Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Amplify Colorado, Offshore Drilling Politics, Donor Advised Funds, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, September 26, 2023

Amplify Colorado, Offshore Drilling Politics, Donor Advised Funds, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, September 26, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Spotted via Google Alerts: Amplify Colorado. “Amplify Colorado is a publicly accessible directory of experts from communities of color and other diverse communities that newsrooms need to better serve, including, but not limited to, women, youth, elders, LGTBQ+, Coloradans with disabilities, rural residents, veterans, immigrants and refugees. Amplify also includes reporters’ and editors’ contact information so community members can more easily find them.

CleanTechnica: Where Does Your Member Of Congress Stand On Offshore Drilling?. “NRDC’s new tool let’s you check out where your state’s delegation stands on new offshore oil and gas drilling. Some regions—like New England—have rejected drilling top to bottom. Other delegations—like those in Florida —have had a more mixed response. Some elected officials are calling on President Biden to end new offshore drilling across the board. Others object only to drilling along their state’s borders. Still others push for more of our ocean to be sold to Big Oil.”

Financial Advisor: New Website Offers Help In Finding Donor-Advised Funds. “Selecting a donor advised fund from the about 1,000 that are available can be a daunting task for advisors and potential philanthropists. But now there is a website that sorts the details and ranks the best donor advised funds. DonorAdvisedFunds.com ranks funds by criteria such as ease of use, investment options and minimum account size, said Brad Saft, founder and CEO of DonorAdvisedFunds.com.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Register: Google killing Basic HTML version of Gmail In January 2024 . “Google will discontinue the Basic HTML version of its Gmail service in January 2024. It’s unclear when Google made the decision to end Basic HTML support – news of which can be found in this support page titled ‘Use the latest version of Gmail in your browser.’ Archive.org’s last capture of the page comes from late 2022, and Google’s own cache has not coughed up info that would identify the date of the change.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Guardian: AEC struggles to get Twitter to remove posts that ‘incite violence’ and spread ‘disinformation’ ahead of voice. “The Australian Electoral Commission has struggled to get Twitter to remove posts that it says are inciting violence against staff and promoting disinformation about the electoral process ahead of the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum, documents reveal.”

Michigan Daily: A closer look at toxic family vlogging channels. “Over the past several years, the curtain has begun to be lifted over many of these ‘wholesome’ family vloggers, and the picture-perfect image that was plastered all over the internet for years on end has been torn to shreds. Issues such as child exploitation, privacy violations and religious prejudice have been brought into the limelight as fans have begun to see the truth behind the light-hearted vlogs they used to enjoy. There is no family, however, who has fallen apart quite so tragically as the ‘8 Passengers.'”

TechCrunch: Google expands its subsea cable infrastructure with Nuvem, connecting the US, Bermuda and Portugal. “Google has announced another subsea cable system, as the internet giant strives to bolster its internet infrastructure and get more people using its array of cloud-based services. Dubbed ‘Nuvem,’ the new cable represents one of more than a dozen cables that Google has invested in through the years, starting with Unity, which went into operation in 2010, stretching more than 6,000 miles across the Pacific from Japan to California.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

404 Media: Congress Introduces Bill That Would Let Farmers Repair John Deere Tractors Without Hacking Them. “A group of lawmakers introduced federal legislation that would make it easier for farmers to repair their tractors and would prevent them from having to literally hack into their John Deere tractors to do some basic repairs.”

TechCrunch: Darrow raises $35M for an AI that parses public documents for class action lawsuit potential . “The [US] may not have the highest per capita amount of lawsuits (that’s Germany), but it has the most of any country overall amid a very active legal industry whose caseload is growing in a market that is worth many tens of billions of dollars. Now, an AI-based startup that’s tapping into those facts for its own business is announcing a round of funding. Darrow — which has developed an AI-based data engine that ingests large amounts of publicly available documents to search for class action litigation potential across areas like data privacy violations and environmental contamination — has raised $35 million.”

WIRED: Meet the Law Geeks Exposing Google’s Secretive Antitrust Trial. “MONTHS OUT OF law school, Yosef Weitzman already has a huge courtroom role in the biggest antitrust trial of the century. In a US federal trial that started last week, Google is accused of unlawfully monopolizing online search and search ads. The company’s self-defined mission is to make the world’s information universally accessible, yet Google successfully opposed live streaming the trial and keeping the proceedings wholly open to the public. Enter Weitzman.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

VentureBeat: Google Bard fails to deliver on its promise — even after latest updates. “Unfortunately, in practice, I find Bard to be a disappointment on many levels. It fails to deliver on its core promise of integrating well with Google apps, and often produces inaccurate or nonsensical responses. It also lacks the creativity and versatility of OpenAI’s GPT-4 (It also has no personality or sense of humor, although some users might not take issue with that). Bard badly falls short of expectations.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: Don’t throw out those used coffee grounds—use them for 3D printing instead. “Most coffee lovers typically dump the used grounds from their morning cuppa straight into the trash; those more environmentally inclined might use them for composting. But if you’re looking for a truly novel application for coffee grounds, consider using them as a sustainable material for 3D printing, as suggested by a recent paper published in DIS ’23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 26, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Monday, September 25, 2023

Skin Regeneration Research, Endangered Syriac, Snapchat, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 25, 2023

Skin Regeneration Research, Endangered Syriac, Snapchat, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 25, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Washington State University: WSU students create database to accelerate skin science. “The website — skinregeneration.org — was created for researchers but allows anyone to cross-compare information on more than 33,000 genes from different species as they relate to skin development, wound repair, and regeneration. Ultimately, it could help scientists reprogram adult skin for regeneration during wound healing and to inhibit the aging process.”

Texas A&M Today: Texas A&M-Led Humanities Project Seeks To Preserve An Endangered Language. “Texas A&M University historian Dr. Daniel Schwartz has devoted the last decade of his professional life to preserving the past — specifically, the culture of a 2,000-year-old language known as Syriac. He and likeminded colleagues from around the world have been working across place, time and cyberspace to safeguard Syriac cultural heritage, painstakingly creating Syriaca.org, a cyberinfrastructure to link Syriac literature to their persons, places, manuscripts and key concepts.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Snap Is Doing What Twitter Can’t. “As Elon Musk threatens to charge all users with a monthly subscription to access Twitter, Snap is seeing a userbase more willing to pay to use the perks of its platform. Snap’s membership service Snapchat+ has reached a whopping 5 million users, which is officially halfway to its goal of 10 million.”

Engadget: Windows’ Copilot AI starts rolling out September 26. “Microsoft announced that its Copilot AI, which currently exists in various iterations in the Edge browser, Microsoft 365 platform and Windows, will be bundled into a single, unified and ubiquitous generative AI assistant across all of Microsoft’s products — from Powerpoint to Teams.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How ChatGPT Can Help You Do More With PDFs. “THE GENERATIVE AI bot ChatGPT has been busy helping writers, debating issues, generating code, and more—and now that developer OpenAI has opened the door to third-party plug-ins, a ton of new functionality is available. These plug-ins can look up information on the web, draw diagrams, manage travel plans, interrogate Wikipedia, and more. To access the various plug-ins, you need an active, $20-per-month subscription to ChatGPT Plus. Here we’ll focus on one particular type of extension: PDF plug-ins.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Baptist Press: Paying for X (Twitter)? Churches, pastors consider the cost. “Churches tend to focus their social media presence on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Accounts on X exist, but generally lag in activity compared to those of pastors and other church leaders. And even for the latter two categories, the way X is used makes a difference as to the need to pay for it. It literally becomes a case of the cost being worth … well, the cost.”

Reuters: With TikToks, memes and Musk comments, Argentina election battle goes viral. “In a high-rise office in downtown Buenos Aires, a loose band of twenty-something influencers gather to plan how to propel Javier Milei to the Argentine presidency with TikTok videos, memes – and some help from Elon Musk.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Guardian: Apple removes app created by Andrew Tate. “McCue Jury & Partners, the firm representing four British women who have accused Tate of sexual and physical assault, claimed that the app deliberately targets young men and encourages misogyny, including members of the app sharing techniques on how to control and exploit women. The firm has also claimed that there is evidence to suggest that the app is an illegal pyramid scheme, with members being charged $49.99 a month to join.”

WWLP: West Springfield Police see increase of “abandoned 911” calls inside The Big E. “Since the start of The Big E fair, six days ago, the West Springfield Police have been called nearly a dozen times by mistake.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Analytics India: Google is Officially Killing the Internet with AI. ” In the latest iteration of the company’s ‘Helpful Content Update’, the phrase ‘written by people’ has been replaced by a statement that search giant is constantly monitoring ‘content created for people’ to rank sites on its search engine. The linguistic pivot shows that the company does recognise the significant impact AI tools have on content creation. Despite prior declarations of intentions to distinguish between AI and human-authored content, with this move, it appears that the company is contradicting its own stance on the omnipresent AI-generated material on the internet.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 26, 2023 at 12:26AM
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Anthony Braxton, Mulgrew Miller, Environmental Stock Footage, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, September 25, 2023

Anthony Braxton, Mulgrew Miller, Environmental Stock Footage, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, September 25, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Yale Library: Rare collection of recordings by Anthony Braxton enters library’s digital collections. “The Irving S. Gilmore Music Library partnered with the Tri-Centric Foundation to digitally preserve and provide online access to a treasure trove of rare archival material: 751 audio and video recordings by Anthony Braxton, one of the most prominent and ground-breaking composers and musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries.”

Columbia Daily Tribune: Notes and tones: New record, website showcase greatness of the late Mulgrew Miller. “It was with a great deal of pleasure — I certainly could tell I was wearing a full-faced smile — when about 10 days ago, I received texts, Facebook messages and an email or two, each letting me know that Aleta Eubanks, the wife of trumpeter Duane Eubanks, had received permission from Tanya Miller, wife of the late pianist Mulgrew Miller, to launch an ‘all things’ Mulgrew Miller website.”

Studio Silverback: Studio Silverback launch Open Planet, a free footage library for global impact. “We’re excited to reveal our new project, a ground-breaking new footage library, Open Planet, announced today (18 Sept) at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. Launching globally in early-2024, Open Planet aims to revolutionise the way we tell stories about our changing planet by enabling everyone, everywhere, access to high-quality, scientifically accurate footage – free to use for educational, environmental and impact storytelling.” There are already about 3,000 clips available on the pre-launch site.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Mastodon’s latest release makes the open source Twitter alternative easier to use. “As changes at Elon Musk’s X continue to push former Twitter users to seek alternatives, the open source, decentralized social network Mastodon — a popular Twitter/X rival — is releasing an update designed to make it easier for users to get started, use its network even when logged out, and more easily search for content across its platform. The web interface has also received a visual refresh and a number of other improvements.”

USEFUL STUFF

Ubergizmo: Blackmagic Introduces Free iPhone Video App For Pro-Level Filming. “Blackmagic Design, renowned for its high-end digital movie cameras and video editing software, has introduced a free iPhone app designed for advanced video shooting, one that caters to users seeking enhanced creative control over video capture on their iPhones. The app’s interface is touted to be as user-friendly as the company’s award-winning cameras, making it an attractive choice for professionals and enthusiasts alike. Users gain comprehensive control over critical settings like frame rate, shutter speed, white balance, and ISO.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Google Says Switching Away From Its Search Engine Is Easy. It’s Not.. “I decided to test how easy or hard it really is to switch to a different search engine. In a blog post this month, Google said the change was a straightforward process and offered three examples… So I followed Google’s instructions and also shared the company’s guidance with a panel of three design veterans. The verdict: It’s hard to switch — and most people would probably give up before completing the change.”

The Hill: Biden campaign launches strategy to combat misinformation on social media. “President Biden’s reelection campaign is creating a working group centered on combating misinformation on social media networks, a Biden campaign official told The Hill on Wednesday. The group will be led by Rob Flaherty, deputy campaign manager; Michael Tyler, communications director; and Maury Riggan, general counsel, as well as aides from the rapid response communications team and legal team.”

WIRED: The Bizarre Cottage Industry of YouTube Obituary Pirates. “A FEW WEEKS ago, a friend of mine found out that a childhood classmate had died unexpectedly. They hadn’t stayed in touch, but he was sad and curious about what had happened, so he did what people do when they hear that someone they know has passed away: Googled her obituary. What he found was odd—so much so that he texted to ask if I’d ever heard of such a thing. Along with pages hosting her official obit, he saw 10 separate YouTube videos of different people casually reciting information about her death.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: War Crimes Tribunal ICC Says It Has Been Hacked. “The International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Tuesday its computer system had been hacked, a breach at one of the world’s most high-profile international institutions and one that handles highly sensitive information about war crimes.”

BBC: AI-generated naked child images shock Spanish town of Almendralejo. “A sleepy town in southern Spain is in shock after it emerged that AI-generated naked images of young local girls had been circulating on social media without their knowledge. The pictures were created using photos of the targeted girls fully clothed, many of them taken from their own social media accounts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Bloomberg: TikTok’s Rules Deter Researchers From Crunching Data on Users, Misinformation. “As TikTok gets more popular, researchers at leading academic institutions want to study what users are doing there. Publicly, the company says it’s open to this, and is partnering with academics. But researchers said so far, the video app’s rules about data are too burdensome.”

Washington Post: Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks. “Academics, universities and government agencies are overhauling or ending research programs designed to counter the spread of online misinformation amid a legal campaign from conservative politicians and activists who accuse them of colluding with tech companies to censor right-wing views.” The link is to a gift article so you should be able to read it without paywall. Good morning, Internet…

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September 25, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Sunday, September 24, 2023

Chazen Art Museum, iOS 16.7, Substack, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 24, 2023

Chazen Art Museum, iOS 16.7, Substack, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 24, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Chazen Museum of Art: Mellon Grant Helps Exhibition Archive Go Online. “When completed, the Chazen’s digital exhibition archive will include thousands of high-resolution images and documents from the museum’s physical archive…As well, high-resolution images of about 3,000 of the museum’s 24,000 permanent collection objects are online, making highly detailed remote viewing widely available for the first time.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: iOS 16.7 arrives for older iPhones and people who don’t want to upgrade. “The iOS and iPadOS 16.7 update covers all devices that could run version 16, including older stuff like the iPhone 8, iPhone X, and first-gen iPad Pro that can’t be upgraded to version 17. In a couple of months, if precedent holds, newer devices will have to upgrade to keep getting security fixes, while iOS 16 updates will continue to support older devices for at least another year.”

The Verge: Substack’s redesign makes it feel like a more traditional social media app. “After a tease in a blog post on Tuesday, Substack officially shared details about its redesigned app on Wednesday, which offers a new ‘Home’ tab and some adjustments to the app’s current layout.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: Unsubscribe From Unwanted Mailing Lists With This Chrome Extension. “Across all my email addresses, which include school, personal, spam, and work inboxes in both Gmail and Outlook, I currently have 23,754 unread messages. This does not mean I am ignoring important emails related to my job, education, or personal pursuits. It simply means those messages are harder to find because I am absolutely inundated with garbage. In an attempt to clean things up, I added the Trimbox extension to my Chrome browsers to clear out the Gmail boxes. I was admittedly nervous about using a third-party app to hack through all my stupid emails, but it worked out great.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Reuters: X social media’s India, South Asia policy head Gupta resigns-sources. “Social media platform X’s head of policy for India and South Asia, Samiran Gupta, has resigned, two sources said, a top departure that comes ahead of India elections and as the company fights a court battle with New Delhi over content removal.”

Mental Floss: 11 Social Media Platforms You Probably Forgot Existed (And Why They Failed). “For every Facebook and TikTok, there’s a Friendster and a Vine. We all probably joined some (if not all) of these websites and witnessed their meteoric rise and respective falls from grace. So why did some succeed while other once-popular social media platforms failed? Here are 11 now-defunct networks that you might have forgotten about, plus why they failed to gain traction with users.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: The FTC may file an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon as soon as next week. “The Federal Trade Commission looks set to drag Amazon into another legal battle between the two sides. The agency is preparing to file an antitrust suit against Amazon as soon as next week, according to Bloomberg. Reuters reports that the FTC has sent a draft complaint to attorneys general in an attempt to get as many states as possible on board with its case.”

NBC News: Social media famous dentist faces backlash on TikTok after women claim he sent inappropriate messages . “A Texas dentist who is known for his brash, edgy humor on social media, where he has hundreds of thousands of followers, has been accused of bullying and sexual harassment by several women who say they received inappropriate messages from his official social media accounts. Kenneth Wilstead, who goes by @DrKennySmiles on Instagram and @DrKennySmilesOfficial on TikTok, often shares his ‘smile makeovers’ on social media.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stony Brook University: Negative Retweets Add to Voter Fraud Conspiracy Theories. “A team of behavioral scientists using big data and a simulation-based model to analyze social media ‘tweets’ around the 2020 presidential election found that the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theories on Twitter (now called X) was boosted by a negativity bias.”

University of North Carolina: They combat patient loneliness with social media. “Researchers in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media and the College of Arts and Sciences are teaming up to demonstrate that social media can be used to improve well-being. They call their method the ‘social connectedness intervention,’ which uses social media to send messages to specific audiences, encouraging them to make in-person connections with other people.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 25, 2023 at 12:54AM
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Graphic Communications Group Ltd, Oklahoma Newspapers, US Census Bureau, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, September 24, 2023

Graphic Communications Group Ltd, Oklahoma Newspapers, US Census Bureau, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, September 24, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Graphic Communications Group (Ghana): Graphic Communications Group Ltd launches Digital Archive spanning over 70 years. “The Graphic Communications Group Ltd (GCGL) has unveiled its meticulously curated Digitalised Archive, a comprehensive collection of the group’s invaluable work spanning over seventy years…. Encompassing the entirety of the company’s newspaper publications and exclusive photographs from 1950 to 2000, the archive stands as a testament to the GCGL’s enduring legacy.”

NonDoc: Oklahoma Historical Society secures CNHI approval for online archive of The Edmond Sun. “Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. and the Oklahoma Historical Society have come to an agreement permitting OHS to place tens of thousands of editions of The Edmond Sun archives on its Gateway to Oklahoma History website.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

US Census Bureau: Census Bureau Releases 2020 Census Data for Nearly 1,500 Detailed Race and Ethnicity Groups, Tribes and Villages. “The U.S. Census Bureau today released 2020 Census population counts and sex-by-age statistics for 300 detailed race and ethnic groups, as well as 1,187 detailed American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) tribes and villages.”

TechCrunch: Google wants to map more of the world’s roads with expansion of ‘Road Mapper’ volunteer community . “Google announced today that it is opening access to more contributors to participate in Road Mapper, a tool where you can add missing roads to Google Maps in areas of the world that need it most.” Thinking about this in relation to the recent Google Maps driving directions lawsuit is kind of 😬.

Times Argus Online: Vermont State University names David Bergh a new interim president. “Vermont State University has named a new president. The Vermont State Colleges System board of trustees announced Friday morning that David G. Bergh will lead VTSU as its next interim president. Bergh takes over following the planned departure of current interim president Mike Smith, who is set to resign from the role by Nov. 1.” Bergh takes over after the disastrous tenure of Parwinder Grewal.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

404 Media: First Google Search Result for Tiananmen Square “Tank Man” Is AI Generated Selfie. “The first thing you’ll see if you search Google for ‘tank man’ right now will not be the iconic picture of the unidentified Chinese man who stood in protest in front of a column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square, but an entirely fake, AI-generated selfie of that historical event.” Google removed the image after being contacted by 404 Media.

Vox: Stuart Russell wrote the textbook on AI safety. He explains how to keep it from spiraling out of control.. “So what do we need to know about AI right now? What are the questions we should be asking? And how should we be preparing for whatever’s coming? To get some answers, I invited Stuart Russell onto The Gray Area. Russell is a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and the author of Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control.”

Deutsche Welle: Tanzanians demand return of ancestral skulls. “In a major research project, scientists from Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History, together with colleagues from Rwanda, investigated the origin of around 1,100 human skulls from Germany’s former colonies in East Africa. Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, told DW that it was ‘a small miracle’ to find living relatives for three skulls through DNA analysis and that it was like finding a needle in a haystack.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: US Supreme Court Extends Pause on Order Curbing Biden Social Media Contacts . “U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday extended a temporary block on an order restricting the ability of President Joe Biden’s administration to encourage social media companies to remove content it deemed misinformation about COVID-19 and other matters of public concern.”

New Zealand Herald: Social media star jailed for two years for eating pork in viral Bali video. “Lina Lutfiawati, also known as Lina Mukherjee, created a ‘blasphemous’ video when she recited an Islamic phrase before eating crispy pork skin for her two million followers to see. While pork isn’t banned in Indonesia, it is forbidden in Islam and remains taboo among most Indonesians. At least 93 per cent of its 231m people identify as Muslim. Mukherjee, 33, who identifies as Muslim, was charged with blasphemy, which is the action or offence of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NBC News: Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, ranks last in climate misinformation ‘scorecard’. “Environmental groups slammed Elon Musk’s X app in a report Wednesday ranking social media platforms on their approach to climate change misinformation. X, formerly known as Twitter, ranked last because it’s not clear the app has policies against the spread of misleading information about climate change, according to Climate Action Against Disinformation, the creator of the score card. The group is a coalition of more than 50 environmental groups, ad agencies and other organizations.”

CNN: How California is using AI to snuff out wildfires before they explode. “Firefighters want every leg up they can get to knock out a blaze before it becomes an inferno. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection says it has a new tool to battle wildfires before they explode – artificial intelligence.” And remote sensors. Good morning, Internet…

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September 24, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Saturday, September 23, 2023

Google, MS Paint, Endangered Appalachia Archives, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 23, 2023

Google, MS Paint, Endangered Appalachia Archives, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 23, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: Get playful with art in four new cultural experiments. “At Google Arts & Culture we have always been committed to creating innovative ways for people to engage with culture and see things from a new perspective, such as finding your Art Selfie, making music with Viola the Bird or playing at the interface of art and AI. In pursuit of this goal, we challenged a group of talented artists and game designers to develop new experiences that allow people to approach and consider art in unique and thought-provoking ways.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Hell freezes over, MS Paint adds support for layers and PNG transparency. “The venerable, equally derided and beloved MS Paint app has been on a roll lately, picking up a major redesign, dark-mode support, better zoom controls, and other fit-and-finish updates all within the last couple of years. But today Microsoft announced that it is finally adding two features that could make the app a bit more useful for power users: support for Photoshop-esque image layers and the ability to open and save transparent PNGs.”

WTVQ: Appalshop in Whitesburg receives grant to treat, digitize images damaged in flood. “Appalshop Archive, a media, arts and education center in Whitesburg, recently received a grant to treat and digitize images that were damaged in the July 2022 flood. The Save America’s Treasure Grant provides Appalshop with $750,000 to help cover preservation lab costs to salvage hundreds of hours of moving images that document life in Central Appalachia from the 1930s to the present day.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

404 Media: Why Scalpers Can Get Olivia Rodrigo Tickets and You Can’t. “The ‘verified fan’ concert ticket presale for pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo’s upcoming Guts Tour is today, and, yet again, it’s worth remembering that Ticketmaster stacks the deck heavily in favor of ticket scalpers, regardless of what the company says.”

New York Times: Being 13🔥👍❤. “As eighth grade began, Anna was worried that she wasn’t very popular because her parents wouldn’t let her on Snapchat. London had a tough couple of days; she had been sent to the principal’s office for lashing out at a girl who had been mean to her by sending a text impersonating a boy that girl liked. And when Addi’s school had a lockdown later in the year, she spent the evening decompressing with her sister, reenacting a TikTok sketch — her mind far from the flashing police lights that had reflected in the windows.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Fortnite: Parents in US offered refunds for game purchases. “The US regulator accused the game of tricking players into making unintended purchases and breaching privacy. Fortnite developer Epic Games agreed to pay $245m (£198m) in refunds in 2022. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now begun the process of contacting 37 million people to alert them to the compensation.”

Engadget: Microsoft AI researchers mistakenly leaked 38TB of company data. “A Microsoft AI research team that uploaded training data on GitHub in an effort to offer other researchers open-source code and AI models for image recognition inadvertently exposed 38TB of personal data. Wiz, a cybersecurity firm, discovered a link included in the files that contained backups of Microsoft employees’ computers. Those backups contained passwords to Microsoft services, secret keys and over 30,000 internal Teams messages from hundreds of the tech giant’s employees, Wiz says.”

TheNextWeb: Poland investigates ChatGPT after alleged data privacy breach. “Poland’s data protection watchdog is investigating OpenAI’s ChatGPT after an unnamed complainant accused the company of GDPR breaches.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New Jersey Institute of Technology: Data Science Techniques Help Evaluate COVID’s Impact on Mental Health. “In case of another pandemic, authorities might only have a 28-day window to connect vulnerable populations to mental health providers before it’s too late to prevent long-term concerns, according to new research assisted by a data science expert at New Jersey Institute of Technology.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Whisperframe Depicts The Art Of Conversation. “At this point, you gotta figure that you’re at least being listened to almost everywhere you go, whether it be a home assistant or your very own phone. So why not roll with the punches and turn lemons into something like a still life of lemons that’s a bit wonky? What we mean is, why not take our conversations and use AI to turn them into art? That’s the idea behind this next-generation digital photo frame created by [TheMorehavoc].” 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 24, 2023 at 12:32AM
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Mousse Magazine, Phil’s Laberia, Twitter Circles, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, September 23, 2023

Mousse Magazine, Phil’s Laberia, Twitter Circles, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, September 23, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

InPublishing: Mousse Magazine launches digital archive. “Contemporary art magazine Mousse has digitised its complete archive of print issues in partnership with publisher services company, Exact Editions, expanding the reading experience with a new paperless dimension. Individuals and institutions can now subscribe for fully-searchable access to over eighty issues from Mousse archives, dating all the way back to 2006, with new ones being published quarterly.”

Stanford Bioengineering: Phil’s Laberia: A Game Changer in Bioengineering Education. “This free, educational video game provides an immersive experience into a digital version of the world-class Uytensgu Teaching Lab (UTL) at Stanford’s Shriram Center for Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering, allowing students to step into the UTL environment virtually. The game is designed to teach skills based on BIOE 44: Fundamentals for Engineering Biology Lab, where Stanford undergraduates learn essential techniques in genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular engineering.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: X is shutting down Circles. “X is planning to shut down Circles, a feature that lets you share posts with a limited group of people instead of all of your followers. The company said in a ‘PSA’ on Thursday that Circles will be disabled by October 31st.”

XDA Developers: Google Bard gets smarter with Extensions support. “To take the competition head-on and challenge rival platforms like ChatGPT, Google has announced a couple of new features for Bard. The Mountain View tech giant has announced Bard Extensions and the ability to double-check responses in Bard to give users more customized responses.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Ars Technica: AI-generated books force Amazon to cap e-book publications to 3 per day. “On Monday, Amazon introduced a new policy that limits Kindle authors from self-publishing more than three books per day on its platform, reports The Guardian. The rule comes as Amazon works to curb abuses of its publication system from an influx of AI-generated books.”

Bloomberg: Google Tweaks Ad Auctions to Hit Revenue Targets, Executive Says. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google has tweaked its advertising auctions to ensure it meets revenue targets, sometimes increasing ad prices by as much as 5%, an executive for the company testified Monday at a federal antitrust trial.”

Variety: Stephen Fry ‘Shocked’ to Discover AI Stole His Voice From ‘Harry Potter’ Audiobooks and Replicated It Without Consent, Says His Agents ‘Went Ballistic’. “Stephen Fry recently revealed at the CogX Festival (via Forbes) that his voice from the ‘Harry Potter’ audiobooks was taken by AI software and replicated without his consent, much to the horror of both himself and his agents.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Apple emergency updates fix 3 new zero-days exploited in attacks. “Apple released emergency security updates to patch three new zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in attacks targeting iPhone and Mac users, for a total of 16 zero-days fixed this year. Two bugs were found in the WebKit browser engine (CVE-2023-41993) and the Security framework (CVE-2023-41991), enabling attackers to bypass signature validation using malicious apps or gain arbitrary code execution via maliciously crafted webpages.”

Australian Associated Press: FTX founder Bankman-Fried to stay in jail until trial. “A US appeals court has upheld a judge’s decision to jail former cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried ahead of his trial on fraud charges stemming from the November 2022 collapse of his now-bankrupt FTX exchange. In a written decision on Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said it agreed with US District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s finding that Bankman-Fried had likely attempted to tamper with two witnesses.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Chico State Today: The Growing Pains of AI: Professor to study how tools like ChatGPT affect children . “What is the impact of AI on kids? Tools like CHATGPT and virtual learning assistants have provided plenty of fodder for people to debate—in schools, around the dinner table, and at parent groups. Chico State professor Abbas Attarwala wants to help answer this question. The Center of California Studies at Sacramento State awarded Attarwala a $30,000 grant this summer to provide much-needed background on the current research landscape of AI and its impact on children.”

The Diplomat: Beijing Is Getting Better at Disinformation on Global Social Media. “Several in-depth investigations published over the past two months by academic researchers, think tanks, news outlets, and cybersecurity companies have shed light on the evolution of disinformation campaigns originating in China. Some offer new insights on campaigns that peaked last spring, while others analyze more recent messaging, tactics, and accounts that have emerged since October 2020. A close reading of these investigations points to several emergent features of China-linked disinformation campaigns – meaning the purposeful dissemination of misleading content, including via inauthentic activity on global social media platforms.”

New York Times: Trump Attacked Me. Then Musk Did. It Wasn’t an Accident.. “This isn’t a story I relish revisiting. But I’ve learned that what happened to me wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t just personal vindictiveness or ‘cancel culture.’ It was a strategy — one that affects not just targeted individuals like me, but all of us, as it is rapidly changing what we see online.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 23, 2023 at 05:30PM
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