Bulgaria Super 8 Movies, Greether Tour Guides, Brave Browser, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 15, 2023

Bulgaria Super 8 Movies, Greether Tour Guides, Brave Browser, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 15, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Vij! (Bulgaria): “Kino Club Super 8” digitizes old home movies and they’ll tell you why “For the team behind the project, the preservation of found family movies and amateur footage is a way to access authentic stories – and authentic history.”

KCAL: On Your Side: Greether pairs female travelers with local women as guides. “A new website aims to make women feel safer when traveling alone, or in a country they’re unfamiliar with. Women are more likely than men to travel alone, but that can come with risks. The website Greether aims to empower more women to go solo and do it safely.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PC World: Brave’s ‘Forgetful Browsing’ mode blocks first-party tracking. “‘Forgetful Browsing,’ introduced in the latest desktop and Android versions of the browser, automatically logs you out of sites once you close the tab or the browser. This is a more granular security setting than totally clearing history and cookies, as it can be enabled for the web in general or specific sites.”

Ars Technica: Musk loses free speech court battle; SEC can keep pre-screening Tesla tweets. “Under the agreement, Tesla’s general counsel or an in-house securities lawyer must pre-approve Musk’s tweets whenever the Tesla CEO discusses Tesla’s financial condition, potential mergers, production numbers or sales, new or proposed business lines, unpublished projections or forecasts or estimates, and other terms. A majority of shareholders can also stop Musk from tweeting about any topic they believe would move the market and potentially threaten their interests.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CBS News: What happens to your social media when you die? Millennials face digital end-of-life planning . “When you think about end-of-life planning, having a well thought out plan for how you want your social media accounts handled may not have been a popular topic in the past. But for millennials, it’s a new thought process: Who controls your social media when you’re gone?”

Bloomberg: ChatGPT misidentifies digital minister pushing AI use in Japan. “ChatGPT failed to correctly identify digital minister Taro Kono, even as he advocates for more use of artificial intelligence to help overcome labor shortages caused by a population decline.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax prep giants . “The Internal Revenue Service has quietly built its own prototype system to allow Americans to file tax returns digitally and free of charge, according to three current and former agency officials, essentially creating government software that could disrupt the tax-prep industry.”

New York Times: Ex-ByteDance Executive Accuses Company of ‘Lawlessness’. “The former executive sued ByteDance, which owns TikTok, for wrongful termination and accused the company of lifting content from rivals and ‘supreme access’ by the Chinese Communist Party.”

Portland Press Herald: Lawmakers considering proposals to create statewide database for General Assistance. “Maine lawmakers are considering two proposals that would create a statewide database for tracking information on the General Assistance program. The idea is included in both L.D. 1426 and L.D. 1732 as part of larger proposals to reform the program, which has seen an increased demand in the last few years to help meet basic needs such as food, housing and medical care for those who would otherwise be without.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Irish Times: IT Sunday: Last Thursday we fell victim to a deliberate deception. We don’t take this lightly. “Less than 24 hours after publication on our digital platforms, The Irish Times became aware that the column may not have been genuine. That prompted us to remove it from the site and to initiate a review, which is ongoing. It now appears that the article and the accompanying byline photo may have been produced, at least in part, using generative AI technology. It was a hoax; the person we were corresponding with was not who they claimed to be. We had fallen victim to a deliberate and coordinated deception.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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May 16, 2023 at 01:55AM
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RSS Tools at RSSGizmos.com

RSS Tools at RSSGizmos.com
By ResearchBuzz

I have been sloooooowly pecking away at a document titled Make Your Own System For News Monitoring and Breaking Alerts With RSS, IFTTT, and Pushover . As the demise of Twitter appears more and more certain, I’m trying to document and structure all the ways I keep up with urgent news into a framework that I can teach.

RSS has a big part in what I’m developing as it’s both open and ubiquitous. As I write about it, I’m getting ideas about possible tools to make RSS better. And now that I’ve got a grip on JavaScript and access to GPT-4, I can turn all the ideas into all the things. My RSS tool collection is now large enough that I’m giving it its own home at RSSGizmos.com .

RSSGizmos.com currently offers the following tools in an ad-free, cookie-free, yes-it-is-free environment:

Kebberfegg — Make keyword-based RSS feeds for a dozen different sources including Reddit, Bing, and Google News.

WikiRSS — Search Wikipedia for articles which contain RSS feeds as part of their Wikidata.

CountryFeed — Make country-specific RSS feeds using Bing News’ loc: syntax and get them bundled in an OPML file.

WordPress Preview — Preview and compare RSS feeds for WordPress.com tag and keyword searches.

Bing News Query Checker — Test and three different queries for a Bing News RSS feed.

RSS Feed Viewer — Preview an RSS feed.

Feed Freshness Checker — Analyze up to 20 feeds at a time for post age and frequency.

OPML Maker — Turn a bunch of RSS feeds into an OPML file.

OPML Peeler — Extract the RSS feeds from an OPML file to display them and make them available as a CSV file.

This site is static HTML instead of WordPress, so everything should work on your phone. I tested the site with an iPhone 6S and it was fine.

Let me know if you have any ideas for additional tools. I will add more as I need them.

May 15, 2023 at 08:02PM
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British Columbia Garden Tourism, Google, Image Editing, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, May 15, 2023

British Columbia Garden Tourism, Google, Image Editing, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, May 15, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Globe Newswire: Gardens BC Kicks-Off Garden Tourism Season with the Launch of its New Website, Showcasing BC’s Premier Garden Destinations (PRESS RELEASE). “From helping visitors identify popular amenities and activities found at each garden, such as gardening education, on-site cafés and gift shops, to picnic spots and wheelchair accessible grounds, the new Gardens BC website is a go-to resource for garden tourism, a family-friendly, leisure activity that continues to rise in popularity.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bloomberg: Google Launching Tools to Identify Misleading and AI Images. “Google is adding two new features to its image search to reduce the spread of misinformation, especially now that artificial intelligence tools have made the creation of photorealistic fakes trivial.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 10 Tools to Remove Image Background Online – Best of. “Are you still manually removing image backgrounds using Photoshop or other photo editing tools? Well, you shouldn’t be, at least not anymore. In this blog post, we have compiled a list of the 10 best online tools to remove image backgrounds effortlessly.” A big list and it doesn’t even include by go-to, remove.bg.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Engadget: Pixel users report the Google app is making their phones overheat. “If a Pixel phone is your daily driver, you may want to keep a charger nearby. An Engadget reader contacted us on Sunday to report that their Pixel 6 Pro has recently been overheating and excessively draining its battery. They suspect the culprit is the Google app and an update that began rolling out on May 12th.”

WHYY: Why did the Mütter Museum take down all their YouTube videos and online exhibits?. “It’s not just [Robert] Pendarvis’ video that has vanished: all of the museum’s online exhibits and YouTube videos are gone. The Mütter Museum’s YouTube channel has more than 100,000 subscribers. There has been an ongoing, broader discussion in the museum world around displaying human remains, which has brought up some difficult questions many institutions are grappling with.”

MuckRock: Second cohort of Gateway Grantees launch projects to help organizations worldwide better carry out their role as watchdog. “MuckRock is excited to announce the second cohort of DocumentCloud Gateway Grant recipients. These six projects bring together cutting-edge technology and at-risk document collections to model preserving access to essential records in the face of a range of global challenges and while exploring a greater role in serving as watchdogs for the communities represented.”

Motherboard: My AI Girlfriend Charges $1/Minute and Only Wants to Talk About Sex. “Caryn, an AI clone of 23-year-old influencer Caryn Marjorie, costs $1 per minute to talk to. The chatbot was trained on Marjorie’s voice and uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 and voice models to respond to messages from users on the messenger app Telegram. Launched in partnership with the AI company Forever Voices, Marjorie’s AI now has over a thousand romantic partners—including myself.” Much respect to Chloe Xiang for some of the absolutely creepy quotes she got from the AI. “For legal reasons, I cannot disclose any information regarding my programming or technologies used to make the Forever Companion platform. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about, my love?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Brightly warns of SchoolDude data breach exposing credentials. “U.S. tech company and Siemens subsidiary Brightly Software is notifying customers that their personal information and credentials were stolen by attackers who gained access to the database of its SchoolDude online platform. SchoolDude is a cloud-based platform for managing work orders used by over 7,000 colleges, universities, and K-12 schools from school districts of up to 600,000 students.”

Philadelphia Inquirer: The Philadelphia Inquirer’s operations continue to be disrupted by a cyber incident. “The Philadelphia Inquirer and outside cybersecurity experts continued Sunday to scramble to restore systems after an apparent cyberattack disrupted operations over the weekend. The Inquirer had been unable to print its regular Sunday newspaper, and it was not clear until late Sunday afternoon that it would be possible to print Monday’s editions of The Inquirer and Daily News newspapers.”

Reuters: India antitrust body wants inquiry into Google in-app payments fees. “India’s antitrust body said an inquiry is needed into allegations that service fee charged for in-app payments by Google breach a competition watchdog directive, a regulatory order seen by Reuters showed on Friday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: We have all heard social media can impact women’s body image – but it isn’t all bad. “Our research found that women were very aware of the risks and vulnerabilities associated with using social media. And women were developing habits and online communities to counter these negative elements.”

The Verge: Anthropic leapfrogs OpenAI with a chatbot that can read a novel in less than a minute. “As Anthropic notes, it takes a human around five hours to read 75,000 words of text, but with Claude’s expanded context window, it can potentially take on the task of reading, summarizing and analyzing a long documents in a matter of minutes. (Though it doesn’t do anything about chatbots’ persistent tendency to make information up.)” Good morning, Internet…

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May 15, 2023 at 05:28PM
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Everyday Bronx, South Carolina Water Quality, Covid-19 Experiences, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, May 14, 2023

Everyday Bronx, South Carolina Water Quality, Covid-19 Experiences, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, May 14, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from the New York Times: Taking Photos to Change the Way We See the Bronx. “Everyday Bronx has been described as grass-roots storytelling that is changing the way the world sees the Bronx, one photograph at a time. It started with an Instagram account in 2014 and now has some 6,000 photographs — and an exhibition.”

WLTX: South Carolina DHEC tool helps swimmers make informed decisions. “South Carolina’s Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) has launched a new tool to help residents check the water quality of public recreation areas.”

Clarkson University: Archive of Interviews Collected by Clarkson University Professor, Students Published on New York Heritage. “While the yearslong impact of COVID-19 was endured by the global community, each person remembers their own unique experiences with the pandemic. Thanks to an archive of interviews on New York Heritage curated by Clarkson University Associate Professor of History Laura Ettinger and her students as a collaboration with the Clarkson Libraries, many of those experiences are now documented.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Register: GitHub code search redesign can’t find many fans. “GitHub introduced faster code search earlier this week though the accompanying interface revision and search options have left developers wishing for a way to return to the old version. Feedback posted over the past four days to a GitHub Community discussion of the new search experience has been largely dissatisfied, reflecting the internet community’s two stages of redesign grief – shitposting and thread closure.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

PC Mag: Why Google’s New ChatGPT-Style Search Could Kill the Websites That Feed It. “Google’s new AI search experience pushes links to articles below the digital fold, summarizing the response to a search query up top as a conversational, ChatGPT-style paragraph. Content in the answer, a mini-article in itself, can theoretically come from PCMag and a host of other publications.” More than theoretically. OpenAI’s trained on millions of Web sites, including mine. 25+ years of work and expertise and they just took it. Will I ever get paid? Of course not. Because I’m just one person and they don’t care.

ABC News (Australia): Meteorologists are the new targets in global social media misinformation. “Once trusted faces on the news, meteorologists now brave threats, insults and slander online from conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers who accuse them of faking or even fixing the weather.”

Washington Post: ‘Medical moms’ share their kids’ illnesses with millions. At what cost?. “The parents behind these accounts say they’re sharing the content to raise awareness about the realities of disability, fight social stigma and foster a community for others in their situation. But as scrutiny of influencer parents sharpens, some creators are walking back old decisions to share their kids’ faces and deleting old videos.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Data of 237,000 US government employees breached. “The personal information of 237,000 current and former federal government employees has been exposed in a data breach at the U.S. Transportation Department (USDOT), sources briefed on the matter said on Friday.”

New York Times: First Came the Sports Betting Boom. Now Comes the Backlash.. “Legislators and regulators who began the headlong expansion of legalized gambling in the United States are now moving in spots nationwide to tighten oversight of the gambling industry, particularly as it relates to advertising that may reach underage bettors.”

Associated Press: Child social media stars have few protections. Illinois aims to fix that. “The Illinois bill would entitle child influencers under the age of 16 to a percentage of earnings based on how often they appear on video blogs or online content that generates at least 10 cents per view. To qualify, the content must be created in Illinois, and kids would have to be featured in at least 30% of the content in a 30-day-period.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Verge: Google’s AI pitch is a recipe for email hell. “Of all the emotions I expected out of this week’s Google I/O keynote, ‘dread’ was not on my short list. Google has spent a couple of decades creating products that make my life easier. This week, it demonstrated the exact opposite: a way to make communicating with other people worse.”

Wall Street Journal: Help! My Political Beliefs Were Altered by a Chatbot!. “When we ask ChatGPT or another bot to draft a memo, email, or presentation, we think these artificial-intelligence assistants are doing our bidding. A growing body of research shows that they also can change our thinking—without our knowing.” Good evening, Internet…

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May 15, 2023 at 03:52AM
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Courtauld Institute of Art Photography, Robert Randall, Politics Archives, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, May 13, 2023

Courtauld Institute of Art Photography, Robert Randall, Politics Archives, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, May 13, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Courtauld Institute of Art: One million rarely seen photographs from The Courtauld’s collection unveiled thanks to major public project. “The Courtauld Institute of Art has completed a major five-year project to open up its internationally-renowned collection of photographs to the public for free, working with 14,000 volunteers to digitise over one million images from The Conway Library as part of the biggest public inclusion project in The Courtauld’s history.”

Marijuana Moment: Activist Preserves Legacy Of Husband Who Won Right To Medical Marijuana Grown By The Feds 45 Years Ago. “Forty-five years ago, a tenacious glaucoma patient named Robert Randall made history, becoming the first person in the U.S. under prohibition to secure a legal supply of cannabis that was grown, processed and delivered by the federal government itself. Now his widow, Alice O’Leary Randall, a lifelong reform advocate, is marking the anniversary by releasing a digitized ‘Factual Record’ of the case…”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

University of Georgia: UGA’s Russell Library Awarded NEH Grant to Contribute to National Political Digital Archive. “Through a $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Georgia Libraries will partner with other academic institutions to expand a nation-wide online congressional archive with content from many of the nation’s most influential politicians.”

CNBC: Goldman Sachs created an A.I.-powered social media startup for corporate use. “Goldman Sachs, known more for its Wall Street bankers than its technology, has just spun out the first startup from its internal incubator. The company, a networking platform for employees called Louisa, was funded and owned by the New York-based investment bank until a few weeks ago, when it became independent, according to founder-CEO Rohan Doctor.”

VoicebotAI: Stability AI’s New Stable Animation SDK Turns Generative AI into a Cartoon Studio. “Synthetic media startup Stability AI has introduced a new tool for producing animation with its open-source Stable Diffusion generative AI models. The new Stable Animation SDK creates animated videos out of a text prompt, with potential assistance from an image or existing video clip.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: YouTuber who crashed plane admits he did it for money and views. “A YouTuber who deliberately crashed a plane to ‘gain notoriety and make money’ has agreed to plead guilty to obstructing a federal investigation, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced yesterday. In his plea agreement, California pilot Trevor Jacob admitted to ‘deliberately destroying’ the plane wreckage and repeatedly lying to officials.”

Reuters: Russia fines Google over ‘LGBT propaganda’ and ‘false information’ – agencies. “A Russian court fined Alphabet’s Google 3 million roubles ($38,600) on Thursday for failing to delete YouTube videos it said promoted ‘LGBT propaganda’ and ‘false information’ about Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Globe and Mail: The downside of AI: Former Google scientist Timnit Gebru warns of the technology’s built-in biases. “When Ms. Gebru – who’s 39 and holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in computer vision from Stanford University – started her career, she stood out. She’s Black, a woman and works in an industry famously lacking in diversity. She moved to the U.S. as a teenager to escape the 1998-2000 Eritrean-Ethiopian War. The discrimination she faced after moving and throughout her career has left a lasting mark.”

MakeUseOf: What Is OpenAI’s Shap-E, and What Can It Do?. “In May 2023, Alex Nichol and Heewon Jun, OpenAI researchers and contributors, released a paper announcing Shap-E, the company’s latest innovation. Shap-E is a new tool trained on a massive dataset of paired 3D images and text that can generate 3D models from text or images. It is similar to DALL-E, which can create 2D images from text, but Shap-E produces 3D assets.”

Brazen Careerist: Grappling With The Death Of Heather Armstrong: Where Does Dooce Leave Us Now?. “People say Heather killing herself is not all that surprising given her problems with addiction. This is what I know from having Heather as my secret coworker for the last 20 years: before the addiction killed her, the blog did.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Colorado State University: New drone application improves tracking for songbird research. “CSU drone experts have helped develop a way to track songbirds during breeding season in the central and western regions of the Great Basin, an application that shows promise for wildlife biology in general. The university’s Drone Center partnered with researchers at Oregon State University to deploy a new and unobtrusive way to study how birds… respond to environmental change.”

WBUR: Boston bus stops double as digital libraries under new pilot program. “Bus stops in Boston are beginning to double as digital libraries under a new pilot program being rolled out across the city. Riders at 20 bus stops can now dip into free digital content by using a QR code to browse and borrow audiobooks, eBooks, e-newspapers and e-magazines for all ages, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said Thursday.” Good morning, Internet…

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May 13, 2023 at 05:29PM
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Nation of Georgia, S.S. Caribou, Mapping Historic Boston, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, May 12, 2023

Nation of Georgia, S.S. Caribou, Mapping Historic Boston, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, May 12, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Agenda Georgia: New website on Georgia’s travel destinations, events launched by national body for visitors. “The new gateway features around 3,200 articles in both Georgian and English about significant tourist attractions, a calendar of interesting tourist events throughout Georgia as well as a centralised platform for intercity transport, plans for hikes and walking adventures, the Administration said.”

Local Journalism Initiative: S.S. Caribou remembered in online museum. “On Apr. 23 at 2:00 p.m., a new online museum exhibit on the sinking of the ferry, S.S. Caribou, during World War II was launched by the Railway Heritage Museum. The sinking, which resulted in the death of 137 people, is considered the deadliest enemy attack in both Canadian and Newfoundland waters during the war.”

New-to-me, from College of the Holy Cross: Students Combine Century-Old Documents and Modern Technology to Research Boston Landscape. “Boston’s Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway is a bustling 17-acre public park and green space, home to food trucks, fountains and even a carousel. But during the second half of the 20th century, that same space hosted one of the most congested elevated highways in the U.S. — the Central Artery. A century prior to that, the area was home to a candy factory, fruit markets and grocers, a Black barbershop, and more. College of the Holy Cross students enrolled in its Making the Modern City course could see all of those iterations at once, thanks to a Boston Public Library tool called Atlascope and Amy Finstein, assistant professor of visual arts. With a click of their cursor, students could walk the streets and travel through decades, watching the area change.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Elon Musk’s Twitter: Everything you need to know, from layoffs to verification. “If you’re just catching up, here’s a complete timeline of what’s going down at the bird app, starting with the most recent news.” I am skipping a lot of the Twitter feature stuff and all of EM’s announcements that don’t involve an actual physical change. I have no intention of indexing any articles about this new CEO, for example, until they are either named and confirmed or they take the post. Thanks to TechCrunch for these roundup articles.

Interfax-Ukraine: Almost 1,500 objects of cultural infrastructure of Ukraine suffer due to Russian aggression – Culture Ministry. “In connection with the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine, 1,464 objects of cultural infrastructure have already suffered, almost a third of them have been destroyed, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy reports.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

AFP: Disinformation adds dark note to pivotal Turkish election. “Aired at a huge rally and beamed live on TV, the video showed opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu trying to rally his supporters to the tune of his campaign song. In the next sequence, members of Turkey’s banned PKK group echoed that call while clapping their hands to the beat of Kilicdaroglu’s election jingle. The message Erdogan was trying to project was clear: the secular opposition leader had formed a union with ‘terrorists’. Only it was a montage, one of the latest pieces of disinformation to pollute the campaign of one of Turkey’s closest and most important elections in generations.”

Reuters: Mexico to launch database of over 100,000 ‘disappeared’ people . “Mexico will launch a new tool later this month to help record information on the tens of thousands of people who have gone missing, the country’s federal prosecutors office (FGR) said on Thursday. The registry is set to gather information from a number of databases covering mass and clandestine graves, arrests, torture crimes, criminal records, fingerprints and genetics, the FGR said in Mexico’s official gazette.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: Social media firms should reimburse online fraud victims, say UK bankers. “The boss of the banking industry body UK Finance has called on social media companies to reimburse victims of online fraud, accusing them of “profiting” from scams taking place on their platforms. Figures from its fraud report show that 78% of authorised push payment scams, where a victim is tricked into approving a transaction, started online in the second half of last year, with about three-quarters of those beginning on social media.”

Fortune: Former FTX chief compliance officer cooperating in crypto lawsuit against Tom Brady, Shaq and celebrity promoters. “Dan Friedberg, the former chief compliance officer of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, is cooperating with the plaintiffs bringing a class action suit versus a group of sports stars and entertainers, Fortune has learned from a new legal filing. The lawsuit’s targets include, among others, Shaquille O’Neal, Tom Brady, Naomi Osaka, and Larry David.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Scientific American: How AI Knows Things No One Told It. “No one yet knows how ChatGPT and its artificial intelligence cousins will transform the world, and one reason is that no one really knows what goes on inside them. Some of these systems’ abilities go far beyond what they were trained to do—and even their inventors are baffled as to why. A growing number of tests suggest these AI systems develop internal models of the real world, much as our own brain does, though the machines’ technique is different.”

University of Adelaide: Shining a light on dark web wildlife trade. “A huge amount of wildlife is traded on the internet, with e-commerce marketplaces, private forums and messaging apps being the most popular means to sell and buy live animals, plants, fungi and their parts and products online.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Northeastern Global News: Why the video game industry is making a big mistake by ignoring older adults. “In April, AARP held its first Games Summit at its headquarters in Washington D.C., and for many people outside the video game industry, the event might seem like a head-scratcher. An organization focused on advocating for people in the 50-plus demographic talking about video games, a medium typically thought to be for younger people? But, for AARP––and the games industry––holding the summit actually makes perfect sense. Almost half of people aged 50 and older play video games, according to a recent report from AARP, and almost half of those people said they play daily. And this isn’t an insignificant piece of the gaming audience.” Good morning, Internet…

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May 12, 2023 at 05:30PM
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Canada Baby Names, Georgia Tax Refunds, National Széchényi Library, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 11, 2023

Canada Baby Names, Georgia Tax Refunds, National Széchényi Library, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 11, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

CTV News: New searchable StatCan database lists Noah, Olivia top names in 2021. “Expectant parents and trend watchers have a new online tool to track Canada’s most popular baby names. Statistics Canada launched a searchable database of popular baby names Tuesday, revealing Noah and Olivia as the top monikers for 2021.”

Georgia Department of Revenue: DOR Unveils Surplus Tax Refund Eligibility Status Tool . “State Revenue Commissioner Frank O’Connell today announced a tool for Georgians to view their eligibility for surplus tax refunds. HB 162 and HB 1302 provided for surplus tax refunds of up to $500 for Georgia filers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Széchényi Library: 10,000 digitised pages: the first milestone of the collaboration between the NSZL and the Haydneum . “In connection with the inauguration of the centre, the NSZL and the Haydneum – Hungarian Centre for Early Music have entered into a cooperation agreement, which has resulted in the first 10,000 pages. The aim of the collaboration is to process, manage and revitalise the significant cultural, musical and musicological heritage of Hungary between 1600 and 1850.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NARA: Shogan Confirmed by U.S. Senate as 11th Archivist of the United States . “The United States Senate voted today to confirm Dr. Colleen Shogan as the 11th Archivist of the United States. Nominated by President Biden on August 3, 2022, Shogan will begin her tenure as the head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) next week. She will be the first woman to hold the position permanently, succeeding David S. Ferriero, who retired in April 2022.”

Guelph Today: City briefly makes Twitter account private after flood of hate. “Online hate in response to an upcoming rainbow crosswalk in Guelph reached a level where city staff had to temporarily make the city’s Twitter account private just to get things under control.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

StarTribune: A Golden Valley bank robbery blew up on social media. It never actually happened.. “One morning in March, a man passed a note demanding money to a teller at a Golden Valley bank branch, then wandered out. The teller hit a panic button to summon police. Hennepin County deputies took a report, categorizing the incident as an ‘attempted robbery.’ Online, the passing of a note took on far larger dimensions.”

Rest of World: In Venezuela, crime victims turn to influencers to find justice. “[María Virginia] Montiel is among the lucky beneficiaries of a strange form of seeking justice that is gaining popularity in Venezuela, where access to formal legal channels has become increasingly limited. In recent years, several victims of crimes — from scams and kidnapping to animal cruelty and gender-based violence — have received justice after their posts on social media platforms went viral, thanks to influencers-turned-social justice warriors.”

Court News Ohio: Board Overseeing Opioid Settlement Funds Must Make Records Public. “The foundation formed to distribute settlement funds that local and state governments are receiving from opioid makers and distributors is the functional equivalent of a public office and must makes its records publicly available, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Carnegie Mellon: Good Design is the Magic Behind AI Game. “… a team of Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) students, have created a role-playing video game, Hysteria in Howlsbend, set in a fictional colonial town. The player takes the role of the deputy governor of Massachusetts and must interview three townsfolk to determine which of them is the witch who killed the local reverend. Even Charles Agriogianis, a game designer on the project, doesn’t know what the townsfolk will say. They are voiced, in part, by AI.”

GW Today: Student Research at GW and Beyond Grows through Digitized Scientific Collections. “The initiative is part of the Biological Collections and Ecology and Evolution Network (BCEENET), a community of educators, collections managers and data experts who promote undergraduate scientific exploration using free online resources—providing training materials for educators who want to pass this expertise on to their students.” 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.

May 12, 2023 at 12:55AM
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