This post is a test of the ActivityPub plugin

This post is a test of the ActivityPub plugin
By ResearchBuzz

If it works, you can now follow ResearchBuzz (this site) on Mastodon. The user name is: https://researchbuzz.me/@researchbuzz .

September 15, 2023 at 01:16AM
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Clean Energy Equipment Price Index, Geospatial Poverty Portal, Retraction Watch, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 14, 2023

Clean Energy Equipment Price Index, Geospatial Poverty Portal, Retraction Watch, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 14, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

International Energy Agency: A new tool to track transitions: the IEA clean energy equipment price index. “To monitor these influences on clean energy equipment prices – a critical determinant of investment in clean energy technology and infrastructure – the IEA developed the Clean Energy Equipment Price Index (CEEPI). The index tracks price movements in a global basket of solar PV modules, wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage, weighted by shares of investment.”

World Bank: Putting Poverty Back on the Map: Introducing the World Bank’s New Geospatial Poverty Portal. “The portal features an interactive map based on data from the newly released Subnational Poverty and Inequality Database (SPID), spanning over 1,600 subnational areas from 141 economies. Statistics in the SPID are direct calculations from available survey data at their levels of representativeness, meaning data frequency varies by country. Some countries have subnational time series as long as 10 years, allowing users to compare changes temporally and spatially over a long period.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Retraction Watch: The Retraction Watch Database becomes completely open – and RW becomes far more sustainable. “We’re thrilled to announce that Crossref has acquired The Retraction Watch Database and will make it completely open and freely available.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Media Matters: X is placing ads for brands like the NFL and MLB next to unhinged conspiracy theories about Jewish people and 9/11 . “X (formerly known as Twitter) has been placing ads for major brands like the NFL, MLB, T-Mobile, and eBay alongside content pushing unhinged conspiracy theories about Jewish people orchestrating the 9/11 attacks.”

What’s on Weibo: Eyebrow Pencil Gate: “Lipstick King” Li Jiaqi Loses 630,000 Fans In One Night. “Li Jiaqi is facing controversy for remarks he made during his recent e-commerce livestream. When viewers made comments about an eyebrow pencil being expensive, he lashed out and asked them if they worked hard enough. Due to his cold attitude and arrogant comments, the ‘lipstick king’ seems to have lost his crown.”

The Daily Beast: How Barstool Built an Empire by Swiping Sports Highlights. “Four years ago, Barstool Sports was raked over the coals for taking a comedian’s video. The sprawling and bro-tastic media company already had a reputation for stealing jokes, but that act of theft inadvertently revealed another way the site was profiting from content it didn’t own: an anonymous, seemingly random Twitter account which was in fact run by Barstool.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta Probed by Lawmakers on Use of AI ‘Ghost’ Staff. “Democratic lawmakers are pressing the top tech firms to open up about the conditions of their ‘ghost work’ — unseen laborers like those labeling data and rating responses who have become pivotal to the artificial intelligence boom.”

Engadget: Hackers claim it only took a 10-minute phone call to shut down MGM Resorts. “The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group claimed responsibility for the MGM Resorts cyber outage on Tuesday, according to a post by malware archive vx-underground. The group claims to have used common social engineering tactics, or gaining trust from employees to get inside information, to try and get a ransom out of MGM Resorts, but the company reportedly refuses to pay. The conversation that granted initial access took just 10 minutes, according to the group.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Axios: Watchdog accuses X again of not moderating hate speech. “Each of the 300 posts examined by the nonprofit represented a ‘clear violation of X’s policies on hate speech,’ the report stated. 86% of the reported posts were still present on the platform a week after they were reported to moderators, the report stated. Among the flagged posts were those promoting racist caricatures and denying the holocaust, as well as hateful imagery like the Nazi swastika.”

American Alliance of Museums: Evidence of Things Not Seen. “The current edition of TrendsWatch includes a ‘Short Take’ on how our country and our sector are beginning to grapple with how to compensate descendant communities for historic harms. Reparative practice may take the form of actions that acknowledge and address this damage, as well as actions or policies that redress systemic economic, educational, or social disadvantages. In today’s post, Jessica O’Connor, Public History Director of the Alabama African American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium, talks about preserving oral histories as a form of reparative practice.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 15, 2023 at 12:04AM
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Canadian Typography Archives, Library of Congress, Tech Legal Cases, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, September 14, 2023

Canadian Typography Archives, Library of Congress, Tech Legal Cases, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, September 14, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Creative Boom: New digital archive provides invaluable insights into the evolution of Canadian type. “Canadian Typography Archives is a new digital resource for students, professionals and anyone else interested in Canada’s type history. Its website has just launched in Phase 1 and aims to create a space for learning, reference and appreciation of type.”

EVENTS

Library of Congress: Innovator in Residence Invites Public to Experience Chinatown Reconstruction. “Artist, educator and 2023 Library of Congress Innovator in Residence Jeffrey Yoo Warren is inviting the public to visit an immersive 3D reconstruction of historic Providence, Rhode Island’s Chinatown in 1914, recreated using archival photographs and records from the Library’s collection. The model is the first part of Yoo Warren’s project, Seeing Lost Enclaves: Relational Reconstructions of Erased Historic Neighborhoods of Color, which aims to unearth lost histories from across the United States.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: How to follow The Verge’s new Tech Cases Bot. “… in partnership with the Free Law Project, The Verge is launching the Tech Cases Bot: a bot dedicated specifically to the kinds of cases that interest our audience. It’s a place for keeping up with Big Tech antitrust suits, criminal crypto charges, authors suing AI companies, challenges to online speech regulations, and more.” The bot is available via Twitter and Mastodon.

Engadget: Twitter spinoff Bluesky hits 1 million users. “Bluesky, one of the most notable alternatives to the platform formerly known as Twitter, has just hit a million users. That’s admittedly tiny compared to the number of users on major social networks, but it’s a big deal for a service that remains inaccessible to most people until today.” Still invite-only.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Government Technology: AI ‘Essay Mills’ Advertise on Social Media, Help Students Cheat. “Though their services are illegal in some countries, companies that combine generative AI and human labor to write essays that are undetectable by anti-cheating software are soliciting clients on TikTok and Meta.”

University of North Carolina: Committee guides use of generative AI. “A committee of faculty members and staff worked throughout the summer to develop guidance on the emerging technology known as generative artificial intelligence (AI). The result is a comprehensive list of resources on the Office of the Provost’s website, including training modules for instructors, with guidelines for use in University operations coming later this semester.”

New York Times: The Fine Art of Naming a Group Chat. “Mr. McLaughlin, 20, is part of so many group chats that each one has to have a name. There is a family chat (‘Wally World’), multiple friend chats (‘‘The’ group chat’ and ‘The 4.5 horseman of the apocalypse’) and class chats (Clash, short for Clash of Clans, a game played during Critical Reading and Writing). ‘I would never have a group chat with no name and just numbers,’ he said. ‘How would you differentiate them?’ He added, ‘Leaving it blank would be like not naming a baby.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

United States Courts: Judicial Conference Revises Policy to Expand Remote Audio Access Over Its Pre-COVID Policy. “The Judicial Conference of the United States on Tuesday approved a change to its broadcast policy that expands the public’s access to civil and bankruptcy proceedings over the Judiciary’s longstanding pre-COVID policy, which prohibited all remote public access to federal court proceedings. The revised policy, adopted at the Conference’s biennial meeting, will permit judges presiding over civil and bankruptcy cases to provide the public live audio access to non-trial proceedings that do not involve witness testimony.”

AFP: From chargers to children’s data: how the EU reined in big tech. “When Apple unveils its latest iPhone on Tuesday, the European Union will have left its mark on the US giant’s flagship product. Now the iPhone 15 is expected to have a USB-C charger, instead of Apple’s usual Lightning charger, after the EU ordered manufacturers to adopt a common connection. Brussels said this would make customers’ lives easier and reduce waste.”

MIT Technology Review: Google has a new tool to outsmart authoritarian internet censorship. “Jigsaw, a unit of Google that operates sort of like an internet freedom think tank and that creates related products, already offers a suite of anti-censorship tools including Outline, which provides free, open, and encrypted access to the internet through a VPN…. Now Jigsaw is releasing Outline’s code in the form of a software developer kit (SDK) so that other websites and applications can build censorship resistance directly into their products, the company exclusively told MIT Technology Review.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Modern War Institute at West Point: Ukraine’s Fight On The Front Lines Of The Information Environment. “Of course, success in war is often a function not only of innovation, but also of a willingness to borrow tactics, techniques, and procedures that have worked well elsewhere, in other conflicts. … But this is not the only example that appears to have influenced the development of Ukrainian operations in the information environment. Unsurprisingly, these operations have also borrowed from Soviet and Russian concepts of information warfare.”

Scientific Data: A framework for FAIR robotic datasets . “The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), proposed in this manuscript, describes how, using the established approach in Earth Sciences, the data characterising marine robotic missions can be formatted and shared following the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. The manuscript is a step-by-step guide to render marine robotic telemetry FAIR and publishable. State-of-the-art protocols for metadata and data formatting are proposed, applied and integrated automatically using Jupyter Notebooks to maximise visibility and ease of use.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 14, 2023 at 05:33PM
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UK Areas of Research Interest, Colorado BIPOC Businesses, Google, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 13, 2023

UK Areas of Research Interest, Colorado BIPOC Businesses, Google, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 13, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

UK Government: New one-stop shop to find the topics government is interested in researching. “A new tool which brings together all Areas of Research Interest (ARI) documents from across government departments in a one-stop shop is now live. ARIs are lists of research questions or topics which government departments and agencies would welcome more research on to inform their policies and help close the evidence policy gap. This new database allows anyone accessing it to search for particular areas of research interest, and find out what are the main research questions facing government departments.”

ABC 7 Denver: New website ShopBIPOC.com connects consumers with BIPOC-owned businesses. “Consumers in Denver looking to support businesses owned by people of color now have a way to do so with just a few taps and clicks. It’s all thanks to The Center for Community Wealth Building, a Denver-based nonprofit organization, which recently helped launch a website dedicated to connecting consumers with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color)-owned businesses.” I checked this Web site to see if it was Denver-only, but after finding results in Colorado Springs and other places I’m pretty confident it’s for all Colorado.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Google’s big antitrust trial kicks off, with even bigger implications. “The Justice Department’s landmark antitrust case against Google kicked off in court today, marking the beginning of a trial that will stretch on for months, potentially upending the tech world in the process. At issue is Google’s search business. The Justice Department says that Google has run afoul of antitrust laws in the course of maintaining its top spot in search, while the tech giant argues that it maintains its dominance naturally by offering consumers a superior product.”

Mashable: X has hidden Quote tweets. Here’s how to find them.. “X/Twitter, which used to display Quote Tweets via a simple click, has been through a redesign recently. Now, you can no longer quickly access Quotes via a post itself — instead, you have to click the three dots in the top-right corner, then click on ‘View post engagements’ in order to see the Quotes. Sigh.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

SF Gate: Family finally leases property so Google can make its village a reality. “Google has finally acquired the remaining piece of property it needed to realize its vision for a bespoke village near its Mountain View headquarters. The Molinari-Martinelli family has leased its 1 acre of land to the tech giant for 35 years for around $3 million, as first reported by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, with an option to extend and potentially buy the property should it become available. The family held on to the property for years as Google continued to acquire land surrounding its offices in a quest to remake the area into a small village that would include homes, retail, hotels, parks and a school.”

Jewish News: More than 36 volumes of work by Rabbi Lord Sacks to be made digitally available. “A digital library, leading publisher and The Rabbi Sacks Legacy are collaborating to bring previously unpublished literary works by the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks to the digital realm…. Ultimately, all of Rabbi Sacks’ works published by Koren, which focus on Jewish texts and teachings, will be available to the public on digital platform Sefaria—more than three dozen volumes in total.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ABC News: Sarah Sanders seeks to limit public records law amid suit related to her travel. “Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ push to overhaul the state’s expansive public records law stumbled at the start of a special legislative session she called this week, with Republican leaders late Monday reworking a bill to enact her changes as Sanders, who says the move is about security and government efficiency, faces criticism over the issue — even from within her party.”

Reuters: Dutch groups sue Google over alleged privacy violations. “The Dutch consumers’ association Consumentenbond together with the Privacy Protection Foundation issued legal proceedings against Google on Tuesday for alleged large-scale privacy violations, they said in a statement.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Information sciences professor developing tool to make data visualizations accessible to blind researchers, students. “Information sciences professor JooYoung Seo is developing a data visualization tool that converts data to sound or Braille to make visual representations of statistical data accessible to researchers who are blind or visually impaired.”

University of Georgia: Socializing boosts mood more than screentime. “A new study from researchers in the University of Georgia’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences found that when asked to scroll on their phones, sit quietly by themselves or have a conversation with a stranger, participants typically found talking was the most enjoyable.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 14, 2023 at 12:55AM
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Open Source STEM Textbook, Transparent Idaho, TikTok Bans, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, September 13, 2023

Open Source STEM Textbook, Transparent Idaho, TikTok Bans, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, September 13, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Illinois: Open-source textbook makes STEM education more accessible . “The textbook’s name, ‘Free Energy,’ plays on both the lack of a price tag and thermodynamics, one of the book’s core concepts. Other subjects covered include entropy, electrochemistry and quantum mechanics, following the curriculum of most Physical Chemistry I and II courses at U.S. universities. ”

Idaho Capital Sun: Transparent Idaho offers info on state pay, expenses. Soon local governments will be included, too.. “Transparent Idaho’s data on state government agencies lets people look deep into government finance — including transactions. Transparent Idaho lets users look up expenses, create data visualizations and download the data. Townhall Idaho, also run by the state, lists public meeting agendas and schedules for state agencies and boards. Only information on budgets, fund balances and employee salary information are being shared about local governments right now, but Idaho Deputy Controller John Iasonides said the Idaho Controller’s Office plans to provide more ‘granular’ details in the long run.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: VPNs, Verizon, and Instagram Reels: how students are getting around the TikTok ban. “Some of the restrictions, such as the one Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed a few months ago, are far-reaching, stipulating broadly that TikTok may not operate within the state. That law is set to take effect next year. But for most — Texas included — the restrictions extend merely to government entities. Agencies have been tasked with eliminating the use of the platform on state-issued devices (as well as personal devices used for state business) and Wi-Fi networks. Those agencies include state universities.”

New York Times: 8 More Companies Pledge to Make A.I. Safe, White House Says. “The White House said on Tuesday that eight more companies involved in artificial intelligence had pledged to voluntarily follow standards for safety, security and trust with the fast-evolving technology. The companies include Adobe, IBM, Palantir, Nvidia and Salesforce. They joined Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection AI, Microsoft and OpenAI, which initiated an industry-led effort on safeguards in an announcement with the White House in July.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Gothamist: Google Translate blamed for linking NYC agency with ‘Communist Party of China’. “No, Mayor Eric Adams and the Chinese government did not team up to build a better New York City, no matter what you might have read on the city’s website. Earlier this summer, a reporter for a Chinese-language news site noticed something strange about the text on a New York City agency’s website after clicking on the ‘Translate’ button and opting for the Chinese-language translation. What they got back were phrases such as ‘Building a City Together with the Communist Party of China.'”

Gizmodo: Salacious Chinese Disinformation Campaign Blames Maui Fires on Deadly American ‘Weather Weapon’. “Researchers say they’ve discovered 85 social media accounts and blogs originating from China and working in tandem to amplify a conspiracy theory claiming the deadly fires in Maui were caused by a secretive “weather weapon” unleashed by the US military. NewsGuard, which has previously uncovered other online influence operations from China and Russia, claims the new ‘coordinated online campaign’ represents the most expansive Chinese operation it has uncovered to date.” Did I intentionally put these two articles together? No.

Dextero: Major anime archive set to “destroy” history after closing. “Tokyo Laboratory is closing its doors after nearly 70 years of working on iconic, historic anime – and original prints of movies and TV shows are set to be ‘destroyed.’… In a statement, the company wrote: ‘Due to the termination of our business at the end of November this year, we will no longer be able to continue storing the original film plates from December onwards, so we are currently working on returning them to our customers.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CISA: CISA Announces Open Source Software Security Roadmap . “The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published the Open Source Software Security Roadmap today that articulates how the agency will enable the secure usage of open source software within the federal government and support a healthy, secure, and sustainable global open source software ecosystem.”

Washington Post: Musk may have violated FTC privacy order, new court filing shows. “Elon Musk repeatedly made business decisions after his takeover of Twitter last year that violated the company’s internal policies and likely ran afoul of a 2022 government order that put sweeping restrictions on the company’s data security and privacy practices, according to depositions from former employees that the Justice Department published in a court filing Tuesday.”

Reuters: Indonesia to ban goods transactions on social media – deputy minister. ” Indonesia is planning to ban goods transactions on social media under new trade regulations, the deputy trade minister told a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday. Ministers have repeatedly said that e-commerce sellers using predatory pricing on social media platforms were threatening offline markets in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Cornell University: Library gets grant to raise algorithmic literacy. “Cornell University Library has been awarded a grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) to support a project aimed at creating open educational resources on algorithmic literacy—building the public’s knowledge about what algorithms are, how they function, and how they shape modern life.”

University of Bath: Customising avatars to look more like you improves learning in virtual environments . “Learning a new skill using VR works better if your virtual instructor is customised to look more like you, according to research by the University of Bath. The study suggests that even minimal customisation can make a difference in how well people learn in a virtual environment.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 13, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Anaphy for Learning Anatomy, Internet Archive, Google Advertising, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 12, 2023

Anaphy for Learning Anatomy, Internet Archive, Google Advertising, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 12, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Clemson University: Clemson student creates coloring app to help students learn anatomy. “Anaphy combines color recognition and location association to allow students to study anatomy effectively. It includes multiple anatomy structure diagrams, each with a list of terms and associated colors for each part of the structure. After labeling and coloring a diagram, students submit their colored diagrams and receive personalized feedback, denoting what they got correct or incorrect. The app includes numerous diagrams for all the human body systems.” It’s designed for the iPad and available in the app store. It is free.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Internet Archive appeals loss in library ebook lawsuit. “The Internet Archive announced today that it has appealed its loss in a major ebook copyright case. A notice indicates that it’s filed with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Hachette v. Internet Archive, a publishing industry lawsuit over the nonprofit group’s Open Library program. The appeal follows a settlement that saw the Archive limit access to some of its scanned books as well as a second suit filed by music publishers over the Archive’s digitization of vintage records.”

The Guardian: Google fails to list voice ads from prominent organisations in political ad disclosure database. “Google’s political ad library is missing paid messaging from prominent organisations trying to influence the vote over the Indigenous voice to parliament, limiting transparency around their efforts before the referendum.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: Top 5 Image Upscaling Tools to Try in 2023 (Review). “I’ve spent a considerable amount of time testing and experimenting with various image upscaling software. In this article, I’ll share with you the top 5 image upscaling tools that have impressed me the most. I’ll also provide before-and-after samples to showcase the remarkable improvements these tools can offer. So, if you’re looking to rejuvenate your old, pixelated photos, read on.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

PC Gamer: Atari acquires massive Atari archive after revealing a ‘new’ 2600 that takes cartridges. “Atari is to acquire AtariAge, which you could call a retro forum though that would vastly undersell what it is: over time this has grown into the best repository for everything Atari (as well as some other companies), both hardware and software, as well as being a major publisher for homebrew software….On top of this [AtariAge founder Albert] Yarusso is to become Atari’s internal historian, which seems rather a good fit, and the site will get the investment it needs for some long-mooted ecommerce functionality.”

The Herald News: Portuguese American Digital Archive receives $300,000 grant. Here’s what it’ll be used for. ” UMass Lowell’s Saab Center for Portuguese Studies has received a major boost to chronicle the experience of the Portuguese in Massachusetts with a second $300,000 grant from the William M. Wood Foundation of Boston. Dr. Frank Sousa, the center’s director, said the funds will support the expansion of the collections of the Portuguese American Digital Archive (PADA) at UMass Lowell’s Center for Lowell History.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Verdict: OpenAI faces further copyright lawsuits from leading authors. “Three more authors have filed copyright lawsuits against OpenAI alleging their works were used in the training of its ChatGPT AI. The authors, Michael Chabon, Rachel Snyder and Ayelet Waldman, have all claimed their published works have been used in the training process of ChatGPT without their consent or knowledge.”

The Register: Save the Children feared hit by ransomware, 7TB stolen . “As highlighted by VX-Underground and Emsisoft threat analyst Brett Callow earlier today, BianLian bragged on its website it had hit an organization that, based on the gang’s description of its unnamed victim, looks to be Save The Children International. The NGO, which employs about 25,000 people, says it has helped more than a billion kids since it was founded in 1919.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Carnegie Mellon University: Student SURF Project Amplifies Unheard Voices in Kingdom of a Million Rice Fields. “[Andy] Jiang received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) to create an interactive, online archive of the stories shared by villagers in this area of Thailand, also known as the Kingdom of a Million Rice Fields. Drawing inspiration from engaging site designs like Refugee Republic, he hopes the archive will amplify the people’s voices and increase the public’s awareness around the new developments, the city’s growth and the loss of agricultural land.”

University of Michigan News: AI tool helps optimize antibody medicines. “Antibody treatments may be able to activate the immune system to fight diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and colorectal cancer, but they are less effective when they bind with themselves and other molecules that aren’t markers of disease. Now, new machine-learning algorithms developed at the University of Michigan can highlight problem areas in antibodies that make them prone to binding non-target molecules.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 13, 2023 at 12:51AM
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Pakistan Food, Google Photos, Twitter, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, September 12, 2023

Pakistan Food, Google Photos, Twitter, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, September 12, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

Starting Friday and continuing through the weekend, I got several complaints about the formatting of RB — it was being delivered headline-only, with no content. I put in a ticket with WordPress, but in the meantime I turned off AMP in the post editor. (AMP is a feature that’s supposed to speed page loading for mobile internet users.) I haven’t heard back from WordPress but two people have reported that their issue has been resolved. If you were having the same problem I hope it’s okay now. I’ll see if ever hear anything from WordPress.

NEW RESOURCES

Evening Standard: Pakistan museum of food: New project to offer ‘most comprehensive’ picture of country’s culinary landscape. “Filmmaker and activist Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has collaborated with Google Arts and Culture and the British Council to build the ‘most comprehensive’ picture of Pakistan’s culinary landscape. A new website, launching at Google’s UK offices in King’s Cross, will feature more than 80 videos alongside hundreds of articles and documents with the aim to preserve Pakistani heritage and chart the evolution of the nation’s dishes.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: How to use the new web-based editing tools in Google Photos. “Google Photos isn’t just a place for storing and sorting your photos and videos — both the web interface and the mobile apps come with a slew of image editing tools so you can spruce up and enhance your pictures before sharing them with the wider world. Google regularly updates these editing tools, and a significant upgrade just arrived on the web.”

PBS News Hour: Elon Musk’s refusal to provide Starlink support for Ukraine attack in Crimea raises questions for Pentagon. “SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s refusal to allow Ukraine to use Starlink internet services to launch a surprise attack on Russian forces in Crimea last September has raised questions as to whether the U.S. military needs to be more explicit in future contracts that services or products it purchases could be used in war, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

TorrentFreak: Z-Library Opens ‘Z-Points’ Around the World to Share Paper Books. “Z-Library, which is commonly known as a pirate ebook repository, has opened up 11 physical book distribution points around the world. From the United States to South Sudan, there are Z-Points in every inhabited continent. The ultimate goal is to broaden the library’s scope to the physical realm, further promoting book sharing.”

Semafor: Twitter appears to throttle New York Times. “X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times. Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically. The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected in links to similar news organizations including CNN, the Washington Post, and the BBC, according to NewsWhip’s data on 300,000 influential users of X.”

Business Insider: Elon Musk poached a Google scientist and justified it by telling Larry Page he shouldn’t have been ‘so cavalier about AI safety’. “In 2015, Elon Musk and Sam Altman convinced one Google scientist to jump ship — with a $1.9 million salary and starting bonus — and join them in cofounding OpenAI. Walter Isaacson’s biography on Musk, written after shadowing the tech billionaire for three years and published on Tuesday, detailed the aftermath of the incident and recounted how Musk justified poaching talent from Google to the company’s then-CEO Larry Page.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: Is Google’s Search Engine Smart or Sneaky? A Court Will Decide. “A FAMILY MEMBER’S hurried Google search for a last-second visa to visit New Zealand recently caused a headache—and provided a timely reminder of why Google faces a landmark US antitrust trial next week. Tapping on the first link took us off to a website that after a few swipes charged $118 for the necessary paperwork. Only later did it emerge that we’d paid a so-called ‘internet-based travel technology company’ and not a government agency, and been fleeced for more than double the required cost.”

Europol: New Europol report shines light on multi-billion euro underground criminal economy . “The world is getting smaller, as trade, communication and infrastructure on a global scale brings us closer together. However, there is another, darker, side to the coin: our interconnected world is being abused by criminals who have created an underground economy to sustain their illegal operations.”

Georgia Tech: New Tool Skewers Socially Engineered Attack Ads. ” Georgia Tech researchers are countering deceptive online ads with a pioneering solution designed to challenge the rising threat of online social engineering attacks by cutting them off at the source. Trident, created by Ph.D. student Zheng Yang and his team of researchers, is an add-on compatible with Google Chrome that has proven to block these ads with nearly 100% efficiency.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Can s change minds? How social media influences public opinion and news circulation. “Social media use has been shown to decrease mental health and well-being, and to increase levels of political polarization. But social media also provides many benefits, including facilitating access to information, enabling connections with friends, serving as an outlet for expressing opinions and allowing news to be shared freely. To maximize the benefits of social media while minimizing its harms, we need to better understand the different ways in which it affects us. Social science can contribute to this understanding. I recently conducted two studies with colleagues to investigate and disentangle some of the complex effects of social media.”

The Journal (Ireland): Major internet companies not doing enough to combat misinformation, report finds. “MAJOR INTERNET COMPANIES are not doing enough to combat misinformation on their platforms, according the CoP Monitor Report co-authored by the EDMO Ireland hub in DCU’s Institute for Future Media Democracy and Society. The report is an international collaboration of 9 academics who conducted a systematic analysis of all information provided by Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter), in the first self-reports submitted under the Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation.”

Dartmouth College: Subscriptions Drive Views of Extremist Videos on YouTube. “According to a new study published in Science Advances, however, exposure to alternative and extremist video channels on YouTube is not driven by recommendations. Instead, most consumption of these channels on the platform can be attributed to a small group of users high in gender and racial resentment and who subscribe to these channels and follow links to their videos. The study authors caution that these findings do not exonerate the platform.” 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 12, 2023 at 05:28PM
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