Marine Microplastics, Flipboard, Content Labeling, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 21, 2023

Marine Microplastics, Flipboard, Content Labeling, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 21, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NOAA: New Oceaneye Partnership Brings Expansion to Microplastics Database. “NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and non-profit organization Oceaneye have created a partnership to improve and expand the Marine Microplastics database. The objective of this partnership is to not only expand the database, but to also establish a diverse international community of public users.”

TechCrunch: Flipboard brings editorial curation to Mastodon with ‘desks’ for news and discovery. “Magazine app Flipboard is furthering its investment in the Fediverse — the distributed social media ecosystem that includes apps like Mastodon and others — with its newly announced plan to establish its first editorial desks to curate news for the wider federated community.”

Deadline: Public Media Body Demands Twitter Drop “Government-Funded Media” Label From All Accounts. “It may have ceded to the BBC, but Elon Musk’s Twitter is back under pressure from the world’s public service broadcasters. The Global Task Force for Public Media has called on the social media platform to correct the designation of four of its members on the site.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Ukraine’s Social Media Stars Rethink How They Wield Their Influence. “Like [Anna] Tsukur, thousands of influencers creating content about everything from children’s games to beauty tips and from science to comedy switched to Ukrainian from Russian after the full-scale invasion, in many cases overnight, according to Vira Slyvinska, a senior executive at AIR Media-Tech, an international company founded by Ukrainians that supports online content creators. Some have also drastically shifted focus, abandoning their original topics for videos that support the country’s war effort. But by far the bigger change was the switch in language.”

CTech: Ever-evolving Israeli Generative AI landscape – the updated map . “The U.S. and China are in the lead, but Israel has certainly earned itself a place as one of the leading centers of excellence in the global AI ecosystem with companies like AI21 Labs, which is developing a large language model named Jurassic, which can be considered as an alternative to GPT.”

The New Republic: They Did It for the Clicks. “The digital era has staged a corporate contest not for truth but for attention—a malleable asset that can be put to countless uses, whether it be to convince readers the 2020 election was stolen or to show them how their preference for Netflix over Hulu means they’re totally a Gorgonzola. All content now is designed to be shareable, to get us to click—but shareable for what? Once you have caught the public’s attention, what do you do with it? What social, political, or cultural purpose does a page impression, a retweet, a video view serve?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Globe and Mail: Google denies it engaged in ‘astroturfing’ to lobby Ottawa through third parties . “Google denied accusations in a Commons committee Thursday that it had engaged in ‘astroturfing’ campaigns to lobby against federal bills by paying individuals and other organizations to oppose them.”

BBC: Mark Page: Smart speaker audio matched paedophile ex-Radio 1 DJ’s voice. “A former Radio 1 DJ jailed for child sex offences was caught partly by matching smart speaker audio to his distinctive voice, it has emerged. Mark Page was jailed for arranging sexual abuse of children in the Philippines, both online and in person. Data from Google Takeout was used for the first time during the two-year investigation by Cleveland Police.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNBC: Read the internal memo Alphabet sent in merging A.I.-focused groups DeepMind and Google Brain. “Alphabet is merging an internal Google Research team called Brain with DeepMind, a move designed to bring two groups focused on artificial intelligence closer together as the battle for AI heats up.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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April 22, 2023 at 02:35AM
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BlueBio Database, Lower Manhattan Architecture, Bluesky, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, April 21, 2023

BlueBio Database, Lower Manhattan Architecture, Bluesky, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, April 21, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: Wikidata Quick Dip
WQD makes accessing Wikidata’s over 10,000 data properties easier. Paste in a Wikipedia category name, and Quick Dip will process the information and generate a dropdown list of Wikidata properties shared by at least 10% of the pages within that category. Chose a property and you’ll get a list of the pages containing that property as well as the property values.

NEW RESOURCES

Scientific Data: The BlueBio project’s database: web-mapping cooperation to create value for the Blue Bioeconomy . “Here we present the BlueBio database: a first comprehensive and robust compilation of internationally and nationally funded research projects active in the years 2003–2019 in Fisheries, Aquaculture, Seafood Processing and Marine Biotechnology.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation: New Historic Images Show Remarkable Preservation Progress and Loss in Our Neighborhoods Over the Last 25 Years. “We’re extremely proud to share two new collections added to our historic image archive, taken between 1994 and 2001 as part of an effort by Village Preservation and historian and preservationist Susan DeVries to document vulnerable historic sites in Lower Manhattan with the hopes of securing their preservation.”

9to5Google: Decentralized Twitter competitor ‘Bluesky’ now has an Android app . “In 2019, Jack Dorsey announced a project to ‘create an open and decentralized standard for social media.’ Bluesky has spent the past several years developing the underlying protocol. After an iOS app in February, Bluesky for Android is now available as an invite-only beta.”

The Register: Google Fi still kicking, gets third rebrand in less than a decade. “Beginning life in 2015 as Project Fi, then Google Fi, and now Google Fi Wireless, Google also announced some new services and features for its mobile virtual network (which operates on T-Mobile and US Cellular’s networks), including expanded support for some smartwatches and a seven-day free trial for new customers.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: The Future of Social Media Is a Lot Less Social. “Facebook, TikTok and Twitter seem to be increasingly connecting users with brands and influencers. To restore a sense of community, some users are trying smaller social networks.”

Sydney Morning Herald: Snapchat, the quirky little brother of social media, grows up in influencer chase. “At a media conference overnight in California, Snap unveiled a host of new features designed to encourage more influencers to post on the platform in a move away from its origins a decade ago as a tool for friends to message each other. It also said it would make its AI chatbot, which has been a subscriber-only feature, available to all users.”

NPR: An app is the latest tool, and barrier, for migrants at the southern U.S. border. “In January of this year, the Biden administration unveiled a new app specifically for asylum-seekers and other migrants without valid visas. CBP One is supposed to help alleviate the crisis at the southern border, but the app, which users say constantly glitches or produces error messages, is what often stands between migrants and their dream of finding safety in the U.S. NPR’s Eyder Peralta has this report from Matamoros, Mexico.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Inquirer (Philippines): For weeks, PNP staff database was exposed – cyber expert. “An unprotected database containing more than a million identity documents and private records of Philippine National Police personnel and applicants was exposed online for at least six weeks before access to the data was restricted in March, according to a report by a cybersecurity tracker.”

NDTV: Google Told To Remove False Content On Aaradhya Bachchan From YouTube. “The Delhi High Court on Thursday restrained several YouTube channels from publishing misleading content on the health of Aaradhya Bachchan, daughter of actors Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, saying spreading misinformation about a child reflects ‘morbid perversity’.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Phys .org: Using social media activity to monitor and respond to population displacement in Ukraine. “This new study, published in the Population and Development Review, provides an innovative metric to monitor population displacement in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. The metric combines daily United Nations data on how many people are crossing the Ukrainian border with the researchers’ daily data on active Facebook users to monitor population displacement across Ukraine provinces.”

The Conversation: As digital activists, teens of color turn to social media to fight for a more just world . “My study adds to a growing body of research that has found young people of color can bring about change when they learn to use digital tools to explore social issues and use those tools to stand up for their beliefs.”

University of Michigan News: Human rights a thing of the past? Google says: No. “Critics say the ‘human rights-based approach,’ defined by the United Nations as a ‘conceptual framework for the process of human development that is normatively based on international human rights standards,’ is no longer useful for people struggling to bring about change. But that’s not the story Google tells, according to political scientists Chris Fariss of the University of Michigan and Geoff Dancy of the University of Toronto. In response to a dearth of survey data, the researchers wanted to understand who was thinking about human rights, and where those people live.” Good morning, Internet…

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April 21, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Human or Not?, Grambank Grammar Database, Dungeons and Dragons, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 20, 2023

Human or Not?, Grambank Grammar Database, Dungeons and Dragons, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 20, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

CTech: AI21 Labs vs. CTech: Human or Not? . “‘Human of Not?’ is currently available via a web browser where users are asked to write prompts where the game – either AI21 Labs’ AI tool or a physical human – will reply. The game lasts two minutes and at the end, players need to guess who they were playing against.”

University of Colorado Boulder: World’s largest grammar database reveals accelerating loss of language diversity. “A study published today in Science Advances debuts a grammatical database that documents the enormous diversity of current languages on the planet, highlighting just how much humanity stands to lose and why it’s worth saving. Known as Grambank, it is now the world’s largest publicly available comparative grammatical database.”

Wargamer: Find your next DnD setting with this fanmade search engine. “An online database allows you to search through nearly 300 third-party DnD settings so you can find the perfect place to start your next D&D 5e campaign.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: Google Bard adds more variety to drafts. “Google Bard now shows more variety in the draft responses it provides to your questions. Google said these drafts are now ‘more distinct from each other,’ allowing you to ‘expand your creative explorations.'”

TechCrunch: Imgur will ban explicit images on its platform this month. “Image hosting platform Imgur is set to ban explicit images on its platform from May 15. The company updated its terms of service and said that the company will focus on removing ‘nudity, pornography, & sexually explicit content’ from the site later this month.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Conversation: Live art exists only while it is being performed, and then it disappears. How do we create an archive of the ephemeral?. “Live performance exists only in the moment it is being performed. Its ephemeral nature means it is transient and impermanent, and cannot be experienced again in precisely the same way. How do artists hold on to the works that they make? What of the invisible labour that is rarely acknowledged or named?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Sky News: Michael Schumacher’s family plans legal action over AI ‘interview’ which generated fake quotes . “Michael Schumacher’s family are planning to take legal action against a German magazine which published an ‘interview’ with the seven-time F1 champion generated by artificial intelligence. The 54-year-old has not been seen in public since he suffered a serious brain injury in a skiing accident on a family holiday in the French Alps almost a decade ago.”

Global News (Canada): Google ordered to pay $500K to Quebec man over links to false pedophilia accusations. “A Quebec Superior Court judge has ordered Google to pay $500,000 to a Montreal man who sued the company after it restored a link to an online post falsely accusing him of being a pedophile.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Spectrum: Imaging journal editors resign over ‘extreme’ open-access fees. “The entire editorial boards of two leading neuroscience journals, NeuroImage and NeuroImage:Reports, resigned en masse on Monday over what they say are exorbitant article fees from their publisher, Elsevier. The group intends to launch a new nonprofit open-access journal called Imaging Neuroscience, ‘to replace NeuroImage as the top journal in our field,’ according to a statement posted 17 April to Twitter by an account called Imaging Neuroscience EiC.”

Miscellany News: Diving into Misc archives with Optical Character Recognition. “The first major pro of this position is that I was able to set my own hours. The second is that it’s a remote job, and while the novelty of remote work may have worn off for most, I am happy to be able to work anywhere from the Old Bookstore to the sunny Nircle to my own cozy bed. And, finally, the third major pro is that it’s surprisingly interesting.” Good afternoon, 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 21, 2023 at 12:07AM
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Gloucester A&I, Nevada Job Training, Microsoft, More: ResearchBuzz is 25 Years Old, April 20, 2023

Gloucester A&I, Nevada Job Training, Microsoft, More: ResearchBuzz is 25 Years Old, April 20, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

Today is ResearchBuzz’ 25th anniversary.

How can I thank you enough? Those of you who read, those of you who support via Patreon and kind words. These last three years have been hellish to put it lightly (I know I am not alone in this) and I hope the work I do to provide you resources has not suffered too much in quality.

SearchGizmos.com has grown to 58 tools. If you have not visited, please consider it. I try to refrain from puffery and hyperbole, but I truly believe you will find search tools there that are nowhere else online — tools for Wikipedia, Google, RSS, Mastodon, and more. Everything is free and there are no ads except for a Patreon banner.

Thank you. I love you.

NEW RESOURCES

Gloucester-Mathews Gazette-Journal: Digital archive tells story of Gloucester A&I. “The documents shed light on the founding and early days of the Gloucester Agricultural and Industrial School, also known as the Cappahosic Academy. That school, which operated from 1888 until its closing in 1933, provided the Black youth of Gloucester and surrounding communities with much more than the basic skills and training needed to be a laborer.”

2 News: DETR’s Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation Launches New Website. “The Department of Employment Training and Rehabilitation’s Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation has announced that their new website vrnevada.org is live. The Bureau of Vocational Rehabilitation connects Nevadans with disabilities to services they need. It also offers a full-service, no-cost program for employers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Microsoft drops Twitter from its advertising platform. “Twitter is being removed from yet another big B2B platform. And this time it’s one of the biggest companies in the tech industry. Microsoft is going to drop Twitter from its Microsoft Advertising plan next week, according to the company.”

TikTok Blog: Earth Day 2023: Driving sustainability awareness with our TikTok community . “From creators such as @james_stew championing sustainable living to @mikaelaloach advocating for environmental protection, TikTok brings together communities in the UK and around the world, empowering them to raise sustainability awareness and inspire action.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bloomberg: Google’s Rush to Win in AI Led to Ethical Lapses, Employees Say. “Shortly before Google introduced Bard, its AI chatbot, to the public in March, it asked employees to test the tool. One worker’s conclusion: Bard was ‘a pathological liar,’ according to screenshots of the internal discussion. Another called it ‘cringe-worthy.’… Google launched Bard anyway.”

CNBC: Google to launch its first foldable phone, the ‘Pixel Fold,’ in June. “Google is planning to launch its first foldable smartphone at upward of $1,700, making it the highest price-point product in Google’s smartphone series, according to internal documents and images viewed by CNBC.”

Far Out: Peter Gabriel unveils AI music video challenge. “Amid the recent AI discussion, some artists have voiced their concerns about the robotic tool. On the flip side, other artists, like the former Genesis member Peter Gabriel, have publicly embraced the technology with open arms…. Last month, Gabriel labelled AI a ‘powerful new tool’ that we should embrace rather than ‘just grumble or pretend it doesn’t exist’. Now, the rock legend has announced a partnership with Stability AI, from which he has launched the DiffuseTogether Challenge. ”

SECURITY & LEGAL

City A.M.: Google to change app store rules after UK competition agency flags concerns. “Google said it will allow app developers in the UK to use alternative payment options following an investigation by the UK’s competition regulator. The tech giant said it would present other payment options to Google Play’s billing system for in-app purchases ‘in a neutral manner’ if its commitments are accepted by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).”

The Verge: AI Drake just set an impossible legal trap for Google. “The AI Drake track that mysteriously went viral over the weekend is the start of a problem that will upend Google in one way or another — and it’s really not clear which way it will go.”

The Guardian: Google calls for relaxing of Australia’s copyright laws so AI can mine websites for information. “Google and other tech giants have called on the Australian government to relax copyright laws to allow artificial intelligence to mine websites for information across the internet.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Racket: A U of M Reporter Explores BORG, the Latest Binge-Drinking Craze. “BORG stands for Black Out Rage Gallon, and yes, it’s all the rage. The recipe is simple and adaptable: Take an empty plastic gallon jug, fill it halfway with water, add a fifth of vodka, and mix in some flavoring like MiO (often the caffeinated kind) or electrolyte powder like Liquid I.V. The BORG’s rise in popularity is tied to TikTok, where its hashtag, #borg, has amassed over 295 million views.”

NJ.com: We’re losing the battle against disinformation because social media is immune from liability. “Based on the justices’ recent comments in a pending lawsuit against Google, the U.S. Supreme Court seems unlikely to limit the liability protections afforded social media platforms for publishing and sharing false or harmful user content. As disinformation on social media and across the internet escalates, the failure to hold the purveyors of such content accountable comes at a significant cost to society. Without a change in the status quo, we will lose the ongoing war against online disinformation.” 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 20, 2023 at 05:32PM
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Natural Disaster Alerts, Google Meet, Performing Arts Livestreaming, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 19, 2023

Natural Disaster Alerts, Google Meet, Performing Arts Livestreaming, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 19, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: National Weather Service accounts were not granted API exemptions by Twitter. “The NWS tells Mashable that Twitter’s API policy changes will limit its accounts to 50 automated tweets per 24-hour period. It expects that Twitter will officially switch its accounts to the new API limits on April 29, based on what the company has previously communicated(opens in a new tab) to developers.” If you’ve ever followed weather alerts on Twitter, you know that 50 tweets in 24 hours is nothing. A drop in the bucket depending on what’s happening.

9to5 Google: Google Meet letting you turn off individual video feeds. “In a nice quality of life improvement, Google Meet will let you ‘turn off the video feed from other participants’ on the web, Android, and iOS.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: As Presenters Cut Back on Streams, Some Disabled Arts Lovers Feel Left Out. “With live performance now back, and some theaters and concert halls still struggling to bring back audiences, presenters have cut back on their streamed offerings — leaving many people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, who have been calling for better virtual access for decades, excluded again.”

ABC News (Australia): Young gamblers losing more as social media presence of sports betting agencies grows. “Watching and betting on sport has become a costly pastime for many young Australians and new research shows that problem gambling is increasing among people aged 18 to 34.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WUFT: University of Florida removes years of campus crime data online. “The University of Florida removed nearly eight years’ worth of crime data online without public notification, leaving only limited details about crimes that occurred on or near campus during the past 60 days.”

The Guardian: WhatsApp and Signal unite against online safety bill amid privacy concerns . “The rival chat apps WhatsApp and Signal have joined forces in a rare show of unity to protest against the online safety bill, which they say could undermine the UK’s privacy and safety.”

Reuters: Google wins appeal of $20 million US patent verdict over Chrome technology. “Alphabet’s Google LLC on Tuesday convinced a U.S. appeals court to cancel three anti-malware patents at the heart of a Texas jury’s $20 million infringement verdict against the company.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: Inside the secret list of websites that make AI chatbots sound smart. “AI chatbots have exploded in popularity over the past four months, stunning the public with their awesome abilities, from writing sophisticated term papers to holding unnervingly lucid conversations…. Tech companies have grown secretive about what they feed the AI. So The Washington Post set out to analyze one of these data sets to fully reveal the types of proprietary, personal, and often offensive websites that go into an AI’s training data.” The link is to a gift article, which you should be able to read even if you normally encounter a paywall.

PetaPixel: Artist Refuses Prize After His AI Image Wins at Top Photo Contest. “A photographer has stirred up fresh controversy and debate after his artificial intelligence (AI) image won first prize at one of the world’s most prestigious photography competitions. He has since declined to accept the prize while the contest has remained silent on the matter.”

Daily Beast: ‘60 Minutes’ Made a Shockingly Wrong Claim About a Google AI. “Emergent behavior is definitely a worthwhile topic for a news show to discuss. Where the 60 Minutes clip takes a turn, though, is when we’re introduced to claims that Google’s chatbot was actually able to teach itself a language it previously didn’t know after it was prompted in that language. ‘For example, one Google AI program adapted on its own after it was prompted in the language of Bangladesh, which it was not trained to know,’ CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley said in the clip. Turns out it was complete BS. ” Good afternoon, 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 20, 2023 at 12:07AM
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Twitter in Turkey, Repatriated Art, Reddit, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, April 19, 2023

Twitter in Turkey, Repatriated Art, Reddit, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, April 19, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

SEARCH GIZMO OF THE DAY: MastoWindow
Explore hashtags across Mastodon, a decentralized social network. No account or registration required; just find an instance and start exploring.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Middle East Eye: Turkey elections: Thousands of Russian Twitter accounts reactivated in Turkish. “Thousands of Russian- and Hungarian-speaking Twitter accounts have been reactivated as Turkish users weeks before the 14 May elections in Turkey, raising the possibility of election interference through social media. Ahmet Turan Han, the general manager of political consultancy and research company Datailor, told Middle East Eye that his company encountered a network of Twitter users, most probably bots, that had recently changed their identity.”

KSAT: 2,000-year-old stolen artifact heading back to Germany after Texas woman bought it at Goodwill for $35. “A first-century marble bust found by a Texas woman at a Goodwill in Austin a few years ago is about to head back to Germany. The bust made headlines in May 2022 after Laura Young, an antique dealer, discovered that the bust she bought in 2018 for $34.99 was actually a 2,000-year-old, 50-pound piece of history.”

TechCrunch: Reddit will begin charging for access to its API. “Following on the heels of Twitter’s decision to restrict third-party access to its data, Reddit today announced that it’ll begin charging for use of its API. It’s not a blanket policy change. As reported by The New York Times, Reddit’s API will remain free to developers who want to build apps and bots that help people use Reddit, as well as to researchers who wish to study Reddit for strictly academic or noncommercial purposes.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Star (Kenya): Farmers reap big from social media. “Francis Muiruri, a 31-year-old Kenyan farmer, has found a new income stream on social media: selling information. As a digital consultant, he advises other farmers on successful service delivery on the farm…. Despite living with disability, the Thika-based, mixed-crop farmer appreciates the platform’s role in commercialising his farming business.”

Quartz: Elon Musk’s Twitter has even lost the man who popularized #hashtags. “Arguably, Chris Messina created a monster. Back in 2007, Messina, a technology developer who was one of the first 2,000 users of Twitter, suggested using the hashtag symbol to group tweets dealing with the same theme or event. This way, these tweets could be easily found by Twitter users interested in that topic. But, like other monsters, the hashtag didn’t behave exactly as Messina intended.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Block: Taylor Swift did her homework on FTX, dodged a bullet, says lawyer suing Tom Brady, Shaq. “Taylor Swift was one of the only celebrities who did their due diligence on crypto exchange FTX, according to the lawyer suing the now-bankrupt company’s celebrity promoters.” The only song I’ve ever heard by Ms. Swift is “Shake it Off,” but this might be enough to make me a fan.

KOLN: Nebraska lawmakers advance proposal for video archive of legislative proceedings. “Lawmakers gave first-round approval Monday to a proposal that would create a video archive of Nebraska legislative proceedings, an effort that has spanned multiple years.”

WIRED: Apple’s Macs Have Long Escaped Ransomware. That May Be Changing. “SECURITY RESEARCHERS ARE examining newly discovered Mac ransomware samples from the notorious gang LockBit, marking the first known example of a prominent ransomware group toying with macOS versions of its malware.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Verge: Social media is doomed to die. “Each platform began honorably, with young founders enthusiastically revealing that if you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product. ‘We’re going to do things differently around here!’ they say through a grin. And then the founders discover, one by one, that there’s something not quite right about the business of social media. They made their apps free to scale their community, and then they found there was no turning back. Unfettered growth became the only way forward, no matter how unrecognizable the product had to become to get there.”

Discover: Social Media Is Not to Blame for Dwindling Face-to-Face Communication. “It’s a familiar and seemingly logical argument: Social media makes us less social. We’re hooked to our phones at the expense of going out into the real world and interacting with other people. And according to Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies and director of the Relationships and Technology Lab at the University of Kansas, the concept even has a name: the social displacement hypothesis.”

PC Magazine: What’s Happening to Twitter Could Never Happen to Mastodon. “Several Twitter crises ago, my editor pitched me the idea for this story. The suggestion was to explain not just why I thought Mastodon—a decentralized social network for Twitter-style posts—was better than Twitter, but also how it could resist whatever Musk-inflicted wound was in the news at the time. I liked the idea, but I didn’t get around to writing it. A few weeks later there was another crisis at Twitter (there have been so many I honestly can’t remember which one) and this story came up again. And again. And again. And so now, I think it’s finally time to run down the list and explain why Mastodon is structurally and technically impervious to the madness that is plaguing Twitter.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

IFL Science: This Is The World’s Oldest Bar Joke, But Literally Nobody Knows Why It’s Funny. “Say, have you heard the one about the Abderite who saw a eunuch talking to a woman and asked whether she was his wife? Upon hearing that eunuchs couldn’t take wives, the Abderite replied: ‘so, is she your daughter?’ Didn’t tickle your funny bone? It probably sounded better in the original Latin – along with context clues like who, exactly, the Abderite people were and why they seem to have been the ancient Roman equivalent of the ‘dumb blonde’ archetype.” 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 19, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Argentina History, Health Care Cybersecurity, Twitter, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 18, 2023

Argentina History, Health Care Cybersecurity, Twitter, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, April 18, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Buenos Aires Herald: Government launches website following dictatorship trials in real time. “The Secretariat of Human Rights has launched its website Crimes Against Humanity with information on all the cases against those involved in Argentina’s last dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983. It includes details on all the perpetrators that have been sentenced since 1985.”

Department of Health and Human Services: HHS Cybersecurity Task Force Provides New Resources to Help Address Rising Threat of Cyberattacks in Health and Public Health Sector. “Resources include a new platform, Knowledge on Demand, to provide free cybersecurity training to the health sector workforce as well as an updated Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices 2023 Edition and a Hospital Cyber Resiliency Initiative Landscape Analysis.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Business Insider: Interest in joining Twitter has plunged after surging when Elon Musk took over last year, Google data shows. “Interest in joining Twitter has plunged in the six months since Elon Musk’s takeover, according to Google Trends data compiled by the web-hosting company Fasthosts. Google Trends’ index for searches of ‘Twitter sign up’ has plummeted 81% from a November peak, just weeks after the world’s second-richest person took control of the social-media company.”

Wall Street Journal: FBI Investigating Ex-Navy Noncommissioned Officer Linked to Pro-Russia Social-Media Account. “The FBI is investigating the activities of a former U.S. Navy noncommissioned officer who oversaw a social-media account involved in the spread of intelligence documents allegedly leaked by Airman First Class Jack Teixeira, U.S. officials said Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the woman, Sarah Bils, administered several pro-Russian outlets while in uniform.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

British GQ: Why Reddit CEO Steve Huffman is finally going public – and thinks TikTok should be banned. “If Facebook was founded as a means to get Harvard students laid and Twitter started out as a group text service, then ‘the front-page of the internet’ was made so that the 57 million people who now use it every day can decide what’s important to them.”

Ars Technica: FSF: Chrome’s JPEG XL killing shows how the web works under browser hegemony. “Chrome developers’ decision to remove support for a compressed image format that Google helped develop is just another sign of ‘the disturbing amount of control’ the ad company has over browsers and the web, according to the Free Software Foundation (FSF).”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNN: Member of chatroom where leaked Pentagon documents surfaced tells CNN alleged leaker didn’t want users to be ‘shocked by news cycles’. “A member of the private online chatroom where a major leak of US classified documents surfaced has defended 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, who was charged in connection to the leak on Friday, telling CNN that Teixeira shared the classified material to keep other members informed, ‘so we won’t be shocked by the news cycles.'”

The Guardian: Pentagon leak suggests Russia honing disinformation drive – report. “Russia has increased the effectiveness of its disinformation campaigning on social media and boasts that vast amounts of fake accounts are escaping detection, according to a report on leaked US intelligence documents.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Internet Archive Blog: AI@IA — Extracting Words Sung on 100 year-old 78rpm records. “Freely available Artificial Intelligence tools are now able to extract words sung on 78rpm records. The results may not be full lyrics, but we hope it can help browsing, searching, and researching. Whisper is an open source tool from OpenAI ‘that approaches human level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition.’ We were surprised how far it could get with recognizing spoken words on noisy disks and even words being sung.”

The Register: Deplatforming hate forums doesn’t work, British boffins warn. “In a recently released preprint paper, Anh Vu, Alice Hutchings, and Ross Anderson, from the University of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh, examine efforts to disrupt harassment forum Kiwi Farms and find that community and industry interventions have been largely ineffective. Their study, undertaken as lawmakers around the world are considering policies that aspire to moderate unlawful or undesirable online behavior, reveals that deplatforming has only a modest impact and those running harmful sites remain free to carry on harassing people through other services.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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April 19, 2023 at 12:28AM
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