Tree of Life Congregation, January 6, Raspberry Pi Simulators, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, January 4, 2023

Tree of Life Congregation, January 6, Raspberry Pi Simulators, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, January 4, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle: New Rauh website provides virtual archive of Oct. 27. “Eric Lidji was facing a challenge. As director of the Rauh Jewish History Program and Archives at the Senator John Heinz History Center, Lidji began collecting objects related to the Oct. 27 attack at the Tree of [Life] building almost immediately after it occurred.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Just Security: January 6 Clearinghouse. “Welcome to this all-source repository of information for analysts, researchers, investigators, journalists, educators, and the public at large. Check out our new addition below: A curated repository of deposition transcripts from the House Select Committee. Readers may also be interested in Major Highlights of the January 6th Report.”

Politico: Musk’s Twitter to lift ban on political ads ‘in coming weeks’. “Twitter plans to lift its restrictions on political ads, saying it would immediately allow issue-based paid content on the platform while political advertisements will return ‘in the coming weeks.'”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The 4 Best Raspberry Pi Simulators for Testing Your Projects. “The Raspberry Pi is a versatile single-board computer that can be used in Internet of Things and robotics projects. It is cheap, powerful, and well-supported. But, due to various reasons, you might not always have a Raspberry Pi handy to test your project ideas. That’s where a Raspberry Pi simulator comes in. To make your choice easier, we have examined five of these simulators, their features, pricing, and their pros and cons.” This article is organized a bit oddly — the first option has a subscription cost and the last option has a single cost. The two middle options, however, are both free.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

TechCrunch: QuickVid uses AI to generate short-form videos, complete with voiceovers. “Generative AI is coming for videos. A new website, QuickVid, combines several generative AI systems into a single tool for automatically creating short-form YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat videos.”

Wall Street Journal: Google and Meta’s Advertising Dominance Fades as TikTok, Streamers Emerge. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. accounted for a combined 48.4% of U.S. digital-ad spending in 2022, according to estimates from research firm Insider Intelligence Inc. Their combined U.S. market share hadn’t been under 50% since 2014, said Insider Intelligence, which expects that number to drop to 44.9% this year.”

The Verge: What to expect from CES 2023. “The event formally kicks off on Thursday, January 5th, but there’ll be plenty of news beforehand. Companies are holding press conferences throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, with the show floor finally opening up on Thursday and into the weekend. The Verge will be reporting from on the ground, so stay tuned for coverage of our favorite finds. For now, here’s what our team is expecting as they look toward the week ahead.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Her Child’s Naked Dance Killed Her Google Account. New Appeals Path Restored It.. “… after reporting by The New York Times, Google has changed its appeals process, giving users accused of the heinous crime of child sexual exploitation the ability to prove their innocence. The content deemed exploitative will still be removed from Google and reported, but the users will be able to explain why it was in their account — clarifying, for example, that it was a child’s ill-thought-out prank.”

KCCI: Missing Iowans’ photos still not posted on database. “Late last year, a KCCI investigation sparked change in the Iowa Legislature. That investigation asked why so many missing Iowans were also missing photos on the state’s database… Three weeks after the story aired, a bill to allow police agencies to use driver’s license photos was introduced in the Iowa House. It was signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds in late May. Now, roughly six months later, pictures are still missing from the majority of the more than 300 people on the state database.”

Canadian Press: Google to pay Indiana $20 million to resolve privacy suit. “Google will pay Indiana $20 million to resolve the state’s lawsuit against the technology giant over allegedly deceptive location tracking practices, state Attorney General Todd Rokita announced.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

North Carolina State University: Tweets, News Offer Insights on Invasive Insect Spread. “A new North Carolina State University study shows the potential for using Twitter and online news articles to track the timing and location of invasive insect spread in the United States and around the globe. Researchers say these sources are promising for filling in gaps when official data are not widely available.”

ScienceDaily: Virtual reality game to objectively detect ADHD. “Researchers have used virtual reality games, eye tracking and machine learning to show that differences in eye movements can be used to detect ADHD, potentially providing a tool for more precise diagnosis of attention deficits. Their approach could also be used as the basis for an ADHD therapy, and with some modifications, to assess other conditions, such as autism.” Good morning, Internet…

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January 4, 2023 at 06:34PM
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Twitch, LinkedIn, Resolutions, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 3, 2023

Twitch, LinkedIn, Resolutions, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 3, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Twitch Coming Back Online After Suffering Major Outage. “Twitch, the livestreaming platform, is up again after being down in a major outage. The Twitch Status page shows the site is now operational.”

Search Engine Journal: LinkedIn Announces 7 Updates Coming In 2023. “LinkedIn previews seven new features coming in 2023, including improved video accessibility, updates to job search, post scheduling, and content analytics.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: 10 of the Best Apps to Track Every New Year’s Resolution. “A New Year’s resolution can quickly turn into an empty promise (usually by the second week). But if you’re determined to make 2023 your year and want a fighting chance at keeping your resolution, here’s the secret: Track the hell out of it. Take notes, monitor your progress, and keep yourself engaged so that given enough time, your resolution turns into an automatic habit. But to get there, you might need some help.” Slideshow.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Johns Hopkins University: A Forgotten Era Of Filmmaking Finds A New Home At Johns Hopkins. “The Sheridan Libraries has acquired the Academic Film Archive of North America, an eclectic collection of more than 7,600 vintage 16-mm films.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Financial Times: Google develops free terrorism moderation tool for smaller websites. “Google is developing a free moderation tool that smaller websites can use to identify and remove terrorist material, as new legislation in the UK and the EU compels internet companies to do more to tackle illegal content.”

WIRED: The Password Isn’t Dead Yet. You Need a Hardware Key. “You likely have dozens or even hundreds of digital accounts, and even if they all supported hardware tokens it would be difficult to manage physical keys for all of them. But for your most valuable accounts and those that are a fallback for other logins—namely, your email—the security and phishing resistance of hardware keys can mean significant peace of mind.”

BuzzFeed News: Sam Bankman-Fried Has Pleaded Not Guilty To Fraud And Other Charges. “Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, appeared in a federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon and pleaded not guilty to eight counts of defrauding customers, laundering money, and violating campaign finance laws. If convicted, he faces up to 115 years in prison.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Engadget: There’s never been a better time to stop tweeting. “There’s never really been a shortage of reasons to spend less time on Twitter. Even before Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover, the platform was long plagued by misinformation, hate speech, harassment and other ills that made it less than welcoming. There’s never been a better time to quit Twitter. The Elon Musk-induced chaos at the company has breathed new life into a crop of alternative platforms, and has inspired a new wave of competing efforts to win over disillusioned Twitter users.”

Princeton University: ‘Learning to see and learning to read’: Artificial intelligence enters a new era. “For artificial intelligence to realize its potential — to relieve humans from mundane tasks, make life easier, and eventually invent entirely new solutions to our problems — computers will need to surpass us at two things that we humans do pretty well: see the world around us and understand our language.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Wearable Skobots Full Of Steam And Vanishing Indigenous Languages. “[Danielle Boyer] is Ojibwe: Sault Ste Marie Tribe and passionate about preserving vanishing indigenous languages. She’s invented a shoulder-worn talking companion, called a SkoBot, to teach STEAM to children through building robots programmed with indigenous language lessons and founded the STEAM Connection to give them away.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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January 4, 2023 at 02:18AM
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Mastodon, Telegram, Google Drive, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, January 3, 2023

Mastodon, Telegram, Google Drive, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, January 3, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: These Features Are Coming to Mastodon in 2023 And Beyond. “Mastodon is the open-source and federated social media network that shot up in popularity in 2022, largely thanks to Elon Musk’s messy purchase of Twitter. Now the project has an official roadmap for upcoming features.”

BGR: Telegram update lets you blur sensitive info in photos and videos. “Popular chat app Telegram recently got a new update that introduced several interesting features. One is the ability to blur elements of an image or video when sharing it on Telegram. The feature will let people conceal sensitive details when sharing content on Telegram. You can even use it to hide away photobombers.”

USEFUL STUFF

Digital Inspiration: Upload Files from Google Drive to Google Cloud Storage with Google Apps Script. “This tutorial describes how you can upload files and folders from your Google Drive to a bucket in Google Cloud Storage using Google Apps Script. You can even set up a time-based trigger, like a cron job, that watches a folder in your Google Drive and automatically upload new incoming files to Google Cloud Storage. The same technique can also be used to upload files from Google Drive to Firebase Storage.”

International Journalists’ Network: How to track digital mercenaries behind disinformation. “t is just as important to identify the actors who perpetuate disinformation as it is the false facts themselves: if a journalist is able to target the source of false information, they can expose and neutralize it. During an ICFJ Disarming Disinformation masterclass, held in partnership with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, award-winning data journalist and director of Columbia University’s Master of Science Data Journalism Program, Giannina Segnini, discussed these ‘digital mercenaries’ and how to stop them.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Librarians Are Meeting Younger Readers Where They Are: TikTok. “The pandemic wiped out decades of progress in children’s reading skills. So what’s a librarian hoping to engage children and teenagers with books and reading to do? ‘Meet them where they are,’ said Sara Day, a teen services librarian at the Woodland Public Library in Woodland, Calif. And that, she said, is on TikTok.”

CNN: The year that brought Silicon Valley back down to earth. “On the first trading day of 2022, Apple hit a new milestone for the tech industry: the iPhone maker became the first publicly traded company to hit a $3 trillion market cap, with Microsoft and Google not far behind. As eye-popping as that valuation was, there were headlines speculating about how long it would be before Apple and its rivals topped $5 trillion.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: India to explore prohibition of unbacked crypto in its G20 presidency. “India said on Thursday that under its ongoing G20 presidency, it will prioritize the development of a framework for global regulation of unbacked crypto assets, stablecoins and decentralized finance and will explore the ‘possibility of [their] prohibition’ in a potentially large setback for the nascent industry.”

Engadget: Google will pay $9.5 million to settle Washington DC AG’s location-tracking lawsuit. “Google has agreed to pay $9.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by Washington DC Attorney General Karl Racine, who accused the company earlier this year of ‘deceiving users and invading their privacy.’ Google has also agreed to change some of its practices, primarily concerning how it informs users about collecting, storing and using their location data.”

Indian Express: Govt proposes to ban online betting ads on social media platforms. “The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has proposed to ban advertisements of online betting sites on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, as per draft rules for online gaming released Monday. The Indian Express was the first to report, in October, on how these social media platforms were rife with such advertisements and that the government could soon intervene to curb them.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Her Inner Child Found Healing, Through an AI Chatbot. “Via the chatbot, which the artist calls ‘Young Michelle,’ Huang, 26, has been able to offer her past self loving, comforting words Young Michelle always wanted and needed to hear. These include reassurances that Huang’s childhood hardships were formative to the person she is today, and that she wouldn’t rewrite the past even if she could.”

One India: No war record with NAI shocks historians. “The assertion of National Archives of India (NAI) that it does not have the records of India’s three major wars – one with China in 1962 and two with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971 – has shocked the nation, especially the historians. For any civilized country, the records of wars are an important repository of historical facts. But the governments of that time failed in their duty to hand over the records to NAI.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Phys .org: Researchers use quantum mechanics to see objects without looking at them . “Imagine that you have a camera cartridge that might contain a roll of photographic film. The roll is so sensitive that coming into contact with even a single photon would destroy it. With our everyday classical means there is no way there’s no way to know whether there’s film in the cartridge, but in the quantum world it can be done.” Good morning, Internet…

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January 3, 2023 at 06:28PM
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Google, Video Games, Online Book Communities, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 2, 2023

Google, Video Games, Online Book Communities, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 2, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Tests New Cleaner Knowledge Panel Feedback Interface. “Google Knowledge Panels are fun and when they are wrong, you can submit feedback to Google directly in the search interface. But that interface is pretty ugly, or at least it was. Google seems to be testing a much cleaner and prettier interface for submitting knowledge panel feedback in Google Search.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Build a Huge PC Game Library for Free. “The argument against PC gaming often boils down to: It’s cheaper and easier to deal with a video game console than to set up a powerful gaming rig. But many console jockeys paying full price for new games may not be aware of a simple PC gaming fact: You can get lots and lots of the best PC games of recent years for free, no strings attached, and mitigate your system cost.”

MakeUseOf: The 5 Best Social Networking Platforms for Book Lovers. “If you love to talk about books, there are social media platforms dedicated to book lovers who love to discuss their favorite reads. The platforms are designed to give you recommendations, keep you up to date with new releases, and allow you to leave reviews. You can also form your own book clubs on some. Let’s take a look at where you can find books and connect with book lovers on the web.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Irish Examiner: The social media food influences pushing Irish butter. “Big American dairy processors Land O’Lakes said autumn 2022 butter sales forecasts were much exceeded, thanks to butter board demand. But farmers on this side of the Atlantic have benefited also, because many social media food influencers have made a point of recommending that only high-quality butter be used, with some naming Kerrygold, or recommending that Irish butter be used.” I know this story seems a bit silly but it’s important to understand what a huge economic impact influencers can have. Of course, if you understand that then you start obsessing over how little oversight there is over influencers…

Rolling Stone: Leaked Jan. 6 Committee Report Exposes Twitter’s Post-Insurrection Chaos. “IN THE IMMEDIATE aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, Twitter employees raged at their own company and its leadership, blaming them for the social media giant’s inept handling of Donald Trump and other top MAGA figures’ incitement to violence. ‘Do you want to have more blood on your hands?’ one staffer asked a top executive, Del Harvey, when she questioned whether Trump could inspire more violence in the insurrection’s aftermath.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Tubefilter: Here’s how sweeping legal changes will affect content creators in 2023. “The past year brought about changes to internet laws and regulations in the European Union, as well as challenges to laws in the United States that will begin to take shape throughout 2023. Additionally, regulatory authorities have continued exercising their control in new and emerging areas, dropping penalties and warnings on both creators and brands.”

Coingeek: Scammers target FTX collapse victims by mimicking US State Department. “Oregon’s Division of Financial Regulation (DFR) has warned digital currency investors to do their due diligence before investing in any scheme, given the high spate of fraud plaguing the industry. The financial watchdog disclosed the warning on its official website, listing some of the tactics employed by scammers. One such measure is the re-victimization of FTX’s users with the ploy of recovering lost assets for the defunct platform’s users.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UCLA: Universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds. “Universities are literally awash in data. From administrative data offering information about students, faculty and staff, to research data on professors’ scholarly activities and even telemetric signals — the functional administrative data gathered remotely from wireless networks, security cameras and sensors in the course of daily operations — that data can be an invaluable resource. But a new study by researchers at UCLA and the MIT Press, published Dec. 23 in the journal Science, finds that universities face significant challenges in capturing such data, and that they severely lag the private sector and government entities in using data to solve challenges and inform strategic planning.”

University of Oregon: Satellite imagery could improve fossil-hunting at remote sites. “Satellite imagery could help paleontologists spot promising fossil sites before trekking into remote places. New research from the lab of UO paleontologist Edward Davis in the Department of Earth Sciences shows that satellite data can reveal large individual fossils from the air, allowing field researchers to embark on more targeted searches on the ground.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Caltech: Caltech to Launch Space Solar Power Technology Demo into Orbit in January. “In January 2023, the Caltech Space Solar Power Project (SSPP) is poised to launch into orbit a prototype, dubbed the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD), which will test several key components of an ambitious plan to harvest solar power in space and beam the energy back to Earth.”

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you.

January 3, 2023 at 02:49AM
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January 6, India Supreme Court, Internet Archive, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 2, 2023

January 6, India Supreme Court, Internet Archive, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 2, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Spotted on Twitter: a new Web site housing the January 6 report. There’s a chaptered and searchable version of the report, of course, but there’s also an “Attack Timeline” which provides information about what happened when, mapped out on a 3d model of the Capitol. Impressive.

Live Law (India): CJI DY Chandrachud Launches E-SCR Project For Digital Version Of Judgments Reported In Supreme Court Reports . “The e-SCR Project is an initiative to provide the digital version of the Supreme Court’s judgments in the manner as they are reported in the official law report – ‘Supreme Court Reports’. This is a project which, in essence, endeavours to take a step forward towards fulfilling the objective of digitization of Indian Judiciary and underlines the vision to bring in a positive change for the benefit of all the stakeholders of justice, primarily litigants and members of the Bar as also the High Courts, National Law University, Judicial Academies, etc.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Internet Archive Blog: Welcoming 1927 to the Public Domain. “This year we are welcoming works from 1927 into the public domain in the United States, including books, periodicals, sheet music, and movies.” Good roundup with lots of links.

The Guardian: Andrew Tate arrest: TikTok and Twitter under fire over false posts from fans. “Social media firms are under fire this weekend for allowing the spread of misinformation by followers of ‘king of toxic masculinity’ Andrew Tate after his arrest in connection with a human trafficking investigation. In the hours after his detention, TikTok and Twitter were flooded with posts falsely claiming he had been freed and conspiracy theories saying he had been set up, Observer analysis shows.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: 10 Discord Features You Should Be Using. “Discord’s core functionality, like sending text messages or joining voice calls, isn’t hard to figure out if you’ve used other modern messaging platforms. There’s also a pile of additional features available for paying Discord Nitro subscribers. However, other features are less obvious, or have uses you may not have thought about.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Moscow Times: Yandex Co-Founder Bids Farewell to Partitioned Russian Tech Giant. “The co-founder of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, announced on Friday that he was leaving the Russian tech giant, addressing a farewell letter to the firm’s employees, in which he described Yandex as ‘the project of my life’ and the plan to restructure the company as ‘reasonable and necessary.'”

Dawn (Pakistan): What Pakistan stands to gain if Google opens shop. “Over the years, officials clai­m­­ed multiple times that compan­ies have agreed to establish their presence in Pakistan, but nothing substantial came out of it. Last month, it was reported that Google has decided to open a liaison or representative office in Pakistan. The move was unlike the past claims, as the California, US-based search engine giant also obtained a registration certificate from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).”

Polygon: How NFT video games crashed and burned. “Less than 12 months ago, it felt as if 2022 would be the year NFTs took off in the video game world. Companies like EA, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Zynga, Niantic, and Take-Two Interactive all, at one point, said that they were brainstorming ways to add NFTs into their games. The idea being that non-fungible tokens would replace everything from loot boxes to character skins to even characters themselves. But none of that ended up happening.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: The Worst Hacks of 2022. “Here’s WIRED’s look back on the year’s worst breaches, leaks, ransomware attacks, state-sponsored hacking campaigns, and digital takeovers. If the first years of the 2020s are any indication, the digital security field in 2023 will be more bizarre and unpredictable than ever. Stay alert, and stay safe out there.”

Wall Street Journal: FTX Collapse Puts Crypto Industry on the Defensive in Congress. “The collapse of FTX has eroded cryptocurrency firms’ standing in Washington, dimming the prospects for industry-backed legislation and raising pressure on regulators to step up enforcement. Since the crypto-trading platform’s November bankruptcy, lawmakers have called for federal regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission to police cryptocurrency markets more aggressively.”

Bleeping Computer: Ransomware gang apologizes, gives SickKids hospital free decryptor. “The LockBit ransomware gang has released a free decryptor for the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), saying one of its members violated rules by attacking the healthcare organization. SickKids is a teaching and research hospital in Toronto that focuses on providing healthcare to sick children.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Techdirt: New Year’s Message: The Opportunity To Build A Better Internet Is Here. Right Now.. “For large parts of this year, I actually wondered if there was really that much to be optimistic about in tech, but over the last few months I have to admit that I’ve been the most optimistic I’ve been in a long time. I previewed just some of my thinking just about a week ago when I noted that I can’t see any reason for anyone to invest time in building up a social graph on yet another centralized social media network, now that we’re seeing how a decentralized one can actually work, and work well.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you.

January 2, 2023 at 06:33PM
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Twitter, Spotting Photoshopped Images, Gluon, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 1, 2023

Twitter, Spotting Photoshopped Images, Gluon, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Axios: Fidelity slashes Twitter value by 56% . “Fidelity slashed its carrying value of Twitter by 56% during the first month of Elon Musk’s ownership, according to a new disclosure.”

USEFUL STUFF

PetaPixel: Photographer Reveals How To Spot Photoshopped Celebrity Images. “A photographer has become a TikTok star educating the internet on how to spot if a celebrity image is Photoshopped. Commercial photographer Caroline Ross is teaching ‘digital media literacy skills’ on TikTok — asking viewers if they can spot what is ‘fake’ in a celebrity’s image and revealing exactly how stars edit their photos.”

Hackaday: Turn A Webpage Into A Desktop App With Gluon. “Electron is software for running web-written apps in the same way as native ones, and has gotten plenty of bad press for its RAM appetite around these parts. But while the execution might leave something to be desired, the concept itself is quite solid — if you’ve already got code written for the web, a quick and easy way to bring it over to the desktop would be very valuable. Which is why [CanadaHonk] is building a framework called Gluon, which aims to turn your web pages into desktop apps with little to no effort.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Search Engine Roundtable: Despite Criticism, Google Says Search Results Are Better & Are More Relevant. “In November, yes, a month ago, there was a lot of criticism across the web that Google Search and the results were declining. We touched on the topic when I covered a poll about SEOs being split on if Google is getting worse or is the web getting worse. Now that it is a slower week, I am digging through some threads I did not cover when I should have, and I spotted Danny Sullivan of Google defending the quality of Google’s search results on Mastodon.”

The Verge: In 2022, cozy games went from niche to video game fixture. “While open-world games with low stakes and minimal violence have existed for decades, it wasn’t until more recently that they became a genre all of their own, referred to as ‘cozy’ or ‘wholesome’ games. The mechanics and goals in games like Stardew Valley, Ooblets, and Cozy Grove may vary, but they share a common vibe wholly separate from the cis-male, RGB streamer setup that’s become analogous with gaming culture.” Hello from Cozy Rimworld.

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: An Architect of Biden’s Antitrust Push Is Leaving the White House. “Tim Wu, a central architect of President Biden’s push to clip the wings of the nation’s largest companies, is leaving the White House…. Mr. Wu is one-third of a troika — along with Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission and Jonathan Kanter at the Justice Department — leading Washington’s attempts to more aggressively check corporate giants, including the largest tech companies.”

The Next Web: EU tech policy predictions: What to expect in 2023. “TNW asked IT experts across the bloc what they predict from the EU’s policies in 2023. All expect significant changes in legislation, with certain technologies particularly prominent in their forecasts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: Cameras struggle with dark skin. Here’s how new smartphones stack up.. “Today, the phones in our pockets can produce images with the kind of fidelity that can rival — and sometimes beat! — dedicated cameras. But even now, [Erika] Young told me, people of color still struggle to feel fully represented in the photos and selfies they take — and that’s partially because our clever phones don’t always know how to handle Black and Brown faces.”

US Census Bureau: Census Bureau Projects U.S. and World Populations on New Year’s Day. “As the nation prepares to ring in the new year, the U.S. Census Bureau today projected the U.S. population will be 334,233,854 on Jan. 1, 2023. This represents an increase of 1,571,393 (0.47%) from New Year’s Day 2022, and 2,784,573 (0.84%) since Census Day (April 1) 2020.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

TechXplore: Disguising solar panels as ancient Roman tiles in Pompeii. “Technically called ‘traditional PV tiles’, the invisible solar panels used in Pompeii come from Camisano Vicentino, a little Italian town with slightly more than 10 000 inhabitants, halfway between Padua and Vicenza…. The traditional PV tiles are made from a polymer compound, which allows the sun’s rays to filter through. The photovoltaic cells are then integrated into it by hand and covered with a layer of the polymer compound.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you.

January 2, 2023 at 01:26AM
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Kino Lorber Documentaries, Twitter, Pastebin Alternatives, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 1, 2023

Kino Lorber Documentaries, Twitter, Pastebin Alternatives, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

My Modern Met: 80 Documentaries From Kino Lorber Are Free to Watch on YouTube. “Now, anyone interested in discovering more about their favorite artists, musicians, and cultural icons, can check out a playlist of documentaries from film distributor Kino Lorber. All 80 films—ranging from an hour to two hours long—are free to watch on YouTube. Among this diverse collection of documentaries are features dedicated to much-loved creative figures like M.C. Escher.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: What’s Gone at Twitter? A Data Center, Janitors, Some Toilet Paper. . “Over the past few weeks, Twitter had stopped paying millions of dollars in rent and services, and Mr. Musk had told his subordinates to renegotiate those agreements or simply end them. The company has stopped paying rent at its Seattle office, leading it to face eviction, two people familiar with the matter said. Janitorial and security services have been cut, and in some cases employees have resorted to bringing their own toilet paper to the office.”

Krebs on Security: Happy 13th Birthday, KrebsOnSecurity!. “KrebsOnSecurity turns 13 years old today. That’s a crazy long time for an independent media outlet these days, but then again I’m bound to keep doing this as long as they keep letting me. Heck, I’ve been doing this so long I briefly forgot which birthday this was!”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The 4 Best Pastebin Alternatives for Sharing Code and Text. “The aptly named Pastebin.com was the first text storage website of its kind. It’s used for easily storing and sharing snippets of code or text with other people online. But if you don’t care for it, you’ll find plenty of alternatives to Pastebin on the web. Let’s look at the best Pastebin alternatives you can use for storing text and code. We’ll examine their best features and why they’re worth using over the well-known service.”

Search Engine Journal: How The ChatGPT Watermark Works And Why It Could Be Defeated. “OpenAI’s ChatGPT introduced a way to automatically create content but plans to introduce a watermarking feature to make it easy to detect are making some people nervous. This is how ChatGPT watermarking works and why there may be a way to defeat it.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Kyodo News: FOCUS: Japan’s imperial family eyeing social media to stay in touch. “Shunning social media, Japan’s imperial family has long been reluctant to open up about the daily lives of its members, but the year 2023 could be a turning point with the agency in charge of the family’s affairs set to explore the potential use of social media platforms as part of a new approach to public relations.”

Unseen Japan, and I did not plan for these two stories to end up beside each other. Just how the queue worked today: Google Translate Fail: Japan Restaurant Tells Customers “Go Away” in Korean. “‘Irasshaimase’ translates to ‘welcome’. However, when plugged into Google Translate, the phrase came out in Korean as 오지 마라 (oji mala). Plugging this back into Google Translate and translating it back into Japanese renders it as 来ないでください (konaide kudasai) – ‘don’t come’ or ‘please stay away’.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Al Jazeera: Influencer Andrew Tate detained amid human trafficking probe. “Andrew Tate, a controversial British-American kickboxer-turned-internet personality, and his brother have been detained in Romania as part of an investigation into alleged human trafficking.”

The Verge: The LastPass disclosure of leaked password vaults is being torn apart by security experts. “While the company insists that your login information is still secure, some cybersecurity experts are heavily criticizing its post, saying that it could make people feel more secure than they actually are and pointing out that this is just the latest in a series of incidents that make it hard to trust the password manager.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

SFist: SF Emergency Room Physician Opens Up About Leaving Twitter Over Rampant COVID Misinformation. “A local doctor dedicated to debunking COVID-19 conspiracy theories is giving up that fight, on Twitter at least, claiming that misinformation is running wild on that platform. And the data backs up that claim.”

Wall Street Journal: Europe Taps Tech’s Power-Hungry Data Centers to Heat Homes. “Electricity-hungry data centers are seeing huge growth in usage, leading to pressure from European officials to funnel the excess heat generated by their computer chips into municipal heating networks. After years of discussions about putting residual heat to work rather than simply venting it outdoors, more such projects are becoming a reality.”

WIRED: Coming Soon: More Ways to Be Yourself in the Metaverse . “We’ll see more people—across most age groups—get a digital representation in 2023 and customize their avatars. Eventually, every person will have one. And people won’t just use someone else’s creation. They will make their very own, from head to toe, reflecting their style, personality, and physique.” Good morning, Internet…

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January 1, 2023 at 06:29PM
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