Saturday, September 23, 2023

Google, MS Paint, Endangered Appalachia Archives, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 23, 2023

Google, MS Paint, Endangered Appalachia Archives, More: Saturday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 23, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Google Blog: Get playful with art in four new cultural experiments. “At Google Arts & Culture we have always been committed to creating innovative ways for people to engage with culture and see things from a new perspective, such as finding your Art Selfie, making music with Viola the Bird or playing at the interface of art and AI. In pursuit of this goal, we challenged a group of talented artists and game designers to develop new experiences that allow people to approach and consider art in unique and thought-provoking ways.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Hell freezes over, MS Paint adds support for layers and PNG transparency. “The venerable, equally derided and beloved MS Paint app has been on a roll lately, picking up a major redesign, dark-mode support, better zoom controls, and other fit-and-finish updates all within the last couple of years. But today Microsoft announced that it is finally adding two features that could make the app a bit more useful for power users: support for Photoshop-esque image layers and the ability to open and save transparent PNGs.”

WTVQ: Appalshop in Whitesburg receives grant to treat, digitize images damaged in flood. “Appalshop Archive, a media, arts and education center in Whitesburg, recently received a grant to treat and digitize images that were damaged in the July 2022 flood. The Save America’s Treasure Grant provides Appalshop with $750,000 to help cover preservation lab costs to salvage hundreds of hours of moving images that document life in Central Appalachia from the 1930s to the present day.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

404 Media: Why Scalpers Can Get Olivia Rodrigo Tickets and You Can’t. “The ‘verified fan’ concert ticket presale for pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo’s upcoming Guts Tour is today, and, yet again, it’s worth remembering that Ticketmaster stacks the deck heavily in favor of ticket scalpers, regardless of what the company says.”

New York Times: Being 13🔥👍❤. “As eighth grade began, Anna was worried that she wasn’t very popular because her parents wouldn’t let her on Snapchat. London had a tough couple of days; she had been sent to the principal’s office for lashing out at a girl who had been mean to her by sending a text impersonating a boy that girl liked. And when Addi’s school had a lockdown later in the year, she spent the evening decompressing with her sister, reenacting a TikTok sketch — her mind far from the flashing police lights that had reflected in the windows.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: Fortnite: Parents in US offered refunds for game purchases. “The US regulator accused the game of tricking players into making unintended purchases and breaching privacy. Fortnite developer Epic Games agreed to pay $245m (£198m) in refunds in 2022. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now begun the process of contacting 37 million people to alert them to the compensation.”

Engadget: Microsoft AI researchers mistakenly leaked 38TB of company data. “A Microsoft AI research team that uploaded training data on GitHub in an effort to offer other researchers open-source code and AI models for image recognition inadvertently exposed 38TB of personal data. Wiz, a cybersecurity firm, discovered a link included in the files that contained backups of Microsoft employees’ computers. Those backups contained passwords to Microsoft services, secret keys and over 30,000 internal Teams messages from hundreds of the tech giant’s employees, Wiz says.”

TheNextWeb: Poland investigates ChatGPT after alleged data privacy breach. “Poland’s data protection watchdog is investigating OpenAI’s ChatGPT after an unnamed complainant accused the company of GDPR breaches.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New Jersey Institute of Technology: Data Science Techniques Help Evaluate COVID’s Impact on Mental Health. “In case of another pandemic, authorities might only have a 28-day window to connect vulnerable populations to mental health providers before it’s too late to prevent long-term concerns, according to new research assisted by a data science expert at New Jersey Institute of Technology.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Hackaday: Whisperframe Depicts The Art Of Conversation. “At this point, you gotta figure that you’re at least being listened to almost everywhere you go, whether it be a home assistant or your very own phone. So why not roll with the punches and turn lemons into something like a still life of lemons that’s a bit wonky? What we mean is, why not take our conversations and use AI to turn them into art? That’s the idea behind this next-generation digital photo frame created by [TheMorehavoc].” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 24, 2023 at 12:32AM
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Mousse Magazine, Phil’s Laberia, Twitter Circles, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, September 23, 2023

Mousse Magazine, Phil’s Laberia, Twitter Circles, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, September 23, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

InPublishing: Mousse Magazine launches digital archive. “Contemporary art magazine Mousse has digitised its complete archive of print issues in partnership with publisher services company, Exact Editions, expanding the reading experience with a new paperless dimension. Individuals and institutions can now subscribe for fully-searchable access to over eighty issues from Mousse archives, dating all the way back to 2006, with new ones being published quarterly.”

Stanford Bioengineering: Phil’s Laberia: A Game Changer in Bioengineering Education. “This free, educational video game provides an immersive experience into a digital version of the world-class Uytensgu Teaching Lab (UTL) at Stanford’s Shriram Center for Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering, allowing students to step into the UTL environment virtually. The game is designed to teach skills based on BIOE 44: Fundamentals for Engineering Biology Lab, where Stanford undergraduates learn essential techniques in genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular engineering.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: X is shutting down Circles. “X is planning to shut down Circles, a feature that lets you share posts with a limited group of people instead of all of your followers. The company said in a ‘PSA’ on Thursday that Circles will be disabled by October 31st.”

XDA Developers: Google Bard gets smarter with Extensions support. “To take the competition head-on and challenge rival platforms like ChatGPT, Google has announced a couple of new features for Bard. The Mountain View tech giant has announced Bard Extensions and the ability to double-check responses in Bard to give users more customized responses.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Ars Technica: AI-generated books force Amazon to cap e-book publications to 3 per day. “On Monday, Amazon introduced a new policy that limits Kindle authors from self-publishing more than three books per day on its platform, reports The Guardian. The rule comes as Amazon works to curb abuses of its publication system from an influx of AI-generated books.”

Bloomberg: Google Tweaks Ad Auctions to Hit Revenue Targets, Executive Says. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google has tweaked its advertising auctions to ensure it meets revenue targets, sometimes increasing ad prices by as much as 5%, an executive for the company testified Monday at a federal antitrust trial.”

Variety: Stephen Fry ‘Shocked’ to Discover AI Stole His Voice From ‘Harry Potter’ Audiobooks and Replicated It Without Consent, Says His Agents ‘Went Ballistic’. “Stephen Fry recently revealed at the CogX Festival (via Forbes) that his voice from the ‘Harry Potter’ audiobooks was taken by AI software and replicated without his consent, much to the horror of both himself and his agents.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Apple emergency updates fix 3 new zero-days exploited in attacks. “Apple released emergency security updates to patch three new zero-day vulnerabilities exploited in attacks targeting iPhone and Mac users, for a total of 16 zero-days fixed this year. Two bugs were found in the WebKit browser engine (CVE-2023-41993) and the Security framework (CVE-2023-41991), enabling attackers to bypass signature validation using malicious apps or gain arbitrary code execution via maliciously crafted webpages.”

Australian Associated Press: FTX founder Bankman-Fried to stay in jail until trial. “A US appeals court has upheld a judge’s decision to jail former cryptocurrency billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried ahead of his trial on fraud charges stemming from the November 2022 collapse of his now-bankrupt FTX exchange. In a written decision on Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said it agreed with US District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s finding that Bankman-Fried had likely attempted to tamper with two witnesses.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Chico State Today: The Growing Pains of AI: Professor to study how tools like ChatGPT affect children . “What is the impact of AI on kids? Tools like CHATGPT and virtual learning assistants have provided plenty of fodder for people to debate—in schools, around the dinner table, and at parent groups. Chico State professor Abbas Attarwala wants to help answer this question. The Center of California Studies at Sacramento State awarded Attarwala a $30,000 grant this summer to provide much-needed background on the current research landscape of AI and its impact on children.”

The Diplomat: Beijing Is Getting Better at Disinformation on Global Social Media. “Several in-depth investigations published over the past two months by academic researchers, think tanks, news outlets, and cybersecurity companies have shed light on the evolution of disinformation campaigns originating in China. Some offer new insights on campaigns that peaked last spring, while others analyze more recent messaging, tactics, and accounts that have emerged since October 2020. A close reading of these investigations points to several emergent features of China-linked disinformation campaigns – meaning the purposeful dissemination of misleading content, including via inauthentic activity on global social media platforms.”

New York Times: Trump Attacked Me. Then Musk Did. It Wasn’t an Accident.. “This isn’t a story I relish revisiting. But I’ve learned that what happened to me wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t just personal vindictiveness or ‘cancel culture.’ It was a strategy — one that affects not just targeted individuals like me, but all of us, as it is rapidly changing what we see online.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 23, 2023 at 05:30PM
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Friday, September 22, 2023

Wildfoods4Wildlife, AsianWeek Newspaper, Decarbonizing Massachusetts, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 22, 2023

Wildfoods4Wildlife, AsianWeek Newspaper, Decarbonizing Massachusetts, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 22, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Found via Google Alerts: Wildfoods4Wildlife.com. From the Getting Started page: “The purpose of this website is to assist permitted wildlife rehabilitators to acquire wild plant foods to feed to their wildlife patients by linking up with volunteer plant foragers. We hope to help beginner plant enthusiasts and foragers collect appropriate fruits, seeds, greens and nuts that are eaten by the Virginia wildlife that are commonly treated in rehabilitation.”

San Francisco Standard: AsianWeek, San Francisco’s Pioneering Asian American Newspaper, Has Been Reborn Online. “On Tuesday night, after years working on digitalization, the Fangs—a locally prominent family of politicos who formerly owned the San Francisco Examiner—held an event to launch an online database that includes AsianWeek’s three decades of content, searchable by article keywords, bylines, issue dates and even images.”

State of Massachusetts: DCR Launches New Online Mapping Tool Highlighting Agency’s Decarbonization Initiatives. “In celebration of Climate Week, the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) today launched a new interactive online map displaying the agency’s decarbonization efforts. The Decarbonization Initiatives Map illustrates the sustainable and equitable practices, strategies, and initiatives DCR is implementing at its properties across the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

New York Times: Google’s Bard Just Got More Powerful. It’s Still Erratic.. “I put the upgraded Bard through its paces on Tuesday, hoping to discover a powerful A.I. assistant with new and improved abilities. What I found was a bit of a mess. In my testing, Bard succeeded at some simpler tasks, such as summarizing an email. But it also told me about emails that weren’t in my inbox, gave me bad travel advice and fell flat on harder analytical tasks.”

Philly Voice: Mütter Museum asks the public to weigh in on ethical battle over displaying human remains. “Philadelphia’s shrine to unusual medical history is in the midst of a culture war between devoted supporters and change-minded leaders who want to review the site’s practices.”

USEFUL STUFF

Hongkiat: 10+ Free Logo Makers and Logo Generators (Best of) . “While initiating a business, most people consider hiring an expert graphic designer to craft a logo. Although this is a good approach, it can be quite expensive. If you’re running a small to medium-sized business or a startup, you might want to consider using an online logo-making tool. These tools can help you develop a simple, yet effective, logo without burning a hole in your pocket.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Motherboard: Google Flat-Out Refuses to Bargain With Workers, Prompting YouTube Music Strike. “YouTube Music contract workers went on strike on Wednesday morning because of Google’s refusal to bargain with the union representing the workers. Google, YouTube’s parent company, claims that because the workers are employed through a third-party contractor it has no obligation to meet them at the table, according to an email from a law firm representing Google seen by Motherboard.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ABC News: Google sued for negligence after man drove off collapsed bridge while following map directions. “Philip Paxson, a medical device salesman and father of two, drowned Sept. 30, 2022, after his Jeep Gladiator plunged into Snow Creek in Hickory, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Wake County Superior Court. Paxson was driving home from his daughter’s ninth birthday party through an unfamiliar neighborhood when Google Maps allegedly directed him to cross a bridge that had collapsed nine years prior and was never repaired.”

Associated Press: Australia tells dating apps to improve safety standards to protect users from sexual violence. ” Australia’s government said Monday the online dating industry must improve safety standards or be forced to make changes through legislation, responding to research that says three-in-four Australian users suffer some form of sexual violence through the platforms.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

McGill University: Assessing unintended consequences in AI-based neurosurgical training. “A new study from the Neurosurgical Simulation and Artificial Intelligence Learning Centre at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) of McGill University… shows that human instruction is still necessary to detect and compensate for unintended, and sometimes negative, changes in neurosurgeon behaviour after virtual reality AI training.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 23, 2023 at 12:43AM
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Aboriginal and Indigenous Law, Connecticut Parks, USPTO Trademark Search, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, September 22, 2023

Aboriginal and Indigenous Law, Connecticut Parks, USPTO Trademark Search, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, September 22, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Dalhousie University: Schulich Law showcases Aboriginal and Indigenous law projects on new website. “The Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie has launched a new website dedicated to highlighting the work of its students, faculty, and staff in the areas of Aboriginal and Indigenous law…. The website contains a large and growing repository of access to justice (A2J) projects and papers created by students for courses they have taken at Schulich Law. These are intended to be resources to help the public achieve a better understanding of issues related to Aboriginal and Indigenous law.”

State of Connecticut: Governor Lamont Announces Launch of CTParks.com: A Cutting-Edge Website Showcasing Connecticut State Parks. “Governor Ned Lamont today announced the launch of CTParks.com, the new official website for Connecticut State Parks. The website offers visitors with an innovative online platform showcasing Connecticut State Parks in a more exciting, user-friendly way to help them engage with, learn about, and access state parks and the areas around them.”

USPTO: Introducing the USPTO’s new cloud-based trademark search system with basic and advanced search options. “This new, cloud-based search system will replace our current system (Trademark Electronic Search System, or TESS) to make searching for trademark registrations and/or applications easier – a necessary step for any aspiring or current business owner looking to protect their brand. Our new system provides users with a stronger industry-standard search syntax and offers both a simplified, basic search interface as well as a more advanced search interface for more complex searching.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Google Quietly Removes ‘Written By People’ From Suggestions for Website Owners. “Google quietly removed the suggestion that the text of a website should be ‘written by people’ from its guidance for site owners who want to do better in search results, a change first spotted by Search Engine Land. The change will likely accelerate the deluge of AI-generated content that’s already beginning to spread across the web, in part thanks to tools that Google itself is building.”

TechCrunch: OpenAI unveils DALL-E 3, allows artists to opt out of training. “OpenAI’s new tool, DALL-E 3, uses ChatGPT to help fill in prompts. Via ChatGPT, subscribers to OpenAI’s premium ChatGPT plans, ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Enterprise, can type in a request for an image and hone it through conversations with the chatbot — receiving the results directly within the chat app.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Adults Are Panicked About Teens and Social Media. These Girls Have Advice.. “Adults have been vocal about the effects of phone and social media use on adolescents, and how to best intervene to protect their mental health. Yet rarely are young people asked what they think might be constructive, or what they already do to build healthy habits. So we spoke to girls from ages 12 to 17 who have participated in programs led by Girls Leadership, a nonprofit that teaches confidence-building and how to use social media responsibly. Here are some of their best pieces of advice for other teens — and what they want adults to know, too.”

Euronews: Social media flooded with misinformation after surge of migrants in Lampedusa. “When more than 10,000 undocumented migrants landed on the shores of the Italian island of Lampedusa last week, social media became flooded with misinformation. Euronews debunked two viral and misleading clips. In this context of heated discussions on how EU member states should handle illegal immigration, multiple misleading videos have been shared criticising the migrants arriving in Italy.”

UK Government: Regulator publishes new guidance on charities’ social media use. “The new guidance is clear that charities using social media should have a social media policy in place and should ensure the policy is followed. This is standard practice in many charities and across other sectors and industries, and can help an organisation avoid problems and address issues swiftly if they occur. The regulator says its casework has revealed a knowledge gap.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC News: Donald Trump Jr.’s X account apparently hacked, announces father’s death. “Donald Trump Jr.’s account on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter appeared to be hacked early Wednesday. One post falsely stated that former President Donald Trump had died, according to screenshots.”

Gothamist: 7 artworks, seized by Nazis, returned to descendants in NY. “An epic legal affair involving artworks looted by the Nazi regime drew to a close on Wednesday in Lower Manhattan, where the works were handed over to the descendants of a Jewish collector who was murdered during the Holocaust. The artworks, by the renowned Austrian artist Egon Schiele, were forcibly taken from Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret performer who was killed in 1941 at Dachau concentration camp, according to descendants of the artist as well as a pivotal court ruling.”

CNBC: How a North Korean cyber group impersonated a Washington D.C. analyst. “Six years ago, a well-respected researcher was working late into the night when she stepped away from her computer to brush her teeth. By the time she came back, her computer had been hacked.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Markets Insider: Remember when NFTs sold for millions of dollars? 95% of the digital collectibles are now probably worthless.. “A report by dappGambl found that 95% of non-fungible tokens are effectively worthless. Out of 73,257 NFT collections, 69,795 of them have a market cap of zero ether, based on data provided by NFT Scan and CoinMarketCap. By their estimates, almost 23 million people hold these worthless assets.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 22, 2023 at 05:32PM
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Thursday, September 21, 2023

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, California Plants, Nest Hub Max, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 21, 2023

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, California Plants, Nest Hub Max, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 21, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

MIT Press: The MIT Press announces the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, a paradigm shift in open access reference works. “For over a generation, the MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences has been an essential resource for researchers and students of cognitive science and neuroscience. Today, the MIT Press proudly announces its intellectual successor—the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (OECS), a dynamic and openly accessible web reference poised to guide the next generation of exploration. Thanks to generous funding from James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Allen Institute for AI, the first set of articles will be published in 2024.”

California Department of Natural Resources: DWR Collaborates With UC Davis to Expand Plant Database for Landscape Community. “The Water Use Classification of Landscape Species database offers water use data for more than 3,500 plants and helps users find the perfect plants for their water needs. Using the Water Use Classification of Landscape Species database, users can search for plants by region, water requirement, and plant type.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Nest Hub Max ending Google Meet and Zoom support in September. “Video calling was originally pitched as a key feature of the Nest Hub Max, but Google Meet and Zoom are dropping support at the end of September.”

Online Journalism Blog: The third edition of the Online Journalism Handbook is now out!. “A new, third, edition of the Online Journalism Handbook is now out. A comprehensive update to the 2017 second edition, it sees the addition of a new chapter on writing for email and chat.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 8 Vintage iPhone Film Camera Apps Worth Using . “For many of us, the blemishes and imperfections that come with shooting film are a distant memory. While the fundamentals of shutter speed and aperture settings persist, the process of shooting and sharing an image has changed massively. It makes sense, then, that a subset of vintage camera apps exists designed to recreate the experience of shooting film. So, let’s look at some of the best iPhone film camera apps.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Jakarta Globe: National Museum that Houses Pre-Historic Artifacts Ravaged by Fire. “The National Museum in Jakarta, housing hundreds of thousands of ancient artifacts, including prehistoric treasures, suffered a devastating fire on Saturday evening, resulting in substantial damage and the potential loss of national treasures. While the exact scope of the losses remains unknown, police have reported that at least four major rooms of the museum were completely destroyed by the fire.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Japan News: Google, X Among Six Search, Social Media Operators Subject to Japan’s New Government Regulations to Protect Personal Data. “Google LLC and X Corp., which operates the service formerly known as Twitter, are among the six companies whose services will be subject to regulation by the Japanese government from as soon as October. A council of the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry released its report Tuesday saying that it is appropriate to designate the six companies, with the aim of strengthening the protection of users’ personal information.”

The Register: Scattered Spider traps 100+ victims in its web as it moves into ransomware. “Scattered Spider, the crew behind at least one of the recent Las Vegas casino IT security breaches, has already hit some 100 organizations during its so-far brief tenure in the cybercrime scene, according to Mandiant. Further, as also witnessed in the ongoing MGM Resorts network outage, the gang, known for its social-engineering-based attacks, is now throwing data-stealing ransomware at victims, too.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Wisconsin-Madison: Machine learning analysis of research citations highlights importance of federal funding for basic scientific research. “Biomedical research aimed at improving human health is particularly reliant on publicly funded basic science, according to a new analysis boosted by artificial intelligence.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Honolulu Star-Advertiser: Lahaina’s 150-year-old banyan tree has sprouted green leaves. “The 150-year-old banyan tree in Lahaina is showing signs of life more than a month after its leaves were singed by fire. Clusters of green leaves have since grown from the iconic tree’s branches, as well as on the ground beneath it at Lahaina’s courthouse square.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 22, 2023 at 12:10AM
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Dutch and Flemish Art Expertise, Syracuse University Football, Google, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, September 21, 2023

Dutch and Flemish Art Expertise, Syracuse University Football, Google, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, September 21, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

CODART: Curators’ Specializations Now Available on the CODART Website. “In the curators overview, you will find a new filter that allows you to select from various topics in terms of geographical regions, periods, media, themes and artists. Please note that only topics related to Dutch and Flemish art from about 1350 to 1750 are included. For example, if one selects the region of Spain, curators specializing in northern artists who were active in Spain will be presented, not curators specializing in Spanish artists.”

Syracuse University: University Football Films Collection Now Available Online. “Of the 430 films digitized from the larger Syracuse University Audiovisual Collection, nearly 400 are now available through SU Digital Collections, the Libraries’ digital library portal. The content forms the core of the new Syracuse University Football Films Collection, a virtual collection created for the digital library where materials can be searched by date, keyword and more.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Bard Gets a ‘Google It’ Button and We’re Back at Square One, Folks . “During a press briefing on Tuesday, Google Bard vice president of engineering Amar Subramanya said one of the challenges with large language models is that they oftentimes present inaccurate information, confidently. So, to fix this issue of what he described as ‘the hallucination problem’, Google is sticking a ‘Google It’ button within Bard. Why….why not just bypass the middle bot and go straight to Google?”

TechCrunch: X’s crowdsourced fact-checking system will now let contributors consider opposing viewpoints . “X (formerly Twitter) this week changed how its crowdsourced fact-checking Community Notes feature works. In the new design, users will be able to review all the notes that have been proposed as annotations to an X post, rather than just the one note they’re currently reviewing. In other words, it will allow contributors to consider other notes before leaving their rating — and possibly, could convince them to change their mind.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Tech Fears Are Showing Up on Picket Lines. “Unions aren’t just fighting for an inflation-beating wage boost. They also are campaigning for job security at a time when workers increasingly fear that shifts to new technologies, like electric vehicles and artificial intelligence, threaten their job, and tech bosses themselves say this gloomy outlook is inevitable.”

Mashable: How social media in the classroom is burning teachers out. “[Sari Beth] Rosenberg noticed the shift about a decade ago. Her students’ attention span seemed shorter, and the teens became more prone to distraction. Conflicts over being excluded or bullied via social media became routine. Students brought that tension into the classroom and hallways. Rosenberg noticed, through observation and conversation, how social media wore down her students’ mental health.”

Hell Gate: The TikTok NPC Streamers of SoHo . “People attuned to the summer’s internet fads would have known what the brothers were doing—the Flints are NPC streamers, a genre in which a content creator will mimic a non-player character in a video game. During their livestreams, these content creators idle like a background villager in an Elder Scrolls town would, until a viewer interacts with them by throwing them a virtual token via TikTok’s reward system, in which case they’ll perform a line of dialogue and one of the animations they’ve come up with for their character.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Google launches last-ditch effort to overturn $2.6 billion EU antitrust fine. “Alphabet’s Google on Tuesday made a last-ditch effort at Europe’s top court to overturn a 2.42 billion euro ($2.6 billion) EU antitrust fine imposed for market abuse related to its shopping service, saying that regulators failed to show that its practices were anti-competitive.”

Wall Street Journal: People Are Streaming Pirated Movies on TikTok, One Short Clip at a Time. “Accounts on the platform are posting episodes of TV shows and full-length films in bite-sized clips that users can watch in a long continuous string. If you search for ‘Barbie,’ odds are, you’ll be inundated with fan videos and chatter, and won’t see any of the clips. But TikTok’s algorithms might promote a 90-second snippet of the movie on users’ For You pages, with a cryptic title like Part 8. Once users watch a few clips, more and more might turn up.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

HackADay: Preserving Floppy Disks . “Time is almost up for magnetic storage from the 80s and 90s. Various physical limitations in storage methods from this era are conspiring to slowly degrade the data stored on things like tape, floppy disks, and hard disk drives, and after several decades data may not be recoverable anymore. It’s always worth trying to back it up, though, especially if you have something on your hands like critical evidence or court records on a nearly 50-year-old floppy disk last written to in 1993 using a DEC PDP-11.”

Axios: Most U.S. adults don’t believe benefits of AI outweigh the risks, new survey finds. “54% of the 2,063 adults in a Mitre-Harris Poll survey in July said they were more concerned about the risks of AI than they were excited about the potential benefits. At the same time, 39% of adults said they believed today’s AI technologies are safe and secure — down 9 points from the previous survey in November 2022.”

Yahoo Finance: Americans spent $71B on social media impulse buys: Survey. “Americans are spending a lot of money on social media. According to a new Bankrate survey, 48% of social media users have made an impulse purchase, spending a whopping $71 billion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 57% of buyers regretted at least one purchase.” Good morning, Internet…

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September 21, 2023 at 05:29PM
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Wednesday, September 20, 2023

African-American Funeral Programs, Google Domains, TikTok, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 20, 2023

African-American Funeral Programs, Google Domains, TikTok, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, September 20, 2023
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Buffalo News: Newly digitized funeral program collection unveiled at Merriweather library. “Interest in genealogical research has increased with new technological innovations, including online databases, but members of the Buffalo Genealogical Society of the African Diaspora long ago discovered the value of African American funeral programs – in all their low-tech glory – as rich sources of biographical information for those working on their family trees. The society recently teamed with the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, University at Buffalo and Western New York Library Resources Council to digitize a community resource that it created called the Funeral Collection project.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ars Technica: Google Domains halts registrations as it waits for the Google Grim Reaper. “Google Domains has registered its last domain. Google announced in July that the service was getting shut down and that it had struck a deal with Squarespace to sell off the existing customer base. Part of that transition process means winding down the existing Google Domains functionality. 9to5Google was the first site to notice that you can no longer buy a domain through the service while it waits for the Google Grim Reaper to arrive.”

TechCrunch: TikTok debuts new tools and technology to label AI content. “As more creators turn to AI for their artistic expression, there’s also a broader push for transparency around when AI was involved in content creation. To address this concern, TikTok announced today it will launch a new tool that will allow creators to label their AI-generated content and will begin testing other ways to label AI-generated content automatically.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeTechEasier: 9 Tools to Convert and Save WEBP Files to JPG . “WEBP is a file extension developed by Google to reduce the size of an image without needing to sacrifice image quality. Recently, many websites have been making use of the WEBP image format, but it’s still not natively supported by many image editors, including older versions of Photoshop or web content management systems, such as WordPress. The solution to this is to convert your WEBP image to JPG. This list includes some of the best tools to convert and save WEBP files to JPG.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Business Insider: New layoffs at Twitter hit trust and safety workers even as advertisers worry about toxic speech. “The cuts happened the first week of September, according to two people familiar with the company, one of the first targeted layoffs since he shrunk operations earlier this year. While this layoff only affected a handful of people, five to 10, it was focused entirely on workers in trust and safety.”

BBC: How will museums of tomorrow tell the Covid pandemic story?. “Covid’s arrival in early 2020 threw organisations and businesses into turmoil. But while most workers grappled with furlough, social distancing and working from home, a small band of museum officers sensed history was in the making. This is one museum service’s story of trying to collect items in real-time to capture the pandemic story for future generations.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CoinDesk: NFL Quarterback Trevor Lawrence and 2 YouTube Influencers Settle FTX Case . “As Sam Bankman-Fried prepares for a trial defense in Manhattan next month, three celebrity promoters of his failed FTX cryptocurrency exchange have opted to settle the case, according to court filings. NFL team Jacksonville Jaguars’ quarterback Trevor Lawrence and YouTube influencers Kevin Paffrath and Tom Nash agreed to settle the case on undisclosed terms. The final court order acknowledging the settlement and removing them from the case is awaiting a sign-off from U.S. Judge K. Michael Moore.”

Bar and Bench (India): X Corp (Twitter) case: Karnataka High Court suggests that government bring in minimum age for using social media. “The Karnataka High Court today suggested that the Central government consider setting a minimum age for using social media so that children are prevented from using it. A bench of Justices G Narender and Vijaykumar A Patil made the suggestion while dwelling upon the dangers of exposing children to social media.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: The Google Trial Is Going to Rewrite Our Future. “The Google antitrust trial, which began last week, is ostensibly focused on the past — on a series of deals that Google made with other companies over the past two decades. The prosecution in the case, U.S. et al. v. Google, contends that Google illegally spent billions of dollars paying off Samsung and Apple to prevent anyone else from gaining a foothold in the market for online search.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis: Turning the tide: Ghana’s innovative approach to tackle marine plastic pollution with citizen science. “Working with IIASA researchers, Ghana has adopted a citizen science approach to addressing the problem of plastic pollution in marine environments, becoming the first country to integrate this type of data on marine plastic litter into its official monitoring and reporting processes. A new study presents this innovative approach on Ghana’s citizen science journey and offers a pathway that can potentially be adopted in other countries.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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September 21, 2023 at 12:08AM
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