19th Century Japanese Scrolls Kodi 20.2 Google News More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz July 5 2023

19th Century Japanese Scrolls, Kodi 20.2, Google News, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 5, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Hawaii: Rare 200-year-old Japanese scrolls made accessible worldwide. “Students and scholars at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa (and worldwide) can now easily access and view the fine details of rare, hand-painted Japanese scrolls, made possible by UH Mānoa Library’s new state-of-the-art digitization lab.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: Kodi 20.2 Now Available With a Ton of Bug Fixes. “Kodi is an open-source media center that allows you to stream content from the internet, such as movies and shows, from servers and backends of your choosing. While Kodi 21 is in still development, a new update for Kodi 20 is rolling out.”

Reuters: Google to block news in Canada over law on paying publishers. “Google said on Thursday it plans to block Canadian news on its platform in Canada, joining Facebook in escalating a campaign against a new law requiring payments to local news publishers.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

MarketWatch: Yahoo CEO says company will seek a public listing again: report. “Yahoo, an early trailblazer of the Internet boom, is ‘very profitable,’ and ready to return to public markets via an initial public offering. That’s according to Chief Executive Jim Lanzone, who made the comments in an interview with the Financial Times that published Tuesday. Yahoo soared to prominence in the 1990s, along with its share price during the dot-com boom.”

Toronto Star: A website spread disinformation about Canada. Why did major Indian outlets treat it as news?. “A report about a conference in Toronto on Sikh terrorism was posted last May on the website of a now defunct Canadian-based think tank. The problem? There’s no evidence the Star could find that the conference took place or that the listed speakers even exist. But multiple Indian news outlets picked up the report, treating it as news.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: LetMeSpy, a phone tracking app spying on thousands, says it was hacked. “A hacker has stolen the messages, call logs and locations intercepted by a widely used phone monitoring app called LetMeSpy, according to the company that makes the spyware.”

WIRED: Pornhub Is Being Accused of Illegal Data Collection. “THERE AREN’T MANY websites bigger than Pornhub. Each month, more than 2 billion people visit the adult site, spending an average of almost eight minutes browsing and watching videos—an eternity in internet time. All that activity has the potential to generate huge volumes of data. Now Pornhub is facing a series of legal challenges across Europe over the information it collects.”

Axios: France approves law requiring parental consent for minors on social media. “France approved a new law Thursday requiring social media platforms like TikTok to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for those under 15 years in an effort to protect children online.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Mixed Conclusions: Canadian Legal Problems Survey: Data Dashboard. “In this blogpost, I describe the construction of a dashboard from the main CLPS dataset itself. First, I’ll give an overview of the organization of the project and go through the structure of the data. Then I’ll describe some simple data validation procedures I performed using a data validation toolkit called Pandera. Finally, I’ll spend the bulk of this post describing the dashboard and its implementation, including various issues I encountered.”

Pew: #BlackLivesMatter Turns 10. “In July 2013, activists first used the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to spark conversation about racism, violence and the criminal justice system following George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. Ten years later, Black Lives Matter stands as a model of a new generation of social movements intrinsically linked to social media.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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July 6, 2023 at 12:36AM
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Google TweetDeck Self-Hosting Memos More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz July 5 2023

Google, TweetDeck, Self-Hosting Memos, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, July 5, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Google Says It will Scrape Everything You Post Online for AI. “Google updated its privacy policy over the weekend, explicitly saying the company reserves the right to scrape just about everything you post online to build its AI tools. If Google can read your words, assume they belong to the company now, and expect that they’re nesting somewhere in the bowels of a chatbot.” I’m trying to square this with the concept of personal intellectual property and having a hard time.

9to5 Mac: Twitter locking TweetDeck behind a paywall, forcing users to switch to the new design. “Twitter has officially announced a change that many of us saw coming. Starting next month, the company is putting TweetDeck behind a paywall, requiring that users subscribe to Twitter Blue to access the more advanced, multi-column version of Twitter.” (This will be what finally gets me off Twitter. I’m on Mastodon at researchbuzz@researchbuzz.masto.host .)

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Search Showing 50% Fewer Twitter URLs After Twitter Blocked Unregistered Users. “On Friday afternoon, Twitter decided to block unregistered, signed-out users, from seeing public tweets. That meant that for Google’s normal crawling purposes, it was unable to see some of these tweets. It seems that Google now has about 52% fewer Twitter URLs in its index today than it had on Friday, just a few days later.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: Memos Is a Simple Self-Hosted Alternative to Google Keep and Evernote. “Cross-platform note-taking apps that allow you to sync and interact with notes and images across devices are essential if you want to stay organized. Synchronization needs to be handled by a central server, which means that your jottings are controlled by a third party you may not fully trust, and which can monitor or delete your content at will. By running Memos on Raspberry Pi, you control the server, and can take the privacy and security of your notes into your own hands. The article focuses a lot on privacy, but this will also work for those of you worried that Google will cancel Keep at any moment…

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Hold the Front Page: Fake journalist profiles used to launch new local news title. “Fake journalist profiles have been used to launch a new website purporting to cover local news in a UK town, an HTFP investigation has found. Photos taken from a stock picture archive were used by the Bournemouth Observer, which claims to be a new independent title serving Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch, to illustrate a series of profiles of its journalists.”

KPEL: I-10 Westbound Open Over Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, Despite Google Maps Saying Otherwise. “According to Google Maps, I-10 westbound is closed at the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge until July 13. One Lafayette family, traveling home from Baton Rouge, told KPEL News that other travel apps on their phone said no such thing. It’s just Google Maps.”

New York Times: Written in the Stars? More Like Written by A.I.. “Astrologers for centuries have referred to the movement and positions of planets and other celestial bodies to inform readings and horoscopes. Co-Star follows similar methods, but its daily readings are prepared by A.I. that pulls text from a database written for the app by a team of astrologers and poets.” So it’s a chat interface on top of a search engine?

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Twitter Accused of Ducking a Fight Over Musk’s Mass Layoffs. “The company now known as X Corp. has been accused in multiple suits of numerous labor and workplace violations, including its failure to pay thousands of workers laid off late last year after Musk’s acquisition. About 2,000 former Twitter employees have resorted to fighting their claims in arbitration as the company has demanded — but Twitter hasn’t shown up, according to a complaint filed Monday in San Francisco federal court.”

TechCrunch: Stop using Google Analytics, warns Sweden’s privacy watchdog, as it issues over $1M in fines. “Sweden’s data protection watchdog has issued a couple of fines in relation to exports of European users’ data via Google Analytics which it found breach the bloc’s privacy rulebook owing to risks posed by U.S. government surveillance. It has also warned other companies against use of Google’s tool.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ubergizmo: Alphabet Invests In Laser Technology For Internet Connectivity In Remote Regions. “Alphabet — the parent company of Google — is embarking on an ambitious endeavor to extend internet access to remote and underserved regions. Departing from the conventional use of high-altitude balloons in the stratosphere, Alphabet is employing cutting-edge laser technology to achieve its goal.”

UNESCO: Generative Artificial Intelligence in education: What are the opportunities and challenges?. “In her think piece, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education, Stefania Giannini expresses her concerns that the checks and balances applied to teaching materials are not being used to the implementation of generative AI. While highlighting that AI tools open new opportunities for learning, she underscores that regulations can only be built once the proper research has been conducted.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Motherboard: 2,200 Forgotten Vintage Computers Are Being Liberated From a Barn in Massachusetts. ” These computers, with a weight equivalent to roughly 11 full-size vehicles, were basically new, other than the fact that they had sat unopened and unused for nearly four decades, roughly half that time inside this barn. Every box was ‘new old stock,’ essentially a manufactured time capsule, waiting to be found by somebody. These machines, featuring the label of a forgotten brand built around an idea that was tragically too early to succeed, could have disappeared, anonymously, into the junkyard of history, as so many others like them have.” 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.

July 5, 2023 at 05:29PM
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Leonardo da Vinci UK Active Travel Mastodon More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz July 4 2023

Leonardo da Vinci, UK Active Travel, Mastodon, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 4, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: Leonardo da Vinci: Inside a genius mind. “Leonardo da Vinci, the master of many disciplines, transformed humanity’s horizons through his art, science, and ingenuity. Today, in collaboration with 28 institutions from around the world, Google Arts & Culture unveils Inside a Genius Mind — the largest online retrospective dedicated to the genius of the Renaissance, showcasing his extraordinary codices alongside his artistic and scientific contributions.”

Cities Today: Data tool launched to support UK active travel policies. “The Sustrans Walking and Cycling Index Data Tool, created in partnership with software design agency B Team, is designed to provide policymakers in local and national government, campaigners, researchers and the general public with deeper insights into active travel trends. Active travel data from 2019 and 2021 can be compared, segmented and analysed for use in research and policy through two dashboards on behaviour and attitudes.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: German alternative Mastodon gets boost from newly restricted Twitter. “‘Looks like Mastodon’s active user base has increased by 110K (110,000) over the last day. Not bad,’ Eugen Rochko, creator and chief executive of Mastodon, wrote on the platform late on Sunday. ‘I would prefer it if Elon Musk was destroying his site during the work week. This isn’t the first time,’ another post from Rochko read.”

Futurism: Social Media App Shuts Down After Admitting 95% of Users Were Bots. “According to the report, app founder and CEO Abraham Shafi repeatedly claimed over the course of several years that the app boasted roughly 20 million users. The company raised nearly $200 million from the likes of SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, among others. Following a series of reports by The Information, which questioned the app’s advertised number of users, the company’s board of investors suspended Shafi and launched an investigation, ultimately revealing that IRL user figures were almost entirely fudged.”

USEFUL STUFF

International Journalists’ Network: How journalists can use new visual techniques to create viral stories. “Emojis, memes and gifs: you may text with them on a daily basis, but did you know you can also use them in your reporting to boost engagement? These newer forms of visual journalism can help amplify the truth and reach larger audiences in a media ecosystem today in which false information proliferates too easily.”

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

Hongkiat: 15 Chrome Extensions to Spice Up Blank New Tabs . “In this post, I’ve pulled together 15 Chrome tab extensions that can help you be more organized, be more relaxed, learn more things, and even a few that will give you a laugh or two. Say goodbye to empty newly opened tabs and say hello to better days with more useful and effective replacements.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: The Reddit moderators who coordinate many celebrity AMAs will no longer do so. “r/IAmA has more than 22 million subscribers, so the subreddit offers a potentially big audience for anyone thinking about promoting what they’re working on or just looking to chat with the Reddit hivemind. But now that the community’s moderators will no longer be actively working with notable people and their teams, it will be that much more difficult to trust that the person doing an AMA is the real deal. The moderators, who are unpaid volunteers, will stop doing the following activities ‘effective immediately,’ according to the post.”

New York Times: ‘Now, Let’s Be a Starfish!’: Learning With Ms. Rachel, Song by Song. “Wearing her signature bluejean overalls, pink T-shirt and a matching headband, she became that friendly woman from the videos: the one who joyfully pronounces words, babbles if necessary, waves and sings to instruct her little viewers. She had morphed publicly into Ms. Rachel, playfully described as the ‘Beyoncé for toddlers’ in a TikTok comment.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Business Insider: A Saudi woman was given 30 years in prison for criticizing the Neom megacity project on Twitter. “Saudi Arabia imprisoned a woman for 30 years for criticizing the Neom megacity project on Twitter, according to an activist group. ALQST, a UK-based human rights group, said a Saudi court sentenced Fatima al-Shawarbi to 30 years during a recent appeal hearing.” 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.

July 5, 2023 at 12:14AM
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Misinformation Dissemination Chinese Exclusion Act Gfycat More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz July 4 2023

Misinformation Dissemination, Chinese Exclusion Act, Gfycat, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, July 4, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Northeastern University: Why do rational people believe lies online? Northeastern research explains how misinformation spreads . “Spanning three departments—philosophy, economics and computer science—at Northeastern University London, the project uses computer simulations to help us learn more about how knowledge flows within a social media community. Now two years in, the researchers have launched an interactive website and made some impressive discoveries, including insight into how and why rational people can come to believe the wrong thing.”

Washington Post: Ancestry records released from era when U.S. banned Chinese immigrants. “A new database released Thursday gives users around the world access to information related to the Chinese exclusion era — six decades during which the United States and Canada barred entry to most people of Chinese descent and limited the rights of those who had already come.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Gfycat is shutting down, so save your best reaction GIFs now. “Gfycat is being put down. The GIF-hosting platform has announced it will soon shut down, with its entire archive of funny GIFs and memes set to disappear in just under two months, on Sept. 1.”

TechCrunch: Proton launches its password manager Proton Pass. “A couple of months after unveiling Proton Pass, Proton — the company behind end-to-end encrypted email service Proton Mail — is officially launching its password manager to everyone. As a reminder, Proton Pass is an end-to-end encrypted password manager for individuals and (soon) families.”

Bleeping Computer: YouTube tests restricting ad blocker users to 3 video views. “YouTube is currently running what it describes as a ‘small experiment globally,’ warning users to toggle off their ad blockers and avoid being limited to only three video views. As first spotted by a Reddit user on Wednesday, YouTube now displays a pop-up that notifies ad blocker users targeted by this test that ‘video player will be blocked after 3 videos.'”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: Why CEO David Baszucki is ready for Roblox to grow up. “It’s been years since the number of adults gaming outnumbered kids — it seems like that’s driving a lot of growth for everyone, including Roblox. But these virtual world games seem like they all want to expand to be much more than just for kids and much more than just for games.”

VOA: Ethiopia’s Social Media Ban Brings Challenges. “Four months into a social media ban, communications businesses and civil rights groups in Ethiopia are feeling the impact. Strict regulations are making it harder for them to reach audiences or verify information.”

Review Geek: ‘The Password Game’ Perfectly Parodies the Worst Part of the Internet. “Developed by Neal.fun, The Password Game is an excellent parody of the average website’s signup process. It starts out nice and easy—choose a password that’s at least five characters. Then, the game says you’ve forgotten to include a number and uppercase letter. Alright, that’s not too hard. Before you know it, The Password Game will force you to perform algebra, decipher strange codes, and dip into distant memories.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Hill: DEA administrator says social media companies not complying to address fentanyl crisis. “Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram said Sunday that various social media companies are not complying with them to help address the ongoing fentanyl crisis.”

Reuters: Australian firm sues Twitter for $665,000 for not paying bills. “An Australian project management firm has filed a lawsuit against Twitter Inc in a U.S. court seeking cumulative payments of about A$1 million ($665,000) over alleged non-payment of bills for work done in four countries, court filings showed.”

New York Times: Cracking Down on Dissent, Russia Seeds a Surveillance Supply Chain. “Russia is incubating a cottage industry of new digital surveillance tools to suppress domestic opposition to the war in Ukraine. The tech may also be sold overseas.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Business Review: 13 Principles for Using AI Responsibly. “Leaders, prioritizing speed to market, are driving the current AI arms race in which major corporate players are rushing products and potentially short-changing critical considerations like ethical guidelines, bias detection, and safety measures. For instance, major tech corporations are laying off their AI ethics teams precisely at a time when responsible actions are needed most.” 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.

July 4, 2023 at 05:26PM
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Illinois Crime WWII Military History Twitter More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz July 3 2023

Illinois Crime, WWII Military History, Twitter, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 3, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Illinois State Police: Illinois State Police Announces a New Public Website for Crime Statistics. “Crime in Illinois Online includes data on crime rates per county, the type of offenses, trends, and more. The website is interactive and contains pin-point crime mapping, data tables, FAQs, agency compliance tracking, and the ability to download crime reports. Previous years’ Crime in Illinois Annual Uniform Crime Reports will still be available and future reports will be presented in the
same format.”

University of Southern Mississippi: WWII Combat StoryMap: 103rd Infantry Division. “In 2022, the Dale Center began a new, multi-year digital humanities project designed to create a new website highlighting the wartime history of the division along with a digital document collection of the division’s historical record. As part of that project, the Dale Center’s 103rd Infantry Division project team created an interactive, digital-narrative timeline and map of the Division’s history, called a StoryMap.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Waxy: Twitter bug causes self-DDOS tied to Elon Musk’s emergency blocks and rate limits: “It’s amateur hour”. “Are shadowy AI companies scraping Twitter for training data? Maybe! But on Mastodon this morning, web developer Sheldon Chang noticed another source of unusual traffic: a bug in Twitter’s web app that is constantly sending requests to Twitter in an infinite loop.”

Bleeping Computer: Twitter’s bot spam keeps getting worse — it’s about porn this time. “Forget crypto spam accounts, Twitter’s got another problem which involves bots and accounts promoting adult content and infiltrating Direct Messages and interactions on the platform. And there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution in sight. While the problem has existed for while, the uptick in porn bots is ironic, given Elon Musk’s promising claims of tackling bots and fake accounts on Twitter, after his acquisition of the platform.”

The Verge: At least one big third-party Reddit iOS app will live on. “Many Reddit users are mourning the June 30th shutdowns of third-party apps like Apollo for Reddit, rif is fun for Reddit (RIF), and BaconReader, but at least one popular Reddit app will still be around: Narwhal for Reddit.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 13 Ways to Give Vivaldi a Complete Makeover. “There are dozens of ways to make your Vivaldi browser look, feel, and behave more uniquely. From basic theme changes to using mouse gestures as a means to navigate the internet in a more efficient manner, Vivaldi offers plenty of customization options.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Why social media is being blamed for fueling the riots in France. “Social media companies are once again under scrutiny, this time in France as the country’s president blames TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms for helping fuel widespread riots over the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old driver.”

Ars Technica: Torrent of image-based phishing emails are harder to detect and more convincing. “Phishing mongers have released a torrent of image-based junk emails that embed QR codes into their bodies to successfully bypass security protections and provide a level of customization to more easily fool recipients, researchers said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

US Department of Energy: U.S. Department of Energy Releases Plan to Ensure Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research. “Key elements of the new DOE public access plan, as laid out by OSTP, will include elimination of any ’embargo’ period before the public gains free access to journal articles or final accepted manuscripts resulting from federal funding; immediate access to scientific data displayed in or underlying publications and expanded access to scientific data not displayed in publications; and broad adoption of persistent identifiers (PIDs) for research outputs, organizations, awards and contracts, and people.”

TechXplore: Rendering three-dimensional images from eye reflections with NeRF. “Vision depends on light entering the eyes through the transparent tissues of the cornea, pupil and lens. When the light reaches the retina, photoreceptors produce signals and transmit them via the optical nerve to the brain, where an image is formed. Some of that light entering the eye is reflected back into the world by a highly reflective thin film of fluid covering the cornea. Researchers at the University of Maryland were able to capture this reflected light and extract a three-dimensional model of the surroundings.” 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.

July 4, 2023 at 12:49AM
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Considering a Post-Twitter World With Mastodon

Considering a Post-Twitter World With Mastodon
By ResearchBuzz

While not everyone was willing to bet on a certain date, much of the Very Online community has been waiting for Twitter to experience some kind of big-enough, ridiculous-enough catastrophe that the user base would be permanently fractured. Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the company has been making incomprehensible decisions, refusing in many cases to pay its bills, and enduring as its CEO a man who would surely be facing greater consequences from his behavior were it not for the protective buffer of ridiculous wealth.

Unfortunately for Mr. Musk, the consequences of unpredictable behavior  eventually become predictable; after firing over 80% of the company’s personnel , Twitter has been sputtering. Over the weekend Elon Musk suddenly made the decision to start limiting the number of tweets users could read; this followed Twitter’s decision to limit view-ability of its content to logged-in users. There’s a lot of debate over why Twitter and Elon Musk are both currently behaving as they are (I am inclined to believe Andy Baio’s assessment) but the upshot is this: Twitter is no longer reliable. Spam bots are worse than ever. Entire countries have been questioning the increase of hate on the platform. And users are leaving in droves. Where does that leave you, person who wants the news and the community but does not want the hate or the drama? You do have options. You have LOTS of options considering all the apps and networks that have popped up, but in this article I’m going to talk about Mastodon.

Mastodon is a decentralized network made up of individual servers, not a single server at the mercy of being ruined by inexplicable acts/actors.  Some people think that because Mastodon is decentralized, it’s too complicated for the average user. I don’t think that’s the case. There are lots of ways Mastodon could be made friendlier, to be sure, but there are lots of people working on that, including me. (More on that later.)

In this article I’m going to highlight some resources I think you should know about and introduce you to several Mastodon tools I’ve made (including four I produced this weekend because apparently Twitter falling apart is good for my creativity.) If you’d like to follow me on Mastodon, I’m researchbuzz@researchbuzz.masto.host.

Getting Started

For an in-depth, all-round walkthrough on how to use Mastodon, I still think Danielle Navarro’s primer, Everything I know about Mastodon, is your best bet. This will tell you everything you need to get started.

If you don’t have time to read that and want more of a “just the facts” primer, check out Clive Thompson’s Come Join Me on Mastodon, Folks .

On the other hand, if you’re the type who likes their guides with lots of asides and interesting-but-not-immediately-useful background and some silliness, I heartily recommend Skulls in the Stars’ An intro to Mastodon from a relative newcomer!

Finding People to Follow

There is a big, active project called Academics on Mastodon which aggregates lists of Mastodon user names by academic community (using Google Sheets, mostly.) The lists range from African Studies to Theologidons, but there are also sections for academic groups (formal network structures on Mastodon),

There’s a tool called Fedifinder that was designed to find those in your Twitter community who had moved to Mastodon. I would have expected with Twitter’s changes that this tool would no longer work, but as of this writing (July 3) it apparently does. I used it last November, and it helped me a lot finding my Twitter people on Mastodon.

Fedified has a tool called Discover Mastodon, which describes itself as “A dynamic collection of engaging Mastodon accounts, organized by topic area.” When I wrote about Fedified last fall, I noted “Fedified is a project managing a spreadsheet of 207 (at this writing) Mastodon accounts of Twitter verified users,” so I suspect this listing is being vetted in some way. I did notice several names that were instantly familiar if you’re a big Twitter user: Neil Gaiman, Jessamyn West, Ed Bott. There are lots of people listed here but I wasn’t super impressed by the diversity.

Fedi.Directory is a human-curated, searchable subject index of Mastodon accounts. Want to find people who talk about Commodore 64, or art history, or solarpunk? This is where you can get really specific.

If you’ve followed ResearchBuzz for a while, you know I created a couple of Mastodon resource lists last November. Between the two of them, the lists contain over 80 different resources related to Mastodon. I haven’t checked the links since I wrote it so I don’t know if they all work, but I suspect that enough of them do that it’s worth a browse. Here is part I and here is part II.

Tools

In addition to curating the Mastodon resource list, I’ve also built several Mastodon-related tools, things that should help a beginner Mastodon user  understand how things work, or simply understand the possibilities. These tools may not work on your phone because of (what I think are) conflicts between the WordPress JavaScript and my JavaScript. These tools are both free and ad-free.

Mastodon URL Helper —  Mastodon’s username format can be confusing to the new user. Enter your Mastodon user name and MUH breaks it down for you, showing you your user name, your instance name, your home page, and how you can get RSS feeds of your content.

MastoTrends — Want to see popular links that are flying around Mastodon? Just open this page. It grabs some random large servers via the Instances.Social API, looks at their popular link lists, and filters them for duplicates. All you have to do is browse.

MastoWindow — Mastodon is very hashtag-friendly. MastoWindow lets you search for Mastodon instances and and explore their hashtag content.

MastoWindow v2 — Browsing hashtags one instance at a time is great, but sometimes you want to do a wider search. MastoWindow v2 searches for hashtags across a number of Mastodon instances (over 80 at this writing.)

RSStodon v2 — I’m not going to include the first version of RSStodon here, because it stunk. But that’s why I made version 2. Enter the language code of your choice and a hashtag, and RSStodon will create RSS feeds for that hashtag from the top 10 Mastodon instances in your language of choice (as listed on Instances.Social.) Not only that, the feeds are bundled into an OPML file that you can download and import to your favorite RSS feed reader.

Mastodon Web Search — You can’t search across all of Mastodon’s instances at once because it’s decentralized, but what if you tried it using Google? MWS looks up Mastodon instances via the Instances.Social API and bundles them into a Google search with the site: syntax.

July 3, 2023 at 09:19PM
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India Street Lettering NOAA Student Opportunities Electric School Buses More: Monday ResearchBuzz July 3 2023

India Street Lettering, NOAA Student Opportunities, Electric School Buses, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, July 3, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, and I was alerted to its existence from a recent news article that isn’t nearly as good as this old one from Scroll.In: Not Arial or Times New Roman, Indian streets are ruled by charming homegrown fonts. “As she was walking down a street in Panjim in 2017, a shop sign caught the eye of Pooja Saxena, a typeface and graphic designer. The wooden sign, written in cursive Sans Serif font, was advertising Bentex watches and straps. It was the elaborately designed ‘B’ with its multiple curves and an eye in the middle that intrigued her. It was the perfect addition to her online project, titled India Street Lettering, where she documents street lettering and signage from across India.”

NOAA: NOAA launches new student opportunities database!. “The new student opportunities database is a searchable database of more than 60 scholarships, fellowships, internships, youth programs, and more across NOAA and our partners. The database includes opportunities appropriate for kindergarten through graduate students and recent graduates. Users can filter by grade level, type of opportunity, citizenship requirement, application period, and in-person and virtual opportunities.”

School Transportation News: WRI Releases Comprehensive Electric School Bus Dashboard. “WRI’s Electric School Bus Initiative is collecting and electric school bus or ESB data for school districts, policymakers and communities to track and accelerate toward an equitable transition. Its new Electric School Bus Dashboard, published June 22, offers data on various topics relating to ESBs, such as state adoption, school district adoption, equity, and funding.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Apollo and other popular third-party Reddit apps have shut down. “Several popular third-party Reddit apps are no longer operational, while a few have chosen to charge users for access, now that the website’s new API rules are in effect. In a lengthy post bidding farewell, Apollo founder Christian Selig said Reddit pulled the plug a little too early, cutting off the app’s access to content on the website.”

The Verge: Twitter has started blocking unregistered users. “If you currently try to access Twitter without logging in to your user account, you’ll be unable to see any of the content that was previously available to the wider public. Instead, you’ll meet a Twitter window that asks you to either sign in to the platform or create a new account, effectively blocking you from viewing tweets and user profiles or browsing through threads unless you’re a registered Twitter user.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Journal (Ireland): Elon Musk has ‘ambivalent’ stance on misinformation and harassment, ex-Twitter safety chief claims. “TWITTER’S FORMER SAFETY chief has claimed that Elon Musk has an ‘ambivalent’ attitude towards misinformation and that the company has undergone a ‘stunning transformation’ under the billionaire’s ownership. Yoel Roth, who served as Twitter’s Head of Trust and Safety until November last year, believes that his former department, whose tasks included fighting misinformation, is no longer operational.”

Techradar: ChatGPT is now a brilliant tool for winding up telemarketers and scammers. ” A recent Wall Street Journal report details one of these engagements where a telemarketer claiming to be from Bank of America called a potential mark only to be answered by Whitey Whitebeard, one of the AIs. Whitey, as a character, has a habit of speaking in circles. The AI was so effective at its job the scammer eventually hung up out of sheer exhaustion about six minutes into the call.”

University of Birmingham: New project brings the work of Stuart Hall back into the spotlight. “A new multidisciplinary project will expand public understanding and engagement with the work of the celebrated cultural theorist, Professor Stuart Hall. Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-British academic, writer, cultural studies pioneer, public intellectual and teacher who was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1932. As a leading public intellectual, he made major interventions in the cultural and political life of Britain, such as coining the term ‘Thatcherism’ and his work on race and class.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

VOA: FBI Turning to Social Media to Track Traitors. “The video is part of an expansive, long-running campaign by the FBI to use social media advertisements to recruit disgruntled Russian officials stationed across the United States and beyond, in part to sniff out Americans who have betrayed their country in order to aid Moscow. A VOA analysis finds the FBI has paid tens of thousands of dollars, at minimum, to multiple platforms for social media ads targeting Russian officials, with the pace of such ad buys increasing just before and then after Moscow launched its latest invasion of Ukraine.”

United States Courts: Librarians Trade Books for Databases in the Digital Age. “This month, courts are marking the 75th anniversary of the creation of the circuit librarian position, a role that today makes possible a wide variety of services in the digital age. Librarians train court professionals to make effective use of databases and presentation tools, negotiate contracts for legal research services, plan and staff court civics and community outreach events, archive court historical data, produce news summaries, and monitor social media.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: A.I. Is Coming for Mathematics, Too. “In 2019, Christian Szegedy, a computer scientist formerly at Google and now at a start-up in the Bay Area, predicted that a computer system would match or exceed the problem-solving ability of the best human mathematicians within a decade. Last year he revised the target date to 2026.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

USAID: The United States and Sesame Workshop Partner to Support Ukrainian Children and Families Affected by Russia’s War Against Ukraine . “Through funding provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of State, Ukrainian children and families will now have access to new Sesame Street content in Ukrainian language, as well as tools and resources to help children, caregivers, and teachers process the trauma of conflict and displacement. These resources include animated videos and teacher training workshops.” Good morning, Internet…

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July 3, 2023 at 05:29PM
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