BillBuddy Rhode Island, Political Misinformation, Telegram, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 3, 2024

BillBuddy Rhode Island, Political Misinformation, Telegram, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 3, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Uprise RI: Uprise RI Officially Launches BillBuddy Legislation Engagement Tool. “Today Uprise RI officially launched BillBuddy, an innovative voter engagement tool designed to empower Rhode Islanders with clear, unbiased insights into state legislation. The tool is now live at UpriseRI.com/bb and offers Rhode Islanders the unique opportunity to understand legislative proposals in straightforward terms, regardless of their political stance.”

EVENTS

Columbia SPS School of Professional Studies: The Real Impact of Fake News: The Rise of Political Misinformation—and How We Can Combat Its Influence. “What is the difference between misinformation and disinformation? That was among the key questions considered at the recent Strategies for Combating Political Misinformation panel hosted by the Columbia University School of Professional Studies (SPS) Strategic Communication and Political Analytics graduate programs. The discussion centered on the varying factors that determine the influence of misinformation on beliefs, and what strategies can be used to combat it effectively.” The full panel is available on YouTube but unfortunately it looks like the captions are autogenerated (I saw a speaker referring to “serial boxes”.)

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Telegram rolls out revamped voice and video calls, new delete animation on Android. “Telegram is rolling out a new update, version 10.5.0, which delivers a new look and feel for voice and video calls, as well as a revamped delete animation that’s now available on Android.”

USEFUL STUFF

Smart Bitches Trashy Books: Track Your 2024 Reading With Our Community-Built Spreadsheet!. “It’s sharing time! Over the past few years, we’ve shared different versions of this reading tracking spreadsheet and each year it’s been improved by one of you!”

How-To Geek: 5 Linux Distributions to Breathe New Life Into Old Hardware. “If you have a relative who only wants to surf the web and catch up with emails, an old computer loaded with Linux is probably all they need. But we wanted to know whether a light distribution of Linux on old hardware could provide something that would allow you to do some real work.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

KPCW: Google Maps led stranded Idaho man down snowmobile track, Summit County rescuers say. “An Idaho man told rescuers Google Maps was to blame when his car got stuck on a snowmobile trail deep in the Uinta Mountains New Years Day.”

The Guardian: A piece of performance poetry’: an absurd, decade-old Twitter account can teach us a lot about AI. Posterity, as soon as I saw the headline I knew exactly which Twitter account this was. “More than a decade before an AI-powered chatbot could do your homework, help you make dinner or pass the bar exam, there was @Horse_ebooks. The primitive predecessor to today’s chatbot renaissance began as a Twitter account in 2010, tweeting automated excerpts from ebooks that, decontextualized, took on unexpected and strangely poetic meanings.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Google Fonts Plugin Vulnerability Affects Up To +300,000 Sites. “The plugin, OMGF | GDPR/DSGVO Compliant, Faster Google Fonts. Easy., optimizes the use of Google Fonts to reduce page speed impact and is also GDPR compliant, making it valuable for users in the European Union looking to implement Google Fonts.”

CBS News: Holiday week “swatting” incidents target and disrupt members of Congress. “At least three members of Congress reported being the victims of ‘swatting incidents’ over the holiday week, according to a review by CBS News. Other members of Congress, from both parties, have also experienced some form of disruption by such phony and harassing swatting calls over the past several weeks.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The News (Pakistan): Website, app launched to digitise Urdu in Nastaleeq font. “The development of website [and]… corresponding mobile phone Android app, which can convert images of printed Urdu text in the Nastaleeq script into an editable text for computers and also read them out, was termed on Thursday a landmark event in the digitisation of the Urdu language in the modern era.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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January 4, 2024 at 01:34AM
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RSS Parrot, Generative AI, Banished Words, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, January 3, 2024

RSS Parrot, Generative AI, Banished Words, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, January 3, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Spotted on Mastodon: a new Mastodon/RSS tool called RSS Parrot. From the about page: “This is the browser home of RSS Parrot, a Fediverse service that lets you turn Mastodon into your feed reader. The Parrot follows the RSS or Atom feeds of a large number of websites, and sends out a toot whenever a new post is published on one of them…. The RSS Parrot brings WordPress blogs into the Fediverse without the need for the blog’s owner to install the Mastodon plugin.”

EVENTS

MIT News: The creative future of generative AI. “The future of generative AI and its impact on art and design was the subject of a sold-out panel discussion on Oct. 26 at the MIT Bartos Theater. It was part of the annual meeting for the Council for the Arts at MIT (CAMIT), a group of alumni and other supporters of the arts at MIT, and was co-presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science, and Technology (CAST), a cross-school initiative for artist residencies and cross-disciplinary projects.” The panel event is available on YouTube. I spot-checked its captioning and it looked perfect.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Detroit News: Lake Superior State releases its list of banished words: Is it cringe-worthy or iconic?. “Wait for it: At the end of the day, hacks need to slay 10 cringe-worthy words and phrases, according to an iconic list from a Michigan university…. This year marks the second appearance of the word ‘iconic’ on the annual list that the Sault Ste. Marie university began releasing in 1976. ‘Iconic’ was also on the 2009 Banished Words list.”

Silicon Republic: X offers cheaper subscription plan for organisations. “The site launched a subscription offering for organisations last year, but the $1000 a month charge was viewed as expensive by critics. Now, X has released a basic version of this service for $200 a month or $2000 a year, with the original offering becoming the ‘full’ subscription tier.”

Smithsonian Magazine: Public Libraries Reveal the Most Borrowed Books From 2023. “Across the country, public libraries are announcing their most popular titles from last year. While no definitive nationwide rankings have been published, many popular texts appear on lists from multiple library systems.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Ukrinform: Ukrinform, Center for Countering Disinformation launching joint project ‘About the War’. “Ukrinform National News Agency of Ukraine and the Center for Countering Disinformation are launching a new joint project, About the War, which will cover the issues related to the front, fake news stories, influencers’ posts, and the urgent war-related problems.”

ARTNews: Database of 16,000 Artists Used to Train Midjourney AI, Including 6-Year-Old Child, Garners Criticism. “During the New Year’s weekend, artists linked to a Google Sheet on the social media platforms X (formerly known as Twitter) and Bluesky, alleging that it showed how Midjourney developed a database of time periods, styles, genres, movements, mediums, techniques, and thousands of artists to train its AI text-to-image generator. Jon Lam, a senior storyboard artist at Riot Games, also posted several screenshots of Midjourney software developers discussing the creation of a database of artists to train its AI image generator to emulate.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Online museum collections down after cyberattack on service provider. “Museum software solutions provider Gallery Systems has disclosed that its ongoing IT outages were caused by a ransomware attack last week. Gallery Systems was formed in April 2022 when it merged with Artsystems, a global leader in gallery and collection management software, and boasts an impressive client portfolio, including over 800 museums.”

NPR: ‘Steamboat Willie’ is now in the public domain. What does that mean for Mickey Mouse?. “… people can creatively reuse only the Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie. Not the Mickey Mouse in the 1940 movie Fantasia. Nor the one on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, a kids’ show that aired on the Disney Channel for a decade starting in 2006. New versions of Mickey Mouse remain under copyright. Copyright applies to creative characters, movies, books, plays, songs and more. And as it happens, Mickey Mouse is also trademarked.”

CTV: Australia launches inquiry into why Cabinet documents relating to Iraq war remain secret. “On Monday, the National Archives of Australia released 2003 Cabinet records in keeping with an annual Jan. 1 practice following the expiration of a 20-year secrecy provision. But 78 documents relating to the Iraq war were withheld because they were prepared for the National Security Committee, a subset of Cabinet ministers who make decisions relating to national security and foreign policy. Committing Australia to war was the committee’s decision.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Yale School of Medicine: Eliminating Racial Bias in Health Care AI: Expert Panel Offers Guidelines. “…the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) recently convened a diverse panel of experts, co-chaired by Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, MBA, Waldemar von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine and deputy dean for biomedical informatics at Yale School of Medicine. The panel identified core guiding principles for eliminating algorithmic bias.”

The Register: How do you teach a robot dog new tricks? Throw it a string of hex, a crayon, and a canvas . “Boston Dynamics’ ‘Spot’ robot dog has been deployed as a tour guide, a police officer, and a warehouse worker. At the National Gallery Of Victoria’s Triennial in Melbourne, Australia, it’s now doing duty as an artist. Spot’s human handler is Agnieszka Pilat, who told The Register she first saw Spot as a new celebrity and therefore worthy of a portrait.” 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.

January 3, 2024 at 06:31PM
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Plum Book, Twitter, Planner Apps, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 2, 2024

Plum Book, Twitter, Planner Apps, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 2, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

GovExec: You can now easily search through every executive in federal government. “A new website has made available a database of anyone serving in a top-ranking position in the federal government, offering new insight that advocates said will boost transparency and better prepare new administrations to transition into power. The Office of Personnel Management launched the site to comply with the Periodically Listing Updates to Management (PLUM) Act, which so far includes the names, roles and pay levels of more than 8,000 executives in government.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Twitter/X appears to restrict Japanese emergency alert account hours after earthquake .”Japanese disaster alert app NERV says Twitter/X limited its posts just hours after Japan was shaken by an earthquake, severely restricting its ability to share important updates about the subsequent tsunami warning.”

9to5 Google: Twitter/X brings back headlines on link previews but now they’re tiny. “Rolling out now to Twitter/X’s web client, any posts that have a link preview now show more than just a preview image and the name of the website. Previews now include the headline of the article (or title of the webpage) being linked, but in a very small format.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: The 5 Best Planner Apps to Keep You Organized. “Using a digital planner can help you stay organized and on task without carrying a notebook. Regardless of how detailed or simple you want your planner to be, there’s a planning app that can meet your needs.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: A 9-Month Cruise Is TikTok’s Favorite New ‘Reality Show’. “Since the ship launched from Miami on Dec. 10, TikTok has been flooded with posts from voyeurs on land, dissecting the videos shared by cruise passengers and speculating on the ship’s potential as a floating arena for high-level drama. Some are declaring it a ‘nine-month TikTok reality show,’ with the passengers becoming unintentional celebrities.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Associated Press: States and Congress wrestle with cybersecurity at water utilities amid renewed federal warnings. “The danger, officials say, is hackers gaining control of automated equipment to shut down pumps that supply drinking water or contaminate drinking water by reprogramming automated chemical treatments. Besides Iran, other potentially hostile geopolitical rivals, including China, are viewed by U.S. officials as a threat.”

Bleeping Computer: Android game dev’s Google Drive misconfig highlights cloud security risks. “Japanese game developer Ateam has proven that a simple Google Drive configuration mistake can result in the potential but unlikely exposure of sensitive information for nearly one million people over a period of six years and eight months.The Japanese firm is a mobile games and content creator, encompassing Ateam Entertainment, which has multiple games on Google Play like War of Legions, Dark Summoner, Hatsune Miku – Tap Wonder, and tools like Memory Clear | Game Boost Master, and Good Night’s Sleep Alarm.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Rolling Stone: The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again. “Some of the most dominant companies on the internet are at risk of losing their relevance, and the rest of us are rethinking our daily habits in ways that will shift the digital landscape as we know it. Though the specifics are hard to predict, we can look to historical precedents to understand the changes that are about to come, and even to predict how regular internet users — not just the world’s tech tycoons — may be the ones who decide how it goes.”

Android Police: Google Authenticator has become a mess, and I dread using it. “Google makes the operating system that runs on many of the best phones in the world and also happens to own the top search engine. Not to mention the massive server farms handling all the cloud-based systems for the company. So, why is one of the most important apps a person has on their phone, the one that helps secure accounts, not offering the ability to search for 2FA accounts in its app or easily manage the accounts within?”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

404 Media: 13-Year-Old Becomes First Person to Ever Beat Tetris. “A 13-year-old competitive Tetris player has become the first known human to beat the game on the original NES by forcing it into a kill screen. In doing so, the player, Blue Scuti, broke world records for overall score, level achieved, and total numbers of lines in the 34-year-old game. Previously, only an AI had broken Tetris.” 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.

January 3, 2024 at 04:15AM
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New Tool Available: WikiTwister

New Tool Available: WikiTwister
By ResearchBuzz

I’m still working on what I want it to look like, so I’ve put up a very plain version of WikiTwister at WikiTwister.com . WikiTwister is a set of five tools designed to find and extract information (Wikidata and otherwise) from Wikipedia categories and pages.

The tools come in two types: category and pages. Both types include a search form for finding Wikipedia categories and pages.

Category tools:

Category Cheat Sheet (list Wikipedia pages by recent popularity instead of alphabetically)

Wiki Category Chronology (lists pages by date of creation along with date-bounded Google and Google News searches)

Wikidata Quick Dip (aggregate Wikidata page properties by category and displays them)

Page tools:

Gossip Machine (finds dates with unusually-high views and turns them into date-bounded Google News searches)

RoloWiki (Turns a page into a Wikidata reference)

As always, everything is free and there is no advertising. The side is hand-coded HTML and should work on your phone, but it was designed with desktop in mind.

Please note these tools were designed to be used with all Wikipedia pages. If you’re more interested in getting OSINT about people and organizations listed in Wikipedia, you’ll probably find MegaGladys.com more useful. It’s a separate set of people-focused tools with only one overlap (Gossip Machine.)

January 2, 2024 at 08:24PM
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Forest Soundmaps, Public Domain Game Jam, Twitter, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, January 2, 2024

Forest Soundmaps, Public Domain Game Jam, Twitter, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, January 2, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Boing Boing: Explore this soundmap of forests all over the world. “Explore this soundmap of forests all over the world. This fun open source library allows users to click on a forest from the map, see where it’s located, and listen to an audio clip of what it would sound like to be there.”

EVENTS

Techdirt: And We’re Off! Time To Get Started On This Year’s Public Domain Game Jam. “Happy new year, everyone — and happy public domain day! That’s right: today’s the day that works from 1928 exit copyright protection and become public domain in the US, and that means it’s time for the latest edition of our annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1928! We’re calling on designers of all stripes and all levels of experience to put this year’s newly public domain works to use in digital and analog games.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Axios: Elon Musk’s X gets another valuation cut from Fidelity. “Fidelity believes that X is worth 71.5% less than at the time of purchase, according to a new disclosure that runs through the end of November 2023 (Fidelity revalues private shares on a one-month lag).”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: Use Your iPhone’s LiDAR Feature in These 6 Awesome Ways . “Do you know that your iPhone is equipped with a sensor capable of mapping out your surroundings in a three-dimensional view? This sensor, known as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), can measure distances by emitting laser light and measuring the reflection off objects. Stay tuned as we explore the coolest and most practical uses of iPhone LiDAR that can transform your everyday experiences.”

How-To Geek: How to Use ChatGPT to Read and Explain Terms of Service. “Software, music, films, and other types of content are licensed and not sold. When you pay for these media, you agree to abide by the provisions of that license. Who has the time to read a lengthy agreement for everything they buy? The good news is that ChatGPT can quicly help you understand key facts about an agreement before you click the ‘accept’ button.” I would be really careful about my prompts to give the bot little bs’ing room.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NHK World Japan: Fake news about quake and tsunami posted on social media. “Misleading or false information has been spreading online concerning the earthquake and tsunami that hit central Japan on Monday. Immediately after the quake, videos purportedly showing the damage, as well as rescue requests from people claiming to be trapped under collapsed buildings, were posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. NHK has verified that some of the posts contain fake information.”

The Business Standard: National Archives: Inside Bangladesh’s largest repository of historical documents. “According to the Bangladesh National Archives Act 2021, the National Archives of Bangladesh is mandated to collect, preserve and protect important official documents of 25-year-old and 30-year-old archival documents in collaboration with various private persons or organisations. So far, the National Archives have collected around 8 crore pages of documents to date.”

The Hill: Fetterman says social media made his depression worse. “Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said being on social media worsened his mental health as he battled with clinical depression last year. Fetterman said in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that social media was the “accelerant” that made his depression worse.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Federal Reserve Bank of New York: Statement on Transparency and Accountability Policy at the 12 Federal Reserve Banks. “In the interest of further strengthening the Federal Reserve System’s commitment to transparency, today the 12 Federal Reserve Banks released a common policy for public requests for information. The Transparency and Accountability Policy will go into effect January 1, 2024, and seeks to simplify and standardize the Federal Reserve Banks’ public information request process.”

Hong Kong Free Press: In U-turn, Hong Kong Department of Justice deletes national security case index from website. “Hong Kong’s Department of Justice (DoJ) has deleted an online database of national security cases, without explanation and days after it was published. The index, published last Thursday, included PDF case summaries relating to 106 national security law cases that have been completed since Beijing inserted the legislation into Hong Kong’s mini constitution in June 2020.”

WIRED: The Worst Hacks of 2023. “With political polarization, unrest, and violence escalating in many regions of the world, 2023 was fraught with uncertainty and tragedy. In digital security, though, the year felt more like a Groundhog Day of incidents caused by classic types of attacks, like phishing and ransomware, rather than a roller coaster of offensive hacking innovation.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Southern California: Balancing the potentials and pitfalls of AI in college admissions. “Artificial intelligence promises efficiency gains for admissions offices and offers students innovative application tools, but will the new technology advance or hinder equity?” 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.

January 2, 2024 at 06:31PM
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Library of Congress, Mickey Mouse, Backing Up Email, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 1, 2024

Library of Congress, Mickey Mouse, Backing Up Email, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 1, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Library of Congress: What’s New Online at the Library of Congress: 2023 Wrap-Up!. “Happy 2024 to all of our Signal subscribers! In this special edition of ‘What’s New Online at the Library of Congress,’ we’re looking back on some of our new digital collections releases in 2023.”

Boing Boing: Meet Tom the Dancing Bug’s newest character: Mickey Mouse!. Considering what often happens when major cultural characters become public domain, I admire the comic’s restraint in only having Mickey peel potatoes.

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Back Up Your Emails in Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud. “It might not matter for all those random newsletters, questionable deals, and politicians begging for cash that clog up your inbox, but what about emails and documents you really need access to? It’s helpful to have at least some of your emails backed up in another location so that you can always get at them, offline or otherwise.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

KRON: ‘STFU Musk’: Projector signs seen at SF NYE fireworks show takes aim at Mayor Breed, Elon Musk. “Thousands of people watched the KRON4 New Year’s Live fireworks show in San Francisco. They were anticipating seeing an exhilarating fireworks show with a breathtaking view of the Bay Bridge in the background. However, a few large signs were projected onto the Ferry Building that may have caught some by surprise.”

Spokesman-Review: Calendar for Expo ‘74’s golden anniversary to be released in January, feature celebrations of history, culture and environmentalism. “The 85,000 people who traveled to downtown Spokane to kick off a world’s fair on May 4, 1974, saw the fruits of business leaders, artists, politicians and more come to life in a reimagined trainyard. Those who come to a revamped downtown park this summer will see a similar collaboration of efforts, said Matt Santangelo, the program manager for the Expo ’74 golden anniversary…. In the next few weeks, organizers also will begin airing testimonials from Expo ’74 in partnership with KHQ-TV that will become a digital archive for the world’s fair, Santangelo said.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: US Supreme Court’s Roberts urges ‘caution’ as AI reshapes legal field . “Artificial intelligence represents a mixed blessing for the legal field, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said in a year-end report published on Sunday, urging ‘caution and humility’ as the evolving technology transforms how judges and lawyers go about their work.”

South China Morning Post: Back to ‘black box’? As China tightens access to court records, legal experts fear for future of judicial transparency. “The blackmail case of Xu Yan, a Chinese policewoman who extorted public officials after having sexual affairs with them, went unnoticed for a year until social media sleuths dug up the verdict online…. The case was one of several in the past decade in which Chinese members of the public used the transparency in the country’s judicial system to openly debate matters in public life that could appear unflattering to Beijing.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Stanford Daily: Blockbuster Alzheimer’s paper retracted by former Stanford president after a decade of resistance. “Marc Tessier-Lavigne told shareholders in 2009 that his research would ‘turn our current understanding of Alzheimer’s upside down.’ Now, the former Stanford president and his co-authors have retracted the paper he once heralded, conceding they do not have confidence in its data.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: How To Build A Small Solar Power System. “A confluence of lower-power appliances and devices using low-voltage external switch-mode supplies, readily available solar panels and electronic modules, and inexpensive high-capacity batteries, means that being your own power provider can be as simple as making an online order. But which parts should you choose? Low Tech Magazine has the answer, in the form of a guide to building a small solar power system.”

Business Insider: Ukrainian troops stuck it to Putin by helping recreate a 19th Century masterpiece. “Ukrainian warriors gathered round a wood table laugh as they one-up each other’s insults in writing a reply to the leader of an invading empire. This is the classic scene of a 19th Century painting that a Paris-born artist recently recreated with the help of Ukrainian troops now battling the Russian troops who invaded their country.” 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.

January 2, 2024 at 01:16AM
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Google, GitHub, Online Safety, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 1, 2024

Google, GitHub, Online Safety, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 1, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Android Police: Here’s what Google killed in 2023. “At this point, Google is infamous for quickly and prematurely killing beloved projects and products. The highest profile loss right at the beginning of the year was certainly Stadia, the company’s game streaming service that launched just in 2019. After not gaining as much momentum as the company likely hoped it would, it quickly decided to reduce spending and ultimately shut it down. But Stadia is not the only product killed in 2023, and with Google Podcasts officially on the way out, we already know what’s coming in 2024.”

TechCrunch: GitHub makes Copilot Chat generally available, letting devs ask questions about code. “Earlier this year, GitHub rolled out Copilot Chat, a ChatGPT-like programming-centric chatbot for organizations subscribed to Copilot for Business. Copilot Chat more recently came to individual Copilot customers — those paying $10 per month — in beta. And now, GitHub’s launching Chat in general availability for all users.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: When Being a Spokeswoman Attracts Leering Internet Trolls. “In the summer of 2020, seemingly overnight, one small but vocal corner of the internet fixed its gaze upon [Milana] Vayntrub and began referring to her by a new name: Mommy Milkers, a reference to her breasts. En masse, people spammed the comment sections of AT&T’s social-media posts with lewd declarations and emojis of glasses of milk. The jeering became inescapable for Vayntrub, bleeding into the comments of her personal social-media accounts.”

Hackaday: The Gopher Revival Is Upon Us. “A maxim for anyone writing a web page in the mid 1990s was that it was good practice to bring the whole thing (including graphics) in at around 30 kB in size. It was a time when the protocol still had some pretence of efficient information delivery, when information was self-published, before huge corporations brought everything under their umbrellas. Recently, this idea of the small web has been experiencing something of a quiet comeback.”

Global Cycling Network: The best Strava art of 2023. “2023 has been a big year for Strava art, with world records coming and going, and an ever-eclectic array of animals, logos, and everything in between. For the uninitiated, Strava art is what happens when the GPS map of a ride takes on a shape of its own, occasionally by accident but usually by design – and increasingly by ever-more audacious, detailed, and artistic design.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

UK Defence Journal: UK exposes Russia for attempted political interference. “The UK and international partners have called out the Russian Intelligence Services for a campaign of malicious cyber activity attempting to interfere in UK politics and democratic processes.”

Associated Press: Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen says he unwittingly sent AI-generated fake legal cases to his attorney. “Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s onetime personal lawyer and fixer, says he unwittingly passed along to his attorney bogus artificial intelligence-generated legal case citations he got online before they were submitted to a judge.”

Sky News: Chloe Macdermott: Google and Amazon told to act after woman’s death following suicide pact. “Google and Amazon must do more after a British woman made a suicide pact with two people she met online and used the internet to buy poison, a coroner has said. Chloe Macdermott, 43, died in May 2021 after buying a lethal substance from the US on Amazon.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Varsity: Cambridge AI centre welcomes Google as first partner. “The University of Cambridge’s newly established Centre for Human-Inspired AI (CHIA) has unveiled a long-term research agreement with Google, including an unrestricted grant to support endeavours in responsible AI, health care and sustainability. The agreement will make the technology giant the first funding partner for the University’s Centre for Human-Inspired Artificial Intelligence.”

TechXplore: Can large language models detect sarcasm?. “Juliann Zhou, a researcher at New York University, recently carried out a study aimed at assessing the performance of two LLMs trained to detect human sarcasm, which entails conveying ideas by ironically stating the exact opposite of what one is trying to say. Her findings, posted on the preprint server arXiv, helped her to delineate features and algorithmic components that could enhance the sarcasm detection capabilities of both AI agents and robots.”

PsyPost: Gender and personality traits influence cryptocurrency investment decisions. “A study in Norway has found that less than 1 in 10 Norwegians are willing to invest in cryptocurrencies. However, the likelihood of investing is more than double in men compared to women. Additionally, those open to investing in cryptocurrency tend to exhibit lower levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness, but higher levels of openness to experience and financial overconfidence. The study was published in Psychology & Marketing.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Mashable: NASA rover posts glorious GIF of a Martian day. “NASA regularly posts highly impressive GIFs of glimpses beyond our own atmosphere, and this week, it’s another beauty from Mars. On Thursday, the space agency’s Curiosity rover posted two animated images showing the six-wheeled vehicle’s view of the Martian landscape over 12 hours. It’s essentially the representation of one Martian day, from sunrise to sunset, with Curiosity capturing its own shadow in the foreground.” 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.

January 1, 2024 at 06:32PM
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