New researches

Sunday, January 8, 2023

Google Stadia, Twitter, Popular Content, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 8, 2023

Google Stadia, Twitter, Popular Content, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 8, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google Stadia is shutting down soon, so transfer your games and saves while you can. “Google Stadia, the company’s not-long-for-this-world cloud gaming service, will be shutting down for good on January 18th. (Specifically, January 18th at 11:59PM PT, Google spokesperson Patrick Seybold confirmed to The Verge.) While the shutdown means that you’re about to lose access to all of your titles and saves on Stadia, many publishers have shared ways to bring your purchases and progress to other platforms so you can keep playing your games.”

Business Insider: A group of laid off Twitter employees finally got paltry severance agreements. Now they must decide whether to sign, or pursue legal action against Elon Musk’s company.. “Hundreds of Twitter employees who were part of Elon Musk’s first round of layoffs just got severance paperwork after waiting for two months. Now they must decide whether to sign or join lawsuits against the company and its billionaire owner.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 8 Ways to Discover the Most Popular Online Content. “These days, most people get their daily dose of news from Facebook posts, Twitter, Reddit threads, and more. However, if you don’t want to rely on social media as your only source for news, there are other ways to discover more popular content online. There was a time when news aggregators and RSS Feeds were more common. These tools still have a place in the digital world despite the rise of social media. Here, we’ll be looking at a few of the best options.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Poynter: Misinformation is swirling online about COVID-19 vaccines and Damar Hamlin’s collapse. “Hamlin tackled Cincinnati Bengals receiver Tee Higgins during a Jan. 2 game at Paycor Stadium. As millions watched, Hamlin stood up after the hit and moments later fell to the ground. Social media users seized on the incident and used it to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines contributed to Hamlin’s cardiac arrest.”

Mid-Day: Why people are keeping their deceased ones alive through social media accounts. “The last post on Bollywood singer KK’s Instagram account was in October 2022, roughly five months after his sudden death in Kolkata last May. ‘After he passed, I spoke to Nakul [his son], about what we should do with his account,’ says Shubham Bhatt, KK’s manager, ‘and we decided to not deactivate it as it was a way to reach out to all his fans….’ … The singer’s posthumous Instagram account is now of the many belonging to renowned artistes across the globe, who have an active account after their death.

Fast Company: How Gen Z social media managers became the new CMOs. “[Zaria] Parvez, who’s since been promoted to global social media manager, is just one of several young corporate marketing staffers who, thanks largely to TikTok’s meteoric rise, have quickly become leaders in their companies when it comes to messaging and positioning. These Gen Z’ers are not just in tune with the brand voice, but actively shaping it, and altering marketing departments along the way.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

GeekWire: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and others, seeking compensation for youth mental health crisis. “A new lawsuit filed by Seattle Public Schools against TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Instagram, and their parent companies alleges that the social media giants have ‘successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth’ for their own profit, using psychological tactics that have led to a mental health crisis in schools.”

Bleeping Computer: Slack’s private GitHub code repositories stolen over holidays. “Slack suffered a security incident over the holidays affecting some of its private GitHub code repositories. The immensely popular Salesforce-owned IM app is used by an estimated 18 million users at workplaces and digital communities around the world.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Beyond Section 230: A pair of social media experts describes how to bring transparency and accountability to the industry. “…the more that platforms like Twitter test the limits of their protection, the more American politicians on both sides of the aisle have been motivated to modify or repeal Section 230. As a social media media professor and a social media lawyer with a long history in this field, we think change in Section 230 is coming – and we believe that it is long overdue.”

New York Times: A New Area of A.I. Booms, Even Amid the Tech Gloom. “An investment frenzy over ‘generative artificial intelligence’ has gripped Silicon Valley, as tools that generate text, images and sounds in response to short prompts seize the imagination.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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January 9, 2023 at 01:27AM
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Bailiúchán Béaloidis Árann, Africa Renewable Energy, Collage Art, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 8, 2023

Bailiúchán Béaloidis Árann, Africa Renewable Energy, Collage Art, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 8, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Connacht Tribune: New website makes Aran’s folklore accessible to all. “When Bailiúchán Béaloidis Árann was founded, it had two primary objectives: to preserve island folklore for future generations of islanders; and that this folklore would be accessible on Inis Mór itself. The new website enables islanders to combine those two objectives. It includes hundreds of photographs and 102 audio recordings, as well as videos collected over the past 20 years. All are enriched with detailed information, identifying the people and places appearing in them.”

Data Descriptors: RePP Africa – a georeferenced and curated database on existing and proposed wind, solar, and hydropower plants. “The Renewable Power Plant database for Africa (RePP Africa) encompasses 1074 hydro-, 1128 solar, and 276 wind power plant records. For each power plant, geographic coordinates, country, construction status, and capacity (in megawatt) are reported.”

EVENTS

Addison County Independent: Sheldon Museum hosts live webinar on collage art. “Thinking of place as an archive is fertile terrain for collage artists who seek to incorporate a sense of place into their practice. Panelists at a Sheldon Museum webinar on Wednesday, Jan. 11, at 7 p.m. will present artwork and discuss what it means to explore a place through the collage artist lens.” The event is free but requires registration.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: TikTok is testing a ‘sleep reminders’ feature that nudges you when it’s bedtime. “TikTok users regularly complain of hours lost on the platform, especially at night. In an effort to address these concerns, the company is testing new sleep reminders that include the option to set up alerts when it’s your bedtime and to mute notifications during the recommended seven hours of sleep.”

Bleeping Computer: Amazon S3 will now encrypt all new data with AES-256 by default. “Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) will now automatically encrypt all new objects added on buckets on the server side, using AES-256 by default. While the server-side encryption system has been available on AWS for over a decade, the tech giant has enabled it by default to bolster security.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Premium Times (Nigeria): In Nigeria, responsible journalism risks being drowned by disinformation -Babcock University VC. “The President/Vice-Chancellor of Babcock University (BU), Ilishan-Remo, Ademola Tayo, has urged global media practitioners and particularly in Nigeria to save the profession from being ‘drowned by the cacophony of disinformation.'”

Michigan Daily: ‘Please don’t hesitate to ask’: An interview with ChatGPT. “After introducing myself to ChatGPT, its functions, capabilities and restrictions, and brainstorming how I could present discussions ChatGPT raises in an interesting way, I came to the conclusion that I was able to interview this Artificial Intelligence. Every single word of ChatGPT’s response is intentional due to how it forms its responses, and this interview will give me a different perspective on ChatGPT’s current position as a fairly groundbreaking software.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google Cloud to support Kuwait’s digitisation drive. “Google Cloud has formed a strategic alliance with the Kuwaiti government to support digitisation efforts across the country’s public sector, the company said on Friday.”

Associated Press: China Suspends Social Media Accounts of COVID Policy Critics. “China has suspended or closed the social media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s policies on the COVID-19 outbreak, as the country moves to further open up. The popular Sina Weibo social media platform said it had addressed 12,854 violations including attacks on experts, scholars and medical workers and issued temporary or permanent bans on 1,120 accounts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Tech Xplore: Researchers test 3D printing materials used for art projects to see if they will stand the test of time. “A team of researchers at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, has tested two of the most popular materials used to 3D print useful objects, including those used for art projects, to see how well they might stand the test of time. In their paper published in Journal of Cultural Heritage, the group describes subjecting 3D printed objects to heat and UV radiation.”

How-To Geek: Adobe Is Using Your Data to Train AI: How to Turn It Off. “If you use Adobe products with cloud storage or backup, like Photoshop or Lightroom, the company may be using your data to train machine learning algorithms. Here’s how to opt out.”

Chosun Ilbo (South Korea): AI-Based Digital Textbooks Ready for Use in Schools by 2025. “AI-based digital textbooks will be supplied to schools in 2025, the Ministry of Education said Thursday. They will first be given to third, fourth, seventh and 10th graders.” Good morning, Internet…

January 8, 2023 at 06:27PM
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Saturday, January 7, 2023

SketchAI, FTX Victims, Poisonous/Venomous Animals Virginia, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 7, 2023

SketchAI, FTX Victims, Poisonous/Venomous Animals Virginia, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 7, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Mashable: Picsart’s new SketchAI app is transforming images into digital art. “SketchAI provides users with the tools to draw an image or upload an existing image, then apply various aesthetics and styles to digitally transform the original. Some of these presets include artist-based styles like ‘Henri Matisse’, ‘da Vinci’, and ‘Claude Monet’; others fall under broader categories like ‘Anime’, ’60s Vibes’, and ‘Bright Impressionism’.”

Decrypt: Were You Rekt by FTX? This Website Connects You to Law Enforcement. “On Friday, U.S. Federal prosecutors filed documents in Manhattan asking permission to use a website to communicate with people who lost money in FTX’s spectacular collapse. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who’s overseeing the case, approved it the same day.”

University of Virginia: News In Brief: UVA Offers New, Free Book On Poisonous, Venomous Animals In Virginia. “To help Virginians avoid poisonings from encounters with wildlife, a reference guide to 32 poisonous and venomous animals that live in Virginia is now available as a free, downloadable book.” There’s also a free book available about poisonous plants in Virginia.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: The best of CES 2023. “After canceling our CES plans in 2022 (and not even having the option of attending in person in 2021), the Engadget team sent a dozen staffers to CES 2023 this week, including reporters, editors and videographers. It’s too soon to say how many stories and videos we’ve published — in fact, we have more good stuff coming — but suffice to say, it was a lot. Though our team swears the show still wasn’t as busy as pre-pandemic years, they were kept busy enough that it felt like a true return to form, not just for us, but for the tech industry at large.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: Seven Coding Games to Help You Build Your Programming Chops. “These coding games cover plenty of languages, age ranges, and skill levels, so whether you’re a complete beginner or looking for something on the next level, there’s a game to help you learn coding the best way: by doing it.” I played Code Combat for a couple of weeks as I was starting out with learning JavaScript. It was fun but I got distracted quickly by what I wanted to make and stopped playing.

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC News: On Musk’s Twitter, users looking to sell and trade child sex abuse material are still easily found. “Twitter accounts that offer to trade or sell child sexual abuse material under thinly veiled terms and hashtags have remained online for months, even after CEO Elon Musk said he would combat child exploitation on the platform.”

Ars Technica: ChatGPT is enabling script kiddies to write functional malware. “Researchers at security firm Check Point Research reported Friday that within a few weeks of ChatGPT going live, participants in cybercrime forums—some with little or no coding experience—were using it to write software and emails that could be used for espionage, ransomware, malicious spam, and other malicious tasks.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Next Web: Evernote has been acquired — here’s how its new owner can fix it. “With a new owner, Evernote now has an opportunity for a clean start. Bending Spoons already has a suite of consumer apps that are modern, powerful, and intuitive, and we have to believe the Italian company will use its expertise to shape a new Evernote. The question is what should it do? How can Bending Spoons bring Evernote to its former glory? Well, we have some ideas.”

WIRED: Banning TikTok Hurts Higher Education. “While students can certainly still access TikTok within the privacy of their own homes, professors can no longer put TikToks into PowerPoint slides or show TikTok links via classroom web browser. Brands, companies, and novel forms of storytelling all rely on TikTok, and professors will no longer be able to train their students in best practices for these purposes. Additionally, TikTok makes parts of the world more accessible, as students can see the things they are learning about in real time. The world keeps turning as these states implement their bans, leaving their citizens disadvantaged in a fast-paced media world.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

CNET: Happy 50th Birthday, ‘Schoolhouse Rock’: Gen X Owes You One. “Schoolhouse Rock, that rambunctious, colorful series of educational videos that taught Gen Xers their multiplication tables, how to unpack their adjectives and the preamble to the US Constitution, turns 50 on Friday. On Jan. 6, 1973, the math segments, known as Multiplication Rock, debuted on ABC, so Schoolhouse Rock can now join the rest of us Xers in AARP. And I can’t let its big birthday go unnoticed.” Good afternoon, Internet…

January 8, 2023 at 01:36AM
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Great Kanto Earthquake, Twitter, Zoom, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, January 7, 2023

Great Kanto Earthquake, Twitter, Zoom, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, January 7, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NHK World Japan: JMA launches website on 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. “The website presents photos and data related to the 7.9-magnitude Great Kanto Earthquake, which struck on September 1, 1923. The temblor destroyed buildings, triggered landslides and tsunami, and caused massive fires that engulfed wide swathes of Tokyo and Yokohama. It left more than 100,000 people dead.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bloomberg: Laid-Off Twitter Workers Remain in Limbo Over Severance Pay. “Twitter Inc. employees who were laid off shortly after Elon Musk took over are still awaiting details of their severance packages months after being let go, leading to further legal trouble for the new owner.”

Engadget: Zoom’s avatars now let you appear as a cartoon version of yourself. “Zoom announced human avatars today for its video meeting app. Like Apple’s Memoji or the humanoid cartoons Mark Zuckerberg wants us to use in the metaverse, the customizable virtual characters mirror your movements and facial expressions. The idea is to inject zaniness into less formal meetings, letting you be present without appearing on camera as your (flesh and blood) self.”

The Verge: Snap’s shutting down the app that put cool filters on your Zoom calls. “On January 25th, Snap will be shutting down its camera app for Mac and PCs. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, you may remember it as the program that let you apply silly filters to your face while you were on Zoom or other video conference calls.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: The 7 Best Weather Apps to Replace Dark Sky on iPhone and Android. “Dark Sky, one of the best weather apps on Android and iOS, officially discontinued service at the end of 2022. Apple bought Dark Sky in 2020 and slowly ported some (but not all) of its features to the Apple Weather app, but its closure means users have to find a replacement. Luckily, there are several great apps on Android and iOS with hyper-localized weather tracking, accurate forecasts, and user-friendly interfaces that can fill the Dark Sky-shaped hole in your app launcher.” Slideshow.

Smashing Magazine: A Guide To Getting Data Visualization Right. “In this article, Sara Dholakia presents a guide on how to choose just the right type of data visualization, with guidelines and things to keep in mind.” A good deep dive.

Search Engine Journal: Best SEO Courses Online – Free & Paid Options. “If you’re just getting started in SEO, you’re a mid-level professional looking to add tools to your toolbox, or even a seasoned veteran seeking the latest tricks, we’ve got just the thing. Below, we’ve compiled a list of the best online SEO courses available, so you can find exactly what you’re looking for.” I dislike SEO intensely, but it’s a fact of life. If you’re in charge of a Web site and its promotion, it behooves you to at least have an understanding of SEO, even if you have no intention of becoming a professional about it.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNET: QAnon Conspiracy Theory Channel Appears on Roku Lineup. “Roku has a new channel in its lineup that’s full of misinformation, such as content regarding QAnon, debunked vaccine conspiracies and false information about COVID-19. Roku says it’s looking into the conspiracy theory channel, which was reported on earlier by Media Matters.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wall Street Journal: Celsius Co-Founder Sued by New York Attorney General. “New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil lawsuit Thursday against Alex Mashinsky, alleging the co-founder of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network LLC defrauded investors out of billions of dollars of digital currency.”

Kotaku: Logan Paul Says Some Of His NFT Game Devs Were ‘Con Men,’ But He Didn’t Scam. “After keeping his mouth shut for roughly two weeks, Logan Paul has finally opened up about his blockchain NFT ‘game,’ CryptoZoo, in a response video to investigative YouTuber Stephen ‘Coffeezilla’ Findeisen. However, if you were hoping for some sort of explanation of what went wrong with the project, you’ll be sorely disappointed.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

How-To Geek: Why I’m Switching Back to Cable TV. “The early days of streaming live TV was great. The channel packages were small and very affordable. Most services let you choose from add-on bundles to expand your channel list. It was pretty easy to get the channels you wanted without much extra ‘fluff’ jammed in. However, in the years since, I’ve watched as these services have ballooned in channel lineup size and price. The dream of ‘al la carte TV’ never really materialized. This brings us to today, where streaming live TV is not much different than cable TV.”

Texas Tech Today: Texas Tech’s Ardon-Dryer Receives National Science Foundation Grant. “Karin Ardon-Dryer, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences, has received a $480,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that will augment research into helping society better understand the causes and impacts of dust storms. Ardon-Dryer, an atmospheric scientist who has been part of the faculty in Texas Tech’s College of Arts and Sciences for six years, received the grant to investigate dust events across the nation during the past 20 years and build out an accessible, centralized database for researchers and communities alike.” Good morning, Internet…

January 7, 2023 at 06:28PM
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Friday, January 6, 2023

Vietnam War Memorial, Plastic Pollution Sources, Freedom On the Move, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 6, 2023

Vietnam War Memorial, Plastic Pollution Sources, Freedom On the Move, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 6, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Christian Science Monitor: It took decades: Now there’s a photo for each name on Vietnam wall. “Volunteers have now tracked down at least one photo for every one of the more than 58,000 U.S. military service members who died in the Vietnam War – for an online Wall of Faces project that took more than two decades to complete.”

Monterey Bay Aquarium: Monterey Bay Aquarium study creates new open-access database to better identify plastic pollution sources. “Published in Scientific Data, the study offers a more extensive free resource for scientists to tap than previously available. It adds 42 polymer types not included in other open-access libraries and is the first to include polymers from non-plastic particles, such as seagrass, shells, and animal tissues, to prevent misidentification and improve accuracy of results. The study constructs a library of polymer types to match current and newly discovered plastic pollutants.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Cornell Chronicle: Mellon grants $1M to deepen and improve Freedom on the Move. “A grant of more than $1 million from the Mellon Foundation will support improvements to the content and functionality of Freedom on the Move (FOTM), a collective digital history project based at Cornell, as well as fostering a research community around the collection. Through FOTM, Cornell is partnering with multiple institutions, including Howard University’s Department of History, to build a free and open archive of all existing ‘runaway slave’ advertisements published in North American newspapers in the 18th and 19th centuries, estimated between 100,000 and 200,000 total. The collection currently contains about 32,500.”

Motherboard: Researcher Deepfakes His Voice, Uses AI to Demand Refund From Wells Fargo. “Do Not Pay is an organization that has previously automated all manner of things from fighting parking tickets to easily cancel unwanted subscriptions. In a video uploaded to Twitter on Wednesday, Do Not Pay founder Joshua Browder showed the tool calling Wells Fargo customer support, and using an AI-generated version of his own voice to overturn wire fees.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Engadget: At CES 2023, Google showed up as an automotive company. “At CES 2023, the company shared that it’s working with Spotify to integrate the Connect streaming tool into the Android UI. It also teased a preview of an audio handoff feature that would suggest different devices to move your music onto depending on your habits and where you are. But CES is a big car show, and Google also has products for automobiles.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google set to challenge India Android antitrust ruling at Supreme Court-source. “Google is preparing to approach India’s Supreme Court within days to try to block a ruling by the country’s antitrust watchdog that will force the U.S. company to change how it markets its Android platform, two people familiar with its strategy told Reuters.”

Ars Technica: Unpaid taxes could destroy porn studio accused of copyright trolling. “Over the past decade, Malibu Media has emerged as a prominent so-called ‘copyright troll,’ suing thousands of ‘John Does’ for allegedly torrenting adult content hosted on the porn studio’s website, ‘X-Art.’ Whether defendants were guilty or not didn’t seem to matter to Malibu, critics claimed, as much as winning as many settlements as possible. As courts became more familiar with Malibu, however, some judges grew suspicious of the studio’s litigiousness.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Financial Times: Whatever happened to Google Search?. “The company says that its goal is always to provide ‘ads that are useful’. It points out that not every search result has ads, either. But advert crowding would be more palatable if the basic service was noticeably improving at the same pace. Google’s example of one enhancement is the fact that search results come with more images now. Of course, this just so happens to be good for advertisers too. Other improvements have been slower to appear. Content behind paywalls is still not marked as such, for example. Nor is it possible to search for words spoken in a video without a transcript — though a trial is under way in India.”

Stanford Graduate School of Education: Stanford faculty weigh in on ChatGPT’s shake-up in education. “The recent release of ChatGPT — a new natural language processor that can write essays, spit out a Haiku, and even produce computer code — has prompted more questions about what this means for the future of society than even it can answer, despite efforts to make it try. Faculty from the Stanford Accelerator for Learning are already thinking about the ways in which ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence will change and contribute to education in particular.”

Western University News: AI tech exaggerates biases in facial age perception more than humans. “Researchers from Western University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) tested a large sample of the prominent major AI technologies available today and found not only did they reproduce human biases in the recognition of facial age, but they exaggerated those biases.”

January 7, 2023 at 01:26AM
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19th Century Snowflake Photography, PFAS Analytics, Jot for Journal Selection, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, January 6, 2023

19th Century Snowflake Photography, PFAS Analytics, Jot for Journal Selection, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, January 6, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Guardian: Snowflake Bentley’s 19th-century images of snow crystals put online. “For most farming families in 19th-century rural Vermont, winter snowstorms were dreaded and endured. But for Wilson Bentley, snow was a source of intense fascination that led him, at the age of 19, to produce the world’s first photomicrographs of snow crystals, which he described as ‘tiny miracles of beauty’. A stunning album of 355 of the original prints by the man who came to be known as Snowflake Bentley was bought by London’s Natural History Museum in 1899, and the collection has now been digitised and made available to view online.”

EPA: EPA Releases New PFAS Analytic Tool. “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a new interactive webpage, called the ‘PFAS Analytic Tools,’ which provides information about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) across the country. … The PFAS Analytic Tools bring together multiple sources of information in one spot with mapping, charting, and filtering functions, allowing the public to see where testing has been done and what level of detections were measured.”

Yale School of Medicine: Introducing Jot — a new open-source tool that help researchers with journal selection. “Say hello to Jot: a free, open-source web application that matches manuscripts in the fields of biomedicine and life sciences with suitable journals, based on a manuscript’s title, abstract, and (optionally) citations. Developed by the Townsend Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, Jot gathers a wealth of data on journal quality, impact, fit, and open access options that can be explored through a dashboard of linked, interactive visualizations.”

Denver Post: CDOT snowplow driver offers a glimpse behind the wheel. “The online COtrip map, which already gave users highway information from around the state, including camera images, construction information, electronic signs, road conditions and road closures, is now tracking CDOT snowplows in real-time. It’s the first season that the public is able to track snowplow locations and work areas on the map, and it includes the plows’ names, such as Darth Blader, Snowtorious B.I.G., and Eisenplower, which were submitted and voted on by Colorado kids from across the state in 2021.”

Business Insider: A new website compiles salaries for jobs at 700 top tech firms, from Amazon to Google — see what your job is worth. “The site aggregates salary ranges for jobs at 700 top tech firms and startups. Its software visits the careers sites of these employers everyday to update numbers daily as new job posts are added. The database is possible thanks to pay transparency laws that recently took effect in places like New York City, California, and Washington state, which are home to major tech hubs.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Elon Cuts Costs by Laying Off the People Who Make Twitter Money. “From a people-power perspective, Twitter is inarguably a husk of what it once was. Since Elon Musk took over the social media platform at the end of October 2022, the company has lost more than an estimated three-quarters of its staff to layoffs and voluntary departures. On Wednesday, the cuts continued.”

Foreign Policy: Après Twitter, the Deluge?. “On the day in mid-November when Elon Musk told Twitter’s remaining employees to commit to being ‘hardcore’ or leave, Mayank Bidawatka landed in San Francisco on a one-way ticket and checked into an Airbnb downtown. Bidawatka, the co-founder of Indian social media app Koo, was there to cash in on the disarray inside Musk’s Twitter. ”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Influencers outshine traditional media on coverage of FTX implosion. “All this coverage of the FTX implosion is the most prominent example of how so-called ‘citizen journalism’ is battling legacy publishers for online attention, catapulting a fresh class of independent journalists into the mainstream while also giving rise to a group of social media influencers who optimize for attention rather than accuracy.”

GrepBeat: New Raleigh-Based Social Media Platform Aims To Captures Your Legacy. “Three years ago Matt Phillips experienced an incident where he faced his own mortality. Being a single father to his 9-year-old son Cooper and 5-year-old daughter Piper, he felt there needed to be a way for him to remain present in their lives, even if he passed away. For Phillips and many others, losing someone means losing their stories, wisdom, and pure essence. That sentiment inspired his Raleigh-based startup, Project Transcend.”

GP Today: FIA Creates E-Library To Preserve Its History. “In order to preserve its rich heritage for future generations, the FIA will digitise its archives, creating an e-library that will be accessible to all in 2024, when the FIA celebrates its 120th anniversary…. The e-library will combine the 120-year-old Motor Sport and Mobility databases, making these facts and figures searchable and comparable. It will be an important tool for the FIA University’s work and by making it public, it will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the history of Motor Sport and Mobility.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: How Tesla, Google and Others Are Making Robots More Like Us. “Tesla is making AI-powered humanoid robots. Google wants to give its AI brain a bot body. Robotics are moving fast, and every day, droids are becoming more like us.”

Genealogy’s Star: Where is genealogy going in 2023 and beyond?. “I am not worried about being replaced by this or any other program but I appreciate the advances that make doing research possible. You are going to see a lot more AI involved in genealogy in 2023 and beyond and how we do genealogical research will continue to change just as rapidly.”

Scripps News: Organization says misinformation spread on Twitter following Hamlin’s cardiac arrest. “Damar Hamlin’s sudden cardiac arrest led to a rise in misinformation on Twitter, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate. The organization notes that the anti-vax trope ‘Died Suddenly’ spiked by 328% a day after the on-field incident.” Good morning, Internet…

January 6, 2023 at 06:27PM
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Thursday, January 5, 2023

Vietnam Biodiversity, Niyazi, Slack, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 5, 2023

Vietnam Biodiversity, Niyazi, Slack, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 5, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Vietnam+: Rich biodiversity database debuts. “A web portal collecting data of natural resources and wildlife conservation in Da Nang City has been introduced. It will provide information, documents, photographs and statistics from nature reserves in Son Tra and Ba Na-Nui Chua, as well as a special-use forest of South Hai Van in the central city.” I took a quick look and it seems that the site officially launches tomorrow. I didn’t see an English option but Google Translate did okay.

Azernews: National Archive Department highlights Niyazi’s musical legacy. “National Archive Department has launched a virtual exhibition devoted to maestro Niyazi, Azernews reports. The exhibition includes documents from the private funds of the State Archive of Literature and Art. Maestro Niyazi’s musical talent was truly impressive. The maestro conducted the Azerbaijan State Symphony orchestra for 46 years.” At this writing the link in the story will give you a 404 error; remove the period at the end of the URL and you’re good. The site is in Azerbaijani and, unusually, Google Translate has a difficult time with it. You can use Google Lens to translate the photography captions without any problem.

USEFUL STUFF

Search Engine Journal: How To Use Slack Effectively: 10 Tips To Increase Productivity. “For many, Slack has overtaken email as the dominant means of communication. And just like some wrestle with unmanageable email inboxes, many others are trying to tame their Slack. So here are 12 handy tips for making the best of Slack and leveraging it to enhance what you do across the rest of your suite of programs.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Rolling Stone: Jan. 6 Committee Experiment Found TikTok Went From Zero To Nazi in 75 Minutes. “WHEN THE JAN. 6 committee wanted to test how easy it was for TikTok users to wander down a far-right rabbit hole, they tried an experiment. They created Alice, a fictional 41-year-old from Acton, Massachusetts, gave her a TikTok account, and tracked what the social media app showed her. To their surprise, it only took 75 minutes of scrolling — with no interaction or cues about her interests — for the platform to serve Alice videos featuring Nazi content, following a detour through clips on the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp defamation suit, Donald Trump, and other right-wing culture war flashpoints.”

Washington Post: Twitter said it fixed ‘verification.’ So I impersonated a senator (again).. “After Blue 2.0 (my term for it) launched on Dec. 12, I made another faux Markey and applied for verification. Some of Twitter’s new requirements slowed down the process — and might dissuade some impatient impersonators — but the company never asked to see a form of identification. Last week, up popped a blue check mark on my @SenatorEdMarkey account. Oops! I did it again. Twitter didn’t reply to a request for comment. After I published this story, Twitter suspended the @SenatorEdMarkey account.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: 200 million Twitter users’ email addresses allegedly leaked online. “A data leak described as containing email addresses for over 200 million Twitter users has been published on a popular hacker forum for about $2. BleepingComputer has confirmed the validity of many of the email addresses listed in the leak.”

Ars Technica: Hundreds of WordPress sites infected by recently discovered backdoor. “Malware that exploits unpatched vulnerabilities in 30 different WordPress plugins has infected hundreds if not thousands of sites and may have been in active use for years, according to a writeup published last week.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: Stop Using Social Media Apps. The Web Version Is Often Better. “I CAN SCROLL through my timeline of choice whenever I want, which is a miracle of technology. The downside: I do so, a lot, even when I wish I were doing something else. With this in mind, I’ve been thinking lately about how I’d like social media to be just a little bit worse—to add the slightest amount of friction so I don’t spend quite so much time doomscrolling. I found the perfect solution: using the web version of social networks on my phone instead of installing the app.”

Front Matter: Building an archive for scholarly blog posts. “Building an archive of scholarly blog posts faces the same fundamental challenges as repositories for other types of scholarly content, whether data, software, preprints, or journal articles. You have to collect metadata and content, and that approach only scales with standardization and open licenses. Luckily we already know a lot about required and optional but desired scholarly metadata, and they are fundamentally not different for scholarly blog post.”

Daily Sabah: Turkish researchers use AI to read cuneatic Hittite tablets. “For the first time, 1,954 ancient Hittite tablets are being read with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) thanks to a project implemented in Türkiye. When the translation part is completed, the cuneatic clay tablets will be put on display for the public in the Hittite Digital Library scheduled to open soon.” Good afternoon, Internet…

January 5, 2023 at 11:35PM
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