Yom Kippur War, Johannes Schwalm Historical Association, Video Games for Educators, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 8, 2023

Yom Kippur War, Johannes Schwalm Historical Association, Video Games for Educators, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 8, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Ynetnews: Israel declassifies massive archive to mark 50th anniversary of Yom Kippur War. “Israeli history comes alive today like never before as the Israel State Archives releases thousands of documents related to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, including materials from the months leading up to and following the conflict.”

Kutztown University: Johannes Schwalm Historical Association Selects Kutztown University As New Home Of Digital Military Archives. “The Johannes Schwalm Historical Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to researching those German auxiliary troops (generically called Hessian) who remained in America after the Revolutionary War… Researchers from across the world can now access these digital archives through Kutztown University’s Rohrbach Library.”

Illinois State University: Creative Technologies professor creates gaming database for educators . “With more than 10,000 computer games of varying topics, themes, and designs released each year, the options are overwhelming. But by establishing an online database called ‘Using.Games,’ [Dr. Sercan] Şengün is aiming to make video games more accessible for educators who are teaching about and researching the humanities, social sciences, and the arts.” I think the database is currently available, but when I checked it it was down.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome. “Don’t let Chrome’s big redesign distract you from the fact that Chrome’s invasive new ad platform, ridiculously branded the ‘Privacy Sandbox,’ is also getting a widespread rollout in Chrome today. If you haven’t been following this, this feature will track the web pages you visit and generate a list of advertising topics that it will share with web pages whenever they ask, and it’s built directly into the Chrome browser.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: New YouTube face just dropped. “The faces on YouTube thumbnails might start to look a bit different. A lot of thumbnails feature a person with an open mouth in shock, awe, excitement, or horror because of a belief that the open-mouth face entices people to click on a video. But MrBeast, the individual with the most subscribers on YouTube, said Wednesday that he’s starting to see longer watch times on videos where his thumbnail face has a closed mouth instead of an open one.” Decades from now, students are going to write their doctoral thesis on YouTube Face.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Google: State hackers attack security researchers with new zero-day. “Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) says North Korean state hackers are again targeting security researchers in attacks using at least one zero-day in an undisclosed popular software. Researchers attacked in this campaign are involved in vulnerability research and development, according to Google’s team of security experts that protects the company’s users from state-sponsored attacks.”

Reuters: Australia to require AI-made child abuse material be removed from search results. “Australia will make search engines like Google and Bing take steps to prevent the sharing of child sexual abuse material created by artificial intelligence, the country’s internet regulator said on Friday. A new code drafted by the industry giants at the government’s request will require search engines to ensure that such content is not returned in search results, e-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

World Bank: Demand for Online Gig Work Rapidly Rising in Developing Countries. “The ‘gig economy’ accounts for up to 12 percent of the global labor market—much higher than previously estimated—and holds particular promise for women and youth in developing countries. Demand for online gig work is growing rapidly, however, social protections for workers in this segment are still lacking, according to a new World Bank report.”

IOL (South Africa): Hashtags showing anti-immigrant sentiment likely artificially manipulated – research finds. “In a new report, the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change (CABC) found that the online conversations using the hashtags #Xenophobia, #PatrioticSpace, #VoetsekANC, and #PutSouthAfricaFirst were likely artificially manipulated.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

University of Maine: Vincent Weaver ‘demakes’ video games to teach about computer systems. “Vincent Weaver, a University of Maine associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, has a quirky hobby: ‘de-making’ video games, or reformatting classic games onto even simpler systems than the ones they were launched on as a programming challenge. Weaver has not only amassed an online fan base for his demakes — he has also found ways to incorporate them into his curriculum for UMaine students.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 9, 2023 at 01:00AM
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Ludvig Holberg, Union Black, Food Safety and Inspection Service APIs, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, September 8, 2023

Ludvig Holberg, Union Black, Food Safety and Inspection Service APIs, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, September 8, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Royal Library Denmark: New research translates Holberg’s comedies into numbers and statistics. “For the past three years, the theatre researchers Ulla Kallenbach (University of Bergen), Anna Lawaetz (Royal Danish Library) and Annelis Kuhlmann (Aarhus University) and a number of programmers from the Royal Danish Library/Deic and Centre for Humanities Computing Aarhus worked on developing tools for digital analyses of Ludvig Holberg’s drama… Here, Holberg’s comedies are converted into statistics, figures and numbers with the aim of investigating how digital analysis can be used in a stage reading.”

Mashable: Google launches incredible online exhibition celebrating Black British music. “Entitled Union Black, the online exhibition explores the various pioneers, innovators, and movements that have deeply and undeniably influenced British culture as a whole. Through vintage photographs, historical documentaries, contemporary interviews, and other multimedia stories, Union Black presents a comprehensive and extraordinary retelling of those who have shaped the fabric of the British music scene.”

US Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service: FSIS Launches New Data Tool: Recall and Public Health Alert API. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) launched a new feature on its website that enables software developers to access data on recalls and public health alerts through an application programming interface (API).”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PA Media: YouTube begins verifying videos by UK doctors to tackle health misinformation. “YouTube has launched a verification system for UK-based doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to help Britons dodge medical misinformation online…. YouTube added a new seal of approval to accounts run by licensed doctors, nurses, psychologists, and other health practitioners or organisations who have passed stringent verification checks to fight misinformation.”

WCVB: Massachusetts updates database of police disciplinary records. “The Massachusetts agency that oversees police officer training and discipline updated its database of officer misconduct to remove the names of officers whose complaints were overturned and is continuing to review requests for corrections, a spokesperson for the commission said. The update was issued on Sept. 1 to the database of officers with sustained allegations that was first issued by the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission last month.”

The Verge: Microsoft is testing a background removal tool in Paint. “Microsoft is testing a new background removal tool in Paint. The feature is rolling out now to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels (version 11.2306.30.0) and lets you remove an image’s background with a single click.” I’m not going to mention every single background removal tool ever, but this seems to me an interesting intersection of the iconic and the future.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

How-To Geek: Duolingo Wants to Give You Music Lessons, Too . “Duolingo has announced that it will soon be rolling out a music teaching experience. With it, Duolingo says that you’ll have hundreds of tiny lessons that will teach you, along the way, everything about musical notes and how you can play music — the company says that users will have access to a library of over 200 songs.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

UK Government: Online animal cruelty activity to be removed from social media platforms. “Social media firms will be forced to remove online content facilitating animal torture in a further push to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. Under new proposals, social media platforms will be required to proactively tackle the illegal content and have it swiftly removed, or face fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their global annual revenue.”

Associated Press: Arkansas blogger files suit seeking records related to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ travel, security. “An Arkansas attorney and blogger has filed a lawsuit against the Arkansas State Police that accuses the agency of illegally withholding public records he requested related to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ travel and security.”

Apple Insider: Exploit patched in iOS 16.6.1 update delivered Pegasus spyware. “Apple’s operating system updates on Thursday patched an exploit chain capable of compromising iOS 16.6 devices with the Pegasus spyware without any interaction from the victim. The exploit was discovered on an iPhone owned by an individual employed by a Washington DC-based civil society organization. The exploit was used to deliver NSO Group’s Pegasus mercenary spyware.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Iowa State University: Crowdsourcing contests: Understanding what brings high rewards, low risk. “[Professor Hui (Sophia)] Feng studies how certain marketing strategies affect a company’s financial outcomes, including stock prices. In a newly published study, Feng and her co-authors show that crowdsourcing contests are associated with high returns — but also high risks. The team suggests ways companies can strike the right balance and put investors at ease.”

Temple University: Temple researchers examine patterns of inequality in banned books. “Since July 2021, more than 1,500 books of contemporary literature have been banned in the United States. Now a team of Temple researchers is looking for patterns across these books to understand what may be causing them to be targeted. The team is made up of Temple faculty, library staff, and undergraduate and graduate English students who are using text mining to understand patterns of representation in these books.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 8, 2023 at 05:30PM
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Maui Recovery Website, Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Snapchat, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 7, 2023

Maui Recovery Website, Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Snapchat, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 7, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

KITV: Interim MEMA head launches new ‘Maui Recovers’ website, an online hub for wildfire survivors. “The Interim administrator for the Maui Emergency Management Agency has launched a new website aimed at providing information on re-entry to Lahaina. Darryl Oiverira, who took his post on August 28, launched Maui Recovers for residents and businesses seeking information and resources on how to safely return to Lahaina.”

Buenos Aries Herald: How AI is helping keep the Abuelas’ legacy intact. “Every day for 40 years, a grandmother bent over a desk, patiently cutting out news articles with a pair of scissors. Raquel Radío de Mazcurra was scouring the newspapers for hints about her grandchildren. She carefully pasted and stored the clippings in folders. Raquel was one of the twelve women who, in 1977, founded the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Snapchat adds new teen safety features, cracks down on age-inappropriate content. “Snapchat today is announcing a series of new safeguards for its app, aimed at better protecting teen users, similar to other efforts introduced earlier by other social apps, like Facebook and Instagram. The company says the new features will make it harder for strangers to contact teens, provide a more age-appropriate experience, crack down on accounts marketing inappropriate content and improve education for teens using its app.”

Politico: Google to require disclosure of AI use in political ads. “Starting in November, Google will mandate all political advertisements label the use of artificial intelligence tools and synthetic content in their videos, images and audio.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Gizmodo: These 24 Members of Congress Paid for Twitter. “The United States House of Representatives recently published its Statement of Disbursements, which is a summary of how the members of Congress have spent money from April to June of this year. The 3,400-page report specifically highlights some representatives that spent money on ‘Twitter paid features.’ According to the report at least 24 members of Congress spent money on Twitter Blue/X Premium—5 of those were Democrats while 19 were Republicans.”

Spotlight PA: Pennsylvania removes email database of public employees. “Pennsylvania officials have removed a searchable, online database of state employee emails, narrowing the ways the public can reach the people who work for commonwealth agencies. The state Office of Administration, which oversees cybersecurity for state government agencies, took down the directory in May because it posed a security risk, said communications director Dan Egan.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: The International Criminal Court Will Now Prosecute Cyberwar Crimes. “In a little-noticed article released last month in the quarterly publication Foreign Policy Analytics, the International Criminal Court’s lead prosecutor, Karim Khan, spelled out that new commitment: His office will investigate cybercrimes that potentially violate the Rome Statute, the treaty that defines the court’s authority to prosecute illegal acts, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”

CoinDesk: Former FTX Executive Ryan Salame Will Plead Guilty to Charges: Bloomberg. “Ryan Salame, who was one of Sam Bankman-Fried’s top deputies at FTX, plans to plead guilty to criminal charges on Thursday, Bloomberg reported. Salame was co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets and allegedly handled crypto exchange FTX’s political donations. He made substantial donations to Republican candidates.”

UPI: Microsoft report highlights Chinese social media campaign against U.S.. “Microsoft accused China on Thursday of operating a disinformation campaign targeting political candidates by impersonating U.S. voters on numerous social media platforms. In a threat analysis report, Microsoft said that the Chinese Communist Party has improved its sophistication in engaging targeted audiences and their spread is much wider than observed in the past.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Chimpanzees are not pets, no matter what social media tells you. “Even Hollywood – which has a long history of using trained monkey or ape ‘actors’ – is shifting to the use of computer-generated imagery to depict primates on screen. Social media must catch up, and recognise that holding exotic animals in human contexts represents a grizzly and exploitative industry – and thus reflects animal abuse.” 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.

September 8, 2023 at 01:08AM
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More Mastodon Tools for You: One New Web App and Three New GitHub Repositories

More Mastodon Tools for You: One New Web App and Three New GitHub Repositories
By ResearchBuzz

As I spend more time digging into Mastodon’s API and considering the possibilities of decentralized social media search, the extant search engines around me seem rather… flat.

That makes sense inasmuch as Google and Bing and other search engines are designed to get you from point A to point B with minimal effort on your part. There have been criticisms about Google’s efficiency at that lately, but putting those criticisms aside, that’s what search engines were designed to do.

After getting under the hood of Mastodon’s API, I find myself unsatisfied with web search. Google is 25 while web search is roughly 30, which means that web searching as an aspect of our daily life is maybe 20 years old. And yet our current search engines don’t take advantage of the fact that the searching audience has become more sophisticated over time. Even if you don’t use social media, you understand the social signals of reposts, replies, and favorites. Even if you don’t use Twitter you can understand the impact that verified identities had on that platform when they worked (and the havoc they’re wreaking now that they don’t.) (These shortcomings don’t even address search engines’ failure to wield user-intuitive persistent metadata to shape search spaces, but I’ve already ranted about that.)

Mastodon’s fully-open API is giving me the opportunity to explore how search might look and I intend to take full advantage. MastoGizmos is now at fourteen one-page Web apps to make your searching and exploring of Mastodon easier, and I’ve added three new GitHub repositories as well. Here’s the update.

Browser Mastodon Instance Directories: David’s ‘Dex

The #1 complaint I hear about Mastodon  is that it’s too hard to find people to follow. I’m trying to help with that — I’ve made Hashtag Harvest and MastoWindow and Wikipedia/Mastodon Thing. To your Mastodon fam-finding toolbox I’d like to also add David’s ‘Dex. David’s ‘Dex lets you explore Mastodon instances users by the domains they link to in their profile.

 

Start by choosing a Mastodon instance to review. David’s ‘Dex will crash if you try it with really big instances like Mastodon.Social – journa.host is set as the default. Once you specify an instance, DD will download the instance’s user directory, organize the users by the links they use in their profile metadata, and present those to you in a drop down directory, with an additional checkbox available to filter for only those links which have been self-verified by users. Once you’ve chosen a domain you’ll get a list of users who have that link in their profile (in this case verified.)

Click on a user and you’ll get their user information in the middle with a clickable link to their profile page. In the third column you’ll get the links from their metadata fields and their last three Mastodon posts. I had a grand time yesterday finding science- and humanities- instances and looking at the users who linked to GitHub, ResearchGate, ORCID, etc, clicking on the profile links of all kinds of cool people. And if I wanted to follow them? Following someone on Mastodon outside of your Mastodon client can be a little awkward, but I made it easy-peasy with a bookmarklet.

Easy Mastodon Follows: Mastodon Follow Bookmarklet

Bookmarklets are bookmarks with JavaScript added in. As you might imagine the addition of JavaScript adds lots of possibilities. With Mastodon Follow Bookmarklet , you highlight a Mastodon user name, click on the bookmarklet, and get taken to your instance’s follow confirmation page. Boom! Done.  The GitHub repository is a snippet of JavaScript. Just save it as a bookmarket after following the directions to customize it with your Mastodon instance name. (If you’re not sure what your instance name is, plug your username into Mastodon Username Helper.)

Even if you follow tons of people on Mastodon you might find your information flow unsatisfactory when breaking news happens. That’s because the decentralized nature of Mastodon means you’re only seeing a limited amount of content. Much more content flows through big instances than small ones.

There are instance-level tools to address the problem of limited information flow to instances, but I think that users should have options as well. So I made a couple.

Monitoring the News From a Small Instance With Mastodon

Make a News Monitoring Perch With Mastodon Stadium Seats

The first time I tried to follow a scheduled political event on Mastodon – a  debate – it was a disaster. I had to run around trying to find the liveposters and the flow of posts from the hashtags I set up was just sad. So I made Mastodon Stadium Seats (which has little CSS and is very rough.) It’s an HTML file. Download it and customize it with the hashtags you want to monitor and the instances you want to monitor, and you’ll get a plain, full-screen display of the last 14 posts from those hashtags on those instances. It’ll automatically refresh every 90 seconds.

Set Up a Passive News Screen With VibesMasto News

A plain, frequently-updating screen is fine when there’s breaking news, but what about when you want to keep a more general eye on what’s happening? That’s what VibesMasto News is for. It monitors general trending links on Mastodon.Social and a list of Mastodon hashtags you specify, but it also has a section for an external RSS feed (the default feed is the front page of the New York Times.) Like Mastodon Stadium Seats, VMN is an HTML that you download, customize, and open in your browser. When nothing specific is happening, I cast this page to a monitor that’s beside my computer.

 

I’m just getting started. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

September 7, 2023 at 08:43PM
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Proceedings of the ACM on Networking, Open and Engaged Conference, Earthly Podcast, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, September 7, 2023

Proceedings of the ACM on Networking, Open and Engaged Conference, Earthly Podcast, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, September 7, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

EurekAlert: ACM publishes new journal of Proceedings of the ACM On Networking. “ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has announced the publication of the first issue of Proceedings of the ACM on Networking (PACMNET), a new peer-reviewed journal. Issued quarterly, PACMNET publishes original research papers on new technologies, novel experimentation, creative use of networking technologies, and new insights into network management. The journal features articles on system design and performance evaluations of computer networks, experience learned from deployments, traffic engineering, and network programmability from academic experts as well as practitioners working in public or private settings.”

EVENTS

British Library Digital Scholarship Blog: Open and Engaged 2023: Community over Commercialisation. “The British Library is delighted to host its annual Open and Engaged Conference on Monday 30 October, in-person and online, as part of International Open Access Week. In line with this year’s #OAWeek theme: Open and Engaged 2023: Community over Commercialisation will address approaches and practices to open scholarship that prioritise the best interests of the public and the research community.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Clemson News: New Clemson University podcast aims to explain the natural world. “Clemson University has launched a new science podcast titled Earthly that will explain the science behind some of world’s most pressing issues in agriculture, natural resources, wildlife, and the earth sciences.”

Politico: Trump social media startup wins more time to go public. “Investors on Tuesday granted a last-minute lifeline to the company looking to take former President Donald Trump’s social media venture public, handing executives another year to finish the transaction ahead of a do-or-die deadline this week.”

Search Engine Land: Google will allow NFT gaming ads under updated cryptocurrency ad policy. “Google will allow NFT gaming ads, provided they don’t promote gambling content, from next month. This change will take place on September 15 when Google issues its updated advertising policy for cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based games.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Tuscon Sentinel: Tucson’s Molly Holzschlag, known as ‘the fairy godmother of the web,’ dead at 60. “Molly Holzschlag, whose pioneering work in online design standards led to her being dubbed ‘the fairy godmother of the web,’ has died at age 60. Holzschlag, a longtime Tucson resident, dealt with a series of illnesses over the past decade, including being diagnosed with aplastic anemia. She was found dead Tuesday at her home, family said.”

CBC: That feeling when your grandma becomes a social media star. “In one of her recent posts, Joan MacDonald twirls on a beach and smiles radiantly into the camera. In another, the 77-year-old exhales heavily as she squats under a weighted bar in a gym. Among the so-called ‘granfluencers’ on social media, the Cobourg, Ont., native is something of a heavy weight who says she’s still getting used to flexing her social media muscles and notes that ‘not in 1,000 years’ did she see herself becoming an influencer in her 70s.”

Gizmodo: Want to See How Bad Twitter’s Bot Problem Is? Ask for Crypto Help.. “For the past year, Don Marti has been tweeting requests for help with ‘MetaMask support.’ MetaMask is one of the more popular wallet services for people to store their cryptocurrency and NFTs. Its users are the subject of widespread and relentless scamming attempts. Fortunately, there are countless robots patrolling Twitter promising to help. Marti, an executive at an ad tech company, tweets about it every couple of weeks. Without fail, dozens of scam bots always come calling. Some even pretend to be beautiful women, and lately, the robots have even started getting poetic in their responses.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Google Turns to a Steady Old Hand to Fight Antitrust Charges. “Google and its parent company, Alphabet, are facing their most significant legal challenge. They are preparing to face off next week in federal court against the Justice Department and a collection of states, which claim the tech giant illegally abused its monopoly power to keep its search engine on top. The Justice Department has argued that Google illegally used agreements with phone makers like Apple and Samsung, as well as internet browsers like Mozilla, to be the default search engine for their users, preventing smaller rivals from getting access to that business.”

Reuters: Google reaches tentative settlement in US Play Store lawsuit. “Alphabet’s Google (GOOG) (GOOGL) on Tuesday tentatively settled a class action suit alleging that its U.S. Play Store had violated U.S. federal antitrust rules by overcharging customers, according to a court filing. Details of the settlement were not disclosed.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Daily Beast: Enough! Advertisers and Governments Must Dump Elon Musk.. “You can, as you have demonstrated, flush billions of dollars down the toilet on a whim. But the rest of us still have some clout left, too, and you have made it clear that it is time to mobilize our influence and utilize the mechanisms at our disposal to stop you before you do even greater harm. It is time for the United States and other like-minded governments to stop subsidizing your ventures. It is time for advertisers to recognize that every dollar they give you to support the site formerly known as Twitter goes to amplify the views of hate-mongers, racists, and despots.”

Bloomberg: UK Back in EU’s Horizon Science Program After Brexit Freeze. “Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave the go-ahead for the UK to rejoin the European Union’s €95.5 billion ($103 billion) Horizon science program, allowing closer ties between Europe’s top research hubs following a two-year gap because of post-Brexit political wrangling.” 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.

September 7, 2023 at 05:28PM
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Renewable Energy Land Use, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, The Conversation, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 6, 2023

Renewable Energy Land Use, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, The Conversation, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 6, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

PV Magazine: Online mapping tool to identify policy-suitable land for renewables. “The tool is reportedly able to determine the number of rooftop or ground-mounted solar projects that can be deployed in a given area, as well as the maximum number of wind turbines within a site considering site geometry and the minimum distance required between each turbine. It can also identify buildings that can be connected to a district heating network within a specified distance.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Axios: Biden administration hires Twitter security whistleblower. “Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko, the high-profile hacker and Twitter security whistleblower, is joining the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Why it matters: Zatko’s hire brings more muscle to an agency that lacks — and doesn’t appear to want — regulatory authorities.”

The Conversation: The Conversation launches in Brazil. “Since The Conversation launched in Melbourne in 2011 we have grown around the world, with teams in New Zealand, large parts of Africa, Spain, France, the UK, US, Indonesia and Canada. Yesterday we welcomed a new team to our fold, working in Brazil and publishing in Portuguese, our fifth language.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Vice: Twitter Users Are Warning Each Other About Its Junk Ads With Community Notes. “Mainstream advertisers have fled the platform in droves since erratic billionaire Elon Musk took over the site, and what’s replaced them is a flood of dropshipping companies and scammy video games. The problem has gotten so bad that users have taken it upon themselves to warn each other about the site’s junky ads: Often, they come with a community note informing users that this product ad, made by one of the few people willing to still give Elon Musk money to advertise on Twitter, is actually misleading.”

Rolling Stone: Dionne Warwick Wants a Word With ‘Young Man’ Elon Musk About Changes to X. “DIONNE WARWICK IS not totally impressed with Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now known as X. Earlier this week, People asked the singer what she thought of Musk’s plan to remove the social media platform’s blocking feature. ‘I have yet to speak to that young man and I intend to because I am not quite sure what he’s doing or if he knows what he’s doing,’ Warwick replied. ‘So until that happens, I’ll reserve my answer to that question.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Channel News Asia: Malaysia mulls rules for Google, Meta to pay news outlets for content. “Malaysia said on Tuesday (Sep 5) it is considering regulations that will make internet giants Alphabet’s Google and Facebook parent Meta Platforms compensate news outlets for content sourced from them.”

Bloomberg Law: FDA’s ‘Not a Horse’ Covid-19 Twitter Posts Are Agency Actions. “‘Tweet-sized doses of personalized medical advice are beyond’ the Food and Drug Administration’s statutory authority, the Fifth Circuit ruled as to the agency’s social media posts that discouraged using ivermectin to treat Covid-19. A lower court must decide whether the case from three ivermectin-prescribing doctors has “any other jurisdictional” or standing issues that would prevent it from moving forward so remand was appropriate, the appeals court also said.”

Associated Press: Carmakers fail privacy test, give owners little or no control on personal data they collect. “Cars are getting an ‘F’ in data privacy. Most major manufacturers admit they may be selling your personal information, a new study finds, with half also saying they would share it with the government or law enforcement without a court order. The proliferation of sensors in automobiles — from telematics to fully digitized control consoles — has made them prodigious data-collection hubs.” Never thought I’d be glad our car is 15 years old.

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Verge: Elon Musk paid for our attention, but the price to keep it is getting higher. “I see Elon Musk has pivoted from pretending he’s going to physically fight Mark Zuckerberg to pretending he is going to sue the Anti-Defamation League. Okay. There are people who still take Musk seriously, and I wish them well on their journey. This blog is for the rest of us.”

The Guardian: Manchester Museum hands back 174 objects to Indigenous Australian islanders. “Manchester Museum’s return of the objects is significant because repatriation projects normally revolve around sacred or ceremonial items…. In this case, Manchester is returning everyday objects with a more mundane backstory. They include dolls made from shells, baskets, fishing spears, boomerangs, armbands and a map made from turtle shells, all being sent back to the Anindilyakwa community, who live on an archipelago in the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the northern coast of Australia.” 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.

September 7, 2023 at 12:15AM
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G20 Tourism and SDGs Dashboard, Web Archiving Expertise, Digital Library of Georgia, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, September 6, 2023

G20 Tourism and SDGs Dashboard, Web Archiving Expertise, Digital Library of Georgia, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, September 6, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

United Nations World Tourism Organization: UNWTO And G20 Launch Dashboard To Support Tourism In Advancing The SDGs. “Ahead of the G20 Leaders’ Summit next 9-10 September, UNWTO has worked with the Presidency through India’s Ministry of Tourism on the G20 Tourism and SDGs Dashboard…. The Dashboard showcases the pillars of the Goa Roadmap for Tourism as a Vehicle for Achieving the SDGs around the five priority areas set for the Tourism Working Group, which are: 1. Green Tourism; 2. Digitalization; 3. Skills; 4. Tourism MSMEs and 5. Destination Management.”

EVENTS

Library of Congress Blog: The Web Archiving Team Answers Questions About the Web Archives. “Have you ever wondered what exactly is web archiving? How the Library select which websites to preserve? Or how you would find and search the web archives? The Web Archiving Team’s Senior Digital Collection Specialists gathered to answer these questions and more in a live webinar during the Preservation Directorate’s celebration of Preservation Week. If you missed it, we have good news– a video is now available to watch on the Library’s website, and you can also read a short summary of the presentation here.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Digital Library of Georgia: The Digital Library of Georgia has made its 3 millionth digitized and full-text-searchable historic newspaper page available freely online. . “The title page of the first edition of the May 22, 1917, issue of the Atlanta Georgian reports on the destruction caused by the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917 and the city’s effort to control the damage. This issue marks the 3 millionth page digitized by the Digital Library of Georgia.”

CBS News: Google eases wartime restrictions in boost for Ukrainian entrepreneurs, but digital hurdles remain. “One month after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, Vladyslav Lysenko surveyed the damage to his egg warehouse outside Kyiv. Russian soldiers had occupied the building for weeks and destroyed most of his stock. ‘At that moment,” he said, “I realized that I had the opportunity to do something new.’ His dream had always been to open a restaurant, so after meeting Ukrainian ‘MasterChef’ finalist Ivan Kozyr while volunteering to help internally displaced people, he hatched a plan.”

Bloomberg: NFTs, Once Hyped as the Next Big Thing, Now Face ‘Worst Moment’. “Nonfungible tokens, most popularly associated with the digital artwork and other collectibles recorded on crypto blockchains, have lost most of their value after once capturing the imagination of crypto enthusiasts as the next big thing. The hype and FOMO, or “fear of missing out,” around NFTs has faded since their all-time peak in January 2022, leaving beaten-down buyers and sellers struggling to find long-term value in the speculative assets. Monthly trading volume for NFTs plummeted 81% between January 2022 and July 2023, data from DappRadar shows.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: Gizmodo’s owner shuts down Spanish language site in favor of AI translations. “Matías S. Zavia, a writer at Gizmodo en Español, posted that the publication was shut down on August 29th and that it would now publish automatically translated articles. Gizmodo en Español previously had a small staff who wrote original stories and created Spanish-language adaptations of pieces from the English-language Gizmodo.”

Politico: The Global South’s missing voice in AI. “Tanzanian politician [Neema Lugangira] (from the country’s ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi political party) is the founder of the African Parliamentary Network on Internet Governance, a pan-regional network of 35 lawmakers from 30 countries. The goal: to include African voices in increasingly complex global discussions on digital policy — many of which have turned, in recent months, to reining in artificial intelligence.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Missouri Independent: Kansas City police made arrests based on rescinded warrants, records show. “The issue arose when the police department switched from one software for tracking warrants to another. It’s unclear how long it went on or how long the individuals were held.”

Ars Technica: Hacker gains admin control of Sourcegraph and gives free access to the masses. “An unknown hacker gained administrative control of Sourcegraph, an AI-driven service used by developers at Uber, Reddit, Dropbox, and other companies, and used it to provide free access to resources that normally would have required payment.”

TorrentFreak: Google Preemptively Banned Hundreds of Millions of ‘Pirate’ URLs Last Year. “Google remains committed to tackling online piracy. In a recent letter to the US Patent and Trademark Office, the company says that it blocked hundreds of millions of URLs before they appeared in the search engine. These preemptive takedowns are part of a broader strategy that also deals with advertisements for streaming piracy that hasn’t happened yet.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT News: Fast-tracking fusion energy’s arrival with AI and accessibility. “As part of their strategy to accelerate fusion energy’s arrival and reach carbon neutrality by 2050, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has announced new funding for a project led by researchers at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) and four collaborating institutions.”

Android Authority: Five months later, I still don’t want to use Google Bard. “Fast forward to today and we’ve crossed the five-month threshold since Google’s chatbot became publicly available. Despite that, Bard hasn’t found the same kind of success that ChatGPT achieved virtually overnight. But even as Google’s chatbot continues to fade from public discourse, the company hasn’t stopped working on it just yet. So after noticing the last set of updates, I decided to give the troubled chatbot a fair chance. Unfortunately, it only took a few tests to find out why I stopped using Bard in the first place.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 6, 2023 at 05:30PM
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