TikTok Wikipedia Google Sheets More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz July 6 2023

TikTok, Wikipedia, Google Sheets, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 6, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: TikTok-owner ByteDance debuts Ripple music creation app. “Ripple can create songs in various genres based on a melody the user hums. The app prompts them into humming into the phone mic and then generates instrumentals they can use, such as drums, bass and piano. The length of the song output will match the length of the input, though — the app can’t generate a full soundtrack from just a few seconds of humming. Also, Ripple can only generate instrumental music, leaving the vocal work to creators.”

Boing Boing: Wikipedia updates its Creative Commons license. “Wikipedia is moving to the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, from the old version it’s used for years. What’s the difference? It means that other v4-licensed material can be added to Wikipedia verbatim, it’s written with international law in mind, it has simpler attribution requirements, and is easier for laypersons to read and understand.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 11 Lesser-Known Google Sheets Functions You Can Use Every Day. “Google Sheets has some terrific features that you probably use all the time. But when it comes to functions, there may be several you didn’t know existed. These handy functions and their accompanying formulas help you compare values, get financial data, convert arrays to columns or rows, and more. This list includes 11 lesser-known Google Sheets functions that can help you be more productive.”

MakeUseOf: 4 Chrome Extensions That Simulate Color Blindness. “If you’re looking for online tools that raise awareness about color blindness by letting you browse through the lens of someone with color deficiency, look no further. People who suffer from color blindness can find it challenging to browse effectively, especially when some websites rely heavily on using certain colors to deliver signs and information.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: A viral left-wing Twitter account may have been fake all along. “In eight months, Erica Marsh has become one of the most consistently viral left-wing voices on Twitter, gaining more than 130,000 followers for her hyper-liberal, often melodramatic opinions on the biggest flash points in American news…. There’s just one problem: She’s probably a fake.”

NPR: For the record: We visit Colleen Shogan, the first woman appointed U.S. Archivist . “Shogan is the first woman ever appointed to be National Archivist. Her job is to make sure that the nation’s history — through its documents — is preserved. The archives contain 13.5 billion records. Everything from the Constitution to the 19th Amendment to the papers your grandfather might have submitted to join the U.S. Army.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Search Engine Journal: ChatGPT Disables ‘Browse With Bing’ Amid Legal Challenges. “OpenAI suspends ChatGPT’s ‘Browse with Bing’ amid content concerns while facing lawsuits over copyright and data privacy violations.”

Mashable: Sharing deepfake porn criminalised in England and Wales . “The government is cracking down on image based sexual abuse in England and Wales. Deepfake porn — which uses editing technology to make and share fake images of a person without consent — will be criminalised under the new measures announced(opens in a new tab) today.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford University: A New Approach Trains Large Language Models in Half the Time. “A Stanford team has developed Sophia, a new way to optimize the pretraining of large language models that’s twice as fast as current approaches.”

University of Manchester: Ukraine data project is recognised for its innovation by OECD. “A project involving experts from The University of Manchester which created a live ‘early alarm’ system of major displacement, human rights abuses, humanitarian needs and civilian resistance in Ukraine has been recognised by the OECD’s Observatory of Public Sector Innovation.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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July 7, 2023 at 12:48AM
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United States History Global Migration Twitter More: Thursday ResearchBuzz July 6 2023

United States History, Global Migration, Twitter, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, July 6, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Library of Congress: Our Invitation to You: Celebrate America’s 250th Anniversary. “America’s Invitation is an opportunity for Americans across the country, from every background, to take part in reflecting on our past and looking to the future by sharing their stories, and the things they love about America, as we continue to strive for ‘a more perfect union.'”

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis: New IIASA online tool to visualize global migration patterns. “Developed by Guy Abel, a researcher in the Migration and Sustainable Development Research Group of the IIASA Population and Just Societies Program and at Shanghai University, and Xavier Bolló, a data visualization specialist, the website offers users a unique opportunity to delve into the complex dynamics of global migration. It presents six different estimation methods that researchers can use to gain insights into migration flows.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNBC: Twitter says rate limits were to help thwart bots, ‘small percentage’ of users currently affected. “Recent usage limits on Twitter were implemented to ‘detect and eliminate bots and other bad actors,’ the company said Tuesday, adding that only a ‘small percentage” of users are currently affected.’

Ukrinform: 1,582 Ukraine’s cultural infrastructure objects already damaged due to war . “‘The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine continues to record damage to cultural infrastructure in Ukraine as a result of Russian aggression. Thus, as of June 26, 2023, 1,582 cultural infrastructure objects, excluding monuments of cultural heritage, suffered damage. Of them, almost a third (585) were destroyed,’ the Ministry’s press service reports.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Loneliness is taking friend-making apps mainstream. “While online dating took over its analog predecessor as the most common way romantic couples meet, online friend-making has received relatively little attention. Now, post-pandemic loneliness is driving young adults like Walton to look for friends more intentionally and, for many, that means turning to the internet.”

New York Times: TikTok Sells a Lot of Books. Now, Its Owner Wants to Publish Them, Too.. “A new publishing company began courting self-published romance writers earlier this year. The pitch, delivered in a generic email, was impersonal and formulaic. The terms weren’t generous, sometimes amounting to just a few thousand dollars for the rights to a book. Then came the clincher. The publisher was ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, a social media company that traffics in short videos and has, over the past several years, helped create some of the biggest best sellers on the market.”

SB Nation: Gronk is sick of getting rizzed up by Baby Gronk’s dad. “Three weeks ago the world learned about the nonsensical madness that is Baby Gronk. Jake San Miguel, a promising 10-year-old football player from California has been transformed into an influencer by his father, who is hawking out his son to anyone who will take a photo with him in an attempt to create fame.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC News: Federal judge restricts Biden officials from contact with social media firms. “A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday restricted some agencies and officials of the administration of President Joe Biden from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content, according to a court filing.”

WION: French officials fine Google $2.2 million over incomplete search results. “Google was fined $2.2 million by the French authorities on Tuesday over incomplete results in its search engine and app store. The Competition, Consumer and Anti-Fraud Office said the US tech firm’s search engine failed to provide adequate information concerning the ranking criteria of results. It said that the results for searches on tourism accommodation lacked explanations for the prices.”

Engadget: Tech giant ‘gatekeepers’ must comply with all of the EU’s new digital market rules . “Seven companies, mostly made up of American tech giants, have notified the European Commission that they meet the criteria to be classified as ‘gatekeepers’ under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok owner ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft and Samsung have declared that they meet the thresholds the EU set when it passed the new law.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ZDNet: Twitter seeing ‘record user engagement’? The data tells a different story. “By Similarweb’s count, Twitter saw a 7.7% traffic year-over-year drop in March alone. In addition, Twitter’s unique visitor web count dropped 3.3% year over year in March. The Twitter Android app’s average daily active users were down 9.8% in March, with monthly active users down 8% year over year. Within the US, monthly active users were down 14% on Android and 15% on iOS.”

MIT News: Computer vision system marries image recognition and generation. “Caption:A unified vision system known as MAsked Generative Encoder (MAGE), developed by researchers at MIT and Google, could be useful for many things, like finding and classifying objects in an image, learning from just a few examples, generating images with specific conditions such as text or class, editing existing images, and more.” Good morning, Internet…

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July 6, 2023 at 05:26PM
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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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July 4, 2023 at 12:49AM
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