Library of Congress, Snapchat, Twitter, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, November 25, 2023

Library of Congress, Snapchat, Twitter, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, November 25, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Library of Congress: What’s new online at the Library of Congress – November 2023. “Interested in learning more about what’s new in the Library of Congress’ digital collections? The Signal shares updates on new additions to our digital collections and we love showing off all the hard work of our colleagues from across the Library. Read on for a sample of what’s been added recently and some of our favorite highlights.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: Snapchat is testing an ad-free subscription. “Snapchat has started testing an ad-free paid subscription plan in Australia. For $US10.50 a month, the new Snapchat+ tier enables consumers to use the platform without disruption from Story or Lens ads. However, the app notes that users may still see sponsored places or My AI responses.’

TechCrunch: Elon Musk says X will show headlines on the platform again. “Elon Musk said that X, formerly Twitter, will start showing headlines in preview cards with URLs on the platform again after removing titles last month. In a post on X, Musk said in an upcoming update, the company will overlay the title in the upper portion of the image of a URL Card. He didn’t mention any specific timeline for rollout or give an example of what might the card look like.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 7 of the Best Spotify Alternatives for Music Streaming . “Spotify’s one of the top music streaming services, but it’s facing some serious competition. But, Spotify might not always have the artists you want or even the quality you prefer. If you’re ready to try something new, check out some of the best Spotify alternatives to see which one fits your needs the best.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: ‘Who’s That Wonderful Girl? Could She Be Any Cuter?’. “‘Nanalan’ hasn’t been on TV in years, but it’s the hottest show on TikTok. A Canadian children’s program that made its debut in 1999, it has had a resurgence in recent weeks, thanks to its growing popularity on the social media platform, where it has been watched millions of times.”

Edinburgh Reporter: Pioneering project captures stories of LGBTQ+ youth. “LGBTQ+ young people across Scotland have lent their voices to a first-of-its-kind social history project that will preserve their experiences, stories and hopes for the future. This is part of LGBT Youth Scotland’s (Un)Seen, (Un)Heard initiative, which is capturing, collating and conserving the stories of LGBTQ+ young people to create a new permanent archive within the National Library of Scotland and increase visibility, provide connection across generations, strengthen communities and inform policymakers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Business Insider: Do Kwon’s Extradition Approved by Montenegro Court. “A court in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, has approved the extradition of Terra founder Do Kwon to either South Korea or the United States, according to an update posted on the judiciary’s website. Kwon was arrested in the country in March after being caught in Podgorica’s airport with falsified documents.”

Mashable: ‘Gay furry hackers’ breach nuclear lab, demand it create catgirls . “Idaho National Laboratory (INL), one of the largest nuclear labs in the US, confirmed this week that it has been hacked. The group behind the data breach was self-described ‘gay furry hackers’ Sieged Security aka SiegedSec, who have demanded the INL put its efforts and resources into creating real-life catgirls. They probably aren’t being serious, but they did hack into a huge nuclear lab, so who knows.” Posterity, are you starting to appreciate the weirdness?

RESEARCH & OPINION

Nature: ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis. “In a paper published in JAMA Ophthalmology on 9 November1, the authors used GPT-4 — the latest version of the large language model on which ChatGPT runs — paired with Advanced Data Analysis (ADA), a model that incorporates the programming language Python and can perform statistical analysis and create data visualizations. The AI-generated data compared the outcomes of two surgical procedures and indicated — wrongly — that one treatment is better than the other.”

Slate: How Google Really Works. “Obviously, governments don’t sue companies just to put private company information in the hands of the public. Nor should they. But, in this case, federal prosecutors have brought a convincing case that Google—arguably the most powerful company on the internet—abused one of its many monopolies. While monopolization cases are rare and notoriously difficult to win, the public has already won to some degree. At least we can see Google for what it really is.”

Virginia Tech: How certain media talk about AI may have everything to do with political ideology. “In the recently published research “Partisan Media Sentiment Toward Artificial Intelligence,” authors from the Virginia Tech Pamplin College of Business – Angela Yi, Shreyans Goenka, and Mario Pandelaere – examined the varied reactions to AI by analyzing partisan media sentiment. Their work was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. The researchers found that articles from liberal-leaning media have a more negative sentiment toward AI than articles from conservative media.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

WIRED: Go on a Psychedelic Journey of the Internet’s Growth and Evolution. “Security researcher Barrett Lyon, who makes visualizations of the internet’s network infrastructure, is back with a new piece chronicling the rise of the IPv6 protocol.” Good morning, Internet…

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November 25, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Charles Darwin, ChatGPT, Flipboard, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 24, 2023

Charles Darwin, ChatGPT, Flipboard, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 24, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

National University of Singapore: All surviving drafts, including three rediscovered pages, of Origin of Species revealed. “On the 164th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s magnum opus, all known surviving pages of the rough draft of Origin of species have been published online. Three recently rediscovered pages from Darwin’s draft of Origin of Species have been published for the first time together with all the other known surviving pages in a new online edition. These documents are added to Darwin Online, a scholarly portal dedicated to Charles Darwin and helmed by Dr John van Wyhe, at the NUS Department of Biological Sciences.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Lifehacker: You Can Now Try ChatGPT’s ‘Chat With Voice’ Feature for Free . “OpenAI rolled out voice chat to ChatGPT Plus users back in September. The feature replaces the text-based ChatGPT interface with something more like a voice assistant: As you speak to ChatGPT, you’ll see a waveform reacting in kind. The assistant will automatically recognize when you’re done talking, and will switch into a ‘thought bubble’ interface as it responds to your question or request. The company always planned to bring voice chat to free users, and while it took a couple months, the feature is finally here.”

TechCrunch: Flipboard stops tweeting, launches new podcast about decentralized social apps. “Social magazine app Flipboard had already committed to joining the ‘fediverse’ — the decentralized social web, which includes apps like Mastodon. Now, it’s doubling down on those ambitions with an announcement that it will stop tweeting while also launching a new podcast devoted to exploring the topic of decentralized social media.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: A Complete Guide to Tab Management in Google Chrome. “Are you having a difficult time organizing your tabs in Google Chrome? In this guide, we’ll explore some solutions to stay on top of your Google Chrome tabs and upgrade your productivity online. Learn how to manage Chrome tabs better in this helpful guide.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Kyiv Independent: Ukraine elected to UNESCO World Heritage Committee for the first time. “Ukraine was among the nine countries elected to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee during the Nov. 22 vote for the first time in history. The country submitted its candidacy in July last year. Ukraine is joining the other 20 members and will hold the seat on the Committee for the period 2023-2027.”

AFP: Internet out: India deploys shutdowns in name of security. “With the world’s largest biometric ID database, a pioneering digital payment system for daily transactions and a flagship space and satellite programme, India knows the power of connected technology. But when trouble brews with political unrest or sectarian violence, authorities are quick to sever internet service to stem disinformation — cutting off millions of people who depend on the web for communication, information and business.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Newswise: Digital payment platforms can easily be misused for drug dealing. “Digital payment platforms such as Venmo work great for sharing a dinner bill with friends, buying gifts at a pop-up shop or making payments without cash or credit cards. But these digital payment platforms have a dark side: They can be misused for drug dealing and other illicit activity, suggest researchers from the University of California, Davis. And social media apps such as TikTok and Instagram can act as marketing tools for digital drug dealing.”

Imperial College London: Altering our language can help us deal with the intelligence of chatbots. “Were these LLMs to be used by bad faith actors, for example scammers or propagandists, people could be vulnerable to handing over their bank details in pursuit of connection, or being swayed politically. Now a new paper sets out recommendations to prevent us over-empathising with AI chatbots to our detriment.”

UCLA: Using Google Trends To Detect Revenue Misreporting. “You don’t need an advanced degree in accounting or finance to grasp the head-scratching mismatch of reporting strong sales growth when your products seem to be less popular, as measured by Google search volume. Indeed, the researchers found that MUP [“managing revenue up”] firms in their study had 165% higher odds of subsequently restating (correcting) their initial reported revenue, compared with firms that didn’t set off a MUP alarm.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

On GitHub, discovered via Boing Boing: Awesome Engineering Games. “A curated list of some of the best engineering games on PC. All titles are rated Very Positive or higher on Steam. Games are divided into broad categories based on the type(s) of engineering they’re most related to, such as civil engineering & city-building, transportation & route-building, computer science & electrical engineering, etc. See the Table of Contents for a full breakdown of categories.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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November 25, 2023 at 01:24AM
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Enhancing Our Heritage Toolkit 2.0, Twitter, Google Contacts, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, November 24, 2023

Enhancing Our Heritage Toolkit 2.0, Twitter, Google Contacts, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, November 24, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

UNESCO World Heritage Convention: New Tool to assess the effectiveness of World Heritage management. “UNESCO and the Advisory Bodies to the World Heritage Committee – ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property), ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) and IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature)- have released a newly revised toolkit for assessing the effectiveness of management systems of World Heritage properties. Enhancing Our Heritage Toolkit 2.0 offers a World Heritage-specific methodology of management effectiveness assessment that can be applied to cultural, natural and mixed sites.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Fortune: Inside Linda Yaccarino’s X all-hands after Elon Musk’s platform sues Media Matters: ‘By all means, put your heads together to bring new revenue into the company’. “At a hastily-assembled all-hands meeting on Monday, X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino urged staff to find new sources of revenue as advertisers paused business with X following a Media Matters report on antisemitic content on the platform formerly known as Twitter. Yaccarino spoke shortly after X sued the media watchdog group on Monday in a defamation lawsuit that claims the report relied on manufactured content and was designed to ruin X. Elon Musk, owner of X , did not attend the meeting.”

9to5 Google: Google Contacts now lets you set reminder notifications for any date. “Earlier this year, Google Contacts introduced a birthday reminder, and those notifications can now be set for all saved dates…. Of course, Google Contacts has long let you add any ‘Significant date’ to a contact, and now those can have a reminder with notifications.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Mashable: This app wants reading to be a social experience — for the best reasons . “Fable [is] a social community app for readers featuring an array of book clubs and a FYP with a Twitter-like stream of thoughts only to do with reading. Founded by Padmasree Warrior, former CTO at Cisco, Fable is like one big digital book club, with niche pockets for all kinds of readers, free and shoppable e-Books, and tons of personalized reading suggestions.”

WIRED: Twitter’s Former Head of Trust and Safety Finally Breaks Her Silence. “From Israel vs. Hamas threats to Donald Trump’s ‘wild’ posts, Del Harvey helped make the platform’s hardest content moderation calls for 13 years. Then she left in 2021 … and disappeared.”

Government of British Columbia: Public engagement begins for new South Asian Canadian museum. “A new website will provide British Columbians with opportunities to share their vision for a new museum to highlight the history, culture and contributions to B.C. from Canadians of diverse South Asian heritages.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Gothamist: LLCs might soon have to list their owners. Should New Yorkers get a look?. “Gov. Kathy Hochul will soon have to decide on a bill that would allow the public to know the true owners behind limited liability companies in New York — a measure that is spurring a lobbying battle among some of her biggest campaign supporters.”

Reuters: YouTuber sues Google Spain for wrongful dismissal. “A Spanish YouTuber is suing Google Spain, a unit of Alphabet Inc, for wrongful dismissal in a case that could set a precedent for content creators’ labour rights, Spanish union UGT said on Thursday. The lawsuit seeks to demonstrate an employment relationship between Jota, a creator of political satire content whose real name has not been disclosed, and Alphabet’s YouTube because he regularly provided his services and received remuneration derived from advertising revenue, UGT said.”

Ars Technica: Thousands of routers and cameras vulnerable to new 0-day attacks by hostile botnet. “Miscreants are actively exploiting two new zero-day vulnerabilities to wrangle routers and video recorders into a hostile botnet used in distributed denial-of-service attacks, researchers from networking firm Akamai said Thursday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Waterloo: Revolutionizing the way air quality data is shared. “Shahan Salim, a PhD candidate in the School of Public Health Sciences and a member of the Waterloo Climate Institute’s COP 28 delegation, has designed, in partnership with UNICEF in Mongolia, a platform to use data from low-cost air quality sensors to monitor and predict adverse outcomes related to air pollution exposure in underserved communities.”

University of Innsbruck: Univer­sity of Inns­bruck focuses on Mastodon. “The communications team at the University of Innsbruck will increasingly rely on the microblogging service Mastodon for science communication. Mastodon is a non-commercial and data protection-friendly platform with functions similar to the former Twitter. For this purpose, an instance has been created at social.uibk.ac.at on university servers, which is open to the university’s organizational units. The active use of X will be significantly reduced.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

NPR: Oklahoma restricted how race can be taught. So these Black teachers stepped up. “The schoolchildren arrived at the community center’s cafeteria on a Saturday morning, their parents in tow. Some adults came without children, because they, too, wanted to learn the African American history that a new law has made many Oklahoma schoolteachers too afraid to teach.” Good morning, Internet…

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November 24, 2023 at 06:31PM
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University of Nevada Reno Newspapers, South Africa Magazines, Google Bard, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 23, 2023

University of Nevada Reno Newspapers, South Africa Magazines, Google Bard, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 23, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Nevada Today (University of Nevada Reno): 130 years of student news: from ‘The Student Record’ to ‘The Nevada Sagebrush’. “The University of Nevada, Reno was founded on Oct. 12, 1874, and just 19 years later, on Oct. 19, 1893, the students of the University published the first edition of a student-run newspaper, which they called The Student Record.”

Polity: Groundbreaking expansion of digital collection of historical magazines . “Online research group Sabinet has announced the expansion of a digitized collection of almost 50 000 rare, historical, and out-of-copyright magazines for South African and sub-Saharan African readers.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: Google Bard’s Latest Update Enhances Understanding Of YouTube Videos. “Google Bard’s latest update gives the conversational AI chatbot the ability to help users better understand YouTube video content. While the enhancement promises to be useful in many settings, I decided to put Google Bard’s ‘understanding’ capabilities to the test.”

Bloomberg: Russia ‘Spits’ on EU Sanctions in Escalating Propaganda Battle. “The European Union promised to shut down the flow of Vladimir Putin’s propaganda after Russia invaded Ukraine, slapping sanctions on state-backed media RT and Sputnik days after the attack. Nearly two years into the war, the Kremlin appears to have the last laugh.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

PC Magazine: Microsoft Rate Hikes for Bing Use May Put This Google Alternative Out of Business. “Running a green search engine can be a mean business, one where Google’s dominance of the search market is just the start of the possible challenges In an interview at the Web Summit conference here, Ecosia CEO Christian Kroll unpacked a variety of obstacles threatening his search nonprofit, which plows all of its income into tree-planting campaigns.”

Fierce Telecom: Google Fiber appoints first growth officer – here’s her plan. “[Melani] Griffith was Google Fiber’s VP of customer engagement for five years, and last week became its first-ever chief growth officer. In an announcement the company said the new role will be responsible for overseeing the entire customer lifespan from brand and marketing, sales, digital, customer service and public relations.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: U.S. Case Details Binance’s Knowledge About Criminal Users. “…despite regular warnings from some of its own employees that some transactions on Binance.com were violating anti-money-laundering laws, the firm was reluctant to cut them off. Those allegations, which were made public on Tuesday in a sweeping federal case against Binance and Mr. Zhao, show how thoroughly he and his deputies understood that criminals were using their trading platform — and how little they did to stop them.”

BBC: Mizzy: TikTok prankster detained for posting videos without consent. “TikTok prankster Mizzy has been sentenced to 18 weeks’ detention in a young offender institution. The 19-year-old, whose real name is Bacari-Bronze O’Garro, was found guilty of two counts of breaching a criminal behaviour order. The court order banned him from sharing videos of people without their approval. He was found to have ‘deliberately flouted’ the order ‘within hours’ of it being passed in May.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Santa Clara University: Revealing an Unseen History. “In 2022, [Professor Lee] Panich and a team of faculty, students, and Muwekma Ohlone representatives began adapting that Google Earth tour into a more comprehensive augmented reality (AR) experience that will allow the thousands of people who visit SCU every year to explore Indigenous stories around our campus in real-time, directly on their phones. The GPS-driven AR tour is planned to highlight roughly 20 stops.”

Scientific American: When It Comes to AI Models, Bigger Isn’t Always Better. “In broad strokes, bigger AI tends to be more capable AI. Ever larger LLMs and increasingly massive training datasets have resulted in chatbots that can pass university exams and even entrance tests for medical schools. Yet there are drawbacks to all this growth: As models have gotten bigger, they’ve also become more unwieldy, energy-hungry and difficult to run and build. Smaller models and datasets could help solve this issue. That’s why AI developers, even at some of the largest tech companies, have begun to revisit and reassess miniaturized AI models.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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November 24, 2023 at 01:37AM
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Local and Independent Ukrainian Newspapers, Google, Transcribing YouTube Videos, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, November 23, 2023

Local and Independent Ukrainian Newspapers, Google, Transcribing YouTube Videos, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, November 23, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Center for Research Libraries: Global Press Archive CRL Alliance Launches First Ukrainian Collection. “East View Information Services and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) have launched Local and Independent Ukrainian Newspapers (LIUN), the fifth in-copyright collection of titles produced under the Global Press Archive (GPA) CRL Alliance, available now to all CRL member institutions. Comprising more than 250,000 pages and 900 titles, LIUN includes local newspapers from more than 340 cities and towns—including publications from each of Ukraine’s 27 regions.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Google “Simple Search” – New Search Refinement Option?. “Google may be testing a new ‘Simple Search’ feature that may dumb-down the search results when you want something more simple. Google shows the ‘Simple Search’ +Topics refinement button at the top of the mobile and desktop results, when tapped on, it readjusts the results to give you a different set of results.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: The Easiest Ways to Transcribe a YouTube Video. “Sometimes, you don’t have time to watch an entire YouTube tutorial when you’re trying to learn something on the fly—sometimes, it would be easier if you could just skim the text to find the step you’re stuck on. Of course, most YouTube videos don’t come with transcriptions, and transcribing them by hand is a non-starter. But you don’t need to: Here are some of the best ways to transcribe a YouTube video.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Search Engine Journal: Google Investigating Reports Of Declining Traffic After Updates, Discover Bug. “Google’s core updates have often resulted in a traffic increase or decline for some websites. However, after the latest updates and possible bugs in Discover, publishers have noticed an unprecedented drop in website traffic and visibility in Google Search.”

TechCrunch: Yup hacks together a cross-posting app for X, Threads, Bluesky and others. “Decentralized social networking may be the future, but in the meantime, there are a lot of Twitter alternatives to keep up with. A new app called Yup aims to help by offering a single place to read feeds, follow friends across services and cross-post to a range of social apps, including Twitter/X itself, as well as Bluesky, Farcaster, Lens and Threads — although the latter comes with a big caveat.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: New York will automatically seal old criminal records under a new law signed by Gov. Hochul. “New Yorkers who complete their sentences and stay out of trouble for a certain period of time will have their criminal records automatically sealed under a long awaited bill signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday.”

WIRED: Bumble, Grindr, and Hinge Moderators Struggle to Keep Users—and Themselves—Safe. “The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) interviewed more than 40 current and former workers based in Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, India, the Philippines, the US, and the UK who worked on behalf of Grindr, Bumble, and Match Group. Conditions across the groups varied, but the trends were stark. Workers spoke of mental health issues, including symptoms of anxiety, depression, and PTSD that they associated with their jobs, but said there was a shortage of support.”

404 Media: Consumer Rights Groups Petition Government to Create Formal Rules Protecting Right to Repair. “Consumer rights groups have formally petitioned the federal government, asking the Federal Trade Commission to finally create and enforce rules on right to repair after years of studying the issue of manufacturer repair monopolies and their cost to consumers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Harvard Gazette: Smart trackers may predict health risks in older adults. “Wearable devices that measure daily patterns of circadian rest-activity rhythms may be able to predict frailty-related health risks more than six years before an incidence occurs, according to a new study out of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital.”

Google Research Blog: Open sourcing Project Guideline: A platform for computer vision accessibility technology. “Two years ago we announced Project Guideline, a collaboration between Google Research and Guiding Eyes for the Blind that enabled people with visual impairments (e.g., blindness and low-vision) to walk, jog, and run independently…. Today, we announce the open source release of Project Guideline, making it available for anyone to use to improve upon and build new accessibility experiences. The release includes source code for the core platform, an Android application, pre-trained ML models, and a 3D simulation framework.”

Scientific American: ChatGPT Replicates Gender Bias in Recommendation Letters. “Generative artificial intelligence has been touted as a valuable tool in the workplace. Estimates suggest it could increase productivity growth by 1.5 percent in the coming decade and boost global gross domestic product by 7 percent during the same period. But a new study advises that it should only be used with careful scrutiny—because its output discriminates against women.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: Infocom’s ingenious code-porting tools for Zork and other games have been found. “The source code for many of Infocom’s foundational text-parsing adventure games, including Zork, has been available since 2019. But that code doesn’t do anything for modern computers, nor even computers of the era, when it comes to actually running the games. Most of Infocom’s games were written in ‘Zork Implementation Language,’ which was native to no particular platform or processor, but ready to be interpreted on all kinds of systems by versions of its Z-Machine.” Good morning, Internet…

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November 23, 2023 at 06:31PM
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American Food Supply, Tackling Poverty Locally, Sam Altman, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 22, 2023

American Food Supply, Tackling Poverty Locally, Sam Altman, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 22, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Colorado Boulder: In time for the holidays: Interactive map shows where your food comes from. “With Food Twin, users can look up their home county to see how much of 25 critical food crops their local regions both produce and consume. Those food staples include everything from wheat to tomatoes and peanuts, grown both in the U.S. and overseas. The map similarly tracks the flow of food across the country, following highways from sites like Kern County, California, to Denver, Chicago and beyond.”

Glasgow Caledonian University: Database to showcase anti-poverty projects. “The Tackling Poverty Locally Directory is a free online resource designed to highlight innovative practice and provide guidance on how similar initiatives can be adopted elsewhere in the country. The first 20 case studies included in the database, which launches today, feature projects set up to tackle food poverty, reduce stigma, assist people into employment, deliver financial inclusion, tackle housing costs, and address the cost of living.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Sam Altman to return as CEO of OpenAI. “Sam Altman will return as CEO of OpenAI, overcoming an attempted boardroom coup that sent the company into chaos over the past several days. Former president Greg Brockman, who quit in protest of Altman’s firing, will return as well.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: Inside the Operation to Bring Down Trump’s Truth Social . “The North Atlantic Fella Organization (NAFO) is an online activist group founded last year to combat pro-Russia propaganda related to the invasion of Ukraine. Last month, the group turned its attention to Trump’s social network and launched a campaign to take over the trending topics section on the website. The group says that the operation, which included 50 ‘NAFO commandos,’ as members targeting Truth Social call themselves, was so successful that those running the campaign now have a long-term goal: Take down Truth Social completely.”

Bleeping Computer: Google shares plans for blocking third-party cookies in Chrome. “Google has officially announced plans to gradually eliminate third-party cookies, a key aspect of its Privacy Sandbox initiative. This phased approach begins with a 1% user testing period early in 2024, leading to a more extensive phase-out in the third quarter of 2024.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: Elon Musk’s X is ‘profiting off violent content’ by Hamas, House Democrats allege. “More than two dozen House Democrats on Tuesday accused Elon Musk’s X of ‘profiting off violent content by a terrorist organization’ and demanded that Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino address Hamas-related content on the social media platform. “The platform has become a hotbed of misinformation and terrorist propaganda,” wrote the group of 27 Democrats, led by Reps. Dan Goldman of New York and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, in a letter obtained by CNBC.”

The Guardian: Australia to force social media companies to crack down on ‘emerging harms’ of AI deep fakes and hate speech. “Social media platforms and tech companies will be required to stamp out harmful material created using artificial intelligence, such as deep fake intimate images and hate speech, under new online safety rules from the federal government.”

US Department of Justice: Binance and CEO Plead Guilty to Federal Charges in $4B Resolution. “Binance Holdings Limited (Binance), the entity that operates the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance.com, pleaded guilty today and has agreed to pay over $4 billion to resolve the Justice Department’s investigation into violations related to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), failure to register as a money transmitting business, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Brookings Institution: How to improve government decisionmaking around edtech innovations. “As part of the Research on Scaling the Impact of Innovations in Education (ROSIE) project, we’ve been investigating how government decisionmakers choose education innovations for their countries—and the combination of forces shaping their decisionmaking. Our recent report examined these decision-making processes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly around educational technology (edtech).”

Cornell Chronicle: Crowdsourced fact-checking fights misinformation in Taiwan. “In a new study, Andy Zhao, a doctoral candidate in information science based at Cornell Tech, compared professional fact-checking articles to posts on Cofacts, a community-sourced fact-checking platform in Taiwan. He found that the crowdsourced site often responded to queries more rapidly than professionals and handled a different range of issues across platforms.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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November 23, 2023 at 01:47AM
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Kalahari Desert Indigenous Peoples, AI Skills Training, Chrome Web Store, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, November 22, 2023

Kalahari Desert Indigenous Peoples, AI Skills Training, Chrome Web Store, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, November 22, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Harvard University, Peabody Museum: Harvard’s Peabody Museum Shares 32,000 Newly Digitized Historic Photos of Kalahari Desert Indigenous Peoples. “The collection of photographic and written records, created by the Laurence K. and Lorna J. Marshall family, documents how Indigenous peoples of the Kalahari Desert region—primarily the Ju/’hoansi, G/ui, and Naro—lived prior to extended contact with the Western world.”

Lifehacker: Amazon Is Offering AI Classes for Free. “In a blog post on Monday, Amazon announced ‘AI Ready,’ the company’s new initiative to give two million people access to free AI skills training by 2025. In total, the company is offering eight new classes, for free, for varying experience levels and purposes. In addition, AI Ready aims to offer a new generative AI course to more than 50,000 high school and university students.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: Visit the new Chrome Web Store. “Inspired by our Material You design language, the new store has fresh color palettes, updated card styles and improved icon legibility that all better complement Chrome’s overall look. You’ll also see new extension categories, like AI-powered and shopping extensions, and ones that are more tailored to your interests based on what you’ve previously downloaded.”

Search Engine Roundtable: New Reports: Google Search Getting Dates Wrong Again. “I am seeing some new reports, some publicly, and some not, of Google Search getting the dates they display in the Google Search results wrong. This is a common issue that Google has struggled with over the years but recently seemed to have been getting better at.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Engadget: Google admits YouTube’s war on ad blockers is resulting in ‘suboptimal viewing’ experiences. “Based on the code found by some YCombinator and Reddit posters, YouTube has implemented an anti-adblocker mechanism that’s causing the delays. We did find the snippet of code cited in those threads, but it’s not quite clear what it does. In a statement that Google has provided Android Authority, it admitted that it has implemented a system that’s meant to urge viewers to uninstall their ad blockers. The company said that users who have ad blockers installed ‘may experience suboptimal viewing’ no matter what browser they choose to use.”

Rolling Stone: How This Viral TikTok Trend Became Linked to a ‘Sex Cult’. “A MARKETING GROUP behind one of the most successful TikTok ad campaigns of all time is drawing scrutiny for its alleged ties to NXIVM, the so-called ‘sex cult’ once led by Keith Raniere in upstate New York.” I’m imagining someone reading that headline and summary 100 years from now, blinking, shaking their head slightly to clear it, and reading it again. Yes, it really is that weird at the moment.

CNN: Elon Musk is now boosting the ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory. “Elon Musk on Monday boosted the dangerous, years-old ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, just days after being roundly criticized and facing an advertiser exodus following his embrace of an antisemitic conspiracy theory.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Europol: Europol sets up OSINT taskforce to support investigations into war crimes committed in Ukraine. “A new Operational Taskforce (OTF) has been set up by Europol to assist ongoing investigations into core international crimes committed in Ukraine following the invasion of the country by Russian armed forces in February 2022. This Taskforce aims to help identify suspects and their involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide crimes committed in Ukraine through the collection and analysis of open source intelligence (OSINT).”

The Guardian: X sues watchdog group Media Matters after report on ads next to Nazi posts. “Social media platform X on Monday sued media watchdog group Media Matters, alleging the organization defamed the platform after it published a report that said ads for major brands had appeared next to posts touting Nazism.”

Bloomberg: Trump’s Truth Social Parent Company Sues 20 Media Outlets. “The company behind former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social wants $1.5 billion in damages from news organizations which reported that the platform had lost $73 million. Lawyers for Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. said in a lawsuit filed Monday in state court in Sarasota County, Florida, that the number was ‘an utter fabrication’ and accused 20 news outlets of a ‘deliberate, malicious, and coordinated attack’ against Truth Social.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stony Brook University: AI Model for Creating Optical Illusions Wins Demo Award at CVPR 2023. “In June of 2023, Stony Brook’s Ph.D. students Ryan Burgert, Kanchana Ranasinghe, and Xiang Li, along with Prof. Michael Ryoo … greatly advanced the role of AI in art by using the technology to create stunning optical illusions. The team showcased their project, titled ‘Diffusion Illusions: Hiding Images in Plain Sight,’ at CVPR 2023, where they won the Demo Award for their contributions to the field.”

University of Florida: Study reveals bias in AI tools when diagnosing women’s health issue. “Machine learning algorithms designed to diagnose a common infection that affects women showed a diagnostic bias among ethnic groups, University of Florida researchers found.” Good morning, Internet…

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November 22, 2023 at 06:31PM
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