Twitter, LibreOffice, Interactive Learning, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 22, 2023

Twitter, LibreOffice, Interactive Learning, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 22, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: X’s new mobile logo looks like bad distressed jeans. “Elon Musk’s X — the app formally known as Twitter — has updated the logo for its app to look like distressed jeans from the ’90s. The initial X logo replaced the iconic Twitter bird with an X that had a striking resemblance to the font Monotype. Now, Musk’s X has updated the app’s logo to have a distressed look. Why a microblogging app should be distressed like a pair of black jeans in the ’90s, no one knows. But here’s the new look.”

How-To Geek: LibreOffice 7.6 is Now Available: Here’s What’s New. “LibreOffice is a popular open-source software suite, serving as a replacement for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other applications. It’s a great option if you want to edit documents and spreadsheets without paying a subscription for Microsoft 365, especially since LibreOffice has more features and supports more file formats than many other free alternatives. The Document Foundation has now released LibreOffice 7.6 across all platforms, making the office suite even better.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 9 Best Education Apps for Interactive Learning in 2023. “Ever found yourself frustrated that a simple Google search doesn’t quite cut it? Or perhaps you’re someone with an insatiable curiosity, constantly seeking new knowledge? You’re in good company, and the great news is that our smartphones are now more than just communication devices; they can be our personal learning guides. Yes, education apps have arrived, and they have the potential to revolutionize how we acquire new skills and knowledge, one app at a time.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: Microsoft says listing the Ottawa Food Bank as a tourist destination wasn’t the result of ‘unsupervised AI’. “The ‘human oversight’ curating algorithmic content on MSN somehow missed a list of tourist hot spots that put the food bank at number three.’

CNN: Meet Khan Academy’s chatbot tutor. “More than 8,000 teachers and students will test education nonprofit Khan Academy’s artificial intelligence tutor in the classroom this upcoming school year, toying with its interactive features and funneling feedback to Khan Academy if the AI botches an answer. The chatbot, Khanmigo, offers individualized guidance to students on math, science and humanities problems; a debate tool with suggested topics like student debt cancellation and AI’s impact on the job market; and a writing tutor that helps the student craft a story, among other features.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Search Engine Journal: Is Google Collecting Children’s Data For Ads? New Report Sparks Concern. “A new report accuses Google of serving targeted ads to children and harvesting their data, potentially violating federal privacy laws. The allegations cast doubt on Google’s previous promises to protect children better online.”

Krebs on Security: Karma Catches Up to Global Phishing Service 16Shop. “The international police organization INTERPOL said last week it had shuttered the notorious 16Shop, a popular phishing-as-a-service platform launched in 2017 that made it simple for even complete novices to conduct complex and convincing phishing scams. INTERPOL said authorities in Indonesia arrested the 21-year-old proprietor and one of his alleged facilitators, and that a third suspect was apprehended in Japan.”

Vice: An Online Prophet With a Huge Following Has Been Convicted of Child Abuse. “Rashad Jamal, a New Age prophet with a huge online following among esoteric Black communities, has been convicted of child molestation and cruelty to children. According to court documents obtained by Motherboard, a Georgia judge sentenced him to 18 years in prison and 22 more on probation, for a total of 40 years.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: What if You Knew What You Were Missing on Social Media?. “The Twitter takeover has been a public reckoning with algorithmic control, but any tech company could do something similar. To prevent those who would hijack algorithms for power, we need a pro-choice movement for algorithms. We, the users, should be able to decide what we read at the newsstand.”

Duke University: How to Depolarize Political Toxicity on Social Media. “While social media is often blamed for exacerbating incivility and partisan polarization, research led by Duke University scholars found that anonymous online conversations using a mobile chat platform they developed can reduce political polarization. The research also showed how varying levels of anonymity can shape conversations about politics.” 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.

August 23, 2023 at 12:13AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/Rk2wBqu

Twitter, Pinterest, Dax Sorrenti, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, August 22, 2023

Twitter, Pinterest, Dax Sorrenti, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, August 22, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: X glitch wipes out most pictures and links tweeted before December 2014. “Ellen’s famous ‘most retweeted’ selfie from the 2014 Oscars has had its image restored, but most old tweets have broken short links instead of the media or links that should be there.”

Boing Boing: Twitter sinks in app store ranking and general findability after “X” rebrand. “Twitter, or “X” as it’s now supposed to be called, has suffered a ‘dramatic decrease’ in its popularity on app stores and in other measures of online findability. Searching for the old name, still in wide use among confused normies and indifferent users, now brings up ads from competitors and hinky SEO plays for the abandoned brand. Searching for X, if you’re even doing it? Good luck!”

TechCrunch: Pinterest rolls out new teen safety features, including wiping followers from users 15 and under . “Pinterest today introduced a series of new safety features aimed at better protecting teens using its service. The features — which include things like private profiles, more control over followers, and message safety controls — are similar to those introduced on other popular social media platforms with teens, like Instagram.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

North Shore News: One YouTuber is saving and sharing Vancouver TV from the 80s and 90s. “The nostalgia of 80s and 90s TV in Vancouver is being preserved on a YouTube channel. RetroVancouver, run by Dax Sorrenti, has become the home to commercials and clips from the pre-Internet decades that many remember but may not be able to find online. Sorrenti says he runs the account to give people a chance to relive memories and the feeling of being younger.”

Wall Street Journal: How Dozens of Websites Sell Knock-Off Drugs, No Prescription Required. “The Wall Street Journal identified more than 50 websites selling semaglutide and tirzepatide, the active ingredients in Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro. Nearly all of them include disclaimers that the substances are ‘not for human consumption.’ But several also include instructions for how to prepare human doses, or sponsor online forums where people explain how to inject the substances.”

Digital Library of Georgia: Digital Library Of Georgia Awards Digitization Subgrants To 7 Georgia Cultural Heritage Institutions Across The State. “The Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) announced today the 7 recipients of its latest set of digitization service awards. These awards expand the scope of the Georgia communities documented in the Digital Library of Georgia. Among the awardees are 5 new partners. Awardee projects include documentation of the Leo Frank trial and folk pottery of Northeast Georgia.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

San Francisco Chronicle: Hack of critical real estate tool upends Bay Area house showings. “A cyberattack on a software service used by real estate agents to track property listing data is in its second week, upending open house tours in San Francisco. ‘It is wreaking havoc everywhere,’ said David Bellings, an agent for 37 years. ‘It is disrupting and frustrating. Clients are asking for information and we just have to tell them we don’t have access.'”

Mashable: Which countries have banned TikTok?. “Beyond, across North America, Europe and Asia, several countries have implemented some level of restriction on the the app, largely over privacy and cybersecurity concerns connected to its parent company ByteDance, which has ties to the Chinese government. International government bodies including the European Commission and NATO have banned staff from using TikTok on their corporate phones, as have federal governments in countries across the globe. Here are the countries that have invoked partial or total bans on the app.”

The Register: Interpol arrests 14 who allegedly scammed $40m from victims in ‘cyber surge’. “An Interpol-led operation arrested 14 suspects and identified 20,674 ‘suspicious’ networks spanning 25 African countries that international cops have linked to more than $40 million in cybercrime losses.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Social media algorithms warp how people learn from each other, research shows. “People’s daily interactions with online algorithms affect how they learn from others, with negative consequences including social misperceptions, conflict and the spread of misinformation, my colleagues and I have found.”

University of Wisconsin-Madison: Study Finds Teens, Young Adults Benefit From Clinician Advice About Safe Social Media Use. “Teens and young adults who received a brief social media counseling session during a health care visit remembered the lessons and reported safer online behavior six months later, according to a large new study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.”

Vanderbilt University: Guidance on AI Detection and Why We’re Disabling Turnitin’s AI Detector. “In April of this year, Turnitin released an update to their product that reviewed submitted papers and presented their determination of how much of a paper was written by AI. … After several months of using and testing this tool, meeting with Turnitin and other AI leaders, and talking to other universities who also have access, Vanderbilt has decided to disable Turnitin’s AI detection tool for the foreseeable future.” 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.

August 22, 2023 at 05:30PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/SswMU6u

Amazon, YouTube Music, Adobe Illustrator Alternatives, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 21, 2023

Amazon, YouTube Music, Adobe Illustrator Alternatives, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 21, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Amazon is reportedly testing a confusing star rating system. “Amazon has started testing a new way to display its star rating system in specific regions that makes it harder to gauge how buyers are liking a specific product. Android Police has spotted the the experimental system on the company’s mobile app in India, its German website and its global website when accessed from Germany.”

How-To Geek: YouTube Music’s New “Samples” Will Help You Find New Songs. “TikTok has been such a runaway success that many other apps have implemented similar short-form videos, from Instagram Reels to YouTube Shorts. Google is now experimenting with them in YouTube Music, the company’s music streaming service, with the introduction of ‘Samples.'”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The 9 Best Free Browser-Based Adobe Illustrator Alternatives. “Adobe Illustrator is the default choice for anyone who needs high-quality graphic design software. But Adobe’s subscription model is pretty expensive, and you can’t use Illustrator online—it only works on Windows and Mac. If you’re a hobbyist on a budget, use Linux or a Chromebook, or want a more mobile option, what can you do? Fortunately, there are plenty of free, browser-based Adobe Illustrator alternatives you can try.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls. “Linus Sebastian’s Linus Media Group YouTube empire is currently in crisis, with accusations of theft, lapses in ethics, and most recently, allegations of sexual harassment. The company has currently paused all production to improve its review processes, and CEO Terren Tong tells The Verge an outside investigator will be hired to examine the harassment allegations.”

MuckRock: Call for Proposals: Better ways to help collect, understand and preserve the public’s documents. “MuckRock’s first two rounds of Gateway Grantees are using DocumentCloud to reveal those secretly profiting from the destruction of Brazil’s rainforests, probe police misconduct in Chicago and much more. Now’s your chance to pitch a project that uses primary source documents to help inform and strengthen the public while leveraging AI, distributed storage and other leading technologies, baked right into DocumentCloud. Selected projects will receive funding of up to $50,000 as well as technical and editorial support.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: In a War of Tanks, Ukrainian Soldiers Play World of Tanks Online. “Somewhere along the several hundred miles of front line in Ukraine, a Ukrainian soldier is probably playing World of Tanks — the video game. A war hero recently admitted to gaming although he had to open a new account when he lost his login information. During training in June, border guards outside Bakhmut, where one of the war’s bloodiest battles was fought, were found playing. And a tank crew seen grabbing a quick lunch last year had slapped a World of Tanks logo on the hull of its T-80 main battle tank.”

Ars Technica: Roblox facilitates “illegal gambling” for minors, according to new lawsuit. “A new proposed class-action lawsuit (as noticed by Bloomberg Law) accuses user-generated ‘metaverse’ company Roblox of profiting from and helping to power third-party websites that use the platform’s Robux currency for unregulated gambling activities. In doing so, the lawsuit says Roblox is effectively ‘work[ing] with and facilitat[ing] the Gambling Website Defendants… to offer illegal gambling opportunities to minor users.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CityAM: How bots came to rule the world, from Ticketmaster to global elections. “Bots are not only a problem on social media: they shape retailers like Ticketmaster and can influence politics, including global elections. Yet the danger they pose is underestimated, writes Elena Siniscalco.”

Washington Post: Revealing The Smithsonian’s ‘Racial Brain Collection’. “The vast majority of the remains appear to have been gathered without consent from the individuals or their families, by researchers preying on people who were hospitalized, poor, or lacked immediate relatives to identify or bury them. In other cases, collectors, anthropologists and scientists dug up burial grounds and looted graves. The Natural History Museum has lagged in its efforts to return the vast majority of the remains in its possession to descendants or cultural heirs, The Post’s investigation found. Of at least 268 brains collected by the museum, officials have repatriated only four.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of York: Digital puzzle games could be good for memory in older adults, study shows . “Older adults who play digital puzzle games have the same memory abilities as people in their 20s, a new study has shown. The study, from the University of York, also found that adults aged 60 and over who play digital puzzle games had a greater ability to ignore irrelevant distractions, but older adults who played strategy games did not show the same improvements in memory or concentration.” 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.

August 22, 2023 at 12:43AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/FE2Mbqa

2023 National Book Festival, Farmer Funding Opportunities, Reddit, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, August 21, 2023

2023 National Book Festival, Farmer Funding Opportunities, Reddit, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, August 21, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

If you’re a Mastodon user and you want an easy way to follow Mastodon accounts while Web browsing, check out this bookmarklet I made: https://github.com/ResearchBuzz/Mastodon-Follow-Bookmarklet .

NEW RESOURCES

Library of Congress: Tens of Thousands Join 2023 Library of Congress National Book Festival. “Tens of thousands of book lovers joined the Library of Congress National Book Festival in person on Aug. 12 at the Washington Convention Center, including capacity crowds on numerous stages. Videos of select stages are now available, and individual presentations will be made available on demand on the festival’s website beginning the week of Aug. 21.”

National Center for Appropriate Technology: Farmer Funding Opportunities Database Launched . “Community Alliance with Family Farmers has launched a new Farmer Funding Opportunities Database, available online in English and Spanish. The database offers listings for grant programs and cost-share opportunities for farmers and local food systems.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: One surviving Reddit app plans to charge based on how much you use it. “The developer Relay for Reddit, of one of the remaining third-party Reddit apps for Android, detailed the potential prices for planned subscriptions for the app in a new post on Thursday. The costs of a subscription will go up based on a user’s daily average number of API calls, essentially meaning that the more things a person does in the app, the more they might have to pay.”

Google Blog: Announcing the new Transparency Center. “Today, we’re launching the Transparency Center — a central hub for you to learn more about our product policies. The Transparency Center collects existing resources and policies, and was designed with you in mind, providing easy access to information on our policies, how we create and enforce them, and much more.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Federal News Network: As free press withers in El Salvador, pro-government social media influencers grow in power. “[Douglas] Guzmán is part of an expanding network of social media personalities acting as a megaphone for the millennial leader. At the same time [Nayib] Bukele has cracked down on the press, his government has embraced those influencers. As the president seeks to hold onto power, he has harnessed that flood of pro-Bukele content slowly turning his Central American nation into an informational echo chamber.”

Public Radio of Armenia: 32 films to be digitized on 100th anniversary of Armenian cinema. “Five full-length feature films, 10 documentaries and 17 animated shorts will be digitized on the 100th anniversary of Armenian cinema and 85th anniversary of Armenian animation, the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport informs.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Hollywood Reporter: AI-Created Art Isn’t Copyrightable, Judge Says in Ruling That Could Give Hollywood Studios Pause. “A federal judge on Friday upheld a finding from the U.S. Copyright Office that a piece of art created by AI is not open to protection. The ruling was delivered in an order turning down Stephen Thaler’s bid challenging the government’s position refusing to register works made by AI.”

WIRED: How an Iowa School District Used ChatGPT to Ban Books. “Using ChatGPT’s guidance, the Mason City Community School District removed 19 titles—including Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Toni Morrison’s Beloved—from its library shelves. But there is another truth: Educators who must comply with vague laws about ‘age-appropriate’ books with ‘descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act’ have only so many options.”

Bleeping Computer: WinRAR flaw lets hackers run programs when you open RAR archives. “A high-severity vulnerability has been fixed in WinRAR, the popular file archiver utility for Windows used by millions, that can execute commands on a computer simply by opening an archive. The flaw is tracked as CVE-2023-40477 and could give remote attackers arbitrary code execution on the target system after a specially crafted RAR file is opened.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PLOS Absolutely Maybe: How Is Science Twitter’s “Mastodon Migration” Panning Out?. “This mid-year activity surge at Mastodon is driven, like surges before it, partly by people joining, and partly by people returning to their dormant accounts. They’re joining, or returning to, a Mastodon that’s changing, and not just because there’s more people and more activity.”

The Conversation: How ChatGPT might be able to help the world’s poorest and the organisations that work with them. “We are associated with Friend in Need India Trust (FIN), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in an isolated fishing village named Kameswaram in Tamil Nadu state. FIN wages a daily battle against women’s lack of empowerment, pollution and a lack of functioning sanitation. These problems and others act as key obstacles to local economic development. Recently a FIN colleague, Dr Raja Venkataramani, returned from the US keen to discuss ChatGPT. He wondered whether the AI chatbot could help to create awareness, motivation and community engagement towards our sustainability goals in Kameswaram.”

NoCamels: New Web App Gives A Voice To People With Speech Impairment. “Voiceitt 2, developed by Voiceitt, lets people with speech disabilities speak spontaneously and be understood by others. It translates their non-standard speech into standard speech, and enables them to transcribe their conversations. It also integrates with AI assistants like ChatGPT and can even be added to video meetings to provide captioning and real time transcriptions.” 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.

August 21, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/djupDiq

Wake Forest University Art Collections, Domain Transfers, Streaming Services, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, August 20, 2023

Wake Forest University Art Collections, Domain Transfers, Streaming Services, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, August 20, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Wake Forest University: Wake Forest launches a new digital guide to art collections, exhibitions. “In addition to the University’s permanent collection of contemporary art, the app showcases the University’s recent donations and new acquisitions and provides a self-guided tour of Wake Forest’s public art collection. Current student-curated exhibitions are also available. A section on integrating art into curricular and co-curricular activities to enhance teaching and learning is also included on the site.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

WordPress: The People Have Spoken (About Our Free Domain Transfers). “Since launching our domain transfer offer to Google Domains customers just over two weeks ago, we’ve been overwhelmed and heartened by the response of those who’ve made the switch.”

Techdirt: The Enshittification Of Streaming Accelerates With Price Hikes, More Password Sharing Crackdowns . “As the streaming market saturates and competition grows, enshittification has come to the streaming video sector in a big way. Products once heralded for low cost convenience now see relentless price hikes at the same time there’s been an erosion in quality and convenience. All to a backdrop of striking workers, many of whom say they were never paid a living wage during the sector’s heyday.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NBC News: An alarming pattern: Climate disasters hit, and Spanish-language misinformation spreads. “News about extreme weather events, as well as media coverage of government policies around climate change, often serve as opportunities for social media accounts that spread false information to become more active online, Cristina López G., a senior analyst at the social media analytics firm Graphika who has long researched misinformation and disinformation in Latino communities, told NBC News.”

The Verge: The fight over what’s real (and what’s not) on dissociative identity disorder TikTok. “DID, or dissociative identity disorder, is a mental health condition that was previously known as multiple personality disorder. It is thought to be an extremely rare response to prolonged abuse experienced in childhood, often at the hands of a caregiver, and causes people to experience several distinct and separate states of consciousness as if they are multiple different people sharing the same body and mind. Its existence has been debated by academics for years. Robinson’s lecture, however, was not about the existence of DID. Instead, it was about a new challenge for the clinicians like him that treat it: TikTok.”

The Messenger: Associated Press Issues Landmark Guidance for Use of AI in Its Journalism. “The newswire service says it will treat any piece of content produced by generative AI as unvetted source material, and it advised its journalists to apply their editorial judgment and source vetting standards before publishing.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NPR: Threats, slurs and menace: Far-right websites target Fulton County grand jurors. “Before many people had a chance to fully read through the Fulton County, Ga., indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants, malicious online actors had already done their work. On a far-right website, where the QAnon conspiracy theory originated, an anonymous user on Tuesday shared a list of the 23 grand jurors with their supposed full names, ages and addresses. Amid a torrent of other posts speculating on the race and religion of the jurors, and rife with derogatory slurs, the implication was clear: This was a target list.”

Associated Press: Georgia jail fails to let out inmates who are due for release and met bail, citing crashed database. “The jail in a suburban Atlanta county held inmates for days who were due for release because a state database had crashed, preventing jailers from being able to check whether a person was wanted in another jurisdiction.”

Ars Technica: ISPs complain that listing every fee is too hard, urge FCC to scrap new rule . “The US broadband industry is united in opposition to a requirement that Internet service providers list all of their monthly fees. Five lobby groups representing cable companies, fiber and DSL providers, and mobile operators have repeatedly urged the Federal Communications Commission to eliminate the requirement before new broadband labeling rules take effect.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Cornell University: Throwing shade: Model maps NYC street trees’ cooling benefits. “Cornell researchers’ ‘leaf-level’ visualization of every tree in New York City – and how much shade each provides – could inform new strategies for mitigating extreme heat there, and in other cities coping with record-breaking temperatures. Tree Folio NYC creates a ‘digital twin’ of New York’s urban canopy.”

North Carolina State University: Self-Driving Cars Can Make Traffic Slower. “A new study finds that “connected” vehicles, which share data with each other wirelessly, significantly improve travel time through intersections – but automated vehicles can actually slow down travel time through intersections if they are not connected to each other. The culprit? Safety.” “Culprit”?

Stanford University: To improve EV batteries, study them on the road. “New research shows adding real-world driving data to battery management software and computer models of battery pack performance can lead to longer-lasting, more reliable batteries.” 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.

August 20, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/K3nwEWa

OSINT Forest Area Tracker, Google Chrome, Hawaii Wildfires, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 19, 2023

OSINT Forest Area Tracker, Google Chrome, Hawaii Wildfires, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 19, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Bellingcat: A New Tool Shows What War Has Done to Ukraine’s Forests. “We’ve launched the ‘OSINT Forest Area Tracker’, hosted on Google Earth Engine. Our tool compares data collected by Sentinel-2, a satellite which detects changes in infrared wavelengths and can be used to study the health of forests. The tool reveals the scale and intensity of anomalous changes on land. This narrows down search areas for researchers working on environmental damage in Ukraine.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

XDA: Google Chrome will soon enforce HTTPS by default . “Currently, Chrome shows warnings if you visit websites which leverage HTTP, but many people ignore them. As such, the company has now decided that it will be taking more aggressive steps towards enforcing HTTPS in an effort to change behavior both in web authors and their audience.”

CNBC: Google’s plan to purge inactive accounts isn’t sitting well with some users. “Google said in May that, starting in December, it would begin purging inactive accounts, a warning sign of sorts to people who use multiple logins. Recently, Google has been nudging people over email to remind them what will happen to those stagnant accounts. Critics of Google’s strategy are making their voices heard.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Messenger: Wildfire Conspiracy Theories Burn on Social Media as Maui Smolders. “Conspiracy theories are circulating on online social media platforms that seek to blame the wildfires in Hawaii on various organizations and individuals, including the World Economic Forum and Oprah Winfrey.”

Texas Tribune: Gen Z influencers, quietly recruited by a company with deep GOP ties, rally to impeached Ken Paxton’s aid. “In late June, about a dozen conservative Gen Z influencers converged on Fort Worth for a few days of right-wing networking. They hit local night spots, posed for group photos and met a far-right Texas billionaire and Donald Trump’s former campaign chair. And then they took to social media to rally their many followers behind a new, controversial film about human trafficking before turning their support to impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

University of Wisconsin-Madison: Down the tubes: Common PVC pipes can hack voice identification systems. “One type of security system that is gaining popularity is automatic speaker identification, which uses a person’s voice as a passcode. These systems, already in use for phone banking and other applications, are good at weeding out attacks that try to fake a user’s voice through digital manipulation. But digital security engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have found these systems are not quite as foolproof when it comes to a novel analog attack. They found that speaking through customized PVC pipes — the type found at most hardware stores — can trick machine learning algorithms that support automatic speaker identification systems.”

The Register: South Korea ‘puts the brakes’ on Google’s app store dominance. “South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission today commenced monitoring of Google’s app store operations – an action that follows its April decision to fine the advertising and mobile OS giant for its competition-crimping activities.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Mashable: Elon Musk’s X follower count bloated by millions of new, inactive accounts. “Of the 153,209,283 X accounts following Musk at the time the data was collected, around 42 percent of Musk’s followers, or more than 65.3 million users, have zero followers on their own account. Just over 72 percent, or nearly 112 million, of these users following Musk have less than 10 followers on their account.”

University of Calgary: Researcher works to eliminate barriers to eye exams using artificial intelligence and virtual reality. “RetinaLogik leverages the power of artificial intelligence and virtual reality by creating a portable eye test using virtual reality glasses that improve patient insights and vision screening for everyone everywhere. Not only does the platform aim to reduce misdiagnosis, improve portability and make eye exams more affordable, but the platform was designed to make it more engaging and comfortable for patients.”

Tech Policy Press: The Value of News Content to Google is Way More Than You Think. “The study, conducted by FehrAdvice & Partners AG on behalf of the SWISS MEDIA publishers’ association with oversight by leading academics, assessed the value of journalistic content on the Google search engine in Switzerland and its impact on user behavior and satisfaction, concluding that the market share of Google searches that use media content results in an estimated revenue of about $440 million per year. It suggests that if Google did not have a dominant monopoly position in web search and faced serious competition, fair compensation for the value that media content provides to Google search would amount to about 40% of total revenue, or approximately $176 million per year in Switzerland alone.” 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.

August 20, 2023 at 12:41AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/okBXfJP

Twitter, Google Keep, Search Scams, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, August 19, 2023

Twitter, Google Keep, Search Scams, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, August 19, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Variety: Elon Musk Says X (aka Twitter) Will No Longer Let You Block Other Users. “Elon Musk’s latest tweak to Twitter, the former name of what he now calls X: Users will no longer be able to block other accounts — as Musk claims the feature ‘makes no sense.’ ‘Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs,’ the tech mogul posted on X Friday. ‘Makes no sense.'”

Engadget: Google Keep is finally adding version history. “Google Keep, the company’s note-taking app, is getting a long-overdue feature that unfortunately doesn’t seem fully baked. Google is adding a version history function, which could save you from having to manually retype a lot of text that you mistakenly deleted.” I like Google Keep but I never started using it seriously because I half-assumed Google would kill it off.

USEFUL STUFF

The Verge: How to delete your Twitter history. “…regardless of whether you’ve cut Twitter out of your life, the best protection you can provide yourself is the deletion of your Twitter history. Here’s where to start if you’re interested in nuking your timeline and keeping future tweets from falling into the internet’s vindictive void of posterity.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CBS News Sacramento: Call Kurtis Investigates: Placer County couple with baby scammed escaping Maui. “Here’s the big takeaway: Never trust the top three to four Google search results. They are usually sponsored; essentially, ads anyone can take out. Scammers take advantage of that, and of you, especially after a disaster. Call the wrong number or click the wrong link, you could end up scammed.”

New York Times: A New Role for Werner Herzog: The Voice of A.I. Poetry. “When asked to narrate an audiobook of machine-generated verse, Mr. Herzog readily agreed. ‘I wasn’t the best choice,’ he said. ‘I was the only choice.'”

Associated Press: Once a target of pro-Trump anger, the U.S. archivist is prepping her agency for a digital flood. “The new National Archives leader whose nomination was swept into the partisan furor over the criminal documents-hoarding case against ex-President Donald Trump says she is now preparing the agency that’s responsible for preserving historical records for an expected flood of digital documents. Colleen Shogan, a political scientist with deep Washington ties, says the spotlight on the Archives during the past year shows that Americans are invested in preserving historical materials.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: Google required to remove ads that violate trademarks, Indian court rules. “The Delhi High Court has ruled that Google’s Ads program falls under the purview of the country’s Trademarks Act and the company must remove ads that infringe upon trademarks in a major decision that may redefine online advertising’s legal landscape.”

Tech Xplore: Don’t expect quick fixes in ‘red-teaming’ of AI models. Security was an afterthought. “White House officials concerned by AI chatbots’ potential for societal harm and the Silicon Valley powerhouses rushing them to market are heavily invested in a three-day competition ending Sunday at the DefCon hacker convention in Las Vegas. Some 2,200 competitors tapped on laptops seeking to expose flaws in eight leading large-language models representative of technology’s next big thing. But don’t expect quick results from this first-ever independent ‘red-teaming’ of multiple models.”

CNN: ‘Bored Apes’ investors sue Sotheby’s, Paris Hilton and others as NFT prices collapse . “A group of investors is suing Sotheby’s Holdings Inc. and others over a 2021 auction and promotion of Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible tokens (NFTs) following a collapse in prices for the celebrity-endorsed collectibles. The four named plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit allege that the auction house ‘misleadingly promoted’ the NFTs and colluded with creator Yuga Labs to artificially inflate their prices.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Mongabay: Using social media images to better respond to disasters. “When disasters strike, social media gets flooded with images, warnings and calls for help. Many of the posts are sources for relevant information from disaster sites and the data can help understand the progression and aftermath of a disaster. But manually segregating and analysing the data is a time consuming, costly and often inefficient process. While deriving useful information, a new study by a multi-country research team presents a large-scale dataset and explores how to automate information processing about natural disasters from social media images.”

Foreign Affairs: How to Prevent an AI Catastrophe. “The opportunities AI offers are immense. Built and managed properly, it could do much to improve society, offering every student a personalized tutor, for example, or giving every family high-quality, round-the-clock medical advice. But AI also has enormous dangers. It is already exacerbating the spread of disinformation, furthering discrimination, and making it easier for states and companies to spy. Future AI systems might be able to create pathogens or hack critical infrastructure. In fact, the very scientists responsible for developing AI have begun to warn that their creations are deeply perilous.”

Washington University in St. Louis: Maragh-Lloyd wins grant to study influence campaigns. “Raven Maragh-Lloyd, an assistant professor of African and African American studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will serve as co-principal investigator for a $1.7 million grant investigating how online influence campaigns, both foreign and domestic, manipulate the fundamental structures and relationships upon which social media is built.” 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.

August 19, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/jXsxAU4