Video Game History Foundation, Roll Mobility App, Ohio Groundwater, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 16, 2023

Video Game History Foundation, Roll Mobility App, Ohio Groundwater, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 16, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Engadget: The Video Game History Foundation will open a digital version of its research library. “The Video Game History Foundation set up shop back in 2017 and offers a gigantic collection of gaming-related archival materials, from magazines to art books and even source code. Previously, you’d have to make the trek to Oakland, California to peruse the archive, but that changes soon. The VGHF just announced a digital library that will offer remote access.”

New-to-me, looks like it launched in February. KSBY: App provides accessibility reviews of public places worldwide– and you can help add to their database. “Shortly after [Joe] Foster’s outing with the Paralympic athletes, he got started on an app to help individuals better navigate public spaces. It’s called Roll Mobility, and it allows users to filter the kind of accessibility they’re looking for. The app then color codes public places from green to red based on how accessible it is.”

Ohio Department of Natural Resources: ODNR Launches New Website For Accessing Groundwater Data In Ohio. “The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Geological Survey has released a new web-based application to help users monitor groundwater resources throughout Ohio…. The new web application is a robust tool for exploring the state’s groundwater resources and is the most comprehensive dataset available for researching long-term trends in groundwater levels in Ohio.”

EVENTS

US Department of Justice: Chief FOIA Officers Council Meeting Showcases the Use of Advanced Technologies in FOIA. “The Chief FOIA Officers (CFO) Council met virtually on November 9, 2023. Associate Attorney General of the United States Vanita Gupta welcomed attendees, thanked agencies for their work on FOIA reporting, and highlighted the new Search Tool on FOIA.gov that will improve the public’s ability to search for previously released FOIA records and to identify appropriate agencies for new FOIA requests.” The entire meeting is available on YouTube.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Elon Musk’s Twitter a year later: Everything you need to know. “Since Musk bought Twitter and took the company private, the news around the microblogging platform has been a whirlwind, rife with verification chaos, API access shakeups, ban reversals, staggering layoffs, and most notably, rebranding to X…. As X enters year two of Musk’s ownership, here’s a comprehensive timeline of everything that’s happened since Elon let that sink in.”

ZDNet: Later, Discord! Midjourney AI tool is moving to dedicated website. “Midjourney AI offers a robust text-to-image generator that can cook up virtually any image you want. But access has been available only through Discord, which isn’t the most user-friendly platform. Now Midjourney has launched its own website that promises an easier and quicker method of creating images.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: ByteDance is secretly using OpenAI’s tech to build a competitor. “TikTok’s entrancing ‘For You’ feed made its parent company, ByteDance, an AI leader on the world stage. But that same company is now so behind in the generative AI race that it has been secretly using OpenAI’s technology to develop its own competing large language model, or LLM.”

NPR: ‘Shameless’: Reporters Without Borders rebukes X for claiming to support it. “‘Elon Musk’s company is a haven for disinformation and in no way an ally to an organization defending journalism,’ Reporters Without Borders said in an email to NPR. While the group had accepted advertising credits from Twitter before Musk took over, Reporters Without Borders said, it does not receive ‘any form of support from X whatsoever.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNBC: Fake TikTok accounts spread disinformation on Russia-Ukraine war to millions. “Fake TikTok accounts have spread disinformation on Russia’s war in Ukraine to millions of people, new data from the Chinese social media giant shows. Posts on the video-sharing site targeted Ukrainian and Russian users, as well as many across Europe, with content designed to ‘artificially amplify pro-Russian narratives’ on the war, TikTok said in a report released Wednesday.”

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Internet Archive Files Appeal Brief Defending Libraries and Digital Lending From Big Publishers’ Legal Attack. “The Internet Archive is a San Francisco-based 501(c)(3) non-profit library which preserves and provides access to cultural artifacts of all kinds in electronic form. The brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Morrison Foerster on the Archive’s behalf explains that the Archive’s Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program is a lawful fair use that preserves traditional library lending in the digital world.” Good afternoon, 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.

December 17, 2023 at 01:08AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/BXao1xE

Chinese Immigration Act (Canada), California Opioid Support, Dutch PV Deployment, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 16, 2023

Chinese Immigration Act (Canada), California Opioid Support, Dutch PV Deployment, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 16, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Launched this summer and discovered while I was chasing down something else, from University of British Columbia: UBC Library collaborates with The Paper Trail project to launch new digital archive. “UBC Library Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC), in partnership with The Paper Trail project team, has launched a digital archival collection of identity papers known as Chinese Immigration (C.I.) certificates created through Canada’s Chinese Immigration Act.”

State of California: California Adds Resources to Fight the Opioid Crisis. “Today, Governor Newsom is launching a new tool to continue California’s efforts in fighting the ongoing opioid crisis – a comprehensive website with resources for Californians: Opioids.CA.GOV. This website serves as a reliable source of information on prevention, data, treatment, and support where Californians can also access information related to the state’s use of opioid settlement funds and efforts to hold drug-traffickers accountable.”

PV Magazine: Dutch government unveils solar deployment database. “The Dutch government’s new open-access PV database is divided by municipality and region. It offers a complete overview of all available spaces for rooftop PV and solar carports across the Netherlands.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: In Memoriam: The tech that died in 2023 . “On our second annual list of tech that died, we have entries that lived long healthy lives, ones that were cut down in their prime, as well as those that were discontinued because, well, they didn’t make much of an impact at all. Nonetheless, we honor them here.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

GrepBeat: Hayti Is First All-in-One News And Podcasts App For Black Publishers. “Hayti currently curates news from over 200 publishers (which includes online and print publications and magazines) and podcasts from over 2,000 Black podcasters. [Cary] Wheelous wanted Hayti to ensure that underrepresented journalists get the exposure they need and that their voices are heard by everyone.”

KQED: Protesters Outside Google in San Francisco Call for Immediate End to ‘Project Nimbus’. “Pro-Palestinian Google employees protested outside Google offices in San Francisco on Thursday to demand the tech giant cancel a $1.2 billion contract — called ‘Project Nimbus’ — with the Israeli government and military.”

EdinburghLive: Tributes paid to Edinburgh photo enthusiast who created ‘spectacular online archive’. “Historian and photography enthusiast Peter Stubbs was best-known as the man behind the popular Edinphoto site which boasts an archive of more than 25,000 old Edinburgh images and recollections. Peter ran the website for more than two decades, building up an online resource that was second-to-none in terms of the wealth of content and information relating to Edinburgh’s past.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WRIC: Judge denies Virginia NAACP’s effort to get voting rights restoration database. “A judge has sided with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration that a database used for Virginia’s rights restoration process is exempt from the state’s public records law. The Virginia NAACP filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records on how the state restores the voting rights of people with felony convictions who have served their sentences, a process in which Youngkin (R) has the sole authority.”

Reuters: Britain weighs new consultation on social media impact on teens. “Britain could look at further measures to protect young teenagers from the risks of social media in the new year following the introduction of new online safety laws focused on children and the removal of illegal content, a minister said. The Online Safety Act, which became law in October, requires platforms like Meta’s Instagram and Alphabet’s YouTube to strengthen controls around illegal content and age-checking measures.”

Vice: Cartels Are Using a Police Database to Track and Target Their Enemies. “Mexican criminal organizations are allegedly tapping intelligence and security software, that is also used by the government, to locate and disappear rivals and hide their crimes, according to several sources within Mexican law enforcement and cartel members who spoke with VICE News.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ruhr University Bochum: Less social media makes you happier and more efficient at work. “In a one-week study, just 30 minutes less social media use per day improved the mental health, job satisfaction and commitment of the participants.”

HuffPost: I Received Death Threats After Elon Musk Put A Target On My Back. Here’s The Truth Of What Happened.. “A year ago, one of my biggest fears came true. My name, work ID picture and old Slack messages were misconstrued, posted on Twitter (now known as X), and then plastered over the headlines of right-wing outlets around the country. They were included within a series of tweets highlighting emails, messages and internal documents from my time working as a senior policy official at Twitter, called the ‘Twitter Files.'” 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.

December 16, 2023 at 06:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/uCwJIdM

Hospital Price Files Finder, Clinical Trial Oversight, Colorado Avalanches, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 15, 2023

Hospital Price Files Finder, Clinical Trial Oversight, Colorado Avalanches, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 15, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

PR Newswire: PatientRightsAdvocate.org Launches Hospital Price Files Finder (PRESS RELEASE). “Today, PatientRightsAdvocate.org (PRA) announced the launch of the brand new Hospital Price Files Finder, a first-of-its-kind, free search tool of the available price transparency files for 6,000 hospitals nationwide. The tool is searchable by state and region, and eliminates obstacles to finding pricing files by compiling and updating the dashboard with the most current information available.”

STAT News: In response to criticism, FDA publishes new database of wayward clinical trial sponsors. “In a bid toward greater transparency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this month launched a dashboard containing preliminary notices sent to companies, universities, and researchers that failed to register clinical trials or report study results. The agency has so far sent about 120 so-called pre-notices indicating a clinical trial sponsor or investigator failed to comply with a federal law that requires such steps.”

Colorado Mountain College: Governor Polis Celebrates Launch Of Accident Explorer Alongside Colorado Avalanche Information Center And Colorado Mountain College, Keeping Colorado’s Great Outdoors Safe. “Today, Governor Polis celebrated the launch of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center and Colorado Mountain College Geographic Information Systems program new Avalanche Accident Explorer. This interactive map displays information about Colorado’s fatal avalanche accidents since December 2009.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Irish Times: Google not objecting to order to provide Micheál Martin with identities of those behind ‘fake adverts’. “Tánaiste Micheál Martin has resolved High Court proceedings he brought against Google seeking information about the people behind ‘fake adverts’ allegedly used to defame him…. The matter returned to court on Thursday when Padraic Lyons SC, with Daragh Breen BL, instructed by solicitor Catherine Ardagh, told the court that an agreement had been reached following discussions between the parties.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Bigots use AI to make Nazi memes on 4chan. Verified users post them on X.. “An antisemitic post on Elon Musk’s X is not exactly news. But new research finds the site has emerged as a conduit to mainstream exposure for a fresh wave of automated hate memes, generated using cutting-edge AI image tools by trolls on the notorious online forum 4chan.”

Tubefilter: The latest lo-fi beats stream stars one of YouTube’s most famous cats. “As it begins its 17th year on YouTube, Simon’s Cat is buying into a beloved format. The feline animation hub led by Simon Tofield has launched a ‘focus music’ video that resembles the chill streams hosted by Lofi Girl.”

Mother Jones: How Former Fundamentalists Are Finding Healing on Reddit. “Fundie snark content is available on TikTok, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter), but it is most well known on Reddit. There, r/FundieSnarkUncensored, started in 2020, boasts 169,000 followers and is in the top 1 percent of communities on the site. While it doesn’t exclusively cater to ex-fundamentalists, many spend time on the subreddit.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Musk Must Testify in SEC Twitter Stock Probe, Judge Signals. “A San Francisco federal judge signaled that Elon Musk should testify about his purchase of Twitter Inc. stock ahead of his $44 billion buyout of the company last year as part of an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.”

CISA: CISA Releases SCuBA Google Workspace Secure Configuration Baselines for Public Comment. “Today, CISA released the draft Secure Cloud Business Applications (SCuBA) Google Workspace (GWS) Secure Configuration Baselines and the associated assessment tool ScubaGoggles for public comment. The draft baselines offer minimum viable security configurations for nine GWS services: Groups for Business, Google Calendar, Google Common Controls, Google Classroom, Google Meet, Gmail, Google Chat, Google Drive and Docs, and Google Sites.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

AlgorithmWatch: AI Chatbot produces misinformation about elections. “Bing Chat, the AI-driven chatbot on Microsoft’s search engine Bing, makes up false scandals about real politicians and invents polling numbers. Microsoft seems unable or unwilling to fix the problem. These findings are based on a joint investigation by AlgorithmWatch and AI Forensics, the final report of which has been published today. We tested if the chatbot would provide factual answers when prompted about the Bavarian, Hessian, and Swiss elections that took place in October 2023.” Good afternoon, 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.

December 16, 2023 at 01:34AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/MUYT5oE

Russia Anti-War Street Art, AI-Assisted Web Building, Resistance Mapping, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, December 15, 2023

Russia Anti-War Street Art, AI-Assisted Web Building, Resistance Mapping, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, December 15, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Global Voices: Museum of Russian anti-war street art opens online. “Russian anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova and her colleagues have been collecting the examples of anti-war street-art — stickers, graffiti, leaflets, and complex installations — for 1.5 years. Now, everyone can see photos of 471 works from 48 Russian cities meticulously classified, carefully translated into English and clearly explained in one place.”

Mozilla Blog: Introducing Solo, an AI website builder for solopreneurs. “At Mozilla and our commitment to a healthier internet, we believe that exploring ideas that can enable solopreneurs an admirable vision. Today we are excited to introduce a new Mozilla Innovation Project, Solo, an AI website builder for solopreneurs.”

Rochester Institute of Technology: Resistance Mapping project provides a digital home for antiracist educational resources for K-12 educators. “The Resistance Mapping website functions as a living, digital archive that documents the history of racist housing and other place-based policies in Rochester and the surrounding region. The materials explore how Rochester’s current segregation emerges from that history and confronts these realities through stories of past and present activism, along with creative imagined possibilities for our community’s future.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Sports Illustrated publisher fires CEO after AI debacle. “A spokesperson for The Arena Group declined to go into further detail to explain the ouster of Ross Levinsohn, who served as chief executive for three years. But the move came after an embarrassing debacle in which Sports Illustrated was caught publishing stories with fake author names and profile photos generated by artificial intelligence.”

Ars Technica: Google Fiber’s 20-gig service is coming to these cities for $250 a month. “In October, Google Fiber announced a ridiculously fast new tier of its Internet service: 20Gbps symmetrical. While that’s 1,000 times faster than what some Internet providers offer (especially going by upload speeds), what we didn’t know was the cost. A new blog post reveals who can get this new service, and they’ll be paying $250 a month for it.”

USEFUL STUFF

Electronic Frontier Foundation: No Robots(.txt): How to Ask ChatGPT and Google Bard to Not Use Your Website for Training. “As norms continue to develop around what kinds of scraping and what uses of scraped data are considered acceptable, it is useful to have a tool for website operators to automatically signal their preference to crawlers. Asking OpenAI and Google (and anyone else who chooses to honor the preference) to not include scrapes of your site in its models is an easy process as long as you can access your site’s file structure.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

SiliconAngle: OpenAI inks content licensing deal with Axel Springer. “OpenAI will license news content from Axel Springer SE, the parent company of Politico and Insider, to improve its large language models. The partnership was announced this morning. It comes a few months after OpenAI inked a similar content licensing agreement with the Associated Press.”

Mashable: Sex workers are cloning themselves with AI to make sexy chatbots. “It’s 4:30 p.m. on a Tuesday and I’m sexting with award-winning porn star Riley Reid. ‘I want to kiss your body all over,’ she tells me via voice note, ‘lick your sweet spots, and make you moan with pleasure.’ Sounds cool, I respond over text. Then – and I’m embarrassed to admit this – I ask, What are you wearing? ‘I’m sorry, but I’m just a digital copy of Riley Reid, so I’m not really here in the physical sense,’ she replies. ‘But if I were…'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: Dropbox spooks users by sending data to OpenAI for AI search features. “On Wednesday, news quickly spread on social media about a new enabled-by-default Dropbox setting that shares your Dropbox data with OpenAI for an experimental AI-powered search feature. Dropbox says that user data shared with third-party AI partners isn’t used to train AI models and is deleted within 30 days.”

Citizen (South Africa): Caxton tells Competition Commission that Google and Meta threaten free press in SA. “Caxton outlined the central challenges that the news media industry is facing in the digital age of media consumption, highlighting the dominance of Google and Meta (Facebook) in digital markets.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: ChatGPT-created letters of recommendation are nearly indistinguishable from human-authored letters, study finds. “In a new study published in the journal AEM Education and Training, researchers discovered that academic physicians could only slightly better than guesswork differentiate between recommendation letters written by humans and those generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The study raises critical questions about the future role of AI in academic assessments, the need for ethical considerations in its use, and the potential reevaluation of the current practices in recommendation letters.”

CNBC: Google is rolling out new AI models for health care. Here’s how doctors are using them. “Google on Wednesday announced MedLM, a suite of new health-care-specific artificial intelligence models designed to help clinicians and researchers carry out complex studies, summarize doctor-patient interactions and more.” 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.

December 15, 2023 at 06:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/XgV8q6o

MotorTrend, Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage, 1931 Census of Canada, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, December 14, 2023

MotorTrend, Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage, 1931 Census of Canada, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, December 14, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

MotorTrend: It’s MotorTrend’s 75th Anniversary and We’re Celebrating With Cool Stuff For You!. “MotorTrend is further memorializing our legacy through the release of our archive in a digital format, available now. The MotorTrend Digital Archive features 75 years of MotorTrend issues dating back to 1949, all available for free right here.”

Smithsonian Magazine: A New Encyclopedia Explores Europe’s Smelly History. “Odeuropa has officially launched its products—a Smell Explorer search engine, which offers insight into how the past smelled, as well as how people described, depicted and experienced those smells, and the Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage, with entries ranging from car interiors to coffeehouses. Odeuropa also hosted a one-day Smell Culture Fair in Amsterdam on November 28 to share the overall project’s final results.”

Government of Canada: 1931 Census of Canada launch: phase two complete!. “Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is pleased to announce that in collaboration with Ancestry® and FamilySearch International, we are providing a free, searchable index of the 1931 Census of Canada through Census Search. This marks the completion of phase two of the plan to make the census accessible to Canadians on our website following the initial release of the census earlier this year.”

National Library of the Netherlands: Release of the Design Drawings Damage Atlas . “The Design Drawings Damage Atlas specifically assists in recognising and categorising damage on architectural design drawings. Additionally, it provides information on their management and preservation. It contains details about materials, techniques, signs of use, and damages. Furthermore, you can learn about the origins of the design drawings and their specific characteristics. All texts in the damage atlas are available in both Dutch and English…. The Design Drawings Damage Atlas can be ordered for free via our webshop.” I tried the webshop link and it gave me an error, so here is the direct link: https://webwinkel.kb.nl/product/schadeatlas-ontwerptekeningen-design-drawings-damage-atlas .

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bloomberg: Musk’s X 2023 Ad Sales Projected to Slump to About $2.5 Billion. “Elon Musk’s X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, is on track to bring in roughly $2.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2023 — a significant slump from prior years, according to people familiar with the matter.” Kind of amazed it’s still that high.

Mashable: Here’s every new emoji we got in 2023. “There isn’t much we ask for around here, but one of those things is new emojis. Thankfully, the Unicode Consortium heard our cries and blessed us with over 118 new emojis approved in 2023. However, this doesn’t mean they’re usable right now. In February, as part of its iOS 16.4 update, Apple added 21 emojis that were approved in 2022.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: YouTube Is Now Hiding Which Channels Get a Cut of Ad Revenue. “YouTube unleashed an influential generation of new internet celebrities in 2007 when it started to share ad revenue with select video creators. For the past couple of years, a snippet of code on YouTube’s website revealed which channels are part of the secretive and exclusive club. But users and activists who had come to rely on that flag suddenly found themselves in the dark last month.”

BBC: Disney goes punk: TikTok sends Welsh covers band viral. “So how did a south Wales quartet end up playing Disney tunes and children’s TV theme music in a rock festival? Like many of the weird events of recent years, you can thank (or blame, depending on musical taste) Covid. A TikTok video of the band playing a cover of the Lion King’s Just Can’t Wait To Be King went viral as everyone was cooped up inside in 2020, and it snowballed.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC News: Media Matters sues Texas attorney general over response to Elon Musk dispute. “Media Matters for America sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in federal court late Monday, alleging that Paxton violated the First Amendment last month and chilled its work when he opened an investigation into the organization over its reporting into Elon Musk’s X app.”

Courthouse News Service: Twitter investors’ suit against Elon Musk to proceed, judge rules. “A federal judge ruled Monday to advance a class action by Twitter investors against Elon Musk claiming that he manipulated Twitter stock leading up to his $44 billion buyout of the social media platform in April 2022.”

Salon: Jack Smith wants to use Trump’s Twitter account and phone data to track his steps on Jan. 6. “Special counsel Jack Smith has obtained Donald Trump’s cell phone data from his time in the White House and plans to use it as prosecutorial evidence as part of the former president’s election subversion trial in D.C., a Monday filing shows.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

John Scalzi: Abandoning the Former Twitter: A Four-Week Check-In. “Ultimately, however, I pretty strongly feel that whatever I got from old-school Twitter — good conversation, interesting things to read, a place to let people know what I’m up to — is now amply covered by [Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads.] Moreover, nearly everyone I know as a friend, colleague or notable personality/celebrity, has an outpost on at least one of these sites. Where these people go, their friends and fans will eventually follow. That’s bad news for the former Twitter, but then, Musk did that to himself.” 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.

December 14, 2023 at 06:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/gX4Ya7s

Lee Harvey Oswald, Washington WIC Program, Michigan FOIA Requests, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 13, 2023

Lee Harvey Oswald, Washington WIC Program, Michigan FOIA Requests, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 13, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Boing Boing: Finland declassifies its long-secret intelligence report on JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald . “Merry Christmas, America! Finland has declassified its 60-year-old intelligence report into Lee Harvey Oswald, who stayed in Helsinki before heading on to the Soviet Union. Oswald, an assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, made a quixotic attempt to defect there; the commies saw him coming and only let him stay because he tried to kill himself after they told him to go home.”

KGMI (Washington): Dept. of Health launches new WIC Nutrition Program Clinic locator. “The state has released a new tool to help pregnant women and young children get access to vital resources. The Women, Infants and Children Nutrition Program offers monthly food benefits and health screenings to mothers and their infants. The program’s new clinic locator gives information on the more than 200 WIC clinics across Washington, including five in Whatcom County.”

Michigan Advance: Benson unveils new online FOIA portal for Michigan Department of Elections. “Calling FOIA ‘one of the most important tools citizens can use to hold their government accountable,’ [Secretary of State Jocelyn] Benson said the new online portal would make document requests easier and the results more accessible than they’ve ever been. In fact, she said once a FOIA request has been made, many of the responsive documents will be publicly available on the department’s website. ”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mozilla Blog: Mozilla VPN Update: New privacy features, plus independent security audit results. “This year, we’ve been working on the many ways to protect your data when you use Mozilla VPN, our fast and easy-to-use Virtual Private Network service. Over the summer, we rolled out new security features like malware blocking, and performance improvements like the server location recommendations. We also expanded to 16 new European countries.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Tom’s Guide: I pitted Google Bard with Gemini Pro vs ChatGPT — here’s the winner. “Google has incorporated its new AI large language model, Gemini Pro, into its popular chatbot, Bard. With this comes the promise that it will perform at least as well, if not better, than OpenAI’s free version of ChatGPT. To better understand whether it has achieved this goal, I decided to pit the two chatbots against one another with a series of questions designed by an independent arbiter.”

Omaha World-Herald: UNL Professor preserves Nebraskan Holocaust stories for educational impact. “In April 2022, former Gov. Pete Ricketts signed LB888 into law, requiring the State Board of Education to adopt standards for education on the Holocaust and other acts of genocide. Dotan’s dissertation for her doctorate studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, ‘Integrating Narratives with Digital Humanities Tools to Inform Holocaust Education Pedagogies,’ aims to provide a framework for Holocaust education in Nebraska by creating a digital archive of maps, letters, and artifacts from seven Nebraskans touched by the events of the Holocaust.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Google’s Epic Legal Defeat Threatens $200 Billion App Store Industry. “Google’s legal defeat at the hands of Fortnite maker Epic Games Inc. threatens to roil an app store duopoly with Apple Inc. that generates close to $200 billion a year and dictates how billions of consumers use mobile devices. The loss — handed down by a San Francisco jury on Monday — is a blow to the two companies’ business model in apps, where they charge commissions of as much as 30% to software developers who typically have few other options.”

ABC News (Australia): Fitbit fined $11 million after misleading consumers about smart watches and fitness trackers. “The Federal Court issued the penalty against the US firm on Tuesday after it admitted making false, misleading or deceptive claims to 58 customers between 2020 and 2022. In several cases, Fitbit representatives claimed customers only had 45 days to return a faulty device.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UPI: Many U.S. teens report using social media ‘almost constantly,’ study says. “The new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens, released Monday, shows that while YouTube is the most widely used platform among 13- to 17-year-olds — at 90% — TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram also remain popular with between 59% and 63% of teens viewing those sites everyday.”

AFP: Fungi and flatworms: Scientists want more diverse nature emojis. “Too many cats, not enough crustaceans: The current emoji catalog doesn’t accurately represent the breadth of biodiversity seen in nature — and that hurts conservation efforts, according to scientists. An analysis published Monday in the journal iScience found that while animals are well represented by the current emoji catalog, plants, fungi, and microorganisms get short shrift.” Good afternoon, 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.

December 14, 2023 at 01:47AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/6gQAynW

Canada Environmental Health, USDA Rural Development Funding, Silicon Valley, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, December 13, 2023

Canada Environmental Health, USDA Rural Development Funding, Silicon Valley, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, December 13, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

McGill University Health Centre: Find your neighbourhood and see which environmental factors influence your health . “… a new tool combines environmental datasets from different sources with demographic data from the Canadian census to present a portrait of environmental equity in over 125 cities across Canada. It identifies avenues for tackling climate change risks and environmental inequities while improving public health.”

CBS 2 Iowa: USDA launches new website services to help individuals & agencies find access to federal services. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development unveiled two new web resources on Monday…. One of the new features should make it easier to find federal resources in one place, with an easy-to-use search function to find what you need. The Find Programs and Opportunities tool includes hundreds of millions of dollars in financing and technical assistance opportunities.”

EVENTS

Cornell Chronicle: Tech companies capitalize on misconceptions of ‘free speech’. “Since the 1980s, doxing, harassment and extremism have all found a home on the internet. Today’s social media companies could limit this type of speech but often choose not to because it serves their bottom line, said Mary Anne Franks, the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard Professor in Intellectual Property, Technology and Civil Rights Law at George Washington Law School, in a presentation Dec. 7 at Gates Hall.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: Elon Musk’s welcoming of extremists puts a spotlight on the NFL’s mega-partnership with X amid renewal talks. “The sports and entertainment juggernaut is in talks to renew its $100 million deal with Elon Musk’s troubled social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter, The Wall Street Journal reported in November. But Musk’s unhinged behavior and the surge in hate and extremism on his platform have complicated the partnership, which The Journal reported expires in April, and raised the question of whether the NFL will renew its deal with the imperiled social media company.”

Search Engine Land: Google Ads updates Cryptocurrencies and related products policy. “Google is updating its Cryptocurrencies and related products policy to provide clear guidance on the scope and requirements for advertising Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts. Starting Jan. 29, advertisers offering Cryptocurrency Coin Trust targeting the U.S. will need to be certified and meet Google’s specific requirements, according to Google’s announcement.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Dexerto: Arthur “cooks” Elon Musk in “savage” official TikTok. “The original clip has to do with Arthur being surprised by his friends, who he believed were tied up ‘solving unsolvable problems.’ They reveal they simply stopped trying to solve the problem and left. In the remix of the clip, titled To Each Their Own, Arthur’s friends are labeled ‘X’s Advertisers’ in the captions. When two other characters conclude there is nothing to learn from the unsolvable problems, they’re labeled as Elon.”

Boing Boing: Meet the man who spreads joy and connection across the globe by asking, “Can you teach me your favorite dance move?”. “Meet Ed People, a content creator and dancer originally from Belgium, who travels around the world asking strangers: ‘Can you teach me your favorite dance move?’ He then learns and performs the dances with his newfound friends, films the heartwarming interactions, and shares them on his social media.”

Absolutely appalling, from Reuters: Meet Ashley, the world’s first AI-powered political campaign caller. “Ashley is not your typical robocaller; none of her responses are canned or pre-recorded. Her creators, who intend to mainly work with Democratic campaigns and candidates, say she is the first political phone banker powered by generative AI technology similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. She is capable of having an infinite number of customized one-on-one conversations at the same time.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight . “Three years after Fortnite-maker Epic Games sued Apple and Google for allegedly running illegal app store monopolies, Epic has a win. The jury in Epic v. Google has just delivered its verdict — and it found that Google turned its Google Play app store and Google Play Billing service into an illegal monopoly.”

Vice: The Names of Thousands of Neo-Nazi Music Fans Just Got Leaked. “For years if a white supremacist wanted to get their hands on select neo-Nazi music one of their likely stops would be Midgård, a Scandinavian online shop specializing in racist tunes. While the site offered a wide range of neo-Nazi music, clothing, and paraphernalia, its customers learned last week one thing they didn’t offer was infosec. This tough lesson was taught by AFA Sweden, a group of Stockholm-based anti-fascists, who ruined thousands of the site customers’ holidays by releasing Midgård’s customer register.”

Hollywood Reporter: Elon Musk Twitter Takeover Lawsuit Gains Steam as Judge Advances Investors’ Claims. “On Monday, a federal judge advanced a lawsuit from investors who say they suffered losses when they sold their shares in Twitter, now known as X, because of posts from Musk claiming the platform has a major issue with fake accounts and that he could wiggle out of the deal because of it. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer found that several of Musk’s statements were false or misleading, in part, because he waived due diligence.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

US National Science Foundation: NSF launches EducateAI initiative. “The U.S. National Science Foundation is excited to announce the EducateAI initiative. The goal of the initiative is to enable educators to make high-quality, audience-appropriate artificial intelligence educational experiences available nationwide to K-12, community college, four-year college and graduate students, as well as adults interested in formal training in AI.” 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.

December 13, 2023 at 06:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/j9wQcl3