORM’s maintenance rests largely on one person: Vermaseren himself. And at 73, Vermaseren has begun to step back from FORM development. Due to the incentive structure of academia, which prizes published papers, not software tools, no successor has emerged. If the situation does not change, particle physics may be forced to slow down dramatically.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Mike Shouts: UNO Goes Wild With Museum of Graffiti x UNO Deck!. “This latest collectible UNO card deck is dedicated to art buffs who appreciate the art of graffiti. Mattel has recently announced a partnership with the Museum of Graffiti to bring the unique artwork of eight legendary street artists from around the world to one of the most iconic card games ever.” Good afternoon, Internet…

December 6, 2022 at 01:43AM
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Oil Refinery Air Pollution, Plastic Litter, Google, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, December 5, 2022

Oil Refinery Air Pollution, Plastic Litter, Google, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, December 5, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Spotted via my Google Alerts: Refinery Air Watch. From the home page: “This site collects fenceline air monitoring data from oil refineries and makes it available for you to download. You can find here two-week sampling data from all U.S. oil refineries, and continuous monitoring data from California refineries.”

New-to-me: an online museum of plastic litter. “Archeoplastica aims to increase public awareness of plastic pollution on beaches and oceans. Set up in 2018, it showcases a significant amount of plastic waste from 30 to 60 years ago which has been found on beaches. The items have been picked up and presented here in an online museum alongside other exhibitions.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Google Is Launching Yet Another Way to Stuff Websites With Ads. “If you’re anything like me, you spend your time online casting your eyes across the screen, desperately hoping for another way to turn your attention into advertising revenue. At last, there’s some good news on that front, thanks to our hardworking friends in the tech industry. Starting December 23rd, Google is launching a new ad format called ‘side rails’ that will show up on the sides of webpages and keep you company as you scroll.”

Wall Street Journal: FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Says He Can’t Account for Billions Sent to Alameda . “FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried said he couldn’t explain what happened to billions of dollars that customers of his failed cryptocurrency exchange sent to the bank accounts of his trading firm, Alameda Research. And he said he couldn’t rule out the possibility that money deposited by FTX customers who were told their money was theirs alone was in fact lent to Alameda.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 5 Ways to Turn a Video Into a GIF . “While some devices and operating systems come with software that can automatically convert a video to a GIF, there are a few online tools you might consider using. Keep reading to learn about five tools that can get the job done right.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: A Paris Museum Has 18,000 Skulls. It’s Reluctant to Say Whose.. “While France has led the way in Europe in investigating and returning colonial-era collections of artifacts — cultural objects, made by human hands — it has lagged behind its neighbors when it comes to remains.”

The Local Germany: German archive acquires trove of works by poet Rilke. “A huge collection of letters and manuscripts by modernist poet Rainer Maria Rilke has been handed over to the public German Literature Archive (DLA), the archive said Thursday.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

IANS: Google Terminates Thousand Of Youtube Channels In China, Russia, Brazil. “Google has purged thousands of YouTube channels in China, Russia and Brazil as part of its investigation into coordinated influence operations. The tech giant terminated 5,197 YouTube channels and 17 Blogger blogs as part of its ongoing investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to China.”

Stuff New Zealand: Government to force Google and Facebook to pay for using NZ news. “The Government will follow Australia and Canada in proposing a law that will require internet giants Google and Meta to pay for the local news they use, with estimates of about $30 million to $50m flowing to New Zealand media.”

Route Fifty: A Governor Imposes a TikTok Ban for State Government. “South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed an executive order Tuesday banning TikTok from state devices, citing concerns about the Chinese-owned app’s data-collection practices.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Vanderbilt University: AI-powered cruise control system may pave the way to fuel efficiency and traffic relief. “A single AI-equipped vehicle could influence the speed and driving behavior of up to 20 surrounding cars, causing a kind of positive ripple effect in day-to-day traffic. The CIRCLES Consortium will spend the next several months analyzing data collected on the AI-equipped vehicles and their impact on the flow of traffic over the duration of the experiment.”

PsyPost: Listening to podcasts may help satisfy our psychological need for social connection, study finds . “Podcast listening may help people fulfill their social needs, according to recent findings published in PLOS One. The study found that people who listened to more podcasts per month reported a greater presence of meaning in life and those who formed parasocial relationships with hosts reported a greater sense of relatedness.” Good morning, Internet…

December 5, 2022 at 06:25PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/bOmYesc

Sunday, December 4, 2022

RealityScan, Virtual New Year’s Eve, Brave, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 4, 2022

RealityScan, Virtual New Year’s Eve, Brave, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 4, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Verge: Epic’s free app that turns real-life items into 3D models is available now on iOS. “Epic Games’ RealityScan app, which lets you scan real-life objects and turn them into 3D models for video games or other projects, is now officially available on iOS as a free download after an initial limited beta launch in April.”

EVENTS

Smithsonian: National Museum of African American History and Culture Examines the Impact of Race in December Public Programming. “The museum will hold its annual Freedom’s Eve program, providing a look into how enslaved African Americans celebrated New Year’s Eve in the past and how the African American community uses food to help bring good fortune into the new year. The two-part program will include curated in-person activities to help plan goals for the new year and conclude with a virtual concert featuring piano prodigy Matthew Whitaker.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PC Magazine: Brave’s Search Engine Starts Offering ‘Privacy-Preserving Ads’. “Last year, Brave Software launched its own privacy-focused search engine. But now the same engine is getting a notorious feature known for data-tracking: Online ads. On Thursday, the company began testing ads in Brave Search. However, Brave Software says its own approach will refrain from profiling or tracking user’s activity to power targeted ads.”

Reuters: Exclusive: Twitter exec says moving fast on moderation, as harmful content surges. “Elon Musk’s Twitter is leaning heavily on automation to moderate content, doing away with certain manual reviews and favoring restrictions on distribution rather than removing certain speech outright, its new head of trust and safety told Reuters.”

USEFUL STUFF

Robert Riemann: Mastodon Privacy Policy Generator. “Most private-sector instances run the identical code of Mastodon and don’t encourage any specific use beyond the generic user-controlled micro-blogging. In that case, I recommend you to use this Mastodon data protection notice generator to create a first draft and add, if necessary, anything that is missing.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Financial Times: Crypto fraud jumps by a third in UK. “Financial losses involving crypto reported to Action Fraud from October 2021 to September 2022 were £226mn — a 32 per cent increase on the same period a year earlier. The number of reported incidents rose 16 per cent to 10,030.”

Washington Post: Inside Sam Bankman-Fried’s courtship of a Washington regulator. “Before his undoing this month, crypto magnate Sam Bankman-Fried aggressively pursued powerful allies in Washington. None was more important than Rostin Behnam. The chief of the federal agency that oversees commodities markets, Behnam holds a strategic perch among the nation’s financial regulators. And the 44-year-old Washington bureaucrat was indispensable in the boyish billionaire’s ambitious plans to reshape U.S. crypto regulation.”

TechCrunch: Twitter alternative Hive shuts down its app to fix critical security issues. “The team at the newly popular Twitter alternative Hive is in over its head. The company has now taken the fairly radical step of fully shutting down its servers for a couple of days in response to concerns raised by security researchers who discovered a number of critical vulnerabilities on Hive, several of which they say remain unfixed.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Hate Speech’s Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented, Researchers Find . “Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day. Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day. And antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61 percent in the two weeks after Mr. Musk acquired the site.”

Wall Street Journal: Data Scientists Grapple With How to Ask, ‘What’s Your Gender?’. “Adults under age 30 are especially likely to say they’re transgender—as high as 3-5% in recent surveys from Gallup Inc. and the Pew Research Center. But with many surveys only giving the options of male or female, such individuals might answer incorrectly, or not at all. That means the data might be inaccurate, and those individuals’ needs go underserved.” Good afternoon, Internet…

December 5, 2022 at 01:01AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/tgfL31Y