Indiana Literacy Dashboards, Insect Bite Force, British Library, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 10, 2024

Indiana Literacy Dashboards, Insect Bite Force, British Library, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 10, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Indiana Department of Education: Key Literacy Data Publicly Available for the First Time. “As Indiana continues to make historic investments in literacy, a new data visualization tool launched by the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) will empower educators, parents and families, community leaders and policymakers with the information needed to continue improving state and local literacy rates.”

Scientific Data: A bite force database of 654 insect species . “Here we present the insect bite force database with bite force measurements for 654 insect species covering 476 genera, 111 families, and 13 orders with body lengths ranging from 3.76 to 180.12 mm. In total we recorded 1906 bite force series from 1290 specimens, and, in addition, present basal head, body, and wing metrics. As such, the database will facilitate a wide range of studies on the characteristics, predictors, and macroevolution of bite force in the largest clade of the animal kingdom and may serve as a basis to further our understanding of macroevolutionary processes in relation to bite force across all biting metazoans.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: YouTube cracks down on AI content that ‘realistically simulates’ deceased children or victims of crimes. “YouTube is updating its harassment and cyberbullying policies to clamp down on content that ‘realistically simulates’ deceased minors or victims of deadly or violent events describing their death. The Google-owned platform says it will begin striking such content starting on January 16.”

British Library: Restoring our services – an update. “As we begin a new year, I’m pleased to confirm that – as promised before Christmas – next Monday 15 January will see the return online of one of the most important datasets for researchers around the world: the main British Library catalogue of over 36 million records, including details of our printed books, journals, maps, music scores and rare books. Its absence from the internet has been perhaps the single most visible impact of the criminal cyber attack which took place at the end of October last year, and I want to acknowledge how difficult this has been for all our users.”

Interfax-Ukraine: Due to Russian aggression in Ukraine, 872 cultural heritage sites damaged – Culture Ministry. “As a result of full-scale Russian armed aggression in Ukraine, some 872 cultural heritage sites were damaged, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy said.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

StateScoop: Maryland governor announces major tech overhaul for state government, including AI order. “[Governor Wes] Moore and his IT secretary, Katie Savage, announced four new technology initiatives, including a statewide executive order on artificial intelligence, a new digital services team, a digital accessibility policy and a cybersecurity partnership with the Maryland Army National Guard. Through these initiatives, Moore said, the state is aiming to integrate AI ethically into state government work, bolster cyberdefense and improve residents’ access to state resources, particularly for those with disabilities.”

Gothamist: NY Gov. Hochul aims to take on mental health access, ‘addictive’ social media. “Gov. Kathy Hochul says she wants to improve access to mental health care, limit social media’s negative impact on teens and bolster slipping health outcomes for pregnant New Yorkers. Those are among the major health care priorities Hochul laid out for the upcoming legislative session in her State of the State address Tuesday.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: SEC Twitter hijacked to push fake news of hotly anticipated Bitcoin ETF approval. “The SEC today said its Twitter account was hijacked to wrongly claim it had approved a bunch of hotly anticipated Bitcoin ETFs, causing the cryptocurrency to spike and then slip in price.”

University of California Riverside: UCR outs security flaw in AI query models. “UC Riverside computer scientists have identified a security flaw in vision language artificial intelligence (AI) models that can allow bad actors to use AI for nefarious purposes, such as obtaining instructions on how to make bomb. When integrated with models like Google Bard and Chat GPT, vision language models allow users to make inquiries with both images and text.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Cornell Chronicle: ChatGPT ‘memorizes’ and spits out entire poems. “The study showed that ChatGPT, a large language model that generates text on demand, was capable of “memorizing” poems, especially famous ones commonly found online. The findings pose ethical questions about how ChatGPT and other proprietary artificial intelligence models are trained – likely using data scraped from the internet, researchers said.” 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 11, 2024 at 01:25AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/K8PoNAx

Bellingcat, Armenian Music, Choctaw Nation, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, January 10, 2024

Bellingcat, Armenian Music, Choctaw Nation, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, January 10, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Bellingcat: Using the Wayback Machine and Google Analytics to Uncover Disinformation Networks . “Bellingcat has developed a lightweight open source research tool—Wayback Google Analytics — which automates the collection of tracking codes and discovery of relationships between websites using copies of sites maintained by The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. This will help researchers sidestep recent changes to how Google manages its analytics data.”

Armenian Weekly: Digital archive of Armenian music now accessible via Armenian Museum of America website. “Over the past year, the Armenian Museum of America’s Sound Archive program has taken a giant step forward. Each month, the Museum posts a handful of songs digitized and restored from its collection of 78 rpm records on its website along with a historical writeup about the artists. Along with more conventional musical recordings, some of the recordings touch on Armenian cultural, political and educational history, as well as the history of recording technologies.”

KFOR: Choctaw Nation launches informational website to celebrate Marvel’s ‘Echo’ series. “The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (CNO) has launched a new website dedicated to Marvel’s five-part series, ‘Echo,’ and giving an in-depth look into the Choctaw representation showcased throughout the show.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Google Blog: What we announced at CES 2024. “Android is all about giving you the ability to choose the devices that work best for you and making sure they connect seamlessly together, regardless of what brand they are. Today at CES, we’re announcing updates to help you get more done across your phone, laptop, Bluetooth accessories, TV, smart home and car.”

WHIO: Federal judge temporarily blocks Ohio’s new social media parental consent law. “A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the new Ohio law that limits children’s social media access. As News Center 7 previously reported on Friday, NetChoice, which represents Meta and TikTok, filed a lawsuit against the State of Ohio.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Magazine (Intelligencer): BuzzFeed’s ‘Dire’ Debt Problem. “BuzzFeed — once a media-industry success story, a shining example of the social internet in action — now faces a very uncertain future. As a public company, almost nothing has gone to plan: The SPAC cash dwindled from almost $290 million to about $16 million; the social-media networks that BuzzFeed relied on for a large share of its traffic pivoted to different kinds of content; investors fled, driving down the company’s stock price by 98 percent and its overall market value to a tiny $37 million.”

Boing Boing: Did a ChatGPT glitch reveal Twitter’s huge bot problem?. “Writer Parker Malloy posted a video that appears to be bot responses to a Twitter post. Each of the responses is a variation on ‘I’m sorry, but I cannot provide a response to your request as it goes against OpenAl’s content policy.’ This suggests that these are all bots that use ChatGPT to auto-generate responses to tweets. Interestingly, almost all of the accounts have blue checkmarks.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

404 Media: Sealed Indictment Shows Case Against Hacker Behind Massive T-Mobile Data Breach. “The U.S. has accused a man living in Turkey for hacking T-Mobile in 2021 and then selling stolen data on more than 40 million people, according to sealed court records obtained by 404 Media. The man, John Erin Binns, previously claimed responsibility for the hack in an interview with journalists, in which he described T-Mobile’s security as ‘awful.’ Now, Binns tells 404 Media he does not think he will be extradited from Turkey to face the charges.”

Reuters: Google faces $1.67 billion damages demand at AI-related patent trial. “Alphabet’s Google went before a federal jury in Boston on Tuesday to argue against a computer scientist’s claims that it should pay his company $1.67 billion for infringing patents that allegedly cover the processors used to power artificial intelligence technology in Google products.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

IANS: Google Trends Data Can Help Gauge Inflation Fears: ICRA Report. “Google search interest regarding the prices of just three vegetables — tomatoes, onions, and potatoes (TOP) — has turned out to be a useful indicator of price anxiety in India, according to an ICRA study released on Tuesday.”

University of Washington: Q&A: UW researchers answer common questions about language models like ChatGPT. “…a team of researchers at the University of Washington noticed that, even amid a year of AI commotion, many people struggle to find accurate, comprehensible information on what language models are and how they work. News articles frequently focus on the latest advances or corporate controversies, while research papers are too technical and granular for the public. So recently, the team published ‘Language Models: A Guide for the Perplexed,’ a paper explaining language models in lay terms.”

Pasifika Medical Association Group: New year, new look: The New Zealand Medical Journal to launch new website and free open access model. “The New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ) will launch its new website and branding, now offering a free open access model for subscribers on Friday 19 January…. Individuals are now able to subscribe to the NZMJ for free, both within New Zealand and overseas. Institutional subscribers are encouraged to pay a fee for a subscription.” 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 10, 2024 at 06:31PM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/ERbPtKO

Worldwide Commercial Fishing, FTC, Twilio, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 9, 2024

Worldwide Commercial Fishing, FTC, Twilio, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 9, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Scientific Data: A database of mapped global fishing activity 1950–2017 . “A new database on historical country-level fishing fleet capacity and effort is described, derived from a range of publicly available sources that were harmonized, converted to fishing effort, and mapped to 30-min spatial cells. The resulting data is comparable with widely used but more temporally-limited satellite-sourced Automatic Identification System (AIS) datasets for large vessels, while also documenting important smaller fleets and artisanal segments. It ranges from 1950 to 2017, and includes information on number of vessels, engine power, gross tonnage, and nominal effort, categorized by vessel length, gear type and targeted functional groups. ”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

FTC: FTC Voice Cloning Challenge submissions are due by January 12th. “Thanks to improvements in text-to-speech AI, voice cloning holds promise for consumers, but scammers often find a way to twist tech advancements for their nefarious purposes – and voice cloning is no exception. Announced in November, the goal of the FTC’s Voice Cloning Challenge is to encourage breakthrough ideas to help monitor, evaluate, and prevent malicious voice cloning. You have until 8:00 PM Eastern Time on January 12, 2024, to file your entry.”

Bleeping Computer: Twilio will ditch its Authy desktop 2FA app in August, goes mobile only. “The Authy desktop apps for Windows, macOS, and Linux will be discontinued in August 2024, with the company recommending users switch to a mobile version of the two-factor authentication (2FA) app. Authy is an authenticator app that allows users to set up two-factor authentication (2FA) for their online accounts, generating a unique validation code every 30 seconds to facilitate authorized access.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Gizmodo: Dumbest Google Result of the Week: ‘JFK Death Penalty’ Brings Up Some Kid’s Middle School Essay. “‘JFK was an interesting man.’ At least, that’s the first thing you read if you follow the top Search result for variations of “Did JFK support the death penalty?” Google turns up 7.5 million results, but for some reason, it starts you off with a Google Doc that appears to be a middle schooler’s homework assignment.” When I tried the search the essay was the second result… and this Gizmodo article was the third.

SiliconANGLE: Getty Images launches generative AI-powered image creation tool. “Getty Images Holdings Inc., an American visual content marketplace for video and images, today announced at the CES 2024 consumer electronics show the release of Generative AI by iStock, a tool that will allow creators to safely create commercially safe content based on licensed images.”

University of Nevada Las Vegas: Special Collections & Archives’ Preservation Project to Document Dec. 6 Shooting. “UNLV Special Collections & Archives is launching a preservation initiative to document the tragic Dec. 6, 2023, shooting on UNLV’s Maryland Parkway campus.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Nebraska Examiner: ‘It’s scary close’: Nebraska lawmakers react to AI voice clones, possible regulations . “As artificial intelligence continues to rapidly evolve, some Nebraska lawmakers are viewing a legislative or regulatory role over AI as a balancing act with the First Amendment. State senators say AI brings opportunities for innovation but also dangers, such as misinformation or disinformation ahead of the 2024 election.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Australian Associated Press: Social media posts used to find mental health distress. “James Cook University researchers have developed a technique to analyse social media posts to detect early warning signs of mental health distress. Data scientist Usman Naseem said the method examined historical posts, their timing and the interval between them.”

MIT Technology Review: What to expect from the coming year in AI. “So what can we expect in 2024? All signs point to there being immense pressure on AI companies to show that generative AI can make money and that Silicon Valley can produce the ‘killer app’ for AI.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

ABC News (Australia): Magpies swoop bald men more often, eight-year-old’s viral survey finds. “With help from mum, Kristy Glenfield, Emma set up an online survey and printed out flyers with a QR code, then she hit the local park and asked strangers to fill it in. She also asked students and teachers at her school. Emma asked respondents how old they were, how tall, what their hairstyles were, how much they weighed, and whether they were hurt as a result of the swooping.” 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 10, 2024 at 01:01AM
via ResearchBuzz https://ift.tt/rWSEHip

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