New researches

Monday, April 10, 2023

Project 88 Art Gallery, Archives New Zealand, Media TikTok, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, April 10, 2023

Project 88 Art Gallery, Archives New Zealand, Media TikTok, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, April 10, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Contemporary Biography Builder
Use Wikipedia data to create lifespan-bounded searches for historical and contemporary figures. Creates searches for Google Books, Internet Archive, Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), and Chronicling America.

NEW RESOURCES

Mid-Day: Here is how this Mumbai art gallery has gone online to make art more accessible. “The art gallery, Project 88, is embarking on an effort to transport their physical experiences to the virtual domain with curated videos of exhibits, talks and sessions held at the gallery through their YouTube channel. Titled Art Talks, the channel was an experiment that the gallery resorted to during the Covid-19-induced lockdown two years ago, but not pursued further till now.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Radio New Zealand: National Archives reboots problematic search system. “Archives NZ says it has set up a new team to work on its breach-ridden main search system. The high-tech replacement for its main Collections search software went badly wrong last year. The $4 million Swedish system exasperated researchers, lawyers and other users with multiple shutdowns, security breaches, delays and slow searches.”

USEFUL STUFF

International Journalists’ Network: Advice for using TikTok to drive news engagement. “During a recent ICFJ Empowering the Truth Global Summit session, Openly TikTok Lead and LGBTQ+ correspondent Enrique Anarte shared with journalists how to make engaging news TikToks.”

Larry Ferlazzo: This Week’s Free & Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools For The Classroom. “At least, for now, I’m going to make this a weekly feature which will highlight additions to THE BEST NEW – & FREE – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Distant Librarian: ChatGPTLibrarian is still finding his (its?) voice. “One of my alerts just tripped over a new blog called ChatGPTLibrarian. The site was launched in March 2023 by librarian Victor Santiago, and I think he’s still trying to decide if he’s going to write as him, or as an AI-assisted author.”

The Independent: This is the official Twitter emoji for King Charles’s coronation. “Buckingham Palace has revealed an official emoji to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. “The colourful cartoon motif depicts the 17th century jewelled solid gold St Edward’s Crown with purple velvet cap – the regalia which will be used to crown the King on 6 May. “Buckingham Palace has revealed an official emoji to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. The colourful cartoon motif depicts the 17th century jewelled solid gold St Edward’s Crown with purple velvet cap – the regalia which will be used to crown the King on 6 May.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Washington vows to tackle AI, as tech titans and critics descend. “…policymakers arrive to the new debate bruised from battles over how to regulate the technology industry — having passed no comprehensive tech laws despite years of congressional hearings, historic investigations and bipartisan-backed proposals. This time, some are hoping to move quickly to avoid similar errors.”

KRON: Twitter sued after failing to pay over $1.2 million in Oakland rent: court docs. “Twitter has been renting space at 1330 Broadway in Oakland since the lease term began in 2021. The Delaware-based company which owns the property located on Broadway in Oakland claims they served a Notice of failure to Pay Rent to Twitter in December. In December, the company said Twitter owed a sum of $327,550.25.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNN: Academic researchers blast Twitter’s data paywall as ‘outrageously expensive’. “In an open letter this week, the Coalition for Independent Technology Research — a group representing dozens of researchers and civil society organizations — said free and open access to Twitter data has historically enabled systematic, large-scale research on social media’s role in public health initiatives, foreign propaganda, political discourse, and even the bots and spam that Musk has blamed for ruining Twitter. But Twitter’s new tiered access system undercuts all of that, the researchers said.”

New York Times: A.I. Is Coming for Lawyers, Again. “Previous advances in A.I. inspired predictions that the law was the lucrative profession most likely to suffer job losses. It didn’t happen. Is this time different?”

PsyPost: Flow experiences on TikTok and Instagram linked to mental health issues. “Greater experiences of ‘telepresence’ — which refer to a user’s sense of immersion in the world created by social media apps — among both TikTok and Instagram users are linked to higher levels of depression and anxiety, according to new research published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.” Good morning, Internet…

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

April 10, 2023 at 05:27PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/OKkGSgU

Sunday, April 9, 2023

Metaverse Fashion Week, Plant Identification Apps, Stable Diffusion, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 9, 2023

Metaverse Fashion Week, Plant Identification Apps, Stable Diffusion, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 9, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Block: Decentraland Metaverse Fashion Week attendance plummets 76% amid ‘worrisome’ trading volume. “While the metaverse platform attracted 108,000 ‘unique attendees’ last year, the company said only 26,000 attended this year, a dramatic decline of 76% for the event that ran from March 28 through March 31. Despite top brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger and Adidas all sponsoring shows, a Decentraland spokesperson said the most people signed in at one time barely eclipsed 1,000 people.”

USEFUL STUFF

CNN: Best plant identification apps for mobile in 2023, tested by our editors. “Spring has officially sprung and people will be spending more time in the great outdoors as the season gears up. Whether you’re looking for help in identifying plants along your morning hike or in designing the flower or food garden of your dreams, there is a mobile plant identification app that can help you.”

Make Tech Easier: How to Use Stable Diffusion to Create AI-Generated Images. “Artificial intelligence chatbots, like ChatGPT, have become incredibly powerful recently – they’re all over the news! But don’t forget about AI image generators (like Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Midjourney). They can make virtually any image when provided with just a few words. Follow this tutorial to learn how to do this for free with no restrictions by running Stable Diffusion on your computer.” Really in-depth.

MakeUseOf: The 7 Best YouTube Channels About Cybersecurity. “Whether you’re a cybersecurity professional or just a hobbyist, reading through verbose whitepapers and case studies can get a tad overwhelming. That’s where YouTube comes in, with plenty of cybersecurity-related content. But what are the best channels to follow? Here are our top picks, in no particular order.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Techdirt: Game Jam Winner Spotlight: Tower Tree Stories. “Those of you who have followed the game jams over the years will surely recognize that name, because this is David’s fourth straight win, and the third in this category. In the past his winning games have all shared a common purpose: guiding players in an exploration of one or more paintings that had just entered the public domain that year. But this time we’ve got something very different. Tower Tree Stories isn’t based on a famous painting or an artist, but rather on something a little more low-key: the 1927 yearbook of Greensburg High School in Indiana, a full copy of which is the backbone of the game.”

CNN: The city without TikTok offers a window to America’s potential future. “At the time of its exit [from Hong Kong], TikTok had a relatively modest presence in the city and was not ubiquitous like it is in the US today. But the varied reactions to its departure, and the way users have pivoted to other platforms or even real-life offline communities, offer Americans a glimpse into their potential TikTok-less future.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bellingcat: From Discord to 4chan: The Improbable Journey of a US Intelligence Leak. “These documents appeared to be dated to early March, around the time they were first posted online on Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers. However, Bellingcat has seen evidence that some documents dated to January could have been posted online even earlier, although it is unclear exactly when. Bellingcat also spoke to three members of the Discord community where the images had been posted who claimed that many more documents had been shared across other Discord servers in recent months.”

Wall Street Journal: Facebook, Twitter Rebuffed Sandy Hook Families’ Request for Data in Alex Jones Case . “Twitter and Facebook rebuffed subpoenas from families of the Sandy Hook school massacre victims, who were seeking internal company data to show how conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s false claims about the killings spread on social media, according to court documents and lawyers for the families.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Wired: Twitter’s Open Source Algorithm Is a Red Herring. “Mozilla, the nonprofit where I am a senior fellow, famously open-sourced the Netscape browser code and invited a community of developers around the world to contribute to it in 1998, and it has continued to push for an open internet since. So why aren’t I impressed or excited by Musk’s decision? If anything, Twitter’s so-called ‘open sourcing’ is a clever red herring to distract from its recent moves away from transparency.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Tired Of Web Scraping? Make The AI Do It. “[James Turk] has a novel approach to the problem of scraping web content in a structured way without needing to write the kind of page-specific code web scrapers usually have to deal with. How? Just enlist the help of a natural language AI. Scrapeghost relies on OpenAI’s GPT API to parse a web page’s content, pull out and classify any salient bits, and format it in a useful way.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 10, 2023 at 12:34AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/e79RFPy

Google Stadia, Twitter, Photo Editing Apps, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, April 9, 2023

Google Stadia, Twitter, Photo Editing Apps, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, April 9, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Techdirt: Everything Stadia Is Now Officially Dead, Project Head Exits Google. “The tech industry is absolutely lousy with failure, of course. Ambitious projects and ideas are entertained all the time. Hell, that’s why we get so much actual cool stuff that works coming out of the industry. But for a company with the resources of Google to fail this hard, this fast, and this completely in an endeavor that really kinda should be at least partially in its wheelhouse is not a good look.”

Deadline: Elon Musk’s Twitter Wrongly Labels The BBC As Being “Government Funded”. “The BBC is not funded by the UK government. It is funded by the British public, through a system known as the license fee. The government plays a role in setting the level of the license fee, but the fee is collected by the companies contracted by the BBC through the TV Licensing authority. The BBC’s operations and editorial decision-making are entirely independent of the government.”

USEFUL STUFF

Slashgear: 12 Best iPhone Apps For Photo Editing (2023). “Apple coined the phrase, “There’s an app for that,” when marketing the iPhone 3g in 2009, eventually dedicating a whole section to the App Store for photo editing apps. We’ve compiled a list of the best photo editing apps for the iPhone. Some are more general, some are for specific tasks, but all are worthy of a place on your device.”

ZDNet: How to bookmark a Mastodon post (and why you should). “What is this feature? It’s very much like the bookmarks you use on your web browser — a convenient method of saving a post so you can easily refer to it later. You may not have used the bookmark feature on Twitter, but Mastodon is different. ”

Slashgear: 5 Tools To Convert JPG To PDF On Any Device . “When you think of JPGs, you likely think of the photos you capture with your phone camera or the pictures you download online. However, JPGs can actually be a lot of other things, such as a screenshot of a lasagna recipe or an image of your signature. In these cases, it might be better for your JPG images to be converted into PDFs instead. This way, you can readily send your PDF to anyone, and it will be more convenient for your recipients to view it.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Search Engine Land: 21 best ChatGPT alternatives. “An important thing to remember as you go through this list: these products are at very early developmental stages. Some will rapidly develop and improve, a few will be shut down, and others will pivot away entirely from what they’re doing now.”

Ars Technica: Artists astound with AI-generated film stills from a parallel universe. “Since last year, a group of artists have been using an AI image generator called Midjourney to create still photos of films that don’t exist. They call the trend ‘AI cinema.’ We spoke to one of its practitioners, Julie Wieland, and asked her about her technique, which she calls ‘synthography,’ for synthetic photography.”

Carlow Nationalist: Carlow Lecture Will Examine The Significance Of Church Interiors. (I am not putting this under “events” because it is not virtual and attendable.) “The talk will also include an introduction to a spin-off project Dr Roddy is leading entitled ‘PARISH’ (Preserving and Recording Ireland’s Sacred Heritage), a collaboration between Maynooth University and the University of Notre Dame in the USA. This project aims to produce an online database containing comprehensive photographic and other data records of the interiors of (initially) all Catholic churches on the island of Ireland.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

PC Magazine: MSI Confirms Breach as Ransomware Gang Claims Responsibility. “A new statement from MSI says users should avoid downloading firmware and BIOS updates from third-party sources, and instead only obtain such software from the company’s official website. The statement suggests MSI is worried hackers could circulate malicious versions of the company’s BIOS software when the ransomware gang, Money Message, claims it stole the PC maker’s source code.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: Internet access must become human right or we risk ever-widening inequality. “People around the globe are so dependent on the internet to exercise socio-economic human rights such as education, healthcare, work, and housing that online access must now be considered a basic human right, a new study reveals. Particularly in developing countries, internet access can make the difference between people receiving an education, staying healthy, finding a home, and securing employment – or not.”

Harvard Business Review: When Celebrity ‘Crypto-Influencers’ Rake in Cash, Investors Lose Big. “[Professor Joseph] Pacelli and his colleagues analyzed about 36,000 tweets in which 180 influencers touted cryptocurrencies over a two-year period. They found that, on average, mentions of cryptocurrencies in tweets are associated with a 1.83 percent return in the first day, but are subsequently associated with significant negative returns—an average loss of 19 percent after three months. ”

Search Engine Journal: Seven Free Open Source GPT Models Released. “Silicon Valley AI company Cerebras released seven open source GPT models to provide an alternative to the tightly controlled and proprietary systems available today. The royalty free open source GPT models, including the weights and training recipe have been released under the highly permissive Apache 2.0 license by Cerebras, a Silicon Valley based AI infrastructure for AI applications company.” Good morning, Internet…

April 9, 2023 at 05:28PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/fGkxUrZ

Saturday, April 8, 2023

Iowa Veteran Services, Wolfram Language, Barbie Selfies, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 8, 2023

Iowa Veteran Services, Wolfram Language, Barbie Selfies, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 8, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Iowa Workforce Development: New IowaWorks Portal Will Ease Path For Veterans In Search Of New Careers. “Iowa Workforce Development today announced the launch of a new online portal that will make it easier for Veterans and their families to find a new career in Iowa. The new portal, http://www.IowaWorksForVeterans.gov, was created to help Veterans connect with one-on-one job search assistance and to aid employers with locating and hiring people who have experience from the armed forces.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Wolfram Blog: New in 13.2: The Beginnings of Astro Graphics. “Last year we released Version 13.1 of the Wolfram Language. Here are the updates in astro computation since then, including the latest features in 13.2.”

Digital Trends: Barbie selfie generator: how to use the barbie filter. “Here’s the good news: you don’t need to be a Photoshop pro to make your Barbie poster. Instead, all you need to do is visit the Barbie Selfie Generator website. It’s an official site created by Warner Bros., and using it is a piece of cake.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Politico: Russia is waging a disinformation war in the Middle East. “Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the United States, United Kingdom and European Union all took quick and decisive action to counteract Russian propaganda, banning its state-sponsored television channels — Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik — from the airwaves, with YouTube also blocking their channels. In the Arabic-speaking world, however, Russian disinformation still hasn’t received the same attention — and as a result, Russia is doing a lot better on that front in the wider Middle East.”

TechCrunch: Twitter won’t let you retweet, like or reply to Substack links. “Twitter is censoring Substack links by making the posts impossible to reply to, like or retweet. While quote-tweeting works, simply pressing the retweet button surfaces an error message: ‘Some actions on this Tweet have been disabled by Twitter.'” This story is changing a lot – some people are accusing Twitter of offering malicious links and changing search results related to Substack. I am not interested in indexing all of EM’s antics but it looks like a security risk might have been introduced here.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Mother Jones: Alleged Fraudster Guo Wengui’s Social Media App Was a Big Security Risk, Ex-Employees Say. “A Twitter-knockoff chasing the anti-woke crowd, Gettr initially branded itself as being led by ‘former President Donald Trump’s team.’ Guo’s quiet influence over the platform highlights his success in using a fortune he made in Chinese real estate to buy his way into the MAGA movement.”

Engadget: Three Samsung employees reportedly leaked sensitive data to ChatGPT. “Soon after Samsung’s semiconductor division started allowing engineers to use ChatGPT, workers leaked secret info to it on at least three occasions, according to The Economist Korea (as spotted by Mashable). One employee reportedly asked the chatbot to check sensitive database source code for errors, another solicited code optimization and a third fed a recorded meeting into ChatGPT and asked it to generate minutes.”

Ars Technica: Florida officials deleted data, stats from dubious COVID analysis: report. “Florida health officials deleted key data and statistics from a state analysis on the safety of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, falsely making them appear unsafe for young men, according to draft versions of the analysis obtained by the Tampa Bay Times through public records requests.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Cornell Chronicle: AI tool gains doctors’ trust by giving advice like a colleague. “A new study led by Qian Yang, assistant professor of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, suggests that if AI tools can counsel the doctor like a colleague – pointing out relevant biomedical research that supports the decision – then doctors can better weigh the merits of the recommendation.” As long as they don’t hallucinate the citations, I suppose…

University of Missouri: Mizzou Team Developing AI-based Tool To Predict Trends In Steel Prices. “A multidisciplinary research team at Mizzou is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a tool that can predict the trend in steel prices. Sharan Srinivas, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering (ISE), is the principal investigator on a sponsored project with Trinity Products, a Missouri-based steel supplier.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 9, 2023 at 12:53AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/0T81UVt

Tennessee Transportation Data, Edinburgh Port Leith, Microsoft Edge, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, April 8, 2023

Tennessee Transportation Data, Edinburgh Port Leith, Microsoft Edge, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, April 8, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Local 3 News: TDOT launches new tool making transportation data more accessible. “The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) has launched a new County Profile Tool you can use to see a variety of transportation-related information in your area.” Been a great week for state government transportation infrastructure projects.

Edinburgh Live: Incredible interactive new website brings parts of Edinburgh back to life. “Using historic street maps, vintage photos, newspaper clippings, post office directory data, and people’s own memories, Old Leith Rediscovered allows locals to explore Edinburgh’s famous port as it was at the end of the 19th century. The interactive site features a zoomable version of Charles Goad’s 1892 Fire Insurance Plan of Leith, which captured the streets and structures of the old Leith in extraordinary detail, giving information on everything from the names of businesses, what they did there and the construction materials used in individual buildings.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: Microsoft Edge Now Has Bing’s Dall-E Image Creator. “Microsoft is cramming AI features into every app and service it can, from Office apps to its Bing search engine. The latest addition? A panel for the Bing Image Creator in Microsoft Edge.”

Engadget: Google’s WebGPU is coming to Chrome to boost online gaming and graphics. “Google will soon start rolling out WebGPU, a new feature that will allow Chrome browsers to use your graphics card to accelerate games, graphics and AI, the company announced. It’ll be enabled by default in Chrome 113 set to arrive in a few weeks for Windows PCs (via Direct3D 12), MacOS (Metal) and ChromeOS (Vulkan).”

The Verge: Google will shut down Dropcam and Nest Secure in 2024. “Google is ending support for the Dropcam and the Nest Secure home security system in one year, on April 8th, 2024. They are among the few remaining Nest products that haven’t been brought over to Google Home, and their demise hints that the new Google Home app might almost be here. At least, no more than a year away. Surely.”

USEFUL STUFF

Android Police: How to install Google ChromeOS Flex on any computer. “Chromebooks are a great alternative to traditional laptops and PCs. Running ChromeOS, they are cheap, powerful devices that provide all the functionality you could ask for. Even better, the best Chromebooks on the market are relatively inexpensive. But you don’t need to buy a Chromebook to try out ChromeOS. Google lets you experience the OS on your old laptop or PC through ChromeOS Flex.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

DPReview: DPReview closure: an update. “We’ve received a lot of questions about what’s next for the site. We hear your concerns about losing the content that has been carefully curated over the years, and want to assure you that the content will remain available as an archive. We’ve also heard that you need more time to access the site, so we’re going to keep publishing some more stories while we work on archiving.”

SF Gate: Major advertisers worry about Elon Musk’s ‘racist rhetoric,’ report says. “Top advertisers have reportedly pulled out of Twitter en masse since Musk’s takeover in October, and his behavior doesn’t appear to be winning back the biggest spenders. Major marketing executives expressed skepticism about the platform under Musk’s erratic leadership in a private email thread reported on Thursday by Semafor.”

MakeUseOf: Google Keep vs. Notion: Which Note-Taking App Is Better?. “If you’re looking for a new place to jot down notes and plan your to-dos, it’s likely you’ve come across two excellent options, Google Keep and Notion. Both are great solutions for your daily to-do lists and keeping tabs on your latest projects, which can make choosing between them difficult. Want to know which app is better for you? Keep reading for a quick comparison of Google Keep and Notion.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: New Batch of Classified Documents Appears on Social Media Sites. “A new batch of classified documents that appear to detail American national security secrets from Ukraine to the Middle East to China surfaced on social media sites on Friday, alarming the Pentagon and adding turmoil to a situation that seemed to have caught the Biden administration off guard.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Poynter: Everything about Twitter is meaningless. “Elon Musk’s attempt this week to delegitimize NPR by labeling the public media’s primary Twitter account ‘US state-affiliated media’ is an outright troll move that will further degrade Twitter’s value to its users and its advertisers.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Western Australia: Aboriginal art and knowledge unlocks mystery of fairy circles. “Fairy circles – barren patches which make polka-dot patterns in dry and desert areas – were first described by scientists in Namibia in the 1970s, sparking global debate about the phenomenon. A paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, authored by a cross-cultural team of researchers and Aboriginal people from Australia’s Western Desert region, has challenged scientific theories by learning from Aboriginal people.” Good morning, Internet…

April 8, 2023 at 05:28PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/nNJBAqR

Friday, April 7, 2023

Pacific Food Trade Database, Google Earth, Google Live Translate, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 7, 2023

Pacific Food Trade Database, Google Earth, Google Live Translate, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 7, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Wollongong: Pacific Food Trade Database supports food system sustainability. “Researchers from the University of Wollongong (UOW) based Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS), led by food systems senior research fellow Dr Tom Brewer, have developed the Pacific Food Trade Database to assist regional analysis and decision making…. The database, which is open access and free to use, includes tonnage of imports and exports from 1995-2018 for 18 Pacific islands and territories.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PC Magazine: Google Earth Just Added 2 More Years of Timelapse Imagery. “Google Earth has added satellite photos from 2021 and 2022 to its zoomable timelapse video of our planet.”

Gizmodo: Google is Finally Bringing Live Translate Captions to Chrome. “After nearly two years, Chrome browsers may soon finally get a feature that has thus far been restricted to Google Pixel phones. On Thursday, Reddit user and Chrome Canary beta tester Leopeva64 posted several screenshots and GIFs on the r/chrome subreddit showing off an upcoming Live Translate caption feature coming to Google’s browser.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: How to Replace Siri With ChatGPT on Your iPhone. “Siri can control your iPhone, but it’s nowhere near as powerful as ChatGPT. Fortunately, you can add ChatGPT to your iPhone and talk to it with your voice, using Siri as a gateway to ChatGPT. Here’s how.”

Lifehacker: How to Spot a Fake-Ass Website. “A fake website is a scammer’s attempt to seem like a reputable business, when in reality, they don’t actually provide any goods or services: Their ‘business’ is to trick you into thinking they do, and to get you to pay for it. There are different types of fake websites to be aware of: those that try to mimic a reputable website, and those that create their own unique website.” If you’re not sure, the About page is often an indicator. Also the bios of any people on the site. Fake ones tend to be vague or a George Santos level of nonsensical.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: In A.I. Race, Microsoft and Google Choose Speed Over Caution. “In March, two Google employees, whose jobs are to review the company’s artificial intelligence products, tried to stop Google from launching an A.I. chatbot. They believed it generated inaccurate and dangerous statements.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Two alcohol recovery startups just got caught sharing private user data. “Online alcohol recovery startups Monument and Tempest got caught sharing confidential user data with advertisers without their consent, as originally reported by TechCrunch. Everything came to light after an internal review revealed a data breach impacting 100,000 users, forcing the companies to issue a formal disclosure to the user base. The violations started in 2017 and were ongoing until last month’s review.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Michigan: More harm perceived globally regarding online harassment. “Online insults and disrespect are perceived as more harmful by individuals outside the United States, especially when the content damages family reputation, according to a University of Michigan study. But there was consensus among all countries, including the U.S., that nonconsensual sharing of sexual photos was highest in harm.”

Cornell University: Teens who trust online information find it less stressful. “Surveying nearly 170 adolescents and young adults from the U.S. and U.K. early in the pandemic, the researchers found that those more trusting of the COVID-19 information they saw on Facebook, Twitter and TikTok were more likely to feel it was empowering, while those less trusting were more likely to find it stressful.”

Lulu Cheng Meservey has a blog/Substack called Flack. I’m putting it like that because efforts to denote that information with more brevity (like Lulu Cheng Meservey (Flack) or Lulu Cheng Meservey / Flack) looked like pejorative assessments and not statements of fact. At any rate: “Please just take the checkmark away!” How Twitter devalued its top status symbol and what it can do now. “While the legacy blue checkmark was positioned as a luxury good, the new Twitter Blue became marketed like an inferior good. Twitter’s messaging antagonized and humiliated influential users, made the product feel like it was made for arriviste social climbers instead of respected power users, and framed it as a cheap imitation of an old status symbol rather than a fresh offering with useful benefits. In this post, we’ll look at why Twitter Blue wasn’t positioned for success and what it can do now to win over users.” Good afternoon, Internet…

April 8, 2023 at 12:42AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/8eYNI0y

Digital South, 2023 National Book Festival, Twitter, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, April 7, 2023

Digital South, 2023 National Book Festival, Twitter, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, April 7, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Gossip Machine
Gossip Machine uses Wikipedia page views to surface potential “news days” in a given year (2016-2023) for any topic with a Wikipedia page. It analyzes daily page views and flags dates with significantly higher-than-average views, then provides you with pre-filled Google News and Google Web search links.

NEW RESOURCES

Daily Tar Heel: New website creates a virtual space for American South collaboration. “The goal of the Digital South website is to create a virtual space to encourage partnership between scholars – students, staff, faculty or anyone using digital scholarship — to research or teach about the American South. Rolando Rodriguez, an academic library associate at UNC, said visitors can see ongoing projects, explore a particular project’s page and spark conversations regarding southern history through the website.”

EVENTS

Library of Congress: Save the Date! 2023 National Book Festival. “Mark your calendars! Join us at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on Saturday, Aug. 12 from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. for the 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival.” Several of t he events will be livestreamed.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Twitter shut off its free API and it’s breaking a lot of apps. “All of these issues are further complicated by the fact that Twitter seems to have communicated very little with any of its developers about these changes or what they mean. Most of the employees who worked in developer relations were cut during the company’s mass layoffs. And the company’s developer forums are filled with posts from confused developers looking for answers. The company no longer has a communications team, and its press email auto-responds with a poop emoji.”

New York Times: Senior Twitter Lawyer Resigns, the Latest in a Series of Executive Departures. “The lawyer, Christian Dowell, rose to the top of Twitter’s legal department in recent months after the company’s legal leaders resigned or were fired by Mr. Musk. Mr. Dowell had been intimately involved in Twitter’s recent negotiations with the Federal Trade Commission, two people familiar with those discussions said.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Gizmodo: Google CEO Says an AI Chatbot Is Coming to Search… Eventually. “Following in the footsteps of competitor Microsoft—which added the same tech behind ChatGPT to Bing earlier this year—Google is on its own path to include a chatbot in its own search engine. When? Well, CEO Sundar Pichai was delightfully vague on the timeline.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: India startups call for antitrust probe of Google in-app billing fee. “Top startups in India have called on the country’s competition watchdog to launch an inquiry into Alphabet’s Google for allegedly bypassing an antitrust directive by charging a high service fee for in-app payments, a filing shows.”

Hindustan Times Tech: Internet firms to lose safe harbour on not removing content flagged by govt notified fact checker. “Internet firms like Google, Facebook and Twitter may lose protection under safe harbour if they fail to remove content identified by the government-notified fact-checker as false or misleading information, Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Thursday.”

Bloomberg: Vietnam Warns TikTok, Social Media Apps Over ‘Toxic’ Content. “Vietnam’s communications ministry said TikTok isn’t doing enough to remove toxic and false content and warned that the government could soon take measures to restrict operations of the popular social media platform and others seen as violating national laws.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Adelaide: AI art vending machine seeks human connection. “The chassis is made of concrete and an annex cage contains a camera, display screen, and microphone. The camera recognises when a person is standing in front of it, and once they’ve pushed the button to start, the machine greets them and initiates a spoken conversation. Users can then collaborate with the machine to create an artwork gift, which is determined by the ‘opinion’ the machine forms of the user.”

Georgetown University: Massive Data Institute partners with leading data scientists at Howard and Morgan State Universities. “The Massive Data Institute (MDI) at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy is partnering with researchers at Howard University and Morgan State University to develop the Environmental Impact Data Collaborative (EIDC), a data and computing infrastructure that will support community groups, policymakers and scholars in their efforts to make environmental policy more effective and just.”

The Guardian: ChatGPT is making up fake Guardian articles. Here’s how we’re responding. “Huge amounts have been written about generative AI’s tendency to manufacture facts and events. But this specific wrinkle – the invention of sources – is particularly troubling for trusted news organisations and journalists whose inclusion adds legitimacy and weight to a persuasively written fantasy.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

The Verge: This AI clock uses ChatGPT to generate tiny poems that tell the time. “ChatGPT has been one of the internet’s favorite toys for months now, but people are still finding novel and fun ways to use the AI chatbot. Case in point is this rhyming E Ink clock created by designer and blogger Matt Webb. It uses ChatGPT to create a short two-line rhyme that also tells the time for every minute of the day.” Good morning, Internet…

April 7, 2023 at 05:28PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/b3FcGC9