Working On Mastodon Content Curation Tools as Twitter Continues to Decline

Working On Mastodon Content Curation Tools as Twitter Continues to Decline
By ResearchBuzz

It’s funny how things change. Once I relied heavily on Twitter for current news and links via tools like Listimonkey and Nuzzel. Now both Listimonkey and Nuzzel are long dead and Twitter’s disinformation and hate speech problems get worse almost by the hour.

But ResearchBuzz is still here, and I still need to do content curation in order to bring you interesting news twice a day. RSS feeds and Google Alerts remain important parts of my toolbox, but I also need tools to monitor the current events link flow that takes place on social media. Nothing exists that is both suitable and affordable, so I’m making my own. Because its API is open and free, I am focusing on Mastodon. And because it’s the right thing to do I’m sharing the tools I make with you.

I’ve mentioned MastoGizmos.com several times, but that’s not the only kind of Mastodon tool I make. I’ve also made utilities that are designed to be used on a local machine. Those programs are available through my GitHub account. For the most part I’ve made them available as HTML files so all you have to do is download them and open them in your browser. (Make sure you’ve enabled JavaScript!). Here are three of them. Maybe you’ll find one useful.

Mastodon Stadium Seats

One of the disadvantages of Mastodon’s decentralized social media is a lack of a single flow to follow. If you’re on a big Mastodon instance like mstdn.social and news breaks, you will likely quickly get a lot of news and links about it. On the other hand if you’re on a small Mastodon instance, it might be a while before news trickles down to you unless you’ve put in a lot of work and followed a lot of people from larger instances. ( I know there are relays available but that’s not a solution for an end user.) I made Mastodon Stadium Seats for when a big news event is happening and I want to see what’s going on even from my tiny instance. It works by querying the larger instances for specified hashtags and showing the results on an HTML page. In the code there’s a space where you can specify the instances and hashtags you want to monitor:

Once you’ve downloaded the HTML file, edit the values above to your preference and open the file in your Web browser. It will give you a plain display of the last 14 posts mentioning your hashtags and it updates every 90 seconds.

This tool isn’t meant to be fancy — it’s just a cheap “stadium seat” where you can see more of what’s happening across the fediverse. For “regular” news days (I have to put that in quotes, it’s 2023, regular news days don’t exist, just less-busy ones) I have a more polished tool that I cast to a second monitor. It’s called VibesMasto News Monitor, and it’s named after Vibesmaster G-Nice.

VibesMasto News Monitor

 

I only use Mastodon Stadium Seats when there’s breaking news or a large event which much of social media will be watching (like a political debate.) For everyday news monitoring I use VibesMasto News Monitor. As you can see in the screenshot above it uses external content (in this case, headlines from the New York Times) and a list of trending links from Mastodon.Social in addition to hashtag monitors. I’m not really looking for specific information with this tool so much as I want a one glance display that tells me what’s happening (and links to more information if I want it.)

Like Stadium Seats, this tool is an HTML file that you can download and run locally. To customize it you change three parts of the code:

const rssFeeds = [

‘https://mastodon.social/tags/rss.rss’,
‘https://mastodon.social/tags/opensource.rss’,
‘https://mastodon.social/tags/foss.rss’,

];

This changes the tags you’re monitoring in the third column. You can change either the tag (the “opensource” part of opensource.rss) or the instance (the “mastodon.social” part of the URL.)

const response = await fetch(‘https://mastodon.social/api/v1/trends/links’);

This changes the trending links in the middle column. All you have to do is change the mastodon.social part with the instance name of your choice — for example, https://journa.host/api/v1/trends/links .

const feedUrl = ‘https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml’;

This changes the news source at the top of the first column. You should be able to use pretty much any RSS feed as long as it doesn’t have crazy formatting. Once you’ve downloaded the HTML page and made the changes you should be able to open it locally in your browser. I keep mine in a folder on my desktop and review the hashtags every morning before I launch it.

I cast VibesMasto to a second monitor that sits beside my computer and glance at it from time to time. It keeps me informed without me running to check news sites all the time and without alerts bleeping and blooping all over the place. But it doesn’t do the heavy lifting that something like Nuzzel could do. Nuzzel was valuable because it could go through Twitter lists and aggregate all the interesting links that your followings posted so you could review them at your leisure.

Mastodon is decentralized, so instead of gathering links from follows I made a tool to grab them from instances. Let me tell you about Mastodon Link Ripper.

Mastodon Link Ripper

 

Mastodon Link Ripper does just what it says — rips links from the current timelines of the Mastodon instances you specify. It then removes duplicates and presents them to you in aggregate. A basic filter allows you to remove posts based on keywords. The site is also hardcoded to filter out posts more than 48 hours old, but you can adjust that. (The code is well-commented and shows you what you need to change.)

Like the other tools I’ve mentioned so far, this is a single HTML file that you download and open locally in your browser. Unlike other tools I’ve mentioned so far, this one has text input forms so you don’t have to edit the page itself. Just enter your keywords, any filter words, rip the links, and have a good skim.

Twitter is only getting worse, Google’s search engine is filling up with infosewage. At this point I’ve been writing about search engines for almost 30 years and I’m discouraged. It seems to be more and more about giving the shareholders dollars and selling advertising than it is helping people find things.

Was it probably always that way? Possibly but not this baldly. We are surrounded by endless authoritative structures — FCC license databases, local business license records, secretary of state business filings, local government resource lists — and they are so rarely applied when we’re searching for real, true information. Why? There are structured resource lists available from places like Wikipedia that we could apply to our general Web searches. We don’t.

Well, they don’t. I do. And I will keep working on this problem. I’m only one person and I don’t count for much but I deeply believe there are ways we can counter what’s happening and I will keep trying to make tools for it and I will keep sharing them with you. It’s important.

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 10, 2023 at 07:18PM
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Florida Civil Rights, 1960s San Francisco Photography, Google Chrome, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, October 10, 2023

Florida Civil Rights, 1960s San Francisco Photography, Google Chrome, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, October 10, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WFSU: A new virtual museum helps visitors learn about Florida’s civil rights leaders. “The first virtual civil rights museum in Florida launched earlier this month. It features civil rights leaders from the early 1900s all the way into the early 60s. Two Tallahassee natives, Jackie Perkins and Delaitre Hollinger, created the virtual museum. It tells the stories of what the founders call ‘pioneers’ in both education and civil rights. Perkins says the museum includes individuals from all walks of life regardless of race, color or religion.”

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. mystery images find a permanent home (where you can see them too). “A cache of mysterious Kodachrome slides found abandoned on a Mission District street corner are going to the San Francisco Public Library’s History Center — where they’ll join collections including Harvey Milk’s papers and the San Francisco Call-Bulletin photo morgue.” The digitizing process is already underway.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bleeping Computer: Google Chrome’s organize tabs will automatically reorder tabs. “In a bid to upgrade user experience, the Chrome team is developing an ‘Organise Tabs’ feature, soon to be seen at the top left corner of the browser, adjacent to the tab search function. This new addition would be a natural extension of Tab Groups functionality.”

Search Engine Journal: Google Launches October 2023 Core Algorithm Update. “Google has confirmed the rollout of its latest core algorithm update, dubbed the ‘October 2023 Core Update.’ This marks the third core update to Google’s search ranking systems this year, following the March and August core updates.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Graphic Images of Violence Flood Social Media Amid Israel-Gaza Conflict. “On X, formerly known as Twitter, a violent video claiming to show the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Saturday morning. The New York Times found hundreds of X accounts sharing images of dead bodies, claiming to be Israeli civilians killed in the past 24 hours of fighting. Some of the images viewed by The Times appeared to be manipulated and edited. Underneath some of the videos and images posted on X, people warned that they could be spread as part of a campaign to stoke fear among Israelis. Some of the accounts claimed to be working on behalf of Hamas.”

Ars Technica: 4chan users manipulate AI tools to unleash torrent of racist images. “Despite leading AI companies’ attempts to block users from turning AI image generators into engines of racist content, many 4chan users are still turning to these tools to ‘quickly flood the Internet with racist garbage,’ 404 Media reported.”

Daily Bruin: UCLA Library receives donation of political cartoon collection dating back to 1690. “The collection, donated by Michael and Susan Kahn, contains more than one million political cartoons and caricatures originating between 1690 and 2022. The donation from the family also includes additional funding for classes and workshops focused on political cartoons…. The political cartoon collection contains works from 59 countries and in 30 languages, according to the UCLA Library. It will be available digitally during the 2024-2025 academic year through the UCLA Library Special Collections.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Alphabet’s Pichai Set to Testify in Google Pay Antitrust Trial. “Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai is set to be called by Epic Games Inc. to testify in an antitrust trial over Google Play policies that could threaten billions of dollars in revenue generated by the app marketplace.”

Hyperallergic: Artists Call on Congress to Stop Corporations From Copyrighting AI Art. “To keep large corporations from gaining copyrights over art made with AI, artists and allies are being called upon to post about the AI Day Of Action on their social media accounts today and to contact their congresspeople using links and scripts provided by Fight for the Future. Artists’ rights over their work have long been contested, yet nothing has brought the conversation to such a head as the advent of generative AI and its potential for corporate exploitation.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ABS: ABS Joins Korean Industry Leaders on 3D Printing Project for Ship Operations . “ABS signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to work with key stakeholders in Korea to develop and demonstrate a 3D printing system for ocean-going vessels. Using a digital library for the design process, the system aims to support rapid maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) by using 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), to manufacture parts on a vessel while at sea.”

Nature: ‘In case I die, I need to publish this paper’: scientist who left the lab to fight in Ukraine. “When Russia invaded his home country in February 2022, neuroscientist Sergiy Sylantyev was leading a research programme at the University of Aberdeen, UK, investigating chemical signalling in the brain. Within weeks, Sylantyev — who had no military experience — travelled to Ukraine, where he was quickly deployed to the front lines as a foot soldier.”

Princeton University: The world has a food-waste problem. Can this wireless tech help fix it?. “One bad apple may not spoil the whole bunch, but when it comes to distributing food, a lot of good goes out with the bad. Now, researchers from Princeton University and Microsoft Research have developed a fast and accurate way to determine fruit quality, piece by piece, using high-frequency wireless technology. The new tool gives suppliers a way to sort fruit based on fine-grained ripeness measurements.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 10, 2023 at 05:31PM
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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…

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 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…

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 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…

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 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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