New researches

Friday, March 3, 2023

Minnesota Data Dashboards, Flipboard, Snapchat, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, March 3, 2023

Minnesota Data Dashboards, Flipboard, Snapchat, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, March 3, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

KSTP: Minnesota Department of Health introduces new tool to track violent death. “The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) introduced the Minnesota Violent Death Reporting System (MNVDRS) dashboard on Wednesday, a comprehensive tool used to observe trends in violent death county by county. The dashboard uses information about violent deaths including suicide, homicide, unintentional firearms, law enforcement intervention or other violent deaths between 2015 and 2020.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Flipboard joins the Fediverse with a Mastodon integration and community, plans for ActivityPub . “Magazine app Flipboard is joining the Fediverse — the group of interconnected servers powering a range of open source, decentralized applications, including the newly popular Twitter alternative Mastodon. Starting today, the Flipboard app for iOS will include a beta feature that will allow Mastodon users to visually flip through their timeline to view posts from the people they follow, much like they’ve been able to do with Twitter.”

The Verge: Snapchat is releasing its own AI chatbot powered by ChatGPT. “The ‘My AI’ bot will initially only be available to paying Snapchat Plus subscribers. CEO Evan Spiegel says it’s just the beginning for the company’s generative AI plans.”

Daring Fireball: Tweetbot and Twitterrific Face the Cliff. “The obvious problem for developers of such clients, of course, is that Twitter clients are useless without the ability to connect to Twitter. A less obvious but no less serious problem is that the leading clients, Tapbots’s Tweetbot and The Iconfactory’s Twitterrific, were monetized through annual subscriptions. That left each company with thousands and thousands of customers with months left on those subscriptions, but no functionality.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Motherboard: How Shock Sites Shaped the Internet. “To talk about shock sites is to talk about the internet, understanding how the latter couldn’t exist in its modern form without the former. And they’re far from a relic of the past. Shock site creators, meme historians, and psychologists say they’ve reshaped pop culture, defined the modern era of the internet, and informed how we use it today.”

FedScoop: National Archives allocates $600,000 to transfer digitized veterans’ records from the VA. “The National Archives and Records Administration has allocated $600,000 to transfer digitized veterans’ records from the Department of Veterans Affairs as it continues to work through a backlog of document requests, according to details set out in a strategic plan.”

Armenian Mirror-Spectator: Musicians on Mission to Fund Digitization of Armenia’s National Music Library. “Victoria Avetisyan and Nuné Hakobyan are on a mission for the preservation and proliferation of the legacy of Armenian classical music and they are doing it through music: a concert on March 18 in Bedford.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Balkan Insight: Europe Toughens Rules on Large Search Engines and Online Platforms. “Online services businesses, from hosting service providers to search engines such as Google or social networks like Meta and Twitter, will need to change the way they work in the European market when two new acts published in the EU Official Gazette, the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, enter into effect. The first will regulate how providers manage the content published through them while the second focuses on their market behaviour, and their relations with competitors, users and the businesses operating through their platforms.”

National Post (Canada): ‘Unacceptable level of risk’: Canada bans TikTok from federal government devices. “The federal government is banning Chinese-owned social media app TikTok from all government mobile devices on Feb. 28 because it presents an ‘unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security’ and the company’s data collection methods create vulnerabilities to cyber attacks.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford University: AI’s Powers of Political Persuasion. “Researchers at Stanford University wanted to see if AI-generated arguments could change minds on controversial hot-button issues. It worked.”

Syracuse University: ‘The Barriers Have Been Removed!’ New Research Explores the Rise of Digital Music-Making in Schools During COVID-19. “New research by David Knapp, assistant professor of music education in the School of Education and College of Visual and Performing Arts, sets out to assess the extent to which creating, arranging and storing digital music online has increased in music education classrooms, especially during and after the coronavirus pandemic that sent learning online in 2020-2021.”

Ars Technica: Microsoft unveils AI model that understands image content, solves visual puzzles. “On Monday, researchers from Microsoft introduced Kosmos-1, a multimodal model that can reportedly analyze images for content, solve visual puzzles, perform visual text recognition, pass visual IQ tests, and understand natural language instructions.” Good morning, Internet…

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March 3, 2023 at 06:27PM
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Thursday, March 2, 2023

Baltimore Public Safety, Bluesky, Twitter, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 2, 2023

Baltimore Public Safety, Bluesky, Twitter, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 2, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Baltimore Sun: Baltimore launches new public safety accountability dashboard with crime, arrest, conviction metrics. “The Public Safety Accountability Dashboard… will offer the public a view of police and court data broken down by neighborhood, police district and crime types. It also will offer metrics around neighborhood demographics and the city’s community violence intervention sites, including Safe Streets locations and hospital-based sites.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Jack Dorsey-backed Twitter alternative Bluesky hits the App Store as an invite-only app. “Bluesky, the Twitter alternative backed by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, has hit the App Store and more testers are gaining access. Though the app is still only available as an invite-only beta, its App Store arrival signals that a public launch could be nearing.”

New York Times: ‘Sometimes Things Break’: Twitter Outages Are on the Rise
. “In February alone, Twitter experienced at least four widespread outages, compared with nine in all of 2022, according to NetBlocks, an organization that tracks internet outages. That suggests the frequency of service failures is on the rise, NetBlocks said. And bugs that have made Twitter less usable — by preventing people from posting tweets, for instance — have been more noticeable, researchers and users said.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

From the National Library of Spain, and Google-translated from Spanish: New boost to digitization, access and digital reuse in the BNE. “The project that is being launched now, starting in March and for the next two years, will develop a program to support and promote processes related to digitization, electronic legal deposit, digital preservation, access possibilities, and promotion of its reuse.”

Rolling Stone: People Are Getting Pregnant on TikTok’s Trendy ‘On-Demand’ Birth Control. “But EvoFem Biosciences has mounted an aggressive marketing campaign, presenting Phexxi as a standalone birth control — the Annie Murphy commercial racked up more than 2 billion impressions. And with its popularity on TikTok, where videos tagged #phexxi have a combined 2.3 million views, there is high demand for the product. According to the company, a little more than 100,000 women hold Phexxi prescriptions today in the United States. Yet in crowd-sourced databases and online forums, alongside some rave reviews of Phexxi, are dozens of women reporting pregnancies while using the drug.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Russian court fines Wikipedia over military ‘misinformation’. “The Wikimedia Foundation was fined 2 million roubles ($27,000) by a Russian court on Tuesday after the authorities accused it of failing to delete “misinformation” about the Russian military from Wikipedia, the courts service said.”

Bianet: Türkiye sentences a journalist under ‘disinformation law’ for first time. “Sinan Aygül had tweeted about allegations of child abuse against security, but deleted the tweets a few hours later, apologizing for sharing unconfirmed information.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Gazette: Consulting Dr. YouTube. “The researchers found content platforms like YouTube offer a vast catalog of videos on sleep health, many containing an alarming amount of misinformation.”

The Conversation: How fitness influencers game the algorithms to pump up their engagement. “In our recent article for the Academy of Management Journal, we explain how just establishing a social media presence doesn’t mean a would-be influencer can easily reach clients, as the social media platform’s algorithm determines who sees what posts, and when. And even if influencers do attract large followings, social media users shouldn’t necessarily buy what the influencers are selling.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

The Guardian: Rediscovered Terry Pratchett stories to be published. “Twenty stories written under a pseudonym and never before attributed to Pratchett, who died in 2015, will be released this year by Transworld.” Good afternoon, Internet…

March 3, 2023 at 01:39AM
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Delaware Traffic Accidents, Android, Reddit, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, March 2, 2023

Delaware Traffic Accidents, Android, Reddit, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, March 2, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

State of Delaware: State Crash Data Now Available to Public Through Open Data Portal. “Those evaluating or planning the safety enhancement of potential crash sites or hazardous roadway conditions will find the dashboard useful as it is updated monthly and contains crashes that occurred since 2009 through six months ago. Through the portal, users can filter crash data and visualize the data in charts, graphs and maps.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Lifehacker: All the New Android Features Google Announced Today. “While it isn’t time yet for the March Feature Drop, it’s still an exciting day to be on Android. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Google unveiled nine new Android and Wear OS features users can expect in coming weeks, with some features available starting today. From Magic Eraser dropping on more devices, to new Emoji Kitchen combinations, this update’s a fun one.”

Engadget: You can now search the comments within an individual Reddit post. “Reddit announced today that it added the ability to search for comments within a single post. The new feature is now available on desktop, iOS and Android.”

CBS News: “Petfluencer” and “rage farming” among new words added to Dictionary.com. “The update, published on Feb. 28, includes 313 new words. Many words address modern situations. For example, ‘rage farming’ is the tactic of using inflammatory content to garner a response on social media and ‘pinkwashing’ refers to the way corporations superficially acknowledge and support LGBTQ+ rights while also supporting anti-LGBTQ causes.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bloomberg: Google Contract Workers Win Raise Following Union Activism. “The Alphabet Workers Union said on Monday that thousands of contract employees assessing the quality of Alphabet Inc.’s Google search and advertising won a raise that brought workers’ wages up to $15 an hour, following a Bloomberg report documenting allegedly inadequate pay and benefits.”

Marketplace: Now we’re paying for social media … but for what, exactly?. “They used to say that if you’re not paying for the product, the product is you. But if you’re now paying for social media, what exactly is the product? Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Shirin Ghaffary, a correspondent at Vox, about the benefits and trade-offs of the blue badge. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.”

Balkan Insight: With TikToks And School Trips, Activists Take On Slovakia’s Disinformation Ecosystem. “Caught between an inadequate education system, government inaction, and mistrust of mainstream media and politicians, Slovakia proves fertile ground for disinformation to flourish. Activists are pushing back on several fronts, including where it all starts: school.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Senator Markey calls on Elon Musk to reinstate Twitter’s accessibility team. “Like any social platform, Twitter has had its foibles when it comes to accessibility — in 2020, Twitter didn’t even have an accessibility team and only established one after public outcry when the company rolled out voice tweets without captions. But in the few years Twitter did have an accessibility team, the company rolled out features for alt text on images, automatic captioning on videos and captions for Spaces live audio rooms and voice tweets.”

CNN: Ransomware attack on US Marshals Service affects ‘law enforcement sensitive information’. “A ransomware attack on the US Marshals Service has affected a computer system containing ‘law enforcement sensitive information,’ including personal information belonging to targets of investigations, a US Marshals Service spokesperson said Monday evening.”

The Guardian: China spends billions on pro-Russia disinformation, US special envoy says. “The west has been slow to respond to China spending billions globally to spread poisonous disinformation, including messaging that is completely aligned with Russia on Ukraine, a US special envoy has claimed.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: Governments shut down the internet more often than ever, report says. “Authorities in 35 countries instituted internet shutdowns at least 187 times, according to the New York-based digital rights watchdog Access Now. Nearly half of these shutdowns occurred in India, and if that nation is excluded, 2022 saw the most number of shutdowns globally since the group began monitoring disruptions in 2016.”

Illinois News Bureau: What’s the remedy for medical misinformation?. “Kevin Leicht is a professor of sociology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the science team lead at the U. of I. System’s Discovery Partners Institute in Chicago. He is co-leading the development of a software app that will alert clinicians to medical misinformation on social media.” Good morning, Internet…

March 2, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Black History Atlantic City, Federal Library Directory, Twitch, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 1, 2023

Black History Atlantic City, Federal Library Directory, Twitch, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Press of Atlantic City: Black History Month at Atlantic City Library strengthened by digitized collection. “The Atlantic City Library marked Black History Month by touting its newly digitized repository ‘The City of Dreams: The Atlantic City Experience.’ The repository, the digitization of which was facilitated by a federal grant, features about 14,000 items from 25 collections that tell the story of the Black community in Atlantic City and the impacts it has made both locally in South Jersey and across the country.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Library of Congress: Updated Federal Library Directory Increases Accessibility to US Agency Libraries. “The ‘Federal Library Directory,’ now in an updated second edition, profiles federal libraries and information centers in the United States and abroad. Presented with an interactive map, the directory displays geographic and collections data from nearly 1,400 federal libraries.”

Tubefilter: What’s new on Twitch? A rundown of ongoing experiments keeps streamers in the know. “The page includes details about Twitch’s operations, classifications for its various test types, and examples of existing features that were once subject to this experimental process. The post identifies Pinned Chat and Chat Highlights as two developments that were refined through rigorous testing.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

9to5 Google: This YouTube video can cause Pixel 7 to instantly crash and reboot. “A weird bug is affecting selected Pixel devices including the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro that sees some devices crash and soft reboot when a specific YouTube video is opened.”

Mother Jones: The Awe-Inspiring Ukrainian Evacuation Effort That Started With a Group Chat. “A native of Melitopol, a city of around 150,000 on the flat farm fields of southern Ukraine, Alexander Lyubishko looks like the long-haul truck driver he once was—bearded, constantly in a baseball cap, and stocky. He founded the group chat on messaging app Viber that helps refugees leave Russian occupation in Melitopol, and his story reveals just how much Ukrainians have achieved over one year of this unexpected war — and how some of them have been changed in the process.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ProPublica: Barricaded Siblings Turn to TikTok While Defying Court Order to Return to Father They Say Abused Them. “Two siblings in Utah have barricaded themselves in a bedroom at their mother’s home in defiance of a judge’s order to return to the custody of their father, despite state child welfare investigators determining that he had sexually abused the children.” This is a disturbing story with descriptions of sexual abuse.

Associated Press: White House: No more TikTok on gov’t devices within 30 days. “The White House is giving all federal agencies 30 days to wipe TikTok off all government devices, as the Chinese-owned social media app comes under increasing scrutiny in Washington over security concerns.”

Ars Technica: LastPass says employee’s home computer was hacked and corporate vault taken. “Already smarting from a breach that put partially encrypted login data into a threat actor’s hands, LastPass on Monday said that the same attacker hacked an employee’s home computer and obtained a decrypted vault available to only a handful of company developers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Michigan Daily: My love for physical media will never die. “I have a DVD collection that I’ve been building since my preteen years. Whenever a book I want to read comes out, I have to buy my own copy (and I wouldn’t be caught dead with a Kindle — no offense to my Mom, or anyone else who owns one). I still get CDs at Christmas, and I’m slowly getting into vinyl. Do I technically still have a bunch of Disney movies on VHS? That, I will neither confirm nor deny.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Daily Beacon (University of Tennessee): UT libraries creates ‘Jargon Blaster’ game to aid students in understanding common library jargon. “UT libraries have vast collections of resources and services available, but they can be difficult to navigate and hard to understand. Library terms can be confusing. Playing the game will help users clarify their knowledge. Users can click through definitions each round to refresh their memory before diving into the questions.” Good afternoon, Internet…

March 2, 2023 at 01:32AM
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Colonial-Era African Postcards, TRS-80 Emulation, Spotify, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, March 1, 2023

Colonial-Era African Postcards, TRS-80 Emulation, Spotify, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, March 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Library of Congress: Library of Congress Releases Newly Digitized Colonial-era African Postcards. “The Library of Congress has announced the initial release of over 1,300 newly digitized postcards from the Africana Historic Postcard Collection, which depicts life under French, Italian, German, Belgian and British colonial rule in sub-Saharan Africa from the 1890s until the end of the 1930s.

New from Hackaday: Emulating All The TRS-80 Software. “There are 15,873 pieces of software on the site, although some of them are duplicates or multiple versions of a single program. You can download them in a format that is useful for some emulators or, in some cases, the original files. But here’s the kicker. You can also click to launch a virtual TRS-80 in your browser and start the program.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Techdirt: Sometimes Open Systems Beat Those Who Try To Lock Them Up: Spotify’s Podcast Colonization Flops. “While it was, perhaps, an understandable move driven by the economics of our totally broken copyright systems which made it impossible to be truly profitable with just music, Spotify’s decision to go after the podcast market, shelling out massive dollars for podcast-focused companies like Gimlet Media and the Ringer, was all about taking a system based on open protocols — mainly mp3s and RSS — and trying to lock it up behind a proprietary moat.”

Search Engine Journal: Bing “Content Medically Reviewed By” Doctor For Health Queries. “Microsoft Bing now shows if the content is medically reviewed by a medical professional for health-related search queries. So if you search for [heart burn] or other health-related queries, Bing will show you which doctor reviewed the content and even link you to their LinkedIn profile.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Slashgear: YouTube Was Designed To Be A Dating Site (But Pivoted After No One Used It). “YouTube launched in 2005 and quickly became a special place on the internet. It was the first platform that allowed users to easily upload video to the world wide web (and without having to pay for the privilege). The site rapidly gained a huge following, and has since grown into the second-most-visited site on the internet globally, behind only Google.”

The Verge: On the internet, nobody knows you’re a human. “Over the past few years, AI tools and CGI creations have gotten better and better at pretending to be human. Bing’s new chatbot is falling in love, and influencers like CodeMiko and Lil Miquela ask us to treat a spectrum of digital characters like real people. But as the tools to impersonate humanity get ever more lifelike, human creators online are sometimes finding themselves in an unusual spot: being asked to prove that they’re real.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Lebanese state media archives looted in heart of Beirut. “Unknown assailants broke into the offices of Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency and stole the servers that contain its archives, the Information Ministry said Monday.”

Business Insider: Elon Musk faces upward of $130 million in legal costs to fight laid-off Twitter workers over severance pay. “The full process of arbitration, which companies commonly require employees to agree to as a private alternative to more public litigation, typically costs about $100,000, according to several law firms. Arbitration costs are often the employer’s burden, as employees often can’t afford the high cost of what an employer is essentially forcing them to do. Given that, Musk could see upward of $130 million in costs to individually arbitrate the employee cases filed so far.”

Times of Israel: Hebrew U threatens to pull content if National Library politicized. “The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has warned that if the government moves ahead with plans to make a fundamental change to the National Library Law, the institute will pull its content from the institution.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: Habitual checking of social media linked to altered brain development in young adolescents. “New neuroimaging research provides evidence that the frequency of checking social media during adolescent might influence how the brains of teenagers develop. The findings, published in JAMA Pediatrics, indicate the the use of social media is related to developmental changes in neural sensitivity to anticipation of social rewards and punishments.”

Newswise: Rutgers Researchers Use Artificial Intelligence to Predict Cardiovascular Disease. “Researchers may be able to predict cardiovascular disease – such as arterial fibrillation and heart failure – in patients by using artificial intelligence (AI) to examine the genes in their DNA, according to a new Rutgers study.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

PC Gamer: This hack lets you use YouTube as infinite cloud storage. I’m filing this here because this is more of an impressive stunt than a useful tool. “Storing data in video isn’t new, but this is the first time we’ve seen it used to turn YouTube into your own free cloud storage service. Hackaday shows off the work achieved by DvorakDwarf, who managed to encode bytes into pixels to store data in YouTube videos just in time for World Backup Day next month.” Good morning, Internet…

March 1, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Tuesday, February 28, 2023

“Patriarchs of Nonproliferation”, Mapping the Universe, Writing Text Prompts, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, February 28, 2023

“Patriarchs of Nonproliferation”, Mapping the Universe, Writing Text Prompts, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, February 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National Security Archive: The “Patriarchs of Nonproliferation”. “A few days after President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would suspend its observation of START, the only U.S.-Russia arms control agreement still in effect, a new series of oral history interviews with veteran Russian arms control negotiators and nuclear experts provides valuable insights into decades of U.S.-Russian nonproliferation efforts and emphasizes the importance of strategic dialogue between nuclear powers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Phys .org: Over one billion galaxies blaze bright in colossal map of the sky. “By creating comprehensive maps of even the dimmest and most-distant galaxies, astronomers are better able to study the structure of the universe and unravel the mysterious properties of dark matter and dark energy. The largest such map to date has just grown even larger, with the tenth data release from the DOE’s Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Survey.”

Decrypt: Don’t Call It ‘Crypto’: How Some Blockchain and NFT Projects are Rebranding. “Crypto—and all its associated jargon—are now toxic words. Where once simply adding the word ‘blockchain’ to your name increased your company’s valuation, now crypto, Web3, NFT and the rest of the buzzwords that conjured up images of a brave new world are, to paraphrase Charlie Munger, rat poison.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Conversation: How to perfect your prompt writing for ChatGPT, Midjourney and other AI generators. “…prompt engineering is essential for unlocking generative AI’s capabilities. And luckily it isn’t a technical skill. It’s mostly about trial and error, and keeping a few things in mind.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

BBC: England’s archaeological history gathers dust as museums fill up. “Troves of ancient artefacts unearthed during building and infrastructure works are gathering dust in warehouses as England’s museums run out of space, the BBC has learned.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: SEC says Elon Musk still needs lawyer to approve his tweets. “The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says Tesla CEO Elon Musk still needs to get pre-approval from lawyers before tweeting Tesla-related information. The SEC penned its renewed stance this week in a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York, arguing that an earlier settlement agreement between the agency and Musk is fully constitutional and valid.”

Bleeping Computer: Brave browser to block “open in app” prompts, pool-party attacks. “The next major version of the privacy-focused Brave browser will start blocking annoyances like ‘open in app’ prompts and will feature better protections against pool-party attacks.”

Search Engine Journal: All In One SEO WordPress Plugin Vulnerability Affects Up To 3+ Million. “All In One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin, which has over three million active installations, is vulnerable to two Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. The vulnerabilities affect all versions of AIOSEO up to and including version 4.2.9.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

OpenCage Blog: Don’t believe ChatGPT – we do NOT offer a “phone lookup” service. “TL;DR ChatGPT claims we offer an API to turn a mobile phone number into the location of the phone. We do not.”

Washington Post: The right’s new culture-war target: ‘Woke AI’. “The new skirmishes over what’s known as generative AI illustrate how tech companies have become political lightning rods — despite their attempts to evade controversy. Even company efforts to steer the AI away from political topics can still appear inherently biased across the political spectrum.” Good afternoon, Internet…

March 1, 2023 at 01:41AM
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US Prison Deaths, Cherokee Nation Jobs, Midjourney, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, February 28, 2023

US Prison Deaths, Cherokee Nation Jobs, Midjourney, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, February 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

UCLA Law: UCLA Law Releases New Database To Monitor Deaths In U.s. Prisons With Funding From Arnold Ventures . “…the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project is releasing a comprehensive public resource documenting prison deaths nationwide. Relying on each state’s public records law and publicly available reports, our team requested and gathered information on each death in U.S. prisons covering at least 2019-2020; for a few states, like Louisiana and Texas, we have relied on exceptional colleagues who had already collected the data in their states.”

Cherokee Phoenix: CN creates new online resource for job seekers. “Finding Cherokee Nation jobs and applying for them is easier than ever thanks to a new website… the tribe’s HR boss said Feb. 23. Samantha Hendricks, the CN Human Resources executive director, touted the online career site during the Tribal Council’s monthly Rules Committee meeting. She said the site went live earlier in the month.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

MIT Technology Review: AI image generator Midjourney blocks porn by banning words about the human reproductive system . “The popular AI image generator Midjourney bans a wide range of words about the human reproductive system from being used as prompts, MIT Technology Review has discovered.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: Gmail Automation: 8 Useful Google Scripts to Automate Your Gmail. “Gmail, by itself, is already a very powerful email client. With the help of filters, you can set up automation to better organize your inbox. However, for power users, the filter feature is not sufficient compared to writing custom scripts. These eight Google scripts can further automate your Gmail.”

MakeUseOf: 8 Recipe Generator Tools to Eat Well and Avoid Food Waste. “These easy-to-use websites have the tools to help you come up with yummy recipes, so you never have to waste ingredients and money again.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Tech’s hottest new job: AI whisperer. No coding required.. “[Riley] Goodside, a 36-year-old employee of the San Francisco start-up Scale AI, works in one of the AI field’s newest and strangest jobs: prompt engineer. His role involves creating and refining the text prompts people type into the AI in hopes of coaxing from it the optimal result. Unlike traditional coders, prompt engineers program in prose, sending commands written in plain text to the AI systems, which then do the actual work.”

The Verge: Microsoft accidentally offers Windows 11 upgrades to unsupported PCs again. “Microsoft has once again accidentally offered the Windows 11 upgrade to PCs with unsupported hardware. Twitter user PhantomOcean3 spotted the mistake earlier this week, where Microsoft was showing fullscreen prompts on unsupported hardware.”

SURF Netherlands: Mastodon pilot for research and education . “SURF and Universities of the Netherlands are jointly exploring Mastodon as an open source platform for education and research in the Netherlands. In which public values are paramount. We launched a pilot in February 2023. Join us and discover how students, researchers, staff and institutions can experiment with Mastodon in a low-threshold way.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wall Street Journal: A Basic iPhone Feature Helps Criminals Steal Your Entire Digital Life. “In the early hours of Thanksgiving weekend, Reyhan Ayas was leaving a bar in Midtown Manhattan when a man she had just met snatched her iPhone 13 Pro Max. Within a few minutes, the 31-year-old, a senior economist at a workforce intelligence startup, could no longer get into her Apple account and all the stuff attached to it, including photos, contacts and notes. Over the next 24 hours, she said, about $10,000 vanished from her bank account.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: How One Guy’s AI Tracked the Chinese Spy Balloon Across the US. “EARLIER THIS MONTH, entrepreneur Corey Jaskolski pulled out a pen and drew his best guess at what the surveillance balloon shot down by a US jet would have looked like from space. Then he fed the sketch and ‘a gob’ of recent satellite images from the area where the balloon was taken down into algorithms developed by his image and video detection startup Synthetatic, and waited. Within two minutes, he says, the algorithms found the 200-foot-tall balloon off the coast of South Carolina.”

New York Times: Why Do A.I. Chatbots Tell Lies and Act Weird? Look in the Mirror.. “In the days since the Bing bot’s behavior became a worldwide sensation, people have struggled to understand the oddity of this new creation. More often than not, scientists have said humans deserve much of the blame. But there is still a bit of mystery about what the new chatbot can do — and why it would do it.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: This Camera Produces A Picture, Using The Scene Before It. “It’s the most basic of functions for a camera, that when you point it at a scene, it produces a photograph of what it sees. [Jasper van Loenen] has created a camera that does just that, but not perhaps in the way we might expect. Instead of committing pixels to memory it takes a picture, uses AI to generate a text description of what is in the picture, and then uses another AI to generate an image from that picture.”

February 28, 2023 at 06:25PM
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