Wood Database, Twitter, ChatGPT Plugins, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 11, 2023

Wood Database, Twitter, ChatGPT Plugins, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 11, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

I have gotten several complaints that these emails haven’t been readable. I made a couple of changes and two people have reported that the issue is resolved. I hope it’s fixed.

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me and wow, what a collection of enthusiasm and expertise. It’s the Wood Database! https://www.wood-database.com/ . This is a collection of information about wood — almost 600 species according to the front page, with tons of articles, a wood identification guide, and more. Just wow.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Times of Israel: Netanyahu said set to meet Elon Musk in US amid antisemitism feud with ADL. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will reportedly meet with Elon Musk when he travels to San Francisco next week. The meeting would come despite Musk being accused of amplifying antisemitism on his X social media platform and his embroilment in a feud with the Anti-Defamation League.”

USEFUL STUFF

PC Magazine: Do More With AI: The 10 Best ChatGPT Plugins and How to Install Them. “A paid subscription to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus offers access to hundreds of plugins designed to expand the capabilities of the AI chatbot. You can use these plugins to interact with external apps, services, and companies to make travel arrangements, reserve a table at a restaurant, order food delivery, apply for a job, play a game, track your diet, or learn a new language. But with almost 900 plugins at last count and more popping up each day, which ones are worth using? Here are the best plugins we have found, and how to use them the right way.”

WIRED: How to Escape the YouTube Algorithm. “We’ve all heard about how the YouTube algorithm can go terribly wrong, mostly in the context of radicalization. But even without that extreme result, the algorithm is a huge time sink—a system designed to keep you watching videos for as long as possible. Some people like this, but if you want more control over how you spend your time, I recommend avoiding the algorithm entirely. And Google just made that easier: Now, if you turn off your YouTube watch history, there will be no recommended videos on the homepage. Here’s how to set that up.”

Android Police: How to track stock prices in Google Sheets. “Google Sheets is a web-based tool, and the tricks below should work completely fine on your desktop, Mac, or a top Chromebook. While the Google Workspace Marketplace is packed with several powerful add-ons to manage your finances, nothing beats the seamless experience of a built-in tool in Google Sheets.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Reuters: UAW union embraces social media as labor talks toughen ahead of deadline. “The United Auto Workers union is leveraging the power of social media to attract public support in demanding substantial wage increases for hourly workers as a deadline looms with the Detroit Three automakers.”

Ubergizmo: Meet Noonoouri, The AI Pop Star That Just Signed With Warner Music. “Warner Music has made headlines by signing an unconventional record deal with Noonoouri, the world’s first AI virtual pop singer and Instagram influencer. Unlike traditional artists, Noonoouri is entirely digital, existing solely on the internet without the limitations of aging, fatigue, or sleep.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Hacker News: Millions Infected by Spyware Hidden in Fake Telegram Apps on Google Play. “Spyware masquerading as modified versions of Telegram have been spotted in the Google Play Store that’s designed to harvest sensitive information from compromised Android devices. According to Kaspersky security researcher Igor Golovin, the apps come with nefarious features to capture and exfiltrate names, user IDs, contacts, phone numbers, and chat messages to an actor-controlled server.”

The Verge: Your Wyze webcam might have let other owners peek into your house. “Some Wyze security camera owners reported Friday that they were unexpectedly able to see webcam feeds that weren’t theirs, meaning that they were unintentionally able to see inside of other people’s houses. A Wyze spokesperson tells The Verge that this was due to a web caching issue.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Forward: How I stumbled upon thousands of Holocaust-era letters and traced the stories behind them. “The letter was dated July 17, 1939, and signed by a man named Joseph Gross. He was writing from New York to thank the Forward for helping to find his relatives. Alongside it in the digital archive was a letter written in Yiddish, dated the following week, sent from Brussels and signed by Avrom Gross, Joseph’s cousin. ‘I read the letter with such great astonishment,” Avrom wrote. “I have no way of thanking you.’ I stumbled across these letters online, in the digitized archives of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Jerusalem, while searching for references to a column called Seeking Relatives that ran for decades in the Forward.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 12, 2023 at 12:38AM
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Introducing the Big Mastodon Hashtag Search

Introducing the Big Mastodon Hashtag Search
By ResearchBuzz

Last week while writing about recent doodads I’ve made for Mastodon, I complained that I found the Google experience rather flat relative to the amount of understanding we as online searchers have developed. We have understandings about social signals and identity verification and content freshness that we didn’t have (or in the case of content freshness, weren’t as relevant) a couple of decades ago.

This weekend, while listening to some excellent DJs on Twitch (recommended: Air Adam, Mix Master Hak, DJ Ray Domingo, DJ Swirlz , Steve Disco Newsome, Hentalia, Vibesmaster G-Nice) , I dived into the Mastodon API with the intention of making something that was capable of filtering Mastodon’s hashtag search thoroughly but not in a way that requires much understanding of special syntax. I ended up with the Big Mastodon Hashtag Search: https://mastogizmos.com/bmhs/ .

 

Let me show you its features!

What it searches

The BMHS does searches for multiple hashtags across 14 large Mastodon instances. It then removes the duplicates and and presents the results to you in a filterable list.

How it Filters

The BMHS offers a number of ways to filter results, from social engagement to post characteristics to hashtags.

Filtering by social engagement

Each post in the search results has a social score. It’s calculated as a weighted sum of the replies/reposts/favorites: replies get 1 point, reposts 2, favorites 3. (I might change that ratio.)

Underneath the search box you’ll see a slider labeled “Slide to filter by social score”:

You can click and drag the slider to filter your search results by social engagement. The number at the right (0 in the screenshot) specifies what social score is currently filtering the results; it changes as you drag the slider. What ALSO changes is the result count in the search box, so you can immediately see how you’re impacting your search results. (All filtering methods reflect in the search result count immediately.) I made a very very terrible GIF to give you an idea of how it works.

Filtering by Post Characteristics

Beneath the slider you’ll see a series of checkboxes representing post characteristics. Ticking one of these immediately changes your search count and results list:

“Sensitive” means posts marked as having sensitive content. By Bots means posts marked as bot-generated by the API’s response. By Verified Accounts means posts whose authors have self-verified at least one of the links in their bio. By High Follower Count OR Verified Accounts means either verified account posts or posts with more than 5,000 followers; that’s why I call it “Influencer Mode.” You can also use checkboxes to limit your search results to the last day, week, or month.

Filtering by Full Text

The initial search is by hashtag, but once you have the results you can use this form to filter by all the text in the post’s content:

Filtering by Hashtag

Finally, BMHS aggregates the top 20 most frequently-appearing hashtags. Click on one and it’ll filter your results by that hashtag. Click the Reset Hashtag Display button to clear the filter.

Viewing Search Results

Search results appear beneath the filters. I added a couple of visual indicators; posts with a social score of more than 40 are outlined in red. Posts from users who have verified at least one of their bio links are outlined in gold. (If the post has both characteristics the outline will be red.)

I already have some things I want to add to this so stay tuned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 11, 2023 at 10:03PM
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Data for Defenders, Georgia Newspapers, Reddit, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, September 11, 2023

Data for Defenders, Georgia Newspapers, Reddit, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, September 11, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Michigan Law / University of Michigan: Michigan Law Launches Data for Defenders Project to Aid Defense Work. “A new public database housed at the Law School aims to help public defenders assist indigent clients by making a wide range of social-science resources readily available. Data for Defenders collects briefs, motions, and transcripts focused on social science research and data that public defenders could find useful. It includes information on topics like the science of eyewitness memory; problems with racism and bias in the criminal legal system; and the use of unreliable, seemingly scientific evidence.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Digital Library of Georgia: Georgia Historic Newspapers Update Summer 2023. “This summer, the Digital Library of Georgia released several new grant-funded newspaper titles to the Georgia Historic Newspapers website. Included below is a list of the newly available titles.”

The Verge: Reddit can now translate posts. “Reddit can now translate posts into eight different languages when viewing them on Reddit’s iOS or Android apps or on the web while logged out, according to a post from a Reddit admin (employee). To start, posts can be translated into English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish.”

Associated Press: Amazon to require some authors to disclose the use of AI material. “After months of complaints from the Authors Guild and other groups, Amazon.com has started requiring writers who want to sell books through its e-book program to tell the company in advance that their work includes artificial intelligence material.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Vulture: The Decomposition of Rotten Tomatoes. “The Ophelia affair is a useful microcosm for understanding how Rotten Tomatoes, which turned 25 in August, has come to function. The site was conceived in the early days of the web as a Hot or Not for movies. Now, it can make or break them — with implications for how films are perceived, released, marketed, and possibly even green-lit. The Tomatometer may be the most important metric in entertainment, yet it’s also erratic, reductive, and easily hacked.”

Los Angeles Daily News: West Hollywood’s Grindr loses nearly half its staff to return-to-office rule. “Grindr Inc. has lost about 45% of its staff as it enforces a strict return-to-office policy that was introduced after a majority of employees announced a plan to unionize. About 80 of the 178 employees at the LGBTQ dating app company were forced to resign after the company in August mandated workers return to work in person two days a week at assigned ‘hub’ offices or be fired, the Communications Workers of America said in a statement Wednesday.”

South China Morning Post: TikTok’s new Amazon copycat ‘Shop’, now live in the US, full of cheap Chinese goods. “Many of the listings mention being shipped from China, where TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is based. That could reignite US regulatory concerns if it puts user data in the hands of Chinese sellers. TikTok Shop will be competing with Amazon to sell a target of US$20 billion in merchandise this year, Bloomberg has reported.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

PC Gamer: Crypto baron behind $2.5B rug-pull declares ‘I am smart enough to lead any institution on Earth’ as court sentences him to 11,196 years in jail. “Faruk Fatih Özer, the founder and CEO of the now-defunct crypto exchange Thodex, has been sentenced to 11,196 years in prison by a court in Istanbul for crimes including aggravated fraud, money laundering, and organised crime. His sister Serap and brother Guven were also found guilty and received the same jail term.”

Reuters: Microsoft to defend customers on AI copyright challenges. “Microsoft will pay legal damages on behalf of customers using its artificial intelligence (AI) products if they are sued for copyright infringement for the output generated by such systems, the company said on Thursday.”

TechCrunch: FCC Proposes Voluntary Security Labels For ‘Internet Of Things’ Devices Most Companies Will Probably Ignore. “The program will initially take aim at stuff like smart refrigerators, TVs and fitness trackers. Eventually it will shift to routers, where lax security has also long been a problem. It’s certainly not the first time government or other organizations have advocated for more robust IOT standards. Consumer Reports in 2017 proposed an open source IOT standards system that (IIRC) never really went anywhere.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Daily Aztec: Death of the Bluebird: The Twitter we once knew is `X-ecuted´. “Elon Musk did not put a lot of intentional effort into X, unlike the original creators of the app. The rebranding of the platform could be a strategy to lead people’s attention away from what Musk is actually doing, which appears to be censoring freedom of speech — something this app is known for providing to its users.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Boing Boing: Man makes a shortwave radio antenna out of a measuring tape to listen to numbers stations . “If numbers stations are a channel for governments to give info to agents in the field, this guy found a way to MacGyver an antenna that’ll let him listen in out of a measuring tape. I also found the software radio dongle he’s using to connect the antenna to his smartphone exciting!” 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 11, 2023 at 05:29PM
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Panda Palooza, Claude Pro, WordPress Plugins, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 10, 2023

Panda Palooza, Claude Pro, WordPress Plugins, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 10, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

EVENTS

Smithsonian: Smithsonian’s National Zoo Hosts Panda Palooza: A Giant Farewell, Sept. 23 to Oct. 1. “The Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) will celebrate its three giant pandas before the bears depart for China later this year. Visitors are invited to join the Panda Palooza, a nine-day onsite and online series of events in honor of 25-year-old Mei Xiang (may-SHONG), 26-year-old Tian Tian (tee-YEN tee-YEN) and 3-year-old Xiao Qi Ji (SHIAU-chi-ji) from Sept. 23 to Oct. 1.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: The AI-assistant wars heat up with Claude Pro, a new ChatGPT Plus rival. “On Thursday, AI-maker and OpenAI competitor Anthropic launched Claude Pro, a subscription-based version of its Claude.ai web-based AI assistant, which functions similarly to ChatGPT. It’s available for $20/month in the US or 18 pounds/month in the UK, and it promises five-times-higher usage limits, priority access to Claude during high-traffic periods, and early access to new features as they emerge.”

USEFUL STUFF

Search Engine Journal: Creating A Simple WordPress Plugin With 6 AI Chatbots. “I tested six AI chatbots by creating a WordPress plugin. Find out if ChatGPT, Bard, Bing, Claude, Code Llama, and Llama 2 completed the task.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Federal News Network: National Archives prepares to ramp up work in new federal records system. “The National Archives and Records Administration is addressing bugs and user experience kinks in its new system for managing electronic records, and NARA plans to allow agencies to begin using the system more widely later this month.”

The Next Web: Ukraine’s fight against disinformation is creating a new startup sector. “Government campaigns had prepared Ukrainians for digital disinformation. When the crude deepfake appeared, the clip was quickly debunked, removed from social media platforms, and disproven by Zelenskyy in a genuine video. The incident became a symbol of the wider information war. Analysts had expected Russia’s propaganda weapons to wreak havoc, but Ukraine was learning to disarm them. Those lessons are now fostering a new sector for startups: counter-disinformation.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: Lost in AI translation: growing reliance on language apps jeopardizes some asylum applications. “Carlos, who is Afro-Indigenous, speaks Portuguese but does not read or write it. Staff at the Calexico, California, detention center spoke only English or Spanish. The staff used an artificial intelligence-powered voice-translation tool to interpret what Carlos was saying, but the system didn’t pick up or understand his regional accent or dialect. So Carlos spent six months in Ice detention unable to meaningfully communicate with anyone.”

New York Times: A $700 Million Bonanza for the Winners of Crypto’s Collapse: Lawyers. “Bankruptcy lawyers and other corporate turnaround specialists have reaped major fees from the bankruptcies of five cryptocurrency companies, including FTX.”

Bleeping Computer: Freecycle confirms massive data breach impacting 7 million users. “Freecycle, an online forum dedicated to exchanging used items rather than trashing them, confirmed a massive data breach that affected more than 7 million users. The nonprofit organization says it discovered the breach on Wednesday, weeks after a threat actor put the stolen data for sale on a hacking forum on May 30, warning affected people to switch passwords immediately.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Illinois: Twitter analysis captures nutrition chatter early in pandemic . “A new study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research from authors at UIC and Texas Woman’s University Institute for Health Sciences used data from Twitter to assess how non-expert users discussed one area of heavy interest during COVID-19: nutrition. By analyzing over 70,000 tweets posted between January and September 2020, the authors characterized the most common topics of conversation, identifying supplements, fluids and fruits as especially prominent.”

ScienceDaily: ChatGPT is debunking myths on social media around vaccine safety, say experts. “ChatGPT could help to increase vaccine uptake by debunking myths around jab safety, say the authors of a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics.” 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 11, 2023 at 12:14AM
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New Jersey Coastal Restoration, Ukraine Cultural Heritage, YouTube, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, September 10, 2023

New Jersey Coastal Restoration, Ukraine Cultural Heritage, YouTube, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, September 10, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

State of New Jersey: DEP Launches Online Mapping Tool To Target And Coordinate Coastal Resilience Projects. “The Coastal Ecological Restoration and Adaptation Planning Tool (CERAP Tool), provides the locations of at-risk areas, coastal resource restoration sites, and other data that will greatly assist in the targeting, development and coordination of projects needed to adapt communities to rising sea levels, increased flooding and more severe storms associated with climate change.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

UNESCO: Ukraine: 20 cultural properties receive enhanced protection by UNESCO’s Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention . “Today, the UNESCO Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict held an extraordinary meeting to strengthen the protection of cultural heritage in Ukraine, including the granting of provisional enhanced protection to 20 cultural properties as well as deciding the training of Ukrainian security forces and judiciary personnel on heritage protection.”

Lifehacker: YouTube Lets You Sort Videos By Color Now, for Some Reason. “YouTube now lets you sort your home page by color, so only videos predominately featuring the chosen hue will appear. The company doesn’t offer you a color wheel to choose from, either. Instead, we get three colors: red, green, and blue.” This apparently is a mobile-only feature.

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 15 Best Note-taking Mobile Apps to Organize Your Thoughts (2023). “Note-taking apps make it a convenient and easy way to jot down thoughts, ideas, and reminders right on your mobile device. In today’s fast-paced world, having a tool that allows for quick and organized note-taking can be a game-changer. Whether you’re a student juggling multiple assignments, a professional managing complex projects, or someone who simply wants to keep track of daily tasks and personal reflections, the right app can make all the difference.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

USC Marshall: Crowdfunding is a Boon for Many Projects, but Why Doesn’t it Work as Well for Social Impact Initiatives?. “In new research, published in Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, the team, including USC Marshall School of Business Professor Jill Kickul, identified strategies to incentivize individuals to more readily contribute to social impact projects through crowdfunding. As part of this work, the team sought to better understand what motivates individuals to contribute to social impact work in the first place.”

Poynter: How a YouTube channel about farming transitioned to misinformation about doomsday prepping. “Nearly every week, [Patrick] Humphrey posts new videos that stoke fear of impending disaster or claim that a catastrophe has already happened, a tactic linked to doomsday prepping that has rapidly increased his audience. As of late August, he had more than 91,000 YouTube subscribers, a significant increase from the 6,000-subscriber milestone he celebrated just one year ago.”

Engadget: The AI-generated fake Drake and The Weeknd track is ‘not eligible’ for a Grammy. “Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. is setting the record straight. After Variety reported earlier this week that an AI-generated track echoing the voices of Drake and The Weeknd would be considered for a Grammy Award, Mason is insisting that’s not the case. The track, Heart on My Sleeve, was created and submitted for consideration by someone using the pseudonym ‘Ghostwriter.’ The song features lyrics written by Ghostwriter but imitates the voices of the rappers without consent.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Court eases curbs on Biden administration’s contacts with social media firms. “A federal appeals court on Friday ruled the White House, the FBI and top health officials may not ‘coerce or significantly encourage’ social-media companies to remove content the Biden administration considers misinformation, including about COVID-19. But the three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed much of an injunction issued by a Louisiana judge that restricted Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration from communicating with social-media companies.”

WTTW: Police Oversight Board Votes to Permanently Scrap New Chicago Gang Database. “Nearly four and a half years after the city’s watchdog warned the police department’s gang databases were riddled with errors, ripe for abuse and disproportionately targeted Black and Latino Chicagoans, an interim commission overseeing the Chicago Police Department voted to scrap plans to launch a new system.”

The Guardian: Elon Musk ‘committed evil’ with Starlink order, says Ukrainian official. “A senior Ukrainian official has accused Elon Musk of ‘committing evil’ after a new biography revealed details about how the business magnate ordered his Starlink satellite communications network to be turned off near the Crimean coast last year to hobble a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian warships”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford University: Stanford Ethicists Developing Guidelines for the Safe Inclusion of Pediatric Data in AI-Driven Medical Research. “…the international SPIRIT-AI and CONSORT-AI initiative has recently established guidelines for AI and machine learning in medical research. These frameworks, however, have not outlined specific considerations for pediatric populations. Children present uniquely complex data quandaries for AI, especially regarding consent and equity.”

Newswise: AI more accurately identifies patients with advanced lung cancer that respond to immunotherapy and helps doctors select treatments. “Treatment planning for lung cancer can often be complex due to variations in assessing immune biomarkers. In a new study, Yale Cancer Center researchers at Yale School of Medicine used artificial intelligence (AI) tools and digital pathology to improve the accuracy of this process.” 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 10, 2023 at 05:30PM
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9/11 Photography, Tennessee Charter Schools, Immigrants in Chicago, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 9, 2023

9/11 Photography, Tennessee Charter Schools, Immigrants in Chicago, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 9, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation: New Historic Image Collection: The World Trade Center, 9/11, and Its Aftermath, as Seen from Our Neighborhoods. “We are proud to share the latest addition to our Historic Image Archive, the Robert Fisch World Trade Center and 9/11 Collection, which contains an incredible array of photos of the pre-9/11 World Trade Center, the 9/11 attacks, their aftermath, and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. Many of the images are from the perspective of Greenwich Village, where Robert lives, and where he has long documented in pictures the world around him.”

Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury: New Online Resources Focus on Charter Schools. “The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office is releasing a new collection of resources on charter schools in Tennessee. As of the 2023-24 school year, more than 100 charter schools operate in the state under six authorizers. More charter schools are set to open in 2024-25. The charter school series includes short publications, infographics, and an interactive data dashboard for Tennessee charter schools. A new publication will be released online weekly over the coming weeks.”

Block Club Chicago: Alderman Launches Migrant Data Portal, Improving Transparency On Care For New Arrivals. “The website will provide weekly updates on the number of migrants in the city, new arrivals, shelter locations and other data, as well as efforts by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration and city departments to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis, Vasquez said. The data includes how many migrants are staying in each shelter, in police stations and other locations.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Roblox’s new AI chatbot will help you build virtual worlds. “Roblox announced a new conversational AI assistant at its 2023 Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) that can help creators more easily make experiences for the popular social app. The new tool, the Roblox Assistant, builds on previously announced features that let creators build virtual assets and write code with the help of generative AI.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Mashable: X is no longer labeling ads for some users. “Multiple users on X have recently reported advertisements showing up on their feed without any disclosure or labeling. The paid ads being served to users appear as organic posts (aka tweets) and show up like non-paid content, right in a user’s feed.”

Wall Street Journal: Inside Musk’s Twitter Transformation: Impulsive Decisions, Favors for Friends. “When he felt his own posts weren’t being seen widely enough, he marshaled dozens of company engineers to make his postings some of the platform’s most visible, according to people involved in that effort. At one point, he said a program designed to flag abusive posts would no longer be extended to the accounts of employees, resulting in a harassment campaign that drove one former executive out of his home, some of the people said. X has said Yaccarino and Musk jointly oversee decisions for the company’s trust and safety department, which handles what kinds of posts should or shouldn’t be online. Current and former employees said Musk often calls the shots himself.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

SF Chronicle: X, formerly Twitter, sues California over content moderation law. “X, the site formerly known as Twitter, sued the state of California Friday over a law passed last year requiring social media companies to divulge their terms of service, including how they moderate content on their sites. The lawsuit claims the law, authored by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, violates the company’s freedom of speech, while Gabriel said the law is designed to increase transparency around an important topic.”

Ars Technica: FTC judge rules Intuit broke law, must stop advertising TurboTax as “free”. “The Federal Trade Commission’s chief administrative law judge ruled that Intuit violated US law with deceptive advertising and should be forced to stop promoting TurboTax as ‘free’ unless all conditions imposed on the free offer are immediately and conspicuously displayed to consumers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

National Review: TikTok’s Secret Effort to Influence American Higher Education. “Since 2019, ByteDance has spent nearly $18 million on lobbying the American government. But its eight-figure funding campaign to American universities has fallen under the radar. This is because all but one of the recipients of TikTok funds failed to properly report the donations to the Department of Education.”

Colorado Sun: Fort Lewis College suddenly pulls plug on rare skiing injury database. “Fort Lewis College last month suddenly pulled the plug on a year-old program that had business and marketing students surveying skiers to assemble a first-of-its-kind database exploring collisions and injuries on ski slopes.” 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 10, 2023 at 12:24AM
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Flora of Virginia, Learning WordPress, ChatGPT, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, September 9, 2023

Flora of Virginia, Learning WordPress, ChatGPT, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, September 9, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

George Mason University: Explore Virginia’s natural communities using the Flora of Virginia app. ” The Foundation of the Flora of Virginia Project (the Flora) has launched a new guide to the Natural Communities of Virginia with the Flora of the Virginia smart-phone app.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

WordPress News: Welcome to Our Brand New Learning Hub. “We’re thrilled to unveil the new and refreshed WordPress.com learning hub! This new resource is easily accessible at WordPress.com/learn. Our mission is to create a central place for all your educational needs. In this post we’ll give you a tour of the new digs and explain the behind-the-scenes design work that has made this resource more accessible, more navigable, and more enjoyable to use.”

Reuters: Exclusive: ChatGPT traffic slips again for third month in a row. “Worldwide desktop and mobile website visits to the ChatGPT website decreased by 3.2% to 1.43 billion in August, following approximately 10% drops from each of the previous two months. The amount of time visitors spent on the website has also been declining monthly since March, from an average of 8.7 minutes on site to 7 minutes on site in August. But August worldwide unique visitors ticked up to 180.5 million users from 180 million.”

USEFUL STUFF

ZDNet: How to use ChatGPT to make charts and tables. “As it turns out, ChatGPT does a great job making charts and tables. And given that this ubiquitous generative AI chatbot can synthesize a ton of information into something chart-worthy, what ChatGPT gives up in pretty presentation it more than makes up for in informational value. Exactly what sort of chart-making tools are available for ChatGPT? There are three ways you can proceed.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Guardian: Fake social media posts on Burning Man festival stir conspiracy theory frenzy. “Rumors of an Ebola outbreak at the Burning Man festival spread like wildfire over the weekend with social media users posting fake health advisories, flight data and conspiracy theories to TikTok and Twitter, Forbes reported. Though the rumors have been debunked, their rapid spread is another example of the dangers of online misinformation, particularly on Twitter.”

VT Digger: Leaf peepers beware: One of Vermont’s most photographed foliage spots closed to tourists. “Amid social media-induced traffic jams, the towns of Pomfret and Woodstock plan to close roads this fall leading to a popular foliage photo op. Pomfret’s picturesque Sleepy Hollow Farm has featured in films and magazines for years…. But town officials say that since the advent of social media, hundreds of cars and thousands of tourists now flock to the dirt road every fall.”

New Zealand Herald: Are social media dance trends the key to keeping the Tongan language alive?. “Tongan culture is inherently tied to its youth, with an average age of 20 years among Tongan people in Aotearoa. They are harnessing the power of social media trends, like Tongan dance, to both preserve their heritage and engage with a global audience. Aisea Latu, from the Black Grace Dance Company, underlines the significance of this exchange: ‘As long as you pass it down properly and you see other cultures getting involved with it too, then it’s just another way of expressing Tongan-ness.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gothamist: Social media companies to take down NYC ‘subway surfing’ videos after rush of teen deaths. “Social media companies have agreed to automatically take down videos that promote subway surfing, officials said. The MTA has for months requested that platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok remove the videos. The content crackdown comes after five teenagers died this year while riding outside subway trains. MTA officials said 2,600 videos and photos of subway surfing have been stripped from the social media platforms in recent months.”

American Songwriter: Kanye West Files Lawsuit Against Social Media Account Leaking His Music. “In the past year alone, Kanye West has been hit with about six lawsuits by paparazzo photographers, Boogie Down Productions, former brand partners at Adidas and Gap, and former employees at his Donda Academy. However, this week, he filed a suit of his own, alleging that a well-known hip-hop blog has been illegally leaking his music.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Old Gold & Black: Is photoshopping on social media ethical?. “The dissociation of celebrities that have been notorious for photoshopping have made them akin to Barbie dolls. They are not even worth comparison because they are so obviously plastic. The larger ethical dilemma is how real people, or public figures that are perceived as real people, post photoshopped pictures and the effect that has on societal standards.”

Jerusalem Post: AI brings Golda Meir back to life at University of Haifa. “Artificial intelligence was able to recreate a speech made by Israeli prime minister Golda Meir, and experts now wonder how the use of AI will change how we study history.”

Texas Monthly: My Brief Career as a Paid Pro-Paxton Propagandist. “Before the start of his impeachment trial this week, pro-Paxton political forces were paying for influencers to post on social media in support of the state’s top legal authority, who faces sixteen counts ranging from dereliction of official duty to bribery and conspiracy. How do I know this? Because I signed up to be a social media influencer, and to my great surprise, I earned $50 for each of two posts.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 9, 2023 at 05:32PM
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