Rap Mixtapes, TikTok, Shell Company Ownership, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, January 9, 2024

Rap Mixtapes, TikTok, Shell Company Ownership, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, January 9, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Rolling Stone: The Internet Archive Now Hosts One of the World’s Biggest Collections of Rap Mixtapes. “LEGENDARY MIXTAPE PLATFORM DatPiff has uploaded the entirety of its over 366,420-project catalog to the internet archive. Last March, the service which calls itself ‘The Authority In Mixtapes’ experienced a server crash that put their canonical library of free music in peril.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: TikTok Quietly Curtails Data Tool Used by Critics. “TikTok has quietly restricted one of its few tools to help measure the popularity of trends on the video app, after the tool’s results were used by researchers and lawmakers to scrutinize content on the site related to geopolitics and the Israel-Hamas war.”

Associated Press: Yellen says 100,000 firms have joined a business database aimed at unmasking shell company owners. “Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has announced that 100,000 businesses have signed up for a new database of that collects ownership information intended to help unmask shell company owners.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

National Guard: Georgia Guard Unit to Document US Central Command Operations. “The Marietta-based 161st Military History Detachment held a ceremony Jan. 7 as the unit prepared to depart for a mobilization to the U.S. Army Central Command area of responsibility. Their mission will be to collect primary source material necessary for historians to write the Army’s official history of operations in the area. Their collection portfolio would include documents, oral interviews, photographs and physical artifacts.”

BBC: International Bomber Command Centre gets National Lottery funding . “The International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC) near Lincoln has been awarded £231,000 funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund…. The funding will be used in several areas including creating a new archive which the IBCC has said will ‘protect and preserve the heritage of the post-war era’.”

This next article isn’t for y’all, this is for whatever graduate student finds this dusty blog archive somewhere two hundred years down the line when I am long dead and forgotten. Posterity, if you want one article to summarize what it’s like to be a woman on the Internet in Century 21, here you go. I hope you get an A in your class. Ask-A-Manager: men are hitting on my scheduling bot because it has a woman’s name. “All it does is schedule meetings, and it’s not nearly to the level of an AI chat bot or anything. Any parts of an email that it receives that don’t seem related to scheduling just get ignored by the program. The emails show up in my inbox and I review them to make sure everything got added to my calendar correctly. However, this complete lack of personal-type interaction has not stopped several of the men (not usually the actual owners of the client businesses) it is scheduling appointments with from asking it out on dates.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

University of Oregon: State’s three 3 largest universities form joint cybersecurity center. “Cybersecurity experts from the state’s three largest research universities have joined together to launch the Oregon Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, with the goal of improving Oregon’s resilience to cyberattacks. The center will be run jointly by the University of Oregon, Oregon State University and Portland State University, which will host the center. It was created by the passage of House Bill 2049, which was signed into law by Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek in July.”

WIRED: Rumble Is Part of an ‘Active and Ongoing’ SEC Investigation. “Rumble, the so-called free speech alternative to YouTube, is the subject of an investigation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to the company and a letter from the SEC.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Georgia Tech: Finding a Better Way to Use Cameras to Reduce Crime. “Areas of a middle Georgia city have experienced a 20% reduction in crime after deploying a system of mobile cameras guided by an algorithm developed by Georgia Tech researchers. The system is being piloted in Warner Robins, Georgia. It uses artificial intelligence to sift through years of historical crime data to predict where future crimes are likely to happen, and by placing cameras that can read license plates in those areas, a three-month test period shows the community has been able to prevent some of those crimes.”

Televisual: Vaudeville teams with Google on 3D Sound Objects. “Sound design and audio post house, Vaudeville, is working with Google to build 3D audio models and creative sound design for the launch of the recently released Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF) specification. The IAMF specification is a royalty-free license, released through the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), that will enable developers to create immersive audio applications, content and experiences across a myriad of devices and platforms – from broadcasting to XR.”

Harvard Business Review: Is GenAI’s Impact on Productivity Overblown?. “Amid all the hype, there is reason to question whether these tools will have the transformative effects on company-wide productivity that some predict. One reason to take a slower approach is that assessments of productivity typically focus on the task level — summarizing a document, completing a slide deck, or answering a customer call, for example — and how individuals might use and benefit from LLMs. Using such findings to draw broad conclusions about firm-level performance could prove costly.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

North Carolina State University: New Soft Robots Roll Like Tires, Spin Like Tops and Orbit Like Moons. “Researchers have developed a new soft robot design that engages in three simultaneous behaviors: rolling forward, spinning like a record,and following a path that orbits around a central point. The device, which operates without human or computer control, holds promise for developing soft robotic technologies that can be used to navigate and map unknown environments.” 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 WikiTwister, SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

January 9, 2024 at 06:51PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/CObDZ35

Wyoming State Library, SCOTUS, Google, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 8, 2024

Wyoming State Library, SCOTUS, Google, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 8, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

EVENTS

Wyoming State Library: Practical Applications of AI in Libraries Webinar on February 6. “Are you curious about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help you with your library work? The Practical Applications of AI in Libraries webinar will give participants the opportunity to hear practical ways Wyoming librarians are already using AI to streamline their library tasks, including creating their monthly newsletter, generating web copy, cataloging, and carrying out technical services.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNBC: Supreme Court rejects appeal by Elon Musk’s X on disclosing federal surveillance. “The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal by the social media giant X challenging a ban on the company disclosing federal surveillance of Americans and foreign nationals using the service.”

Search Engine Journal: Google Gives Cookie Reprieve To Select Sites Through New Trials. “Google Chrome is restricting third-party cookie access for 1% of users as of January 4. Google expects to gradually ramp up the percentage of affected Chrome browsers, reaching 100% of users globally by Q3 2024. Recognizing the need for a smooth transition, Google is allowing websites and businesses to request additional time to migrate away from third-party cookie dependencies for non-advertising use cases.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: The Perfect Webpage. “How the internet reshaped itself around Google’s search algorithms — and into a world where websites look the same.” A long, well-done read that made me very depressed.

New York Times: Dark Corners of the Web Offer a Glimpse at A.I.’s Nefarious Future. “In the hands of anonymous internet users, A.I. tools can create waves of harassing and racist material. It’s already happening on the anonymous message board 4chan.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

404 Media: Inside a $20 Million Coinbase Phishing Ring. “Ricardo’s story is but a small cog of a massive cybercrime machine. The domain that duped Ricardo was used by a hacking crew that has stolen more than $20 million from more than 500 Coinbase users, many of them in the U.S., according to recently unsealed court records. Last month, the Secret Service quietly arrested Chirag Tomar, a 30-year-old Indian man in the Northern District of Georgia, who is allegedly part of the scheme. It’s not clear if Tomar was the man Ricardo spoke to on the phone.”

The Guardian: HyperVerse crypto promoter ‘Bitcoin Rodney’ arrested and charged in US. “Rodney Burton, who goes by the name ‘Bitcoin Rodney’, was arrested in Florida on Friday and remains in custody pending transfer to Maryland, where the charges were laid. He has been charged with operating and conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.”

Australian Associated Press: Thousands of extremists posts removed from social media. “More than 2500 violent or extremist social media posts have been removed from online platforms following requests by the federal government in the past six months. Figures from the Department of Home Affairs have revealed the government agency referred 3052 posts to platforms to be removed between July 1 and December 21.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

IEEE Spectrum: Generative AI Has a Visual Plagiarism Problem: Experiments with Midjourney and DALL-E 3 show a copyright minefield. “The degree to which large language models (LLMs) might ‘memorize’ some of their training inputs has long been a question, raised by scholars including Google DeepMind’s Nicholas Carlini and the first author of this article (Gary Marcus). Recent empirical work has shown that LLMs are in some instances capable of reproducing, or reproducing with minor changes, substantial chunks of text that appear in their training sets.”

Nature: How we remember the dead by their digital afterlives. “Many of us will have turned to the Internet to grieve and remember the dead — by posting messages on the Facebook walls of departed friends, for instance. Yet, we should give more thought to how the dead and dying themselves exert agency over their online presence, argues US sociologist Timothy Recuber in The Digital Departed.” 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 WikiTwister, SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

January 9, 2024 at 01:45AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/AKWHTdG

Steamboat Willie, WordPad, Google, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 8, 2024

Steamboat Willie, WordPad, Google, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 8, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Disney’s ‘Steamboat Willie’ YouTube copyright claim is back, this time for audio. “Disney has once again demonetized a third-party Steamboat Willie video, after previously remonetizing it and dropping its copyright claim against it. This time taking issue with the video’s audio.”

Boing Boing: Microsoft to take workhorse app WordPad out back after 28 years. “WordPad, the free word processor included with Windows, is to be discontinued presently. In a blog post about the next preview build of the Windows 11 operating system, the company snuck in the news under ‘Changes and Improvements’ after announcing new features.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Reiterates: We Have Changes Coming To Deal With Search Spam. “Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, posted this morning that the search company has changes coming to better deal with the recent flux of search spam we’ve all been seeing in the search results. He said it just sometimes takes time to fully put these changes into place but they are on their way.”

USEFUL STUFF

Tom’s Guide: This Chrome extension saves downloads directly to Google Drive — I really wish I’d found it sooner. “If you regularly save images or files from the web, which you then upload to Google Drive for use across multiple devices, there’s an extension that helps you completely cut out the middle steps — that is to say, it removes the need to save files to your physical device storage and then upload them to Google Drive. You simply save the image or screenshot directly to a folder on your Google Drive.”

MakeUseOf: Buying Tickets Online? Avoid These 4 Ticketmaster Scams. “The latest and hottest gigs sell out almost instantly, with people willing to shell out big bucks to buy other people’s tickets. At the center of that is Ticketmaster, the ticket company most folks love to hate. Unfortunately, scammers use Ticketmaster to separate fans from their hard-earned money, but you can learn how to spot and avoid Ticketmaster scams.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: OpenAI’s news publisher deals reportedly top out at $5 million a year. “The Information reports that OpenAI offers between $1 million and $5 million a year to license copyrighted news articles to train its AI models. That’s one of the first indications of how much AI companies plan to pay for licensed material. It sits alongside a recent report saying Apple is looking to partner with media companies to use content for AI training and is offering at least $50 million over a multiyear period for data. The Verge reached out to OpenAI for comment on the numbers.”

Indian Express: Why PM Modi’s Lakshadweep visit has the Maldives’ social media and govt officials up in arms against India. “All it took was a series of posts on X this weekend from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, promoting tourism in Lakshadweep islands, to set off a social media war between Maldivian politicians, government officials and Indian social media users.” The Maldives’ side is some of the craziest social media behavior I’ve ever seen by a national government representative. And I’m American!

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: EU’s Vestager to meet Big Tech CEOs in the US next week. “EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager will meet the chief executives of Apple, Alphabet, Broadcom and Nvidia in the United States next week, her communications advise said on Friday.”

CBS 12 Florida: New Florida bill aims to ban children under 16 from social media. “On Friday, Republican Florida Representative Tyler Sirois introduced House Bill 1. The proposed bill will require social media platforms to ban minors under 16 years of age in Florida from creating a new account.”

Los Angeles Public Press: The LAPD wants access to 10,000 cameras across the city. “The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is in the process of creating a brand new surveillance program that will centralize live video feeds from security cameras (including private homeowner cameras) from all across the City of LA if its budget for the next fiscal year is approved by the LA City Council and Mayor Karen Bass.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Guardian: Twitter changed my life for good. But the platform I loved no longer exists. “Nobody is entirely immune to the narcissism that social media encourages. It takes time and research, as well as intellectual and emotional discipline, to introduce nuance and factual information into a conversation. Balanced analysis is hard; snark and outrage take a lot less effort. Everybody enjoys being praised and nobody likes being corrected in public, with the result that there is a real risk that even the most seasoned analysts or journalists start worrying more about their own reputation or ‘brand’ than about the issues they are writing about.”

Internet Archive Blog: Mickey’s Bad Day, or, The Ecosystem. “As a variety of slasher movies, costumes, crypto tokens, fan-fiction creations and general meme images of Steamboat Willie cascade into the first parts of 2024, it’s worth noting how the entire situation will feel unusual or a controversial subject to a number of folks. What it is, however, is a too-long-delayed part of a natural process of works and copyright. The implementation of universal involuntary copyright that then lasts longer than the vast majority of human lifetimes means a disconnect, a vast gulf between the life of creative works and when they become a part of culture at large in anything other than a consumption relationship.” 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 WikiTwister, SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

January 8, 2024 at 06:51PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/bGClRy6

Pacific Northwest Bees, Google Domains, Ham Radio History, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 7, 2024

Pacific Northwest Bees, Google Domains, Ham Radio History, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 7, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Oregon State University: New online guides will aid in identification of native bees in Pacific Northwest. “Pollinator enthusiasts and scientists have new online tools to identify native bees in the Pacific Northwest. The publicly available ‘keys’ resemble the field guides familiar to fans of fauna and flora but contain the extraordinary detail needed to identify bees, which are much harder to tell apart than plants, birds, mammals and reptiles, according to Jim Rivers of the Oregon State University College of Forestry.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5Google: Google Domains and Squarespace saw new registrations drop following takeover. “Data spotted by Domain Name Wire and published by ICANN shows that new registrations of .com domains from Google Domains and Squarespace combined dropped by around 25% the month that Google Domains ceased sales, from over 250,000 in August 2023 to just shy of 190,000 in September 2023.”

Amateur Radio Daily: DLARC Continues to add Rich History of Ham Radio Content. “Kay Savetz (K6KJN), posted an update in the most recent issue of Zero Retires highlighting the continued stream of rich content and history being donated to the Digital Library of Amateur Radio & Communications (DLARC).”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Dominican Today: Google’s information on dollar to peso exchange rate is false, says Central Bank. “The Central Bank informed today that the exchange rate for the US dollar is quoted in the exchange market at 58.63 for sale and 58.31 for purchase. Likewise, it specifies that the information on the peso’s value concerning the dollar of RD$33.20, which appears in the Google search engine, is incorrect and whose correction has been requested by the bank to that technological company.” I checked and it looks like this has been fixed.

NPR: Election officials worry about the potential use of AI to spread misinformation. “NPR’s A Martinez talks with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes about the use of artificial intelligence to curb AI-manufactured threats to the integrity of the 2024 vote.”

New Zealand Herald: Taonga archival pictures of Aotearoa history returns to New Zealand ownership. “A taonga archive featuring thousands of images illustrating aspect of Māori life from the early 20th century will be repatriated into public ownership – thanks to a new deal between its foreign owner and the National Library of NZ.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Journal (Ireland): Senior Irish-based X employee files High Court case against Elon Musk. “A SENIOR IRELAND-BASED employee at X, formerly known as Twitter, is taking a High Court case against Elon Musk and the company over allegedly unfair disciplinary action. Aaron Rodericks, X’s co-lead of threat disruption, is initiating proceedings after a dispute last year that centred around Rodericks allegedly liking tweets that were critical of the company.”

Ars Technica: A “ridiculously weak” password causes disaster for Spain’s No. 2 mobile carrier . “Orange España, Spain’s second-biggest mobile operator, suffered a major outage on Wednesday after an unknown party obtained a ‘ridiculously weak’ password and used it to access an account for managing the global routing table that controls which networks deliver the company’s Internet traffic, researchers said.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: Isomorphic inks deals with Eli Lilly and Novartis for drug discovery. “Isomorphic Labs, the London-based, drug discovery-focused spin-out of Google AI R&D division DeepMind, today announced that it’s entered into strategic partnerships with two pharmaceutical giants, Eli Lilly and Novartis, to apply AI to discover new medications to treat diseases.”

Lismore City News (Australia): National Library rewriting the script as history becomes clearer. “Up until now, anyone interested in looking at a handwritten letter in the 15 kilometres of boxes on shelves in Canberra would have to go to the building itself. The box would be taken off the shelf and brought to a desk for the actual bit of paper to be read. And readers wouldn’t be able to search through it without actually reading the thing.” 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 WikiTwister, SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

January 8, 2024 at 01:43AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/Jle1oDq

CES, YouTube, Logan Paul, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 7, 2024

CES, YouTube, Logan Paul, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 7, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

EVENTS

The Verge: What to expect at CES 2024. “This year’s show kicks off from Las Vegas on Tuesday, January 9th and runs through Friday, January 12th, but you should expect news to start coming out as soon as, really, right now. Companies have been trickling out announcements over the past week, and many will try to preempt the conference with announcements in the days before the show floor opens up.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Roundtable: YouTube’s Significant Drop In Google News Visibility. “It seems that YouTube is not showing up in Google News as often as it use to. Will Flannigan, the SEO Editor at the Wall Street Journal posted a chart from The Trisolute News Dashboard showing the drop in visibility experienced by YouTube in Google News.”

TechCrunch: Logan Paul promises CryptoZoo refunds, as long as you don’t sue him. “Logan Paul is offering refunds for CryptoZoo, the failed and allegedly fraudulent Pokémon-inspired NFT game that he launched in 2021. The catch? You can’t sue him if you get a refund. In an X (formerly Twitter) post on Thursday, Paul announced that he is ‘personally committing’ more than $2.3 million to buy back NFTs purchased through CryptoZoo. Claims can be submitted online until February 8.”

Genealogy’s Star: FamilySearch Year-in-Review 2023. “One interesting observation from this year-end report from FamilySearch.org is the extent to which artificial intelligence or AI is having on the website’s records. The searchable names and records continue rapidly increase, due in part, to the use of AI based handwriting recognition and AI assited Computer Aided Indexing or CAI.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Search Engine Land: TikTok ‘planning to rival Amazon with major U.S. expansion’. “TikTok Shop is a prime opportunity for brands as 83% of users make purchase decisions on the platform. If TikTok is planning a major expansion, marketers will benefit from being able to showcase their products to a larger engaged audience in the States, maximizing ROI.”

Variety: GroupM Teams With NBCU, Disney, Roku, YouTube in Bid to Bolster Streaming Ads. “GroupM, the large media-buying unit of European ad conglomerate WPP. is launching a group that aims to make the process of buying and placing ads in streaming environments easier for marketers. GroupM has formed a partnership with media owners Disney, Roku, NBCUniversal and YouTube, along with ad-tech firms including KERV, BrightLine; and Telly.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Police investigate virtual sex assault on girl’s avatar. “Police are investigating a virtual sexual assault of a girl’s avatar, the chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners has said. Donna Jones said she had learned that a complaint was made in 2023, triggering a police inquiry.”

404 Media: Google Contractor Pays Parents $50 to Scan Their Childrens’ Faces. “Google is collecting the eyelid shape and skin tone of children via parent submitted videos, according to a project description online reviewed by 404 Media. Canadian tech conglomerate TELUS, which says it is working on Google’s behalf, is offering parents $50 to film their children wearing various props such as hats or sunglasses as part of the project, the description adds.”

Techdirt: Company Threatens To Sue Cyclist For Trademark Over ‘Near Miss’ YouTube Video. “While I’m sure this sort of thing must somtimes work, it’s also quite common for these would-be censorial folks to be introduced to the Streisand Effect instead, finding that the attempt to suppress negative information instead gains it far more attention than it would have had on its own. Well, allow me to introduce you to a company called Cornices Centre in the UK.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Daniel Stenberg: The I In LLM Stands For Intelligence. “Right now, users seem keen at using the current set of LLMs, throwing some curl code at them and then passing on the output as a security vulnerability report. What makes it a little harder to detect is of course that users copy and paste and include their own language as well. The entire thing is not exactly what the AI said, but the report is nonetheless crap.”

The Conversation: Jan. 6 was an example of networked incitement − a media and disinformation expert explains the danger of political violence orchestrated over social media. “What set Jan. 6 apart was the president of the United States using his cellphone to direct an attack on the Capitol, and those who stormed the Capitol being wired and ready for insurrection. My co-authors and I, a media and disinformation scholar, call this networked incitement: influential figures inciting large-scale political violence via social media. Networked incitement involves insurgents communicating across multiple platforms to command and coordinate mobilized social movements in the moment of action.”

WIRED: In Defense of AI Hallucinations. “It’s a big problem when chatbots spew untruths. But we should also celebrate these hallucinations as prompts for human creativity and a barrier to machines taking over.” 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 WikiTwister, SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

January 7, 2024 at 06:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/EywcUBO

Midjourney, Unknown Photography, Factcheck Games, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, January 6, 2024

Midjourney, Unknown Photography, Factcheck Games, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, January 6, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: How much detail is too much? Midjourney v6 attempts to find out. “In December, just before Christmas, Midjourney launched an alpha version of its latest image synthesis model, Midjourney v6. Over winter break, Midjourney fans put the new AI model through its paces, with the results shared on social media. So far, fans have noted much more detail than v5.2 (the current default) and a different approach to prompting.” 1000 points to whoever gave this article “MAYBE SHE’S BORN WITH IT. MAYBE IT’S MIDJOURNEY.”

Flickr Blog: Another Round of Mystery Photos from the Library of Congress. “The mystery photos album consists of many uncaptioned images from the Harris & Ewing studio. The Harris & Ewing studio was located in Washington, D.C and owned and operated by George Washington Harris and Martha Ewing. This particular collection consists of over 40,000 glass negatives and according to the Library of Congress, are noted to be from the period between 1905-1945.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Indian Express: Facts about Fiction: 5 games that can help you think like a fact checker. “Training someone to verify and fact check is easy but what if these things are taught using games? Yes, there are several games that are aimed at teaching people the important fact checking skills. Some games also put the users in the shoes of fake news generators and teach about the sources that one needs to trust.”

Lifehacker: The Best Sites and Apps to Track Your Books, Movies, Music, and Video Games. “Even before technology presented methods to make it easier, I intermittently have kept lists of, say, the movies I watched with my then-girlfriend, now spouse. Like scrolling through photos in my phone, just seeing the name of a film on that list would trigger my memories of where we were when we saw it or the conversations we had afterward. So much of daily life is ephemeral; keeping a record of a given day—even if it’s just something as inconsequential as finally watching Weekend at Bernie’s (a surprisingly weird movie) can give you an anchor to cling to.”

Hongkiat: 50 Best Sites to Download Free SVG Files (2024). “…the question is, where can you find high-quality SVG graphics and icons, especially for free? We’ve done the heavy lifting for you, sifting through hundreds of sites to curate a top-notch list of 50 websites where you can download SVGs at no cost. Whether you’re on the hunt for SVG logos, icons, or any other graphics, there should be something that meets your need.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Gizmodo: Kohler’s Newest Bidet Finally Brings Alexa and Google to Your Butt. “CES is about more than just the gadgets you hold in your hand or sit at the desk to use. It’s about the stuff in your bathroom, too, which is why Kohler is using the annual trade show to debut its latest in connected fixtures. The new items include a new shower sprayer, a ventilation fan that helps with humidity after a long shower, and my favorite, the PureWash Bidet Seat with Google and Alexa built-in.”

Canadian Architect: Architect Toyo Ito donates archive to the CCA. “The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) announced the addition of the early works of Toyo Ito to its archives. Ito is known for transcending the boundaries of architecture while also speaking out about social needs. The CCA Collection includes ideas, provocations, inspirations, and trials and errors that have formed the basis of international research, exhibition and publication program.”

Hackaday: Digital Master Tapes Seek Deck. “As a nerdy kid in the 90s, I spent a fair bit of time watching the computer-themed cartoon Reboot. During the course of making a documentary about the show, [Jacob Weldon] and [Raquel Lin] have uncovered the original digital master tapes of the show. This is certainly exciting news for fans of the show, but there’s a bit of a wrinkle. These digital masters are all on D-1 digital cassette tapes which the studio doesn’t have a player for anymore.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Google Search Technique Used by Police Draws New Legal Challenge. “On Friday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and its Pennsylvania chapter argued in a court filing that the investigative technique used in the case, known as a keyword search warrant, is dangerously broad and threatens to infringe on the privacy rights of innocent people.”

9to5Mac: US expected to hit Apple with major antitrust lawsuit this year . “A major new Apple antitrust development will reportedly land soon. That’s according to the New York Times, reporting today that the United States Department of Justice has reached ‘late stages’ of its monopoly investigation of Apple.”

WSYX: Ohio faces lawsuit from trade group over new social media law. “A trade group representing multiple social media sites is suing to stop a new Ohio law that would force companies to get verifiable parental consent for children under 16. Trade group NetChoice filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of Ohio on Friday seeking to stop the Parental Notification by Social Media Operators Act from going into effect on January 15, 2024.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Search Engine Land: 94% of Google SGE links are different from organic search results, study finds. “Google SGE is expected to reduce organic traffic significantly to websites for many keywords because searchers will be able to get the answer directly in Google’s AI-generated answer. The one bright spot? Websites that can’t reach the top 10 of Google’s organic results might be able to appear as links within SGE.” Google’s going to scrape all your content, claim “fair use,” and generate advertising revenue with it while you get nothing, BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS … 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 WikiTwister, SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

January 6, 2024 at 07:48PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/TZ5DSj3

Colorado Community Services, National Library of Chile, Firefox, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 5, 2024

Colorado Community Services, National Library of Chile, Firefox, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 5, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Colorado Sun: New online tool helps Coloradans quickly determine which public benefits they might be eligible for . “The tool, which appears to be the first of its kind in Colorado, streamlines the navigation process for human services workers by helping them guide people through screening questions on the MyFriendBen site instead of a time-consuming search through a cumbersome database, Jimenez said.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

From the National Library of Chile and machine-translated from Spanish: Writer’s Archive adds new digitizations to the collections of Braulio Arenas, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda and Salvador Reyes. “All types of manuscripts and personal documents of Chilean authors are gathered in the Writer’s Archive. The collection of this section of the National Library is made up of more than 25,000 objects, including manuscripts, epistolaries and personal documents. During this year, the Writer’s Archive made progress in the digitization of the valuable collections of Braulio Arenas, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda and Salvador Reyes.”

ZDNet: The fall of Firefox: Mozilla’s once-popular web browser slides into irrelevance. “There’s nothing new about Firefox’s decline. In 2022, Firefox dropped to 2.6% from 2021’s 2.7%. In 2015, when I first started using DAP’s numbers, Firefox had an 11% market share. By 2016, Firefox had declined to 8.2%. It had a slight bounce upward by 2018 to 9%.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: How to Be More Anonymous Online . “At this stage of the internet, being totally anonymous across your entire online life is incredibly hard to achieve. Phones, SIM cards, browsers, Wi-Fi networks, and more use identifiers that can be linked to your activity. But there are steps you can take to obscure your identity for everyday browsing.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Diplomat: How Social Media Will be Weaponized in Bangladesh’s Election. “As Bangladesh prepares for its 2024 elections, a familiar but chilling specter haunts the political landscape: the potential misuse of social media, which has reshaped the landscape since the 2018 parliamentary election.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

PBS News: How citizen investigators are helping the FBI track down Jan. 6 rioters. “The Jan. 6 investigation is the largest FBI operation in history. More than 1200 people have been charged and over 900 convicted. But it has stretched the bureau’s resources and has often had to rely on the work of citizen investigators who came to be known as ‘sedition hunters.’ Judy Woodruff spoke with one of these anonymous sleuths as part of her series, America at a Crossroads.”

Reuters: Google must bargain with YouTube worker union, US labor board rules. “Alphabet Inc’s Google violated U.S. labor law by refusing to bargain with a union representing contract workers for YouTube Music, a federal agency has ruled. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in a decision on Wednesday rejected claims by Google, which owns YouTube, that it should not be considered the employer of workers provided by staffing firm Cognizant Technology Solutions.”

Associated Press: Official suggests Polish president check social media security after odd tweet from private account. “Poland’s minister of digital affairs suggested Friday that President Andrzej Duda check the security of access to his social accounts after a bizarre tweet went out that was almost immediately removed. The tweet published Thursday on Duda’s private account said: ‘Tell him to ask his wife what “having balls” means. She knows!'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New Yorker: What We Lost When Twitter Became X. “The over-all direction of Musk’s changes hasn’t been too surprising, but the magnitude of the shift—the sheer inanity of it—still shocks me. Wiping out billions in brand value by changing the platform’s name; decimating the developer ecosystem; testing out charging new users for the service. These decisions seem indistinguishable from acts of self-sabotage.”

The Independent: Google reveals new ‘robot constitution’ to try and stop robots from accidentally killing humans. “The company has now revealed a set of new advances that it hopes will make it easier to develop robots that are both able to help out with such tasks and to do so without causing any harm. The systems are intended to ‘help robots make decisions faster, and better understand and navigate their environments’, it said – and to do so safely.” 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 6, 2024 at 04:06AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/PjyzpqC