Final Fantasy XIV, Library of Congress, GPTBot, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 30, 2023

Final Fantasy XIV, Library of Congress, GPTBot, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

SiliconEra: Japanese Fan Creates Database of All Final Fantasy XIV Items. “Japanese fan FF14_mirapri completed a database for all of the items in Final Fantasy XIV from Square Enix. This includes all of the cosmetics, hairstyles, seasonal event exclusives, weapons and more spanning the entire history of the MMORPG.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Library of Congress: Improvements Ahead for the Web Archives. “Users of the Library of Congress Web Archives may have recently noticed issues when trying to access archived content presented at webarchive.loc.gov. We want to give some background and explanation about the ongoing work that is happening to modernize and improve functionality, and to set the stage for future announcements about planned improvements for access to the Library’s Web Archives.”

Search Engine Land: Dozens of big brands have blocked GPTBot, OpenAI’s new web crawler. “At least 69 of the 1,000 most popular websites in the world have blocked GPTBot, the new web crawler OpenAI introduced Aug. 7, according to a new analysis. And the percentage of sites is increasing by about 5% per week, according to AI content and plagiarism service Originality.ai.”

USEFUL STUFF

Space: The rare Super Blue Moon rises on Aug. 30 and you can watch it online for free . “After sunset on Wednesday, this Super Blue Moon will rise in the east, as seen from New York City. But if conditions happen to be poor for moonwatching in your area, you’re in luck: The Virtual Telescope Project hosted by astronomer Gianluca Masi of Rome, Italy will host a free livestream of the event starting at 11:30 p.m. on Aug. 30 (0330 GMT on Aug. 31).” Shoutout to everyone else who is getting hurricane rain tonight and will miss the blue moon.

PC World: How to put Chrome’s download notifications back at the bottom. “In early August, Google changed the way Chrome displays download notifications. Instead of files being shown as big rectangular buttons in a bar at the bottom of the screen, the information is now much more discreetly tucked in the upper right-hand corner. A single, small icon shows both your progress and completion status, along with a dropdown list of recent downloads when clicked on. But if you’re finding this update difficult to adjust to, you can reverse it.”

MakeUseOf: Navidrome Is the Perfect Self-Hosted Music Server for Raspberry Pi. “Streaming music is a feature of modern life, and most people are used to the convenience of services such as Spotify and YouTube. If you have a large, privately owned music collection, you can instead use Navidrome to stream your favorite tunes to your mobile devices and listen to internet radio.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: Can news outlets build a ‘trustworthy’ AI chatbot?. “News publishers have jumped headfirst into artificial intelligence, using generative AI tools to produce bland travel guides, inaccurate film blogs, and SEO-bait explainers. By and large, the goal has been: can we make more pages for ads without paying more writers? Now, a group of tech outlets is attempting to incorporate generative AI into its websites, though readers won’t find a machine’s byline anytime soon.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: Blue-tick scammers target consumers who complain on X. “Consumers who complain of poor customer service on X are being targeted by scammers after the social media platform formerly known as Twitter changed its account verification process.”

WIRED: The Cheap Radio Hack That Disrupted Poland’s Railway System . “SINCE WAR FIRST broke out between Ukraine and Russia in 2014, Russian hackers have used some of the most sophisticated hacking techniques ever seen in the wild… But the mysterious saboteurs who have, over the past two days, disrupted Poland’s railway system—a major piece of transit infrastructure for NATO in its support of Ukraine—appear to have used a far less impressive form of technical mischief: Spoof a simple radio command to the trains that triggers their emergency stop function.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Los Angeles Times: Michael Hiltzik: Scientists used to love Twitter. Thanks to Elon Musk, they’re giving up on it. “Concerns about the decline of X as a source of reliable information extends beyond the scientific and academic communities. During the apparent coup attempt in Russia in June, journalists noticed its relative uselessness at helping them find real-time, breaking information from the ground and sifting fact from fakery, due in part to Musk’s trashing of its account verification system.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 31, 2023 at 12:51AM
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Keeping an Eye on Hurricane Idalia

Keeping an Eye on Hurricane Idalia
By ResearchBuzz

Good morning, y’all. I hope everyone is safe and well and prepared for Hurricane Idalia if you need to be. I am interested in Hurricane Idalia both as a weather event (currently under a flood watch and expecting 2-5 inches of rain) and as a news event I want to monitor online even as Twitter gets worse and worse.

I’m finding myself using a lot of my own tools this morning as I set up my information traps.

1) Marion’s Monocle 2 finds FCC-licensed TV stations by state, allowing me to quickly identify TV stations in Tallahassee, Tampa, and Pensacola and integrate them into an RSS feed Google Alert. https://searchgizmos.com/mm2/

2) I used Non-Sketchy News Search 2 to keyword-search for news outlets mentioned in Wikipedia and build out the sources I’m monitoring. I was able to find some paper-based news sources this way: https://searchgizmos.com/nsns2/ .

3) I’m not even going to try to monitor Twitter for this event; I’m staying with Mastodon. I wasn’t sure what hashtags would be appropriate to monitor so I did some testing with Hashtag Harvest (looks like #HurricaneIdalia is the one to use): https://mastogizmos.com/hh.html .

4) My Mastodon instance is very small and because of that the flow of information when news breaks is pretty poor. To save myself having to find and follow tons of people every time something happens, I made Mastodon Stadium Seats. It searches for an array of hashtags across an array of Mastodon instances and displays the results on a plain screen which updates every 90 seconds. I put it up on GitHub: if you can edit an HTML page, you’ll be able to use it. https://github.com/ResearchBuzz/Mastodon-Stadium-Seats . It’s currently casting to my side monitor so I can keep one eye on the news as I work.

I hope everybody gets through this all right. Best wishes to you.

August 30, 2023 at 04:58PM
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Hebrew Manuscripts, Claude AI, Linus Tech Tips, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 29, 2023

Hebrew Manuscripts, Claude AI, Linus Tech Tips, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Library of Congress: Library of Congress Releases Newly Digitized Hebrew Manuscripts. “The Library of Congress has released some 230 newly digitized manuscripts written in Hebrew and similar languages such as Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian and Yiddish. The collection, available online for researchers and the public for the first time, includes a 14th century collection of responsa by Solomon ibn Adret of Barcelona, considered one of the most prominent authorities on Jewish law of all time.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: Anthropic To Launch Paid Plans For Access To Claude. “In a notable shift from its existing user model, Claude.ai, the web interface for Anthropic’s Claude 2, has begun limiting access for unpaid users. Claude.ai, in open beta, gives users access to the latest model of Claude with 100k context windows (175 pages of text) and file upload capability.” I haven’t used Claude as much as I have used ChatGPT, but Claude’s UI is my opinion far better.

The Verge: Linus Sebastian addresses error handling and ethics in a new video. “Over a week after Linus Media Group paused video production after allegations of theft, ethical missteps, and sexual harassment, Sebastian provided a partial response to the issues and updated viewers on what’s changing.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: An alt text guide to ensure everyone can enjoy your memes. “Accessible memes make the internet a fun place for all, but the practice is helpful in a variety of ways. 3Play Media, a captioning and video accessibility company, notes that adding alt text to your memes is a beneficial practice for companies and creators, too. ‘Alt text allows bots to “read” and better understand the content, similar to how they read closed captions on video content,’ the company explains. ‘This means your content can be better recommended to viewers, gain more exposure, and ultimately lead to increased site traffic.’ Here’s how to get started making your jokes available for all, whether you’re a meme connoisseur or a brand cashing in on a trendy bit.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Tubefilter: The Creators Guild of America is a new “service organization” for online video professionals. “The CGA officially launched on August 24. It resembles a labor union, but it’s actually a ‘professional service organization’ that provides a litany of benefits to a varied roster of digital media pros. The CGA does not engage in collective bargaining on behalf of its members, but some of its services — such as creator advocacy and networking opportunities — are decidedly union-esque.”

BBC: China state media calls on British Museum to return artefacts. “A call for the British Museum to return Chinese artefacts after the recent theft of about 2,000 items is heating up social media in the country. The demand became the most trending topic on Weibo after an editorial in a state-run nationalist newspaper.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: A Global Cyber-Scam Industry Is Booming in Plain Sight in Cambodia . “Around the world, reports of cyber-scam schemes targeting unsuspecting victims online have proliferated rapidly. Southeast Asia has become a center of gravity for those criminal syndicates, often in remote and war-torn corners. But in Cambodia, the scam industry has been flourishing well within the reach of officials.”

Australian Financial Review: Big tech urges government to go slow on AI rules. “Responding to the government’s call for ideas on how Australia can develop safe and responsible AI practices, the peak body representing the likes of Apple, Google, Twitter, Meta, TikTok and Yahoo advised the government to base its AI policy ‘on existing regulation, rather than introducing new legislation aimed at regulating AI as a technology’.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Next Web: Autonomous cars worse at detecting children and dark-skinned pedestrians, study finds. “Researchers from King’s College London (KCL) tested the software on over 8,000 images of pedestrians. They found that the average detection accuracy was almost 20% higher for adults than it was for children. The systems were also 7.5% more accurate for light-skinned pedestrians than hey were for darker-skinned ones.” And for night driving conditions, as you might expect, it’s even worse.

Irish Times: Karlin Lillington: Technology helps piece together archive lost in 1922 Four Courts fire. “This is an absorbing tale of imagination, diligence, chance discoveries and fruitful relationships with other national archives, many in the UK which hold copies of records here, and myriad small partners such as Killruddery, with its 400 years of documents including land records and correspondence.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 30, 2023 at 01:00AM
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Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Australian Parliamentary Debates, Safe Work Australia, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, August 29, 2023

Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Australian Parliamentary Debates, Safe Work Australia, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, August 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Art Daily: The Beaverbrook Art Gallery launches its online digital collection of nearly 5000 works of art . “The entire Beaverbrook Art Gallery permanent collection of works is now viewable online on the gallery’s website for members of the public to study and enjoy, and this is joined with new animated videos and activities for children.”

Scientific Data: Digitization of the Australian Parliamentary Debates, 1998–2022 . “Following the lead of the Linked Parliamentary Data project which achieved this for Canada, we provide a new, comprehensive, high-quality, rectangular database that captures proceedings of the Australian parliamentary debates from 1998 to 2022. The database is publicly available and can be linked to other datasets such as election results.”

Safe Work Australia: New website provides WHS data at your fingertips. “Today, Safe Work Australia released a new interactive data website that allows users to explore national work health and safety (WHS) and workers’ compensation data in an intuitive and user-friendly way. The new website provides a wide array of WHS data through dashboards, data collections and reports not previously available to the public. Website users can now explore and create their own charts and tables to explore insights into WHS data by industry, occupation, year, and mechanism of injury.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Business Insider: Russian tech billionaire wants sanctions lifted after he criticized Ukraine invasion, report says. “Russian oligarch Arkady Volozh will be the first to formally ask for sanctions to be lifted after condemning Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a report says. The Financial Times reported that Volozh’s lawyers had petitioned the European Union to repeal sanctions placed on the tech billionaire last June after he chose to criticize Putin’s offensive 18 months after Russia’s invasion.”

AFP: Microsoft’s Bing, LinkedIn vows more ads transparency. “Microsoft will provide more information on targeted adverts and protect users against any new risks from artificial intelligence, the company vowed Friday, as stringent EU rules on tech platforms enter into force. Internet giants must now enforce the milestone EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which demands they protect users online from harmful content and be more transparent about their algorithms.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Behind the AI boom, an army of overseas workers in ‘digital sweatshops’. “In the Philippines, one of the world’s biggest destinations for outsourced digital work, former employees say that at least 10,000 of these workers do this labor on a platform called Remotasks, which is owned by the $7 billion San Francisco start-up Scale AI. Scale AI has paid workers at extremely low rates, routinely delayed or withheld payments and provided few channels for workers to seek recourse, according to interviews with workers, internal company messages and payment records, and financial statements.” This is a gift article, so you should find no paywall.

Asahi Shimbun: Expert: ‘Yokai’ ghouls dwell in ChatGPT in modern times. “Masanobu Kagawa [is] the chief curator at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of History, and the first Japanese to get his doctorate in the study of yokai. In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Kagawa said their nonexistent existence is an essential characteristic of yokai. He also said artificial intelligences that present themselves as human are a modern form of yokai. What makes them scary is that you can’t tell them apart from humans, he added.”

CNN: Maui conspiracy theories are spreading on social media. Why this always happens after a disaster. “A slew of viral conspiracy videos on social media have made baseless claims that the Maui wildfires were started intentionally as part of a land grab, highlighting how quickly misinformation spreads after a disaster. While the cause of the fires hasn’t been determined, Hawaiian Electric — the major power company on Maui — is under scrutiny for not shutting down power lines when high winds created dangerous fire conditions.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Auctioneer exposed by BBC admits illegally selling rare ancient coins. “A British auctioneer who was at the centre of a BBC investigation has pleaded guilty at a New York court to a series of charges in connection with unlawful sales of rare ancient coins. Richard Beale, director of London-based auction house Roma Numismatics, admitted two counts of conspiracy and three counts of criminal possession of stolen property, court documents show.”

Route Fifty: States ramp up software security standards amid growing threats. “Collaboration among states to tighten the security of cloud software is increasing under the nationwide program StateRAMP. Meanwhile, Texas is embracing its own certification effort after several high-profile cyber incidents.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Monthly: Google’s Participation Trophies. ” My certificate took me just two and a half weeks to get, mainly because I learned to game the system. (I watched videos at double speed and passed quizzes by trial and error.) And when I presented my shiny new credential to prospective employers in the Washington, D.C., area and scoured job postings in Silicon Valley, my credential was less a foot in the door than a plaintive knock at firmly barred gates.”

University of Bath: Suggestible people feel more present in virtual reality – study finds. “People with vivid imaginations are more likely than others to believe they truly inhabit the worlds they visit in virtual reality (VR) according to new research led by the University of Bath.” Good morning, Internet…

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August 29, 2023 at 05:30PM
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Presbyterian Historical Society, RSS Algo, WordPress, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 28, 2023

Presbyterian Historical Society, RSS Algo, WordPress, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Presbyterian Historical Society: 60 Years Since ’63: Newly Digitized March on Washington Records. “Sixty years ago this month, over 200,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the endpoint of a massive protest march organized to draw attention to the Civil Rights Movement…. The Presbyterian Historical Society recently published a set of documents detailing the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.’s (UPCUSA) involvement in this historic march.”

Spotted on Mastodon: RSS Algo. From the home page: “An open source client-side algorithmically-driven RSS reader, living with your data on your device.” Also has a GitHub page.

EVENTS

WordPress: The Future of WordPress & What’s Next for Gutenberg. “Nearly 2,000 attendees gathered for two days of keynotes, sessions, and community-building conversations at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in the largest attended WordCamp US ever. Saturday’s sessions concluded with back-to-back keynotes by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Africanews: Gabon imposes curfew and cuts internet access as voting wraps up. “Gabon’s government announced a nationwide curfew and cut off internet access Saturday evening as voting in major national elections was wrapping up. The Central African nation’s communications minister, Rodrigue Mboumba Bissawou, said on state television that there would a nightly curfew from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. He said internet access was being restricted indefinitely, saying there had been calls for violence and the spreading of disinformation.”

CBR: Comics Twitter Has Created A Fandom That Doesn’t Understand Comics . “Twitter, or X as it’s now called, has become the most important advertising tool for the comic industry. Companies like DC Comics and Image use the site to get the news about new books out. A whole ecosystem of fan accounts and podcasts has sprung up around Twitter, where indie creators peddle their wares, and fans and creators interact like never before. However, Comics Twitter is often a cesspool of toxicity and bad takes. In fact, the very nature of Comic Twitter has often been its downfall, and the fans Comic Twitter created have run into some huge problems.”

PC Gamer: Elon Musk appearance at Valorant Champions tournament met with boos, crowd chanting ‘Bring back Twitter’. “Billionaire Elon Musk was booed by the crowd when his attendance on the final day of the Valorant Champions 2023 tournament was highlighted in the broadcast. In a clip of the stream shared by Jake Lucky, Musk’s attendance in the stadium was revealed, only to be met with raucous boos from the crowd.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ABC News (Australia): Privacy watchdog ‘monitoring’ telemarketer after financial information posted to dark web in data breach. “Two charities have said that banking details of their supporters were stolen and leaked on the dark web in a major cyber hack affecting more than 50,000 Australians. The privacy watchdog is not yet investigating the hack involving over a dozen charities, despite multiple organisations alleging the company breached privacy laws by retaining historical data.”

BBC: Lapsus$: Court finds teenagers carried out hacking spree. “A court has found an 18-year-old from Oxford was a part of an international cyber-crime gang responsible for a hacking spree against major tech firms. Arion Kurtaj was a key member of the Lapsus$ group which hacked the likes of Uber, Nvidia and Rockstar Games. A court heard Kurtaj leaked clips of the unreleased Grand Theft Auto 6 game while on bail in a Travelodge hotel.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: A.I. Brings the Robot Wingman to Aerial Combat. “An Air Force program shows how the Pentagon is starting to embrace the potential of a rapidly emerging technology, with far-reaching implications for war-fighting tactics, military culture and the defense industry.”

Harvard Kennedy School: Who knowingly shares false political information online?. “Some people share misinformation accidentally, but others do so knowingly. To fully understand the spread of misinformation online, it is important to analyze those who purposely share it. Using a 2022 U.S. survey, we found that 14 percent of respondents reported knowingly sharing misinformation, and that these respondents were more likely to also report support for political violence, a desire to run for office, and warm feelings toward extremists. These respondents were also more likely to have elevated levels of a psychological need for chaos, dark tetrad traits, and paranoia. Our findings illuminate one vector through which misinformation is spread.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 29, 2023 at 12:19AM
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UK Epidemiology, Hazard Mitigation Methodology, Czech Folk Architecture, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, August 28, 2023

UK Epidemiology, Hazard Mitigation Methodology, Czech Folk Architecture, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, August 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Cardiff University: Understanding all disease prevalence in the UK. “A new website gives the public, health professionals and researchers easy access to data about the prevalence of all diseases in the UK, marking a landmark achievement for global health information analysis.”

NIST: NIST Issues New Guidance for Emergency Response During Wildfires. “NIST has launched a new website intended to help community leaders and first responders in wildfire-prone areas make buildings and other structures more resistant to fire. The website is based on the Hazard Mitigation Methodology (HMM), which was developed by researchers at NIST, CAL FIRE and other agencies and organizations. While traditional strategies focus on hardening individual structures, the HMM takes a community-wide approach to addressing wildfire risks.”

Radio Prague International: Ethnologists create online museum of Czech folk architecture. “Folk architecture is one of the cornerstones of regional and national identity, but it is rapidly disappearing. That is why ethnologists from the National Museum and Czech Academy of Sciences worked together with IT specialists from the Czech Technical University to create a virtual museum of folk architecture in Czechia.”

Reclaim the Records: The Connecticut Genealogy Index Is Now Online. “Introducing ConnecticutGenealogy.org! It’s a FREE searchable database of 576,638 births, 2,180,700 marriages, 2,086 civil unions, and 2,772,116 deaths from the state of Connecticut, spanning three centuries.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BBC: British Museum recovers some of 2,000 stolen items. “About 2,000 treasures are thought to have been stolen from the British Museum, but recovery has begun of some of them, chairman George Osborne has said. The ex-chancellor accepted the museum’s reputation has suffered but said ‘it is a mess we are going to clear up’.”

TechCrunch: YouTube to support RSS uploads for podcasters by year-end, plus private feeds in YouTube Music. “YouTube is growing its commitment to hosting podcasts on its platform. This week, at the Podcast Movement conference, YouTube product lead Steve McLendon confirmed the platform will be rolling out support for RSS uploads for podcasters by the end of the year, among other updates. The new functionality had been in beta testing since earlier this year, as a strategic, invite-only pilot.”

USEFUL STUFF

Amit Agarwal: How to Enable Push Notifications for File Changes in Google Drive with Apps Script. “Are you looking for a way to receive notifications in real-time when an important spreadsheet in your Google Drive get modified or is accidently deleted by sometimes? Well, Google Drive offers an API to help you set up a watch on any file in your Google Drive be it a document, presentation or even a PDF file. This means that you can receive instant notifications whenever the content or even permissions of that file changes. This tutorial explains how you can setup watch notifications on any file in your Google Drive with the help of Google Apps Script.”

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. Here are the latest.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Anime News Network: Manga Archive Organization Dedicated to Archiving Manga Materials Founded. “The Manga Archive Organization announced its founding on Monday. Formally founded on May 1, the organization aims to preserve and share manga creators’ original artwork and related materials, including published material such as magazines and compiled book volumes. Taku Ōishi, the curator of the Yokote Masuda Manga Museum, will be the organization’s board representative.”

Saint Louis University (Madrid): SLU-Madrid Ethnographer to Create a Digital Red Carpet for Spanish Film Festival. “The glam. The status. The pageantry. Film festivals — whether local or international — put the spotlight on filmmakers, actors and creatives alike. These events tout prestige through showy outfits and indulgence in expensive giveaways for attendees. Imagine getting glammed up for the big gala, but in a barn instead of a state-of-the-art theatre. The status of such a rustic backdrop is why Vivar has researched the annual Festival de Cans since 2020. The film event occurs in the heart of rural western Galicia in the province of Pontevedra, Spain.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New Voice of Ukraine: Crimeans using social media to help Ukrainian military spot Russian air defenses. “Crimeans are actively helping the Ukrainian military detect Russian air defense systems by publishing photos and videos of the systems in operation, Taras Berezovets, a political scientist and officer of the I. Bohun special brigade, told Radio NV in an interview on Aug. 25.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Michigan: Tuning the tension: Negative feedback could moderate extreme views on social media, per U-M research. “‘Downvotes’ and ‘dislikes’ from peers could moderate extreme rhetoric and mitigate echo chambers among social media users, according to new research from the University of Michigan. The study finds such ‘feedback can serve as the whip that regulates the polarization of opinions by encouraging users to moderate their tone.’ Conversely, the research doesn’t find evidence of equivalent moderation effects from positive feedback.” Good morning, Internet…

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August 28, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Coffee Genetics, Standard Telephone Company, California State Parks, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 27, 2023

Coffee Genetics, Standard Telephone Company, California State Parks, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, August 27, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Global Coffee Report: WCR releases Arabica genetic fingerprint database. “Verification of coffee varieties ensures quality control of plant material is available to farmers worldwide. WCR is making the database openly accessible to the scientific community so that it can be used by public and private labs for variety verification.”

Digital Library of Georgia: Standard Telephone Company Records documenting Standard Telephone Company’s provision of services to rural northeast Georgians for the past century are now available online.. “The collection contains historical materials dating from 1904 to 1999 that come from the archives of the independently-owned Standard Telephone Company. Headquartered in Cornelia, it provided telephone service to rural northeast Georgians. Among the materials are items recognizing fifty years of service from the Standard Telephone Company’s longtime employee, Henry Davis, an African-American telephone engineer, the first in Georgia and possibly the nation.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

California Department of Parks and Recreation: California State Parks Unveils Enhanced PORTS Website Offering Innovative Learning Resources for Teachers and Students. “PORTS is an innovative initiative that connects K-12 classrooms with the wonders of California’s diverse state parks through virtual field trips, live interactive sessions, and comprehensive digital resources. The newly updated website offers a range of exciting features to enrich the educational journey of teachers and students across the state.”

WordPress: Introducing the 100-Year Plan: Secure Your Online Legacy for a Century. “A domain is your most valuable digital asset. While standard domain registrations last a decade, our 100-Year Plan gives you an opportunity to secure your domain for a full century.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bloomberg: Google Axes Bad Reviews of Tracker Exposing Uyghur Forced Labor. “The Human Rights Foundation’s Uyghur Forced Labor Checker had been experiencing a spate of unusual activity in recent months, with the number of downloads fluctuating dramatically, according to Claudia Bennett, the nonprofit’s legal and program officer. The tool, a Google Chrome extension, alerts internet users if a retailer or business whose website they are visiting has links to forced Uyghur labor.”

BBC: ‘Girl’ trends are sticky and fun. But they can also be problematic.. “Lazy girl jobs are just one instance of a parade of content recently branded as ‘girl’ trends. In the past month, we’ve seen the rise of ‘girl math’, which allows shoppers to justify pricey purchases with a bit of number crunching; and ‘girl dinner’, in which meagre snack platters constitute a full dinner. As these trends rise, there’s one key thing they have in common besides their nomenclature – there’s nothing inherently feminine about them at all.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: AI chatbots help web content farms copy work from top publishers, report says. “Dozens of websites are using AI chatbots to copy and repurpose articles from top publishers, according to a report from the news-rating group NewsGuard, offering a glimpse into how artificial intelligence tools risk undermining media companies and muddying the online news industry. The 37 websites, which Bloomberg also reviewed, posted stories that contained identical text, photos and quotes to articles previously published by the New York Times, Reuters and CNN, according to the report.” Not that junk content online is anything new.

The Messenger: Trump Advisor’s Former Social Media Company Gettr Accused of Stiffing IT Firm Out of $3 Million. “The social media company founded by Donald Trump advisor Jason Miller stiffed a tech outfit they hired for IT services out of more than $3 million, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in New York.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Oregon State University: FDA approving drugs after fewer trials, providing less information to public, OSU studies find. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is approving more novel pharmaceutical drugs based on single clinical trials and with less public disclosure about those trials than was the norm just a few years ago, a pair of recent studies from Oregon State University found. Researchers agree it is important to minimize delays in making treatments for diseases such as cancer available to patients, but they say their findings point to a need for greater transparency around how drugs receive approval.”

The Conversation: Online gaming communities could provide a lifeline for isolated young men − new research. “Online gaming communities could be a vital lifeline for young men struggling silently with mental health issues, according to new research. My colleagues and I analyzed an all-male online football gaming community over the course of a year. We discovered that members who reported more depressive symptoms and less real-life support were roughly 40% more likely to form and maintain social ties with fellow gamers compared with those reporting more real-life support.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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August 28, 2023 at 12:07AM
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