Live Music Archive, Twitter, YouTube, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 2, 2023

Live Music Archive, Twitter, YouTube, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 2, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Internet Archive: Live Music Archive Collection Now Tops 250,000 Recordings. “The collection has steadily grown over the past 20 years as a collaborative effort between Internet Archive staff and dedicated, music-loving volunteers. At a pace of uploading nearly 30 items a day, the Live Music Archive reached the one-quarter million recording mark in June, and now takes up more than 250 terabytes of data on Internet Archive servers.”

Salon: “They need us. We don’t need them:” The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate. “The escalation of shock value tactics, on both the right and the pretending-not-to-be-right political classes, are likely rooted in the same cause: The slow motion collapse of Twitter, now rebranded ‘X’ under the leadership of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. While these folks have various outlets, both in the media and social media, ultimately their business model of trolling depends heavily on Twitter.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: How to Edit Your Videos Using YouTube Studio. “There are plenty of video editors out there, and there are plenty of options you can use for Windows, Mac, or Linux. However, if you want to do a simple edit, they can be overkill. If you’re uploading your video to YouTube, why not use YouTube Studio, the platform’s in-house video editor? It’s sparse on features, but a very good option if you want to do bare-bones editing on a web browser.”

MakeUseOf: How to Trace and Find Your Phone’s Location. “There are many ways to trace a smartphone’s location. Both Android and iPhone devices come with built-in location tracking utilities. These services are active as long as the GPS location services on the phone are enabled and the owner has granted an app permission to access this information. The following are a few ways that these location-tracking services can be used to find your phone location.”

Creative Boom: A step-by-step guide on deleting your social media accounts. “Social media has been going through something of a revival of late, but not all of us are happy with the change. To some, what once felt like thriving and supportive communities now feel like another chore. So if you’ve found yourself increasingly offline, is now the moment to pull the plug? Here’s our guide to deleting your social media accounts in 2023.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

702: Celebrating women: World’s largest database of female-owned businesses loading…. “Food design agency, Studio H, aims to launch a comprehensive database of women-led and women-owned businesses in the food and beverage industry in South Africa and Africa. Gugs Mhlungu was in conversation with Founder of Studio H and Food XX, Hannerie Visser.”

CNN: Passenger uses AirTag to track the bike his airline lost . “When your luggage goes missing, it’s bad enough. Tackling the start of your vacation without your clothes or toiletries? It’s not something most of us want to do. But when your luggage itself is the reason you’re traveling in the first place, it gets considerably worse. Luckily for Barry Sherry, when it happened to him, he had a secret weapon: a luggage tracker.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gothamist: NYPD to consider encrypting police radio transmissions citywide. “Members of the public and the press who routinely listen in on New York City’s police radio channels may no longer have the ability to do so if the NYPD goes ahead with plans to encrypt its transmissions.”

Bloomberg: Google’s Dominance Sparks South African Antitrust Crackdown. “The watchdog determined that Alphabet Inc.-owned Google’s search dominance ‘distorts platform competition’ in favor of large market players. It recommended several remedies focused on improving visibility for smaller South African companies in search results to address this.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Southampton: Music and AI combine for quirky performance . “Can a robot write a love letter? A project by the University of Southampton has demonstrated that it can – and the resulting quirky computer-generated love letters have now been set to music.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 3, 2023 at 12:24AM
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Digital Health Literacy, Fold3, Twitter, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, August 2, 2023

Digital Health Literacy, Fold3, Twitter, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, August 2, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

RMIT University: Australian made tool puts health and digital literacy on the map. “The Global Atlas of Literacies for Health (GALH) is one of the first online tools displaying interactive data visualising levels of health literacy and digital health literacy from evidence-based studies conducted with citizens, patients and health professionals across the globe.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Fold3: New Military Records from the United Kingdom!. “Do you have ancestors that served in the British military? We are pleased to announce that we’ve added nearly half a million new military records from the United Kingdom.”

WIRED: This Is the Era of Zombie Twitter. “THE BIRD IS dead, but zombie Twitter is not. Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, the platform has survived rate-limiting, massive staff cuts, suspensions of journalists, hemorrhaging ad dollars, exorbitant API price hikes, and a frenzy of new competitors. This week it survived becoming not Twitter, as the site suddenly rebranded to X.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: How to Activate Text-to-Speech on iPhone and iPad (2023). “Have you ever wished that your iPhone or iPad could read out text to you? With the ‘Text-to-Speech’ feature iOS (and iPadOS), it can! This feature lets your device read aloud things like news articles or reports. It’s like having a personal reader right in your pocket!”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Montana Public Radio: How to spot misinformation in your community. “Montana Public Radio’s Maxine Speier spoke to a Missoula-based expert on viral misinformation on how to stop the spread of online rumors. Madison Dapcevich is a reporter and fact checker with Lead Stories and Snopes who researches and documents falsehoods online. They start the conversation talking about misinformation that recently went viral in Missoula.”

CBR: How Tik Tok & Social Media Changed The Anime Industry. “While it was once considered an acquired taste for a very selective fanbase, the anime industry has recently started to become much more mainstream. Before the internet age, anime was a niche subculture enjoyed by just a handful of fans, who were labeled as socially awkward and/or geeky. However, due to technological advancement, social media has paved the way for the anime (and by extension the manga) industry to flourish. As a result, anime is capturing the eyes of curious spectators and gaining a larger community of fans.”

GeekWire: Paul Allen estate donates thousands of rare music, film and sci-fi artifacts to Seattle’s MoPOP. “Thousands of one-of-a-kind artifacts from Paul Allen’s collection, spanning decades of cultural relevance, are headed to Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, the institution he helped found 23 years ago. The bequest by the estate of the late Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist comes just under five years since his death in October 2018 at the age of 65.”

Daily Beast: Inside the Battle to Be the Trumpiest Streaming Channel. “As Donald Trump faces mounting legal problems, the former president has consistently turned to one of his favorite YouTube channels, the fiercely pro-MAGA ‘Right Side Broadcasting Network,’ to spin the news in his favor. And yet, RSBN—as it’s colloquially known—is facing criticism for not being Trump-y enough from an unlikely source: current and former staffers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Variety: Twitter/X Sues Hate-Speech Research Group Over Claims That Hateful, Racist Content Has Proliferated Under Elon Musk’s Ownership. “Elon Musk has taken legal aim at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an independent nonprofit research group, over the organization’s findings that since the multibillionaire acquired Twitter (now called X) hate, racism and disinformation on the social platform has substantially increased.”

The Next Web: Microsoft’s Teams and Office bundling may breach EU competition rules. “On Thursday, the European Commission opened an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of its Teams app with its Office suite, which includes Word, Excel, and Outlook. The EU is concerned that this practice may be in breach of the bloc’s competition rules.”

Reuters: Italian watchdog OKs Google’s commitments to end data case. “Italy’s AGCM competition watchdog said on Monday it had accepted commitments proposed by Google to end a case over the tech giant’s alleged abuse of its dominant position in the user data portability market.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Georgia Tech: Researchers Highlight Ethical Issues for Developing Future AI Assistants. “Next-generation smart assistants aren’t on the market yet, but the research necessary to create them is underway now. This includes efforts to develop smart assistants that are proactive —that is, the system could anticipate the user’s wants and needs, and even assist and mediate social interactions between users and their support networks. But with the design of systems that seek to enhance the abilities of older adults as they experience cognitive decline, a broad range of ethical issues arises.” Good morning, Internet…

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August 2, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Ghostery, Twitter, BBC on Mastodon, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 1, 2023

Ghostery, Twitter, BBC on Mastodon, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

TechRadar: Track the trackers together: Ghostery opens up its adblocker library. “Blocking and filtering online trackers since 2009, Ghostery was already used to collaborating with external experts to feed its database. Now, the team decided to make this process more transparent and accessible by the broader online community. TrackerDB is now open-source and fully available on GitHub.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Jezebel: Elon Musk Forced to Take Down Disastrous ‘X’ Sign on Twitter Building After 3 Days. “Over the weekend, days after police had to stop the company from taking down its Twitter sign as they didn’t have the necessary safety permits, Musk rolled out an enormous, blinding ‘X’ sign at the top of the building. The brightly lit eyesore—which inevitably poses a risk to those vulnerable to seizures—terrorized neighbors across the street. Well, as of Monday afternoon, the ‘X’ sign has vanished from the top of the office building following a string of very vocal complaints from neighbors, CBS reports.” Note to posterity: we find this just as ridiculous now as you will then. I got nothing, fam.

The Verge: BBC launches an ‘experimental’ Mastodon server. “The BBC has launched its own ‘experimental’ Mastodon server, marking one of the first major news outlets to establish an instance on the Twitter alternative. You can access the server at social.bbc, which encompasses posts from a handful of BBC accounts, including BBC Radio 4, BBC Taster, BBC Research & Development, and a few more.” If you haven’t gotten into Mastodon yet, or if you HAVE gotten into Mastodon and you’re looking for your fam, check out MastoGizmos. 11 tools for exploring, browsing, and making the most of Mastodon. Free and ad-free.

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: The Best Way to Bulk Export Your Apple Notes. “Apple Notes is among the best free note-taking apps out there, but it doesn’t make it easy to export notes in bulk. Whether you’re thinking of switching to another app—such as Obsidian, which has better support for Android and Windows—or just considering backing up all your notes, you’re going to need a bulk export tool to handle the job.”

Engineering .com: Can I 3D Print This? New Tool from EOS Will Tell You. “The tool is designed to make the viability of metal and polymer 3D printing more accessible to newcomers. Focused on using laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) for production, the tool is squarely aimed at industrial 3D printing, a.k.a., additive manufacturing (AM). Users can input information about their current manufacturing method(s) along with a part design file and receive an automatically generated analysis that includes a cost estimation, predicted production time, and a recommended EOS system and material.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Daily Progress: Threat and promise of AI looms over fall semester at UVa. “‘I’ve used ChatGPT to write answers to essays and discussion questions,’ an undeclared first-year student said. ‘Professors thought I wrote it. Almost everyone I know has probably cheated with it at some point. It’s the future, and it’s so easy.'”

Associated Press: Poetry academy announces grants. “A digital poetry archive in Utah, slam poetry workshops in South Carolina and creative writing programs in New Mexico are among the initiatives being supported by more than $1 million in grants from the Academy of American Poets.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: CISA warns of breach risks from IDOR web app vulnerabilities. “CISA warned today of the significant breach risks linked to insecure direct object reference (IDOR) vulnerabilities impacting web applications in a joint advisory with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) and U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). IDOR vulnerabilities are flaws in web apps (or apps that use affected web APIs) that enable attackers to access and manipulate sensitive data by directly referencing internal objects or resources.”

New York Times: U.S. Hunts Chinese Malware That Could Disrupt American Military Operations. “American intelligence officials believe the malware could give China the power to disrupt or slow American deployments or resupply operations, including during a Chinese move against Taiwan.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford Law School: Rethinking Algorithmic Decision-Making. “In a new paper, Stanford University authors, including Stanford Law Associate Professor Julian Nyarko, illuminate how algorithmic decisions based on ‘fairness’ don’t always lead to equitable or desirable outcomes.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 2, 2023 at 12:42AM
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ALERTCalifornia, Student Loan Repayment, National Library of Australia, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, August 1, 2023

ALERTCalifornia, Student Loan Repayment, National Library of Australia, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, August 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

ALERTCalifornia: ALERTCalifornia Launches to Provide Essential Tools to Understand and Adapt to Wildfires and Natural Disasters in the Golden State. “Fire and emergency management personnel input was essential to create the new, mobile friendly, public website interface, which now features a camera view “quilt” or collection of camera views targeting a specific area of interest as well as panoramas that show a high-resolution stitched-together 360-degree view for each camera.”

CNN: First on CNN: Biden administration launches new income-driven student debt repayment plan. “The Biden administration is launching a beta website for its new income-driven student loan repayment plan today, officials told CNN, allowing borrowers to begin submitting applications for the program as federal student loan payments are set to resume in October.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

National Library of Australia: National Library of Australia launches modernised Catalogue. “The National Library of Australia has launched its modernised Catalogue making it easier for patrons to search the Library’s collections.”

Search Engine Roundtable: New Google Merchant Center Policy Says AI Generated Reviews Are Spam & Disallowed. “Google has posted a new policy saying AI-generated reviews are against its policies, disallowed and considered spam. If you find such content, Google said you must mark it as spam in your feed with the is_spam attribute.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WHO13: Google glitch burns Urbandale business at worst-possible time. “Google is now the business lifeline. Without it, Lenz is only doing about ten jobs a day, and that’s only because this business, one that usually takes calls, is now making them. ‘The gals in the office are calling out, reaching out to friends, using Facebook,’ he said. Lenz said he’s losing $30,000 to $40,000 a day. But what’s worse are his fears that he’s losing his customers’ trust.”

The Guardian: Twitter neighbours complain of lit-up ‘X’ sign working at high intensity. “San Francisco’s building inspectors said it might be in violation of rules. One wrote in a report that company representatives denied roof access, twice, to officials seeking to inspect the logo. The inspector noted one representative said the sign was temporary.”

NBC News: Online games struggle to rein in hateful usernames, report finds. “Usernames that include racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ+, ableist and white supremacist terms go unmoderated on some of the most popular online games, according to a report published Monday by the Anti-Defamation League.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Researchers Poke Holes in Safety Controls of ChatGPT and Other Chatbots. “A new report indicates that the guardrails for widely used chatbots can be thwarted, leading to an increasingly unpredictable environment for the technology.”

Northeastern Global News: New smartphone vulnerability discovered by Northeastern Ph.D. student reveals hackers could track your location. “A newly discovered vulnerability in text messaging may enable attackers to trace your location, according to Northeastern Ph.D. student Evangelos Bitsikas. His research group exposed the flaw by applying a sophisticated machine-learning program to data gleaned from the relatively primitive SMS system that has driven texting in mobile phones since the early 1990s.”

Washington University in St. Louis: Analyzing generative AI’s copyright crisis. “The recent explosion of artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot have supercharged the assistance available to programmers. However, AI assistants may strip out comments embedded in code to convey copyright and attribution guidelines, leaving human coders none the wiser yet still on the hook legally for intellectual property infringement. To combat this problem, computer science & engineering researchers in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have developed CodeIPPrompt, the first automated testing platform to evaluate how much language models generate IP-violating code.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington State University: Viral TikTok health videos tend to cover three topics, rely on influencers. “Sexual health, diet and exercise are the three topics that steal the show when it comes to popular health-related videos on TikTok. Unfortunately, there’s little else in terms of engaging health-related content on the video sharing platform, a Washington State University study found.”

University of California Riverside: Google & ChatGPT have mixed results in medical info queries. “When you need accurate information about a serious illness, should you go to Google or ChatGPT? A study led by University of California, Riverside, computer scientists found that both internet information gathering services have strengths and weaknesses. The team included clinical scientists from the University of Alabama and Florida International University.” Good morning, Internet…

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August 1, 2023 at 05:27PM
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Digital Equity Dashboard, Donald Judd’s Books, Arc Browser, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 31, 2023

Digital Equity Dashboard, Donald Judd’s Books, Arc Browser, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 31, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

EdWeek: Ed-Tech Inequities Abound. A New Data Dashboard Seeks to Bring Them Into the Open. “The Digital Equity Dashboard, created by the Consortium for School Networking, consolidates national data sets into one resource, providing detailed information on tech access and other characteristics of communities, anonymized and broken down by county, school district, and zip code.”

Glasstire: Judd Foundation Launches Online Catalog of Donald Judd’s Marfa Library. “The books cover a wide range of topics such as art, architecture, philosophy, literature, anthropology, natural history, and world history. The catalog features a visual map of bookshelves in the library, and when a shelf is clicked, the site displays a photograph of the actual shelf. The bookshelves, built by local craftsmen, were designed by Mr. Judd in response to the dimensions of the room.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: The excellent Arc browser is now available for anyone to download. “Arc, the Mac and iOS browser from The Browser Company, is finally ditching its waitlist. The company has been testing the app for more than two years and has, until now, made every interested user sign up for a waitlist. But now, it’s launching for real. Arc’s version number just jumped to 1.0, and anyone who wants to use Arc can go to arc.net and get the browser.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Switch Browsers Without Losing Your Bookmarks and Passwords. “IF YOU’RE THINKING of switching browsers—maybe because you like the features in a different application, or you’re fed up with the one you’re using—all of your accumulated data, extensions, and bookmarks can feel like a reason to stay put. It doesn’t have to be, though: Getting your data out of one browser and into another isn’t as hard as you might think.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WCAX: Vermont Historical Society creates flood archive. “The Vermont Historical Society is collecting photos, videos and more to memorialize the flood of 2023. In addition to creating this brand new archive V.H.S. is also re-vamping their online gallery of the flood of 1927. Juls Sundberg, the metadata librarian at the Vermont Historical Society says they hope having access to both collections can connect viewers to the past, and for those uploading their experiences — provide a little bit of catharsis.”

Engadget: Twitter’s rebrand to X is causing scam alerts on Microsoft Edge. “Twitters swift rebrand to X is generating yet another issue. As reported by Bleeping Computer, the social media platform is causing Microsoft’s Edge browser to throw up a warning, indicating some sort of security problem.”

Fast Company: ‘You cannot dunk on a public defender.’ Meet the extremely online lawyer-Twitter celebrity. “Lawyers themselves are not known for having great senses of humor, which is something Beth Bourdon considers a massive misconception. Most of the attorneys in her Central Florida office, for instance, trade dark jokes amongst themselves whenever possible. Anything to lighten up the bleak atmosphere that comes with striving to mitigate the death penalty for one’s clients.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Judge blocks Arkansas law allowing librarians to be criminally charged over ‘harmful’ materials. “Arkansas is temporarily blocked from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing ‘harmful’ materials to minors, a federal judge ruled Saturday.”

Bleeping Computer: BreachForums database and private chats for sale in hacker data breach. “While consumers are usually the ones worried about their information being exposed in data breaches, it’s now the hacker’s turn, as the notorious Breached cybercrime forum’s database is up for sale and member data shared with Have I Been Pwned.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: The Story of the Student Journalist and the Stanford President. “Absent public scrutiny, journals have been consistently slow to act on allegations of research falsification. In a field dependent on good faith cooperation, in which each contribution necessarily builds on the science that came before it, the consequences can compound for years.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 1, 2023 at 12:14AM
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Digital Citizenship in Africa, Henry Moore Art Exhibit Posters, Spanish-Language Audio and Braille, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, July 31, 2023

Digital Citizenship in Africa, Henry Moore Art Exhibit Posters, Spanish-Language Audio and Braille, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, July 31, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Institute of Development Studies: A new era of digital citizenship in Africa. “With contributions from scholars across the continent, Digital Citizenship in Africa illustrates how citizens have been using social media to run hashtag campaigns and VPNs, encryption and privacy protecting browsers to resist limits on their rights to privacy and political speech. In each chapter authors show how positive examples of digital citizenship are limited and constrained by new forms of digital authoritarianism: internet shutdowns, repressive laws, and by state surveillance and disinformation.”

The Guardian: Poster boy: Henry Moore exhibition art through the ages – in pictures. “Sunday 30 July is the 125th anniversary of artist Henry Moore’s birth. To celebrate, the Henry Moore Archive is unveiling a digitised collection of more than 400 posters featuring Moore’s many shows through the years.”

New-to-me, from Library of Congress: NLS Debuts Site for Spanish-Language Audio and Braille. “At the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS), we’ve been delighted by the enthusiastic reader response to the rollout of a Spanish site at the top of our home page. Since the site’s February debut, readers have jumped at the chance to find the newest reading materials in Spanish-language audio and Braille. The new site also features Spanish-language guides to our most popular resources, including frequently-asked questions about our BARD Mobile reading app, information about our accessible music scores and details on how to obtain a free currency reader for blind and visually impaired users.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bureau of Transportation Statistics: BTS Updates Datasets to National Transportation Atlas Database 07/28/2023. “The U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) today released its summer 2023 update to the National Transportation Atlas Database (NTAD), a set of nationwide geographic databases of transportation facilities, networks, and associated infrastructure.”

NBC News: Ye’s Twitter account is unsuspended months after it was banned over swastika post. “Ye’s account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, was unsuspended Saturday, more than six months after it was banned over a post showing an image of a swastika inside a Star of David.”

Ars Technica: Reddit calls for “a few new mods” after axing, polarizing some of its best. “Reddit is campaigning to replace numerous longstanding moderators who were removed from their positions after engaging in API protests. Over the past week, a Reddit employee has posted to subreddits with ousted mods, asking for new volunteers. But in its search, the company has failed to address the intricacies involved in moderating distinct and, in some cases, well-known subreddits. And it doesn’t look like the knowledge from the previous moderators is being passed down.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Tom’s Guide: Don’t ‘Bard it’ — Google says you should still Google it to be safe. “Google Bard may be competing with ChatGPT, but it’s also competing with Google Search. Plenty of people are turning to AI chatbots over traditional search engines, which is why Bing Chat and Google Search Generative Experience both exist as AI tools that blend generative AI with traditional search. But unfortunately, generative AI gets things wrong — a lot. So Google is reminding people that when in doubt, you should still Google it rather than Bard it.” Use the whizbang technology, but do not TRUST the whizbang technology. Instead, keep using the old technology, so that it takes twice as long to do a task. But whizbang technology! This is so stupid.

Techdirt: Techdirt Has Been Deleted From Bing And DuckDuckGo. “A few months ago, Jack Yan pointed out to me that if they did a search for Techdirt on DuckDuckGo, it showed only one single link which was (bizarrely) to a random story from like eight years ago. There were literally no other results for Techdirt. I replicated it, but was travelling, and by the time I went back to write about it a few days later, everything seemed back to normal (in the interim there were a few days where it just found a couple hundred Techdirt posts). Jack wrote a short blog post on his own site about it. This morning, however, someone alerted me to the fact that DuckDuckGo currently shows zero results for Techdirt. Not even some random old article. Zero. None. Zilch.”

Huffpost: There’s A Deadly Drinking Problem On TikTok. “While the app has strict rules prohibiting branded content promoting alcohol, creators are still allegedly making money drinking to excess — and at least one has died.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Russia Takes Its Ukraine Information War Into Video Games. “These games and adjacent discussion sites like Discord and Steam are becoming online platforms for Russian agitprop, circulating to new, mostly younger audiences a torrent of propaganda that the Kremlin has used to try to justify the war in Ukraine. In this virtual world, players have adopted the letter Z, a symbol of the Russian troops who invaded last year; embraced legally specious Russian territorial claims in Crimea and other places; and echoed President Vladimir V. Putin’s efforts to denigrate Ukrainians as Nazis and blame the West for the conflict.”

Euractiv/Reuters: Sweden says it’s target of Russia-backed disinformation over NATO, Koran burnings. “Sweden is the target of a disinformation campaign by ‘Russia-backed actors’ intended to hurt the image of the NATO-candidate country by implying it supported recent burnings of the Koran, its Minister for Civil Defence said on Wednesday (26 July).”

RESEARCH & OPINION

North Carolina State University: Citizen Science Inspires Kids to Take Local Action. “North Carolina State University researchers recently found that a program designed to get Girl Scouts involved in citizen science – programs where members of the public can participate in real scientific research – not only taught girls about the process of science, but also motivated them to tackle scientific or environmental problems in their communities.” Good morning, Internet…

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July 31, 2023 at 05:27PM
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Smithsonian Podcast, Reddit, Photoshop, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 30, 2023

Smithsonian Podcast, Reddit, Photoshop, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, July 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Smithsonian: Smithsonian Magazine Announces “There’s More to That,” a New Podcast in Partnership With PRX. “Smithsonian magazine covers history, science and culture in the way only it can—through a lens on the world that is insightful and grounded in richly reported stories. On There’s More to That, listeners will meet the magazine’s journalists as they discover the forces behind some of the biggest issues of our time and give curious listeners a fresh understanding of the world we all inhabit.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Reddit is testing ‘official’ labels for profiles and making parts of its app compatible with screen readers. “Reddit is starting to test a new ‘Official’ label that will make it easier to spot if an account is authentic. The new label will appear sitewide, meaning that it won’t be up to the moderators of individual subreddits to have to verify specific accounts.”

TechCrunch: Photoshop’s new generative AI feature lets you ‘uncrop’ images. “Adobe is building on Firefly, its family of generative AI models, with a feature in Photoshop that ‘expands images beyond their original bounds,’ as the company describes it.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Rest of World: Indian politicians embrace influencers ahead of 2024 elections. “As the campaign for the 2024 elections in India goes digital, social media influencers have become a powerful tool to try and shape voter behavior.”

Associated Press: Saudi Arabia is spending billions to become a global gaming hub. Some fans don’t want to play. “Saudi Arabia, the new home of some of soccer’s biggest stars and a co-owner of professional golf, is proving to be no less ambitious when it comes to another global pastime – the $180 billion-a-year video game industry.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: Code Kept Secret for Years Reveals Its Flaw—a Backdoor . “FOR MORE THAN 25 years, a technology used for critical data and voice radio communications around the world has been shrouded in secrecy to prevent anyone from closely scrutinizing its security properties for vulnerabilities. But now it’s finally getting a public airing thanks to a small group of researchers in the Netherlands who got their hands on its viscera and found serious flaws, including a deliberate backdoor.”

TorrentFreak: Turner Classic Movies Airs a Film With ‘Pirated’ Subtitles. “Turner Classic Movies is an invaluable institution for many film aficionados. The same is true for the private BitTorrent tracker Karagarga, which archives tens of thousands of films, many of which are not available through legal channels. While the latter operates without permission from rightsholders, it made a surprise appearance on Turner’s service recently in the form of ‘pirated’ subtitles.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: The war in Ukraine is spurring a revolution in drone warfare using AI. “The design and software innovations, as well as mass dissemination of piloting know-how, are also likely to influence the way drones are used far beyond the war in Ukraine, with serious implications for governments confronting separatist militias, drug cartels and extremist groups seeking to gain a technological edge.”

NBC News: That sports broadcaster you hear could be AI. “Artificial intelligence commentators are edging into roles in sports broadcasting, with major competitions such as the Masters golf and Wimbledon tennis championships using the tech to automatically narrate certain highlight videos posted on the tournaments’ websites and apps.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: The IBM mainframe: How it runs and why it survives. “Mainframe computers are often seen as ancient machines—practically dinosaurs. But mainframes, which are purpose-built to process enormous amounts of data, are still extremely relevant today. If they’re dinosaurs, they’re T-Rexes, and desktops and server computers are puny mammals to be trodden underfoot.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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July 31, 2023 at 12:07AM
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