Mayfield Tornado Oral History Project, Ireland Child Development, Google Search Trends 2023, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 12, 2023

Mayfield Tornado Oral History Project, Ireland Child Development, Google Search Trends 2023, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 12, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Kentucky: Mayfield Tornado Oral History Project commemorates loss, celebrates resilience of Western Kentucky community . “Six months after the disaster, Rebecca Freihaut, Ph.D., a risk and crisis communications expert who works at the University of Central Florida and UK alumna, partnered with University of Kentucky Libraries Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History to speak with Mayfield residents about their experiences…. The result is the Mayfield, Kentucky 2021 Oral History Project, a harrowing but hopeful collection of interviews that commemorates a tragic loss of life while also capturing stories of survival, resilience and regrowth.”

Government of Ireland: New Early Learning and Childcare Data website launched by Minister O’Gorman . “Roderic O’Gorman, Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth today launched the Early Learning and Childcare Data website. This new website will include a series of interactive dashboards that will be released by Pobal on behalf of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) over the coming weeks and months. The first two interactive dashboards – ‘Overview of Service Providers’ and ‘Capacity’ – are released today.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NBC Chicago: What did you Google in 2023? ‘Barbie,’ Israel-Hamas war are among the year’s top internet searches. “Your Google search history for 2023 has arrived. Well, actually, the world’s. On Monday, the California-based tech giant released its ‘Year in Search,’ a roundup of 2023’s top global queries, ranging from unforgettable pop culture moments (hello, Barbenheimer), to the loss of beloved figures and tragic news carrying worldwide repercussions.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Sky News: Elon Musk fact-checked on X by his own system – but claims it has been ‘gamed by state actors’. “The billionaire has promoted the community-based fact-checking system as his flagship policy to tackle disinformation on the social media platform since his $44bn (£38bn) takeover in October last year. But on Sunday, one of his own posts was marked with a community note, after he commented on the detention of US YouTuber Gonzalo Lira in Ukraine.”

New York Times: Using A.I. to Talk to the Dead. “Some people are turning to A.I. technology as a way to commune with the dead, but its use as part of the mourning process has raised ethical questions while leaving some who have experimented with it unsettled.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Russia hacking: ‘FSB in years-long cyber attacks on UK’, says government. “The UK is accusing Russia’s Security Service, the FSB, of a sustained cyber-hacking campaign, targeting politicians and others in public life. The government said one group stole data through cyber-attacks, which was later made public, including material linked to the 2019 election. Russia has repeatedly denied claims it is involved in such activities.”

Washington Post: Air Force disciplines 15 people in Discord leaks investigation. “The Air Force disciplined 15 members of the Air National Guard after an internal investigation found that a ‘lack of supervision’ and a ‘culture of complacency’ helped enable a 21-year-old airman to share hundreds of classified documents online in the sprawling leak of U.S. military secrets that rocked the national security establishment this spring.”

CNN: Supreme Court won’t let RFK Jr. intervene in case challenging efforts to combat social media disinformation. “The Supreme Court on Monday declined to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. join a challenge to a case concerning the Biden administration’s communications with social media companies about online posts the government views as disinformation. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito said in a brief dissent that he would have allowed Kennedy to intervene in the case, which the high court will hear this term.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Science: Leading scholarly database listed hundreds of papers from ‘hijacked’ journals. “Scopus, a widely used database of scientific papers operated by publishing giant Elsevier, plays an important role as an arbiter of scholarly legitimacy, with many institutions around the world expecting their researchers to publish in journals indexed on the platform. But users beware, a new study warns.” This rang a bell so I checked the Firehose. Nature had a similar story in February 2021..

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Boing Boing: The Arizona Daily Star collaborates with local artists to turn newspaper into wrapping paper. “How cool is this? The Arizona Daily Star collaborated with local Tucson artists to create holiday wrapping paper. Each day between December 3 and December 14, a full page of wrapping paper is included in the print newspaper. You can also visit the website to download each day’s featured art-as-wrapping-paper.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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December 13, 2023 at 01:40AM
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Conservation Documentation Archive, AudioGames, YouTube Premium, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, December 12, 2023

Conservation Documentation Archive, AudioGames, YouTube Premium, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, December 12, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Duke University Preservation Underground: Announcing the Conservation Documentation Archive. “Today we are excited to publicly announce the launch of The Conservation Documentation Archive (CDA). This is the culmination of several years of work to digitize and make available all of the conservation documentation that has been produced as part of caring for Duke’s collections for the last 26 years.”

New-to-me and discovered via a conversation on Mastodon: AudioGames. From the front page: “Using sound, games can have dimensions of atmosphere, and possibilities for gameplay that don’t exist with visuals alone, as well as providing games far more accessible to people with all levels of sight. This site exists as a community portal for all things to do with audiogames. Here you will find news, articles, an active community forum and our database of over 500 titles on platforms from Microsoft Windows to iOS.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tubefilter: Some YouTube Premium users have held onto lower rates. They can expect price hikes in 2024.. “More price hikes are coming to YouTube Premium. Or, to put it more accurately: Users who were previously exempt from price hikes will be required to pay up just like anyone else.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Mashable: Elon Musk’s AI assistant Grok roasts its creator. “Grok, the AI assistant on X (formerly Twitter), launched on Friday for Premium+ subscribers (those who pay $16/month) and has already spun a flurry of conversation. Nearly immediately, users noticed that Grok is ‘woke’; it doesn’t share its creator Elon Musk’s right-wing political or cultural views. For instance, as Mashable’s Cecily Mauran pointed out, Grok isn’t aligned with Elon Musk’s anti-trans beliefs, responding to a question of whether trans women are women with ‘yes.’ Not only that but, apparently, Grok isn’t afraid to roast its creator.”

Route Fifty: Data literacy: the drive to educate the public sector workforce. “There are certain positions in state and local government that everyone recognizes as essential to the successful use of data. They’re the obvious ones: data analysts, data scientists and experts in privacy and ethics. Those roles are hard to fill, but even when they are, there’s still a missing link. Michelle Littlefield, the chief data officer for the city and county of San Francisco, refers to this link as ‘upskilling the workforce.'”

WIRED: Fake Taylor Swift Quotes Are Being Used to Spread Anti-Ukraine Propaganda. “The disinformation campaign, which was launched in November, reached at least 7.6 million people on Facebook alone, according to a database of the ads reviewed by WIRED and collected by Reset, a nonprofit that provides grants to those tackling disinformation. It’s still in progress, and two separate groups of disinformation researchers believe the campaign is run by a notorious Russian influence operation dubbed Doppelganger that has in the past been linked to the Kremlin.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: Google Antitrust Trial Focused on Android App Store Payments to Be Handed off to Jury to Decide. “A federal court jury is poised begin its deliberations in an antitrust trial focused on whether Google’s efforts to profit from its app store for Android smartphones have been illegally gouging consumers and stifling innovation.”

Washington Post: 2024 could be the ‘deepfake’ election. Few states are acting.. “As the 2024 election campaign heats up, there’s virtually no doubt that political actors of all stripes — including some deliberately trying to mislead voters — will turn to AI and deepfakes as the latest weapon in the political communications arsenal. They will do so in an environment in which just a handful of states have passed laws designed to limit the forgeries’ influence, while Congress has introduced a few pieces of legislation that have gone nowhere, at least to date.”

Europol: Europol warning on the criminal use of Bluetooth trackers for geolocalisation. “Based on the technological capabilities of Bluetooth trackers, and the information shared with Europol, it is confirmed that drug traffickers use them to track the transit of illicit cargo. Through the trackers, cargo can be traced after arrival in ports, and onward by road towards storage locations in European markets. They are likely also used to locate illicit shipments upon arrival in ports. To warn about the misuse of this technology, Europol has issued a restricted early warning notification to all EU Member States, as well as a public version.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Brookings Institution: What should be done about the growing influence of industry in AI research?. “Enabling academic researchers to play a larger, publicly-minded role in AI will require a variety of initiatives. To ensure academia has sufficient talent, academic researchers will need direct support to keep them from leaving for industry, and more open immigration policies will be needed to attract and retain promising researchers from other countries. To let academic researchers work on cutting-edge projects, investments will need to be made in public computing platforms and data.”

The Guardian: Scrawled bits of paper and an A-Z: How I went cold turkey on Google Maps. “Google Maps is an important and often necessary part of modern life. However, it has its problems. It has no time for meandering. The blue dot does not allow for distraction and discovery. It is there to get you from A to B. Removing it from my life has turned journeys around the city into richer, more enriching experiences. It has allowed me to feel part of things, and has made me feel more engaged with the place in which I live. That, I think, makes the occasional wrong turn well worth it.” I was glad to read this article because it’s an excellent metaphor for how I feel about AI-generated search results, even when they are correct.

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

BBC: The pro gamer who has to rely upon sound alone. “In the competitive world of professional gaming, one gifted player goes by the username Rattlehead. At the tournaments he attends in the US, his opponents quickly spot that he, real name Carlos Vasquez, is, by his own description, ‘completely blind’. They then let their guard down, wrongly thinking that they are set for an easy game of popular fighting series Mortal Kombat. And he often beats them.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 12, 2023 at 06:31PM
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US Civil War History, COP Conference Tracker, Google, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 11, 2023

US Civil War History, COP Conference Tracker, Google, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 11, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Cowboy State Daily: Casper-Based Database Revolutionizes Virtual Access For Civil War Buffs. “The website allows historians — amateur and professional — to dig into the nitty gritty of Civil War regiments, weapons and uniforms, or just to see how that great-great-great uncle lived on the battlefields from 1861-1865.”

Circular: New AI tool can analyse and explain all COP documents. “Pentatonic’s COP Tracker allows users to search the hundreds of pages of conference session documents, such as draft decisions, conclusions, and action reports, that the summit publishes each year. Users can generate ‘bespoke’ AI summaries and interact with a chat function to ask questions.” The site also makes it easy to hide the AI components if you’re just interested in the documents.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Search Results Super Volatile Days After Reviews Update Completed. “The last likely Google confirmed update of the year, the November 2023 reviews update, completed last Thursday afternoon on the 7th. But days after it completed the Google search results are still super volatile and the fluctuations and chatter are heated.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Gizmodo: Google’s NotebookLM Could Be the Ultimate AI-Based Notes App if It Doesn’t Lie to You. “NotebookLM lies, makes stuff up, and does it in some of the strangest ways possible. As an experiment, I plugged in a story I wrote a few years ago, along with a few supplementary documents, into NotebookLM and asked it to craft a query letter to send to literary agents. It got some parts right about my story but then misinterpreted whole swathes of its structure and plot. It then tried to lie and say I was a graduate of the University of California Berkeley (I’m not) and that I’m a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.”

The Messenger: X Looks to Small Advertisers After Elon Musk Attacks Big Brands: Report. “After antisemitic content was found near advertisements bought by major brands on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, some of the world’s largest companies pulled their spending on the platform. Now, X is going after a new demographic: small businesses.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Stuff New Zealand: Social media vitriol has ‘profound effect’ on council staff. “‘Yous are proving to be ABSOLUTELY USELESS,’ reads one, under a Tasman District Council post about a cycle lane. ‘You f**cken clowns, no brains at all.’ ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING??!? WHO IS MAKING THESE INCOMPETENT DECISIONS!?’ another shouts. Stuff contacted Tasman and Nelson councils to ask how they dealt with social media vitriol after a council employee, who asked to remain anonymous, got in touch to express their distress about such comments.”

New York Times: That QR Code You’re About to Scan Could Be Risky, F.T.C. Warns. “Scammers have used QR codes to steal personal information by imitating legitimate companies or sending deceptive emails and text messages, the Federal Trade Commission said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT News: MIT group releases white papers on governance of AI. “Providing a resource for U.S. policymakers, a committee of MIT leaders and scholars has released a set of policy briefs that outlines a framework for the governance of artificial intelligence. The approach includes extending current regulatory and liability approaches in pursuit of a practical way to oversee AI.”

University of Waterloo: Is Alexa sexist? In short, yes. “University of Waterloo professor and Canada Research Chair in Technology and Social Change Dr. Lai-Tze Fan analyzed hundreds of Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa’s voice-driven skills. Dr. Fan’s goal was to better understand how the encoded technology mirrors and reinforces traditionally feminized labour and sociocultural expectations.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Ars Technica: Marbled paper, frosty fireworks among 2023 Gallery of Fluid Motion winners. “Marbled paper is an art form that dates back at least to the 17th century, when European travelers to the Middle East brought back samples and bound them into albums. Its visually striking patterns arise from the complex hydrodynamics of paint interacting with water, inspiring a winning video entry in this year’s Gallery of Fluid Motion.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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December 12, 2023 at 01:31AM
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Digital Transformation Executive Orders, PrivaSeer, Oregon Public Investments, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, December 11, 2023

Digital Transformation Executive Orders, PrivaSeer, Oregon Public Investments, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, December 11, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

StateScoop: New website catalogs states’ digital-transformation executive orders. “The new website includes a data dashboard and database of executive orders. It compiles and analyzes executive orders spanning the last decade. Users can search the orders by group or filter them by state or territory, year of enactment or topic. The group also highlighted a handful of executive orders that represent bold action, such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s order creating the Commonwealth Office of Digital Experience.”

Future of Privacy Project: The PrivaSeer Project In 2023: Access To 1.4 Million Privacy Policies In One Searchable Body Of Documents. “In the summer of 2021, FPF announced our participation in a collaborative project with researchers from the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Michigan to develop and build a searchable database of privacy policies and other privacy-related documents, with the support of the National Science Foundation. This project, PrivaSeer, has since become an evolving, publicly available search engine of more than 1.4 million privacy policies.” I did mention this project a couple of years ago but it seems to have grown considerably since then.

KLCC: Oregon launches database to track public investments. “The Oregon Department of Treasury has launched a new tool to track how the state invests. The agency manages nearly $100 billion in public employee retirement funds. Around 400,000 public workers are beneficiaries. It means Oregon is a shareholder in publicly traded companies around the world. Previously, if you wanted details on how Oregon used its shareholder votes, you’d need to make a public records request. State Treasurer Tobias Read said now, all that is online.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Variety: Elon Musk Says Far-Right Firebrand Alex Jones Will Be Reinstated on X/Twitter. “Elon Musk, continuing his campaign to make X a ‘free speech’ refuge even to the detriment of the company’s business interests, said he is reinstating the account of far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.”

404 Media: Civitai and OctoML Introduce Radical New Measures to Stop Abuse After 404 Media Investigation. “Civitai, a text-to-image AI model sharing platform, is seeking a new cloud computing provider and instructing its millions of users to complain to its current provider, OctoML, after OctoML decided to end its business relationship with Civitai entirely, after a 404 Media investigation.”

Man of Many: GTA VI Trailer Breaks the Internet with Record-Shattering 24 Hours. “While it’s still a long, long road to Grand Theft Auto VI (set to release sometime in 2025), that hasn’t stopped Rockstar Games’ upcoming juggernaut from breaking records. The first trailer for GTA VI dropped recently, sending the whole of the internet into a frenzy, and according to Guinness World Records, the new trailer has already shattered three official world records. Within a mere 24 hours, the trailer had amassed a staggering 90.4 million views (currently sitting at 121 million), setting a new record for the most-watched video game trailer ever.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Guardian: Google profiting from sale of zombie knives in UK despite claims of ban. “Google is profiting from ads offering lethal weapons for sale to people in the UK – including 17in zombie knives, ‘military tactical’ blades and ‘zombie killer sword apocalypse machetes’ – despite claiming to ban them.”

The Verge: The quiet plan to make the internet feel faster. “Engineers and major companies are pushing a technology called L4S that they say could make the web feel dramatically faster. But how?”

Search Engine Journal: OpenAI Investigates ‘Lazy’ GPT-4 Complaints On Google Reviews, X. “OpenAI, the company that launched ChatGPT a little over a year ago, has recently taken to social media to address concerns regarding the ‘lazy’ performance of GPT-4 on social media and Google Reviews.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: The Generative AI Copyright Fight Is Just Getting Started. “The biggest fight of the generative AI revolution is headed to the courtroom—and no, it’s not about the latest boardroom drama at OpenAI. Book authors, artists, and coders are challenging the practice of teaching AI models to replicate their skills using their own work as a training manual. The debate centers on the billions of works underpinning the impressive wordsmithery of tools like ChatGPT, the coding prowess of Github’s Copilot, and artistic flair of image generators like that of startup Midjourney.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Michigan: Biases in large image-text AI model favor wealthier, Western perspectives. “AI model that pairs text, images performs poorly on lower-income or non-Western images, potentially increasing inequality in digital technology representation.”

University of Texas at Austin: Census Bureau’s Proposal Threatens Integrity of Race and Ethnicity Data. “As a demographer and former analyst with the bureau, I support the desire to achieve accurate data for these populations. But the combined question is riddled with too many ethical and methodological flaws to be considered a viable solution. As it stands, the question conflates race and ethnicity by making both concepts co-equal and relies on a coding infrastructure that forcibly reassigns people to race groups they did not initially identify with.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 11, 2023 at 06:31PM
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ICANN, Quiche Browser, GDPR-Compliant WordPress, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 10, 2023

ICANN, Quiche Browser, GDPR-Compliant WordPress, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 10, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Krebs on Security: ICANN Launches Service to Help With WHOIS Lookups. “More than five years after domain name registrars started redacting personal data from all public domain registration records, the non-profit organization overseeing the domain industry has introduced a centralized online service designed to make it easier for researchers, law enforcement and others to request the information directly from registrars.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: You Can Create Your Own Custom iPhone Browser With Quiche. “Safari on the iPhone is fast, convenient—and, admittedly, a bit boring. There are plenty of third-party options on the App Store, but seeing as Apple forces them all to use WebKit, most are essentially Safari. However, that hasn’t stopped one indie developer from trying to make things interesting. Greg De J’s Quiche browser is unique, engaging, and fully customizable, down to every button and toolbar you see in the interface. You can take advantage of this to make the browser much more functional, like adding a button dedicated to private mode in the toolbar. Plus, it has many color and layout options to explore for truly fine-tuning your browsing experience.”

Noupe: How to make WordPress GDPR-compliant. “GDPR(General Data Protection Regulation) is a set of European regulations designed to protect your data. It gives you control over how your data is used and ensures that businesses handle it by stringent guidelines. Before using your data, they must obtain your consent and notify you in case of a data leak. Businesses that violate these regulations risk incurring hefty fines. These guidelines apply to any business, regardless of location, that handles information from individuals in Europe. Similar to a global norm, GDPR protects the privacy of your data.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Gulf News: The National Library and Archives launches Encyclopedia of UAE history project in Abu Dhabi. “The Encyclopedia of UAE history will initially be digitally issued consisting of seven sections focusing on the UAE’s geography, location, area, natural resources, physical features and much more. The encyclopedia is supervised by an advisory body including members from different emirates in the UAE. According to the project’s developed work-plan, the encyclopedia is expected to be completed within five years.”

ABC News (Australia): Social media ‘skinfluencers’ drive teen demand for high-end skincare, but costs can go far beyond hip pocket. “Part of Lilly Parker’s daily routine is spent pursuing the kind of ‘beautiful dewy skin’ she sees online…. Emerging from retailer Mecca Maxima, the 14-year-old can’t put her finger on what it is about the products sold inside that appeal to her. ‘It just looks cool,’ she says. For her mother, Sarah, the answer is clear-cut — clever marketing through social media influencers.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Deutsche Welle: Why Ukrainian archives must be protected. “The regional archives in Vysokopillya are just one of many examples that the looting and destruction of archives is part of Russian warfare. A report by the Arolsen Archives, an international center for Nazi persecution, reveals how dramatic the current situation is. Russian soldiers are said to have stolen millions of documents from the archives in Kherson, amounting to around half of the entire collection. These include computers and printers. And finally, they placed mines in the building. After the Russian troops withdrew, the mines were cleared, but recovering the remaining documents is a laborious process. There is a lack of scanners, computers, storage boxes, shelves and staff.”

Ars Technica: Verizon fell for fake “search warrant,” gave victim’s phone data to stalker. “Verizon Wireless gave a female victim’s address and phone logs to an alleged stalker who pretended to be a police officer, according to an affidavit filed by an FBI special agent. The man, Robert Michael Glauner, was later arrested near the victim’s home and found to be carrying a knife at the time, according to the affidavit submitted in court yesterday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of California Davis: Google Weed View? Professor Trains Computer to Spot Invasive Weed. “Using photos from Google’s Street View database, UC Davis researchers have tracked down over 2,000 cases of johnsongrass in the Western United States for a fraction of the cost and time that it would take to do drive-by or other in-person surveys. They call their tool Google Weed View.”

Washington Post: Big Tech funds the very people who are supposed to hold it accountable. “Tech giants including Google and Facebook parent Meta have dramatically ramped up charitable giving to university campuses over the past several years — giving them influence over academics studying such critical topics as artificial intelligence, social media and disinformation.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Boing Boing: Watch “Hardware Wars” in HD. “The description of this YouTube claims this HD transfer of the legendary Star Wars parody, Hardware Wars, was done under the supervision of director Ernie Fosselius! Hardware Wars was a film that every kid at my Elementary school heard about back in the late 1970s, but only one of us had seen.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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December 11, 2023 at 01:22AM
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Tulane University AI, Silicon Valley Startups, Stony Brook University, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, December 10, 2023

Tulane University AI, Silicon Valley Startups, Stony Brook University, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, December 10, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Tulane University: Tulane showcases AI expertise through new online hub. “The website also includes guidelines for ethical and responsible use of AI, a news section highlighting AI research at Tulane and a section where the Tulane community can learn about upcoming workshops and training opportunities. In the coming months, the site will feature Tulane’s latest findings on how artificial intelligence can better support its research and teaching missions as well as its students and faculty. It will also spotlight how documentation and proposals are prepared via AI and how data and other scholarly materials are accessed and organized.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: From Unicorns to Zombies: Tech Start-Ups Run Out of Time and Money. “WeWork raised more than $11 billion in funding as a private company. Olive AI, a health care start-up, gathered $852 million. Convoy, a freight start-up, raised $900 million. And Veev, a home construction start-up, amassed $647 million. In the last six weeks, they all filed for bankruptcy or shut down. They are the most recent failures in a tech start-up collapse that investors say is only beginning.”

Stony Brook University: Stony Brook University Libraries Is Now A Member Of Hathitrust Digital Library!. “Stony Brook University Libraries is pleased to announce that we are a HathiTrust member library. We are now part of a group of 200+ libraries and institutions that comprise the HathiTrust community! HathiTrust provides access to more than 18 million digital items.”

Ars Technica: Google announces April 2024 shutdown date for Google Podcasts. “Google Podcasts has been sitting on Google’s death row for a few months now since the September announcement. Now, a new support article details Google’s plans to kill the product, with a shutdown coming in April 2024. Google Podcasts (2016–2024) is Google’s third attempt at a podcasting app after the Google Reader-powered Google Listen (2009–2012) and Google Play Music Podcasts (2016–2020). The product is being shut down in favor of podcast app No. 4, YouTube Podcasts, which launched in 2022.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Fortune: FabFitFun, a $1 billion subscription box startup, frantically backpedals after a profane, pro–Elon Musk ad bombs. “FabFitFun turned into a dumpster fire just in time for the holiday season. The millennial-favorite subscription box company went viral this week when it posted a controversial ad on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter)—but it blew up for all the wrong reasons. The meltdown over what appeared to be a badly misjudged attempt to piggyback off a viral Musk moment reads as a case study in how not to approach internet marketing.”

NiemanLab: The press adopts a new level of transparency around images. “The press has often been light on contextual information and details about the images they use. Typically, publications only provide the reader with a tiny gray caption, perhaps with a name and maybe some context related to its use or production method or where it was found, such as ‘illustration,’ ‘archival photo,’ ‘photo,’ or ‘social media.’ … A newfound level of transparency around images could be vital in educating the press and the public about images and their credibility.”

TechCrunch: Early impressions of Google’s Gemini aren’t great. “This week, Google took the wraps off of Gemini, its new flagship generative AI model meant to power a range of products and services including Bard, Google’s ChatGPT competitor. In blog posts and press materials, Google touted Gemini’s superior architecture and capabilities, claiming that the model meets or exceeds the performance of other leading gen AI models like OpenAI’s GPT-4. But the anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Google Takes Aim at the EU’s ‘Flawed’ Ad Tech Break Up Threat. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google said that the European Union’s threat to break up its profitable ad tech arm was ‘flawed’ as it formally took aim at the bloc’s allegations of anticompetitive conduct.”

Tubefilter: Congress is putting off its plan to regulate TikTok until 2024 (but GOP hopefuls still have takes). “TikTok continues to face criticism from American politicians, but the Congressional plan to regulate the app is going on the back burner — at least until 2024. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), who heads the Senate Commerce Committee, told Reuters that Congress will not take up TikTok-oriented legislation until the calendar turns over to a new year.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Robb Knight: Please, Expose your RSS. “Earlier this week I had a need to manually find a bunch of people’s RSS feed links. It seemed simple enough: go to their website and look for an RSS/Subscribe link but I was surprised to find that a lot of people don’t have a link anywhere to their feed. Even if people only ever add your website into their feed reader and let the app find the RSS feed (see below for more info on this), showing an RSS link reminds people that RSS exists, a win for the open web.”

University of Missouri: Virtual reality simulations can help autistic people complete real-world tasks, MU study finds. “Many people associate virtual reality headsets with interactive video games, but a researcher at the University of Missouri is using them for something far more important — helping autistic people navigate public transportation on college campuses. MU researcher Noah Glaser — in collaboration with Matthew Schmidt, an associate professor at the University of Georgia, and others — partnered with a program at the University of Cincinnati on a pair of studies geared toward providing autistic people virtual training opportunities to practice using a public bus to get around town.”

Ohio State University: ChatGPT often won’t defend its answers – even when it is right. “A team at The Ohio State University challenged large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT to a variety of debate-like conversations in which a user pushed back when the chatbot presented a correct answer. Through experimenting with a broad range of reasoning puzzles including math, common sense and logic, the study found that when presented with a challenge, the model was often unable to defend its correct beliefs, and instead blindly believed invalid arguments made by the user.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 10, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Adler University, Tribal Federal Funding, Google Drive Missing Files, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 9, 2023

Adler University, Tribal Federal Funding, Google Drive Missing Files, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 9, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Adler University: Digitization project preserves archival videos of founders’ teachings, lectures. “The Adler University Library and the Center for Adlerian Practice and Scholarship are nearing the completion of digitizing over 260 archival videos featuring sessions and lectures of the University’s founding members…. Organized by topical playlists, the collection contains videos featuring founders and early instructors of the Institute of Adlerian Psychology.”

The Oklahoman: New executive order makes it easier for tribal nations to access federal funds. “The executive order also creates a ‘one-stop-shop’ for federal funding to be available to tribes and Native American businesses through a database called the Tribal Access to Capital Clearinghouse, which was launched at the Tribal Summit, the White House said.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

PC Magazine: Google Rolls Out Recovery Tool for Bug That Deleted Drive Files. “In late November, users started noticing missing Google Drive files. They’d log in and find everything missing, sometimes months or years’ worth of data. In some cases, older versions of the files might be present but not the latest version. Google now has a potential fix with a new recovery tool.”

Amnesty International: South Korea: Google fails to tackle online sexual abuse content despite complaints by survivors. “Google has failed to fix its flawed system for removing non-consensual sexually violative content from its searches despite a long-running campaign by South Korean women and girls targeted with digital sex crimes, Amnesty International said today – exactly one year after first highlighting the problem.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Otago Daily Times: Lost revenue blamed on mysterious Google caller. “The owners of a Dunedin cafe say they have lost significant business due to the carelessness of a mysterious caller claiming to work for Google.”

Florida Department of State: Secretary of State Cord Byrd Seeks Public Input on Proposed Florida Museum of Black History. “Today, Secretary of State Cord Byrd announced the release of a public survey to gather input for the legislatively created Florida Museum of Black History Task Force. The Department of State is distributing the survey on behalf of the Florida Museum of Black History Task Force, which was created by legislation signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis on May 11, 2023.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Axios: 23andMe changes terms of service to prevent lawsuits after data breach. “Days after a data breach allowed hackers to steal 6.9 million 23andMe users’ personal details, the genetic testing company changed its terms of service to prevent customers from suing the firm or pursuing class-action lawsuits against it.”

Irish Times: Social media firms face fines of up to €20 million for breaches of Ireland’s first online safety code. “Ireland’s first online safety code will require social media and video-sharing platforms to protect children from harmful content or face the prospect of fines of up to €20 million. Coimisiún na Meán, Ireland’s new body for regulating broadcasters, on-demand services and online media, has today opened a public consultation on its draft online safety code for video-sharing platform services.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Defector: Elon Musk Is Grimly Determined To Let You Know He Is Funny. “Not to take the comedic semiotics of Elon Musk too-too seriously, but the most interesting facet of his dogged, ever-flopping quest to be thought of as a comedy genius as well as a success entrepreneur guy is the ways in which he is consistently five or more years behind the online comedy meta-game. For someone with a stupefying amount of resources and a bizarrely overcooked opinion of the importance of his dying app, he understands precious little about the modern forms of comedy.”

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Study shows challenges to protecting privacy of library users. “Librarians have historically taken a strong stand on protecting the privacy of their patrons. But how well they accomplish this varies widely with the size of a library, and technology has made it more difficult, according to the first study of privacy practices and challenges in public libraries.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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December 10, 2023 at 01:51AM
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