Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Supporting Lewiston Maine, Ukraine History, Internet History, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, October 31, 2023

Supporting Lewiston Maine, Ukraine History, Internet History, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, October 31, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

State of Maine: Governor Mills Launches “Healing Together” Online Resource to Help Support to Lewiston Victims and Families. “The website, available at https://www.maine.gov/governor/mills/lewiston also identifies mental health resources from the Maine Department of Health and Human Services to support anyone affected by the violence in Lewiston who may be struggling. The website lists community funds established by the Maine Community Foundation, the L-A Metro Chamber, the United Way of Androscoggin County, and Central Maine Medical Center that will deliver financial supports to those affected by the shootings, and those organizations involved in the community and heath care response.”

Ukrainska Pravda: Preserving oral history. Digital archive of Holodomor and collectivisation of Ukrainian SSR created. “The project called Oral history of Ukrainian peasant culture of 1920-1930 has been released on the platform of Great Transformations archives. It tells the audience about the impact of collectivisation on the lives of Ukrainians – in particular, about the consequences of the Holodomor of the 1930s and changes in the cultural sphere through participants’ eyes in these events.”

Laughing Squid: An Online Museum of Pivotal Early Internet Artifacts. “Neal Agarwal of Neal.fun created a fascinating online museum of early Internet Artifacts that documents the pivotal years of the development of the world wide web as we know it today. It starts out with the revolutionary ARPANET in 1977.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: Vivaldi 6.4 Takes Video Playback and Calendar to the Next Level. “The Vivaldi web browser is already popular and feature-packed. While it has received several updates recently, the latest Vivaldi v6.4 release makes watching and controlling videos easier than ever on desktop (particularly in ‘pop-up’ mode). It also delivers a better calendar experience, among other improvements.”

USEFUL STUFF

Google Blog: Curl up with a spooky Halloween story with Google Books. “Spooky season is upon us, and this time of year there’s nothing better than to curl up with a spine-tingling tome and scare yourself silly. Google Books has the stories, free of charge – all you need to do is find a cozy corner and get reading.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Taipei Times: Task force to combat false reports . “The Mainland Affairs Council has reached out to temples across Taiwan to promote awareness of Chinese misinformation campaigns, after national security agencies reported a ‘high occurrence’ of election disinformation being spread among the religious community, a senior government official said.”

El País : Fitness, butts and Instagram stories: How exercise is sexualized on social media . “A couple of months ago Laura Kummerle tried uploading something different to her Instagram page. She’d been posting fitness routines for several years, so the exercises weren’t entirely new. But the camera shot was different: it focused directly on her butt, sexualizing the entire result. What happened next came as a surprise to no one, except Kummerle herself…. Her post multiplied the views she normally receives; comments and revenue soared as well.”

Colorado Public Radio: New Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library staffers are updating more than exhibits overdue for change. “Since starting the position in July, [Dexter Nelson II] manages and supervises a staff of four, all of whom focus on the museum, gallery, and archives on the second and third floors. He has a few immediate goals recently completed, and a few goals to fill. One completed goal is hiring a new Library Program Associate to create programming specific to the archival collection — which includes audio tapes of Colorado’s first Black surgeon, artwork of the first Black person in Colorado, and hundreds of vinyl records.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Google expands its bug bounty program to target generative AI attacks. “With concerns around generative AI ever-present, Google has announced an expansion of its Vulnerability Rewards Program (VRP) focused on AI-specific attacks and opportunities for malice. As such, the company released updated guidelines detailing which discoveries qualify for rewards and which fall out of scope.”

Radio Free Europe: ‘Cultural Expropriation’: Russia Steps Up Seizures Of Artifacts In Occupied Ukraine. “Late last month, a new exhibition opened at the Tauric Chersonesos museum complex in the Russian-occupied Crimean city of Sevastopol devoted to artifacts recovered at the Stone Age Kamyana Mohyla site in the occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region. At the same time, artifacts from the Tauric Chersonesos preserve are currently on display in the Russian city of Novgorod in an exhibition called Byzantine Gold.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Business School: When Tech Platforms Identify Black-Owned Businesses, White Customers Buy . “The study, coauthored by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Luca, Abhay Aneja at the University of California-Berkeley, and Oren Reshef of Washington University in St. Louis, shows that making it easier to search for Black restaurant owners on Yelp substantially increased their demand, leading to more calls, more delivery orders, as well as more in-person visits—boosting in-store traffic by about 10 percent.”

University of Michigan: New phone case provides workaround for inaccessible touch screens. “A new smartphone case could soon enable folks with visual impairments, tremors and spasms to use touch screens independently. Developed at the University of Michigan, BrushLens could help users perceive, locate and tap buttons and keys on the touch screen menus now ubiquitous in restaurant kiosks, ATM machines and other public terminals.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 31, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Monday, October 30, 2023

Pro Bono Opportunities North Carolina, Library of Congress, New Orleans Musicians, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2023

Pro Bono Opportunities North Carolina, Library of Congress, New Orleans Musicians, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

North Carolina Judicial Branch: Pro Bono Go: North Carolina’s New One-Stop Shop for Pro Bono Opportunities. “Pro Bono Go allows legal professionals to visit one website to find pro bono opportunities from the state’s leading civil justice organizations. Volunteers can search and filter opportunities by keyword, location, practice area, type (ex: cases, clinics, etc.), and sponsor organization. Volunteers can also set up customized email alerts when new opportunities matching their preferences hit the site. Volunteers do not need to create an account and never have to remember a password.”

American Libraries: Programming with Digital Collections. “A new LibGuide from the American Library Association (ALA) was recently created to help libraries explore the thousands of primary sources available from the Library of Congress online collection.”

NOLA: New Orleans & Company launches Musician Database, an online collection of 200 profiles. “NewOrleans.com has rolled out its online Musician Database, a collection of biographical pages on more than 200 local musicians presented in alphabetical order. Each profile page can accommodate a brief biography, photos, a description of the music, links to the act’s web page, social media accounts and performance schedule, and a Spotify playlist.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Your Amazon Alexa IFTTT automations are about to stop working. “The team behind IFTTT (short for ‘if this, then that’) wrote in a blog post that Amazon is cutting the service off from Alexa beginning October 31st. Once the integration is severed, users won’t be able to ask Alexa to trigger IFTTT applets. Certain automations will stick around in the IFTTT app, but some will be archived on November 1st unless you take action.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Mysterious bylines appeared on a USA Today site. Did these writers exist?. “Staffers at Reviewed, a USA Today-owned website devoted to shopping recommendations, were about to end their workday Friday when one of them noticed something strange: Articles were publishing on the site by writers none of them had ever heard of — and using suspiciously similar language.”

NPR: TikTok returns to the campaign trail but not everyone thinks it’s a good idea. “But while some first-time, grassroots candidates only know a political playing field that includes TikTok, uncertainty lingers over the best way for national Democrats to embrace it. Especially when the vast majority of the party isn’t on the platform.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

404 Media: Elon Musk Broke All the Tools Historians Need to Archive Tweets About Israel-Gaza War. “When Elon Musk began requiring people to pay steep fees to access the Twitter API earlier this year, he broke a series of tools used by researchers and archivists that could be used to accurately save tweets with metadata.”

Northeastern Global News: The smart home tech inside your home is less secure than you think, new Northeastern research finds . “Our homes are getting smarter every day. The next time you buy a toaster, fridge or dishwasher, setup might involve connecting to your home WiFi network and downloading an app on your phone. But such interconnectivity comes with risk, says David Choffnes, associate professor of computer sciences at Northeastern University.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: Bitcoin mining has “very worrying” impacts on land and water, not only carbon, UN-led study reveals. “As bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have grown in market share, they’ve been criticized for their heavy carbon footprint: Cryptocurrency mining is an energy-intensive endeavor. Mining has massive water and land footprints as well, according to a new study that is the first to detail country-by-country environmental impacts of bitcoin mining.”

New York Times: Is Social Media Addictive? Here’s What the Science Says.. “Experts who study internet use say that the magnetic allure of social media arises from the way the content plays to our neurological impulses and wiring, such that consumers find it hard to turn away from the incoming stream of information.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 31, 2023 at 12:14AM
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India Cultural Heritage, FOIAonline, Virtual White House Tours, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2023

India Cultural Heritage, FOIAonline, Virtual White House Tours, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, October 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from MIT Technology Review: The grassroots push to digitize India’s most precious documents. “The museum building houses the largest reference library for Gandhian philosophy in the state of Karnataka, and over the next year, the large assortment of books—including the collected works of Mahatma Gandhi, a translation of his autobiography, Experiments with Truth, into the Kannada language, and other rare items—will be digitized and their metadata recorded before they join the Servants of Knowledge (SoK) collection on the Internet Archive.”

MuckRock: Here’s why MuckRock and POGO had to archive FOIAonline. “… while the decommissioning of FOIAonline has been in the works for several years, it still remains unclear when the public can expect access to these records to be restored by government agencies, if ever. In the interim, POGO and MuckRock have partnered to host a publicly available archive of nearly 34,000 documents captured before FOIAonline was shuttered.”

ABC News: The White House and Google launch a new virtual tour with audio captions, Spanish translation. “Can’t come to Washington? Couldn’t get a ticket to tour the White House? Don’t worry. The White House, Google Maps and Google Arts & Culture launched a new virtual tour of the famous mansion on Friday, which is also National Civics Day. With a computer or smartphone, users will be able to spend time zooming in on all of the rooms that they would have seen had they been able to go on an in-person tour.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: Firefox 119 Arrives With Updated Firefox View and PDF Viewer. “Mozilla releases a new major Firefox update every four weeks, giving the open-source web browser a steady stream of improvements. Firefox 119 will start rolling out today, complete with an updated Firefox View, an improved PDF viewer, security fixes, and more.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: How to Download Videos From X/Twitter. “Although the official X app doesn’t let you download videos, there are some straightforward ways to get the job done, whether you’re on Android, iOS, Mac, or PC.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Bloomberg: Google Paid $26 Billion to Be Default Search Engine in 2021. “Google paid $26.3 billion to other companies to ensure its search engine was the default on web browsers and mobile phones, a top company executive testified during the Justice Department’s antitrust trial Friday.”

TechCrunch: AI’s proxy war heats up as Google reportedly backs Anthropic with $2B. “With a massive $2 billion reported investment from Google, Anthropic joins OpenAI in reaping the benefits of leadership in the artificial intelligence space, receiving immense sums from the tech giants that couldn’t move fast enough themselves. A byword for the age: Those who can, build; those who can’t, invest.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Inside Google’s Plan to Stop Apple From Getting Serious About Search. “For years, Google watched with increasing concern as Apple improved its search technology, not knowing whether its longtime partner and sometimes competitor would eventually build its own search engine. Those fears ratcheted up in 2021, when Google paid Apple around $18 billion to keep Google’s search engine the default selection on iPhones, according to two people with knowledge of the partnership, who were not authorized to discuss it publicly.”

Reuters: Google CEO Sundar Pichai to testify Monday in US Google antitrust trial. “Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet and its subsidiary Google, will testify on Monday in the once-in-a generation antitrust fight over Google’s dominance of search and some parts of search advertising.”

KNWA: Blogger Matt Campbell suing Gov. Sanders over documents regarding lectern. “Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is being sued for documentation about the purchase of a $19,000 lectern by blogger Matt Campbell. Campbell’s lawsuit against the governor’s office was filed on October 24. The lawsuit states the governor’s office did not turn over documents related to the purchase of a $19,000 lectern, claiming that is a violation of the state’s FOIA law.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Verge: The poster’s guide to the internet of the future. “The idea is that you, the poster, should post on a website that you own. Not an app that can go away and take all your posts with it, not a platform with ever-shifting rules and algorithms. Your website. But people who want to read or watch or listen to or look at your posts can do that almost anywhere because your content is syndicated to all those platforms.” If you’ve been on the Internet since the early 1990s, this is going to seem very familiar…

North Carolina State University: Helping Companies Understand – and Respond to – Online Misinformation . “When misinformation spreads on social media, there can be real consequences for both companies and the public. A new study offers insight into how consumers respond to these online hoaxes, which companies can use to better respond to these misinformation campaigns.” 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 30, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Sunday, October 29, 2023

Sustainable Food Science, Landslide Alerts, United Nations, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2023

Sustainable Food Science, Landslide Alerts, United Nations, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Confectionery News: New database launched to drive innovation in Sustainable Food Systems. “IFIS Sustainability a cutting-edge, free Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) database that curates the latest scientific research at the intersection of food and sustainability, has launched a new digital tool providing food innovators access to the latest in sustainable food science.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

University of Hawaii News: Landslide alerts, maps focus of new Pacific Disaster Center/NASA tool. “Landslides cause thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damage worldwide every year. Through a partnership with NASA, a robust new tool to identify, track and respond to rainfall triggered landslides is now available to all users of the free Pacific Disaster Center’s (PDC) DisasterAWARE software. PDC is an applied research center managed by the University of Hawaiʻi.”

Kyodo News: New U.N. panel to weigh benefits, risks of artificial intelligence. “U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres launched an advisory body of experts Thursday to discuss the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence as well as how the world can better control it. The group of 39 specialists, including a political analyst and anthropologist, will publish a set of recommendations by the summer of 2024 through an interim report due at the end of this year.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: To Go Viral on TikTok, Do This. “If this story were a TikTok video, the writer would be applying lip gloss right about … now. Unscrewing the cap on a tube of mauve goo and giving it a generous swipe across puckered lips. Mwah! The application of lip gloss in the first few seconds of an online video is a subtle trick that creators and influencers use to grab attention — ideally without viewers’ even realizing why they were moved to stop scrolling.”

BBC: Fidias: YouTuber sorry for freeloading stunt video in Japan. “A popular YouTuber has apologised after a video titled I Travelled Across Japan For Free riled locals. Fidias Panayiotou’s video – which showed him dodging train fares and a five-star hotel breakfast bill, has earned almost half a million views. Some have called for his arrest on social media and rail authorities are considering further action against him.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Jurist: New York high court finds police can search state DNA database for relatives of potential suspects. “The New York Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that the state legislature authorized the Commission on Forensic Sciences to create rules allowing police to search the state’s DNA database to identify family members of potential suspects. Practically, this means New York police officers can resume using the state’s DNA databank for these types of searches.”

The Conversation: Ukraine’s IT army is a world first: here’s why it is an important part of the war. “The IT army has thousands of volunteer members around the world, who use Twitter and Telegram channels to communicate, coordinate and report on actions. Its members have already taken part in a wide variety of attacks. These range from stealing and exposing important information to successfully disrupting Russian communications and other critical networks in order to hinder the Russian war efforts.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Yale News: Zooming in on our brains on Zoom . “When Yale neuroscientist Joy Hirsch used sophisticated imaging tools to track in real time the brain activity of two people engaged in conversation, she discovered an intricate choreography of neural activity in areas of the brain that govern social interactions. When she performed similar experiments with two people talking on Zoom, the ubiquitous video conferencing platform, she observed a much different neurological landscape.”

Emory University: Emory establishes state-wide initiative to reduce youth athlete injury using virtual reality technology. “The Emory Sports Performance And Research Center (SPARC) has received a $4.5 million grant from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation to establish the Georgia Initiative for Virtual Reality, Education and Sport (GIVES) program. The school-based program will leverage virtual reality (VR) technology and disseminate scientific discoveries from EMORY SPARC to reduce injury risk in young athletes and improve their game performance.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Space: Declassified spy satellite images reveal 400 Roman Empire forts in the Middle East. “Hundreds of Roman Empire forts popped up in old spy satellite imagery depicting regions of Syria, Iraq and nearby ‘fertile crescent’ territories of the eastern Mediterranean. These satellites were once used for reconnaissance in the 1960s and 1970s, but their data is now declassified. Some of their archived images are now allowing for fresh archaeology finds in Earth zones often difficult for researchers to visit.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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October 30, 2023 at 12:44AM
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Solar Mirror Research, The Digital Florentine Codex, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2023

Solar Mirror Research, The Digital Florentine Codex, Twitter, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, October 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NREL: News Release: New Database Shines Spotlight on Decades of Solar Mirror Research. “The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is preparing to unveil a database containing the results of exposure experiments on solar reflectors conducted over more than four decades. The publicly available Solar Mirror Materials Database (SMMD) will contain information from thousands of solar mirror samples from more than a hundred suppliers that have been subjected to outdoor tests and laboratory environments.”

Getty: A Rare 500-Year-Old Manuscript Gets a Second Life Online. “The Florentine Codex… is a 16th-century manuscript that details, in both the Spanish and Nahuatl languages, the culture and history of the Mexica (Aztec) people, including the invasion of Mexico City by the Spaniards and their Indigenous allies. The Digital Florentine Codex reveals the manuscript’s contents by providing access to new and previously published Nahuatl and Spanish language transcriptions, English and Spanish translations, as well as easily searchable texts and images.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: Twitter takeover: 1 year later, X struggles with misinformation, usage decline. “X looks and feels something like Twitter, but the more time you spend on it the clearer it becomes that it’s merely an approximation. Musk has dismantled core features of what made Twitter, Twitter — its name and blue bird logo, its verification system, its Trust and Safety advisory group. Not to mention content moderation and hate speech enforcement. He also fired, laid off or lost the majority of its workforce — engineers who keep the site running, moderators who keep it from being overrun with hate, executives in charge of making rules and enforcing them.”

Search Engine Journal: Google Introduces AR Beauty Ads, Promote Products With Virtual Try-On. “Google has launched a new advertising product called AR Beauty Ads, which allows beauty brands to promote their products using augmented reality (AR) technology. The interactive ads feature virtual try-on capabilities that aim to showcase items in a more engaging way.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

KUSA: Descendants rethink ethnic identity after historians uncover indigenous slave names. “[Native Bound Unbound] brings a new team of historians together who search old documents, like baptismal and census records, to identify and catalog thousands of names of forgotten indigenous slaves in the Western Hemisphere. … The goal is to eventually publish an open-source website where people can read stories and find names of their enslaved indigenous ancestors.”

Rowan University: Global impact: Alumna’s gift to preserve history, legacy of Operation Uganda. “[Betty Bowe Castor’s] gift will support the establishment of the Operation Uganda Digital Collection & Exhibit, an online archive containing historic records that will showcase the educational legacy of Operation Uganda and its important role in teaching the South Jersey region about Africa.”

Reuters: Google to run internet cables to Pacific islands in Australia-US deal. “Alphabet’s Google will run undersea cables powering internet access to at least eight far-flung Pacific Ocean nations under a joint U.S.-Australian deal set to be announced on Wednesday, according to a U.S. official.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Governing: States Act, but Can Legislation Slow AI-Generated Election Disinformation?. “Artificial intelligence (AI) is hardly the first breakthrough technology released into society before its impact was understood. We still have a lot to learn about human-made chemicals that have made their way into air, soil, water, food and our bodies since the 1950s. But a contentious election season is just ahead, and policymakers have to do their best to contain a force that could make things even more volatile.”

Ars Technica: Pro-Russia hackers target inboxes with 0-day in webmail app used by millions. “A relentless team of pro-Russia hackers has been exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in widely used webmail software in attacks targeting governmental entities and a think tank, all in Europe, researchers from security firm ESET said on Wednesday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ohio State News: ‘Dim-witted’ pigeons use the same principles as AI to solve tasks. “A new study provides evidence that pigeons tackle some problems just as artificial intelligence would – allowing them to solve difficult tasks that would vex humans. Previous research had shown pigeons learned how to solve complex categorization tasks that human ways of thinking – like selective attention and explicit rule use – would not be useful in solving.”

Texas A&M: Developing deep learning technologies for medical image classification. “Dr. Tianbao Yang, associate professor for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, recently received more than $1 million from the National Science Foundation to develop deep learning technologies for medical image classification by leveraging both the images and associated free-text reports of patients for self-supervised learning.”

Cornell Chronicle: Robot stand-in mimics your movements in VR. “Researchers from Cornell and Brown University have developed a souped-up telepresence robot that responds automatically and in real-time to a remote user’s movements and gestures made in virtual reality.” 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 29, 2023 at 05:31PM
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Saturday, October 28, 2023

WRAL Archives, INsights on Food SystEm Risks Framework, TikTok, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2023

WRAL Archives, INsights on Food SystEm Risks Framework, TikTok, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WRAL: WRAL announces public preview of AI-powered archives platform. “WRAL Archives uses state-of-the-art artificial intelligence to automatically extract metadata from media assets, including facial sentiment, audio transcription, logo identification, subject demographics, object identification, weather conditions and much more.”

ESCAP: New index reveals increasing risk in food systems across countries in Asia and the Pacific. “ESCAP and the WFP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific are launching the INsights on Food SystEm Risks (INFER) Framework, a data-driven approach for assessing multidimensional risks to food systems. INFER integrates up-to-date understanding of food systems with well-established concepts of risk based on three dimensions: hazard and exposure, vulnerability, and lack of adaptive capacity.”

EVENTS

Engadget: TikTok’s first live ‘global music event’ will feature Cardi B and Charlie Puth. “Dubbed as the platform’s first ‘live global music event,’ TikTok In The Mix will take place in Mesa, Arizona on December 10. The headliners are Cardi B, Niall Horan, Anitta and Charlie Puth, all of whom are popular figures on TikTok. The service says there will be surprise guests and performances by emerging artists, some of whom are involved in the TikTok Elevate program for up and coming musicians.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PetaPixel: Google’s New Image Verification Tool Can Help Spot AI Fakes. “Google’s ‘About This Image’ tool, announced last May during Google I/O, combs an image’s metadata to find context and identify if it’s an AI fake or not. The tool is now rolling out as part of Google’s updated search tools.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

MIT Technology Review: This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI. “The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to ‘poison’ this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, by rendering some of their outputs useless—dogs become cats, cars become cows, and so forth.”

TechCrunch: Google is actively looking to insert different types of ads in its generative AI search. “Google confirmed on its earnings call that it is working on different ad formats for its generative AI-powered search experience — Google shared some ideas earlier this year and the mention in the earnings call could indicate that a rollout could happen sooner rather than later.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Even Google CEO Sundar Pichai doesn’t understand Google’s privacy controls. “Like a lot of Google court cases, this case has most of the records sealed so that embarrassing comments and testimony about the reality of Google’s business don’t reach the public. The Register noticed that a transcript of the expert’s video deposition is public, though, so we can see just a glimpse of what is going on in this case.”

The Guardian: National Library of Australia says yes to Indigenous voice referendum memorabilia. “Australia’s national library is urging Australians not to dump the T-shirts, posters, badges, fridge magnets and other campaign material they acquired during the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum campaign, and consider donating the items to the national archives instead. The National Library of Australia is seeking material from both sides of the campaign, including examples of misinformation and images depicting the conflict in communities in the lead up to the 14 October poll.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Verge: Microsoft fixes the Excel feature that was wrecking scientific data. “In 2020, scientists decided just to rework the alphanumeric symbols they used to represent genes rather than try to deal with an Excel feature that was interpreting their names as dates and (un)helpfully reformatting them automatically. Yesterday, a member of the Excel team posted that the company is rolling out an update on Windows and macOS to fix that.”

University of Copenhagen: Strong AI skills significantly raise salaries. “Some professional competencies and skills are worth more than others. A new study maps the value of 962 specific skills and shows that knowledge about artificial intelligence (AI) in particular is in high demand today. On average, AI skills increase remuneration by 21 percent.” (translated from Danish.) 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 29, 2023 at 12:45AM
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Steamboat Photography, New Jersey Reproductive Health, South Carolina School Spending, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2023

Steamboat Photography, New Jersey Reproductive Health, South Carolina School Spending, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, October 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Government of South Dakota: Henry J. King Steamboat Photographs Added to South Dakota Digital Archives. “A historic collection of photographs documenting steamboat traffic on the Missouri River has been added to the state of South Dakota’s digital archives. The Henry J. King collection of photographs and postcards was donated to Brule County in 1961 by Mr. and Mrs. Blakely King in memory of Mr. King’s grandfather, Captain Henry J. King. Captain King was a Missouri River boatman in the early days of Chamberlain.”

Government of New Jersey: Governor Murphy Signs Legislation Launching a New Online Portal to Provide Access to Critical Reproductive Health Care Information . ” Governor Phil Murphy today signed a bill (S-3275/A-4829) alongside members of his Administration, legislators, advocates, and public officials to launch a brand new website – the Reproductive Health Information Hub accessible at nj.gov/reproductivehealth – providing critical information on reproductive rights, access, and health care coverage across New Jersey.”

WRDW: South Carolina launches tool to shed light on school spending. “State leaders unveiled the new dashboard Wednesday at the State House. It allows viewers to see statewide data – like how money is being spent in all districts and where those dollars are coming from. It also offers district-by-district looks and comparisons between districts on data like average teacher salaries, money in their rainy-day funds and how their revenue per student correlates to test scores.”

EVENTS

Space .com: Watch the partial lunar eclipse of the Full Hunter’s Moon on Oct. 28 with these free livestreams. “If you’re out of the path of the eclipse or are unable to get outside to watch it, you’re in luck: You can watch it here at Space.com, thanks to one of the livestreams we’ve assembled to let you watch the partial lunar eclipse on Oct. 28 from the comfort of your own mobile device or computer.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Futurist: Banks That Lent Elon Musk Money To Buy Twitter Are Totally Screwed Now. “The mercurial CEO had to borrow a whopping $13 billion from seven banks to scrounge together the asking price of $44 billion almost exactly a year ago. Those banks still haven’t recovered from the ensuing chaos, the Wall Street Journal reports…. The numbers are staggering: the seven banks, which include Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays, are bracing themselves to take a hit of at least 15 percent, per the report, amounting to a loss of around $2 billion — a devastating bet on the world’s richest man that has seemingly backfired spectacularly.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: Elon Musk Mocked Ukraine, and Russian Trolls Went Wild. “Since Elon Musk spent $44 billion on Twitter (now X) last year, the billionaire has been determined to wipe out bots and spammy accounts. Things haven’t gone smoothly. Amid the chaos, in recent weeks Russian trolls have jumped on one of Musk’s own posts and used it to push pro-Kremlin messaging, a new analysis shows.”

CNN: Fake placenames with anti-Israel messages flood Google Maps’ depiction of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. “When Google Maps users navigated to the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Tuesday, they might have seen placenames that included, ‘F**k Israel,’ and ‘May god curse Israel’s Jerusalem.’ Cyber activists appeared to have targeted the service to post anti-Israel messages, likely by taking advantage of a feature on Google Maps that allows people to create and contribute information about businesses and landmarks that appear on the service.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CISA: CISA, HHS Release Collaborative Cybersecurity Healthcare Toolkit . “Today, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) co-hosted a roundtable discussion on the cybersecurity challenges that the U.S. healthcare and public health (HPH) sector system faces, and how government and industry can work together to close the gaps in resources and cyber capabilities. Ahead of the roundtable, CISA and HHS released a cybersecurity tool kit that includes resources tailored for the healthcare and public health sector.”

Reuters: EU’s Breton confirms investigations into three tech platforms, including X. “EU industry chief Thierry Breton has launched investigations into three tech platforms over content moderation decisions, including Elon Musk’s X. Under the bloc’s wide-sweeping Digital Services Act, very large tech platforms and search engines must do more to tackle illegal content and risks to public security, and to protect their services against manipulative techniques.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

North Carolina State University: Using AI to Solve Fundamental Issues in Nuclear Physics. “Understanding the behavior of nucleons impacts many branches of physics, ranging from fundamental questions to applied nuclear science. But the numbers and types of calculations required to make accurate predictions about the behavior of nucleons can require massive amounts of computing power. Enter the STREAMLINE project. STREAMLINE, which stands for SmarT Reduction and Emulation Applying Machine Learning In Nuclear Environments is a multi-institutional collaboration aimed at solving the nuclear many-body problem by using machine learning, or AI.”

The Conversation: In times of war, digital activism has power. Here’s how to engage responsibly. “Eyewitness accounts, verified facts and culturally sensitive reporting are competing with misinformation, political propaganda and irresponsible journalism. This information warfare has real-world consequences. Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protests organised through social media have drawn tens of thousands of people onto the streets, despite anti-protest measures adopted in some countries.”

David Strom: The decline of online shopping. “So what has happened to online storefronts in the past 25 or so years? In the quest to make everyone able to buy just about anything, they have become unusable. Menus are inscrutable, choices confound, and delivery mechanisms are so plentiful that they can paralyze consumers.” Good morning, Internet…

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October 28, 2023 at 05:31PM
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