Ireland Outdoor Activities, Pomodoro Apps, Google, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, November 1, 2023

Ireland Outdoor Activities, Pomodoro Apps, Google, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, November 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Leave No Trace Ireland: The launch of the National Database of Sport & Recreation Amenities is here!. “Today Sport Ireland are launching the new National Digital Database for sport & recreation amenities across Ireland. This new website… is a single online hub for all outdoor recreation, and is a huge step towards providing accessible information for anyone who wants to experience Ireland’s outdoor spaces.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: The Best Free Pomodoro Timers and Apps to Boost Productivity. “The Pomodoro Technique can be used to cut down on procrastination by scheduling work and break periods throughout the day. While any old timer will do, dedicated timer apps make it easier to get started and stick with it.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Boing Boing: Google returning AI nonsense in search highlights. “‘While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, none of them begin with the letter “K”‘, Google search asserts. ‘The closest is Kenya, which starts with a “K” sound, but is actually spelled with a “K” sound. It’s always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this.’ This drivel was reportedly the top, prominently quoted result for the search term ‘African country that starts with K’ and represents an inhuman centipede: AI-generated SEO-optimized content rising to the top and ending up as the automated answers Google offers to questions.”

The Provincetown Independent: An Online Archive of Provincetown’s Past — and Future. “[Stefan] Anikewich’s posts appear the same way a beachcomber’s artifacts do — gems from nearly every corner and decade of the town’s history surface with a strangely pleasing refusal to submit to an orderly timeline. There’s an 1898 photo of Provincetown taken from the harbor, a 1970s photo of a woman with a soft sculpture of the Pilgrim Monument in her bike basket, 1957 footage of a stroll down Commercial Street, and a 1916 photo of students in Charles Hawthorne’s Cape Cod School of Art painting on the wharf.”

The Verge: The restaurant nearest Google. “Thai Food Near Me, Dentist Near Me, Notary Near Me, Plumber Near Me — businesses across the country picked names meant to outsmart Google Search. Does it actually work?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: Sweeping White House AI executive order takes aim at the technology’s toughest challenges. “The Biden Administration unveiled its ambitious next steps in addressing and regulating artificial intelligence development on Monday. Its expansive new executive order seeks to establish further protections for the public as well as improve best practices for federal agencies and their contractors.”

Harvard Gazette: How facial-recognition app poses threat to privacy, civil liberties. “[Kashmir] Hill spoke of the need to come up with regulations to safeguard users’ privacy and rein in social media platforms that are profiting from users’ personal information without their consent. Some states have passed laws to protect people’s right to access personal information shared on social media sites and the right to delete it, but that is not enough, she said.”

Washington University in St. Louis: WashU Expert: Your smart speaker data is used in ways you might not expect. “We’ve all had the uncanny experience of searching for something on the internet and then suddenly ads for that very thing are popping up everywhere we look online. It’s no coincidence, said Umar Iqbal, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University College Cork: First ever study of wartime deepfakes reveals their impact on news media. “Deepfakes are artificially manipulated audio-visual material. Most deepfake videos involve the production of a fake ‘face’ constructed by Artificial Intelligence, that is merged with an authentic video, in order to create a video of an event that never really took place…. Researchers at University College Cork (UCC) examined tweets during the current Russian-Ukrainian war, in what is the first analysis of the use of deepfakes in wartime misinformation and propaganda. The study is published today in PLOS ONE.”

EurekAlert: Right-wing social media benefited from high-profile suspensions on mainstream platforms. “Following the ban of prominent political figures from Twitter, such as former US President Donald Trump, many alt-tech platforms – offering uncensored speech and popular with the far-right – have gained significant influence across the digital media ecosystem.”

NL Times: Teenagers frequently exposed to climate misinformation on TikTok, study finds. “Teenagers searching for information about climate change on TikTok frequently encounter misinformation, according to a study by Pointer and Beeld & Geluid. Out of 240 climate change-related videos analyzed, 73 had misleading content, representing 30 percent of the total. TikTok responded to the findings by taking corrective measures.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Lunduke: How to play the first text adventure game… in style.. “The very first major text adventure game, Colossal Cave Adventure, is 47 years old this year. And the 3D re-make (by the legendary Ken and Roberta Williams, founders of Sierra) has been released (allowing you to explore the cave in Virtual Reality). So, let’s take a few moments to enjoy the original classic… with a little help. Wether you are new to Colossal Cave Adventure (often simply called ‘adventure’ or ‘ADVENT’), or have simply not played it in some time, below you will find everything you need to experience the game in the most ultimate way possible.” 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.

November 1, 2023 at 05:34PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/5eJ7YMH

ecolo-zip Database, Building Energy Usage, ChatGPT, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 31, 2023

ecolo-zip Database, Building Energy Usage, ChatGPT, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, October 31, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

HPC Wire: KL Krems Launches ecolo-zip Database, Mapping Terrain, Vegetation, and Climate Precisely. “ecolo-zip, a globally unique database offering intricate details on terrain formations, vegetation, and climate conditions across 1.5 million locations in 94 countries and regions, has been successfully developed and released.”

EPA: EPA Launches Online Tool Providing Energy Use Data and Insights from ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager®. “Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing the launch of a web-based tool that enables users to explore aggregate energy use data from more than 150,000 commercial and multi-family buildings in the United States.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: New Version Of ChatGPT Gives Access To All GPT-4 Tools At Once. “OpenAI plans to unveil a new way to use multimodal GPT-4 with access to All Tools without switching and more document analysis capabilities. Screenshots shared by numerous ChatGPT Plus users on X show new capabilities for PDF and document analysis and an ‘All Tools’ feature. All Tools gives users access to all GPT-4 features without having to switch between one over the other.”

TechCrunch: X to take on newswire services with new product, XWire. “As Instagram Threads is leaning away from news, according to statements made by Instagram head Adam Mosseri, its competitor X appears to be doubling down. Executives at the company formerly known as Twitter spoke during yesterday’s all-hands internal meeting of their desire to create a new wire service called XWire, according to Bloomberg. The product would rival existing services for press releases, like Cision’s PR Newswire.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Denver Post: The Denver Art Museum has been quietly removing plundered artworks from its website without explanation. “For years, the Denver museum has carefully curated which repatriations and deaccessions — pieces removed from its collection — it chooses to publicly announce, a practice that goes against industry recommendations. Unlike some other institutions, it’s impossible in Denver to see which pieces, and how many, the museum has returned after foreign governments or U.S. authorities provided evidence that they were stolen or illegally trafficked.”

The Scotsman: Opening up ‘treasure trove’ archives of Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and George Mackay Brown. “Kept for decades in cardboard boxes and disintegrating plastic bags, they are a treasure trove of diaries, drafts, doodles, pocketbook, lists and letters offering invaluable insights into the minds of three of Scotland’s leading writers of modern times…. Now a major appeal is underway to help open up public access to the personal archives kept by Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and George Mackay Brown.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Stateline: Politicians love to cite crime data. It’s often wrong.. “Across the country, law enforcement agencies’ inability — or refusal — to send their annual crime data to the FBI has resulted in a distorted picture of the United States’ crime trends, according to a new Stateline analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program participation data.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Register: Boffins find AI stumbles when quizzed on the tough stuff . “…to better assess how large language models – which interpret text input – and large multimodal models – which interpret text, images and perhaps other forms of input – actually handle problem solving, a group of ten researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Washington, and Microsoft Research have devised a testing benchmark called MathVista that focuses on visually-oriented challenges.”

NOAA: NOAA uses artificial intelligence to translate forecasts, warnings into Spanish and Chinese. “Through a series of pilot projects over the past few years, NWS forecasters have been training artificial intelligence (AI) software for weather, water and climate terminology in Spanish and Simplified Chinese, the most common languages in the United States after English. NWS will add Samoan and Vietnamese next, and more languages in the future.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: A Paper Printer For Q Code Menus. “Do you miss the days of thumbing through a sticky, laminated booklet to order your food? Sick of restaurants and their frustrating electronic menus? Fear not, for [Guy Dupont] and his QR code menu printer are here to save the day.” I don’t miss sticky menus, but I really do not like scanning unknown QR codes with my phone. 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.

November 1, 2023 at 12:49AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/FyjU3OX

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…

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 31, 2023 at 05:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/qTwzWHm

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…

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 31, 2023 at 12:14AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/SFwub4l

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
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/WoO8ea7

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…

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 12:44AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/TutgIY3

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
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/rcLDs1R