A Passage of Water, USPTO, Social Media Advertising, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 2, 2023

A Passage of Water, USPTO, Social Media Advertising, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 2, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

NASA: Google’s ‘A Passage of Water’ Brings NASA’s Water Data to Life. “As part of the long-standing partnership between NASA and Google, NASA worked with Google Arts & Culture and artist Yiyun Kang to create an interactive digital experience around global freshwater resources titled ‘A Passage of Water.’ This immersive experience leverages data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites and new high-resolution data from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission to illustrate how climate change is impacting Earth’s water cycle.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

US Patent and Trademark Office: USPTO’s new trademark search system to launch November 30. “To provide a modernized search experience that can adapt to the needs of the trademark community, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will be launching our cloud-based trademark search system on Thursday, November 30. This launch is the culmination of an eight-month partnership with our stakeholders. The new system provides a more stable search environment with a simplified search interface that also supports complex searching for advanced users.”

Reuters: Walmart says it is not advertising on social platform X. “Walmart said on Friday it is not advertising on social media platform X, one of the latest brands to say it has dropped the Elon Musk-owned site. ‘We aren’t advertising on X as we’ve found other platforms to better reach our customers,’ a Walmart spokesperson said.”

TechCrunch: Bluesky rolls out automated moderation tools, plus user and moderation lists. “Bluesky, the startup aiming to build a decentralized social network to take on Twitter/X, says it has begun deploying new safety tooling to help moderate content on the network through automation. Although still in private beta, the company has already made headlines for issues around content moderation in recent months after it initially didn’t ban a member making death threats, and later didn’t catch that some people were creating accounts with racial slurs in their usernames.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

TechRadar: EVE Online players are creating the first ‘AI empire’ guided by Chat GPT-4. “Just when you thought the sci-fi sandbox MMO couldn’t get more interesting after EVE Online was rocked to the core by a single player, pilots joined forces to create the Neural Nexus, an AI-led player corporation. This decision was made with a clear goal in mind. Firstly, it will reduce the reliance on a single leader as AI will now be available to all the corporation players at any time of the day. It also means that the AI leader will keep a clear and consistent vision for what the corporation should be, as well as give new dynamic role-playing opportunities for its members.”

Peninsula Daily News: Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe gets grant to digitize collections. “The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe has received a $14,536 grant from the Office of the Secretary of State to find previously undigitized items from their collections, digitize them and add them to The House of Seven Generations Online Museum. The Washington Digital Heritage grant is among the 13 given local libraries in 2023. A total of $152,476 was awarded by the Office of the Secretary of State, which oversees the Washington State Library and the Washington State Archives, announced in late September.”

Washington Post: News outlets turn to Reddit as Musk’s X descends into chaos. “As Twitter continues to decline as a place to post news, media companies have been seeking out alternative platforms to promote their work, and more are turning to Reddit. But by promoting the article in a prominent snark subreddit, Business Insider’s Reddit account has raised questions about how media companies should navigate a new social media landscape dominated by freewheeling, self-policed groups.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: Federal judge vows to investigate Google for intentionally destroying chats. “Judge James Donato is overseeing Epic v. Google, a case that could determine the future of the Android app store — but testimony in this case may have more repercussions for Google too. On Friday, Judge Donato vowed to investigate Google for intentionally and systematically suppressing evidence, calling the company’s conduct ‘a frontal assault on the fair administration of justice.'”

Associated Press: Brazilian city enacts an ordinance that was secretly written by ChatGPT. “City lawmakers in Brazil have enacted what appears to be the nation’s first legislation written entirely by artificial intelligence — even if they didn’t know it at the time. The experimental ordinance was passed in October in the southern city of Porto Alegre and city councilman Ramiro Rosário revealed this week that it was written by a chatbot, sparking objections and raising questions about the role of artificial intelligence in public policy.”

New York Times: Inside U.S. Efforts to Untangle an A.I. Giant’s Ties to China. “American spy agencies have warned about the Emirati firm G42 and its work with large Chinese companies that U.S. officials consider security threats.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

North Carolina State University: To Help Autonomous Vehicles Make Moral Decisions, Researchers Ditch the ‘Trolley Problem’. “Researchers have developed a new experiment to better understand what people view as moral and immoral decisions related to driving vehicles, with the goal of collecting data to train autonomous vehicles how to make ‘good’ decisions. The work is designed to capture a more realistic array of moral challenges in traffic than the widely discussed life-and-death scenario inspired by the so-called ‘trolley problem.'”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

State of Michigan: Gov. Whitmer Launches Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential . “Today, Governor Gretchen Whitmer officially launched operation of the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential, or MiLEAP. The new department, established by executive order in July, is tasked with improving outcomes from preschool through postsecondary so anyone can ‘make it in Michigan’ with a solid education and a path to a good-paying job.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 2, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Dutch and Flemish Art Collections, San Diego Music, PizzaGate, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 1, 2023

Dutch and Flemish Art Collections, San Diego Music, PizzaGate, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

CODART: More than 70 Summaries of Museums and Institutions with Dutch and Flemish Collections in the Netherlands Published. “As part of CODART’s 25th anniversary year, the summary texts of museum collections with Dutch and Flemish art on this website are being greatly expanded in two installments. In March we announced the addition of more than 40 summaries of Belgian collections, and now we announce the addition of around 70 new summary texts of public collections in the Netherlands with significant holdings of art from the Low Countries. The texts were written exclusively for the CODART website by, or in collaboration with, curators of the collection in question.”

New-to-me, from San Diego Reader: Jim MacDonald’s cellphone captures over 2,000 local performances. “Just a Fan Recording Local Music is the name of Jim MacDonald’s YouTube channel; it boasts over 2000 cell phone videos of live performances by local artists, 586 subscribers, and around 191,000 views. MacDonald resides in Ocean Beach, and in 2019, he started walking over to the Farmers Market bandstage on Wednesdays to check out performers like Yvonne Brown of the Kings.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Vice: Pizzagate Rears Its Head Again, and Not Just Because of Elon Musk. “Over the past several weeks, Elon Musk, a business genius, has further devalued Twitter, the website he owns and insists on calling X, by posting things and engaging with things supportive of Pizzagate. The 2016 conspiracy theory makes no sense on its own terms and has been repeatedly and roundly debunked anyway, including by a gun-wielding citizen carrying out his own investigation. (He found there were no children being held in the basement of Comet Ping Pong, which does not have a basement.)”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Futurism: Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers. “There was nothing in Drew Ortiz’s author biography at Sports Illustrated to suggest that he was anything other than human…. The only problem? Outside of Sports Illustrated, Drew Ortiz doesn’t seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history. And even more strangely, his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots, where he’s described as ‘neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes.'”

Search Engine Land: Google Ads boss Jerry Dischler steps down. “The executive in charge of Google Ads, Jerry Dischler, stepped down after more than 15 years with Google. Google wouldn’t say whether Dischler will stay with the company, only that he would take on a ‘new challenge.’ Google confirmed to Search Engine Land that the decision was not related to the recent federal antitrust trial.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: How Your Child’s Online Mistake Can Ruin Your Digital Life. “Google-owned YouTube has A.I.-powered systems that review the hundreds of hours of video that are uploaded to the service every minute. The scanning process can sometimes go awry and tar innocent individuals as child abusers. The New York Times has documented other episodes in which parents’ digital lives were upended by naked photos and videos of their children that Google’s A.I. systems flagged and that human reviewers determined to be illicit. Some parents have been investigated by the police as a result.”

Europol: International collaboration leads to dismantlement of ransomware group in Ukraine amidst ongoing war. “In an unprecedented effort, law enforcement and judicial authorities from seven countries have joined forces with Europol and Eurojust to dismantle and apprehend in Ukraine key figures behind significant ransomware operations wreaking havoc across the world. The operation comes at a critical time, as the country grapples with the challenges of Russia’s military aggression against its territory.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Utrecht University: Revealed: this is what this 15th-century painting looked like before it was painted over. “Assistant Professor Sanne Frequin was one of the three speakers at the Paleissymposium, with King Willem-Alexander as host. Frequin spoke about her Lindau project, in which she and her team digitally restored the painting The Crucifixion (around 1425) and made a 3D print of the work. The 3D reconstruction was revealed for the first time during the symposium.”

University of Kentucky: UK researcher developing anti-tracking and robocall-free architecture. “The project, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), is led by Yang Xiao, Ph.D., assistant professor in Department of Computer Science in the UK Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering. Its goal is to develop an anti-tracking and robocall-free mobile access architecture to provide maximum privacy protection for mobile users.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

AI Weirdness: AI Weirdness advent calendar 2023. “It’s 2023 and the combo of GPT-4/DALL-E3 can generate passable versions of the saccharine Christmas drawings in an advent calendar. They cannot, however, label them correctly. Also sometimes you get sweatermugs. This means the 2023 AI-generated advent calendar is happening!”

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December 2, 2023 at 01:43AM
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Medieval England, Library of Congress, Tokyo Laboratory, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, December 1, 2023

Medieval England, Library of Congress, Tokyo Laboratory, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, December 1, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Guardian: Archaeologists reveal life stories of hundreds of people from medieval Cambridge. “Archaeologists at Cambridge University have reconstructed the ‘biographies’ of hundreds of the city’s ordinary medieval residents by examining their skeletons in detail, using a wealth of scientific data to fill out the life stories of poor or disadvantaged people whose names were never recorded.”

EVENTS

Library of Congress: Join Us on 12/7 for Human Rights Day: Science Literacy and the Law. “We hope you can join us on December 7th at 3 p.m., via Zoom, for our Human Rights Day celebration…. Dr. Sarah Cooper will provide this year’s lecture on scientific literacy and the law. Science helps the law to understand the world in which legal policy, including human rights standards like the right to a fair and public trial, must operate. Yet, it is widely recognized that law and science approach the world in different ways: law must provide finality and stability, whereas science is encouraged to embrace new ideas so that we can better understand the natural world.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Anime News Network: Toho Archive Accepts Unclaimed Film Masters After Tokyo Laboratory Shuts Down. “Tokyo Laboratory (Tokyo Genzōsho, or Togen) announced on Thursday that the TOHO Archive will now take over the management of all of Tokyo Laboratory’s remaining unclaimed film masters, instead of the masters being destroyed. Tokyo Laboratory shut down on Thursday after 68 years of operation.”

New York Times: Advertisers Say They Do Not Plan to Return to X After Musk’s Comments. “At least half a dozen marketing agencies said the brands they represent were standing firm against advertising on X, while others said they had advised advertisers to stop posting anything on the platform. Some temporary spending pauses that advertisers have enacted in recent weeks against X are likely to turn into permanent freezes, they added, with Mr. Musk’s comments giving them no incentive to return.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Viet Nam News: New media art pioneers aim to create digital archive. “With a desire to experiment with technology and explore the capability of the human voice, two artists have developed a surreal art-technology project Voice Gems – a generative system and voice archive that transforms human voices into digital gems.”

Hollywood Reporter: The Rise of AI-Powered Stars: Big Money and Risks. “As the Hollywood guilds grapple with the potential for generative AI to transform film and TV production, tech firms are using the power of celebrities to introduce the underlying technology to the masses. ‘There’s a huge possible business there and I think that’s what YouTube and the music companies see, for better or for worse,’ says Gavin Purcell, the former executive producer of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon who now hosts the AI for Humans podcast. ‘The Facebook’s and the YouTubes are trying to get people onboarded with what they see as the next UGC, user generated content world, which is this AI stuff.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Vice: ChatGPT Can Reveal Personal Information From Real People, Google Researchers Show. “Previous work has already shown that image generators can be forced to generate examples from their training data—including copyrighted works—and an early OpenAI LLM produced contact information belonging to a researcher. But Google’s new research shows that ChatGPT, which is a massively popular consumer app with millions of users, can also be made to do this. Worryingly, some of the extracted training data contained identifying information from real people, including names, email addresses, and phone numbers.”

FedScoop: DHS releases commercial generative AI guidance and is experimenting with building its own models. “The Department of Homeland Security is leaning into the use of generative artificial intelligence by issuing new guidance on how its workforce should use commercial applications of the technology and experimenting with building its own models, the department’s top IT official told FedScoop.”

Associated Press: Congressmen ask DOJ to investigate water utility hack, warning it could happen anywhere. “Three members of Congress have asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate how foreign hackers breached a water authority near Pittsburgh, prompting the nation’s top cyberdefense agency to warn other water and sewage-treatment utilities that they may be vulnerable.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Sydney: Sydney researchers discover hidden structure in networks like Twitter. “Researchers at the University of Sydney have discovered new structural relationships in complex networks, such as X (formerly Twitter) and political blogs, that could help explain the digital flow of information.”

Ars Technica: New “Stable Video Diffusion” AI model can animate any still image. “On Tuesday, Stability AI released Stable Video Diffusion, a new free AI research tool that can turn any still image into a short video—with mixed results. It’s an open-weights preview of two AI models that use a technique called image-to-video, and it can run locally on a machine with an Nvidia GPU.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Music Radar: This web app randomly samples thousands of YouTube videos to create a playable grid of loops, giving you endless sonic inspiration. “Built by Technology Greg, Sonic Garbage pulls over 3000 randomly generated YouTube audio snippets into a colour-coded grid and sorts them by ‘audio energy’ (volume?) or length, giving you a playable set of randomized samples that is tons of fun to mess around with. Sure, the majority of them may not sound great, but play around for a few minutes and it’s remarkably easy to stumble on combinations of loops that fit together just right and create something unexpectedly musical.” It really is, I tried it. It was amazing to me how much random audio actually made half-decent samples. Good morning, Internet…

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December 1, 2023 at 06:31PM
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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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