Google, Microsoft Copilot, LinkedIn, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, December 31, 2023

Google, Microsoft Copilot, LinkedIn, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, December 31, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: Google New Years Eve Search Algorithm Update. “There has been a ton of chatter within the SEO community over the past couple of days related to extreme ranking volatility within the Google Search results. The Google tracking tools have also picked up the volatility over the past day or so. There is no way Google pushed out a confirmed update this week but hey, Google’s search results live a life of their own.”

The Verge: Microsoft’s Copilot app is now available on iOS. “Just days after introducing a Copilot app on Android, Microsoft has rolled out an app for its AI chatbot on iOS and iPadOS. Both versions of the app are now available to download from the Apple App Store.”

Times of India: How Elon Musk’s X is the reason for LinkedIn’s rise in ad revenue. “Brands are flocking to the platform, sending ad prices skyrocketing as companies reportedly pull their advertising money from X. LinkedIn’s ad revenue jumped 10.1% in 2023, reaching nearly $4 billion, according to estimates from research group Insider Intelligence, as per a report in The Financial Times. Analysts predict this strong growth will continue, with a further 14.1% increase expected in 2024.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: News outlets join forces to create AI charter. “In a year marked by rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has joined with sixteen journalism organizations from around the world to forge a landmark ethical framework for addressing challenges posed by the transformative technology.”

New York Daily News: New Jersey police tell public to ignore AI-generated story about Christmas shooting that never happened. “New Jersey’s Bridgeton Police Department is asking the public to ignore an inflammatory story about a Christmas Day shooting that never actually happened. ‘This “article” is circulating social media and was brought to BPD’s attention,’ cops wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. ‘It is entirely false. Nothing even similar to this story occurred on or around Christmas, or even in recent memory for the area they described.'”

BBC: Austrian government launches repair scheme for electronic goods. “Has your washing machine broken down, or is your electric kettle, laptop or mobile phone refusing to work? Well if you live in Austria, the government will pay up to €200 ($219; £173) towards getting it repaired. The Repair Bonus voucher scheme is aimed at trying to get people to move away from throwing away old electrical appliances – and focusing on getting things mended.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TubeFilter: Revolt accused of “Ponzi-ish” scheme as its manager, Ryan Piasente, faces sexual assault allegations. “Revolt, a merch company that has released drops with creators like MrBeast, Valkyrae, Tubbo, Corpse Husband, Anthony Padilla, and Nihachu, has been accused of running a ‘Ponzi-ish’ scheme that’s left it owing significant amounts of money to an unknown number of creators. And its head, Ryan Piasente–who also manages the well-known YouTube group Misfits–is facing accusations of sexual assault and misusing money from Revolt’s company coffer.”

South China Morning Post: Singapore PM Lee issues warning after deepfake video of him ‘promoting’ crypto investment emerges. “Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has urged the public not to respond to deepfake videos of him promising guaranteed returns on investments after one such video emerged on social media platforms in recent days.”

Associated Press: Michigan and Alabama restricting how players view game film ahead of Rose Bowl over sign-stealing fears . “The Alabama Crimson Tide caused a stir at the Rose Bowl when they revealed they’ve restricted their players’ game film viewing on iPads heading into the College Football Playoff semifinal against Michigan because of concerns about hacking. As it turns out, Michigan is also taking precautions.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: The Year the Millennial Internet Died . “YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING how we got here. How all of this happened. Don’t. It’s a fool’s errand in a time of spectacular fools, crooks, and private equity monsters. My internet is dying. It’s been dying for some time. Everything I knew about it will soon vanish, its histories regurgitated via 30-second TikTok videos shared in group chats, eulogized annually in the cocoon of darkened movie theaters, where tickets run $30.”

New York Times: ChatGPT Helps, and Worries, Business Consultants, Study Finds. “Studies this year of ChatGPT in legal analysis and white-collar writing chores have found that the bot helps lower-performing people more than it does the most skilled. Dr. Lakhani and his colleagues found the same effect in their study. On a task that required reasoning based on evidence, however, ChatGPT was not helpful at all.”

Android Police: Google’s issue with excessive advertisements is only growing worse. “From invasive Search results to obnoxiously long, unskippable videos, Google’s services are often packed to the brim with content designed to sell you stuff. YouTube, Google Search, and Google TV all suffer from excessive ad saturation, worse than ever before, and it’s starting to make these services unbearable to use.” Gee, why am I thinking of AltaVista all of a sudden? 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. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

December 31, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Reddit, Twitch, 2023 Media Stories, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 30, 2023

Reddit, Twitch, 2023 Media Stories, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Guardian: ‘Front page of the internet’: how social media’s biggest user protest rocked Reddit. “In June, thousands of Reddit communities plunged into darkness – making their pages inaccessible to the public in a mass protest of corporate policy changes. Users of a social network lambasting it is nothing new; but Reddit’s moderators rebelled on a scale never seen before. Six months later, users and researchers say reforms sparked by the movement are still rippling through the social network, which bills itself as the ‘front page of the internet’.”

Tubefilter: Kai Cenat was Twitch’s top streamer in 2023. “As for which creators are bringing in the most viewership, xQc has finally been knocked from the #1 spot. For the past three years, he’s been Twitch’s most-watched streamer, but this year, he was overtaken by three people: Kai Cenat, who’s #1 with 109 million hours of watch time; Gaules, with 106 million hours; and ibai, with 106 million hours. xQc is in fourth place, with 89 million hours. Cenat snatching top spot isn’t all that surprising considering his channel alone accounted for 2.5% of all global watch hours on Twitch in February.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Drum: From Musk’s mayhem to TikTok testimony, here’s our top 20 media stories of 2023. “From the demise of X under the leadership of mercurial billionaire Elon Musk to a landmark Google antitrust case, the question of Threads’ viability and the promise of the merger that is Max, these are the stories that defined the media landscape in 2023.”

Search Engine Journal: ChatGPT Vs. Bard Vs. Bing: What Are The Differences? (Festive Flashback). “If you want to search for information, need help fixing bugs in your CSS, or want to create something as simple as a robots.txt file, chatbots may be able to help. They’re also wonderful for topic ideation, allowing you to draft more interesting emails, newsletters, blog posts, and more. But which chatbot should you use and learn to master? Which platform provides accurate, concise information? Let’s find out.”

WIRED: Generative AI Learned Nothing From Web 2.0 . “…for all the novelty and speed, generative AI’s problems are also painfully familiar. OpenAI and its rivals racing to launch new AI models are facing problems that have dogged social platforms, that earlier era-shaping new technology, for nearly two decades. Companies like Meta never did get the upper hand over mis- and disinformation, sketchy labor practices, and nonconsensual pornography, to name just a few of their unintended consequences. Now those issues are gaining a challenging new life, with an AI twist.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: Chinese Spy Agency Rising to Challenge the C.I.A.. “The ambitious Ministry of State Security is deploying A.I. and other advanced technology to go toe-to-toe with the United States, even as the two nations try to pilfer each other’s scientific secrets.”

AFP: Legal battles loom as first Mickey Mouse copyright ends. “Anyone is now free to copy, share, reuse and adapt ‘Steamboat Willie’ and ‘Plane Crazy’ —another 1928 Disney animation—and the early versions of the characters that appear within them, including Mickey and Minnie. A vital caveat is that later versions of the characters, like those in 1940 film ‘Fantasia,’ are not in the public domain, and cannot be copied without a visit from Disney’s lawyers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

San Francisco Chronicle: Errors found in key database tracking foreign influence in U.S. politics. “[OpenSecrets] is a widely used source of campaign finance and lobbying data cited by lawmakers, journalists and researchers. But since at least Dec. 11, some of its foreign lobbying data has differed from the amounts published by the Justice Department, and some of the contribution totals have not matched its own desegregated data.”

PsyPost: New study investigates psychological correlates of emoji use and preference. “In this work, Janine Carroll examined the association between mental health, personality, prosocial behavior, and emoji use. A total of 222 participants, recruited from the University of Chester and Prolific Academic, participated in this research. Participants completed measures of anxiety and depression, prosocial behavior, Big 5 personality traits, and various aspects of emoji usage, including frequency, motivation, attitudes, and preferences (e.g., positive and negative emojis).”

Washington Post: Microsoft says its AI is safe. So why does it keep slashing people’s throats?. “Lately, ordinary users of technology such as Windows and Google have been inundated with AI. We’re wowed by what the new tech can do, but we also keep learning that it can act in an unhinged manner, including by carrying on wildly inappropriate conversations and making similarly inappropriate pictures. For AI actually to be safe enough for products used by families, we need its makers to take responsibility by anticipating how it might go awry and investing to fix it quickly when it does. In the case of these awful AI images, Microsoft appears to lay much of the blame on the users who make them.” 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. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

December 31, 2023 at 02:06AM
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The Seattle Rocket, Metaverse, NFTs, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 30, 2023

The Seattle Rocket, Metaverse, NFTs, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, December 30, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Seattle Times: Archives of The Rocket, influential Seattle music magazine, go digital. “Acting as a hub of information before the digital age, the magazine helped bring together key bands like Nirvana and Alice in Chains through its classified ads, while its writers and artists helped the growing music community make sense of, and rally around, the raw new sounds being created…. Now, all 336 issues — more than 16,000 pages of Seattle music history spanning 1979 to 2000 — have been digitized, made searchable by keyword and are available to the public for free.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Marketplace: What happened to the Metaverse?. “It wasn’t all that long ago when ‘the Metaverse’ was being pushed hard in certain corners of the Big Tech universe. What was it? It wasn’t always clear — something about a virtual but realistic place where, we were told, we’d be hanging out with friends, holding office meetings and even buying property. Contributing to the hype: a tech giant neck deep in a PR mess and eager for a rebrand.”

How-To Geek: A Look Back on NFTs: Where Are They Now?. “Going into 2023, things weren’t looking good for NFTs. Between 2022 and 2023, the average price of NFT sales dropped by 92 percent, according to a Chainalysis report. This meant that an NFT once worth $1,000 was now only worth $80. Evidently, things had gone quite sour for the NFT market. NFTs can still hold value, but their current prices pale in comparison to those of 2021 and 2022, as is evident via the aforementioned Chainalysis statistic. 2023 has shown just how fragile the NFT industry is.”

WRAL: Major pornographic website blocks NC access days before new law takes effect. “One of the world’s largest pornography websites blocked access to at least some North Carolina users Thursday ahead of a new state law taking effect that will require adult websites to verify user ages. Instead of complying or providing its usual content, Pornhub redirected North Carolina users to a message asking them to reach out to lawmakers and oppose the new law.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Boing Boing: One man’s horrific saga of inadvertantly destroying municipal infrastructure with superabsorbent water beads. “With viral challenges getting bigger and broader in scope, it can be easy to forget the consequences they have on people around them. The cautionary tale of French TikToker Cyrilschr, however, serves as a sobering warning to those seeking to get a little too big for their britches. In 2020, he filled a bathtub with Orbeez–superabsorbent expanding toys–for views, only to then be left with the problem of disposing of them.”

Ars Technica: AI-created “virtual influencers” are stealing business from humans. “Pink-haired Aitana Lopez is followed by more than 200,000 people on social media. She posts selfies from concerts and her bedroom, while tagging brands such as hair care line Olaplex and lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret. Brands have paid about $1,000 a post for her to promote their products on social media—despite the fact that she is entirely fictional.”

Meduza: Latvian government blocks all Yandex sites. “Latvia’s electronic media regulator (NEPLP) announced Thursday that it has blocked access to all websites affiliated with Yandex. According to the agency’s head, Ivar Abolins, the company’s audio streaming service, Yandex Music, will also be blocked as it contains podcasts and other content ‘created by sanctioned individuals in Russia.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Hartford Courant: Bring Me Back Home: New registry seeks to prevent tragedy when loved ones go missing. “When Connecticut State Trooper Stephanie Cortes read that 80-year-old Anne Page of Willington had been found dead on Christmas Eve, her first thought went to the Bring Me Back Home Program — a new, voluntary registry designed to aid law enforcement in locating Connecticut residents with Alzheimer’s, dementia and other cognitive or developmental challenges that raise the risk of wandering and disorientation.”

ABC News: Prosecutors say there’s no need for a second trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. “A second trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on charges not in the cryptocurrency fraud case presented to a jury that convicted him in November is not necessary, prosecutors told a judge Friday.”

Bleeping Computer: Malware abuses Google OAuth endpoint to ‘revive’ cookies, hijack accounts. “In late November 2023, BleepingComputer reported on two information-stealers, namely Lumma and Rhadamanthys, who claimed they could restore expired Google authentication cookies stolen in attacks. These cookies would allow the cybercriminals to gain unauthorized access to Google accounts even after the legitimate owners have logged out, reset their passwords, or their session has expired. BleepingComputer has contacted Google multiple times over a month with questions about these claims and how they plan to mitigate the issue, but we never received a response.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

NPR: Artificial intelligence can find your location in photos, worrying privacy experts. “A student project has revealed yet another power of artificial intelligence — it can be extremely good at geolocating where photos are taken. The project, known as Predicting Image Geolocations (or PIGEON, for short) was designed by three Stanford graduate students in order to identify locations on Google Street View. But when presented with a few personal photos it had never seen before, the program was, in the majority of cases, able to make accurate guesses about where the photos were taken.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

New York Times: Need a Home for 80,000 Puzzles? Try an Italian Castle.. This article is a gift link. “Until recently, the Miller collection resided at Puzzle Palace in Boca Raton, Fla….Puzzles occupied even the bathrooms. Then last year, on a whim, the Millers bought a 15th-century, 52-room castle in Panicale, a hamlet in central Italy. They packed their puzzle collection into five 40-foot shipping containers and, for their own transit, booked a cruise from Miami to Rome.” 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. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

December 30, 2023 at 06:33PM
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Google, 2023 Social Media, 2023 AI, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, December 29, 2023

Google, 2023 Social Media, 2023 AI, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, December 29, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: Google Tests Longer Search Result Snippets Again. “Google seems to be testing longer search result snippets again. We saw this recently with Google Ads, some really long Google Ads descriptions and now we are seeing it with the organic/free listings.”

Associated Press: The year of social media soul-searching: Twitter dies, X and Threads are born and AI gets personal. “We lost Twitter and got X. We tried out Bluesky and Mastodon (well, some of us did). We fretted about AI bots and teen mental health. We cocooned in private chats and scrolled endlessly as we did in years past. For social media users, 2023 was a year of beginnings and endings, with some soul-searching in between. Here’s a look back at some of the biggest stories in social media in 2023 — and what to watch for next year.”

Route Fifty: After an action-packed year, 2024 will be another blockbuster year for AI. “Taylor Swift is Time magazine’s person of the year. Sam Altman is its CEO of the year. And 2023, according to the publication, is the year governments began taking artificial intelligence seriously. And indeed, it has been a banner year for executive orders and policies mandating the technology’s responsible use. State and local governments have issued their own guidelines and action plans, have dabbled with generative AI-driven pilot projects and instructed agencies to identify effective use cases.”

USEFUL STUFF

Larry Ferlazzo: This Week’s Free & Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools For The Classroom. “At least, for now, I’m going to make this a weekly feature which will highlight additions to THE BEST NEW – & FREE – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CODART: Exhibiting Sustainably: M Leuven and Its Green Book. “In this second article in CODART’s series on sustainability in museums, we will be focusing on sustainability in exhibitions. What does it involve and how does it affect the curator’s work CODART spoke to Marjan Debaene of M Leuven, a museum with a comprehensive sustainability policy and a Green Book that it has developed to translate this policy into good practice.”

Internet Archive Blog: Public Domain Day 2024 Remix Contest: The Internet Archive is Looking For Creative Short Films Made By You!. “We are looking for filmmakers and artists of all levels to create and upload short films of 2–3 minutes to the Internet Archive to help us celebrate Public Domain Day at our celebrations on January 24 (in-person screening & party) & January 25 (virtual celebration), 2024! Our short film contest serves as a platform for filmmakers to explore, remix, and breathe new life into the timeless gems that have entered the public domain.”

Mother Jones: Is Dumping Twitter Your New Year’s Resolution?. “Most users have stayed. The site still hums with activity, and is still the closest thing to a place of centralized discourse. But the numbers show a substantial share have departed: some 15% of users left since Musk took over last October; ad revenue is down by 54% over the same period. Staying does feel bad. Logging on to send little tweets while knowing you are playing some sliver of a part in enabling a petulant billionaire, however minuscule and indirect, is at a minimum embarrassing.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

London Free Press: London ‘master con man’ outed after online event featuring Elon Musk. “Benjamin Zev co-hosted a virtual debate on the social media platform X featuring billionaire owner Elon Musk, would-be U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, alt-right radio broadcaster Alex Jones and other high-profile guests earlier this month…. Less than two weeks after co-hosting the largest-ever Twitter event, Zev disappeared from social media without a trace, leaving his wide-ranging network of lawyers, political insiders, journalists and entrepreneurs baffled. They would soon learn that Zev isn’t a lawyer, never worked for the Department of Justice and was lying about his real name.”

Ars Technica: Google agrees to settle Chrome incognito mode class action lawsuit. “Google has indicated that it is ready to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 2020 over its Chrome browser’s Incognito mode. Arising in the Northern District of California, the lawsuit accused Google of continuing to ‘track, collect, and identify [users’] browsing data in real time’ even when they had opened a new Incognito window.”

TorrentFreak: Reckless DMCA Deindexing Pushes NASA’s Artemis Towards Black Hole. “The crew of Artemis 2 are preparing to become the first humans to fly to the moon since 1972. The Artemis program faces many challenges but allowing people to learn about the program should not be one of them. Targeting the word ‘Artemis’ no matter what the context, a reckless anti-piracy sweep has demanded Google deindexing against dozens of innocent platforms for simply trying to report on mankind’s quest for knowledge.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: A.I. Can Make Art That Feels Human. Whose Fault Is That?. “A.I. cannot innovate. All it can produce are prompt-driven approximations and reconstitutions of preexisting materials. If you believe that culture is an imaginative human endeavor, then there should be nothing to fear, except that — what do you know? — a lot of humans have not been imagining anything more substantial.” This article is a gift link so you should be able to read it without paywall.

Hackaday: Generating 3D Scenes From Just One Image. “The LucidDreamer project ties a variety of functions into a pipeline that can take a source image (or generate one from a text prompt) and “lift” its content into 3D, creating highly-detailed Gaussian splats that look great and can even be navigated. Gaussian splatting is a method used to render NeRFs (Neural Radiance Fields), which are themselves a method of generating complex scenes from sparse 2D sources, and doing it quickly.” 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. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

December 29, 2023 at 06:32PM
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Google Chrome, Bluesky, Driving Direction Errors, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 28, 2023

Google Chrome, Bluesky, Driving Direction Errors, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Chrome’s password safety tool will now automatically run in the background. “Google’s Safety Check feature for Chrome, which, among other things, checks the internet to see if any of your saved passwords have been compromised, will now ‘run automatically in the background’ on desktop, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. The constant checks could mean that you’re alerted about a password that you should change sooner than you would have before.”

TechCrunch: Bluesky rolls out an in-app video and music player and a new ‘hide post’ feature. “The new video and music player works with YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify and Twitch embeds. Unlike on X, where autoplay on videos is the default setting, Bluesky’s in-app player won’t autoplay content. If users want to watch or listen to the content, they will have to trigger it with a tap.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Verge: How to take advantage of Chrome’s side panel. “…when Chrome added a side panel that would give access to various features, I noted this new option, filed it away in the back of my brain and ignored it for several weeks. But now, I’ve taken another look — and I think this is something I should try. Chrome’s side panel offers immediate access to several useful apps, and it’s probably a good idea to explore what they are and whether the sidebar is a good way to access them.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

ABC News (Australia): Quairading shire erects signs telling travellers to ignore GPS maps including Google. “A frustrated council in Western Australia has erected signs warning drivers against using Google maps after GPS-based directions repeatedly sent travellers down unsafe roads…. The issue has frustrated the Quairading shire for the past eight years.”

WIRED: The Hollywood Strikes Stopped AI From Taking Your Job. But for How Long?. “Throughout 2023, many trades and professions, from painters to coders and beyond, found themselves vulnerable to being replaced by machine learning. IBM’s CEO estimated out loud that some 7,800 jobs at the company could be done by bots in the next five years. A Goldman Sachs report from late March estimated nearly 300,000 jobs globally could be affected by automation. Radiologists, journalists (gulp), tax preparers—everyone, it seemed, spent at least part of 2023 wondering if robots were coming for their jobs.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: GTA 5 source code reportedly leaked online a year after Rockstar hack. “​The source code for Grand Theft Auto 5 was reportedly leaked on Christmas Eve, a little over a year after the Lapsus$ threat actors hacked Rockstar games and stole corporate data. Links to download the source code were shared on numerous channels, including Discord, a dark web website, and a Telegram channel that the hackers previously used to leak stolen Rockstar data.”

Centre Daily Times: Inside the Pennsylvania court case pitting a genealogist against Ancestry.com. “Are they the property of the commonwealth? Or are the documents — which include birth and death certificates, veterans’ burial cards, and slave records — fully controlled by a private company? That question has pitted a New York City-based professional genealogist against the Pennsylvania agency in charge of a vast array of historical documents and artifacts, as well as Ancestry.com, an online genealogy company used by millions of people to search for family and other records.”

Indian Express: FIU issues notice to 9 offshore crypto platforms, writes to MeiTY for blocking of URLs. “The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Finance Ministry has issued show cause notices to nine offshore cryptocurrency and virtual digital assets platforms, like Binance and Kucoin, for non-compliance with anti-money laundering law. The FIU has also written to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block the URLs of these nine entities that are operating illegally without complying with the provisions of the PML Act in India.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Avert Your Eyes, Avoid Responsibility and Just Blame TikTok. “We’re in a season of hand-wringing and scapegoating over social media, especially TikTok, with many Americans and politicians missing that two things can be true at once: Social media can have an outsize and sometimes pernicious influence on society, and lawmakers can unfairly use it as an excuse to deflect legitimate criticisms.”

National Catholic Reporter: Why I finally left Twitter (aka ‘X’)
. “I am now among this group of people who will no longer abide the hate-mongering algorithms; the Wild-West-like trolling; the rise in antisemitism, racism, homophobia and transphobia; and the absence of virtually any constructive discourse. Musk’s reinstatement of previously banned accounts is emblematic of the shifting context and tone of the platform.” 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. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

December 29, 2023 at 01:34AM
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Ethical Book Search, Artifact Repatriations, FTC, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, December 28, 2023

Ethical Book Search, Artifact Repatriations, FTC, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, December 28, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Discovered via Mastodon: Ethical Book Search. From the front page: “You would prefer not to spend your money on a company that avoids paying taxes, or treats the people who work for them badly, or is damaging the environment. We make this as easy as possible for you by recommending book sellers who are much more responsible than some of their less reputable competitors and enabling you to search them all with one click.” Basically it’s a metasearch for specific booksellers.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

ProPublica: The Remains of Thousands of Native Americans Were Returned to Tribes This Year. “American museums and universities repatriated more ancestral remains and sacred objects to tribal nations this year than at any point in the past three decades, transferring ownership of an estimated 18,800 Native American ancestors, institutions reported. And more repatriations are forthcoming.”

FTC: Deadline extended for comments on FTC’s proposed ban on junk fees. “In October 2023, the FTC proposed a rule that would prohibit junk fees – hidden charges and bogus fees that cost consumers tens of billions of dollars each year and undercut honest businesses. The FTC wants your feedback on its proposed Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees and has extended the deadline to February 7th.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: AI Is Telling Bedtime Stories to Your Kids Now. “The main version of ChatGPT has, since its launch last year, been able to write a children’s story, but GPTs allow parents—or anyone, really—to constrain the topic and start with specific prompts, such as a child’s name. This means anyone can generate personalized stories starring their kid and their favorite character—meaning no one needs to wait for Ludo to drop fresh content. That said, the stories churned out by AI aren’t anywhere as good as the show itself, and raise legal and ethical concerns.”

Tubefilter: Ten of YouTube’s top makers built each other high-tech gifts for a Secret Santa exchange. “As part of the exchange, all participants uploaded behind-the-scenes videos depicting the construction of their respective gifts. The results of the Secret Santa vary wildly depending on which creators are involved. Some of the presents are flat-out ridiculous, others encourage creativity, and some even seem helpful.”

New York Times: This N.Y.U. Student Owns a $6 Million Crypto Mine. His Secret Is Out.. “Jerry Yu has the trappings of what the Chinese call second-generation rich. He boasts a Connecticut prep-school education. He lives in a Manhattan condominium bought for $8 million from Jeffrey R. Immelt, the former General Electric chief executive. And he is the majority owner of a Bitcoin mine in Texas, acquired last year for more than $6 million.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: AI companies would be required to disclose copyrighted training data under new bill. “Two lawmakers filed a bill requiring creators of foundation models to disclose sources of training data so copyright holders know their information was taken. The AI Foundation Model Transparency Act — filed by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Don Beyer (D-VA) — would direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to establish rules for reporting training data transparency.”

WSYX: Ohio’s new social media law takes effect in January. “A new Ohio law aimed at forcing social media companies to get verifiable parental consent for children under 16 is set to go into effect in mid-January. The Parental Notification by Social Media Operators Act was passed by the General Assembly in July.”

Rolling Stone: Kevin Hart Sues YouTuber Tasha K for Extortion. “Kevin Hart is taking legal action against his former assistant and controversial YouTuber Tasha K over an alleged extortion surrounding a ‘defamatory’ interview. On Tuesday, the actor filed the complaint in L.A. Superior Court alleging that Tasha K, born Latasha Kebe, asked for a $250,000 ransom so that she not publish a ‘defamatory’ interview with his former personal assistant Miesha Shakes.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Physician’s Weekly: Hispanic, Indigenous Americans Undercaptured in National Cancer Database. “Hispanic and American Indian or Alaska Native (AI/AN) individuals diagnosed with breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer have been undercaptured in the National Cancer Database (NCDB), but their representation is improving, according to a study published online Dec. 27 in JAMA Network Open.”

Associated Press: Social media companies made $11 billion in US ad revenue from minors, Harvard study finds. “Social media companies collectively made over $11 billion in U.S. advertising revenue from minors last year, according to a study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published on Wednesday. The researchers say the findings show a need for government regulation of social media since the companies that stand to make money from children who use their platforms have failed to meaningfully self-regulate.”

The Conversation: The AI industry is on the verge of becoming another boys’ club. We’re all going to lose out if it does. “Unfortunately, the omission of women from the history of STEM isn’t a new phenomenon. Women have been missing from these narratives for centuries. In the wake of recent AI developments, we now have a choice: are we going to leave women out of these conversations as well – even as they continue to make massive contributions to the AI industry? Doing so risks leading us into the same fallacy that established computing itself as a ‘man’s world’. The reality, of course, is quite different.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 28, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Political Deepfakes, WordPress, Google Advertising, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 27, 2023

Political Deepfakes, WordPress, Google Advertising, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, December 27, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Associated Press: As social media guardrails fade and AI deepfakes go mainstream, experts warn of impact on elections . “Nearly three years after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, the false election conspiracy theories that drove the violent attack remain prevalent on social media and cable news: suitcases filled with ballots, late-night ballot dumps, dead people voting. Experts warn it will likely be worse in the coming presidential election contest.”

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Migration Guides Undermining Divi, Elementor And Wix?. “WordPress is creating guides and tools to help publishers migrate to their block based editor Gutenberg and away from commercial WordPress page builders and private closed source content management systems like Wix. While it’s understandable that WordPress might want to help publishers and businesses migrate away from Wix, some perceive it as a somewhat controversial move to create a guide to undermine software publishers who are a part of the WordPress ecosystem itself.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tom’s Guide: How to opt out of Google Ad Topics for greater privacy. “Google recently launched its new Topics API as a part of Google’s new Privacy Sandbox. … Advertisers use this data to display tailored ads, hoping you’ll interact with the ad and make a purchase. While some individuals can discover new products with the ads, there are others who are uncomfortable sharing their personal data with who knows what. So, if you want to enjoy greater privacy and are not interested in seeing personalized ads, this guide, where we discuss how to opt out of Google Ad Topics, is for you.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

TechCrunch: TechCrunch’s favorite apps of 2023. “As 2023 draws to a close, we reflect on some of our favorite apps that made everyday life a little easier this year. While flashy new AI apps and rival social networks were grabbing headlines, sometimes the most useful innovations fly under the radar. The apps on our best-of list may not have arrived in 2023, but they became daily staples that streamlined our work or brought small moments of joy. Read on for the top apps we turned to again and again when we needed to get things done, connect with others or simply have more fun.”

The Print (India): Meet India’s ‘dunki influencers’. They teach you how to cross Panama jungle, Mexico border. “[Jaspal] Sharma, who goes by the name of ‘2 Numbari USA Wala’, is only one of the dozens of Indians who are now taking to YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok to document their migration journeys. They offer tips, route suggestions and risk assessments to hop from one country to another, especially the tricky forest between Colombia and Panama and the US-Mexico border. In fact, Indians rank third when it comes to illegal immigration to the US.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Ars Technica: 4-year campaign backdoored iPhones using possibly the most advanced exploit ever. “Researchers on Wednesday presented intriguing new findings surrounding an attack that over four years backdoored dozens if not thousands of iPhones, many of which belonged to employees of Moscow-based security firm Kaspersky. Chief among the discoveries: the unknown attackers were able to achieve an unprecedented level of access by exploiting a vulnerability in an undocumented hardware feature that few if anyone outside of Apple and chip suppliers such as ARM Holdings knew of.”

New York Times: The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work. “The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Selfies and social media: how tourists indulge their influencer fantasies. “The expansion of social media and ubiquity of smartphone cameras has had a major impact on tourists’ behaviour. This has also led to what’s been called a selfie ‘tourist gaze’, creating photos where the traveller is at the forefront of images rather than the destination. Indeed, according to my research, increasingly, some tourists go somewhere to be spotted – to be observed by others both online and in person at these destinations.”

Larry Ferlazzo via EducationWeek: Larry Ferlazzo’s 9 Education Predictions for 2024 . “I’ve been publishing annual education-related predictions for over a decade now, usually in The Washington Post. Let’s just say that no one would have become rich by betting on my past predictions. Nevertheless, since being wrong has never stopped education pundits from continuing their pontifications, I figured it shouldn’t stop me, a practicing teacher, from continuing mine!”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

BBC: Firm develops jet fuel made entirely from human poo. “Chemists at a lab in Gloucestershire have turned the waste into kerosene. James Hygate, Firefly Green Fuels CEO, said: ‘We wanted to find a really low-value feedstock that was highly abundant. And of course poo is abundant.’ [editor’s note: ] Independent tests by international aviation regulators found it was nearly identical to standard fossil jet fuel.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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December 28, 2023 at 02:09AM
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