New researches

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Raw Rock Star Interviews, Open Source Polymer Engineering, USU COVID-19 Oral History Archive, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 11, 2023

Raw Rock Star Interviews, Open Source Polymer Engineering, USU COVID-19 Oral History Archive, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 11, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Northeastern Global News: Rare rock star interviews ‘raw, complete and unedited’ in new Northeastern digital archive . “Now, for the first time, [Larry] Katz’s interviews with some of the most famous musicians and other cultural figures in history—many of them now deceased—are available for the public to peruse. Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono all spoke to Katz during his career, and all of their interviews are now a part of Northeastern University Library’s digital archive of what’s known as the Katz Tapes.”

Tokyo Institute of Technology: Towards Polymer Informatics: Open-source Library for Creating Polymer Property Databases. “This software automates the simulation and calculation of several relevant properties for a given list of polymers. In turn, this greatly accelerates the generation of large amounts of data to be used in the search for new compounds via materials informatics.”

Utah State University: USU COVID-19 Oral History Digital Collection Now Live. “The last time USU faced a pandemic was more than a hundred years ago, in fall 1918. Evidence, especially firsthand accounts, of that period in USU’s history is limited in the archives. The University’s Libraries’ Special Collections & Archives sought to ensure that generations of future historians would be able to understand the institutional effects of COVID-19 on USU by collecting oral histories of USU administrators, faculty, staff and students as they experienced the effects of a global pandemic.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NBC News: Twitter blocks hashtags used to promote child sex abuse material after NBC News review. “NBC News found that a series of hashtags on the platform related to the file-sharing service Mega served as rallying points for users seeking to trade or sell CSAM. NBC News observed the hashtags over a period of several weeks, and counted dozens of users who collectively published hundreds of tweets daily.”

TechCrunch: Twitter makes algorithmic timeline default on iOS. “Twitter is making the algorithmic timeline named “For You” the default feed on iOS. If you are getting a sense of déjà vu, you are not dreaming. The company has tried to pull this stunt previously only to give the option to switch back to a chronological timeline after a lot of backlashes. So what’s different this time?”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Twitter bans account for D.C.-area bus system without explanation. “Metro officials said they weren’t told why the social media company suspended the account, @metrobusinfo. Before the suspension, Metro officials said, the account had not posted anything other than standard content, which includes route scheduling information, delay and detour updates, customer-service-related tips, and replies to customer complaints or concerns.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Politico: The legal threat coming for venture capital. “After being battered by rising interest rates and choppy markets, the venture capital industry is sweating new regulations that could expose fund managers to legal risks. The SEC is putting the final touches on a rule that would make it easier for investors to sue VCs for bad behavior, negligence or recklessness.”

Chicago Tribune: As Chicago police prepare to relaunch ‘gang database,’ concerns remain the tool could unfairly sweep up many. “Critics remain concerned by the Chicago Police Department’s impending relaunch of its much-criticized ‘gang database,’ a tool intended to identify people with connections to street gangs, even after the process to revamp it was paused last fall at the behest of the city’s new police oversight committee.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

United Nations: ‘Urgent need’ for more accountability from social media giants to curb hate speech: UN experts. “In a detailed statement, more than two dozen UN-appointed independent human rights experts – including representatives from three different working groups and multiple Special Rapporteurs – called out chief executives by name, saying that the companies they lead ‘must urgently address posts and activities that advocate hatred, and constitute incitement to discrimination, in line with international standards for freedom of expression.'”

Wall Street Journal: Keep ISIS Off Twitter. “For all its faults, Twitter has managed in recent years to keep ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist groups off its platform. But jihadists still want to tweet and won’t stop trying to sneak back onto Twitter. As Elon Musk restores many accounts that had been shut down, he should make sure he doesn’t give back access to jihadists who would kill and maim innocent people the in name of militant fundamentalist Islam.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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January 12, 2023 at 01:54AM
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Disease Blood Atlas, Energy-Related Wastewater, Twitter, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, January 11, 2023

Disease Blood Atlas, Energy-Related Wastewater, Twitter, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, January 11, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

KTH Royal Institute of Technology: New database maps proteins that could predict cancer. “Announced by KTH Royal Institute of Technology Professor Mathias Uhlén, the new open-access Disease Blood Atlas provides a first-ever map of the proteome signature in blood from cancer patients. The Disease Blood Atlas highlights 1,463 proteins associated with 12 different types of cancer, and presents proteins that can be used to identify individual cancer types based on a drop of blood.”

National Energy Technology Laboratory: NETL-Developed Online Database Brings Energy-related Wastewater Stream Data To Public’s Fingertips. “Community leaders and water researchers can now access publicly available online datasets curated and processed by NETL to better understand the composition of energy-related wastewater streams.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Wrap: Twitter Offers Former Staffers One-Third Promised Severance, Demands Silence Agreement. “Hundreds of former Twitter employees waiting for the severance pay Elon Musk promised when he canned them in November will be required to sign away all rights to bring claims against the company or even speak out about the platform for the rest of their lives before they get any cash, a lawyer representing the workers says.”

PC Gamer: Coinbase lays off nearly 1,000 more employees, blaming FTX ‘contagion’ and economic downturn. “One of the biggest crypto exchange platforms in the world, Coinbase, is undergoing a massive round of layoffs. Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said that the company will reduce its operating expense by 25% and let go of 950 employees.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The 3 Best Alternatives to ChatGPT . “Since its public launch in November 2022, ChatGPT, the mesmerizing AI chatbot by OpenAI, has grown in popularity like wildfire. Social media feeds are filled with incredible things people are doing with the chatbot. Jobseekers, programmers, high school teachers, content creators—professionals in almost every field are finding good uses for the tool. However, when one tool takes center stage, it’s easy to lose track of the alternatives that could offer equal or even better value. We’ve put together three of the best ChatGPT alternatives you can use right now.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

VOCM: Holy Spirit High Waiting for Name Change on Google Maps . “For some time now, Holy Spirit [High School] shows up as ‘Mouldy bread loaf’ on Google map searches. Principal David Locke says the school contacted Google as soon as they discovered it, but they’re still waiting to have it fixed.”

South China Morning Post: Recording old Hong Kong on video: why this group believes digitising VHS tapes is key in preserving city’s history. “To restore Hong Kong’s videocassette memories, a group of enthusiasts started HKVCRBase 16 years ago to collect videotapes and upload their content online. The group has gathered more than 6,000 videotapes and digitised countless clips, from advertisements to concerts, news and dramas. Their Facebook page has garnered 77,000 followers, and their YouTube channels combined have nearly 60,000 subscribers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC News: Biden signs law to help preserve Japanese American WWII incarceration camps. “The legislation, spearheaded by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, would reauthorize funds that help preserve the sites in which tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were detained, including Manzanar in California and Rohwer in Arkansas.”

TechCrunch: Europe quizzes TikTok on data safety, disinformation and DSA compliance . “A meeting between TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, and senior European Union lawmakers which took place today saw the video sharing platform’s chief executive quizzed on a range of topics — including its preparations to comply with incoming pan-EU rules focused on content governance and safety (aka the Digital Services Act; or DSA), and its approach to existing rules on privacy and data protection (including the General Data Protection Regulation).”

AFP: Disinformation fueled rage in Brazil over vote outcome. “Rioters who ransacked Congress and other buildings in Brasilia were partly mobilized by disinformation alleging a ‘fraudulent’ electronic ballot system cost Jair Bolsonaro his victory in the presidential election.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of California Davis: University of California to Research Expanded Access to Digitized Books. “The University of California libraries — which comprise the largest university research library in the world — are launching a landmark research project to investigate the potential for expanded lawful use of digitized books held by academic and research libraries. The Mellon Foundation is providing $1.1 million support for Project LEND (Library Expansion of Networked Delivery), a two-year project that the UC Davis Library will lead on behalf of the 10-campus UC system.”

Stephen Wolfram: Wolfram|Alpha as the Way to Bring Computational Knowledge Superpowers to ChatGPT. “For decades there’s been a dichotomy in thinking about AI between ‘statistical approaches’ of the kind ChatGPT uses, and ‘symbolic approaches’ that are in effect the starting point for Wolfram|Alpha. But now—thanks to the success of ChatGPT—as well as all the work we’ve done in making Wolfram|Alpha understand natural language—there’s finally the opportunity to combine these to make something much stronger than either could ever achieve on their own.” Good morning, Internet…

January 11, 2023 at 06:28PM
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Tuesday, January 10, 2023

AI Detection, Section 504 at 50, Android, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 10, 2023

AI Detection, Section 504 at 50, Android, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 10, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NPR: A college student created an app that can tell whether AI wrote an essay. “Teachers worried about students turning in essays written by a popular artificial intelligence chatbot now have a new tool of their own. Edward Tian, a 22-year-old senior at Princeton University, has built an app to detect whether text is written by ChatGPT, the viral chatbot that’s sparked fears over its potential for unethical uses in academia.”

Syracuse University News: Southeast ADA Center Launches Virtual Interview Series: Section 504 at 50. “In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Southeast ADA Center has launched a special virtual interview series where we speak with leaders of the disability rights movement who advance the cause of equal rights through their tireless work. The interview series and resources are available at the website Section 504 at 50. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 protects the rights of qualified individuals with disabilities from discrimination.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google’s bringing new features to older versions of Android. “Google is taking another shot at bringing new features to phones that haven’t gotten OS updates in years. It’s releasing something called the ‘Extension Software Developer Kit,’ which should let developers use features like Android 13’s new photo picker in apps running on some versions of Android 11 and 12.”

USEFUL STUFF

Larry Ferlazzo: Four New & Helpful Resources About Using ChatGPT For Education. “I’ve been adding quite a few new links to THE BEST POSTS ON EDUCATION & CHATGPT over the past couple of weeks without highlighting them, so you might want to check it out.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

University of York: World-famous Avebury site to be brought to life online for first time. “Avebury comprises one of the UK’s largest Henge monuments, containing the world’s largest stone circle at almost 350m in diameter, with avenues of paired standing stones… The four-year project will analyse, expand, digitise, and share Avebury’s unique multimedia archive, detailing its Neolithic origins, and a history that ranges from a medieval hamlet to a modern site of heritage, tourism, creativity, and spirituality.”

WIRED: How an Iraqi Instagram Influencer Became a People Smuggler. “[Abdulrahman] Khalid Is Now Working As A Waiter In Western Turkey. He Makes Only Occasional Posts To His Instagram Account. He Claims Instagram Has Suspended The Account 10 Times, Including One Five-month Ban, And Worries More Posts About Atheism Would Prompt A Permanent Deletion. Deletion Would Matter Because Khalid Has Become More Than An Influencer. He’s A People Smuggler, Too.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Education Week: There Are Hundreds of New Bills Targeting Cyberattacks in Schools. Will They Work?. “More state policymakers are recognizing the serious consequences that cyberattacks can have on K-12 schools, but the policy response is ‘still insufficient,’ according to the Consortium for School Networking’s analysis of school-related cybersecurity bills introduced in 2022.”

Motherboard: Citizen App Doxes Billie Eilish’s Family Home to Tens of Thousands of People. “A push notification informed thousands of users of the crime reporting app Citizen Thursday night that police were responding to a 911 call in Los Angeles, an attempted burglary at a specific home in the city’s Highland Park neighborhood. At 9:41 p.m., the notification was updated to disclose that, according to police, the home belonged to pop star Billie Eilish. The notification—which included the home’s exact address—was sent to 178,000 people, according to the metrics that Citizen shows its users, and was viewed by nearly 78,000 people.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Hill: Americans more inclined to browse social media than post their own content: Gallup . “Although YouTube is the most popular platform that Americans said they used, only 11 percent of those who have accounts said they posted their own content. Twitter… is one of the least popular platforms among Americans, with about 39 percent of Americans saying they use the platform but only 11 percent saying they frequently post their own content.”

Smithsonian Magazine: How an Unorthodox Scholar Uses Technology to Expose Biblical Forgeries . “As it turns out, [Michael] Langlois is a professional musician, having played bass on some 20 French studio albums, from soul to gospel to pop. He had recently laid down the bass tracks on an album of Celtic music by the French composer Hélène Goussebayle, and that summer he would perform in France with the Christian rock singer Chris Christensen. But he is also perhaps the most versatile—and unorthodox—biblical scholar of his generation.” Good afternoon, Internet…

January 11, 2023 at 01:55AM
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No Mastodon Account? No Problem! Explore Instances and Hashtags with MastoWindow

No Mastodon Account? No Problem! Explore Instances and Hashtags with MastoWindow
By ResearchBuzz

Are you rethinking your social platforms of choice lately? You’re not the only one. Between Mark Zuckerberg’s all-in on a legless metaverse and Twitter doing whatever it’s doing (I can’t even speculate at this point) people are rethinking where they want to establish and maintain their online communities.

My husband and I are social media opposites: his main platform is Facebook, and while he has a Twitter account he doesn’t use it. Meanwhile, until recently Twitter was my main platform, and I only use Messenger on Facebook.

With the social media shakeup, we have both been rethinking our options. I haven’t had too much trouble moving myself to Counter.Social and Mastodon. But my husband isn’t as technical as I am. He wants to explore Mastodon, but he finds the decentralized aspect confusing and he doesn’t know how to find people to follow.

We talked about it some. I asked if he could do account discovery via hashtags, and he said yes. So I asked if it would help if he had a way to explore different Mastodon instances and how different hashtags look on them. Another yes. So I made MastoWindow for him – and you!

MastoWindow uses the Instances.Social API to list Mastodon Instances by language. After it’s generated a list of languages, you can specify a hashtag and get a list of recent posts from that instance with that hashtag.

Let’s walk through an example using one of my husband’s current interests – David Graeber. The first thing he’d do is specify en to get Mastodon Instances in English:

Once he’s clicked the button, he’ll see a dropdown list of the top 30 English-using Mastodon instances, sorted by most active users. MastoWindow will not list instances with less than 200 active users. MastoWindow will also not list instances which don’t specify languages, so if you see your Instance missing from the list and you’ve confirmed it’s on Instances.Social, consider adding languages-used to your listing.

The listings include the name of the instance, the number of active users, and a short description. We’ll pick the first one, mastodon.social.

Underneath the drop-down menu is a place for you to specify the hashtag you want to explore. The default hashtag is openaccess, but you can put anything that you think might be hashtagged. (Stick to general topics at first – you’ll find plenty of posts about #music and a lot fewer about #QveenHerby. There are some, though, so shout to the fellow fans out there.) You don’t have to use the hash(#) but if you do, don’t worry, MastoWindow will just toss it and it won’t mess anything up.

In this case we’ll replace openaccess with graeber and click the big blue button.

After a moment, you’ll get a list of the most recent posts in the mastodon.social instance which use the hashtag graeber.

You’ll notice the first part of the post is a link. That generally takes you to the permanent post on its home Mastodon Instance. From there you can explore the instance further, look at more of that account’s posts, etc. In the case of the third post the first link takes you to a list of posts on that instance tagged with #graeber.

You’ll also notice that the second post is in Catalan. That’s because instances can specify multiple languages.

Maybe my husband doesn’t find anything interesting here and he wants to look at another instance. All he has to do is choose another from the dropdown menu and click the big blue button again. Let’s look at results from mstdn.ca:

You’ll notice that there’s some overlap in posts. In large instances and with common hashtags, there will be a lot of overlap as popular posts get responded to and reposted. If you’re finding too much overlap for your taste, try making your hashtags a little more obscure and try smaller instances. Here’s what mstdn.plus, a comparatively smaller instance (just under 2700 active users) has for #graeber:

When my husband gets tired of searching for #graeber, he can click on the Review New Hashtag button and the page resets and starts over.

I’m not sure if my husband is going to get into Mastodon or not. He might find some other platforms that he likes more, or he may decide to stick with Facebook. Wherever he ends up, I’m glad he’s getting the chance to explore Mastodon without having to figure out an account or find an instance. Maybe you’ll like exploring it too.

January 10, 2023 at 08:57PM
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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…

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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