Google, Yahoo, Twitter, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 24, 2023

Google, Yahoo, Twitter, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 24, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Google Search gets ‘The Last of Us’ easter egg. “Searching ‘The Last of Us’ on both mobile and desktop today will show a red mushroom button at the bottom of the screen. Tapping will populate the screen with what’s presumably Cordyceps. It’s unfortunately animated with the slowness of the swaying somehow even more creepy.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Yahoo To Make Search Cool Again. “Yahoo posted on Twitter under its Yahoo Search account, ‘Just popping in to remind everyone that we did search before it was cool. BRB making it cool again.’ Is that some sort of tease that Yahoo is about to announce something big with web search?” I’m worried this is going to be some half-baked AI thing. I hope I’m wrong.

NiemanLab: Twitter will soon let news outlets lay visual claim to their staffers’ accounts. Should they?. “… it falls short of ownership, but a Twitter feature now in testing would visually tie journalists’ accounts to their employers more clearly than before. As Press Gazette reports, several staffers of the U.K. tabloid the Daily Mirror are the media industry’s guinea pigs. On these journalists’ personal Twitter accounts, there is now (next to the oft-debated blue checkmark) a small Mirror icon to indicate the affiliation with their employer.”

USEFUL STUFF

Lifehacker: This Setting Turns Your iPhone Into a Professional Video Camera. “Normally, iPhones shoot in either HEVC or H.264 video formats. HEVC files are smaller and more compressed, while H.264 are larger but supported by more apps and platforms. However, in your iPhone’s camera settings menu, there’s a third format called ‘Apple ProRes,’ which offers better color and less compression for a crisper, more professional look. The catch is Apple ProRes videos can be up to 30 times larger than HEVC files, so they take up large portions of your phone and iCloud storage space.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

News.com.au: Google worker documents ‘a day in my life getting laid off’ in viral TikTok. “The viral trend of young employees at tech firms like Google, Meta, Twitter and LinkedIn showing off their ritzy workplace benefits, while seemingly doing little actual work, has sparked debate online in recent months, with some blasting the companies as ‘adult daycare’. But with the once-unassailable tech sector facing a huge downturn, many of those same employees are now facing the axe.”

Outlook India: Koo Solves Everything That Annoys Twitter Users Today, Says Koo CEO . “In an exclusive interaction with Outlook Business, Koo’s CEO and co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna shares his views on the desi app’s global appeal, the larger Koo vs Twitter debate, and how the homegrown app is distinct from other competitors of Twitter.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Financial Times: Can Big Tech make livestreams safe?. “As well as self-harm and child sexual exploitation, livestreaming also featured in the racially motivated killing of 10 black people in Buffalo, New York, last year and the deadly mosque shootings of 51 in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. These issues are coming to a head in the UK in particular, as the government plans new legislation this year to force internet companies to police illegal content, as well as material that is legal but deemed harmful to children.” This article contains disturbing content including references to harm and self-harm.

BuzzFeed News: Meet The Three Artists Behind A Landmark Lawsuit Against AI Art Generators. “… last week’s lawsuit against Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and DeviantArt is the first time that artists have challenged generative AI companies in court. Days after that lawsuit was filed, stock-image powerhouse Getty Images filed its own suit against Stability AI in London, claiming that the company ‘unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright and the associated metadata’ to train its AI model.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: Public Programs Are Only as Good as Their Data. “Bad data is why people in the UK have been wrongly deported and accused of being illegal immigrants, as happened during the Windrush scandal. Bad data was behind a childcare benefits scandal in the Netherlands, where benefit claimants were wrongly accused of fraud because a government algorithm had been programmed to identify people with dual nationalities as more likely to commit the crime.The reality is, when it comes to collecting and analyzing national statistics, many governments around the world are severely underresourced.”

Euractiv: EU Commission to create common oncology imaging database. “The European Commission launched its European Cancer Imaging Initiative on Monday (23 January), which aims to create a common digital infrastructure across the EU to facilitate data sharing on the disease.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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January 25, 2023 at 01:16AM
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The Western Activist, Ocean Photography, ChatGPT, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, January 24, 2023

The Western Activist, Ocean Photography, ChatGPT, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, January 24, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

WMUK: The Western Activist, a 1960s-era student newspaper published at WMU, is now online. “In the 1960s, students at Western Michigan University published an anti-war, countercultural newspaper. Now the Western Activist, as it was known, has been digitized. The paper covered the Black Panther movement and protests against the Vietnam War among many other topics.”

New-to-me (launched in October) from New Zealand Herald: Ocean photography project Project Kahurangi launched to give non-profit conservation groups a boost. “The library, which has over 1200 professional-quality images and videos, launched in October with the help of Live Ocean Foundation, another conservation-focused non-profit started by America’s Cup champions Peter Burling and Blair Tuke. The content is free for fellow non-profit advocacy groups, as well as iwi, governments and education institutions looking to promote ocean conservation.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Interesting Engineering: ChatGPT premium rolls out at $42 a month, Google still catching up. “The premium edition will offer additional features with less unpredictable availability, better response times, and priority access for a $42 monthly membership, according to a LinkedIn post on Saturday by Linas Beliūnas, a financial technology specialist.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 10 Useful Kindle Sites You Should Know About . “Kindles have dramatically longer battery lives than smartphones and tablets and allow you to carry around thousands of books everywhere you go. Ultimately, owning a Kindle can help you read more books in less time. However, as awesome as Kindles are out of the box, there are a collection of websites that you should use to get even more out of your Kindle. The following Kindle websites are the perfect companions to your e-reader.” This is a nice list but the Kindle/RSS tool is the one which grabbed my eyeballs.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Rest of World: Indian teenagers from small towns are taking YouTube Shorts by storm. “Indian teenage creators like [Rohit] Gupta have drawn millions of views by producing Hindi voice-over Shorts on Western and Asian memes and skits. These creators describe, explain, and provide additional context to the videos, often in the style of boisterous news-anchors, as part of a growing genre known as ‘fact channels.’ In January, four of the top 10 fastest-growing channels on YouTube were fact channels, according to SocialBlade.”

Washington Post: Cine2Nerdle is a remarkably fun Wordle-like game for movie obsessives. “…if you love the movies — and come on, who doesn’t? — Cine2Nerdle may feel like a breath of fresh air. The game looks like Wordle and has a name that’s similar to Wordle, but the main underlying mechanic is quite different. Cine2Nerdle presents players with a four-by-four set of tiles, each with a word or phrase on it that corresponds to a movie.”

Honolulu Star-Advertiser: Hawaii’s new poet laureate finds solace in verse. “Hawaii’s new poet laureate, Brandy Nalani McDougall, sees poetry as a way to heal…. As poet laureate, she will spend the next three years encouraging the people of Hawaii to follow her on that path of healing…. She also plans to launch an indexed online archive for poets to post their own poetry.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: A hack at ODIN Intelligence exposes a huge trove of police raid files. “Detailed tactical plans for imminent police raids, confidential police reports with descriptions of alleged crimes and suspects, and a forensic extraction report detailing the contents of a suspect’s phone. These are some of the files in a huge cache of data taken from the internal servers of ODIN Intelligence, a tech company that provides apps and services to police departments, following a hack and defacement of its website over the weekend.”

The Marshall Project: The Many Ingenious Ways People in Prison Use (Forbidden) Cell Phones. “…most of what I knew about illicit electronics came from press releases and news stories that offered example after example of all the bad things people could do with contraband phones, things like trafficking drugs, making threats and running scams. While it’s true those things can happen, over the past three years I’ve also seen a lot of people use their phones for good. Some use them to self-publish books or take online college classes. Others become prison reform advocates, teach computer skills, trade bitcoin or write legal briefs.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

WIRED: How to Spot AI-Generated Art, According to Artists. “The public release of AI art tools, like Midjourney and DALL-E 2, has ignited contentious debates among artists, designers, and art fans alike. Many are critical of the fact that the technology’s rapid progress was fueled by scraping the internet for publicly posted art and imagery, without credit or compensation to the artists who had their work stolen.”

Washington Post: Attacks on U.S. Jews and gays accelerate as hate speech grows on Twitter. “New research to be released later this month by the misinformation tracker Network Contagion Research Institute suggests a connection between real-world incidents and variations of the word ‘groomer,’ often aimed at gays and suggesting that they are adults bent on seducing children. Although polls indicate a significant minority of the population believes otherwise, gay people are not more likely to be predators than straight people.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Running Cray OS And UNICOS On Your Own Cray Simulator Instance. “This simulator allows you to run software written for the Cray X-MP (1982), Y-MP (1988), J90 (1994) and SV1 (1998), which covers essentially all major Cray systems after the Cray 1 and up till when Cray had become part of SGI in 1996.” Good morning, Internet…

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January 24, 2023 at 06:31PM
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South Dakota Audio, Google’s Area 120, Stop-Motion Video, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 23, 2023

South Dakota Audio, Google’s Area 120, Stop-Motion Video, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 23, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

DRG News: Audio files from the State Archives collections now available online; Files include KGFX founder Ida McNeil. “The South Dakota State Archives has been working to digitize select audio recordings and make them available in the South Dakota Digital Archives. State Archivist Chelle Somsen says they received a grant to preserve the recordings.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator, severely impacted by Alphabet mass layoffs. “Area 120, the Google in-house incubator responsible for products such as Checks, Tables, Stack and ThreadBite, has been significantly affected by broader layoffs at Google parent company Alphabet. A spokesperson tells TechCrunch via email that the majority of the Area 120 team has been ‘winded down,’ and that only three projects from the division will graduate later this year into core Google product areas.”

New York Times: Google Calls In Help From Larry Page and Sergey Brin for A.I. Fight. “A rival chatbot has shaken Google out of its routine, with the founders who left three years ago re-engaging and more than 20 A.I. projects in the works.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Shoot a Stop Motion Video: A Beginner’s Guide. “Stop-motion video can satisfy the needs of hobbyist photographers wishing to dabble with video, YouTubers wanting interesting transitional content, or simply for something to do on a rainy day. How can you get started with stop-motion animation? There are just three key pieces of equipment that are required. Two of which you likely have already.”

PC World: The old Windows Photos app is better than the new one, and you can still use it. “What’s known as Microsoft Photos Legacy still resides within the Windows Store, and there’s one good reason that you might still prefer it over the latest version: its superior content search capabilities.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: Tech Workers Fight for Iran Protesters as Big Tech Plays It Safe. “Google’s Iran response has frustrated some employees, rights groups, and US lawmakers. They want the company to deepen its support, including by opening up cloud computing and software development tools to people inside Iran to help protesters communicate securely and circumvent government internet firewalls.”

CNN: Who is Shou Zi Chew? Mounting scrutiny on TikTok could put new spotlight on its CEO. “In Silicon Valley, it’s common for tech CEOs to be household names and the faces of the company’s they lead. Mark Zuckerberg is synonymous with Facebook and Jack Dorsey was the bearded face of Twitter, before Elon Musk acquired it. But Chew, who took over as TikTok CEO in April 2021, has largely stayed out of the spotlight at a time when the app he leads can’t seem to avoid it.”

Mashable: The ‘film Twitter take generator’ isn’t an AI. That’s why it’s so good. . “The film Twitter take generator is funnier than any ChatGPT nonsense I’ve seen — and that has a lot to do with the fact that it has nothing to do with AI. All it takes to have an awesome generator is someone with a vast knowledge of the subject matter. It also has the added benefit of being divorced from all the ethical questions surrounding AI.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Arizona State University: More internet matches are leading to happy marriages. “According to a 2013 study by social psychologist J. T. Cacioppo, the internet is responsible for roughly one in every three marriages. And those who use online dating end up being slightly more satisfied with their relationship and marriage than those who met in more traditional ways.”

Michigan Daily: I’m in a toxic relationship with Goodreads. “Ever since I downloaded Goodreads, every page turned has become a small step closer to completing my yearly reading goal. Keeping track of my reading is now a quantifiable task instead of an entertaining hobby. It has also made me extremely self-conscious of the books I enjoy reading, given that people can actively see the media I consume and silently judge me based on it. I’m hyper-aware of this, yet I refuse to delete Goodreads from my phone. I’m addicted to it. Goodreads seems to have me in a chokehold I can’t break out of.” Good afternoon, Internet..

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January 24, 2023 at 01:30AM
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Octosuite, Black Women in Physics and Astronomy, Indiana Department of Education, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 23, 2023

Octosuite, Black Women in Physics and Astronomy, Indiana Department of Education, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 23, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Bellingcat: Octosuite: A New Tool to Conduct Open Source Investigations on GitHub. “Octosuite is an advanced GitHub framework written in Python that uses GitHub’s Public API to make the process of investigating accounts and repositories on the platform more efficient, while also creating a set of automated and easily reproducible queries.”

New-to-me, from Black Enterprise: Database Makes Black Women With Ph.D.s In Physics More Discoverable. “Out of the 2,000 physics Ph.D.s that are awarded in the U.S. each year, less than 0.5% of those are reportedly given to women of African descent. Doctor of Cosmology and University of New Hampshire professor, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, is tackling the lack of representation in scientific research through Cite Black Women+ in Physics and Astronomy Bibliography, a database that lists professional publications by Black women who hold Ph.D.s in physics-related disciplines.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Indiana Department of Education: Users Can Now View Longitudinal and Disaggregated Data In Just One Click. “The Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) has deployed the first round of enhancements to its new Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed Dashboard (Indiana GPS) – a resource that is constantly evolving in response to the needs of Indiana’s students, communities and employers. The most recent enhancements allow users to drill down into longitudinal and disaggregated data, showing data over time by student population.”

Internet Archive: Public Domain Day Film Contest Highlights Works of 1927. “At Internet Archive we love to see how creative people can get with the material we make available online. As part of this year’s Public Domain Day celebration we asked the greater community to submit short films highlighting anything that was going to be made available in the Public Domain in 2023. For the contest, vintage images and sounds were woven into creative films of 2-3 minutes. Many of the films were abstract while others educational, they all showcased the possibility when public domain materials are made openly available and accessible for download.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 5 Fun Map Sites for Cool and Interesting Cartography. “There are portals that preserve old maps and show you how the world has changed, while others let you compare pretty much any two places on the planet. And you’ll be glad to know that there are communities to find like-minded map lovers to share your interests.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Search Engine Land: TikTok has a secret “Heating” (cheating?) button. “Six current and former employees of TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, as well as internal documents and communications reviewed by Forbes, TikTok and ByteDance staff use a practice called ‘heating’ to artificially boost the distribution of certain videos in addition to relying on the algorithm to determine what becomes popular.”

The Guardian: ‘That’s Africa, man’: how a young musician captured the music of Rwanda . “In 2018, [Michael Makembe] decided to travel all around Rwanda, visiting communities in remote places to collect voices, poems, songs and recordings of traditional instruments. In five years Makembe has amassed nearly 1,000 different sounds. He is hoping to open an audio museum this year where people can go and listen to them. He also wants to launch Sounds of Rwanda, an online library for a global audience.”

Deseret News: New genealogy platform unveiling, and connecting, the untold stories of our lives . “[Kendall] Hulet knows a thing or two about genealogy and search services having spent 14 years upgrading the search functions for family history giant Ancestry.com and launching his own mobile browser, Cake, a few years back. Now, Hulet is CEO of Storied, a newly announced rebrand of newspaper and record archive service World Archives which was acquired in 2020 by Charles Thayne Capital.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EdSurge: Before Using Augmented and Virtual Reality Tools, Teachers Should Develop a Plan. “As an early adopter and enthusiast for immersive technology in schools, I’ve had the opportunity to share ways to use augmented and virtual reality to transform learning with educators around the world. I provide staff development and training, and many of the teachers I work with are enthusiastic about trying new tools…. But I’ve seen a lot of teachers dive in too quickly, selecting and using a tool without carving out time to think through how to implement it with fidelity.”

Margins: Google vs. ChatGPT told by aglio e olio. “Yes, Google is still the best search engine for most things, but the fact that many people are comparing OpenAI’s tech demo to Google’s flagship product should be causing alarm bells to go off. For a long time, Google’s claim to fame was to getting the users the answers they want faster than the competition. That doesn’t hold true for many types of queries anymore. More than half the time, I have to add `site:reddit.com` to get anything that is not SEO spam.”

The Hill: We need an open source intelligence center. “A government of multiple small efforts is insufficiently prepared to harness the current open source revolutionary potential. The volume and variety of open and commercial source materials, urgency of the geopolitical rivalry, and continued development of tools to exploit the data all necessitate a systematic effort to harness open and commercial source to support decision making. The answer, we believe, rests on standing up a standalone open source entity.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

WIRED: You Can Use This Silly Game to Do Some Serious Physics. “The game works like this: You start off with a rocket on a very small planet. Click on the rocket to start, then you can use the arrows on your keyboard to turn on the thruster, rotate the spacecraft, and find other planets and a few fun things that are mostly inside What If jokes. That’s it. That’s the game. It’s silly and fun, and I love it. But it turns out that you can use even a simple game to explore some key concepts in physics.” Good morning, Internet…

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January 23, 2023 at 06:26PM
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Sundance Film Festival, CNET, Illinois State Archives, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 22, 2023

Sundance Film Festival, CNET, Illinois State Archives, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 22, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

EVENTS

Lifehacker: You Can Attend Sundance Without Going to Utah. “The 2023 Sundance Film Festival returns to Park City, Utah this week, but you don’t have to travel to enjoy a packed schedule of movie screenings. After several years of partly virtual (or virtual-only) programming, it seems like online showings are here to stay.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: CNET pauses publishing AI-written stories after disclosure controversy. “In a staff call on Friday, CNET leadership told staff it was pausing all AI-generated content for now. Top executives at Red Ventures, the firm that owns CNET and other websites, also offered more details on the company’s AI tool.”

Illinois State Genealogical Society Blog: BIG NEWS from the Illinois State Archives- Death Certificates Database Updated to 1971!. “ISGS has just heard fantastic news from the Illinois State Archives Director, Dr. David Joens- The Illinois Death Certificates searchable database at ilsos.gov has been updated to include death certificate entries for the years 1951-1971!”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Wall Street Journal: Forget Google Maps: Why Paper Map Sales Are Booming. “Digital maps, while powerful, aren’t perfect navigational tools: Phone batteries die, cell signals fail. And though a smartphone can easily direct you to the quickest route, taking it often means you’ll miss the best scenery. A paper map, more like those made by early humans, can provide a bigger picture…. Perhaps that’s why paper maps are regaining popularity.”

Nevada Humanities: Nevada Humanities Awards More Than $194,000 in Major Project Grants (this link is to a PDF file.) “Thirty cultural organizations across Nevada have been awarded $194,110 in Major Project Grants by Nevada Humanities. These grants fund humanities projects across the state and benefit nonprofit organizations and government and tribal entities, including libraries, museums, and schools to fund public and educational programs in the humanities.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Hackers push malware via Google search ads for VLC, 7-Zip, CCleaner. “Hackers are setting up fake websites for popular free and open-source software to promote malicious downloads through advertisements in Google search results. At least one prominent user on the cryptocurrency scene has fallen victim to the campaign, claiming it allowed hacker hackers steal all their digital crypto assets along with control over their professional and personal accounts.”

WIRED: A Sneaky Ad Scam Tore Through 11 Million Phones. “Security researchers today revealed a new widespread attack on the online advertising ecosystem that has impacted millions of people, defrauded hundreds of companies, and potentially netted its creators some serious profits. The attack, dubbed Vastflux, was discovered by researchers at Human Security, a firm focusing on fraud and bot activity. The attack impacted 11 million phones, with the attackers spoofing 1,700 app and targeting 120 publishers. At its peak, the attackers were making 12 billion requests for ads per day.”

Ars Technica: Twitter hired experts for case against Musk—now Musk won’t pay them, lawsuit says . “Twitter was sued yesterday by a consulting firm that says it was never paid for work it did on the lawsuit that forced Elon Musk to complete his purchase of the company. Charles River Associates (CRA) says it was hired by Twitter in August 2022, shortly after Twitter sued Musk over his refusal to complete their $44 billion merger agreement. Musk finally completed the purchase in late October after it became clear that he was likely to lose in court.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Wyoming: UW Professors Develop Dashboard to Drive Education Decision-Making. “University of Wyoming College of Education faculty members have published a paper in the journal PLOS ONE describing the development of an interactive dashboard that combines data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

Search Engine Journal: GPT-4 Is Coming: A Look Into The Future Of AI. “GPT-4, is said by some to be ‘next-level’ and disruptive, but what will the reality be CEO Sam Altman answers questions about the GPT-4 and the future of AI.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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January 23, 2023 at 01:06AM
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International Criminal Court, Twitter, AmazonSmile, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 22, 2023

International Criminal Court, Twitter, AmazonSmile, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 22, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

International Criminal Court: International Criminal Court Launches French and Spanish Versions of Case Law Database. “Today, 20 January 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) launched the French and Spanish versions of the ICC Case Law Database (CLD). The CLD is an easily searchable database of the Court’s jurisprudence providing free access to the entire case-law of the ICC in English, and to the available translations in French and Spanish. Users can search for ICC jurisprudence based on several criteria, including full-text and keywords. The CLD contains all judicial decisions, judgments, and orders issued by any Chamber or the Presidency of the Court, including separate and dissenting opinions.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNBC: Twitter is down to fewer than 550 full-time engineers. “Twitter’s full-time headcount has dwindled to approximately 1,300 employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers by title, according to internal records viewed by CNBC. Around 75 of the company’s 1,300 employees are on leave including about 40 engineers. The company’s trust and safety team, which makes policy recommendations, design and product changes with the aim of keeping all of Twitter’s users safe, is down to fewer than 20 full-time employees.”

Engadget: Amazon is shutting down the AmazonSmile charity program in February. “Whenever people use the AmazonSmile website to make a purchase, the company donates 0.5 percent of what they paid to the charity of their choice at no additional cost to them. As a parting donation to participating organizations, Amazon will give them the equivalent of three months what they earned in 2022 through the program.”

CNET: Microsoft Is Shutting Down Its Social VR Platform AltspaceVR. “AltspaceVR, a social virtual worlds platform acquired by Microsoft in 2017, will shut down on March 10. In a blog post on Friday, the AltspaceVR team said they’re shifting focus to ‘immersive experiences powered by Microsoft Mesh,’ the tech giant’s cloud-based AR/VR platform.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 7 Best Ways to Track Flights. “There are different methods to track flights, and in this post, we are going to list some of the best ways to do that. These include tools, a search engine, and one of iOS’s built-in apps. Let’s take a look at these in detail.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

9to5Mac: Tapbots readies ‘Ivory’ client for Mastodon as Tweetbot era unceremoniously ends. “In an update published on its website, Tapbots apologized to Tweetbot users and thanked them for their years of support. The Tapbots team, however, also teased that even though Tweetbot is no longer, they’re continuing their work on the Ivory client for Mastodon.”

The Wrap: ‘Kim’s Video’ Review: Pursuit of a Legendary VHS Archive Becomes a True-Life Comic Mystery . “Video stores started to close by 2008 when the near-mythical Mr. Kim offered his collection of 55,000 movies to any institution that would keep it intact. The town of Salemi, Sicily, acquired the archive, and in 2012 there was an article in The Village Voice by Karina Longworth that attempted to figure out what had happened to it, but the final fate of the collection is at last revealed in ‘Kim’s Video,’ a documentary by director David Redmon and his filmmaking partner Ashley Sabin that plays like an expert comic thriller.”

NPR: A rocky past haunts the mysterious company behind the Lensa AI photo app. “A Belarussian millionaire living in Cyprus. A dinner with the CEO of Snap. A six-figure patent troll case. They are all part of the history of Prisma Labs, a largely obscure artificial intelligence startup that spent years under the radar until November, when the company introduced ‘Magic Avatars.’ The feature in Prisma’s Lensa app has allowed millions to turn mundane selfies into dazzling AI-generated animated portraits of fairy princesses and astronauts. And it has brought in tens of millions of dollars.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechCrunch: India releases guidelines for social media influencers accepting paid promotions. “As the market of social media influencers is getting bigger in India, the South Asian nation has introduced endorsement guidelines to limit unfair trade practices and misleading promotions on the web. On Friday, the Department of Consumer Affairs held a press conference to announce new guidelines to make it mandatory for social media influencers to disclose promotional content in accordance with the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.”

NY Jewish Week: A serial flasher crashed a live chat with Orthodox women. Now its influencer organizer is sleuthing him out.. “A Brooklyn-based Orthodox activist wants her community to be the last one targeted by a possible serial flasher who crashed an online chat she was leading last week. Adina Miles-Sash, who is known to her 61,000 followers as Flatbush Girl, also says her community’s reaction to the flashing incident underscores the changes needed if women are to feel respected and secure.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

UChicago News: UChicago launches accelerator for data science and emerging AI startups. “The University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Data Science Institute today announced the launch of Transform, a new accelerator for startup companies focused on the breakthrough technologies of data science and artificial intelligence.”

Northeastern Global News: Can ‘digital traces’ from internet searches and social media predict outbreaks of COVID-19?. “A team of scientists including Northeastern University machine learning expert Mauricio Santillana says internet users’ ‘digital traces’ can be adopted to alert public health officials to sharp increases in COVID-19 at the county level one to six weeks ahead of a major outbreak.” Good morning, Internet…

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January 22, 2023 at 06:31PM
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Food Insecurity Tracking, Wikipedia Update, Google Doodle Contest, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 21, 2023

Food Insecurity Tracking, Wikipedia Update, Google Doodle Contest, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 21, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Conversation: Inflation hasn’t increased US food insecurity overall, according to our new tracker . “We are experts on food and agricultural economics. Together we have created a new data dashboard that tracks U.S. food insecurity – the technical term for having trouble getting enough nutritious food – based on publicly available information.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Wikimedia Foundation: Wikipedia Gets a Fresh New Look: First Desktop Update in a Decade Puts Usability at the Forefront . “The updated interface, which comes on the heels of English Wikipedia’s 22nd birthday (January 15), prioritizes usability and modernizes the Wikipedia experience to make it easier for everyone to access, explore, and share knowledge. The update is rolling out today on English Wikipedia and is already live on 94% of the 318 active language versions of Wikipedia for all desktop users.”

CNET: Google’s 2023 Doodle Contest Asks Schoolkids What They Are Grateful For. “Google has revealed that the theme of the 2023 Doodle for Google contest will be ‘I am grateful for …’ The annual contest challenges schoolkids from kindergarten through the 12th grade to design their own variation of the company’s famous logo in a way that reflects what they are grateful for in their personal lives.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hackaday: Mod, Repair And Maintain Your Cassette Tapes With 3D Printed Parts. “The benefit of 3D printers is that they have made it relatively easy to reproduce just about any little plastic thing you might happen to break. If you’re one of the diehards that still has a cassette collection, you might find these 3D prints from Thingiverse useful to repair and maintain any broken tapes you may have.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNBC: Google to lay off 12,000 people — read the memo CEO Sundar Pichai sent to staff. “Google said on Friday that it will be laying off 12,000 people from its workforce, adding to the slew of major U.S. tech companies cutting jobs amid fears of an oncoming recession. Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, said in an email sent to the company’s staff Friday that the firm will begin making layoffs in the U.S. immediately.”

New York Magazine: Elon Musk and the Sad Mod Theory of Social-Media CEOs. “The tales of internal chaos combined with Musk’s own hypervisible and constantly trollish behavior on Twitter itself have helped to create a sense that the service itself is changing rapidly. A look back at Musk’s first few months in charge, however, suggests a leader struggling with a strange and confusing sort of impotence and taking it out on the people over which he has actual control.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NPR: T-Mobile says breach exposed personal date of 37 million customers. “The U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile said Thursday that an unidentified malicious intruder breached its network in late November and stole data on 37 million customers, including addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth.”

TechCrunch: India’s top court rejects Google plea to block Android antitrust ruling in major blow. “Google has been dealt a significant blow in one of its key overseas markets. India’s Supreme Court on Thursday declined to block an antitrust order that requires the Android-maker to make a series of changes that could topple its financial viability.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

USGS: Bipartisan Infrastructure Law helps USGS Pilot New Search Tool for Subsurface Data & Samples Across the Country. “This application, named the National Index of Borehole Information (NIBI), will allow natural-resource managers, industry and researchers to discover and access borehole – and core sample holdings from the USGS and state geological surveys through a single portal.”

The Atlantic: What Happens When AI Has Read Everything?. “Artificial intelligence has in recent years proved itself to be a quick study, although it is being educated in a manner that would shame the most brutal headmaster. Locked into airtight Borgesian libraries for months with no bathroom breaks or sleep, AIs are told not to emerge until they’ve finished a self-paced speed course in human culture. On the syllabus: a decent fraction of all the surviving text that we have ever produced.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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January 22, 2023 at 01:33AM
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