Library of Congress, Medieval Manuscripts, Iran Activism, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 2, 2023

Library of Congress, Medieval Manuscripts, Iran Activism, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 2, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Library of Congress: What’s new online at the Library of Congress – September 2023. “Updated collections this month include the Foreign Legal Gazettes, which now features new issues of from Burkina Faso, the Philippines, and Ecuador. And two new sections were added into the Occupational Folklife Project collection: Training the Troops: Military Role-Players of Fort Polk, Louisiana and Immigrant Women Artists in Oklahoma : Archie Green Fellows Project, 2020-2021.”

Medievalists: 61 Medieval Manuscripts digitized and available online. “One of the largest databases of medieval manuscripts has added 61 new items to its collection. They include manuscripts from the Franciscan order as well as fragments dating back to the eighth century. The digitized manuscripts were added to e-codices: The Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland, which is run out of the University of Fribourg. The new additions bring their collection to over 2500 items.”

Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation: IPLC Launches the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement of Iran Web Archive. “The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation is pleased to announce the launch of the Woman, Life, Freedom Movement of Iran web archive, curated by librarians at the IPLC. This web archive preserves material on, about, and from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement of Iran, which emerged in the wake of the 2022 police killing of Mahsa Jîna Amini.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Everything you need to know about X CEO Linda Yaccarino’s disastrous interview. “Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of social media platform X, was the headline guest at Vox Media’s Code 2023 event earlier this week. CNBC’s Julia Boorstin interviewed Elon Musk’s handpicked CEO, who is tasked with bringing advertisers back to the platform formerly known as Twitter. As you may have seen, thanks to all the social media chatter surrounding the event, the interview did not go well for Yaccarino. In case you missed it, Mashable has broken down the most intriguing moments of Yaccarino’s disaster of an interview at the tech conference.”

New York Times: Fact Checkers Take Stock of Their Efforts: ‘It’s Not Getting Better’. “The number of fact-checking operations at news organizations and elsewhere has stagnated, and perhaps even fallen, after a booming expansion in response to a rise in unsubstantiated claims about elections and the pandemic. The social networking companies that once trumpeted efforts to combat misinformation are showing signs of waning interest. And those who write about falsehoods around the world are facing worsening harassment and personal threats.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 10 Vivaldi Features That Google Chrome Doesn’t Have . “Vivaldi is a web browser that has existed since about 2015. Released by Vivaldi Technologies, this browser intended to revive features Opera lost after it transitioned to a Chromium engine. It remains a relatively small browser in terms of user base and isn’t an especially big threat to Chrome’s browser dominance at the moment. However, Vivaldi boasts a multitude of features you won’t find in Google Chrome. It is one of the most feature-rich web browsers for surfing websites. These are some of the more notable Vivaldi features that Chrome doesn’t have.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Media Matters for America: X is placing ads for the NFL on prominent white nationalist accounts. “X (formerly Twitter) has been placing advertisements for the NFL on prominent white nationalist accounts, including accounts that have attacked the league by calling it anti-white. While X has been monetizing those racist accounts, which collectively have over a million followers, a senior NFL executive recently praised company CEO Linda Yaccarino for supposedly ‘doing great work innovating to make the platform better.'” Needless to say NFL has backtracked.

Motherboard: What It’s Like To Own the Cars That Became a Viral Sensation To Steal. “[Sonya] Jordan’s Kia was one of 642 vehicle thefts in Pierce County that month. Auto thefts have spiked in Washington state over the last two years, according to the Puget Sound Auto Theft Task Force, reflecting a nationwide trend fueled almost entirely by a design decision in Kia and Hyundai vehicles that make them easy to steal, exacerbated by a Tiktok and Instagram subculture dubbed ‘Kia Boys’ dedicated to showing off stolen vehicles.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC News: Have you got our treasure? British Museum wants help finding missing ancient loot. “The British Museum in London this week appealed to the public to help recover around 2,000 lost, stolen or damaged items from its vast collection. Details and images were released Wednesday of the missing loot — which includes jewelry and gems from the Greek and Roman eras — in the hope of generating some leads on where they ended up.”

The Verge: Passkeys: all the news and updates around passwordless sign-on. “Passkeys are built on WebAuthn (or Web Authentication) tech and stored directly on your device. They are supported by companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft because they’re more secure than passwords or PINs which can be stolen. Password managers can help backup and sync passkeys across all your devices. It’s expected that passkeys will eventually replace passwords entirely, though it’s going to take some time. Here you can follow all the updates and developments — including which companies have rolled out support in preparation for a passwordless future.” 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. I live at Calishat.

October 3, 2023 at 12:44AM
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Turning MegaGladys Into a Wikipedia OSINT Power Tool

Turning MegaGladys Into a Wikipedia OSINT Power Tool
By ResearchBuzz

When I say that I do ResearchBuzz, that’s literal. There’s only one person behind ResearchBuzz and that’s me. I don’t have any contract workers or employees or anything like that; I can’t afford them. It’s just me.

That means when I make something I’m limited by what I know and what I can do. This is frustrating because sometimes I have a feeling about how something should go but I don’t know how to make it. That’s definitely been the case with MegaGladys, a tool for pulling and presenting information from Wikipedia. When I first wrote it  last year I had an idea of using it as part of a dashboard-type application that would do a variety of Wikipedia-based people searching, but I just had the idea, I didn’t have any knowledge.

The past few months of hand-coding MastoGizmos and RSS Gizmos have both given me more knowledge and more comfort around working with CSS, so last week I decided to see if I could create a single-page application that would allow the user to both find information about a person listed on Wikipedia and create informed, context-added searches of external sources like Google News, Bing, and Chronicling America.

And y’all, I think I made something pretty nice. I haven’t put all my ideas in it yet, but I like what I’ve got so far and I think you will too. Let me tell you all about MegaGladys.

Introducing MegaGladys

MegaGladys is a single-page application of eight tools designed to find information about people on Wikipedia from both within Wikipedia and via specially-crafted external links. Because all tools are aggregated in this single page, you enter the name you’re searching only once and it’s automatically integrated into the searches you do. The site will work on your phone but it’s not mobile-friendly; it’s designed for desktop use.

Let me show you how it works using Joe Biden as an example (though you can use any person who’s in Wikipedia.) I’ll enter his name in the top search form and click the MegaGladys button.

MegaGladys

MegaGladys, the first tool, pulls the Wikipedia information about the name you’re searching. The center column provides an image and an excerpt from the Wikipedia article. The right column shows official and reference links for the person at the top (if there are multiple official Web sites, they’re all listed.) Beneath that are two sections for social media links for that person — and again, if there are multiple links for a network, they will all be listed. (Joe Biden has accounts as POTUS, VP, and himself.)

That’s handy if you just need some quick link information, but what if you want to know what Biden’s been up to lately? That’s when you need Gossip Machine. Click the button.

Gossip Machine

Gossip Machine uses Wikipedia’s page view data (which starts in 2017) to analyze Joe Biden’s page activity by month and list dates with particularly high activity — in this case I’m looking at July 2023. The Z-Score of each listed date is denoted by a progress bar so you can get an at-a-glance idea of how much busier his page was compared to average. Each date listing as a “Google News search for this date” link that takes you to a Google News search for that specific date. I’ll click on the link for July 10. Here’s what I get:

As you can see, the increased interest in Joe Biden’s Wikipedia page coincided with his trip to Europe in advance of NATO’s meeting.

I find that having a way to narrow down searches for famous people by date can come in really handy. If you went to Google News right now and searched for Joe Biden, you’d get information about current events and news, which makes sense. But if you want to dig down and find out about things that happened a couple of years or even a couple of months ago, you’ll have less luck finding specific news unless you use Google News’s date search. Gossip Machine makes Google News date searching very, very specific using what I call “fossilized attention” — the recorded interest of visitors to Wikipedia in the form of page view data.

Let’s look at another example — November 2020. The election in America was November 3, 2020. Knowing that, what dates in November do you think would be most busy for Joe Biden’s Wikipedia page? November 4, maybe? Nope!

Clicking on the November 8 will remind you that the actual winning declaration took a couple days:

Gossip Machine is great when you want to find news about a person from a specific month, but what if you’re trying to find news about a person from a specific place? That’s when you want the Search TV News By State button.

Search TV News by State

That to AI-generated infosewage and scrape-and-spit fraudsters, there’s no telling what you’ll get when you search Google News for somebody’s name. Search TV News by State gives you some defense against the garbage by letting you query the FCC database for FCC-licensed TV stations by state. Use the dropdown menu to choose the state you want to search, then tick the checkboxes of the stations you want to search (up to 10.) Once you’ve chosen at least one station you’ll have the option of searching the Web space of that station, or search Google News for the last 24 hours’ worth of news from that station. Your name search is automatically included.

The advantage of using this tool is that you know what you’re getting. You’re searching FCC-licensed TV stations, so you KNOW that the news you’re getting is coming from a specific place; you’re not relying on the word of some anonymous content creator.

Of course, the FCC database is authoritative but limited. It’s only for TV stations in America. Sometimes that’s just not enough, but there aren’t any worldwide confirmed media lists that I know of that I can access via API, so I did the next-best thing: made a tool to find media sources on Wikipedia and bundle them into a Google search. This search is not as authoritative as the FCC license search, but it does give you a way to identify and search media sources in a more transparent way than just throwing your search into Google News.

Non-Sketchy News Search

Non-Sketchy News Search lets you do a Wikipedia search for media sources by keyword, then bundle them into a Google search. Your original query name is automatically included. Tick up to ten sources, then click on the Generate Google Search button at the bottom. A Google search will open in a new tab.

Please note that I’m still chasing a bug on NSNS. Most times it works great, occasionally it fails and I can’t figure out what’s happening. So if it breaks for you I apologize; please reload and try again.

I’ve got one more tool to help you search news about a person. It’s called Biography Builder.

Biography Builder

Unlike the other tools I’ve showed you so far, Biography Builder requires no input beyond the initial name search. It uses Wikidata to find the birth and death dates for the person you’re searching for, and creates date-bounded Google searches for Google Books, Internet Archive, Digital Public Library of America, and Chronicling America. If the person is still alive, as in Joe Biden’s case, the time search terminates in this year.

Joe Biden isn’t a great example for this; it works better if you’re searching a more historical figure.  A search of Google Books’ Newspapers section for Mark Twain looks much different when you limit your search to his lifespan.

 

So far I’ve showed you tools that provide information about one individual. But equally important is information about someone and their relationships with other people. And if you can search Wikipedia for information about one person, why not search for information about several people and how they relate to each other? Let me tell you about Crony Corral, the PeopleLinx Affiliations Lookup, and the PeopleLinx Affiliation Filter.

Crony Corral

Crony Corral is a little complicated. It uses Wikidata to find things in common between groups of people (by checking 17 different Wikidata properties) and then divides the people into pairs based on what they have in common. In this case, I have searched for Joe Biden, Beau Biden, and Hunter Biden, and chosen the pair of Joe Biden and Beau Biden. (They have Archmere Academy in common as a place of education.) Once I have that pair I can search for Wikipedia pages which mention both of those names x number of times (the setting goes from 1-5.) In the case of the Bidens the Wikipedia pages are family-oriented as you might expect. If you tried the names of two people who worked together — Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman, say — you’d get much different results. The idea is to find Wikipedia pages relevant to the the relationship of the pair you’re searching.

As you can see, each Wikipedia page listing also includes search links for the name pair and the topic on Google, DuckDuckGo, or Bing, so you can continue your searches outside Wikipedia.

Crony Corral is designed to find Wikipedia pages that two people have in common, and it’s designed to find two people in common via their Wikidata properties. The PeopleLinx Affiliations Lookup focuses just on the affiliations, and uses them to build external search links.

PeopleLinx Affiliations Lookup

PAL focuses on finding affiliations between people and listing them in groups along with external search links. In this case, a search for Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Beau Biden finds the affiliation of Archmere Academy between the three of them and lists that at the top, followed by the affiliation with the University of Pennsylvania, which Joe Biden (employee) and Beau Biden (student) share.  As you might imagine, searching for Joe Biden along with something as specific as his school name can generate some pretty focused results. The first one made me laugh out loud.

The last tool I want to show you analyzes a group of people AND a group of companies at the same time to find any affiliations between the two. Here’s the PeopleLinx Affiliation Filter.

PeopleLinx Affiliation Filter

The PeopleLinx Affiliations Lookup finds affiliations between people for all companies/organizations/groups on Wikipedia. PeopleLinx Affiliation Filter, on the other hand, looks for commonalities between a specific group of people and a specific group of businesses/organizations/groups. In the case of the screenshot I did a lookup of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Beau Biden with the organization of Archmere Academy and University of Pennsylvania. That works for the purposes of this demonstration but the way I generally use this tool is after I read some article about a bunch of tech CEO types and what they did, I put in their names and the institutions of Harvard and Stanford. The results are always enlightening.

More to Come

When I make tools like MegaGladys, it’s usually to answer the needs of some search problem. As I use the tool I invariably come up with more search problems I want to solve, so I’m sure this is just the start. Give MegaGladys a try — I’m pretty sure it has some tools you can’t find anywhere else (and if you CAN find them somewhere else I want to know about it!)

 

October 2, 2023 at 09:35PM
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Medieval Murder Maps, Digital Services Act, Google, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 2, 2023

Medieval Murder Maps, Digital Services Act, Google, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 2, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Cambridge: Medieval Murder Maps. “A new website, launched by Cambridge’s Violence Research Centre, allows users to compare the causes and patterns of urban violence in medieval England across three cities for the first time. The site features a new map of York’s homicides during its 14th century ‘golden age’ when – driven by trade and textiles – the city flourished as Black Death subsided.”

European Commission: Digital Services Act: Commission launches Transparency Database. “Under the DSA, all providers of hosting services are required to provide users with clear and specific information, so-called statements of reasons, whenever they remove or restrict access to certain content. The new database will collect these statements of reasons in accordance with Article 24(5) of the DSA.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: Google Search, Chrome & Ad Execs Plotted To Increase Ad Revenues. “United States antitrust lawsuit against Google uncovers emails of executives from Google Search, Chrome and Ads discussing schemes for increasing ad revenue. There are two documents, one from 2019 that features top Google executives from Search, Chrome and Ads hatching plans for pumping up ad revenues before the end of the quarter. At one point they even discuss the impact on Google’s stock price and their own personal fortunes.” Every day I get a little bit sadder.

Brooklyn Reader: Brooklyn Public Library Announces Expansion of Books Unbanned Program. “The library recently debuted a new podcast series titled ‘Borrowed and Banned.’ Created by award-winning producer Virginia Marshall, the seven-episode series investigates the alarming rise in book bans over the years. The podcast will feature conversations with authors that have been impacted by book bans, including Maia Kobabe, George M. Johnson, and Mike Curato, to name a few. BPL has also launched a new page on its website that gives teens the opportunity to submit their past experiences with censorship, including the potential dangers they face as they seek the freedom to read, according to the library.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 4 Google Podcasts Alternatives to Consider . “Google Podcasts has been the one-stop destination for many podcast listeners since its launch in 2018. However, Google has been increasingly shifting its focus towards YouTube Music. The platform offers all the functionality of Google Podcasts with the added benefit of offering video support. So, it’s not surprising that the tech giant is shutting down Google Podcasts in late 2024. Fortunately, there are a number of appealing alternatives available.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ABC News: Germany’s government and Elon Musk spar on X over maritime rescue ships. “Germany’s government rebuked X owner Elon Musk after he criticized the recent work of migrant rescue ships that German humanitarian groups operate in the Mediterranean Sea. Musk late Friday shared a video that showed migrants and aid workers on a boat. The right-wing account that first put the content on X, formerly known as Twitter, praised the populist far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has taken a hard line on migration issues.”

Deccan Herald: ‘Ejipura Stonehenge’: Unfinished Bengaluru flyover named must-visit monument on Google Maps. “The unfinished flyover was marked as Ejipura Monument and Ejipura Stonehenge on Google Maps, where citizens even started giving out reviews by tagging the flyover as a ‘must visit’. A user’s review read, ‘These monuments are an epitome of tourism in the most happening part of Bangalore. Must visit! Please be prepared for the huge loving crowd of people who have all come here to witness the greatness of the beautiful structures.’ Google Maps later removed the flyover’s listing.” I think in America we would call the flyover an overpass. Same idea anyway.

CNN: Chinese artists boycott big social media platform over AI-generated images. “Artists across China are boycotting one of the country’s biggest social media platforms over complaints about its AI image generation tool. The controversy began in August when an illustrator who goes by the name Snow Fish accused the privately owned social media site Xiaohongshu of using her work to train its AI tool, Trik AI, without her knowledge or permission.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Your phone will blare a national emergency alert test on October 4 at 2:20PM ET. “The federal government will conduct a nationwide alert test on Wednesday, October 4. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will send notifications to cell phones (as well as radios and TVs) to test the National Wireless Emergency Alert System and ensure the system (including the public’s familiarity with it) is ready for a real crisis.”

Globe and Mail: Federal Court of Appeal ruling opens door for Canadians to have ‘right to be forgotten’ on Google. “Google’s search engine is covered by federal privacy law, a court has ruled, opening the door for people to demand to have their names made unsearchable – commonly known as a ‘right to be forgotten.’ In a 2-1 ruling, the Federal Court of Appeal said Google, which is responsible for as much as 75 per cent of internet searches in Canada, is not covered by an exemption in the federal law for journalistic or artistic work.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Verge: How the Elon Musk biography exposes Walter Isaacson. “While Isaacson manages to detail what makes Musk awful, he seems unaware of what made Musk an inspiring figure for so long. Musk is a fantasist, the kind of person who conceives of civilizations on Mars. That’s what people liked all this time: dreaming big, thinking about new possible worlds. It’s also why Musk’s shifting political stance undercuts him. The fantasy of the conservative movement is small and sad, a limited world with nothing new to explore. Musk has gone from dreaming very, very big to seeming very, very small. In the hands of a talented biographer, this kind of tragic story would provide rich material.”

George Washington University: Combating Distrust Online: New GW Study Explains Why Current Messaging Efforts May Not Be Effective. “New research led by the George Washington University finds that current mitigation efforts to combat distrust online may not be effective because organizations and governments tackling distrust are only targeting one topic and only one geographical scale. The study shows that online distrust has become a ‘glocal’ phenomenon, meaning that it is spreading with different topics lumped together and mixing both local and global interests.” 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. I live at Calishat.

October 2, 2023 at 05:29PM
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Windows Product Keys, YouTube, Bootable USB Devices, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 1, 2023

Windows Product Keys, YouTube, Bootable USB Devices, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: Microsoft Ends Free Windows 10 & 11 Upgrades for Windows 7 & 8. “Microsoft just closed its free upgrade path for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users. This may seem like an insignificant change, but it will affect two very large groups of people. Enthusiasts can no longer use their old Windows 7 and 8 product keys to activate Windows 10 or 11 on a new PC or in a virtual machine. And stubborn gamers who refused to install Windows 10 will soon be forced to make an upgrade, as Steam will stop working on Windows 7 and 8 in 2024.”

Search Engine Land: YouTube relaxes controversial topic guidelines to boost ad revenue opportunities . “YouTube is updating its Advertiser-Friendly Content guidelines regarding controversial issues. Under the new best practice recommendations, creators will be able to earn ad revenue on content discussing topics such as: Sexual and domestic abuse. Abortions. Eating disorders.”

USEFUL STUFF

Linux Journal: The 6 Best Tools to Create a Bootable USB From an ISO in Linux. “Linux, known for its robustness and versatility, offers a plethora of tools for creating bootable USB drives from ISO files, which are exact copies of disk data. This guide aims to delve into the top six tools available on Linux for crafting bootable USB drives from ISO files.”

Hongkiat: Best Time Lapse Apps For Your Smartphone . “Shooting time-lapse videos offers a unique perspective on the world, capturing the enchanting progression of events too slow for the human eye. The combination of a low frame rate and rapid video playback allows you to craft stunning visuals such as blooming flowers, sunsets, or drifting clouds. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need expensive equipment to create time-lapse content. In fact, your smartphone, coupled with the right app, can produce mesmerizing results. Here are 5 top-notch time-lapse apps available for both Android and iOS.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

TorrentFreak: The World’s Oldest Active Torrent Turns 20 Years Old. “Twenty years ago, a group of friends shot a Matrix fan film on a limited budget. Sharing their creation with the rest of the word initially appeared to be too expensive, but then they discovered a new technology called BitTorrent. Fast forward two decades and their ‘Fanimatrix’ release is the oldest active torrent that’s still widely shared today.”

UC Davis: Plug-in Electric Vehicles Archive to Be Housed at UC Davis Library. “During National Drive Electric Week, the University of California, Davis, today (Sept. 27) announced that it has begun to build a Plug-in Electric Vehicles Archive. It will be housed at the UC Davis Library’s Archives and Special Collections with support from the UC Davis Electric Vehicle Research Center. The archive will focus on the decades-long story of how plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs — long seen as a science project — shifted from prototypes and modifications to mass production.”

Ars Technica: Jony Ive and OpenAI’s Altman reportedly collaborating on mysterious AI device. “Ex-Apple design star Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have been discussing the design of an unspecified new AI device, reports The Information, citing two people familiar with the talks. It’s unclear what exactly the device may be, but the report has many people on social media and the press guessing about a re-imagining of a smartphone that relies heavily on generative AI. Others think the device may be something else entirely.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: Tech giants ramp up cloud security under pressure from Washington. “After a recent theft of emails from top U.S. officials raised alarms about the country’s increasing dependence on the biggest cloud computing companies, Amazon, Google and Microsoft have begun to explain more of the work they do to secure the data of tens of millions of online customers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Cornell University: Gamers help highlight disparities in algorithm data. “Is The Witcher immersive? Is The Sims a role-playing game? Gamers from around the world may have differing opinions, but this diversity of thought makes for better algorithms that help audiences everywhere pick the right games, according to new research from Cornell, Xbox and Microsoft Research.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

UC San Diego Today: These Screen-printed, Flexible Sensors Allow Earbuds to Record Brain Activity and Exercise Levels . “A pair of earbuds can be turned into a tool to record the electrical activity of the brain as well as levels of lactate in the body with the addition of two flexible sensors screen-printed onto a stamp-like flexible surface.” 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. I live at Calishat.

October 2, 2023 at 12:31AM
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South Africa History, Inclusive Stock Photos, Google, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 1, 2023

South Africa History, Inclusive Stock Photos, Google, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Polity: New online SA archive aims to better empower citizens. “Hundreds of historical grassroots democracy documents from the past 29 years have been made public in a bid to empower South Africans and assist them, alongside activists, to hold government to account. The online archive is supported by the European Union-funded Enhancing Accountability programme, which came about following an agreement between the European Union and the South African Government, signed in 2020.”

University of Kentucky: UK HDI celebrates disability representation with stock photo project. “Having meetings. Studying for class. Enjoying the outdoors. All are common interactions often depicted in stock photos featured on websites, social media, news releases and more. A team of staff at the University of Kentucky’s Human Development Institute (HDI) has created a photo library that represents Kentuckians of all kinds. The Photo Library Fund for Excellence Project had one main goal: to create an accurate and diverse collection of stock photos that highlight disability representation.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: Google Launches “SEO Made Easy” YouTube Series. “Google has released the first video in a new YouTube series called ‘SEO Made Easy’ to teach people how to improve their website’s performance in search results. In the inaugural episode, Martin Splitt from Google’s Search Relations team explains how sites can customize the way their brand name appears in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).”

WIRED: Six Months Ago Elon Musk Called for a Pause on AI. Instead Development Sped Up. “SIX MONTHS AGO this week, many prominent AI researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on development of AI systems more capable than OpenAI’s latest GPT-4 language generator. It argued that AI is advancing so quickly and unpredictably that it could eliminate countless jobs, flood us with disinformation, and—as a wave of panicky headlines reported—destroy humanity. Whoops!”

Techdirt: Elon Fires Half Of ExTwitter’s Election Integrity Team, Because A Manager Liked A Tweet Calling Him A Fucking Dipshit. “Earlier this week it was reported that exTwitter had disabled the feature that let users “report” election misinformation as part of its reporting tools. That already got some people worried about how a Musk-run exTwitter would handle many upcoming elections. As if to confirm this was absolutely intentional, that same day, the Information revealed that Elon fired half of the remaining ‘Election Integrity Team’ at exTwitter. This is despite him recently promising to expand that effort. Rolling Stone has way more info on all of this, including details about what likely happened here and it’s dumber than you could have imagined.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Leadership (Nigeria): 1,000 Publications, Rare & Vulnerable Resources In NLN Lagos Strong Room Digitised – National Librarian . “Chief Executive Officer (CEO), of the National Library of Nigeria (NLN), Professor Chinwe Anunobi has said about a thousand of the library’s publications, including rare and vulnerable resources in its Lagos branch ‘strong room’ have been digitized. Anunobi disclosed this during a media briefing to mark her second year in office, whilst highlighting the library’s achievements and challenges.”

8List: Maggie Wilson Is Single-Handedly Exposing a Network of Online Trolls. “If you didn’t believe in online trolls before, what’s currently happening to former beauty queen Maggie Wilson will change your mind. The 34-year-old model and businesswoman is single-handedly exposing content creators who were allegedly paid to join an online smear campaign against her and her lifestyle company, Acasa Manila. Wilson posted a slew of Instagram stories proving how a group of ‘influencers’ were hired to create negative videos about her.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: China Uses ‘Deceptive’ Methods to Sow Disinformation, U.S. Says. “The State Department accused China on Thursday of using ‘deceptive and coercive methods’ to shape the global information environment, by acquiring stakes in foreign newspapers and television networks, using major social media platforms to promote its views and exerting pressure on international organizations and media outlets to silence critics of Beijing.”

Washington Post: Got an idea for protecting kids online? You can now take action. “If you have concerns about kids and teens on social media or ideas for keeping them healthy and safe now you can submit those directly to the federal government. The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) sent out a request for public comment on Thursday calling for parents, educators and other interested parties to write in and share their concerns and ‘best practices’ around internet usage of kids and teens.”

Perkins Coie: New York Bans Employers From Requiring Disclosure of Personal Social Media Login Credentials. “New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law bill A836 on September 14, 2023, prohibiting employers from requesting or requiring employees or job applicants to disclose the login credentials for their personal social media accounts, or from retaliating against employees or job applicants who refuse to do so.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

William & Mary News: Smart cars and privacy concerns: Navigating the data highway with W&M’s Rajiv Kohli. “Connected smart cars, equipped with an array of sensors and communication systems, have the potential to revolutionize our driving experience. However, as these vehicles gather and transmit vast amounts of data, it raises important questions about individual privacy, security and the need for regulatory oversight. To shed some light on the multifaceted dimensions of this intricate discourse, the Raymond A. Mason School of Business marketing department conversed with Rajiv Kohli, the John N. Dalton Professor of Business.”

University of Chicago: UChicago computer scientists design compact backpack that creates feeling of jumping, landing . “Alongside Assoc. Prof. Pedro Lopes and a team of students, third-year Ph.D. student Romain Nith has designed a haptic device called JumpMod that uses vertical force-feedback to mimic the full-body feeling of gravity. The technology lives within a compact, wearable backpack and modifies the user’s perceived jump through five different effects: the feeling of jumping higher, landing harder or softer, and being pulled higher or lower.” 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.

October 1, 2023 at 05:27PM
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Historic Costume and Textile Museum, Raspberry Pi, Google Jamboard, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 30, 2023

Historic Costume and Textile Museum, Raspberry Pi, Google Jamboard, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Kansas State University: Historic Costume and Textile Museum launches online database, showcasing its more than 15,000 artifacts. “For the first time since its inception, the Historic Costume and Textile Museum’s collection will be available to view online. Guests of the database can explore images and descriptions of the thousands of pieces housed at the Historic Costume and Textile Museum, HCTM, which is located on the third floor of Justin Hall.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: The Raspberry Pi 5 uses the company’s own chip designs. “It’s been four years since Raspberry Pi 4 was released, and since then, the company has only rolled out minor upgrades, including doubling the RAM for the base $35 version. Now, the company has officially launched Raspberry Pi 5, which is the first full-size computer from the brand that uses silicon it built in-house. It offers double or even triple the CPU performance of Raspberry Pi 4, with better graphics capability, thanks to its 800MHz VideoCore VII GPU.”

9to5 Google: Google shutting down Jamboard, offering transition to other whiteboard apps . “Back in 2016, Google announced a 55-inch 4K touchscreen that serves as a digital whiteboard for real-time collaboration. Google Jamboard and its mobile apps are now shutting down in 2024.”

USEFUL STUFF

Electronic Frontier Foundation: How To Turn Off Google’s “Privacy Sandbox” Ad Tracking—and Why You Should. “Google referring to any of this as ‘privacy’ is deceiving. Even if it’s better than third-party cookies, the Privacy Sandbox is still tracking, it’s just done by one company instead of dozens. Instead of waffling between different tracking methods, even with mild improvements, we should work towards a world without behavioral ads. But if you’re sticking to Chrome, you can at least turn these features off.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Euronews: Pro-Russia disinformation floods Slovakia ahead of crucial parliamentary election . “Propaganda and attacks on LGBTQ people are prominent ahead of election which could decide whether the country moves politically closer to Moscow. Voters in Slovakia are being inundated with misinformation from home and abroad in the run-up to the country’s parliamentary elections on Saturday. The vote could determine whether the country of 5.4 million moves closer to Moscow or not, with much of the false information coming from Russia.”

University of Massachusetts Amherst: UMass Amherst Libraries Acquire Terri Cappucci Glass Plate Negative Collection. “The UMass Amherst Libraries announce the acquisition of the Terri Cappucci Glass Plate Negative collection. The archive, from local photographer Terri Cappucci ’00BA,’03MFA, of 2,500-3,000 glass plate negatives that date back to the 1860s, was gifted to Cappucci in July of 2019. Cappucci donated them to the Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center (SCUA) in July 2023. Cappucci, who received her MFA at UMass Amherst, is a documentary photographer, alternative process printer, and educator who has been producing her own nineteenth century-style photographs using the wet plate collodion process for many years.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ProPublica: ProPublica and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Have Sued the FDA for Records Related to Recalled Breathing Machines . “ProPublica and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have filed suit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in federal court in New York, accusing the agency of holding back records related to the sweeping recall of breathing machines that were sold around the world.”

Krebs on Security: ‘Snatch’ Ransom Group Exposes Visitor IP Addresses. “The victim shaming site operated by the Snatch ransomware group is leaking data about its true online location and internal operations, as well as the Internet addresses of its visitors, KrebsOnSecurity has found. The leaked data suggest that Snatch is one of several ransomware groups using paid ads on Google.com to trick people into installing malware disguised as popular free software, such as Microsoft Teams, Adobe Reader, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Discord.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Iowa State University: Finding art in the biological rhythms of trees. “Johnny DiBlasi, an assistant professor of art and visual culture, recently received a $10,000 grant from the Iowa Arts Council to develop ‘Transcoded Ecologies,’ a project that fuses artificial intelligence and plant biodata into an art installation that incorporates light and sound. The concept involves sensors that track data produced by tree saplings and an artificial intelligence program that translates the data into a dynamic artistic experience.”

Newswise: Your Zoom background might influence the first impression you make. “In a new study, participants tended to judge faces appearing against backgrounds featuring houseplants or bookcases as more trustworthy and competent than faces with a living space or a novelty image behind them. Gender and facial expression also appeared to influence judgments.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 1, 2023 at 01:02AM
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County-Level Weather Risks, Iowa Libraries, Shadows on Stone, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, September 30, 2023

County-Level Weather Risks, Iowa Libraries, Shadows on Stone, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, September 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

US Department of Health and Human Services: HHS Launches Climate and Health Outlook Portal to Identify Counties at Risk of Climate-Related Hazards . “The Portal, hosted on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Geospatial Portal, builds on an OCCHE publication known as the Climate and Health Outlook, which links seasonal weather and hazard forecasts to health impacts. This beta version of the Climate and Health Outlook Portal features interactive maps showing county-level extreme heat, wildfire, and drought forecasts for the current month, along with county-level data on individual risk factors that may make people more vulnerable to negative health outcomes from these climate hazards.”

State Library of Iowa: New “Find My Local Library” Interactive Map Tool from the State Library. “The ‘Find My Local Library’ tool displays an interactive and informational map of all the public libraries in the state. Users can filter data by county, population size, and library district. When a location is clicked, a pop up appears with library information, including address and phone number as well as links to the library website and detail page in the Iowa Library Directory.”

Fordham University: Crowd-Sourced History Project Seeks to Humanize the Incarcerated . “From 1865 to 1925, nearly 50,000 people passed through the gates of Sing Sing prison, just 20 miles north of New York City. Very little is known about who they were. Shadows on Stone, a new crowd-sourced digital history project that began in a Fordham history class, seeks to fill in that gap and, in doing so, help restore the humanity of a group of people who have historically been dismissed as irredeemable.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google adds a switch for publishers to opt out of becoming AI training data. “Google just announced it’s giving website publishers a way to opt out of having their data used to train the company’s AI models while remaining accessible through Google Search. The new tool, called Google-Extended, allows sites to continue to get scraped and indexed by crawlers like the Googlebot while avoiding having their data used to train AI models as they develop over time.”

CBS News: Boston Public Library opens e-book access to teens across US. “Ahead of Banned Books Week (Oct. 1-7), the Boston Public Library is joining the Book Unbanned initiative…. Anyone ages 13-26 who lives in the U.S. can sign up for a free e-card to access the library’s entire collection of e-books and e-audiobooks.”

TechCrunch: Zapier launches Canvas, an AI-powered flowchart tool. “Zapier today announced the launch of Canvas, a new tool that aims to help its users plan and diagram their business-critical processes — with a fair bit of AI sprinkled in there to help them turn those processes into Zapier-based automations. Canvas is now in early access.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

1 News New Zealand: Experts alarmed as truck drivers livestream on social media. “Experts are sounding the alarm over a social media trend that sees truck drivers livestreaming their drives on TikTok. Users on the social media platform can go live once they have 1000 followers, and it has seen some drivers sharing their trips around New Zealand.” The alarm is less about the livestreaming and more about the drivers interacting with viewers when they’re supposed to be driving.

Business Insider: X owner Elon Musk largely runs the social media giant from his iPhone, employees say. “Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, runs the social media giant from his iPhone and expects staff to send emails in a format that’s easy for him to read on his phone, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Several former and current X employees told the FT that Musk steers the ship from his iPhone and if staff want to get his attention, their emails needed to be sent in a specific format. This includes no attachments, documents, or spreadsheets within the email. Instead, Musk wants all information to be within the body of the email, per the FT.”

New York Times: European Central Bank Is Experimenting With a New Tool: A.I.. “The European Central Bank said on Thursday that it was exploring ways to use artificial intelligence to better understand inflation and support its oversight of big banks, but stressed that these efforts were still in the early stages.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

How-To Geek: Update LibreOffice Now to Fix a Security Flaw. “Earlier this month, a security vulnerability in the popular libwebp software library was discovered, affecting everything from web browsers to email clients. The Document Foundation, the developers behind the free and open-source LibreOffice suite, has now released an emergency update for LibreOffice that includes the fix. You should update as soon as possible if you have LibreOffice installed.”

Bloomberg: Microsoft Says Apple Used Bing as Google ‘Bargaining Chip’. “A Microsoft Corp. executive complained that when it came to the search-engine wars with Alphabet Inc.’s Google, the company’s Bing was never more than a bargaining chip to Apple Inc.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Carnegie Mellon University: Addressing Copyright, Compensation Issues in Generative AI. “Recent work by Carnegie Mellon University researchers tackles the thorny issues of copyright and compensation for generative AI models that create new images. A team in the School of Computer Science’s Generative Intelligence Lab collaborated with Adobe Research and the University of California, Berkeley, to develop two algorithms to help generative AI models take important steps on these issues. The first algorithm prevents these models from generating copyrighted materials, while the second develops a way to compensate human creators when models use their work to generate an image.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 30, 2023 at 05:31PM
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