By ResearchBuzz
NEW RESOURCES
Queensland University of Technology: Google Australia and QUT launch A2O Search – a sound search engine to study Australian wildlife. “A2O Search will enable nonprofits, universities, and governments to easily search millions of hours of audio from the Australian Acoustics Observatory and will be open sourced to the broader research community to help influence decisions about land and wildlife management. Researchers can simply upload audio recordings of a species to find similar sounds across the database, filter by location and date, and download results for other systems.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
Engadget: Evernote is reportedly testing a severely restricted plan for free users. “Evernote is experimenting with severe restrictions to its free plan, which may nudge users to upgrade or quit the app entirely. According to a report from TechCrunch, some Evernote users were greeted with a pop-up message announcing that the free plan would be limited to a single notebook and 50 notes.”
AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD
New Indian Express: Fake letters on social media keep leaders on tenterhooks. “Fake news, in the form of letters, being spread on social media platforms is not only creating confusion in political circles but also causing a big headache for the leaders.”
Business Insider: An image of Israel Kamakawiwoʻole shows Google search still can’t tell AI-generated pictures apart from genuine ones. “If you’re struggling to differentiate AI-generated images from real ones, you’re not alone. An AI-generated image of the late Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwoʻole is currently showing up as the top search result on Google when you search his name. Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, spotted the change and shared a screenshot of it on X on Sunday.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
TechCrunch: Judge to deliberate competition harm vs Google’s gains in search antitrust trial. “The U.S. Justice Department wrapped the evidentiary phase of its antitrust trial against Google a couple of weeks ago, with closing arguments set for May 2024. At its core is a question: Can a giant of industry engage in anticompetitive business practices legally, as long as those practices create a better product for that business and its own customers? Judge Amit Mehta reportedly says he has ‘no idea’ how he will rule in this landmark case that could decide not just the future of the internet, but also the future of antitrust law. And little wonder the judge is stumped.”
ABC News (Australia): New laws to prevent ‘iconic’ sport moments slipping behind paywalls. “New laws are being proposed to prevent iconic Australian sporting events from slipping behind online paywalls. The federal government wants to modernise Australia’s anti-siphoning scheme, which prevents subscription television from gaining rights to broadcast an event before free-to-air television has had the opportunity to acquire those rights first.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
Brookings Institution: AI can strengthen U.S. democracy—and weaken it. “In this first part of a new series on the risks and possibilities of the confluence between AI and democracy, we provide an overview of three principal areas where AI may transform democratic governance and its execution. Subsequent installments of the series will offer deeper dives into these topics and policy recommendations for lawmakers.”
University of California Riverside: Online consumers shy away from sponsored product listings. “Consumers… tend to view sponsored listings with suspicion and often prefer to click on what are called ‘organic’ listings that appear high in their product search results but are not sponsored, said Mingyu ‘Max’ Joo, an assistant professor of marketing in UCR’s School of Business and lead author the study. Platforms and sellers expect the ‘sponsored” and ‘ad’ signs to be visually prominent. In fact, a sponsored listing can be detrimental when it replaces a seller’s organic listing that would have appeared in the top few positions in the search results.”
Tech Xplore: What if Alexa or Siri sounded more like you? Study says you’ll like it better. “One voice does not fit all when it comes to virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, according to a team led by Penn State researchers that examined how customization and perceived similarity between user and voice assistant (VA) personalities affect user experience. They found a strong preference for extroverted VAs—those that speak louder, faster and in a lower pitch.”
OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL
Ars Technica: DOS_deck offers free, all-timer DOS games in a browser, with controller support. “DOS_deck [provides] the most frictionless path to playing classic DOS shareware and abandonware, like Doom, Jazz Jackrabbit, Command & Conquer, and Syndicate, with reconfigured controller support and a simplified interface benevolently looted from the Steam Deck. You can play it in a browser, right now, the one you’re using to read this post.” It looks like only the Android table is available for the Epic Pinball game. Just in case you try to play the Excalibur table a couple times before you figure it out. >cough< Good afternoon, Internet…
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November 29, 2023 at 01:56AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/0ReULO4
lightbulb moments I’ve had in my own journey with CSS Grid. You’ll learn the fundamentals of this layout mode, and see how to do some pretty cool stuff with it. 
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