Georgia City Directories, Astronomers Without Borders, Reddit, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 9, 2023

Georgia City Directories, Astronomers Without Borders, Reddit, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 9, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Georgia Public Library Service: Historical city directories from across Georgia are now freely accessible online. “Georgia Public Library Service has completed a two year-long project to digitize 214 city directories, which document 17 different Georgia communities across nearly 100 years. The directories, contributed by 12 public library systems, are now full-text searchable and freely available in the Digital Library of Georgia.”

Space: Hold the annular solar eclipse in your hand with new ‘One Eclipse’ app from Astronomers Without Borders. “With the interactive eclipse map, users are able to pinpoint the perfect viewing spot for observing the upcoming eclipse and the handy countdown timer lets you see the exact moment when you can expect to experience the moon’s shadow. The eclipse simulator lets you see what the eclipse will look like from any location on Earth, from start to finish.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TorrentFreak: Reddit Sees Copyright Takedowns Peak While Subreddit Bans Drop. “Reddit’s latest transparency report shows a modest increase in DMCA takedown notices. The number of copyright infringement-related user- and subreddit bans has declined, however. The latest data follows a hectic period at Reddit, where protests over an API policy change triggered a ‘dramatic’ 1169% increase in user data requests.”

Mashable: Snapchat’s Bitmoji update upsets users. “Snapchat users are once again frustrated with an update to the social media platform. This time it involves the once delightful, now disquieting Bitmoji. Last week, Snapchat’s cartoon avatars underwent a makeover that startled users, as part of the company’s effort to bring Bitmoji further into 3D.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: Raspberry Pi 4 vs. Raspberry Pi 5: 14 Key Differences. “Launching in late October, the Raspberry Pi 5 offers numerous hardware upgrades compared to the Pi 4. Wondering which board to choose for your next project? Read on for a detailed comparison of these two single-board computers’ specifications and capabilities.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ABC News (Australia): How a soap opera star pushed a conspiracy theory linking the Voice to Parliament to a UN takeover. “In the past few weeks, a conspiracy theory suggesting the Voice is a secret plot devised by the UN to strip Australians of their private property and sovereignty has spread like wildfire. Since early August, versions of a social media video promoting the baseless accusation have recorded nearly twice as many shares on Facebook as any content published by either the official Yes or No campaign.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: A Giacometti for a Cezanne: Jeffrey Epstein’s Role in a Pricey Art Deal. “Mr. Epstein helped the billionaire Leon Black defer capital gains taxes from the swap. A Senate committee is scrutinizing some of Mr. Black’s art deals as it looks into tax avoidance schemes.”

South China Morning Post: ‘Gold-digger’: China blogger jailed over fake news claiming woman’s grandpa was tycoon husband, attracting 470 million views online. “A man in China who spread fake news online about a ‘gold-digger’ marrying an ageing tycoon, alongside photos of a young woman with her grandfather, has been jailed for a year. The perpetrator, surnamed Wu, was sentenced by Dongguan No 1 People’s Court in southeastern Guangdong province, for ‘fabricating facts that defamed’ and which resulted in ‘serious consequences that jeopardised the social order’.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Brigham Young University: AI-powered chat assistance elevates online conversation quality, BYU study finds. “Check the comments section of many social media and digital news platforms, and you’re likely to find a cesspool of insults, threats and even harassment. In fact, a Pew Research Center survey found that 41% of American adults have personally experienced online harassment, and one in five adults say they’ve been harassed online for their political views. But researchers at BYU and Duke University say derisive online conversations don’t have to be the norm. A joint paper between the two universities found that artificial intelligence can be used to improve conversation quality and promote civil dialogue in online interactions.”

Northwestern: Instant evolution: AI designs new robot from scratch in seconds. “A team led by Northwestern University researchers has developed the first artificial intelligence (AI) to date that can intelligently design robots from scratch. To test the new AI, the researchers gave the system a simple prompt: Design a robot that can walk across a flat surface. While it took nature billions of years to evolve the first walking species, the new algorithm compressed evolution to lightning speed — designing a successfully walking robot in mere seconds.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 10, 2023 at 12:56AM
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Tracking Ukraine Restoration, Racism Harms Health, Internet Governance Forum, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 9, 2023

Tracking Ukraine Restoration, Racism Harms Health, Internet Governance Forum, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 9, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

UNITED24: Monitoring rebuilding efforts — a joint project by UNITED24 and LUN. (This link is to a Google Doc.) “18 residential buildings in Kyiv Oblast are actively being rebuilt, funded by UNITED24. From now on, you can read the stories of their residents and observe the progress, thanks to the monitoring project of the IT company LUN.”

Berkeley Public Health: The data are clear: Racism harms health. “Our just-launched website, Racism Harms Health, compiles research data culled from more than 250 studies across the spectrum of American life—from workplaces and policing to education and housing—showing exactly how racism harms health. It makes the evidence clear and easily accessible to public health practitioners, policymakers, students, researchers, and anyone interested in an equitable, healthy society.”

EVENTS

Kyodo News: U.N. forum on internet governance begins in Kyoto, focus on AI. “A U.N. forum on public policy issues regarding the internet began in Kyoto on Sunday with focus on artificial intelligence and measures against disinformation. The results of the discussions at the Internet Governance Forum scheduled through Thursday will be utilized for the Hiroshima AI Process, in which the Group of Seven industrialized nations will establish rules on AI-related topics.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Decrypt: Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Creator Yuga Labs Confirms Layoffs. “Yuga Labs, the $4 billion startup behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club and other prominent NFT projects, announced Friday that it has restructured the company and eliminated certain roles as a result, leading to layoffs.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: The Easiest Ways to Access Your Computer Remotely. “FROM MUSIC STREAMING to video calling, the internet has given us so much. It has also made it much easier to get to your computer when you’re not actually sitting in front of it. There are now numerous remote access programs to choose from that will connect one computer to another across the web. What’s more, a lot of the basic tools are free to use.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Amazon’s Alexa has been claiming the 2020 election was stolen. “Amid concerns the rise of artificial intelligence will supercharge the spread of misinformation comes a wild fabrication from a more prosaic source: Amazon’s Alexa, which declared that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.”

Canadian Press: MuchMusic’s expansive physical videotape archive is finally going digital. “Decades of MuchMusic programming is being rescued from the sands of time. The music channel’s owner Bell Media says it’s on the final stretch of a years-long project to go through tens of thousands of videotapes and transfer pieces of pop culture history into a new digital archive.”

Chicago Tribune: Landmarks: A 200-year archive of maps faces uncertain future as 5-generation run of Chicago surveyors nears end. “A group of college students in Springfield was engaged in an ambitious project to digitize all the written records associated with court cases argued by Abraham Lincoln back when he was just an Illinois attorney. One name the students found that appeared in a couple of cases associated with Lincoln was Samuel S. Greeley, a prominent surveyor based in Chicago in the city’s early days.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Euromaidan: Texty: Russian museums refuse to return 110,000 Ukrainian looted treasures. “A new investigation by the Ukrainian media outlet TEXTY reveals that two of Russia’s biggest museums – the State Hermitage Museum and the State Historical Museum – hold over 110,000 artifacts that were taken from modern-day Ukraine. The study excluded icons, artwork, and weapons, as their origins are harder to trace. It also did not look at objects looted during the current war in Ukraine.”

ZDNet: Patch now: This serious Linux vulnerability affects nearly all distributions. “As security holes go, CVE-2023-4911, aka ‘Looney Tunables,’ isn’t horrid. It has a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 7.8, which is ranked as important, not critical. On the other hand, this GNU C Library’s (glibc) dynamic loader vulnerability is a buffer overflow, which is always big trouble, and it’s in pretty much all Linux distributions, so it’s more than bad enough.”

VN Express: Google Maps used to advertise illegal services in Vietnam. “People are trying to advertise illegal services anonymously using Google Maps’s tagging feature, the broadcast watchdog said. Le Quang Tu Do, head of the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information, confirmed this on Thursday, saying his agency has received reports about tags not being properly displayed on Google Maps.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Tech Xplore: Study: Digital watermark protections can be easily bypassed. “Major digital media companies—OpenAI, Alphabet, Amazon, DeepMind—have promised to develop tools to combat disinformation. One key approach is the use of watermarking on AI-generated content. But a paper published Sept. 29 on the preprint server arXiv raises troubling news about the ability to curb such digital abuse. Professors at the University of Maryland ran tests demonstrating easy run-arounds of protective watermarks.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 9, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Google, Reddit, Deepfake Voices, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 8, 2023

Google, Reddit, Deepfake Voices, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 8, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CBC: Still unsatisfied with Online News Act, Google says it expects to remove news links this year. “Google says it still expects to remove news links from its search engine at the end of the year. The company has been a part of the regulatory process for the Online News Act, which will require tech giants to pay media outlets for news content that is shared or repurposed on their online platforms. Google says draft regulations to implement the bill don’t address the company’s concerns.”

Mashable: Reddit just made some big updates to its search function. “Reddit has launched a slew of updates to its search functionality. The app broke down the latest additions, which include a media search tab, a media search within subreddits, and accessibility features, in a blog post on Wednesday.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

BBC: AI: Voice cloning tech emerges in Sudan civil war. “A campaign using artificial intelligence to impersonate Omar al-Bashir, the former leader of Sudan, has received hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok, adding online confusion to a country torn apart by civil war.”

VietnamNet: Online cuisine map to bring Vietnamese foods to the world. “The Vietnam Cuisine Culture Association (VCCA) is working to develop a national online cuisine map with a view to introducing Vietnamese cuisine quintessence to the world through helping those who want to explore the country’s food.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

404 Media: People Exploited YouTube Bug to Upload “Undeletable” Porn Videos. “A small community of people who search for adult content on YouTube has discovered a bug that allows them to continue hosting porn on YouTube, even if their channels are deleted.”

Europol: Europol and TikTok collaborate to bolster efforts against terrorist content. “On 28 September, a large-scale voluntary Referral Action Day between TikTok, Europol’s European Counter Terrorism Centre (ECTC) and 11 countries took place targeting suspected terrorist and violent extremist content online. In collaboration with the video sharing platform TikTok, investigators from the participating countries, together with the ECTC’s European Union Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU), performed an exercise to detect material glorifying past terrorist attacks or terrorist perpetrators.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Defense One: Taiwan is using generative AI to fight Chinese disinfo. “As Taiwan approaches a pivotal presidential election in January, Tang said that both the government and a wide network of volunteers are preparing for China to increase efforts to manipulate Taiwanese civilians. Taiwanese civil society has developed new organizations to combat it. A group called Cofacts allows users to forward dubious messages to a chatbot. Human editors check the messages, enter them into a database, and get back to the user with a verdict.”

City University of New York: A call for ethical guidelines for social media data use in public health research. “Three studies by CUNY SPH investigators highlight the need for stronger guidance on research ethics for using data from social media platforms in public health research, especially the use of personal identifiers.”

Harvard University: Undoing Empire, One Plant at a Time. “This summer, the Davis Center’s Imperiia team partnered with the Harvard Map Collection on the “Undoing Empire” project. The project was awarded a Harvard Library Advancing Open Knowledge grant to sustain work across a six-month period. It has three goals: 1) create a database of biodiversity in 19th-century Ukraine, 2) create an inclusive strategy for mapping historical places, and 3) develop best practices for producing data that can be preserved via the Harvard Geospatial Library and the Harvard Library (HOLLIS) catalog.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Yale Library: In the cards: Library partners work together to solve mysteries of rare tarot deck. “For the past five years, and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the library has collaborated internally and partnered internationally to study the world’s three earliest 15th-century Italian tarot (or tarocchi) decks. One of these decks is the Visconti di Modrone deck, held in the Cary Collection of Playing Cards at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Dating from ca. 1440–45, it is one of the oldest of the three.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 9, 2023 at 12:15AM
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Permission Slip by CR, NASA, Better Audio, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 8, 2023

Permission Slip by CR, NASA, Better Audio, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 8, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Consumer Reports: Consumer Reports Introduces Free ‘Permission Slip by CR’ App to Empower Consumers to Take Back Control of Their Personal Data . “Permission Slip makes it easy for consumers to manage their personal information. Users can swipe through companies that may have their data, and with a simple tap, send a request for the company to delete their account or stop selling their information.”

EVENTS

Engadget: NASA will reveal what OSIRIS-REx brought back from asteroid Bennu on Wednesday. “NASA will give the public a look at the asteroid sample brought back to Earth by its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft next week. A livestream of the reveal is set for 11 AM ET on Wednesday, October 11. The capsule containing rocks and dust taken from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid ‘Bennu’ touched down at a Department of Defense training site in the Utah desert on September 24, and scientists have since been at work making their initial analyses.”

USEFUL STUFF

New York Times: How to Make the Audio in Your Projects Sound Better. “Even if you don’t plan to start a podcast, understanding digital audio a bit more can make other tasks like recording Grandma’s stories for a family-history archive or adding a narration track to your vacation videos sound much cleaner. Here’s an overview.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Boing Boing: Twitter running shady undisclosed ads that look an awful lot like those new unheadlined link previews. “A couple of days ago, Twitter removed headlines from embedded links to other websites. Today, the other shoe dropped: advertisements with the same design, making them look very similar to news stories and other links. You can’t report, block, like or retweet them, and there’s no disclosure or other indication that it’s an ad.”

The Verge: Pokémon’s Van Gogh collaboration turned out to be kind of a disaster. “The horde of people that descended upon the Van Gogh Museum yesterday to snatch up as much merchandise as they could was the first sign that the Pokémon x Van Gogh collaboration might be a bit more chaotic than expected. While there was hope that all the fracas might die down and give everyone a chance to get in on the fun, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.”

Chicago Tribune: Puerto Rican museum in Humboldt Park to tear down archives building amid complaints, lawsuit and find new site. “It resembles a German style of architecture that is ‘very unusual’ in Chicago, according to the Chicago Park District, and is home to the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. But when the museum began construction about a year ago — without proper permits — on a cinder-block structure for archives beside the Chicago landmark, some residents and preservation groups were alarmed, calling it an eyesore that blemished the area’s historic charm and didn’t involve enough community input.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Google Changed Ad Auctions, Raising Prices 15%, Witness Says. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google changed its advertising auction formula in 2017, raising prices by 15% and likely making the company billions of dollars in additional revenue, according to an economist testifying for the US Justice Department in the antitrust case against the search giant.”

Troy Record (New York): Ashby sponsors legislation to create inventory database of vacant state facilities and unused property. “State Sen. Jake Ashby hopes the state will create an inventory database of vacant state facilities and unused property. Ashby (R,C-Castleton) said he wants to prevent the state from contracting to lease or construct new facilities when existing ones could be repurposed more cost-effectively. Additionally, given the state’s accelerating budget shortfall, selling properties that have been vacant for many years could be a prudent measure that simultaneously cuts costs and juices revenue. Ashby is sponsoring legislation (S.7665).”

Route Fifty: The hazards of facial recognition in schools. “New York has banned the emerging technology in its schools, arguing that the concerns surrounding it ‘are not outweighed by the claimed benefits.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Dartmouth University: K-Pop Fans Helped COVID-19 Public Health Messaging Go Viral. “When health officials and agencies such as Tedros leveraged entertainment groups like ‘#BTS’ into their public health messages on COVID-19, this generated 111 times more virality or retweets, according to a new Dartmouth-led study.”

University of Waterloo: Gen Z imagines innovative finance tools using virtual reality and 5G. “Banking with a virtual reality headset may not be as far-fetched as you might think after students from the University of Waterloo’s startup incubator Velocity wrapped up a two-week-long ‘hackathon’, an innovation challenge aimed at augmenting the future of finance with VR and high-speed wireless technology.”

Newswise: You Are What Your Food Influencer Is Eating: UNLV Social Media Experts Team on Mukbang Study. “Ever find yourself inexplicably sucked into (another!) video of social media influencer downing a massive feast of 100 different kinds of shrimp? You can’t scroll past. And before you know it, you’re craving crustaceans, making reservations at that new seafood restaurant, and searching for recipes. We’ve got one word for you: mukbang.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 8, 2023 at 05:28PM
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Conduct and Culture Research and Policy Database, I-15 Utah, Muay Thai Fighters, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 7, 2023

Conduct and Culture Research and Policy Database, I-15 Utah, Muay Thai Fighters, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 7, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Government of Canada: Defence Minister Bill Blair announces launch of new online database to make Defence conduct and culture research and policies more open and accessible. “The Honourable Bill Blair, Minister of National Defence, today announced the launch of an online Conduct and Culture Research and Policy Database. The database makes research and policies related to sexual harassment and misconduct, gender, sexual orientation, race, diversity and inclusion, and culture change more readily accessible to the public, as well as to members of the Department of National Defence (DND) and Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).”

Utah State University: USU Presents Digital Exhibition on I-15’s Impact on Salt Lake City’s West Side. “The Libraries and the Department of History at Utah State University collaborated to create a digital exhibition on the construction of Interstate 15 through the west side of Salt Lake City, an under-researched topic in Utah history.”

Newsfile: Muay Thai Records Launches the Most Comprehensive Database for UK’s Thriving Fight Community (PRESS RELEASE). “Founded in July 2023, Muay Thai Records is a newly-formed website offering a deep dive into the world of Muay Thai. With a database of over 30,000 fighter records, the site is a haven for fighters, trainers, and fans alike.” The site says that this is an early release and a full launch is expected in March 2024.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Traditional Music Forum: Scottish Traditional Music Archive Directory – Call for Organisations. “The Traditional Music Forum (TMF) is developing a Directory of organisations inside and outside of Scotland with collections of Scottish traditional music as part of our work towards a Scottish Traditional Music Archive. The Directory will act as a signpost to help people interested in Scottish traditional music identify pertinent collections, contact collection holders, and make links between material.”

The Register: Mozilla’s midlife crisis has taken it from web pioneer to Google’s weird neighbor. “Mozilla, please stop aping Chrome. Copying is rarely the way to win big. The Australis Chrome-like theme in Firefox 29 annoyed users and was a driving force behind Pale Moon. Firefox Quantum killed XUL addons, and drove The Reg FOSS desk to Waterfox Classic. Others went to Basilisk instead, while XP users have MyPal.”

WIRED: The Truth About the Taylor Swift, Jets Game, Google Search Conspiracy Theory. “No one will ever know if Swift went to a Jets game specifically to shift the SEO for ‘Taylor Swift jets,’ but what is true is that interest in that search is currently the highest it’s ever been on Google Trends. Comparatively, the interest in the search term in summer 2022, when the news was going around about her PJs, has been bumped down to single digits. So if it was a gambit, it worked. Not only are the search results upended, but now TikTok videos about the ‘genius’ move are getting half a million views.” All you need to do to bypass this “genius move” is use Back that Ask Up and take one month off your search date. Presto, you’re back to reading about Taylor Swift and her carbon-burning globe hopping.

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google changes user data practices to end German antitrust probe. “Alphabet unit Google has agreed to change its user data practices to end a German antitrust investigation aimed at curbing its data-driven market power, the German cartel office said on Thursday.”

404 Media: Food Delivery Robots Are Feeding Camera Footage to the LAPD, Internal Emails Show. “A food delivery robot company that delivers for Uber Eats in Los Angeles provided video filmed by one of its robots to the Los Angeles Police Department as part of a criminal investigation, 404 Media has learned. The incident highlights the fact that delivery robots that are being deployed to sidewalks all around the country are essentially always filming, and that their footage can and has been used as evidence in criminal trials.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

IANS: Facebook, X and YouTube Pages Most Delisted From Google Search Using ‘Right To Be Forgotten’, Says Report. “Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube pages are the most delisted from Google Search when requested by European individuals using the ‘right to be forgotten’ privacy law, a new report has shown.”

Federal Trade Commission: FTC Data Shows Consumers Report Losing $2.7 Billion to Social Media Scams Since 2021. “In a new data spotlight, the FTC also takes a deep dive into social media scam trends in the first half of 2023. Reports during the first half of the year show that the most frequently reported scams on social media are related to online shopping, with 44 percent of reports pointing to fraud related to buying or selling products online. Most of these reports come from people who never received the items they ordered after responding to an ad on Facebook or Instagram.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 8, 2023 at 01:00AM
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Aging and Climate Change Clearinghouse, Be Real, Google Japan, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 7, 2023

Aging and Climate Change Clearinghouse, Be Real, Google Japan, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 7, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Cornell University: Clearinghouse highlights aging, climate as interlinked risks. “[Professor Karl] Pillemer and colleagues have launched the Aging and Climate Change Clearinghouse, an initiative to gather, promote and stimulate research, real-world interventions and policies addressing the intersection of aging and climate change. Funded by CHE, the clearinghouse also aims to encourage older adults and environmental organizations to work together toward solutions.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: BeReal pushes back at report that it’s losing steam, says it now has 25M daily users. “Just under a year ago, the buzzy new social app BeReal looked to be on the rise, with reportedly 20 million users launching the app every day to snap their candid photos. However, in the months since, BeReal’s traction has declined, according to a new report from Similarweb, despite its rollout of new features like messaging, the ability to post more photos and a ‘Friends of Friends’ discovery feed. BeReal, however, disputes the new published estimates, saying that it’s still growing at a ‘healthy rate.'”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Ars Technica: Google open-sourced a hat shaped like a giant keycap—and it actually types. “… the Gboard CAPS project is another of Google Japan’s joke keyboard ideas, like the 5.25-foot-long, single-row Gboard Stick Version keyboard shown off last year, used to promote Google’s Gboard app. However, Google Japan seemingly prototyped the keyboard in real life.”

Kaumudi Online: Two doctors killed after car driven following Google Map falls into river in Kochi, three rescued . “Two young doctors were killed when the car carrying a five-member group fell into the overflowing river after driving the vehicle following the directions using Google Maps. Three people were rescued by the locals. The dead have been identified as Adwaith and Ajmal, doctors of a private hospital in Kodungallur. Three people, including a medical student and a nurse, were rescued from the car.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Politico: SEC sues Elon Musk to force him to testify in Twitter probe. “The Securities and Exchange Commission is suing Elon Musk in a bid to compel him to testify in a probe into his 2022 purchase of Twitter, the company now known as X, the agency said Thursday.”

Bloomberg: Apple Considered, Rejected Switch to DuckDuckGo From Google. “Apple Inc. held talks with DuckDuckGo to replace Alphabet Inc.’s Google as the default search engine for the private mode on Apple’s Safari browser, but ultimately rejected the idea.”

Vice News: Elon Musk Accused a Man of Being a ‘Fed’ and Nazi, Now He’s Being Sued. “Earlier this year, college student Ben Brody, 22, had his life turned upside down when he was accused of being a part of a Pacific Northwest neo-Nazi group. The claims occurred after a neo-Nazi had his mask pulled off when his group had a small brawl with local Proud Boys in Oregon City on June 24. The unmasked neo-Nazi bore a passing resemblance to Brody, who once wrote on a website for his Jewish fraternity that he wanted to work for the government. This, seemingly, was enough for some of the worst folks online to go to work, and for Musk to jump into the fray.”

Yonhap News Agency: Google, Apple face 68 bln won of fines in S. Korea over in-app billing irregularities . ” South Korea’s telecommunications regulator said Friday it seeks to slap up to 68 billion won (US$50.42 million) in combined fines against Alphabet Inc’s Google and Apple Inc. for their violation of the country’s in-app payment laws.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT News: New tools are available to help reduce the energy that AI models devour. “The MIT Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center (LLSC) is developing techniques to help data centers reel in energy use. Their techniques range from simple but effective changes, like power-capping hardware, to adopting novel tools that can stop AI training early on. Crucially, they have found that these techniques have a minimal impact on model performance.”

University of Texas at Austin: AI-Driven Earthquake Forecasting Shows Promise in Trials. “A new attempt to predict earthquakes with the aid of artificial intelligence has raised hopes that the technology could one day be used to limit earthquakes’ impact on lives and economies. Developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, the AI algorithm correctly predicted 70% of earthquakes a week before they happened during a seven-month trial in China.”

Stanford University: New dog, old tricks: New AI approach yields ‘athletically intelligent’ robotic dog. “With a simplified machine learning technique, AI researchers created a real-world ‘robodog’ able to leap, climb, crawl, and squeeze past physical barriers as never before.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Cracked: Proto-Monty Python Sketch Show Discovered After Being Lost for 50 Years. “What once appeared to be an ex-sketch comedy show, a sketch show that was no more, was resting in peace, had ceased to be, and was bereft of life may have been simply stunned after all. Most of The Complete and Utter History of the British Isles, a sketch comedy television show created in 1969 by almost-Pythoners Michael Palin and Terry Jones, was once thought to be lost forever. As it turns out, The Complete and Utter History of the British Isles was simply misplaced.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 7, 2023 at 05:31PM
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GMail, Google Assistant, Wildlife Transactions, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 6, 2023

GMail, Google Assistant, Wildlife Transactions, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 6, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Gmail unleashes “email emoji reactions” onto an unsuspecting world. “Finally, the feature everyone has been asking for: Gmail emoji reactions . You can now reply to an email just like it’s an instant messaging chat, tacking on a ‘crying laughing’ emoji to an email instead of replying. Google has a whole support article detailing the new feature, which allows you to ‘express yourself and quickly respond to emails with emojis.'” Pretty sure I’m too old for this.

Engadget: Google Assistant with Bard will use generative AI for personalized answers. “During its Made by Google event on Wednesday, the company announced that it’s integrating its Bard AI chatbot into Google Assistant. The company describes the feature as combining Bard’s ‘generative reasoning’ with Assistant’s ‘personalized help’ to provide more contextually aware responses for mobile users.”

United Nations Wildlife Programme: CITES Trade Database Surpasses 25 Million Trade Transaction Records. “More than 25 million records of wildlife trade transactions have now been reported by the Parties of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in the CITES Trade Database. As the most comprehensive and authoritative database on international trade in wildlife, this tool enables CITES Parties and the general public to access transactions of international trade in species of wild fauna and flora.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Futurism: Scammers Are Using AI to Sell Ripped Off Versions of Other People’s Books. “It seems that scammers who use AI to mimic actual human writers are getting smarter, after a British journalist found a memoir that bore a shocking resemblance to his own that he’d just published — except that this one was full of made-up stories and was published under a different name than his.”

The Pink News: Mermaids quits Twitter due to lack of ‘safe, healthy or inclusive’ space for trans people. “Trans charity Mermaids has announced its departure from X (formerly known as Twitter) as the social media platform no longer aligns with its values. Mermaids, one of the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ charities, said that the Elon Musk-owned platform now fails to provide a safe space for trans people or trans organisations in a statement on Thursday (5 October).”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Elon Musk’s X Corp In Another Legal Fight Over Unpaid Rent. “Elon Musk’s X Corp, facing its own legal claims over unpaid rent, has sued a financial services company to recoup more than $713,500 in allegedly past due rent and other fees stemming from a sublease agreement for San Francisco office space.”

New York Times: Ukraine’s War of Drones Runs Into an Obstacle: China. “More than any conflict in human history, the fighting in Ukraine is a war of drones. That means a growing reliance on suppliers of the flying vehicles — specifically, China. While Iran and Turkey produce large, military-grade drones used by Russia and Ukraine, the cheap consumer drones that have become ubiquitous on the front line largely come from China, the world’s biggest maker of those devices. That has given China a hidden influence in a war that is waged partly with consumer electronics.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Daily Illini: Opinion | Social media is essential to artists’ success . “Lucky for artists, becoming famous is easier now than ever before. Ordinary people are trending on social media every single day. Despite that, becoming a famous artist is still tough. In fact, according to a 2014 study, around 90% of all musicians are considered ‘wholly undiscovered.’ Breaking into any creative industry is virtually impossible without resources or connections.” I think that’s breaking into ANY industry.

North Carolina State University: NSF-Funded Project Will Expand Access to Open-Source Geospatial Program. “A new project led by researchers at the Center for Geospatial Analytics at North Carolina State University will modernize the infrastructure of GRASS GIS, a freely available geospatial software platform that has helped researchers create and innovate geospatial workflows for over forty years. The project will also strategically grow the GRASS community to achieve a technologically and socially sustainable open-source ecosystem.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Eastern Daily Press: Ringsfield Primary students put time capsule in church roof. “School pupils have laid a time capsule in the roof of a village’s 15th-century historic church which is being rethatched. Ringsfield church, near Beccles, welcomed the Year 3 and 4 children from Ringsfield Church of England Primary School to bury a time capsule in the new thatch on the roof being restored.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 7, 2023 at 12:51AM
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