New researches

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Cornell ILR Wage Atlas, Israel Immigration Records, YouTube, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, January 10, 2023

Cornell ILR Wage Atlas, Israel Immigration Records, YouTube, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, January 10, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Cornell Chronicle: Fewer than 40% of New Yorkers earn a living wage. “The Cornell ILR Wage Atlas is designed to help New York state policymakers, economic development officials, nonprofits, academics and other stakeholders more easily analyze and visualize who earns living wages and where, and which occupations are best or worst for earning a living wage.”

Forward: Israeli immigration records now searchable in English online. “The collection of 1.7 million records, published by MyHeritage.com, is free for anyone to search. The database includes scanned images of documents for immigrants who arrived in Israel between 1919 and 1948, from anywhere in the world, by ship, plane or land. The records include the immigrants’ names; names of those who traveled with them and those who were expecting them in Israel; country of origin; date of arrival and their destination city.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CoinTelegraph: Logan Paul backflips on defamation lawsuit against Coffeezilla, apologizes. “YouTuber Logan Paul has deleted a video in which he threatened to sue internet detective Stephen ‘Coffeezilla’ Findeisen over a three-part series that painted Paul’s CryptoZoo project as a ‘scam.’ According to Coffezilla in a Jan. 6 tweet, Paul has promised to drop his threats of filing a defamation lawsuit over the videos.”I know this all seems very gossipy, but I’m interested because Logan Paul is a huge YouTuber who has a long history of doing questionable stuff, and he’s been rather abruptly pulled up and called out lately.

Engadget: YouTube will begin sharing ad revenue with Shorts creators on February 1st. “YouTube’s long-awaited revenue-sharing program for Shorts creators is nearly ready. Starting today, the company is rolling out a new Partner Program agreement ahead of February 1st, when creators can begin earning ad share revenue on their Shorts views.”

How-To Geek: Raspberry Pi Launches a New Autofocus Camera In 4 Flavors. “The newly-launched Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 will inspire some very interesting projects. It’s a 12MP camera with powered autofocus, HDR support, and a 1080p 50FPS video resolution—three things that were absent in previous Pi camera modules.”

USEFUL STUFF

Zapier: Descript harnesses the power of AI for easy audio and video editing. ‘If you’ve never tried it, you’re in luck: Descript recently revamped its desktop app, adding video storyboarding, editing, and production tools in addition to existing audio functionality. Descript does require a paid subscription for anything more than testing, but plans are reasonable and priced on the low end for casual users, as well as offering robust plans for more professional production needs. Let’s take a quick tour to see it in action.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

PENTA: Hauser & Wirth Institute’s Mission to Make Artist Archives Freely Available. “Hauser & Wirth Institute is a nonprofit, private foundation fully supported by the mega gallery Hauser & Wirth to fund and make available artist archives and catalog raisonnés, and to provide grants to support archival projects.”

KNAU: McCain Institute and Cronkite School launch taskforce to combat disinformation . “The McCain Institute and the Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University have announced the launching of a task force focused on defeating disinformation attacks on democracy in the U.S.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

PLEASE READ THIS. This is bad. Krebs on Security: Identity Thieves Bypassed Experian Security to View Credit Reports. “Normally, Experian requires that those seeking a copy of their credit report successfully answer several multiple choice questions about their financial history. But until the end of 2022, Experian’s website allowed anyone to bypass these questions and go straight to the consumer’s report. All that was needed was the person’s name, address, birthday and Social Security number.”

Iowa Capital Dispatch: Iowa counties’ records inaccessible in wake of suspected cyberattack. “Iowa’s county recorders maintain land records, issue marriage licenses and register births and deaths. They also issue titles and liens on boats, snowmobiles and ATVs. The biggest immediate effect of the apparent hack is that the public, as well as the recorders themselves, can’t currently access real estate records.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Scientific American: Audio Astronomy Unlocks a Universe of Sound. “To realize their dreams, [Sarah] Kane and other budding blind or visually impaired (BVI) researchers are betting big on efforts to turn scientific data into sound, also called sonification. At a conference at the Lorentz Center in the Netherlands last December, a motley crew of scientists, sound engineers and educators representing the leaders of the nascent field of astronomical sonification gathered to discuss current projects and chart a course forward.”

Ars Technica: Microsoft’s new AI can simulate anyone’s voice with 3 seconds of audio. “On Thursday, Microsoft researchers announced a new text-to-speech AI model called VALL-E that can closely simulate a person’s voice when given a three-second audio sample. Once it learns a specific voice, VALL-E can synthesize audio of that person saying anything—and do it in a way that attempts to preserve the speaker’s emotional tone.” Do we have time to vote against this trend of calling everything GAN-related whatever-E? Good morning, Internet…

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January 10, 2023 at 06:28PM
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Monday, January 9, 2023

Westminster Accounts, Windows 7, Nintendo, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 9, 2023

Westminster Accounts, Windows 7, Nintendo, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 9, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Sky News: Westminster Accounts: How to explore the database for yourself. “Sky News and Tortoise Media have programmatically collected and analysed thousands of public records to create this extensive record of financial interests in Westminster from December 2019 onwards. It means that for the first time, you can easily see the total sums of donations and earnings for individual MPs – something which was previously very difficult to collate and compare due to the way the registers are published.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bleeping Computer: Microsoft ends Windows 7 extended security updates on Tuesday. “Windows 7 Professional and Enterprise editions will no longer receive extended security updates for critical and important vulnerabilities starting Tuesday, January 10, 2023. Microsoft launched the legacy operating system in October 2009. It then reached its end of support in January 2015 and its extended end of support in January 2020.”

Techdirt: DidYouKnowGaming Gets Video Nintendo DMCA’d Restored. “Back in December we discussed how Nintendo got a video on the DidYouKnowGaming YouTube channel taken down via a DMCA notice. While Nintendo is notorious for being an intellectual property bully and enforcing what it thinks are its rights in as draconian a manner as possible, what stood out about this particular story is that the video in question was a journalistic effort to document a game pitched to Nintendo that never came out, included no gameplay footage, and therefore didn’t reproduce any actual game assets.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Asahi Shimbun: Students lay groundwork for research project on Donald Keene. “Students have taken the lead in a project to sort out more than 7,000 books in the collections of American-born Japanese literature expert Donald Keene (1922-2019). Toyo University, Tokyo’s Kita Ward and the Donald Keene Memorial Foundation in July signed an agreement to scrutinize the collections of the scholar who introduced Japanese literature and culture to people around the world.”

TMZ: POPEYES MEME KID: I’M A COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYER!!! … Wants NIL Deal. “Remember the TerRio look-alike who went viral for giving the side-eye at Popeyes??? That kid from the famous meme is now a college football player — and we’re all officially old. TMZ Sports has confirmed … Lake Erie College freshman offensive lineman Dieunerst Collin is, in fact, the little kid in the yellow shirt who became internet famous on now-defunct social media platform Vine back in the day.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Come to the ‘war cry party’: How social media helped drive mayhem in Brazil. “Online influencers who deny the results of the country’s recent presidential election used a particular phrase to summon “patriots” to what they called a ‘Festa da Selma’ — tweaking the word ‘selva,’ a military term for war cry, by substituting an ‘m’ for the ‘v’ in hopes of avoiding detection from Brazilian authorities, who have wide latitude to arrest people for ‘anti-democratic’ postings online. ‘Festa’ is the Portuguese word for ‘party.'”

The Guardian: Second cabinet minister says Twitter account hacked. “A second cabinet minister has said they fell victim to hackers and was forced to apologise after their Twitter account posted a series of offensive tweets about race, sexuality and gender identity. Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, said others temporarily gained access to his account and posted some ‘deeply unpleasant stuff’.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Nikkei: Japan taps AI to defend against fake news. “The foreign ministry will launch an AI-powered system in fiscal 2023 to collect and analyse fake information on social media and other platforms, allowing it to track how foreign actors are trying to influence public opinion over the medium to long term. The framework will not only cover information geared toward the Japanese audience, but also information aimed at harming foreign perceptions of Japan.”

New York University: Exposure to Russian Twitter Campaigns in 2016 Presidential Race Highly Concentrated, Largely Limited to Strongly Partisan Republicans. “The study, which included researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Trinity College Dublin, and Technical University of Munich and examined social media users’ behaviors and attitudes in both April and October of 2016, also concluded that there was no relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior. Despite these results, the researchers caution that Russia attempts to alter the outcome of the election may have had other effects.”

ZDNet: I’m running my own Mastodon server on a Raspberry Pi. Here’s what I’ve learned. “I decided that if I’m going to truly move away from Twitter, I want to own my entire Mastodon experience. I don’t want to worry about the server I’ve joined having an admin go rogue, or not being able to secure enough funding to keep running. I want to be my own admin, and it’ll be up to me to keep the server running.” Good afternoon, Internet…

January 10, 2023 at 01:10AM
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Corporate 401(k) Transparency, Oklahoma Prison Newsletters, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 9, 2023

Corporate 401(k) Transparency, Oklahoma Prison Newsletters, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 9, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pittsburgh tech company makes 401(k) data free and open to all. “More than two decades after the idea came up during a party conversation, [Raul Valdes-Perez] has launched a search engine called Benchmine that allows users to do comparative analysis on more than 54,000 company 401(k) retirement plans. The online tool provides free and public access to data that all companies offering 401(k)s to their employees are required to report annually to the U.S. Department of Labor.”

Oklahoma Department of Libraries: The archivists at the Oklahoma Department of Libraries digitized 285 prisoner newsletters, spanning from 1937 to 1973, for you to view online.. “The newsletters were written by the inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and Oklahoma State Reformatory. The collection consists of five different newsletters: The Eye Opener, Soonerland, Tidings, Granite Nugget, and the OSR News & Views.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Twitter has reportedly laid off more of its global content moderation team. “In what has become a monthly occurrence at Twitter, the company has cut more of its workforce. On Friday night, Twitter reportedly laid off ‘at least a dozen’ workers across its Dublin and Singapore offices. According to Bloomberg, the casualties include Analuisa Dominguez, the company’s former senior director of revenue policy.”

CNN: LinkedIn is having a moment thanks to a wave of layoffs. “In a normal year at this time, a typical LinkedIn feed might be full of posts about year-end reflections on leadership and professional goals and suggested lifehacks for the year ahead — possibly with a few posts from CMOs offering tips on brand strategy, for good measure. Those posts are still there. But mixed in are many others about job hunts, offers of support for laid off friends and colleagues, and advice for coping with career hurdles in an uncertain economic environment.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: 10 Browser Add-Ons to Make Downloading Videos Easy. “MAYBE YOU WANT to save an image or a video clip from the web through your browser because it’ll make a great wallpaper or you want to include it in a video you’re making. In most cases (especially when it comes to pictures) you can simply right-click on the file and choose ‘save image as,’ or something similar. But sometimes that doesn’t work, or not well enough. What if there’s no save option on the right-click menu? What if you want to quickly save dozens of images from a single website? What if you’re trying to save an animated video as a GIF, or you keep downloading one of those .webp files no one wants?

MakeUseOf: 7 iPhone Scanner Apps to Track Receipts, Solve Math Problems, and More . “While scanning documents was a chore back in the day, smartphones have turned it into a relatively easy task. However, there are scanner apps out there that can do much more than just scan a few random documents here and there.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Register: CES Worst in Show slams gummi gouging, money-wasting mugs, and other dubious kit. “As the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show winds down, it’s once again time for the Worst in Show Awards, an enumeration of ill-conceived tech products as determined by various technology advocates.”

Louisiana Tech University: Special Collections and Archives acquires Bernard J. Stinnett Collection. “The Special Collections and Archives at Louisiana Tech University has acquired a collection of letters, memorabilia, artwork, and photographs of former Camp Ruston U.S. Army clerk Bernard J. Stinnett, courtesy of his daughter Hester Stinnett. Louisiana’s Camp Ruston was one of the largest prisoner-of-war (POW) camps established by the U.S. during World War II, located on the western outskirts of the town of Grambling.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NOLA: Document storage company withholding ‘hundreds of boxes’ of city records amid financial dispute. “Document storage company Iron Mountain is withholding hundreds of boxes of files it is storing for the city of New Orleans because of an ongoing financial dispute with Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration, a City Hall spokesman confirms.”

Reuters: Germany tells Musk it expects Twitter to fight disinformation. “The German government will continue to critically observe the situation at Twitter. Germany’s digital minister recently met Elon Musk to clarify what Berlin expects from Twitter, especially in fighting disinformation, since the Tesla founder took over the social media firm, the digital ministry said on Friday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: ‘Consciousness’ in Robots Was Once Taboo. Now It’s the Last Word.. “Wading directly into these murky waters might seem fruitless to roboticists and computer scientists. But, as Antonio Chella, a roboticist at the University of Palermo in Italy, said, unless consciousness is accounted for, ‘it feels like something is missing’ in the function of intelligent machines.”

Ohio State News: Why technology alone can’t solve the digital divide. “For some communities, the digital divide remains even after they have access to computers and fast internet, new research shows. A study of the Bhutanese refugee community in Columbus found that even though more than 95% of the population had access to the internet, very few were using it to connect with local resources and online news. And the study, which was done during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home orders in Ohio, found that nearly three-quarters of respondents never used the internet for telehealth services.” Good morning, Internet…

January 9, 2023 at 06:31PM
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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…

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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