Henry Kissinger, Introduction to Discrete Mathemathics, .Meme Domains, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 30, 2023

Henry Kissinger, Introduction to Discrete Mathemathics, .Meme Domains, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

Sorry this is late, got a migraine I couldn’t work through.

NEW RESOURCES

National Security Archive: Henry Kissinger: The Declassified Obituary. “This special posting also centralizes links to dozens of previously published collections of documents related to Kissinger’s tenure in government that the Archive, led by the intrepid efforts of William Burr, has identified, pursued, obtained and catalogued over several decades. Together, these collections constitute an accessible, major repository of records on one of the most consequential U.S. foreign policy makers of the 20th century.”

Wolfram Blog: Don’t Be Discreet and Learn Discrete Mathematics with Wolfram Language. “I am glad to announce the launch of Introduction to Discrete Mathematics, a free interactive course that aims to explore the world of integers and information. This course investigates the mathematical foundations of computation and information theory. It is designed to be compact and efficient, minimizing the number of redundant examples and amount of potentially distracting background material.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google’s .meme domain is here to serve your wackiest websites. “If you ever wanted to make your website sound a little more silly, now’s your chance. Google Registry just released a new top-level domain that lets you slap a big ol’ .meme at the end of your website.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 5 of the Best Websites to Learn Morse Code Online for Free. “Despite modern communication methods, the art of Morse code remains a timeless and valuable skill. Fortunately, the Internet offers many accessible resources that can help anyone learn Morse code from the comfort of their own home. If you’re ready to begin mastering this skill, check out our recommendations for the best websites to learn Morse code.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

GrepBeat: SaveOr Can Save Families Time And Turmoil From Cleaning Out Estates. “According to Durham-based startup SaveOr, all of our items can easily be categorized and tagged for family members, friends and charities to have after we’re gone, reducing the stress and difficulty for the family members and friends left behind of sorting through hundreds or even thousands of items. Founder and Duke University senior Matthew Scola created SaveOr after sorting through his great-grandparents’ house after they passed.”

Mashable: What do we owe our online dating matches?. “In an era where we’re finally recognising the more nebulous dating stages, like situationships and talking stages, we don’t seem to have come to a mutual understanding of how we end our online interactions when we decide they’re no longer for us. So, what exactly do we owe each other?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Google Chrome emergency update fixes 6th zero-day exploited in 2023. “Google has fixed the sixth Chrome zero-day vulnerability this year in an emergency security update released today to counter ongoing exploitation in attacks. The company acknowledged the existence of an exploit for the security flaw (tracked as CVE-2023-6345) in a new security advisory published today.”

Vice: It Sure Looks Like a Hacking Campaign Messed Up People’s Spotify Wrapped. “Every year, Spotify Wrapped provides a rundown of everything its users listened to over the past year. It’s a fun, and sometimes embarrassing, reminder of the music that dominated your life. Excitement turned to confusion this year when some users got their Wrapped roundup only to discover their lists taken over by an artist they weren’t listening to: Lil Durk.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Snowplow Parents Are Ruining Online Grading. “I’ve spent the past couple of weeks talking to teachers about their experiences with online grade books like Schoology and Infinite Campus, and many of their anecdotes were similar to what Miller shared: anxious kids checking their grades throughout the day, snowplow parents berating their children and questioning teachers about every grade they considered unacceptable, and harried middle and high school teachers, some of whom teach more than 100 kids on a given day, dealing with an untenable stream of additional communication.”

Reuters: Most online hate targets women, says EU report. “Women are the main targets of online hate, including abusive language, harassment and incitement to sexual violence, a European Union report said on Wednesday. This should encourage the EU and social media platforms to pay close attention to protected characteristics such as gender and ethnicity when moderating content, the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) said in its report.” Good evening, Internet…

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December 1, 2023 at 05:12AM
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eDNA Explorer, Google News, National Library of Australia, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, November 30, 2023

eDNA Explorer, Google News, National Library of Australia, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, November 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of California Santa Cruz: New eDNA Explorer provides a powerful new resource for conservation. “CALeDNA, a UC-wide consortium project to document California’s biodiversity, has launched a prototype of their new eDNA Explorer. This open-source tool provides a powerful and easily accessible platform for sharing, exploring, and analyzing data from projects that use environmental DNA.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google agrees to pay publishers in Canada and drops plans for blocking news. “Google announced today that it won’t pull links to Canadian news outlets after all, thanks to an agreement with the government of Canada over the contentious Online News Act or Bill C-18.”

National Library of Australia: Making history with Trove. “Australia’s much loved digital library Trove is inviting community-led, volunteer-run and rural and regional collecting organisations across Australia to make their significant digital collections and data available and findable in Trove. Following the budget announcement in April 2023, the National Library of Australia has announced that these organisations will not be asked to pay to showcase their digital content in Trove.”

NPR: Merriam-Webster’s word of the year definitely wasn’t picked by AI. “‘Authentic’ was selected as the 2023 word of the year by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, landing among the most-looked-up words in the dictionary’s 500,000 entries, the company said in a press release Monday.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Daily Beast: Elon Musk Tells Major Advertisers in Person: ‘Go F*ck Yourself’. “Elon Musk on Wednesday told advertisers who’ve abandoned X over his antisemitic and conspiratorial posts to ‘Go fuck yourself,’ throwing a normally calm media summit off the rails during its closing session. While appearing at The New York Times’ annual DealBook Summit, Musk accused major companies like Disney and The Washington Post of wanting to ‘blackmail me with advertising,’ denouncing them for abandoning his platform and speculating they will ‘fail’ for their decision.”

The Guardian:
‘Part of our history’: Ukraine hails return of Scythian gold treasures . “On Tuesday the collection, including a rare golden neck ornament and a solid gold helmet, was shown off in Kyiv. They are among 1,000 items lent in 2013 by four museums in Crimea for an exhibition in the Netherlands. The following year – with the artefacts still out of the country – Vladimir Putin annexed the Black Sea peninsula. Ukraine and the museums in Moscow-occupied territory both demanded the Scythian finds be sent back to them. After a lengthy battle the Dutch supreme court ruled in June that the items belonged to Ukraine. ”

CBS News: How algorithms determine what we’re buying for the holidays — and beyond. “We’ve all been there: Scrolling through social media and spotting the ads recommending something you never knew you needed, whether it’s the perfect pair of shoes, a gadget to solve an annoying problem or the ideal holiday gift for your mom. As shoppers log on for Cyber Monday sales and the holidays approach, you’re more likely to see gift ideas inspired by and advertised by algorithms, experts in the field of algorithmic commerce and online shopping say.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Irish Independent: Dublin riots: Elon Musk’s X did not take down ‘vile messages’ despite Garda requests, Justice Minister Helen McEntee says . “Helen McEntee says X, formerly Twitter, did not cooperate with Gardaí in taking down ‘vile messages’ last Thursday. A detective at Store Street last Saturday told Minister McEntee that An Garda Síochána had been engaging in real time with social media companies to seek the removal of hate messages and those relating to incitement to violence…. ‘They [other companies] were taking down their vile messages. X were not. They did not engage. They did not fulfil their own customer standards,’ she said.”

TechCrunch: Founder of spyware maker Hacking Team arrested for attempted murder: local media. “The founder of the infamous and now-defunct spyware maker Hacking Team was arrested on Saturday after allegedly stabbing and attempting to murder a relative, according to multiple news reports. David Vincenzetti, who launched Hacking Team in 2003, was arrested when police showed up to his apartment after his cousin called the police, local media reported, because he couldn’t reach his wife on the phone.”

INTERPOL: INTERPOL unveils new biometric screening tool . “In mid-November, a fugitive migrant smuggler was subject to a police check… Wanted on organized crime and human trafficking charges since 2021, the smuggler presented himself as a fellow migrant under a false name, using a fraudulent identification document to avoid detection. The police check, however, was part of an INTERPOL operation that saw the Biometric Hub – a new tool that checks biometric data against the organization’s global fingerprint and facial recognition databases – used remotely for the first time.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

ABC News (Australia): Social media is starting to feel like a playground for adults, and yes, the games are just as repetitive. “More and more social media seems like an all-in adult version of children’s playground games, where nobody’s ever out, and where the game — and the joke — just goes around and around and never gets old. That new catchphrase that would run around the playground for a week or so before it’s replaced by another? That’s pretty much it.”

Northeastern Global News: From the Ice Bucket Challenge to MrBeast — does ‘stunt philanthropy’ make the world a better place? . “MrBeast, or James Donaldson as he is known in real life, is arguably the poster child of stunt philanthropy. With more than 215 million YouTube subscribers, he is one of the platform’s largest content creators — and a self-described philanthropist… Patricia Illingworth, a professor of philosophy and business at Northeastern University and author of ‘Giving Now: Accelerating Human Rights for All,’ considers Donaldson in her philanthropy and ethics courses, and says the YouTube star may not be the force for good that many — Donaldson included — make him out to be.” Good morning, Internet…

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November 30, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Kenya Treaties, Finland Research, Google Drive, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 29, 2023

Kenya Treaties, Finland Research, Google Drive, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Kenya News Agency: Govt Launches Treaty Database. “The Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the African Union (AU), and the government of Sweden, launched a project dubbed ‘Accelerating the Ratification and Domestication of African Union Treaties.’ This will establish and maintain a public website of treaties and international instruments to which Kenya is a party to.”

National Library of Finland: Finnish research data now under one roof. “Research data can be accessed more easily as Finnish research organisations are making their publications available in the Finna.fi search service. The VATT Institute for Economic Research has also made its publications, including research reports, available through Finna.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Google investigating missing files on Drive, caused by desktop app. “Over the past few days, quite a few Google Drive users have noticed files go missing, and now Google is confirming that it is looking into the issue, which is caused by the desktop app.”

Search Engine Journal: Google To Curb Microtargeting In Consumer Finance Ads. “Google will update its personalized ads policy in February 2024 to prevent advertisers from targeting audiences for credit and banking ads based on sensitive factors like gender, age, parental status, marital status, or zip code. Google’s current policy prohibiting ‘Credit in personalized ads’ will be renamed ‘Consumer finance in personalized ads’ under the changes.”

CNN: Major brands are not only pausing ads on Elon Musk’s X. They’re stepping away from the platform altogether. “The blackout on X extends beyond these companies’ corporate accounts, in some cases. For instance, the most high profile accounts affiliated with Disney have gone dark on X, such as @StarWars, @Pixar, and @MarvelStudios, which were previously posting multiple times a day on the platform to their millions of followers. Instead, these brands have switched over to the Meta-owned rival Threads, where they have started actively posting.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Globe and Mail: Google ads for Canadian brands found on Russian adult web sites. “Ads for the Disney+ channel, including The Little Mermaid movie, were placed on an Italian porn website, whose name translates as ‘hamster porn.’ Adalytics found a recruitment ad for the FBI on the explicit Italian site as well as on an Iranian steel company’s website, which may be covered by U.S. sanctions. A report by the advertising research company also found ads for vodka, beer and alcoholic cocktails placed on search engines designed for children.”

WIRED: Palestinians Are Locked Out of Google’s Online Economy. “The internet has given some Palestinians a global audience, but many benefits of online life that billions around the world can take for granted simply don’t work for people in Gaza and the West Bank. In addition to YouTube’s partner program, money transfer services such as PayPal and ecommerce marketplaces, including Amazon, largely bar Palestinian merchants from entry. Google tools for generating revenue from web ads or in-app purchases are technically open to Palestinians but can, in practice, be inaccessible due to challenges verifying their identity or collecting payment.”

Tubefilter: A new platform is trying to take on Twitch and Kick by adding minigames to streaming sessions. “Noice, which describes itself as a “true multiplayer experience,” launched a closed beta on November 21. Like Twitch and Kick, the new platform is a home for streamers who want to publicly broadcast their gameplay. At launch, Noice is offering creator monetization with a favorable revenue split. Streamers will take home 70% of their earnings on the platform, with the other 30% going to Noice.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Okta Says Hackers Stole Data for All Customer Support Users. “Okta Inc. has discovered that hackers who breached its network two months ago stole information on all users of its customer support system — a scope far greater than the 1% of customers the company had previously said were affected.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

LiveScience: Smart glasses could boost privacy by swapping cameras for this 100-year-old technology. “Smart glasses of the future could swap out optical cameras for sonar, which uses sound to track the movements of its wearer, according to a new study. The sonar-based tech could improve accuracy and privacy, as well as make them cheaper to produce.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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November 30, 2023 at 01:15AM
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Maryland Vital Records, Google, Google Assistant, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, November 29, 2023

Maryland Vital Records, Google, Google Assistant, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, November 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Reclaim the Records: The Maryland Motherlode: Births, Marriages, Deaths, and Naturalizations. “MORE THAN FIVE MILLION RECORDS FROM THE STATE OF MARYLAND ARE NOW ONLINE. These records include both the name/date indices as well as full vital records certificates, covering more than a century of Maryland history. They are now freely viewable in the ‘Maryland State Archives’ collection, at the Internet Archive.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Marketing Brew: Google’s working group for news publishers could shut down. “Rob Beeler, a publishing consultant and a former digital ad executive who said he was brought on by Google in 2021 to lead the group, told Marketing Brew that last month the tech giant suggested it would no longer participate in a consortium of publishers first convened to help understand Google’s Privacy Sandbox, its alternative to the third-party cookie.”

9to5 Google: Google Assistant ‘animal of the day’ going the way of the dodo. “Google Assistant has been winding down or consolidating features, especially voice experiences, over the past year, and the latest victim is the whimsical ‘animal of the day’ command.”

Associated Press: Former Google executive ends longshot bid for Dianne Feinstein’s US Senate seat in California. “A former California tech executive is ending her longshot campaign for the U.S. Senate seat once held by the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, she announced Tuesday. Democrat Lexi Reese said in a statement that she has been unable to raise the many millions of dollars needed for a first-time candidate to introduce herself to voters across the nation’s most populous state.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Kyodo News: Japan to recommend A-bomb photo archive for UNESCO heritage list. “The Japanese government decided Tuesday to recommend a collection of photos and videos depicting the devastation in Hiroshima after the August 1945 atomic bombing to a UNESCO documentary heritage program for 2025, the 80th anniversary of the U.S. attack. If accepted, it will mark the first time documents related to the atomic bomb have been added to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Memory of the World Register.”

Washington Post: Elon Musk boosts Pizzagate conspiracy theory that led to D.C. gunfire. (This link goes to a gift article.) “Elon Musk voiced support Tuesday for Pizzagate, the long-debunked conspiracy theory that led a man to fire a rifle inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant in 2016. The far-right theory, a predecessor to QAnon, alleged that the Clintons and Democratic Party leaders ran a secret satanic child sex ring in a D.C. pizzeria known as Comet Ping Pong…. After this story was published, a Washington Post spokesperson said the company had made the decision to pause its advertising on X.”

BusinessWire: GRAMMY Museum® Grant Program Awards $200,000 for Music Research and Sound Preservation (PRESS RELEASE). “The GRAMMY Museum® Grant Program announced today that $200,000 in grants will be awarded to 14 recipients in the United States to help facilitate a range of research on a variety of subjects, as well as support a number of archiving and preservation programs.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

404 Media: Plex Users Fear New Feature Will Leak Porn Habits to Their Friends and Family . “Many Plex users were alarmed when they got a ‘week in review’ email last week that showed them what they and their friends had watched on the popular media server software. Some users are saying that their friends’ softcore porn habits are being revealed to them with the feature, while others are horrified by the potentially invasive nature feature more broadly.”

Gothamist: 4M NYers’ data and medical records were exposed in a breach. Here’s how to protect against ID theft.. “At least 4 million New Yorkers’ private information could be at risk of identity theft after a data breach at a medical transcription company that works with hospitals in New York, state Attorney General Letitia James said Tuesday. The company, Nevada-based Perry Johnson & Associates, works with Northwell Health, which has hospitals and clinics across the five boroughs and Long Island, as well as Crouse Health in Syracuse. About 9 million patients nationwide are affected by the breach, according to the attorney general’s office.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Carnegie Mellon University: Software Engineering Institute Establishes AI Security Incident Response Team . “The Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University today announced the formation of the Artificial Intelligence Security Incident Response Team (AISIRT) to help ensure the safe and effective development and use of AI. AISIRT will analyze and respond to threats and security incidents emerging from advances in AI and machine learning (ML). The team will also lead research efforts in incident analysis and response and vulnerability mitigation involving AI and ML systems.”

The Atlantic: Substack Has a Nazi Problem. “The newsletter-hosting site Substack advertises itself as the last, best hope for civility on the internet—and aspires to a bigger role in politics in 2024. But just beneath the surface, the platform has become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Substack has not only been hosting writers who post overtly Nazi rhetoric on the platform; it profits from many of them.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

New York Times: Nom Nom Nom. What’s the Deal With Cookie Monster’s Cookies?. “The recipe, roughly: Pancake mix, puffed rice, Grape-Nuts and instant coffee, with water in the mixture. The chocolate chips are made using hot glue sticks — essentially colored gobs of glue. The cookies do not have oils, fats or sugars. Those would stain Cookie Monster. They’re edible, but barely.” Great read. Good morning, Internet…

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November 29, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Australia Wildlife Audio, Evernote Misinformation, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 28, 2023

Australia Wildlife Audio, Evernote Misinformation, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 28, 2023
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
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Political Systems and Social Media, Seattle Gay News, CODART, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, November 28, 2023

Political Systems and Social Media, Seattle Gay News, CODART, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, November 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Centre for Economic Policy Research: The political economy of social media: A new eBook. “The emergence of social media has reshaped the way humans communicate, interact and coordinate with each other. Assessing the impact of this transformation on politics has been one of the great social science questions of the last or decade or so, and will continue to occupy researchers for a long time to come. A new CEPR eBook provides a snapshot of how economists have been trying to answer this question.”

King5: ‘A labor of love’: Seattle Gay News working to archive every old publication free for the public to view. “The new owner and publisher of Seattle Gay News (SGN), one of the longest-standing LGBTQIA publications in the country, has an ambitious goal: archive every single issue of the publication for the public to view online…. [Mike] Schultz said SGN’s new website lets you see archives of the publication dating back to the 1970s.” As far as I can tell this is a separate archive than the Seattle Gay News archive created by the state of Washington and launched in February.. I’m mentioning it because it looks like they might have different holdings.

EVENTS

CODART: CODART’s Anniversary Magazine and Symposium Recordings Are Now Available. “On 6 October 2023, CODART organized a public symposium on The Curator of the Future, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which was attended by more than 170 international museum professionals, students and art-lovers. Recordings of the panel discussions and closing remarks by Warda El-Kaddouri are now available online. ”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Tumblr sheds Post Plus subscriptions as the platform downsizes. “Tumblr is doing away with Post Plus, the feature that lets creators charge users a subscription to access their content. Starting on December 1st, creators will no longer be able to enable Post Plus on their blogs. The discontinuation of Post Plus comes just weeks after a leaked memo revealed the platform’s plans to downsize after struggling to meet usage and revenue targets.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Android Police: Google Drive seems to have lost some user data, reports say. “It looks like Google Drive is experiencing some issues with disappearing files. Multiple users have taken to the Google Support forum to report that they lost access to some of the files that they’ve uploaded to Google Drive, with them seemingly fully gone from the cloud service. Google recommends you don’t make any changes to your Google Drive if you’re affected while the company investigates the issue.”

ABC News: Paris mayor says she’s quitting Elon Musk’s ‘global sewer’ platform X. “The mayor of future Olympic host city Paris says she is quitting X, accusing Elon Musk ‘s platform previously known as Twitter of spreading disinformation and hatred and of becoming a ‘gigantic global sewer’ that is toxic for democracy and constructive debate.”

University of Southern California: Records of Trailblazing Latino Journalist Association Find Home at USC Libraries. “The USC Libraries have acquired the records of CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California, the trailblazing professional association fostering diversity within the news media for more than a half century. Founded in 1972 in Los Angeles and formerly known as the California Chicano News Media Association, CCNMA was the first advocacy organization for journalists of color to incorporate. To this day, it promotes the advancement of Latino journalists through scholarships to high school and college students, educational programs, job fairs, and professional development opportunities.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Slick videos or more ‘authentic’ content? The Israel-Gaza battles raging on TikTok and X. “When I open up my TikTok feed, two videos play one after the other. The first shows four Israeli soldiers dancing with guns, set against a blue sky. The other is a young woman speaking from her bedroom, with a prominent pro-Palestinian caption. TikTok’s algorithm will determine what kind of videos I want to see and recommend similar content, based on which of the two videos I watch until the end.”

Rolling Stone: We Spied on Trump’s ‘Southern White House’ From Our Couches. “We didn’t have to risk life and limb, posing as the help and smuggling information out through a well-funded spy ring. All we had to do was sign up for an online service, enter the address of Mar-a-Lago, and click a button. Within a few minutes, we had a report profiling thousands of visitors to Trump’s club over the course of an entire year, including details like where they likely live and work, their ages, incomes, ethnicities, education levels, where they were immediately before visiting, and where they spent their time on the property once they got there.”

CBS News: 2 N.J. emergency rooms diverting patients after Hackensack Meridian Health hit with potential cyber attack. “A ransomware attack on a health system in New Jersey is forcing two hospitals in the state to divert patients coming to their emergency rooms to other facilities. One of the hospitals is Hackensack Meridian Pascack Valley Medical Center in Westwood and the other is in Montclair.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: Opinion: Schools should ban smartphones. Parents should help.. “Understandably, individual schools and school districts — in Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere — are trying to crack down on smartphones. Students are required to store the devices in backpacks or lockers during classes, or to place them in magnetic locking pouches. In 2024, these efforts should go even further: Impose an outright ban on bringing cellphones to school, which parents should welcome and support.”

University of Arkansas Little Rock: UA Little Rock Receives $5 Million From U.S. Army To Combat Adversarial Information Campaigns. “The project, set to run through 2025, aims to identify research gaps in deviant socio-technical behaviors, shape an agenda focused on developing strategies that can counter emerging threats, and create tools for near real-time analysis of such threats.” 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 28, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Royal Court Theatre, Secure AI System Development, Google Accounts, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 27, 2023

Royal Court Theatre, Secure AI System Development, Google Accounts, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, November 27, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

BroadwayWorld: The Royal Court Theatre Creates Digital Archive Allowing Open Access For All. “The Royal Court Theatre announced the launch of Living Archive, their first ever standalone online archive. The digital archive holds information on every play which has ever been presented on the Royal Court stages from when it opened its doors in 1956 to the present day, totalling almost 2000 works by over 1000 writers.”

CISA: DHS CISA and UK NCSC Release Joint Guidelines for Secure AI System Development. “…the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) today jointly released Guidelines for Secure AI System Development to help developers of any systems that use AI make informed cybersecurity decisions at every stage of the development process.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NPR: Google is deleting unused accounts this week. Here’s how to save your old data. “Starting Dec. 1, Google will start deleting ‘inactive’ accounts — that is, accounts that haven’t been used in at least two years. Google accounts give access to the company’s other products, including Gmail, Drive, Docs, Meet, Calendar, Photos and YouTube. That means emails, videos, photos, documents and any other content sitting in an inactive account are at risk.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Audrey Salkeld, Pioneering Historian of Everest, Dies at 87
. “Audrey Salkeld, a pioneering historian of Mount Everest who herself made it to within 8,000 feet of the summit, died on Oct. 11 in Bristol, England. She was 87…. In a tribute, Climbing magazine called Ms. Salkeld ‘the world’s pre-eminent expert in Everest history.'”

Rest of World: The end of anonymity on Chinese social media. “On October 31, Weibo, as well as several other major Chinese social media platforms including WeChat, Douyin, Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, and Kuaishou, announced that they now required popular users’ legal names to be made visible to the public. Weibo stated in a public post that the new rule would first apply to all users with over 1 million followers, then to those with over 500,000.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Pentagon’s AI initiatives accelerate hard decisions on lethal autonomous weapons. “Artificial intelligence employed by the U.S. military has piloted pint-sized surveillance drones in special operations forces’ missions and helped Ukraine in its war against Russia. It tracks soldiers’ fitness, predicts when Air Force planes need maintenance and helps keep tabs on rivals in space. Now, the Pentagon is intent on fielding multiple thousands of relatively inexpensive, expendable AI-enabled autonomous vehicles by 2026 to keep pace with China.”

Georgia Tech: Largest Study of its Kind Shows Outdated Password Practices are Widespread. “Three out of four of the world’s most popular websites are failing to meet minimum requirement standards and allowing tens of millions of users to create weak passwords. The findings are part of a new Georgia Tech cybersecurity study that examines the current state of password policies across the internet.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Forget dystopian scenarios – AI is pervasive today, and the risks are often hidden. “The Biden administration’s recent executive order and enforcement efforts by federal agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission are the first steps in recognizing and safeguarding against algorithmic harms. And though large language models, such as GPT-3 that powers ChatGPT, and multimodal large language models, such as GPT-4, are steps on the road toward artificial general intelligence, they are also algorithms people are increasingly using in school, work and daily life. It’s important to consider the biases that result from widespread use of large language models.”

PsyPost: People worse at detecting AI faces are more confident in their ability to spot them, study finds . “In new research published in Psychological Science, a team of scientists have shed light on a perplexing phenomenon in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI): AI-generated faces can appear more ‘human’ than actual human faces.”

The Guardian: ‘Cultural vandalism’: row as Kew Gardens and Natural History Museum plan to move collections out of London. “London’s ageing buildings, crumbling storage space, and soaring land prices mean a move beyond the M25 is the only realistic way to protect the capital’s swelling backroom collections of scientific and cultural treasures while improving researchers’ access to them, say senior museum staff. The total price-tag for the venture could top half a billion pounds. But this vast rehousing project has not been universally welcomed.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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November 28, 2023 at 01:59AM
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