Family History Month, Christiansburg Institute, Los Angeles Indigenous History, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 25, 2023

Family History Month, Christiansburg Institute, Los Angeles Indigenous History, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, October 25, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National Genealogical Society: Celebrate Family History Month with New Resources from NGS!. “Whether you’re curious about old photos and hoping to scan them, looking to record family members’ memories, or aiming to write stories that are part of your family’s legacy, this is the moment to begin or restart a project. It’s easy to put off these tasks, thinking there’s always tomorrow. But as we’re often reminded, the best time is now. NGS created three resources to inspire you this month with steps to help make projects successful.”

Cardinal News: Virginia Tech helps Christiansburg Institute preserve Black history archives. “For 100 years, Christiansburg Institute battled white discrimination by serving as a model of Black education and culture tucked away in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. Today, the battlefield has transferred to a digital arena as the nonprofit that carries its name strives to preserve it for future generations.”

USC Dornsife: Mapping project reveals LA’s Indigenous past, aims to inform the city’s future. “Blending insight from representatives of local Indigenous communities, extensive archival research and contemporary technologies such as spatial analysis and modeling, the long-running project headed by the Spatial Sciences Institute (SSI) at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences has developed the first systematic map of L.A.’s natural ecology. ‘Mapping Los Angeles Landscape History’ offers a comprehensive view of the region’s natural environment and how Indigenous people interacted with the land and each other in a sustainable way before the arrival of European settlers.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Poynter: Fact-checkers and the social media misinformation tsunami: A Q&A with Lucas Graves. “Not so many years ago, fact-checking went hand-in-hand with elections reporting and political journalism. With the rise of social media, though, fact-checkers have spent more and more time debunking online misinformation, viral memes and other hoax content. That shift has raised an important question for those who analyze and follow the work of fact-checkers: Has online misinformation reduced the amount of attention from fact-checkers to elections fact-checking and the fact-checking of government?”

Tubefilter: TikTok comes “Out Of Phone” to advertise at airports, gas stations, and movie theaters. “TikTok is complementing its digital advertising business with a real-world push. The video app has debuted a product it has dubbed Out Of Phone: An IRL media operation that will distribute vertical videos across locations like airports, gas stations, and movie theaters.”

PR Newswire: LensCrafters Creates Its Own Immersive Experience on Roblox to Drive Awareness on Proper Vision Health (PRESS RELEASE). “LensCrafters, one of the largest optical retail brands in North America, launched its first virtual experience, LensCrafters Eye Odyssey on Roblox, a global immersive platform where millions of people connect and communicate daily. LensCrafters Eye Odyssey, one of the first online edutainment experiences with an optical retailer on Roblox, offers an engaging and educational way to promote healthy eye care habits, while providing an entertaining and immersive experience for young people.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Japan Investigates Google Over Alleged Antitrust Violations. “Japan’s antitrust watchdog has begun an investigation into whether Alphabet Inc.’s Google abuses its market position to block rival services, compounding scrutiny of the internet leader’s business practices across the globe.”

Associated Press: Thousands of remote IT workers sent wages to North Korea to help fund weapons program, FBI says. “Thousands of information technology workers contracting with U.S. companies have for years secretly sent millions of dollars of their wages to North Korea for use in its ballistic missile program, FBI and Department of Justice officials said.”

Ars Technica: Rapper Pras’ lawyer used AI to defend him in criminal case—it did not go well. “[Prakazrel “Pras”] Michel was represented at trial by defense counsel David Kenner, who is accused of failing to provide a cogent defense and misattributing two songs to the Fugees. The allegations about Kenner’s use of AI are reminiscent of a previous incident in which a lawyer admitted using ChatGPT to help write court filings that cited six nonexistent cases invented by the artificial intelligence tool.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Silence on Social Media Is Not Complicity. “I think the pressure to say something publicly really comes from the fear we face when we’re confronted with horrors like this. What we want is a simple binary where there’s a good side and an evil side and we can easily identify heroes and villains. And social media kind of lends itself to making very binary statements. It’s really hard to do nuanced analysis in a format that really only allows for 280 characters at a time.”

Cornell Chronicle: Research repository arXiv receives $10M for upgrades. “Cornell Tech has announced a total of more than $10 million in gifts and grants from the Simons Foundation and the National Science Foundation, respectively, to support arXiv, a free distribution service and open-access archive for scholarly articles.”

Stanford News: OpenCap: Sophisticated human biomechanics from smartphone video. “With synchronous video from a pair of smartphones, engineers at Stanford have created an open-source motion-capture app that democratizes the once-exclusive science of human movement – at 1% of the cost.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 25, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Outdoor Play and Learning Tool, Basement Films Archive, AI Denoising, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 24, 2023

Outdoor Play and Learning Tool, Basement Films Archive, AI Denoising, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 24, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of British Columbia: UBC researchers launch new online tool to help teachers take their classes outdoors. “Researchers from UBC and BC Children’s Hospital have launched a new online Outdoor Play and Learning tool, to help parents, caregivers and educators gain the skills and confidence to support outdoor play and learning in elementary schools from kindergarten through Grade 7.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

KOB4: Basement Films archive finds new home at CNM. “The Basement Films archives are officially moving into their new home at [Central New Mexico Community College.] The archive, which specializes in 8mm and 16mm films, was kicked out of its previous space at UNM in August. Recently, CNM offered a partnership they couldn’t refuse.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tape It: Tape It launches automated studio quality noise reduction AI for music (PRESS RELEASE). “Today, music software developer Tape It released their free AI-powered Denoiser that automatically removes background noise such as hums and hisses. It produces studio-quality results on full songs, single instrument tracks, and field recordings — not just on spoken word. Tape It launched its Denoiser as a free web app and will later implement it into the company’s flagship product, the Tape It iOS app, which helps musicians organize and record song ideas.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

9to5 Mac: Report: AI features in development for iOS 18, Siri, Apple Music, Xcode and more. “In his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Apple was caught by surprise at the sudden swell of generative AI tools this year. But they are working hard to catch up with Apple SVPs Craig Federighi, John Giannandrea, and Eddy Cue all in charge of integrating AI-powered functionality into Apple’s products and services.” It surprises me how much these big Silicon Valley companies chase after each other. It shouldn’t, but it does.

New York Times: An Industry Insider Drives an Open Alternative to Big Tech’s A.I.. “Ali Farhadi is no tech rebel. The 42-year-old computer scientist is a highly respected researcher, a professor at the University of Washington and the founder of a start-up that was acquired by Apple, where he worked until four months ago. But Mr. Farhadi, who in July became chief executive of the Allen Institute for AI, is calling for ‘radical openness’ to democratize research and development in a new wave of artificial intelligence that many believe is the most important technology advance in decades.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Expedia’s Ex-COO Says Ad Fees Jumped After Google Remade Search. “About 500 million people visit Expedia’s Vrbo from Alphabet Inc.’s Google each year and that number didn’t increase even though the company’s search advertising costs grew from $21 million in 2015 to $290 million in 2019, according to Jeff Hurst, Expedia’s former chief operating officer.”

News 12 The Bronx: Authorities: Social media influencer Cesar Pina charged in multimillion-dollar Ponzi-like scheme. “Cesar Pina, 45, was charged with one count of wire fraud, U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger announced. Authorities say Pina, who advertised real estate investments offering huge guaranteed profits, was actually running a Ponzi-like scheme, in which he took money from new investors to pay off older ones, as well as pocketing some of the cash. They say he’s been running the scheme since 2017.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Associated Press: Health providers say AI chatbots could improve care. But research says some are perpetuating racism. “As hospitals and health care systems turn to artificial intelligence to help summarize doctors’ notes and analyze health records, a new study led by Stanford School of Medicine researchers cautions that popular chatbots are perpetuating racist, debunked medical ideas, prompting concerns that the tools could worsen health disparities for Black patients.”

Marcus on AI: “Math is hard” — if you are an LLM – and why that matters. “Notice anything? It’s not just that the performance on MathGLM steadily declines as the problems gets bigger, with the discrepancy between it and a calculator steadily increasing, it’s that the LLM based system is generalizing by similarity, doing better on cases that are in or near the training set, never, ever getting to a complete, abstract, reliable representation of what multiplication is.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Popular Mechanics: Scientists Figured Out How to Design Dice to Roll Any Way You Want. “Ask any Dungeons and Dragons player: dice rolls don’t always go your way. But what if you could use a complex algorithm to design dice to physically roll any way you wanted? Scientist Yaroslav Sobolev at the Institute for Basic Science in Ulsan, South Korea—along with his colleagues—have designed an algorithm that creates wonky-shaped objects called ‘trajectoids’ that mathematically travel along any set path.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 25, 2023 at 12:38AM
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AI Model Transparency, Google, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 22, 2023

AI Model Transparency, Google, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 22, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Verge: The world’s biggest AI models aren’t very transparent, Stanford study says. “Today, Stanford HAI released its Foundation Model Transparency Index, which tracked whether creators of the 10 most popular AI models disclose information about their work and how people use their systems. Among the models it tested, Meta’s Llama 2 scored the highest, followed by BloomZ and then OpenAI’s GPT-4. But none of them, it turned out, got particularly high marks.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Google takes aim at Duolingo with new English tutoring tool. “Rolling out over the next few days for Search on Android devices in Argentina, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Venezuela, with more countries and languages to come in the future, the new feature will provide interactive speaking practice for language learners translating to or from English, Google writes in a blog post.”

CNBC: X, formerly Twitter, will launch two new subscription tiers, Elon Musk says. “X, the social media service formerly known as Twitter, will launch two new tiers of subscriptions for users, its owner Elon Musk said on Friday. One tier will be ‘lower cost with all features, but no reduction in ads,’ while the other is “more expensive, but has no ads,’ Musk said.”

Search Engine Journal: Google’s October 2023 Core Update Now Complete. “First announced on October 5, the October 2023 Core Update is expected to significantly shift search rankings, as previous core updates have done. Core updates target the primary ranking systems in Google’s search engine algorithms. They aim to promote authoritative, trustworthy, and helpful content while downgrading low-quality sites.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Elon Musk’s X removes the New York Times’ verification badge. “The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has removed the gold ‘verified’ badge from the New York Times’ account amid ongoing complaints about the news organization from X owner Elon Musk.”

Refinery29: Archivo Cubanecuir is Preserving the History of Trans & Queer Cuba. “In 2019, while living in Brooklyn, [Librada González Fernández] began to fulfill her childhood dream by creating the Archivo Cubanecuir, an archive documenting the lives of Cubans who have lived outside of the gender norm. She has been connecting with cuir (queer) Cuban elders across the Caribbean island and the United States to collect their photos, letters, and artifacts, piecing together the folklore she wished she had access to when she was younger.”

Know Your Meme: What Is ‘Thirst Trap Propaganda’? The Bizarre Phenomenon Of Militaries Posting Hot Soldiers On Social Media. “Often when people talk about social media being used for military purposes, they’re discussing things like disinformation, misinformation, election interference or recruiting. But there’s also another kind of reported psyop underway on TikTok and other social media platforms: ‘thirst trap propaganda,’ which features attractive soldiers of armies around the world partaking in internet trends and dances.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

US Department of Justice: Social Media Influencer Sentenced for Election Interference in 2016 Presidential Race . “According to court documents, by 2016, Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, had established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as one of the most significant influencers of the then-upcoming presidential election. Between September 2016 and November 2016, Mackey conspired with other influential Twitter users and with members of private online groups to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages that encouraged supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to ‘vote’ via text message or social media, which was legally invalid. ”

Bloomberg: Google, Meta and Apple Win US Approval for Mobile VR Devices. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. won approval from US regulators to deploy a new set of mobile virtual- and augmented-reality devices, including goggles and in-car connections. The gadgets would be allowed to tap airwaves used by Wi-Fi-enabled devices, the Federal Communications Commission decided in a 5-0 vote Thursday.”

Decrypt: SBF Asked Former FTX Lawyer to Find ‘Legal Justifications’ for Missing Customer Funds. “FTX former general counsel, Can Sun, testified on Thursday that Sam Bankman-Fried asked him to craft ‘legal justifications’ to explain why billions of dollars of customer funds were missing, as the exchange struggled to process customer withdrawals last November.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNN: Musk’s X cashes in on ‘superspreaders’ of Israel-Hamas misinformation, new report finds. “Some of the biggest peddlers of misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war on Elon Musk’s X platform are premium, so-called ‘verified’ accounts that pay the social media company formerly known as Twitter to promote their posts to boost visibility, a report released Thursday found.”

University of Michigan: Choosing exoskeleton settings like a Pandora radio station. “Of course, what’s simple for the users is more complex underneath, as a machine learning algorithm repeatedly offers pairs of assistance profiles that are most likely to be comfortable for the wearer. The user then selects one of these two, and the predictor offers another assistance profile that it believes might be better. This approach enables users to set the exoskeleton assistance based on their preferences using a very simple interface, conducive to implementing on a smartwatch or phone.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 22, 2023 at 05:31PM
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National and University Library of Iceland, IRS, Google, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 21, 2023

National and University Library of Iceland, IRS, Google, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 21, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National and University Library of Iceland: Foreign manuscripts from Willard Fiske’s Library. “The books arrived at the library soon after his death, but were not unpacked from boxes until after the library’s move to a new building in 1908. Recently, it was discovered that among the books the library received from Fiske’s collection were four foreign manuscripts, all of which are unique.” All four manuscripts have been digitized and are available online.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: IRS will start piloting its free TurboTax alternative in 2024. “It looks like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) truly was working on a free TurboTax alternative like earlier reports had claimed. The US tax authority has announced that it will start pilot testing its new Direct File program for the 2024 filing season, though it will initially be available for select taxpayers in 13 states only.”

The Verge: Google is tweaking Chrome’s search bar to make it easier to navigate the web. “Google is making a few changes to the way its search and address bar — known as the omnibox — works in the Chrome browser. The changes are individually pretty small, but there’s an important and somewhat unexpected trend in them all: Google is making it easier for you to move around the web without having to do so many Google searches.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: Elon Musk’s Main Tool for Fighting Disinformation on X Is Making the Problem Worse, Insiders Claim. “… a WIRED investigation found that Community Notes appears to be not functioning as designed, may be vulnerable to coordinated manipulation by outside groups, and lacks transparency about how notes are approved. Sources also claim that it is filled with in-fighting and disinformation, and there appears to be no real oversight from the company itself.”

CNBC: Google cuts dozens of jobs in news division. “Google cut dozens of jobs in its news division this week, CNBC has learned, downsizing at a particularly sensitive time for online platforms and publishers. An estimated 40 to 45 workers in Google News have lost their jobs, according to an Alphabet Workers Union spokesperson, who didn’t know the exact number.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

FTC: Influence peddling? Bogus “brand ambassador managers” scam prospective influencers. “We’ve warned professionals about online job scams involving phony ‘recruiters’ who falsely claim to represent big-name businesses. Employment impersonators are still at it, but this time they’re approaching people with bogus offers to be ‘brand ambassadors’ for well-known consumer products companies. The only ‘brand’ these fraudsters represent is their own sleazy financial interest.”

MENAFN: Court Declares Google’s Russian Subsidiary Bankrupt. “The Moscow Arbitration Court on Wednesday declared Google LLC, Google’s Russian subsidiary, bankrupt, Azernews reports, citing Interfax.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Cornell University: Online learning widens gap for minority students. “After the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, even as institutions had adapted to online learning, students belonging to underrepresented ethnic minority groups struggled to bounce back academically as compared with their non-minority classmates.”

New York Times: A New Report Documents How Easily Children Can Access Graphic Images of the War. “The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a research group that studies online platforms, created accounts on Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat under the guise of British 13-year-olds. Within a 48-hour period from Oct. 14 through 16, the researchers said, they found more than 300 problematic posts.”

Washington University in St. Louis: AI for Health launches to promote growing intersection of artificial intelligence, health. “To further integrate the power of AI and Internet of Things (IoT) into health care, the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis has launched the AI for Health Institute to design data-driven tools to characterize complex diseases, support clinical decisions and drive precision health.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 22, 2023 at 12:27AM
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London Runoff Pollution, Australia Heavy Minerals, Project FeederWatch, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 21, 2023

London Runoff Pollution, Australia Heavy Minerals, Project FeederWatch, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 21, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

BBC: London pollution: Maps shows worst areas for road run-off pollution. “A new online map has been created to show where contaminated rain water from roads is polluting rivers in London. Environmental charity Thames21 has launched the site to help local authorities, as well as local communities, identify problem areas.”

Minister for Resources and Minister for Northern Australia: Mapping Australia’s heavy minerals in world-first. “The Heavy Mineral Map of Australia, developed by Geoscience Australia in collaboration with Curtin University, has been created using heavy mineral samples found in floodplain sediments from across the country.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Cornell Chronicle: Add new types of data for the 37th season of Project FeederWatch. “The prime directive for Project FeederWatch has been and continues to be gathering data about how bird populations and distributions are changing across the United States and Canada—vital information for conservation. For the 37th season of this project, participants can enter some brand-new kinds of data—and finally get a chance to tell tales about squirrels, deer, raccoons, bears, or other mammals they see at their count sites in winter—in addition to the birds.”

Search Engine Journal: YouTube Unveils Major Update Including Dozens Of New Features. “YouTube has launched over three dozen new features and design updates to enhance the user experience. Now rolling out globally, the changes are designed to give viewers more control and help them easily find content while modernizing the look and feel.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ARTnews: British Museum Will Digitize Entire Collection at a Cost of $12.1 M. in Response to Thefts. “British Museum has announced plans to digitize its entire collection in order to increase security and public access, as well as ward off calls for the repatriation of items. The project will require 2.4 million records to upload or upgrade and is estimated to take five years to complete.”

AFP: US congresswoman shares post misrepresenting photo of dead Syrian children. “Hundreds of children are among those killed as Israeli pounds the Gaza Strip with air strikes and prepares a ground offensive against Hamas, which plunged the region into war with a bloody attack. But a photo spreading online of dead boys and girls swaddled in cloth — amplified by a US lawmaker — does not show slain Palestinian youth; the picture was taken in Syria in 2013.”

New York Times: What Happens When an Artist’s Technology Becomes Obsolete?. “A museum’s task of protecting art in perpetuity has remained fixed, even as artists’ materials have changed. Art institutions are likely the only places in the world that are currently planning how they might be able to fix an Oculus Rift 50 years from now. Rather than keep stockpiles of expensive and obsolete technology in storage, museums have to find clever ways around software updates, from video game emulators to server farms to niche businesses like CTL.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Musk considers removing X platform from Europe over EU law. “Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, is considering removing the service formerly called Twitter from Europe in response to a new internet platform regulation in the region, news site Insider reported on Wednesday (18 October)” This is the Digital Services Act.

Times of Israel: Hamas launched unique terror tactic: Livestreaming horrors on victims’ social media. “Hamas seems to have intentionally adopted a new terror tactic during its devastating attack on Israeli communities on October 7 — that of using the social media accounts of their victims to spread fear and confusion among their families and friends as the killings and abductions unfolded.”

Ars Technica: The most insane “robocall mitigation plans” that telcos filed with the FCC. “The 20 carriers include a mix of US-based and foreign voice service providers that submitted required ‘robocall mitigation’ plans to the Federal Communications Commission about two years ago. The problem is that some of the carriers’ submissions were blank pages and others were bizarre images or documents that had no relation to robocalls.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford Medicine: Virtual reality helps people with hoarding disorder practice decluttering. “…a pilot study by Stanford Medicine researchers suggests that a virtual reality therapy that allows those with hoarding disorder to rehearse relinquishing possessions in a simulation of their own home could help them declutter in real life. The simulations can help patients practice organizational and decision-making skills learned in cognitive behavioral therapy — currently the standard treatment — and desensitize them to the distress they feel when discarding.”

Newswise: Using AI to develop hydrogen fuel cell catalysts more efficiently and economically. “The team developed Slab Graph Convolutional Neural Network (SGCNN) artificial intelligence model to accurately predict the binding energy of adsorbates on the catalyst surface. This is not the first application of AI to materials discovery. The SGCNN model was developed by evolving the CGCNN model, which is specialized in predicting bulk properties of solid materials, to predict surface properties of catalytic materials.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 21, 2023 at 05:31PM
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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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