Masterpiece Studio, Content Moderation Sim Games, Vivek Murthy, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 20, 2023

Masterpiece Studio, Content Moderation Sim Games, Vivek Murthy, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 20, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Animation World Network: Masterpiece Studio Releases New Text-to-3D Generative AI Tool. “Masterpiece Studio has announced the release of Masterpiece X – Generate, a generative AI tools for creating textured and animated 3D models from simple text prompts.”

Washington Post: Think you could make a safer social media site? This game lets you try. “Policymakers in Washington often accuse social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok of putting profits over people when making decisions about how to run their businesses. An educational game released Tuesday is looking to flip the script by putting users in charge of safety efforts at a fictional digital platform, an initiative aimed at teaching people about the thorny trade-offs tech companies face daily.”

EVENTS

Harvard Gazette: Murthy says social media hurting kids, time for government, tech firms to help. “It’s time for government and private industry to step up and reduce the mental health risks of social media for young people, according to U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Murthy called the impact of digital platforms on teen well-being a ‘pivotal issue in public health’ during an event last Friday afternoon marking the launch of the Center for Digital Thriving at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 5 Best Alternatives to Google Sheets . “If you’re looking for other spreadsheet options, you’re in the right place. In this guide, we’ll introduce you to some of the top alternatives to Google Sheets. Each tool has its own special features, advantages, and disadvantages. Let’s dive in to learn more about them.” Not mentioned and heartily endorsed by me: Gnumeric.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The City: Tongue Twisted: Adams Taps AI to Make City Robocalls in Languages He Doesn’t Speak . “Mayor Eric Adams is using artificial intelligence to turn himself into a polyglot: sending out robocalls with his voice to New Yorkers in a slew of languages he does not speak — and spooking out ethics and privacy advocates.”

MariTalk: NARA Wants Agencies to Automate Social Media Records Retention. “The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is calling on Federal agencies to consider dedicating more resources to IT solutions that can automate the records retention of their social media records.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wall Street Journal: The Crypto Exchange Moving Money for Criminal Gangs, Rich Russians and a Hamas-Linked Terror Group. “Despite its place on the U.S. blacklist, which restricts transactions with sanctioned entities, Garantex has become a major channel through which Russians move funds into and out of the country, according to trading data and people familiar with the firm. It has also been a vehicle for Russian cybercriminals to launder their earnings, U.S. authorities say.”

Bloomberg: South Africa goes after Google, Facebook, and ChatGPT. “South Africa has started a probe to gauge if artificial intelligence models, digital and social media platforms managed by companies including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook are limiting the nation’s news and media companies’ ability to generate revenue.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pete Warden: Why We’re Building an Open-Source Universal Translator. “One of the most common answers is a wearable earpiece. This is in line with Hitchhikers’ Babel Fish, but there are still massive technical obstacles to fitting the processing required into such a small device, even offloading compute to a phone would require a lot of radio and battery usage…. Instead, we’re building a small, unconnected box with a built-in display that can automatically translate between dozens of different languages.”

MarketWatch: Some teens are spending a quarter of their lives on social media. These are the sites sucking up their time.. “A Gallup poll finds that that 17-year-old girls spend about 6 hours a day across social media apps, and teens overall scroll for almost 5 hours a day on average.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 21, 2023 at 12:18AM
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1950s Aerial Photography, Mathematics Education, Twitter, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 20, 2023

1950s Aerial Photography, Mathematics Education, Twitter, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, October 20, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Montana: UM-Led Project Creates Mapping Tool Using Satellites, 1950s Photo Archive. “When the Cold War grew chillier around 1950, the U.S. military worried about a communist land invasion of the United States. So pilots were employed – many of them veterans of World War II – to photograph the entire country using aircraft…. Now the University of Montana and its partners have created a new tool, Landscape Explorer, which combines those 1950s photos with modern satellite imagery…. At present the tool covers the American West, from the Pacific Ocean to North Dakota and down to Texas.”

Education Week: Are Schools Choosing High-Quality Math Curricula? A New Database Offers Clues . “The Center for Education Market Dynamics, a nonprofit market-intelligence organization, has created a database of math curricula used in 934 districts, representing more than 52 percent of all students in the country. The database demonstrates which publishers hold the most control over the market—but it also tracks the spread of high-quality materials.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Rolling Stone: Elon Musk’s X Tests $1 Annual Fee in Desperate Attempt to Fight Bots, Spam. “The program, called ‘Not a Bot,’ will cost new users in both countries one dollar a year to post and interact with other posts. New users who select the subscription plan on X will be able to ‘post content, Like posts, Reply, Repost and Quote other accounts’ posts, Bookmark posts.'”

Engadget: Google rolls out more accessibility features for Maps, Search and Assistant. “Google has revealed a string of accessibility updates it’s rolling out for Maps, Search and Assistant, as well as greater availability of some camera-based Pixel features. One of the main focus areas this time around is wheelchair accessibility. A new option that’s gradually becoming available on iOS and Android will allow Maps users to request stair-free walking routes.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Ars Technica: After ChatGPT disruption, Stack Overflow lays off 28 percent of staff. “While no chatbot is 100 percent reliable, code has the unique ability to be instantly verified by just testing it in your IDE (integrated development environment), which makes it an ideal use case for chatbots. Where exactly does that leave sites like Stack Overflow? Apparently, not in a great situation. Today, CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar announced Stack Overflow is laying off 28 percent of its staff.”

TechCrunch: One year post-acquisition, X traffic and monthly active users are in decline, report claims . “According to data from market intelligence firm Similarweb, X’s global website traffic was down 14% year-over-year in September, and U.S. traffic was down by 19%. On mobile devices in the U.S., performance had also declined 17.8% year-over-year, based on monthly active users on iOS and Android.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Malicious Notepad++ Google ads evade detection for months. “Threat actors have been increasingly abusing Google Ads in malvertising campaigns to promote fake software websites that distribute malware. According to Malwarebytes, which spotted the Notepad++ malvertising campaign, it has been live for several months but managed to fly under the radar all this time.”

BBC: Twitter glitch allows CIA informant channel to be hijacked. “A cyber-security researcher has exploited a glitch on the CIA’s official Twitter account, to hijack a channel used for recruiting spies. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) account on X, formerly known as Twitter, displays a link to a Telegram channel for informants. But Kevin McSheehan was able to redirect potential CIA contacts to his own Telegram channel.”

Sydney Morning Herald: Lachlan Murdoch pleaded with Google boss to save Aussie start-up. “Media billionaire Lachlan Murdoch made a personal plea to Google’s boss, Sundar Pichai, in an attempt to stop the tech giant from banning Aussie start-up Unlockd from its platform in 2018. The revelations surfaced in court documents filed this week to a California District Court as bankruptcy trustees for Unlockd’s US operations continue a long-running antitrust battle with Google over its decision to ban the start-up from its platforms.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Bleeding Cool: Physical Media Is Not Dead For Film Fans, It Is Just Fine Actually. “While nowhere near the highs of 2000-2010’s, physical media sales of films still topped $1.5 billion in 2022. A far cry from the peak of 2005 when sales were around $16 billion. Disney has stopped selling physical media in many foreign countries, with the US expected to be next soon. And sure, more and more people are building their streaming profiles, using services like Vudu to create a digital collection. But, just like with music, a huge group of collectors keeps film on media alive.”

Tulane University: No FOMO here – study finds social media photos may drive new customers away. “Across a diverse range of destination venues, the authors consistently found that the presence of others in the photo of a place for special or once-in-a-lifetime events lowered viewers’ liking and preference for the venue. ‘When it’s an experience closely tied to self-identity, like vacations or weddings, people want to feel personal ownership over the venue,’ the authors explained.”

CNN: Baidu says its AI is in the same league as GPT-4. “Chinese tech giant Baidu is officially taking on GPT-4. On Tuesday, the company unveiled ERNIE 4.0, the newest version of its artificial intelligence chatbot that it directly compared to the latest iteration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 20, 2023 at 12:54PM
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Radio Broadcasting History, Adobe, AI, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 19, 2023

Radio Broadcasting History, Adobe, AI, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 19, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from TVNewsCheck: David Gleason Builds A Digital Archive Worth Honoring. “Fully searchable and well organized, the database not only contains publications about broadcasting, but also of the related fields of advertising, media buying, media research and cable. Visitors to the site will also find music magazines, network and station publications, FCC regulations and decisions, fan magazines, radio enthusiast magazines, technical manuals, programming guides and ‘oddities.'”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Adobe previews new AI editing tools. “Photo-editing software maker Adobe unveiled a slew of new AI-powered tools and features last week at its annual Max event, including a dress that transforms into a wearable screen and streamlined ways to delete elements from photos.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: Public AI vs. Private AI vs. Personal AI: What’s the Difference?. “AIs can be categorized as public, private, or personal AIs. Training and designing an AI system based on these categories can help solve issues on regulatory limitations, data privacy, and security…. To understand the difference between public, private, and personal AI, let’s compare them based on their purpose, performance, data handling, and privacy.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Government Technology: NYC Releases AI Action Plan, Business-Focused AI Chatbot. “New York City has launched the MyCity Business Services chatbot in a beta form to help residents get information about starting or operating their businesses. The city also released an AI Action Plan to guide responsible city government use of the tech.”

Wall Street Journal: Elon Musk’s X Courts Political Advertisers Ahead of a Contentious Election Year . “Social-media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has begun aggressively pitching political advertisers after owner Elon Musk reversed a previous ban on political ads this year.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Google’s Deals Lock Up 50% of US Searches, DOJ Expert Says. “Google’s exclusive deals to be the default search engine on mobile devices and PC browsers block rivals from as much as half of all queries conducted in the US, the Justice Department’s economic expert said at the company’s antitrust trial Monday.”

The Verge: Google asks Congress to not ban teens from social media. “Google responded to congressional child online safety proposals with its own counteroffer for the first time Monday, urging lawmakers to drop problematic protections like age-verification tech.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT News: A method to interpret AI might not be so interpretable after all. “As autonomous systems and artificial intelligence become increasingly common in daily life, new methods are emerging to help humans check that these systems are behaving as expected. One method, called formal specifications, uses mathematical formulas that can be translated into natural-language expressions. Some researchers claim that this method can be used to spell out decisions an AI will make in a way that is interpretable to humans. MIT Lincoln Laboratory researchers wanted to check such claims of interpretability. Their findings point to the opposite: Formal specifications do not seem to be interpretable by humans. ”

Brookings Institution: Big Tech won. Now what?. “We have been here before. Many of the abuses of today’s internet barons echo behavior by the industrial barons in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In that instance, the federal government finally stepped up to constrain industrial abuses with new antitrust and consumer protection laws. Whether 21st century policymakers will similarly step up—especially as artificial intelligence becomes pervasive—is the challenge of the internet era.”

Tech Xplore: Using a large-scale dataset holding a million real-world conversations to study how people interact with LLMs. “A team of computer scientists at the University of California Berkeley, working with one colleague from the University of California San Diego and another from Carnegie Mellon University, has created a large-scale dataset of 1 million real-world conversations to study how people interact with large language models (LLMs). They have published a paper describing their work and findings on the arXiv preprint server.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 20, 2023 at 01:00AM
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Iowa Banned Books, Global Plastics Laws, AI, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 19, 2023

Iowa Banned Books, Global Plastics Laws, AI, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, October 19, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Des Moines Register: Which banned books have been removed from Iowa schools? Our updated database lists them. “Senate File 496, signed into law by Reynolds in May, bans books with descriptions or depictions of sex acts from school libraries and prohibits instruction on gender and sexual identity until seventh grade, among other effects…. The Register sent open records requests to every school district in Iowa — 326 in all — asking for a list of the books they have removed from their libraries to comply with SF496. Two-dozen have responded so far.”

Waste Advantage Magazine: The Global Plastic Laws Database: A Resource to Track Policies Around the World. “The Global Plastic Laws Database is the most comprehensive tool to date to research, track, and visualize plastic legislation that has been passed around the world. The Database tracks legislation across the full life cycle of plastics and organizes these policies according to life cycle categories and key topics.”

WKRN: Vanderbilt scholars analyze role of AI in hate speech. “As artificial intelligence (AI) expands its impact on the world and online, scholars at Vanderbilt University are discussing ways to use the system to combat hate speech. Scholars within the Vanderbilt community along with researchers, free speech, and human rights activists and lawyers are taking part in a two-day symposium on AI and its role in hate speech.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Google, DOJ still blocking public access to monopoly trial docs, NYT says. “Dozens of exhibits from the Google antitrust trial are still being hidden from the public, The New York Times Company alleged in a court filing today. According to The Times, there are several issues with access to public trial exhibits on both sides. The Department of Justice has failed to post at least 68 exhibits on its website that were shared in the trial, The Times alleged, and states have not provided access to 18 records despite reporters’ requests.”

Engadget: Twitch adds stories to keep followers tuned in. “Twitch announced today that stories are now available in the platform’s mobile app. Similar to the feature of the same name on Snapchat, Instagram and other social platforms, Twitch’s stories let streamers post photos, text or clips that expire after 48 hours.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Asahi Shimbun: Railway firms turn to AI to shake up lost property search. “Gone are the days when a laborious search by hand is required to locate a missing item at the lost and found office. In May, Tokyo-based private railroad operator Keio Corp. introduced a service that relies on artificial intelligence (AI) to sort things out quickly. Kyushu Railway Co. (JR Kyushu), based in Fukuoka, followed suit by starting to provide a similar service in August. Claimants simply need a smartphone to make an inquiry.”

Romania Insider: European Commission in Romania launches anti-disinformation platform. “The platform, named ‘trUE – The Naked Truth’ (trUE – Adevărul gol-goluț), aims to support the general public with useful tools for identifying fake news and information distributed online with the intent to misinform. It brings together articles, case studies, and video materials produced in collaboration with influencers, as well as educational materials that can be used in classroom settings.”

The Markup: Twitter Is Throttling Patreon Links, Creators Say It Undermines Their Livelihood. “Twitter is now slowing down traffic on links to the crowdfunding site Patreon, WhatsApp, and at times, Meta’s Messenger app, a Markup analysis confirms. Using a tool launched by The Markup last month, readers discovered that links to these sites were delayed by an average of 2.5 seconds—findings we confirmed.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency: CISA, U.S. and International Partners Announce Updated Secure by Design Principles Joint Guide. “The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with 17 U.S. and international partners, published an update to ‘Shifting the Balance of Cybersecurity Risk: Principles and Approaches for Secure by Design Software’ that includes further detail on key principles, guidance, and is co-sealed by eight additional international cybersecurity agencies…. Initially published in April 2023, this joint guidance urges software manufacturers to take urgent steps necessary to design, develop, and deliver products that are secure by design.”

New York Times: Across U.S., Chinese Bitcoin Mines Draw National Security Scrutiny. “When a company with Chinese origins broke ground last year on a crypto-mining operation in Cheyenne, Wyo., a team at Microsoft that assesses national security threats sounded the alarm. Not only was the site next door to a Microsoft data center that supported the Pentagon — it was about a mile away from an Air Force base that controlled nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

Bloomberg: Colorado Court OKs Use of Google Search Data in Murder Case. “The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Monday that evidence gleaned from a warrant for Google’s search data could be used in a murder case, sparking concerns the decision may encourage more police to embrace the controversial technique.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Indian Express: Scientists working on Polymathic AI, a new tool that will help make scientific discoveries. “A group of scientists are working on a new tool called Polymathic AI that will use the same technology that powers ChatGPT. Unlike the OpenAI’s chatbot, which mostly deals with words and sentences, the new model will work with numerical data and physics simulations.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 19, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Relational Reconstruction Toolkit, Oregon Transportation-Related Injuries, Telegram, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 18, 2023

Relational Reconstruction Toolkit, Oregon Transportation-Related Injuries, Telegram, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 18, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Library of Congress: Relational Reconstruction Toolkit Now Available. “The intention with the toolkit is to offer a method for deepening one’s connection to a space that’s meaningful for their own story, with a special focus on communities of color. Though sourced maps, photographs and oral accounts, reconstructions of erased historic spaces are intentionally imaginative as well as authentic. The toolkit is organized into a series of chapters that describe stages of the work to consider.”

KTVZ: OHA’s new transportation data dashboard finds motorcycle, cyclist, pedestrian fatalities on the rise. “Oregon Health Authority has unveiled another interactive data dashboard to help people more easily track state, county and demographic trends in deaths and hospital visits related to a range of transportation-related injuries.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Telegram CEO, a criticised but cited source of Hamas videos, says app will continue to host ‘war-related content’. “As social platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Meta and TikTok face off with regulators and the theater of public opinion for how they are handling incendiary and graphic content, disinformation, writing and other media related to Hamas and Israel, Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, has controversially come out to defend how his messaging app is not taking down some of the more sensitive war-related coverage that can be found there, claiming that it can prove to be an important channel for information.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: 7 creative ways to organize your mobile apps. “With thousands of apps at our fingertips, they can quickly overcrowd our screens. Apps are designed to improve our lives and make us more efficient, but trying to find them in a mishmash collection of colorful icons can be time consuming. Solve this problem by taking 15 minutes to clean out the jumble of app clutter, and find a homescreen organizational structure that works for you. After all, no one wants to be an app hoarder. Here are seven creative ways to arrange your smartphone apps.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: A ‘Green’ Search Engine Sees Danger—and Opportunity—in the Generative AI Revolution. “Berlin-based Ecosia carved out a niche as a carbon-negative search engine. To adapt to the ChatGPT era, it’s moving closer to Google and exploring how AI could help users cut carbon emissions.”

BBC: Royal Albert Hall archive preserved in £1m project. “The Royal Albert Hall’s archive has been saved from flooding and preserved in a £1m rescue operation. The South Kensington venue’s collection includes a trumpet from the opening ceremony 152 years ago and a programme designed by Pablo Picasso. The archive spans the venue’s history since its inception in the 1850s and consists of tens of thousands of items.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wall Street Journal: How Ads on Your Phone Can Aid Government Surveillance. “A recent U.S. intelligence-community report said the data collected by consumer technologies expose sensitive information on everyone ‘in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid.’ The Wall Street Journal identified a network of brokers and advertising exchanges whose data was flowing from apps to Defense Department and intelligence agencies through a company called Near Intelligence NIR.”

Punch (Nigeria): Social media regulation: We are engaging Google, TikTok, says NBC. “The National Broadcasting Commission has said that it is engaging with major social media platforms to curb the excesses of their users. Director, Broadcast Monitoring of the NBC, Francisca Aiyetan, stated this on Friday while speaking with Daily Trust on the plan of the commission to regulate social media. She said if social media is not regulated, young people could be misguided.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Michigan Daily: Kwebbelkop AI and the now-unavoidable AI conversation. “The sentiment that we must adjust to AI is a perplexing one; time and time again, influential voices online will cite how terrifying AI is, yet to prove this point, they keep using it. It keeps getting brought into the public sphere as some inevitable fate when it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to treat it as a legitimate threat if we stop paying attention to it, yet thought leaders sabotage these human-driven values in favor of using AI to save money.”

PsyPost: Screen time addiction linked to borderline personality traits and psychological distress . “Adults who spend too much time in front of screens are more likely to experience psychological distress and symptoms associated with borderline personality disorder, according to new research published in the Annals of Human and Social Sciences.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 19, 2023 at 12:48AM
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Small Satellite Reliability Initiative, Google, Text Extraction, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 18, 2023

Small Satellite Reliability Initiative, Google, Text Extraction, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 18, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NASA: NASA Releases Small Spacecraft Reliability Knowledge Base Tool v3.0. “The [Small Satellite Reliability Initiative] Knowledge Base is a free, pubicly available, comprehensive and searchable online tool that consolidates and organizes resources, best practices, and lessons learned from previous NASA small satellite missions and missions sponsored by other organizations. The SSRI Knowledge Base is updated on a regular cadence with best practices, lessons learned, and unique resources for the 58 topic pages.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Eyerys: Google Introduces ‘AR One Sans,’ A Font Meant For Augmented Reality Headsets. “A font is those stylized characters for text information. And Google has just introduced what it calls the ‘AR One Sans’, which is a type family purposefully designed for AR environments and user interfaces. What makes it unique, is its high-readability on user interface with busy backgrounds.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 7+ Ways to Extract Text From an Image. “There are many reasons to copy the text you see in an image. You may have a screenshot with instructions or a photo of a billboard with details. This guide includes several ways to extract text from an image, depending on your platform or device.”

PC World: 22 awesome open source programs that do everything you need. “Good software is the basis of all PC use, but many professional programs are too expensive for private use. This is where the free software-based applications step in, which, including their source code, are available free of charge on the internet. This immediately raises the question of quality and functionality. Don’t worry, open source software is often a real competitor to professional products. In this guide, we present the best open source tools for typical areas of application — from Office, to media editing, to file management and backup.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

404 Media: AI Images Detectors Are Being Used to Discredit the Real Horrors of War. “A free AI image detector that’s been covered in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal is currently identifying a photograph of what Israel says is [too graphic for me to mention in a summary] as being generated by AI. However, the image does not show any signs it was created by AI, according to Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley and one of the world’s leading experts on digitally manipulated images.” This story is extremely disturbing and graphic.

Washington Post: A flood of misinformation shapes views of Israel-Gaza conflict. “Social media has long played a critical role in battles in the area. During the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in 2021, posts of carnage in Gaza rallied the public to the Palestinian cause. Researchers say increased internet access and the spread of smartphones enabled a watershed moment, revealing how tech platforms could show the horror and human toll of such events. But now, a volatile, months-long fight over Israel’s democratic future has primed conspiracies and false information to spread within its borders.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Hindu: All of Google’s eyes, now on Madras High Court. “The court will decide the fate of civil suits filed against service fees levied on owners of mobile apps featured on Google Play. The litigants have accused Google of abusing its dominant position in the market to impose ‘unconscionable and arbitrary’ conditions.”

Associated Press: Australian safety watchdog fines social platform X $385,000 for not tackling child abuse content. “Australia’s online safety watchdog said on Monday it had fined X — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — 610,500 Australian dollars ($385,000) for failing to fully explain how it tackled child sexual exploitation content.”

BBC: Inside the deadly instant loan app scam that blackmails with nudes. “A blackmail scam is using instant loan apps to entrap and humiliate people across India and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At least 60 Indians have killed themselves after being abused and threatened. A​ BBC undercover investigation has exposed those profiting from this deadly scam in India and China.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog: Cataloguing the Cotton charters. “A new project is underway to examine one of the British Library’s oldest and most important collections. The Cotton charters and rolls are being catalogued as part of the Library’s Hidden Collections initiative. Begun by the antiquarian and politician Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631), and augmented by his son and grandson, the Cotton collection was the first library to be presented to the nation, in 1702, and it has been part of the British Library and its predecessor, the British Museum Library, since the latter’s foundation in 1753.”

New York Times: Wearables Track Parkinson’s Better Than Human Observation, Study Finds. “An Oxford University researcher and her team showed that digital wearable devices can track the progression of Parkinson’s disease in an individual more effectively than human clinical observation can, according to a newly published paper.”

Truth or Fiction: So Long, and Thanks for All the Facts. “Visibility and visits are the lifeblood of digital publishing, and the absence of fact checks to an audience is the absence of sustaining revenue to a site or project; this is how efforts like ours are slowly starved into silence. It’s not just counterdisinformation that is under attack. Related services and fields have been chronically starved away for decades and replaced with distortions and outright lies.” Yup. Good morning, Internet…

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October 18, 2023 at 05:31PM
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My Big Fat Greek Manuscript, Lexicon of New Jewish Literature, Twitter, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 17, 2023

My Big Fat Greek Manuscript, Lexicon of New Jewish Literature, Twitter, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 17, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

British Library Medieval Manuscripts Blog: The largest Greek manuscript?. “Add MS 35123 comprises more than 600 leaves, almost 1,300 larger-than-A4 pages, bound tightly between heavy medieval wooden boards that weigh almost 10 kilograms. This giant tome is a late-12th century Biblical manuscript, containing the first eight books of the Old Testament: the five from Moses appended by Joshua, Judges and Ruth.” The first eight books of the Old Testament and LOTS of commentary.

Forward: The comprehensive lexicon of Jewish writers is now accessible on the Internet. This article has been translated from Yiddish. “Researchers and simply lovers of the Yiddish word have long been interested in a digital encyclopedia of all writers who published in Yiddish. Now, in honor of its 75th anniversary, the Jewish Cultural Congress has digitized the Jewish original and installed a search function. His current website includes the entire content of the eight-volume Lexicon of New Jewish Literature, as well as the supplemental volume on Soviet Jewish writers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Rolling Stone: War Misinfo Is Everywhere. So Twitter Is Cracking Down on … Nudity . “X, formerly Twitter, may sound like a porn site, but it’s growing more hostile to adult content. Although currently awash in misinformation and extremist hate speech related to the ongoing war between Israeli armed forces and Hamas militants, the platform is apparently focused on keeping nudity out of users’ feeds rather than how it may be fueling violence and geopolitical instability.”

National Library of Norway: New Bokhylla agreement gives you digital access to 400,000 books. (Translated from Norwegian.) “Soon you will have digital access to all books published in Norway up to and including 2005 in the Nettbiblioteket at nb.no. The new Bokhylla agreement, which has been entered into between the National Library and Kopinor, covers 400,0000 Norwegian books subject to rights. This is 175,000 more than today.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Preservation Underground (Duke University Libraries): Automatic Text Generation Fail. “We discovered that Microsoft Word will now automatically generate Alt Text (alternative text) descriptions of the images you insert into your documents after it described an Ethiopic scroll as a roll of toilet paper. Clearly the robots have some training to do on cultural heritage materials.”

Tubefilter: Dude Perfect gets its own streaming service. “Dude Perfect has officially launched its own streaming service. The Texas-based YouTube trickshot group–aka longtime friends Tyler Toney, Garrett Hilbert, Cody Jones, and twins Cory and Coby Cotton–first unveiled the free-to-watch service (and accompanying app) this past June, during its Pandemonium Tour.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Your Face May Soon Be Your Ticket. Not Everyone Is Smiling.. “Facial recognition software is speeding up check-in at airports, cruise ships and theme parks, but experts worry about risks to security and privacy.”

Engadget: The EPA won’t force water utilities to inspect their cyber defenses. “The EPA is withdrawing its plan to require states to assess the cybersecurity and integrity of public water system programs. While the agency says it continues to believe cybersecurity protective measures are essential for the public water industry, the decision was made after GOP-led states sued the agency for proposing the rule.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Search Engine Journal: Research: GPT-4 Jailbreak Easily Defeats Safety Guardrails. “Researchers discovered a new way to jailbreak ChatGPT 4 so that it no longer has guardrails to prohibit it from providing dangerous advice. The approach, called Low-Resource Languages Jailbreak,” achieves a stunning 79% total success rate.”

WIRED: The Curse of the Creator Economy. “Seldom do I crawl out of a TikTok rabbit hole feeling well-informed and more knowledgeable about complicated subjects. And then there’s the trust issue. Some people gleefully anticipate the end of gatekeepers. But the creator ecosystem has insufficient protections against toxic, even racist content. An oft-cited drive of creators is getting famous, and that compass too often points to the lowest common denominator. Creators are also all too eager to sell out their followers with #ads that might in other venues be called bribes.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 18, 2023 at 12:14AM
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