Monday, September 28, 2020

Justice Initiative Maldives, Unlawful Militias, YouTube, More: Monday Evening ResearchBuzz, September 28, 2020

Justice Initiative Maldives, Unlawful Militias, YouTube, More: Monday Evening ResearchBuzz, September 28, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Edition (Maldives): Justice Initiative Maldives launches online legal resource database. “Local non-government organization Justice Initiative Maldives, on Saturday, launched its free-to-use online database for legal resources. Created by Lexavy Chambers, the first of its kind platform in the country offers individuals with consolidated news and access to legal documents.”

Georgetown Law: Fact Sheets on Unlawful Militias for All 50 States Now Available from Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection . “The fact sheets provide key information about lawful and unlawful militias, state laws prohibiting private militias and paramilitary activity, and what to do if citizens see groups of armed individuals near polling places.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: YouTube AI to automatically block videos that violate age restrictions. “YouTube will use machine learning to automatically apply age restrictions on videos, the Google-owned video site said Tuesday, widening its use of artificial intelligence to automate blocking some videos from viewers who either aren’t signed into a YouTube account or are signed in as a viewer under the age of 18.” What could POSSIBLY go wrong.

Fast Company: Facebook now says it will reject Trump ads prematurely claiming victory Nov. 4. “Facebook has said it will reject political ads that spread misinformation about the outcome of the November 3 election, several hours after Fast Company reported that the company’s stated policies would do nothing to prevent a candidate such as Donald Trump from declaring victory before the final results are tabulated.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: California County Enlists Social Media to Thwart a Misleading Election Photo. “Election officials in Sonoma County, Calif., asked the broader social media community on Friday to help them rebut a false report about mail-in ballots in the county. After receiving phone calls from constituents claiming they saw online pictures of mail-in ballots in a landfill, the county posted a message on its main Twitter account alerting residents and other Twitter users that a false report was circulating.”

Politico: Why the right wing has a massive advantage on Facebook. “Throughout 2020, Democrats have denounced Facebook with growing ferocity as a ‘right wing echo chamber’ with a ‘conservative bias’ that’s giving an edge to Donald Trump in November. But Facebook says there’s a reason why right-wing figures are driving more engagement. It’s not that its algorithm favors conservatives — the company has long maintained that its platform is neutral. Instead, the right is better at connecting with people on a visceral level, the company says.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBC: Ottawa prepares to squeeze big U.S. tech firms over loss of revenue for Canadian news outlets. “Advocates for Canada’s news media sector have welcomed the federal government’s clearest pledge yet to squeeze web giants for compensation. But there’s evidence it will be a long, difficult process. Major U.S.-based tech firms such as Facebook and Google have long been accused of funnelling advertising revenues away from Canada’s struggling news organizations while not paying the outlets for their copyrighted content.”

NPR: U.S. Judge Halts Trump’s TikTok Ban, Hours Before It Was Set To Start. “A federal judge on Sunday blocked President Trump’s TikTok ban, granting a temporary reprieve to the wildly popular video-sharing app. During a telephone court hearing on Sunday, lawyers for TikTok argued that Trump’s clampdown infringed on free speech and due process rights.” Good evening, Internet…

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September 29, 2020 at 05:45AM
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Monday CoronaBuzz, September 28, 2020: 30 pointers to new resources, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Monday CoronaBuzz, September 28, 2020: 30 pointers to new resources, useful stuff, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz

Please wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay at home if you can. Please be careful. I love you.

NEW RESOURCES – MEDICAL/HEALTH

USA Today: A new database tracks COVID-19’s effects on sex and gender. “Months into the COVID-19 pandemic, details about the virus’ sex and gender implications have begun to emerge: More men than women are dying from the coronavirus. But other details — such as why, or what social or biological mechanisms are involved, or what that means for treatment or public health — remain unknown. One problem, experts say, is an international blind spot to sex and gender. Global disease surveillance systems have done a poor job of monitoring how the virus affects people of different gender identities or sexes. A new database is trying to address that.”

EurekAlert: Web resources bring new insight into COVID-19. “Researchers around the world are a step closer to a better understanding of the intricacies of COVID-19 thanks to two new web resources developed by investigators at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of California San Diego. The resources are freely available through the Signaling Pathways Project (Baylor) and the Network Data Exchange (UCSD).”

FACT CHECKS / MISINFORMATION

Poynter: The sheer amount of misinformation is forcing fact-checkers to collaborate. “This week a study by the Oxford Internet Institute showed that only 1% of a sample of YouTube videos spreading COVID-19 misinformation received a fact-checking label when recirculated on Facebook. The study authors concluded that Facebook’s Third Party Fact-Checking program may be overmatched by the sheer amount of false information on YouTube and Facebook. (Full disclosure: Facebook requires that its fact-checking partners are verified signatories to International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles).

SOCIETAL IMPACT

STAT News: The Road Ahead: Charting the coronavirus pandemic over the next 12 months — and beyond. “In this project, STAT describes 30 key moments, possible turning points that could steer the pandemic onto a different course or barometers for how the virus is reshaping our lives, from rituals like Halloween and the Super Bowl, to what school could look like, to just how long we might be incorporating precautions into our routines. This road map is informed by insights from more than three dozen experts, including Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates, people on the frontlines at schools and hospitals, as well as STAT reporters. It largely focuses on the U.S.”

NPR: CDC’s Halloween Guidelines Warn Against Typical Trick-Or-Treating. “In a year that’s been plenty scary, this much is clear: Pandemic Halloween will be different than regular Halloween. Many traditional ways of celebrating are now considerably more frightful than usual, because now they bring the risk of spreading the coronavirus. Accordingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued new guidelines on how to celebrate Halloween safely. No big surprise: Classic door-to-door trick-or-treating and crowded, boozy costume parties are not recommended.”

INSTITUTIONS

Times of India: As a circus goes online, clown pines for hugs and selfie requests. “The last time Biju Pushkaran had whistled at a girl, she had shown him her slipper and soon, they were married. Many years later, young girls would whistle at this shy Malayali widower and smother him with hugs as they took selfies. Such unsolicited proximity used to make Pushkaran -the painted face of Rambo Circus- uncomfortable but the lockdown turned the joke on the joker.”

CNBC: Virus disrupting Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival for the first time in a century. “A cloud of uncertainty that has hung over Rio de Janeiro throughout the coronavirus pandemic has been lifted, but gloom remains — the annual Carnival parade of flamboyant samba schools won’t be held in February. And while the decision is being characterized as a postponement of the event, no new date has been set.”

BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS

CNET: The American RV industry fell off a cliff, but now it’s bouncing back. “America is in a pretty rough place right now, both financially and from a public health standpoint, but that isn’t stopping people from going out and buying or renting RVs and undertaking their great American road trip. According to a report published Tuesday by Reuters, the RV industry is seeing a dramatic increase in sales after the initial plummet at the start of the COVID-19 crisis — aka the mythical V-shaped recovery. Why, though? It’s not as though new RVs are cheap.”

Barron’s: The Pandemic Has Swelled the Ranks of Zombie Companies. Here’s How to Recognize Them.. “With Halloween near, investors need to keep an eye out for zombies. The pandemic has boosted the number of zombie companies—unprofitable, cash-poor firms that rely on financial markets to cover their costs—reports money manager Principal Global Investors. In the first quarter, Principal found 18% of companies in the Bloomberg Total Return Index couldn’t cover interest costs with the previous year’s pretax earnings, up from a little more than 10% a year ago.”

BBC: Nike expects permanent shift to online sales. “Sportswear firm Nike has seen a huge rise in online sales as it bounces back from a coronavirus slump. The US company saw digital sales rocket 82% during the June to August quarter, offsetting falling revenue in its stores.”

STATE / LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Route Fifty: Local Officials Say They Need More Time to Spend CARES Act Money, as Future Aid Remains in Doubt. “Local officials say a looming end-of-year deadline for their governments to use hundreds of millions of dollars in federal coronavirus aid could force them to unnecessarily rush spending over the coming three months and will limit them from spreading the money into next year when the virus is likely to still be a threat. It would be immensely helpful, they say, if the federal government pushed the cutoff date to use the money from Dec. 30, out into 2021.”

COUNTRY / FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

BBC: Coronavirus: Saudi Arabia to gradually resume Umra pilgrimage. “Saudi Arabia is to gradually resume a Muslim pilgrimage which has been suspended for seven months because of the coronavirus pandemic. From 4 October, up to 6,000 Saudi citizens and residents will be allowed to undertake the Umra each day. Pilgrims from countries deemed safe will be permitted from 1 November, when the daily capacity will rise to 20,000.”

American Independent: More than 1 million US citizens might never get virus relief checks. “Millions of Americans have been left out to dry when it comes to obtaining coronavirus relief money, and among the hardest hit are U.S. citizens with undocumented spouses. A Monday report by the United States Government Accountability Office indicated that 8.7 million or more Americans had not yet received their stimulus checks during the coronavirus pandemic. At least 1.2 million Americans with undocumented spouses likely never will.”

New York Times: Despite Claims, Trump Rarely Uses Wartime Law in Battle Against Covid. “President Trump has sweeping powers to compel companies to produce protective gear and to guarantee that the federal government will pay them for it — and as his election campaign intensifies, he has been boasting about aggressively using them. But in fact, most of his administration’s use of that authority, granted under the Cold-War Defense Production Act, has had nothing to do with the pandemic.”

Ubergizmo: Finland Deploys COVID-19 Sniffer Dogs At The Airport. “We’ve all seen how dogs are deployed at checkpoints along the border or at airports to help sniff out drugs and other illegal substances that people should not be bringing into a country, but could sniffer dogs also be used to sniff out diseases in people, like the coronavirus? Apparently so, or that’s what Finnish researchers believe.” There’s already been quite a bit of research done into dogs sniffing out coronavirus.

INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS

BBC: Gordi: The pop star doctor who answered the Covid call. “Singer-songwriter Gordi thinks it’s ‘incredibly selfish’ not to wear a face mask during the coronavirus pandemic. As a practising doctor in hospitals around the state of Victoria – the current “epicentre of Covid in Australia” – she’s perhaps more qualified than most musicians to talk on the topic.”

CNN: A ‘distressed’ Birx questions how long she can remain on White House task force, sources say. “Once a fixture at the administration’s coronavirus briefings, Dr. Deborah Birx has confided to aides and friends that she has become so unhappy with what she sees as her diminished role as coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force that she is not certain how much longer she can serve in her position, sources familiar with her thinking tell CNN.”

HEALTH

HuffPost: U.S. COVID Deaths Are Set To Blow Past Trump’s Own Targets. “On April 10, President Donald Trump gave somber remarks on COVID-19, which by then had been spreading in the U.S. for months. He cited models that it would kill as many as 220,000 Americans ― although he predicted ‘substantially’ below 100,000 ― and said ‘our people had to be extremely strong and brave to be able to put up with what they’ve put up with.’ Five months later, the nation is hurting even more.”

Slate: What Keeps an Immunization Expert Up at Night. “Dr. Paul Offit has a role in the race to get a vaccine to market. Offit is the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and serves on the vaccine advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration. On What Next TBD, I spoke with him about the vaccine development process, how to restore Americans’ trust in science, and why the vaccine won’t be a miracle cure.”

NiemanLab: “‘Warp speed’ was an unfortunate term”: With Covid-19, vaccine messaging faces an unprecedented test. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had a problem: A new vaccine could save lives and end a viral epidemic that had infected millions of Americans. The immunization was safe, effective, and widely available. Most insurance companies planned to cover it. But few people were taking it. That epidemic was human papillomavirus, or HPV, a sexually transmitted infection that sometimes causes cervical cancer and other serious conditions.”

Poynter: When can we expect a vaccine for children, an important step in the fight against COVID-19?. “As I read the CDC’s new playbook for how to roll out a COVID-19 vaccine, one thing is missing from the plan: how we will vaccinate children. The plan, understandably prioritizes seniors, health care workers, people with medical vulnerabilities, people in jails, homeless shelters and other at-risk populations. The first priority group also includes daycare workers and school teachers, but does not mention the students, except for college students. There are reasons for this.”

New Zealand Herald: Covid 19 coronavirus: Hundreds of women desperate after endometriosis treatment cancelled. “Endometriosis New Zealand chief executive Deborah Bush said that during the seven-week lockdown alone the organisation received cries for help from 568 women, far more than usual, with some suicidal because they were struggling to deal with their condition.”

Washington Post: Rising coronavirus case numbers in many states spur warning of autumn surge. “Twenty-seven states and Puerto Rico have shown an increase in the seven-day average of new confirmed cases since the final week of August, according to The Post’s analysis of public health data. Minnesota, Montana, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, Wisconsin, Wyoming and Utah set record highs [September 21] for seven-day averages.”

OUTBREAKS

BBC: Coronavirus: Madrid at serious risk without tougher rules, minister warns. “Madrid is again at the epicentre of Spain’s coronavirus outbreak, as it was during the first peak earlier this year. The country recorded a further 12,272 cases on Friday, bringing the official total to 716,481, the highest infection tally in western Europe. Spain and many other countries in the northern hemisphere have seen a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in recent weeks.”

TECHNOLOGY

Vox: The pandemic is speeding up the space internet race. “In vast swaths of the United States and the world, there are millions of people who don’t have reliable internet access. These unconnected people aren’t just in far-flung places like rural America or New Zealand or sub-Saharan Africa, either. There are plenty of people living in dense city centers who struggle to access affordable broadband. The pandemic has brought new urgency to the problem, and while companies like Google and Facebook have floated far-out ideas for solving this problem, the internet technology that’s most promising is also the one that’s already proven: satellite broadband.”

Mike Shouts: Not A Joke: This Helmet With HEPA Filters Is A Real Product Money Can Buy. “Well, what do I know? I thought the spherical helmet conceptualized by art collective Plastique Fantastique in response to the pandemic was not something to be taken seriously. But then this happen: AIR by MicroClimate.”

RESEARCH

EurekAlert: Comparing face coverings in controlling expired particles. “Without a mask, talking (reading a passage of text) gave off about 10 times more particles than simple breathing. Forced coughing produced a variable amount of particles. One of the volunteers in the study was a superemitter who consistently produced nearly 100 times as many particles as the others when coughing. In all the test scenarios, surgical and N95 masks blocked as much as 90 percent of particles, compared to not wearing a mask. Face coverings also reduced airborne particles from the superemitter.” Wear ya mask.

Reuters: J&J kicks off study of single-shot COVID-19 vaccine in 60,000 volunteers. “Johnson & Johnson JNJ.N on Wednesday began a 60,000-person trial of an experimental single-shot COVID-19 vaccine that, if proven effective, could simplify distribution of millions of doses compared with leading rivals requiring two doses.”

CRIME / SECURITY / LEGAL

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Ten inmates at Deerfield Correctional Center now dead from COVID-19. “Ten inmates with COVID-19 at the Deerfield Correctional Center have now died. The rural Southside prison holds many elderly and otherwise vulnerable inmates. With 925 inmates, Deerfield has an assisted living unit and infirmary and holds many of the state prison system’s elderly and medically impaired offenders. Many of the inmates at Deerfield sleep in dormitories, making social distancing difficult if not impossible.”

OPINION

Washington Post: Yes, airborne transmission is happening. The CDC needs to set the record straight.. “The science here is fairly straightforward. When you talk or sing — or even just breathe — you emit a range of particles of different sizes. Yes, there might be one or two particles that are large enough to see and that fall to the ground within six feet, but there are also thousands of particles that are smaller than five microns (or five millionths of a meter). Such particles stay aloft for minutes to hours and can travel all the way across a room on natural air currents. They don’t stop at six feet. They will stay in the air in the room until they are pushed outdoors by ventilation, trapped on a filter if you have one, or deposited in your lungs. More importantly, among particles that stay in the air long enough to be inhaled, those smaller than five microns actually carry more virus than the larger ones, counterintuitively.”

CoronaBuzz is brought to you by ResearchBuzz. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment, send resource suggestions, or tag @buzz_corona on Twitter. Thanks!







September 29, 2020 at 02:51AM
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Drinking Water, Google, Google Web Creators, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 28, 2020

Drinking Water, Google, Google Web Creators, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 28, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

EurekAlert: Is your drinking water toxic? This app may help you find out. “Exposure to hydraulic fracturing fluid in drinking water has been shown to increase the risk of respiratory problems, premature births, congenital heart defects, and other medical problems. But not all wells are created equal…. Now, a new, interactive tool created by Penn Medicine researchers allows community members and scientists to find out which toxins may be lurking in their drinking water as a result of fracking.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Google celebrates 22nd birthday, together but from a distance. “The company has celebrated its birthday on Sept. 27 since 2006, but the previous year, it celebrated its birthday on Sept. 26, and in 2004 and 2003, the date was Sept. 7 and Sept. 8, respectively. Google isn’t even sure why this is, especially since it was incorporated on Sept. 4, 1998.” Maybe it was in beta.

Google Blog: A community for web creators to grow and get inspired. “Today we’re launching Google Web Creators to provide tools, guidance and inspiration for people who make awesome content for the web. In addition to this blog, you can check us out on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. A web creator could be a blogger, a photographer with a website, or a journalist—anyone who places their content on the open web. And while web creators may have different backgrounds, industries or areas of expertise, we think we can all learn from each other.”

USEFUL STUFF

A new one to me, from Ghacks: AnyTXT Searcher is a freeware tool that can search for text inside documents instantly. “The program isn’t limited to text documents, it can be used with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) and eBook files. Here is the list of document formats supported by AnyTXT Searcher: TXT, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, PPTX, EPUB, MOBI, HTML, CPP and EML. Though it isn’t mentioned in the list, the program also supports the CHM (HTML Help files), TCR, FB2 formats. In addition to these, it also supports PDFs, though this feature is still in beta.”

Make Tech Easier: How to Share Files and Locations With Google Calendar. “When you’re arranging a big event, it’s a good idea to bundle all the information that your guests need into one calendar event. That way, the guests know when the event is, where it’s taking place, and any additional documentation they might need ahead of time. Did you know, however, that you can set up all of these in one Google Calendar event? All you need to do is set up the event and share it with your guests, and Google does all the work for you!”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

AP: Facebook: Fake pages from China tried to disrupt US politics. “Facebook says it has removed a small network of fake accounts and pages that originated in China and focused on disrupting political activity in the U.S. and several other countries. The U.S.-focused activity was just a ‘sliver’ of the accounts’ overall activity and gained almost no following, Facebook said. Their primary focus was Southeast Asia, including the Philippines.”

CNN: A controversial photo editing app slammed for AI-enabled ‘blackface’ feature. “Photo editing app Gradient is under fire for a new feature that lets people alter their ethnicity in images, with many slamming it for promoting digital ‘blackface.’ The feature, called AI Face, supposedly allows users to ‘find out how you would look if you were born on a different continent,’ according to Gradient’s website.” 😬

SECURITY & LEGAL

FBI and CISA: Foreign Actors And Cybercriminals Likely To Spread Disinformation Regarding 2020 Election Results. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are issuing this announcement to raise awareness of the potential threat posed by attempts to spread disinformation regarding the results of the 2020 elections. Foreign actors and cybercriminals could create new websites, change existing websites, and create or share corresponding social media content to spread false information in an attempt to discredit the electoral process and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions.”

Ubergizmo: Instagram Bug Would Have Allowed Hackers To Take Over Your Smartphone. “It would seem that Instagram had a particularly nasty bug on their hands when cybersecurity researchers at Check Point Security discovered that this bug, when exploited, would have allowed a hacker to take over the victim’s phone. Yup, the entire phone, not just their Instagram account.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT Technology Review: OpenAI is giving Microsoft exclusive access to its GPT-3 language model. “The companies say OpenAI will continue to offer its public-facing API, which allows chosen users to send text to GPT-3 or OpenAI’s other models and receive its output. Only Microsoft, however, will have access to GPT-3’s underlying code, allowing it to embed, repurpose, and modify the model as it pleases.” Good evening, Internet…

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September 29, 2020 at 01:07AM
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Freshwater Lakes, Unemployment Data, Bing, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, September 28, 2020

Freshwater Lakes, Unemployment Data, Bing, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, September 28, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Oceanographic: New publicly available water quality database contains information on 12,000 global lakes. “York University (Toronto, Canada) researchers have created a free and publicly available water quality database containing information on close to 12,000 freshwater lakes globally – almost half of the world’s freshwater supply. The hope is that the database will help scientists monitor and manage the health of these lakes. The study includes data for lakes in 72 countries, from Antarctica to the United States and Canada.”

PR Newswire: FileUnemployment. org Launches ‘DataView’- A Comprehensive Unemployment Database (PRESS RELEASE). “FileUnemployment.org has further expanded its footprint as a reputable unemployment database by unveiling DataViewTM, a graphical representation of numerical data on US unemployment. Various sets of databases are presented in an attractive graphical format that’s easy to conceptualize. There are also interpretations of the most important trends for the less numerically inclined.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: Bing Improves Key Search Features . “Each of these updates are made possible due to advancements Microsoft has made in the areas of Natural Language Representation and Natural Language Generation. Here’s how these updates will enhance the Bing search experience going forward.”

Reuters: Google to block U.S. election ads after polls close. “Alphabet Inc’s Google will block election-related ads on its platforms after polls close in the U.S. election on Nov. 3, the company told advertisers in an email on Friday.”

Tubefilter: Text Message-Based Social Platform ‘Community’ Onboards President Obama. “Community says its point of difference from other platforms is that it enables creators to engage with audiences directly, without the interference of a social algorithm. Creators can filter their messages to respond to followers in a specific location, write to fans on a one-to-one basis, or blast out mass missives. The platform also isn’t ad-based, meaning that creators pay a monthly fee — ranging from $100 to several thousand dollars — to operate a Community account.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Mashable: HOTorNot shaped the social web as we know it. “Created on a lark in 2000, HOTorNOT became what we’d now call an overnight viral hit by letting people upload pictures of themselves to the internet so total strangers could rate their attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10. Twenty years later, it’s a conceit that smacks of the juvenile ‘edginess’ of the early web. It’s now seen at best as superficial and crass, at worst as problematic and potentially offensive. However, the deeper you dive into HOTorNOT’s history, the more surprised you’ll be by the thoughtfulness bubbling below its shallow surface — and its fundamental impact on internet history.”

BuzzFeed News: Twitter Let Dozens Of Tweets Doxing Interfaith Couples In India Stay Up For Months. “For nearly two months, tweets by far-right Hindu nationalists in India doxing dozens of young interfaith couples — usually Muslim men marrying Hindu women — circulated on Twitter…. On [September 21], as outrage mounted in India, Twitter finally took down some of the largest threads, even though people had been reporting them for weeks.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Route Fifty: Court Orders Census to Continue Counting People Past Trump Administration’s Sept. 30 Deadline. “The decision—issued in a federal court in California in response to a lawsuit brought by many nonprofit groups—marks a dramatic shakeup for the 2020 census just days before it was set to stop its enumeration. After the novel coronavirus pandemic forced the bureau to push back its original schedule, Census had planned to continue knocking on doors through October. The Trump administration later revised that timeframe, in a decision that came from outside the bureau, to expedite the delivery of apportionment data by a statutory deadline of Dec. 31, 2020. The judge stayed both the Sept. 30 and Dec. 31 deadlines.”

Matt Stoller: Will Trump’s Supreme Court Destroy Trump’s Google Case?. “While Obama didn’t do much to address monopoly power, towards the end of his administration the Democratic establishment started shifting towards a more skeptical posture towards corporate concentration. Elizabeth Warren launched the first mainstream attack on Google as a monopoly in 2016. She was pushed back by critics as seeking to upend antitrust law to incorporate social goals, for being a radical left-winger, for hipster antitrust, whatever. But it should be clear by now that Warren has won the debate. If [Senator Mike] Lee is on board, then nearly everyone in Congress is on board.”

Techdirt: DOJ Continues Its Quest To Kill Net Neutrality (And Consumer Protection In General) In California. “After the FCC effectively neutered itself at telecom lobbyist behest, numerous states jumped in to fill the consumer protection void. As a result, California, in 2018, passed some net neutrality rules that largely mirrored the FCC’s discarded consumer protections. Laughing at the concept of state rights, Bill Barr’s DOJ immediately got to work protecting U.S. telecom monopolies and filed suit in a bid to vacate the rules.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Guardian: We need to rethink social media before it’s too late. We’ve accepted a Faustian bargain. “When people envision technology overtaking society, many think of The Terminator and bulletproof robots. Or Big Brother in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a symbol of external, omnipotent oppression. But in all likelihood, dystopian technology will not strong-arm us. Instead, we’ll unwittingly submit ourselves to a devil’s bargain: freely trade our subconscious preferences for memes, our social cohesion for instant connection, and the truth for what we want to hear.”

Harvard Business Review: The Next Big Breakthrough in AI Will Be Around Language. “The 2010s produced breakthroughs in vision-enabled technologies, from accurate image searches on the web to computer vision systems for medical image analysis or for detecting defective parts in manufacturing and assembly, as we described extensively in our book and research. GPT3, developed by OpenAI, indicates that the 2020s will be about major advances in language-based AI tasks.” 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 love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!





September 28, 2020 at 05:39PM
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Sunday, September 27, 2020

Georgia Birding, Italy Energy Industry, Google Rivet, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 27, 2020

Georgia Birding, Italy Energy Industry, Google Rivet, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 27, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Savannah Business Journal: DNR launches updated Georgia Birding & Wildlife Trails website. “The Georgia Birding and Wildlife Trails website introduces each trail site with access tips, a map, a list of amenities, wildlife highlights and a link to eBird hotspots. Wildlife viewing resources include a printable species checklist with seasonality data, as well as information on birding basics, Georgia Audubon chapters, citizen science projects, bird curricula and conservation organizations. A new program logo showcases the great blue heron, a familiar species found throughout the state.”

Think GeoEnergy: ENEL opens a treasure trove of digital assets among them fantastic historical geothermal pictures. “Enel launches a website with an absolutely stunning treasure trove of assets with thousands of documents, photographs, films, technical drawings, books, magazines that tell the birth and development of the electricity industry in Italy. Absolutely stunning assets particularly for the early days of geothermal energy in Italy.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5Google: Google is shutting down Area 120’s popular ‘Rivet’ kids reading app. “Google’s Area 120 incubator launched an app called Rivet in beta in 2018 as a ‘fun and supportive reading app for kids.’ It finally exited beta on Android and iOS in May of 2019, and in its time has grown to be one of the most beloved teach-your-kids-to-read apps on the Play Store. Now Google says that it’s shutting the app down.”

CNET: New Twitter prompt gets users to read news before retweeting it, says firm. “After rolling out a test in June that prompts users to consider reading an article before retweeting it, Twitter says the company has seen ‘more reading’ and ‘more informed tweeting.’ In fact, people open articles 40% more often after seeing the prompt, the social media giant says, and the amount of people opening articles before retweeting went up by 33%. ”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Verge: Telepath is a buzzy new social network trying to fix what’s broken on Twitter. “The app, which like Clubhouse is available only in private beta and requires an invitation to use, resembles a hybrid of Twitter and Reddit. As on Twitter, the app opens to a central scrolling feed of updates from people and topics that you follow. And as on Reddit, every post must be created within a group, which Telepath calls a ‘network.’ But what stands out about Telepath is its approach to moderation — which is both more aggressive and more constructive than any I have ever seen in a venture-backed social app at this stage of development.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Wall Street Journal (unpaywalled for me): Google Will Be Hard Habit to Break. “The Justice Department has been meeting in recent days with state attorneys general to map out a course for pursuing an antitrust case against the internet-search company owned by Alphabet Inc. The outcome remains highly uncertain given the charged political environment. The Wall Street Journal reports that not everyone is on board with the speed at which U.S. Attorney General William Barr wants to move.”

Montana State University: MSU Extension, Montana Legal Services announce do-it-yourself Will-in-a-Box for tribal communities. “A new online program featured on the Montana State University Extension website aims to provide free help for Native Americans looking to write an Indian will. The program, called Will-in-a-Box, is the result of a partnership between the Montana Legal Services Association and the Indian Land Tenure Foundation. It is featured on Extension’s website on planning for the passing reservation lands to future generations, which explains major sections of the American Indian Probate Reform Act.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Slate: Under the Gaze of Big Mother. “An artificial intelligence that can truly understand our behavior will be no better than us at dealing with humanity’s challenges. It’s not God in the machine. It’s just another flawed entity, doing its best with a given set of goals and circumstances. Right now we treat A.I.s like children, teaching them right from wrong. It could be that one day they’ll leapfrog us, and the children will become the parents. Most likely, our relationship with them will be as fraught as any intergenerational one. But what happens if parents never age, never grow senile, and never make room for new life? No matter how benevolent the caretaker, won’t that create a stagnant society?”

KDKA: Mental Health Experts Warn About Dangers Of ‘Doomscrolling’. “Experts say spending too much time on social media can be damaging to your mental health, especially when consuming too much negative news.”

EurekAlert: Machine learning takes on synthetic biology: algorithms can bioengineer cells for you. “…scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a new tool that adapts machine learning algorithms to the needs of synthetic biology to guide development systematically. The innovation means scientists will not have to spend years developing a meticulous understanding of each part of a cell and what it does in order to manipulate it; instead, with a limited set of training data, the algorithms are able to predict how changes in a cell’s DNA or biochemistry will affect its behavior, then make recommendations for the next engineering cycle along with probabilistic predictions for attaining the desired goal.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 28, 2020 at 12:58AM
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China Biographical Database, New Zealand Newspapers, Hawaii Volcanoes, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, September 27, 2020

China Biographical Database, New Zealand Newspapers, Hawaii Volcanoes, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, September 27, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from KrAsia: [Tuning In] Peter Bol on creating the China Biological Database and the power of digital humanities . “Professor Bol directs the China Biographical Database project, which is maintained by Harvard University, Academia Sinica, and Peking University. This online relational database currently contains some 350,000 historical figures and is being expanded to include all biographical data in China’s historical records from the last 2,000 years.” It is the BIOGRAPHICAL database, not the BIOLOGICAL database. Couple typos in the article.

National Library of New Zealand: Papers Past data has been set free . “Papers Past is the National Library’s fully text searchable website containing over 150 newspapers from New Zealand and the Pacific, as well as magazines, journals and government reports. As a result of the data being released, people can now access the data from 78 New Zealand newspapers from the Albertland Gazette to the Victoria Times, all published before 1900. The data itself consists of the METS/ALTO XML files for each issue. The XML files sit in the back of Papers Past and are what allows you to locate keywords within articles.”

West Hawaii Today: Volcano Watch: HVO’s new website is more accessible and mobile-friendly. “On the full-sized version (using a tablet or computer), users can still access Hawaiian volcanoes information and data via a menu of options viewed on the left-hand side of the screen, with a list of shortcuts to our most popular pages available on the right-hand side. News items are listed at the bottom of the homepage. The new website maintains the dynamic data streams — seismic maps, deformation plots, and webcam imagery of Hawaiian volcanoes — of the old website.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Android Police: Spotify’s new tool compares your music taste to celebs like John Legend or Conan O’Brien. “Spotify already has over a hundred million users globally, and it’s a big task to keep them all engaged. The streaming service added Group Sessions to help out with that not too long ago, and many more interactive features are still in the pipeline. In its latest move, Spotify is introducing a tool called Listen Alike that tells you how close your music taste is to that of some celebrities.” Because I am old, I didn’t know many of the people featured, but I’m pleased to report that Alicia Keys and I are 14% matched in our listening tastes. Probably not all the disco in my playlists…

CNN: TikTok ban: Here’s the latest on the app’s fate. “A US ban on TikTok could start on Sunday. Maybe. There have been so many twists and turns in the saga of the app that each development can feel as fleeting as its 15-second videos. On Thursday, a US judge ordered the Trump administration to either postpone its ban on TikTok or respond by Friday afternoon to a request from the app’s parent company, ByteDance, to temporarily block the ban.”

The Next Web: Todoist takes a shot at Trello with Kanban-style ‘boards’. “Todoist today officially introduced a feature that could significantly change how people use the popular task-management app: Boards. It basically works a lot like Trello, but built right into Todoist.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BuzzFeed News: A Woman Who Survived Being Kidnapped By A Serial Killer Is Now Empowering Others On TikTok. “A woman who survived being kidnapped by a serial killer when she was 15 years old is inspiring hundreds of thousands of people on TikTok, where she has been sharing her story and advice on dealing with trauma and how to help victims.”

The Observer: CWU offering students Emotional Intelligence Badges for display on their social media platforms. “[Central Washington University] is offering the first ever Emotional Intelligence Badges for students to display on their social media profiles through its new course, Emotional Intelligence for Professionals (BUS411). The course will lead students through five different modules that break down emotional intelligence, help them understand their own behaviors and work on workplace communication skills.”

Data Horde: Help Archive YouTube’s Community Contributions!. “YouTube is removing their community contributions feature on September 28. In case you haven’t already heard, that’s the feature which allows viewers to add captions/subtitles, translated titles and video descriptions on videos. And YouTube seems to be pretty insistent on removing the feature, despite massive backlash. Now although YouTube have given their word to keep published community captions (and other contributions) online, there’s a small detail many people have overlooked. Last year, YouTube restricted the feature to only allow uploaders to publish contributions. As such, there are many many unpublished captions, title/description translations stuck in review.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ABC 7 Chicago: Illinois Facebook users can now file claims for up to $400 as part of class action lawsuit settlement. “Facebook users in Illinois can now apply to collect from a settlement stemming from a class action lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed over Facebook’s collection and storing of biometric data of Illinois users without proper consent. As part of the $650 million settlement, claimants may be eligible for payments of between $200-$400, depending on the number of valid claims filed.”

BetaNews: Free tool helps security professionals improve ransomware defenses. “Endpoint detection and response company Nyotron is launching a new, free online tool called Ransomwiz that allows allows security professionals to check their defenses by generating actual ransomware samples using a variety of real-world attack techniques.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Olympic .org: Catherine Freeman’s Golden Olympic Moment To Last Thousands Of Years With New Technology. “To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Olympic Games Sydney 2000, the famous white exterior sails of the Sydney Opera House are becoming an enormous movie screen, showing Australian Catherine Freeman’s 400-metre gold medal win on 25 September 2000. She ran her final in 49.11 seconds, becoming the first Aboriginal athlete to win gold in an individual event at the Olympic Games. The cinematic event celebrates not only Freeman’s historic achievement, but also its audiovisual preservation for future generations on an innovative, sustainable, long-term storage technology called ‘synthetic DNA’.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 27, 2020 at 05:47PM
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Saturday, September 26, 2020

Australia Startups, Cherokee Nation, Amazon, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 26, 2020

Australia Startups, Cherokee Nation, Amazon, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 26, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Government News (Australia): Database links government with startups. “The database contains publicly sourced information on more than 2,000 Victorian startups as well as data on venture capitalists, local accelerators, workspaces and universities. The data can be searched by sector, location or investment, and features a tool to ‘match’ startups with investors.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNN: The Cherokee Nation reservation is now visible on Google Maps. “The reservation boundaries include 7,000 miles nestled in northeastern Oklahoma. Borders for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Seminole reservations — all in Oklahoma — have also been added in the last few weeks.”

Tubefilter: Amazon To Begin Hosting Podcasts, Sets Exclusive Series With DJ Khaled, Dan Patrick, More. “Millions of podcast episodes are now available for free within Amazon Music in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Japan — and can be accessed whether or not listeners are paying Amazon Music subscribers. (Amazon Music offers both ad-supported and paid tiers, with an ad-free membership coming complete with an Amazon Prime subscription). Podcasts will be available via the Amazon Music app on Android and iOS, on the web, and via Amazon’s Echo smart speakers.”

USEFUL STUFF

Bustle: How To Curate Your iPhone’s Home Screen With The New Widget Tool. “On Sept. 16, Apple released the iPhone’s latest operating system, iOS 14. The upgrade has a few features that make life easier, like direct replies in group chats and a new translation app, but one upgrade will make your life harder in the best possible way — the newly customizable Home Screen with widgets, graphic icons that offer a summary of an app at a glance.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Radio Free Europe: Belarusian Protesters Counter Authorities’ Moves With Online Tactics. “The risks are high, with opposition leaders such as Maryya Kalesnikava jailed after being accused of using media and the Internet to stage protests. But Belarusians are defying the authorities by going online to expose members of the security services cracking down on demonstrations, recruit volunteers, share news and information, and strategize methods of peaceful protest.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Techdirt: House Passes Bill To Address The Internet Of Broken Things. “Cory Gardner, Mark Warner, and other lawmakers note the bill creates some baseline standards for security and privacy that must be consistently updated (what a novel idea), while prohibiting government agencies from using gear that doesn’t pass muster. It also includes some transparency requirements mandating that any vulnerabilities in IOT hardware are disseminated among agencies and the public quickly.”

Reuters: Thailand to start legal action vs Facebook, Google, Twitter over content. “Thailand’s digital ministry said on Wednesday it would start legal action against Facebook, Twitter and Google this week for ignoring some requests to take down content, in what would be the country’s first such cases against major internet firms.”

Mashable: Feds: Amazon staffers took bribes to prop up sketchy merchants, products. “Sketchy merchants have been bribing Amazon employees and contractors to reinstate unsafe and counterfeit products on the e-commerce site and manipulate reviews, according to the U.S. Justice Department.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Texas at Austin: Getting Fewer ‘Likes’ on Social Media Elicits Emotional Distress Among Adolescents. “Study participants helped test drive a new program that allowed them to create a profile and interact with same-age peers by viewing and ‘liking’ one another’s profiles. Likes received were tallied, and a ranking of the various profiles displayed them in order of most to least liked. In actuality, likes were assigned by computer scripts. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either few likes or many likes relative to the other displayed profiles. In a post-task questionnaire, students in the fewer likes group reported more feelings of rejections and other negative emotions than those who received more likes.”

CNET: Why I don’t trust US VPNs. “Fast cars, Champagne and virtual private networks — some goods are best imported. It’s not about snobbery; it’s about getting the best value for your dime, especially in the case of VPNs. Sure, there are plenty of homegrown US-based VPNs that offer inexpensive subscriptions with which you can game and stream media to your heart’s content. But for those of us seeking out top-notch privacy protection, I’ve become as sure about importing VPNs as I am about the Champagne.” 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 love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!





September 27, 2020 at 12:49AM
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