Belgium’s Botanical Gardens, Kentucky Public Health, War of 1812 Pension Files, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 30, 2023

Belgium’s Botanical Gardens, Kentucky Public Health, War of 1812 Pension Files, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Brussels Times: Belgium’s botanical gardens and arboretums unveil massive online database. “The new website – a global first on this scale – makes 83,000 plants belonging to 25,000 different species and varieties from 25 botanical gardens and arboretums available at the click of a button. Visitors can view technical data sheets on each plant which detail their main characteristics, their origin and their location in the botanical garden in question.”

News-Enterprise (Kentucky): New website tracks county-by-county data on health factors. “The state Department for Public Health has launched a new resource for tracking a variety of topics that affect health in Kentucky…. topics include air quality, asthma, birth defects, cancer, childhood lead poisoning, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, carbon-monoxide poisoning, climate and weather, drinking water, heat-related illness, radon gas and reproductive and birth outcomes.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Fold3: War of 1812 Pension Files Digitization Moves Forward!. “We have some exciting news to share. Ancestry® and the National Genealogical Society® have recently finalized a contract with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to resume digitization of the War of 1812 Pension Files. Like so many other things, this ongoing project came to a screeching halt during the closure of NARA due to COVID-19.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Reuters: Vatican chastises bishops who stoke division on social media. “The Vatican urged bishops and high-profile lay Catholic leaders on Monday to tone down their comments on social media, saying some were causing division and stoking polemics that harmed the entire Church.”

Hold the Front Page: Editor calls for regional daily’s archive to go back online. “An editor whose newspaper’s archive disappeared from the web without explanation two months ago has called for it to go back online. Eastern Daily Press editor Richard Porritt has told readers he is ‘pushing’ for a revival of the Local Recall project, which was launched by Archant with Google funding in 2020 but went offline earlier this year.”

Slashgear: TikTok Users Are Reimagining Alternative Human Histories With Generative AI . “New AI trends just kept coming; the latest one is very thought-provoking and creative. TikTokers have created viral videos with pictures and accompanying textual descriptions of what the world would look like if human history were changed. Most of these videos try to explore different narratives by changing important details of specific historical events, for example, the victors of a pretty significant conflict in human history.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Here’s What Happens When Your Lawyer Uses ChatGPT. “A lawyer representing a man who sued an airline relied on artificial intelligence to help prepare a court filing. It did not go well.”

University of Arizona: UArizona researcher at the forefront of Indigenous data sovereignty. “The concept known as IDSov emphasizes Indigenous Peoples’ right to control data about their people, lands and cultures. Stephanie Russo Carroll, associate director of the University of Arizona Native Nations Institute, has focused her career on encouraging institutions to adopt policies and practices that recognize that right.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NiemanLab: Seeing stories of kindness may counteract the negative effects of consuming bad news. “During the pandemic, multiple studies linked news consumption to poorer mental health, documenting symptoms of depression, anxiety, hopelessness and worry. In our research, we found that spending as little as 2-4 minutes on Twitter or YouTube reading about the pandemic affected people’s moods adversely. However, our latest study has found that looking at positive news stories — specifically, videos and articles featuring acts of kindness — can actually counteract the ill-effects of seeing negative news stories.”

Poynter: Pink slime from AI content farms is a poor substitute for real journalism. “It’s pink slime on steroids. I’m writing, of course, about the creators of AI content farms that quickly churn out content related to current events using generative AI language-bots, like Open AI’s Chat GPT and Google’s Bard. A May 1 investigation by NewsGuard, an online trust-rating platform for news, found more than 49 such AI-generated content sites in seven languages: English, Tagalog, Portuguese, Thai, French, Czech and Chinese.”

Notre Dame News: The metaverse can lead to better science. “One Notre Dame researcher says we should look beyond the hype to see how virtual reality can make scientists more effective. But to realize the benefits, researchers must also plan well and avoid potential pitfalls.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

The Atlantic: Life Is About to Come With Subtitles. “‘How does that feel?’ I saw the captioned words right after Alex uttered them. Because I have always watched videos with closed captions on, my initial thought was that he’d stepped out of a TV screen to talk to me.” 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.

May 30, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/bRrZ5U4

Yom Kippur War, 2020 Census Demographics, Proton Family Plan, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 29, 2023

Yom Kippur War, 2020 Census Demographics, Proton Family Plan, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Times of Israel: ‘Egypt, Syria are coordinating’: IDF estimates on eve of Yom Kippur War declassified. “The Defense Ministry on Sunday launched a website hosting dozens of newly declassified documents, images, videos and other files from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in honor of the conflict’s 50th anniversary later this year.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

US Census Bureau: Census Bureau Releases New 2020 Census Data on Age, Sex, Race, Hispanic Origin, Households and Housing. “Today, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2020 Census Demographic Profile and Demographic and Housing Characteristics File (DHC). These products provide the next round of data available from the 2020 Census, adding more detail to the population counts and basic demographic and housing statistics previously released for the purposes of congressional apportionment and legislative redistricting.”

How-To Geek: Proton’s Family Plan Offers a Suite of Privacy Tools and Cloud Storage. “Families searching for a privacy-focused alternative to Google One now have at least one option. Proton just launched a family bundle of its own, which includes access to Proton’s full suite of apps and plenty of cloud storage.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNBC: Tech layoffs ravage the teams that fight online misinformation and hate speech. “Across the tech industry, as companies tighten their belts and impose hefty layoffs to address macroeconomic pressures and slowing revenue growth, wide swaths of people tasked with protecting the internet’s most-populous playgrounds are being shown the exits. The cuts come at a time of increased cyberbullying, which has been linked to higher rates of adolescent self-harm, and as the spread of misinformation and violent content collides with the exploding use of artificial intelligence.”

Motherboard: Captcha Is Asking Users to Identify Objects That Don’t Exist. “People trying to use Discord are being asked to identify an object that does not exist. The object in question is a ‘Yoko,’ which appears to be a kind of mix between a snail and a yoyo.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Driver’s Licenses, Addresses, Photos: Inside How TikTok Shares User Data. “The profusion of user data on Lark alarmed some TikTok employees, especially since ByteDance workers in China and elsewhere could easily see the material, according to internal reports and four current and former employees. Since at least July 2021, several security employees have warned ByteDance and TikTok executives about risks tied to the platform, according to the documents and the current and former workers.”

Merco Press: Brazilian gov’t, Google team up to filter hate speech. “Brazil’s Ministry of Racial Equality (MIR) and Google will develop a filter to prevent hate speech, intolerance, and racism to be disseminated through the internet, Agencia Brasil reported. The South American country’s authorities contacted the internet giant after becoming aware of a video game available through the multinational technology company’s app store in which the user acted as a ‘slave owner.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Sofia Globe: Diplomacy by disinformation: Russian embassies’ role in Kremlin’s information war. “On Twitter, for example, the overall number of posts by Russian diplomatic missions increased by 26 per cent in just a month after the war began. This is according to the Hamilton Dashboard – a database created by the German Marshall Fund to track the public messages coming from Russia and other states through media and social networks. The data shows also that the number of reactions and retweets of the Russian embassies’ posts over the same interval grew by over 200 per cent, while the disinformation in them became more blatant and aggressive.”

The Conversation: DIY degree? Why universities should make online educational materials free for all. “My proposal – also outlined in this journal article – is that a proportion of educational resources generated by publicly funded universities should be made public and freely available. This could radically expand opportunity and flexibility and potentially allow students to design their own degrees, by doing multiple different units from different universities.”

McGill University: Mapping the genetic history of French Canadians through space and time. “A new McGill University-led study is now providing insight into the complex relationship between human migration and genetic variation, using a unique genealogical dataset of over five million records spanning 400 years to unravel the genetic structure of French Canadian populations.” 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 30, 2023 at 12:08AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/gqheIpL

Exploring Search Results as Word Clouds: CloudSERP Explorer

Exploring Search Results as Word Clouds: CloudSERP Explorer
By ResearchBuzz

In my endless quest to find ways for users to create more detailed search queries without having lots of foreknowledge…

I made a Gizmo, CloudSERP Explorer, that queries WordPress, Bing, and Bing News, then shows the titles of the results as a word cloud (one cloud per query.) Clicking on a word takes you to a search of the cloud’s word-source using both the original query and the word you clicked on.

I started this as a goof but I like the way it turned out. The clouds for the different resources can look VERY different and make quite different impressions. And I find when I click on a word to do a search, it’s less because it looks relevant and more that it *doesn’t* — what in the world is that word doing in this cloud?

Those clicks take me to odd corners, which can be a good thing.

May 29, 2023 at 09:44PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/fyYQjl7

Wisconsin History, Mentoring Best Practices, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, May 29, 2023

Wisconsin History, Mentoring Best Practices, Twitter, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, May 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Wisconsin State Journal: Wisconsin to celebrate 175th birthday Monday. “The Wisconsin Historical Society has launched a new website celebrating a list of Wisconsin ‘visionaries, changemakers and storytellers.'”

American Council on Education: New Ace Brief, Search Tool Outline Effective Mentoring Programs And Practices For Graduate Education. “For students of color and other historically minoritized students, mentoring has been shown to be especially promising in encouraging their pursuit of graduate education, according to a new brief published by ACE….ACE’s new search tool offers examples of institutions that employ these various practices. Practices are organized into four stages of students’ academic journeys along the pathway into and through graduate education.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PressGazette: Twitter’s shrinking role as traffic source for news publishers revealed. “Twitter’s role as a traffic referral source to publishers’ sites has been shrinking. Data from publisher analytics firm Chartbeat shows that Twitter referral traffic, 1.9% of all traffic in April 2018 to 1,350 publisher sites included in the analysis, had fallen to 1.2% five years later in April this year.”

USEFUL STUFF

Slashgear: This Chrome Extension Helps Students Prove AI Didn’t Write Their Essays . “Draftback is a Google Chrome browser extension available as a free download from the Chrome Web Store. When installed, Draftback adds a special button to the top of a Google Doc interface that retraces the entire revision history of the document.”

MakeUseOf: 5 Free Interactive Presentation Tools You Can Try Online. “Giving a presentation that’s engaging can be difficult, especially if the material happens to be particularly dry. One of the best ways to keep audiences engaged is by making your presentation interactive. Luckily, there are plenty of online tools that aim to make creating interactive presentations as easy as possible. Here are five of the best for your consideration.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Library of Congress: Library of Congress Launches COVID-19 American History Project. “The Library of Congress has announced the congressionally-funded COVID-19 American History Project, a multiyear effort to collect, preserve and make available to the public the oral histories of frontline healthcare workers, survivors of loved ones who died, and others impacted by the pandemic.”

Progress-Index: Former tennis stars donate money to preserve historic Black student records housed at VSU. “Former women’s tennis stars Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss have donated money to Virginia State University to help preserve the history of Black athletes in the Jim Crow era. … The money will be used to digitize and preserve records of the Virginia Interscholastic Association currently housed at VSU. The records contain information about the achievements of Virginia-based Black athletes who were assisted by the work of the VIA.”

Canada’s National Observer: Wildfire conspiracy theories spread faster than flames. “Emergency responders and some politicians are exasperated and say this kind of disinformation hinders efforts to keep people safe during extreme weather events like the fires and to deal with climate change, which climate researchers say has fuelled the fires.”

BBC: French Open 2023: Grand Slam using AI to protect players from online abuse. “The Bodyguard technology aims to filter out abusive comments on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok and Discord. Players can scan a QR code to connect their social media accounts to its system, with the company stating it analyses every real-time comment in under 200 milliseconds and blocks abusive remarks.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBS: Nearly every state and D.C. sue telecom company over billions of robocalls. “Attorneys general from almost every state in the U.S. filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Avid Telecom, a company accused of making more than 7.5 billion robocalls to people on the National Do Not Call Registry. Attorneys general from the District of Columbia and every state except Alaska and South Dakota are acting as plaintiffs.”

Reuters: Judge Throws Out Shareholder Lawsuit Against Elon Musk Over Twitter Buyout. “A judge dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Elon Musk that claimed he cheated Twitter shareholders several times last year in the course of buying the social media company for $44 billion.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: A Hospital Visit Reveals Medieval Secrets Hidden in Books. “Even in medieval times, recycling was in vogue: Bits of parchment salvaged from older handwritten manuscripts were often used to reinforce other books. Using CT scanning, a team of researchers has now shown that those medieval leftovers hidden beneath some books’ covers can be seen.” 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.

May 29, 2023 at 05:33PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/E42X9qt

Google Chrome, Apple, Revitalizing Old PCs, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, May 28, 2023

Google Chrome, Apple, Revitalizing Old PCs, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, May 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: New ways to customize Chrome on your desktop. “Looking for more ways to make Chrome your own? With the latest updates to Chrome on desktop, it’s easier than ever to personalize the look and feel of your browser — exactly how you want it. Here’s a closer look at the ways you can customize Chrome to make it yours.”

Engadget: Apple’s free My Photo Stream service will shut down on July 26th. “Apple plans to shut down its My Photo Stream service on July 26th, 2023, the company announced on Friday. The free service has been available since the release of iCloud in 2011. You can use My Photo Stream to upload the last 30 days of images and videos – up to a limit of 1,000 – from your Apple devices to iCloud.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: 10 Inexpensive Ways to Breathe New Life Into an Old PC. “Why buy a new computer when the one you have just needs a little spring cleaning and some inexpensive upgrades to give you many more years of service? Here are some easy tips and tricks to rejuvenate your old PC.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Tom’s Hardware: Google’s AI Search Feels Like a Content Farm on Steroids. “Currently available for testing in limited beta, Google’s new Search Generative Experience (SGE) shifts the site from being a search engine that links the best content to a publication offering its own mini-articles. But instead of hiring expert writers to do the work, Google employs an AI that ingests data from human-authored content and spits out weaksauce advice with no expertise or authority to back it up.”

NPR: Can a chatbot help people with eating disorders as well as another human?. “The National Eating Disorders Association is shutting its telephone helpline down, firing its small staff and hundreds of volunteers. Instead it’s using a chatbot — and not because the bot is better.”

The Verge: A fake climate change theory is going viral on TikTok after Joe Rogan talked about it. “A made-up global warming theory discussed in the Joe Rogan Experience podcast is spreading on TikTok despite the platform’s new policy against climate disinformation, a new report shared exclusively with The Verge finds.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Twitter likely to quit EU code against disinformation, EU official says . “Twitter is likely to pull out from a voluntary EU code of practice to tackle disinformation, but the move does not mean it will quit Europe, an EU official said on Thursday.”

Bloomberg: US and Guam hit by Chinese hacking campaign: report . “An alleged campaign by Chinese state-sponsored hackers on targets in the US and Guam has raised fears that Beijing is preparing to disrupt communications in the Pacific in the event of a conflict. The hacking campaign was first identified by Microsoft Corp on Wednesday and quickly confirmed by authorities in the US, UK and other allied nations.”

South China Morning Post: As India goes digital, unsuspecting victims lose life savings to social media scams. “While cybercrimes are not new to India, a new wave of these crimes is spreading rapidly across the country … These crimes are pushing many deep into debt, and often, despair. Late last month, a software engineer in the southern city of Hyderabad took his own life after losing more than 1.2 million rupees in a similar scheme, just months after he got married.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Arizona: A new method for creating 3D images. “[Professor David] Brady developed the set of algorithms and strategies for measuring a two-dimensional hologram and used those measurements to estimate three-dimensional objects. The resulting image is not a photograph; rather, it is a three-dimensional representation of the scene. A person can view the 3D representation using interactive software or by 3D-printing a model, Brady said.”

Queen Mary University of London: Social media platforms letting down autistic users, new research shows. “While understanding and awareness of autism has majorly progressed in recent years, with around 7000 Brits diagnosed, most autistic adults in the UK still don’t get the support they need to be fully included in society. Autism can have a profound impact, with just 29% of autistic adults in any kind of work and new Government plans announced this month to boost employment prospects.”

New York Times: How Twitter Shrank Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis. “…for all its influence, social media is still downstream of other institutions — universities, newspapers, television channels, movie studios, other internet platforms. Twitter is real life, but only through its relationship to other realities; it doesn’t have the capacity to be a hub of discourse, news gathering or entertainment on its own. And many of Musk’s difficulties as the Twitter C.E.O. have reflected a simple overestimation of social media’s inherent authority and influence.” 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.

May 28, 2023 at 05:28PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/34mMxkZ

Nebraska Cultural Heritage, Scotland Endangered Archives, Google Chrome, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, May 27, 2023

Nebraska Cultural Heritage, Scotland Endangered Archives, Google Chrome, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, May 27, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Lincoln Journal-Star: WanderNebraska kicks off second year with 150 sites across state. “This Memorial Day weekend, the Nebraska State Historical Society Foundation will launch its 2023 WanderNebraska Travel Adventure Program with an expanded list of more than 150 sites across the state…To make things easier, the foundation also launched a new website featuring information about all 150 sites, including hours of operation, upcoming events, a map for directions and more.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Hold the Front Page: Newspaper archive featuring almost 1,000 titles saved after fundraising success. “A bid to save a collection of almost 1,000 historic newspapers has succeeded after raising more than £115,000 in six months. The National Library of Scotland launched the ‘Save Our Stories’ campaign, backed by The Scotsman, after warning around two-thirds of the newspapers in its archives risked being lost unless ‘essential conservation and preservation work’ was carried out.”

9to5 Google: Google Chrome extensions can now create a side panel UI. “In addition to your Bookmarks and Reading List, the desktop Chrome side panel will soon support Manifest V3 extensions that want to display an interface.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tom’s Hardware: Windows XP Offline Activation Enabled With This New Tool. “A recent blog post by TinyApps highlights the arrival of an offline tool that can successfully activate a Windows XP install. The new tool is safer than prior solutions, it isn’t a crack and it works completely offline. It doesn’t require online connectivity (a risky area for Win XP machines to tread), which is a considerable bonus.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Japan’s unlikely venue for G-7 discussions: A website beloved by anime fans. “The gathering of world leaders here has attracted an unlikely audience online: Japanese youths glued to more than 72 hours of summitry and offering real-time commentary on a livestreaming site popular among anime fans.”

Jerusalem Post: A digital Jewish library aims to add women’s Torah scholarship to its shelves. “Sefaria, the app that contains a digital collection of Jewish texts, has made everything from Genesis to an essay on Jewish law and gambling accessible at the tap of a finger. But in one way, it’s the same as nearly every other Jewish library in history: Almost all the texts, from ancient times to the present, are written by men. Now, Sefaria is hoping to chip away at that gender disparity by organizing and supporting a group of 20 women Torah scholars who are writing new books on Jewish texts.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: Deepfakes, Cheapfakes, and Twitter Censorship Mar Turkey’s Elections. “This election cycle has been marred by a torrent of misinformation and disinformation on social media, made more difficult by a media environment that, after years of pressure from the government, has been accused of systematic bias toward the incumbent president. That has intensified as the Erdoğan administration struggles to hold onto power.”

Bloomberg: China cracks down on over 1 million social media posts, accounts. “China said it took action on more than 1 million social media posts and accounts in its latest campaign to moderate online content that it regards as malicious. Authorities permanently banned 66,000 accounts and cracked down on 928,000 others in the drive that started in March, China’s cyberspace regulator said in a statement on Saturday.”

Reuters: US jury says Google owes Sonos $32.5 million in smart-speaker patent case. “Alphabet Inc’s Google must pay $32.5 million in damages for infringing one of smart-speaker maker Sonos Inc’s patents in its wireless audio devices, a San Francisco federal jury decided on Friday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence: Chat AIs can role-play humans in surveys and pilot studies. “Synthetic data from large language models can mimic human responses in interviews and questionnaires. Research data from popular crowdsourcing platforms may now contain fake responses that cannot be reliably detected, raising the risk of poisoned data.”

USC Viterbi School of Engineering: Can AI Teach Your Child Perseverance?. “A team of researchers that includes Emmanuel Johnson, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI), has been awarded a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund a new artificial intelligence institute focused on AI in education.”

University of Rochester: Large language models could be the catalyst for a new era of chemistry. “Large language models like the one behind the popular ChatGPT could transform the future of chemistry, according to a researcher at the University of Rochester. Andrew D. White, an associate professor of chemical engineering, outlines why he believes large language models (LLMs) represent the future of the field in an article published by Nature Reviews Chemistry.” 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.

May 27, 2023 at 09:08PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/ueJCF2x

Data Storytelling Asia, Henry Kissinger, Google Maps, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2023

Data Storytelling Asia, Henry Kissinger, Google Maps, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 26, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

International Journalists’ Network: New data storytelling tool available for journalists [Asia]. “Kontinentalist, a Singapore-based media that tells data stories about Asia, is launching Lapis, a no-code data storytelling tool that facilitates real-time collaboration and long-term community building, in December. The tool aims to spearhead data storytelling excellence in Asia and beyond, with support from the 2022 Google News Initiative (GNI) Challenge. Interested journalists can sign up to be one of the first on the new platform or help shape the tool as an alpha tester.”

National Security Archive: Henry Kissinger’s Documented Legacy. “To contribute to a balanced and more comprehensive evaluation of Kissinger’s legacy, the National Security Archive has compiled a small, select dossier of declassified records—memos, memcons, and ‘telcons’ that Kissinger wrote, said and/or read—documenting TOP SECRET deliberations, operations and policies during Kissinger’s time in the White House and Department of State.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

India Today: Google Maps Street View now available across India, even small village and town roads mapped and photographed. “The Google Maps Street View feature appears to be available in most Indian cities, letting users experience a ‘virtual representation’ of their surroundings. Google announced Street View for Maps in India last year, though it was initially launched in Bengaluru on a pilot basis.”

PC Magazine: YouTube Stories Heading for the Google Graveyard. “YouTube’s answer to Instagram stories, YouTube Stories, is being killed off. In a blog post(Opens in a new window) announcing the move, Google said that starting June 26 users will no longer be able to post Stories, and their existing posts will expire seven days after that.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Screen Rant: Shonen Jump Develops AI Manga Writing Tool, Steps Into Controversy. “Shonen Jump+’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief Yuta Momiyama tweeted out a link to the company’s new AI tool Comic-Copilot (or Comicopa for short), which is intended to help mangaka with simple tasks like refining dialogue and creating character names. Mangakas can ask the AI a question or give it a request and Comicopa will attempt to help them the best it can. The website stresses that the tool is meant to be used as an aid for mangakas and not their replacement and as of now this certainly rings true.”

CNN: Google removes ‘Slavery Simulator’ game from store following a wave of criticism in Brazil. ” A game entitled ‘Slavery Simulator,’ where players can ‘buy and sell’ enslaved Black characters, has been taken down from Google’s app store after widespread criticism from Brazilian social media users.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: The cyber gulag: How Russia tracks, censors and controls its citizens. “Rights advocates say that Russia under President Vladimir Putin has harnessed digital technology to track, censor and control the population, building what some call a ‘cyber gulag’ — a dark reference to the labor camps that held political prisoners in Soviet times. It’s new territory, even for a nation with a long history of spying on its citizens.”

The Hacker News: Severe Flaw in Google Cloud’s Cloud SQL Service Exposed Confidential Data. “A new security flaw has been disclosed in the Google Cloud Platform’s (GCP) Cloud SQL service that could be potentially exploited to obtain access to confidential data.”

NPR: TikTok sues Montana over its new law banning the app. “TikTok has filed a federal lawsuit against Montana after the state passed a law last week intended to ban the app from being downloaded within its borders. The widely expected lawsuit argues that banning a hugely popular social media app amounts to an illegal suppression of free speech tantamount to censorship.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Columbia Journalism Review: How the media is covering ChatGPT. “In order to better understand how ChatGPT is being covered by newsrooms, we interviewed a variety of academics and journalists on how the media has been framing coverage of generative AI chatbots. We also pulled data on the volume of coverage in online news using the Media Cloud database and on TV news using data from the Internet TV News Archive, which we acquired via The GDELT Project’s API, in order to get a sketch of the coverage so far.” 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 27, 2023 at 01:44AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/GTVrjDX