Rowena Reed Kostellow, Mötley Crüe, American Counterculture, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 19, 2024

Rowena Reed Kostellow, Mötley Crüe, American Counterculture, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 19, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Pratt Institute: Rowena Reed Kostellow Archive Chronicles a Half-Century of Shaping Industrial Design. “Her career was dedicated to promoting thoughtful design for daily life, and with her husband, Alexander Kostellow, and Donald Dohner, she established Pratt’s Industrial Design program and its foundation curriculum with an attention to form, function, and industry. This pioneering program inspired industrial design courses across the globe. The newly launched Rowena Reed Kostellow Digital Archive honors that legacy by bringing together archival material from Pratt Libraries and submissions from alumni.”

Ultimate Classic Rock: Motley Crue Unveils ‘World’s Most Notorious Museum’. “Motley Crue will celebrate their 43rd birthday by unveiling the Crueseum, an online virtual museum dedicated to the band’s long and colorful history. The Crueseum gives fans an expansive look at all facets of Motley Crue’s career. The site includes rare memorabilia, backstage photos, handwritten notes, flyers and poster art, ticket stubs, tour itineraries, VIP laminates and more, many of which ‘have never been seen by the public,’ according to the press release.”

PR Newswire: Gale’s New Power to the People Archive Reveals the Historical Roots of Today’s Counterculture and Social Justice Movements (PRESS RELEASE). “The company has launched Power to the People: Counterculture, Social Movements, and the Alternative Press, Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century, a new digital archive that brings together materials that document the movements, events, individuals and grassroots organizations that worked to effect change in cultures and societies around the world. This unique collection offers a comprehensive view of the struggles and triumphs of activism over time, enabling users to make key connections and comparisons between past movements and the challenges humanity faces today.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Google is no longer bringing the full Chrome browser to Fuchsia. “Google has formally discontinued its efforts to bring the full Chrome browser experience to its Fuchsia operating system.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Art Museum: Brazil plans museum devoted to 2023 insurrection. “An initiative to create a comprehensive record of the 2023 insurrection of the Brazilian congress has been launched as part of the development of the Museum of Democracy in Brasília, a forthcoming museum that will explore the complex history of democratic rule in the country.”

Newport Daily News: Flood in Newport Historical Society’s basement damages archives. How they’re being saved . “Hanging from a clothing line stretched across two sets of ladders, dozens, if not hundreds, of film negatives from The Newport Daily News archives dry out in the lobby of the Newport Historical Society’s headquarters on Touro Street, just a portion of the photo archive that was impacted when the organization’s basement unexpectedly flooded on Tuesday.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Deutsche Welle: War in Ukraine: Photos to preserve endangered cultural sites. “UNESCO, the cultural organization of the United Nations, classifies numerous World Heritage Sites in Ukraine as endangered, including St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the old town of Lviv. ‘The destruction continues to increase,’ says Christian Bracht, Director of the Documentation Center for Art History (DDK) — Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, ‘because there is no end to the war in sight.’ This is one of the reasons the Marburg archive has dispatched up to 20 local photographers into the field since October 2022, equipped with digital cameras and special lenses.”

New Voice of Ukraine: Ukrainian hackers steal construction plans for 500 Russian military sites — report . “Hackers from the group Blackjack, purportedly affiliated with Ukraine’s SBU security service, have breached a Russian state enterprise involved in construction work for the Russian military, and downloaded over 1.2 TB of data, a Ukrainian law enforcement source told NV on Jan. 18.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EL PAÍS: Chile searches for those missing from Pinochet dictatorship with the help of artificial intelligence. “At the end of August, Chilean president Gabriel Boric launched the Search Plan for more than 1,000 Chileans. Today, old judicial documents, many typewritten, have been digitized to apply cutting edge technology and cross-reference data.”

University of Texas at Austin: AI Can Boost Service for Vulnerable Customers. “Artificial intelligence has become the Swiss Army knife of the business world, a universal tool for increasing sales, optimizing efficiency, and interacting with customers. But new research from Texas McCombs explores another purpose for AI in business: to contribute to the social good. It can do so by helping businesses better serve vulnerable consumers: anyone in the marketplace who experiences limited access to and control of resources.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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January 20, 2024 at 01:16AM
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First Responders Mental Health, Police Collective Bargaining Agreements, Connecticut Jobs, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, January 19, 2024

First Responders Mental Health, Police Collective Bargaining Agreements, Connecticut Jobs, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, January 19, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Fire Engineering: NVFC Launches Online Tool to Connect Responders with Mental Health Professionals. “The National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC) has launched an online, searchable directory of behavioral health professionals ready and able to help firefighters, EMS providers, rescue workers, and their families. This new tool replaces the previous PDF directory and will make it easier for responders and their families to find the assistance they need.”

Ballotpedia News: Ballotpedia’s new dashboard is your go-to resource for information about police CBAs. “Ballotpedia today announced the launch of its Police Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) Dashboard. This new resource allows users to find timely, reliable, non-partisan information on police collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in all 50 states and the 100 most populated cities in the U.S. A police CBA is a contract between a state, city, or other governing entity and a police union to establish certain rights, protections, and provisions for law enforcement officers.”

State of Connecticut: Governor Lamont Announces Launch of Jobs.CT.Gov. “Governor Ned Lamont today announced the launch of Connecticut’s new jobs portal, jobs.ct.gov. The portal is aimed at assisting Connecticut residents and those seeking to move to the state in the process of finding a job.”

Center for Reproductive Rights: New Digital Tool Provides State-by-State Analysis of High Court Rulings on Abortion. “State courts are deciding whether and how their own constitutions protect abortion rights, some for the first time. Plus, voters are weighing in on ballot initiatives to amend their state constitutions to protect or deny reproductive rights. The Center for Reproductive Rights has developed a new digital tool, State Constitutions and Abortion Rights, showing the current status of abortion rights through state court constitutional decisions.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

CNBC: Google CEO says more job cuts are needed in 2024 in order to reach ‘ambitious goals’. “In a memo titled “2024 priorities and the year ahead” that staffers received Wednesday evening, Pichai said, ‘we have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year.’ In the memo, which was obtained by CNBC, Pichai said company leadership is gearing up to share its AI goals for the year this week and will publish its 2024 OKRs (objectives and key results).” It’s probably too much to ask that one of the goals be “Nobody dies or suffers serious injury from following Google Maps directions.”

Library of Congress: Meet the 2024 Connecting Communities Digital Initiative Higher Education and Libraries, Archives, Museums Recipients. “The Library of Congress has awarded funding to six higher education and cultural heritage organizations through the Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI)’s Higher Education Institutions and Libraries, Archives and Museums awards. The 2024 awardees will create projects that offer creative approaches to the Library’s digital collections and center Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic or Latino Studies.”

WIRED: What SoundCloud Created Can Never Die. “The element of discovery has been SoundCloud’s secret sauce since it launched in 2007. The Berlin-founded company has maintained its relevance by embracing a simple ethos: come as you are. That’s made SoundCloud the for-everybody platform—one that embraces all genres, sexualities, religions, and definitions of music and art. By setting itself up as a hub for community-oriented music streaming, it’s become a kind of incubator for avant-garde sounds. SoundCloud is everybody’s underground. That may soon change.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bloomberg: Google Judge Balks at Altering App Store Fee Without Expert Help. ” The judge presiding over Epic Games Inc.’s challenge to Google’s Play Store business model said he’s not confident about setting a fee for mobile app developers without expert input. A jury last month sided with the maker of the popular game Fortnite and concluded that Alphabet Inc.’s Google Play unlawfully abused its power in what has become a duopoly with Apple Inc. that generates close to $200 billion a year. In the next phase of the case, US District Judge James Donato will decide on a remedy.”

ARTNews: Three U.S. Museums Accused of Hiding Stolen Stain Glass Windows from Rouen Cathedral. “A complaint was filed by the Parisian lumière sur le patrimoine association against three American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for hiding the theft of stain glass windows from the Rouen Cathedral in December 2023, Ouest-France reports.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: DeepMind’s latest AI can solve geometry problems. “DeepMind, the Google AI R&D lab, believes that the key to more capable AI systems might lie in uncovering new ways to solve challenging geometry problems. To that end, DeepMind today unveiled AlphaGeometry — a system that the lab claims can solve as many geometry problems as the average International Mathematical Olympiad gold medalist.”

Northeastern University Research: From social media to body image and back: Rachel Rodgers reveals the complexity of this bi-directional relationship.. “Social media is arguably one of the greatest factors in the development of self esteem and body image in modern society. … Many parents, young people and social science researchers have a creeping feeling that there’s reason to be concerned, but measuring the impacts of social media on body image is quite complex. That’s because social media works as a two-way street: The algorithm influences the user’s ideas and the user’s online interactions guids the algorithm.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Stanford News: New, portable antenna could help restore communication after disasters. “Researchers at Stanford University and the American University of Beirut (AUB) have developed a portable antenna that could be quickly deployed in disaster-prone areas or used to set up communications in underdeveloped regions. The antenna, described recently in Nature Communications, packs down to a small size and can easily shift between two configurations to communicate either with satellites or devices on the ground without using additional power.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at WikiTwister, SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

January 19, 2024 at 06:31PM
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Being Human Podcast, London Road Casualties, Google, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 18, 2024

Being Human Podcast, London Road Casualties, Google, More: Thursday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 18, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Pittsburgh: The University Library System will host the full collection of Pitt podcast ‘Being Human’. “The full collection of audio and transcripts of ‘Being Human’ — a University of Pittsburgh podcast ‘devoted to exploring the humanities, their intersections with other disciplines, and their value in the public world’ that ran from 2015-2022 — is now available from Archives and Special Collections at University Library Services (ULS).”

Transport for London: Pioneering map of London shows the link between deprivation and road casualties. “The dashboard enables users to filter the data on the relationship between deprivation levels and road casualties by year, borough, casualty severity and mode of travel, while the mapping function makes it easier to explore areas of higher casualty or casualty location rates.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bloomberg: Google Plots Product Overhaul for EU’s Digital Dominance Rules. “Alphabet Inc.’s Google is rolling out a series of broad changes to some of its core search, browser and data products in Europe, in order to step in line with the European Union’s new rules to rein in Big Tech’s market dominance.”

Gizmodo: You’re Not Imagining It: Google Search Results Are Getting Worse, Study Finds. “The study looked at 7,392 product-review search terms over the course of a year on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo. The results were clear: the highest-ranked pages are more optimized, they feature more affiliate links, and in general, their text is lower quality. In other words, the jerks pumping out garbage content to make a couple of extra dollars are winning.” And the people who try to give you information free of ads and junk and infosewage? We’re losing.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Cleveland.com: Cleveland Museum of Art conceals displays of Native American art in observance of new federal regulations. “The Cleveland Museum of Art has installed opaque covers on three display cases containing Native American artworks and artifacts in compliance with new federal regulations that went into force on Jan.12.”

Smithsonian: Smithsonian Curators To Collect 2024 Presidential Campaign Memorabilia. “As the 2024 presidential election season speeds up with caucuses and primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, political history curators from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History will be on the road gathering materials and memorabilia to document this election cycle for the national collections.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

International Business Times: Australia May Ask Tech Companies To Label Content Generated By AI Under New Laws . “Australia may push through a new law forcing tech companies to watermark or label content generated by artificial intelligence, as its federal government tries to tackle ‘high-risk’ AI products evolving faster than legislation.”

Associated Press: Iowa Is the Latest State to Sue TikTok, Claims the Social Media Company Misrepresents Its Content. “Iowa on Wednesday became the latest state to sue TikTok over claims that the social media company deceives consumers over the amount of ‘inappropriate content’ that children can access via the platform.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Internet Archive Blog: Call for Proposals: Advancing Inclusive Computational Research with Archives Research Compute Hub. “Computational research and education cannot remain solely accessible to the world’s most well-resourced organizations. With philanthropic support, Internet Archive is initiating Advancing Inclusive Computational Research with ARCH, a pilot program specifically designed to support an initial cohort of five less well-resourced organizations throughout the world.”

The Conversation: Some people who share fake news on social media actually think they’re helping the world . “One of the main ways in which fake news spreads is when people share it to their own social networks. Some genuinely believe the story to be true and share it by mistake. We’ve found that around 20% of people report having shared a story they later found out was untrue. However, like other researchers, we also find that around one in 10 people admit sharing political information that they knew at the time was untrue. Why would these people deliberately spread lies?” Good afternoon, Internet…

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January 19, 2024 at 02:00AM
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Puerto Rico Legislation, Surgical Outcomes, FamilySearch, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, January 18, 2024

Puerto Rico Legislation, Surgical Outcomes, FamilySearch, More: Thursday ResearchBuzz, January 18, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Puerto Rico State Department, and machine-translated from Spanish: Puerto Rico State Department launches powerful online tool to search and access laws and regulations. “As part of its policy of preserving our legal and historical heritage and fulfilling its ministerial responsibility, the Department of State of Puerto Rico launched its new ‘Virtual Legal Library’ on the portal in agency line ( https://bibliotecavirtual.estado.pr.gov/ ), providing free access to an extensive archive of laws dating from 1902 to the present, announced the Secretary of State, Omar J. Marrero Díaz.”

Newswise: New database of more than 83,000 surgical outcomes aimed at advancing research and training artificial intelligence algorithms now online. All personal information has been stripped from the data. “The repository, which had been in the works since 2012, fills a gap in publicly accessible databases that researchers can use to train and test AI algorithms….It contains data, collected over seven years, of hospital visits for patients undergoing surgery at UCI Medical Center, consisting of comprehensive electronic health record and high-fidelity physiological waveforms.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

FamilySearch: What to Expect from FamilySearch in 2024. “Every year at FamilySearch brings more free genealogy records for everyone to explore and new and improved experiences that help people connect to their families, past and present. Here is a fun glance of some of the new things coming to the FamilySearch website and apps this year in 2024.”

USEFUL STUFF

New-to-me, discovered via Mastodon: Sit in Shade. “Find Best Bus Seat to Minimize Sun Exposure While Traveling,” it says on the front page, and that’s about the size of it. Select your starting point and your destination and the date/time, and you’ll get recommendations of which side of the vehicle to sit on along with information about how much sun exposure each side has.

MakeUseOf: JPEG, GIF, or PNG? Image File Types Explained and Tested. “Do you know the difference between JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, and other image file types? Do you know when you should use one instead of the other? Or which is best for storing your photos? Here are the basics you need to know.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Search Engine Land: Google Ads support is at an ‘all-time low’ – we asked Google why. “From incorrect account suspensions to uncomfortable sales calls ‘aggressively’ pushing automation to confusion over the platform’s own products, advertisers have told Search Engine Land that they are exasperated by the lack of help offered by their reps. And the problem only seems to be getting worse.”

BBC: ‘We need jungle’ – Amol Rajan on how a University Challenge question spawned a remix craze. “In idle moments this week, of which there have been fewer than usual, I have wondered about the precise circumstances that led Nathan Filer, a best-selling writer based at Bath Spa University, to post on Twitter/X about University Challenge. The curious thing, given what followed, was that he was playing catch-up.”

Mashable: Digital art sales aren’t done. These Bitcoin artworks are going for thousands.. “The landscape of art has invariably shifted over the last few years thanks to NFTs and the onset of digital artworks; for both art collectors and NFT enthusiasts, this boom has been both lucrative and contentious. But though the buzz may have ebbed, blockchain-supported art is still big business.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: Google quietly updates Chrome’s incognito warning in wake of tracking lawsuit. “Weeks after agreeing to settle a lawsuit that accused Google of illegally tracking browsing activity even after users activated Chrome’s incognito mode, the company has quietly updated how the browser describes its private browsing feature. The updated text, spotted by MSPowerUser, can be found in the latest Canary build of Google Chrome, version 122.0.6251.0.”

Bleeping Computer: Google fixes first actively exploited Chrome zero-day of 2024. “Google has released security updates to fix the first Chrome zero-day vulnerability exploited in the wild since the start of the year.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Grenada: Scientific study shows we are not addicted to mobile phones but to the social interaction they facilitate “A University of Granada (UGR) research team has shown for the first time that we are not ‘addicted’ to mobile phones, but to the social interaction that these electronic devices provide. The study, published in the scientific journal Psicothema, is the first experimental scientific evidence of this theory, which was developed in 2018 by Professor Samuel P.L. Veissière, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal (Canada).”

PsyPost: Popularity over fairness: How online dating platforms prioritize users. “In the ever-evolving world of online dating, a new study has brought to light the intricacies of matchmaking algorithms used by these platforms. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington have uncovered a ‘popularity bias’ in these algorithms, a tendency to recommend more popular and attractive users over their less popular counterparts. The findings of this study were published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at WikiTwister, SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

January 18, 2024 at 06:30PM
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Wolfram Language, Google, Twitter Community Notes, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 15, 2024

Wolfram Language, Google, Twitter Community Notes, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, January 15, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Wolfram Blog: The Story Continues: Announcing Version 14 of Wolfram Language and Mathematica. “Version 1.0 had 554 built-in functions; in Version 14.0 there are 6602. And behind each of those functions is a story. Sometimes it’s a story of creating a superalgorithm that encapsulates decades of algorithmic development. Sometimes it’s a story of painstakingly curating data that’s never been assembled before. Sometimes it’s a story of drilling down to the essence of something to invent new approaches and new functions that can capture it. And from all these pieces we’ve been steadily building the coherent whole that is today’s Wolfram Language.”

The Verge: Google will now let EU users select which services share their data, thanks to the DMA. “Google just announced a change for users in Europe that will let them decide exactly how much data-sharing they’re comfortable with. The new policy, which the company said was in response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), allows users to opt out of data sharing across all, some, or none of a select number of Google’s services. The services listed include YouTube, Search, ad services, Google Play, Chrome, Google Shopping, and Google Maps.”

Rolling Stone: Twitter’s Scammy Advertisers Are Getting Wrecked by Community Notes . “Musk needs these bottom-of-the-barrel advertisers, because paid user subscriptions likely aren’t making much money — plus he’s now paying some blue-check creators who reap significant engagement on their posts. But there’s another app feature, much touted by Musk as a counterweight to the misinformation that continues to run rampant on the site, which undercuts the deceptive promises made in many garbage ads: Community Notes. Fact-checkers have increasingly weaponized the tool to point out potential scams and bogus bargains.”

Decrypt: GameStop Bails on Crypto Gaming, Killing NFT Marketplace. “GameStop is getting out of the NFT business. About a year and a half after launching its NFT marketplace, publicly-traded video game retailer GameStop is saying goodbye to its platform, which supports gaming NFTs and other collectibles across Immutable X and Loopring, both Ethereum scaling networks.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to View, Edit, and Add Metadata to a Photo. “Metadata can provide descriptive information about a photo, such as its caption, title, author, how the image was taken, and legal information. Also, if you publish some of your work online, the metadata offers information regarding usage rights and acts as proof of ownership. So, how can you add metadata to your photos?”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Inside the Games: Olympic athletes can upload photos and videos to social media, but not live or AI. “The International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines allow accredited athletes to post audio and video recordings of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and the Gangwon 2024 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) of up to two minutes per post.”

Boing Boing: Twitter account shares screenshots of games that don’t exist. “Although the people who run it are shrouded in mystery, its mission is clear: it accepts submissions from artists of all stripes, as long as the art in question can be reasonably passed off as a video game- a video game that doesn’t exist, specifically.”

Tedium: What Was ISDN? . “In 2025, British Telecom plans to shut off its ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) and PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) services entirely, in favor of modern technologies like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: US School Shooter Emergency Plans Exposed in a Highly Sensitive Database Leak. “Thousands of emergency planning documents from US schools—including their safety procedures for active shooter emergencies—were leaked in a trove of more than 4 million records that were inadvertently made public. Last month, security researcher Jeremiah Fowler discovered 800 gigabytes of files and logs linked to school software provider Raptor Technologies.”

Cowboy State Daily: Radical Change To Wyoming Public Notice Law Would Put State Database Over Newspaper. “For more than a century, Wyoming’s public records law has mandated that all legally required governmental public notices must be printed in a local newspaper of record. The drafted legislation would change that requirement by instead creating a centralized electronic notice system in Wyoming that would be maintained by the Secretary of State’s office.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Atlantic: ChatGPT’s FarmVille Moment. “When Facebook invited developers to build tools on top of the Facebook platform in 2007, the company was experiencing fantastical growth and had seemingly limitless revenue potential. OpenAI is inviting developers in 2024 to build tools that could themselves become lawsuit targets. OpenAI has created a moderation system to weed out GPTs that violate its brand guidelines and usage policies, but there is a pretty wide gap between OpenAI’s position on acceptable GPT uses and the position of potential litigants. And meanwhile, the direct revenue potential for developers is still an aspirational promise, to be revisited sometime in the first quarter.”

Wall Street Journal: What if You Never Had to Charge Your Gadgets Again?. “Now, companies including Ambient Photonics and Exeger are offering solar cells of this kind, known as a ‘dye-sensitized solar cell.’ They are lightweight, bendable, made from common materials, and can be manufactured cheaply, in a type of printing process.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at WikiTwister, SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

January 15, 2024 at 06:37PM
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New Zealand Soccer News, Google, Google Assistant, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 14, 2024

New Zealand Soccer News, Google, Google Assistant, More: Sunday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 14, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Friends of Football (New Zealand): READ: New Zealand’s national Soccer News magazine from fifty years ago. “Fifty years ago, New Zealand football fans followed the sport through various publications, including the national monthly magazine Soccer News. Published and edited by Wellington-based John Ewan, the magazine covered the national team, national competitions such as the Rothmans Soccer League and the Chatham Cup… The publication has been converted to digital format by Friends of Football as part of an ongoing project to preserve the heritage of the game in New Zealand.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Google pulls Binance, other global crypto apps from India store. “Google pulled many crypto exchanges, including Binance and Kraken, from its Play Store in India on Saturday in what is the latest blow to the world’s second largest internet market’s already dwindling web3 dream. The ban comes two weeks after these global crypto exchanges were flagged for operating ‘illegally’ in the South Asian market.”

The Verge: Google removes 17 features from Google Assistant. “Several ‘underutilized’ Google Assistant features will soon be joining the infamous Google graveyard — such as the ability to use your voice to send an email, video, or audio messages — as the search giant introduces changes it says will make the feature easier to use. The company is also changing how the microphone works in the Google app and Pixel Search bar.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

WIRED: Scammy AI-Generated Book Rewrites Are Flooding Amazon. “When AI researcher Melanie Mitchell published Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans in 2019, she set out to clarify AI’s impact. A few years later, ChatGPT set off a new AI boom—with a side effect that caught her off guard. An AI-generated imitation of her book appeared on Amazon, in an apparent scheme to profit off her work. It looks like another example of the ecommerce giant’s ongoing problem with a glut of low-quality AI-generated ebooks.”

Yale School of Management: A New Course Prepares Students for a Workplace Transformed by AI. “Large Language Models: Theory and Application debuted this fall. Taught by Kyle Jensen, the Shanna and Eric Bass ’05 Director of Entrepreneurial Programs, and K. Sudhir, the James L. Frank ’32 Professor Private Enterprise and Management and professor of marketing, the course aims to equip students with the fundamentals of how large language models (LLMs) work and explore their far-reaching impact in the marketplace.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

StateScoop: Nonprofit behind FTC complaint about automated fraud-detection software hopes for more responsible AI use. “The group behind the recent Federal Trade Commission complaint against Thomson Reuters’ automated public-benefit fraud detection software — which is used by 42 state governments — hopes the filing will bring about more responsible use of artificial intelligence by governments and the vendors they contract.”

CBC: Toronto Public Library storing returned books at 12 trailers off site in wake of cyberattack. “The Toronto Public Library says it is storing returned books at 12 trailers off site following an October cyberattack. The books are being stored securely and have yet to be checked in, the library said in an email on Thursday.”

Fightful: NJPW Issues Copyright Strike Against…..NJPW. “New Japan Pro-Wrestling strikes again. NJPW is notorious for issues copyright strikes from users who upload their videos on YouTube and social media platforms and their latest victim is one of the biggest platforms in the world of wrestling. NJPW.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: Our fingerprints may not be unique, claims AI. “There is a belief that each fingerprint on one person’s hand is completely unique but that is now being challenged by research from Columbia University. A team at the US university trained an AI tool to examine 60,000 fingerprints to see if it could work out which ones belonged to the same individual. The researchers claim the technology could identify, with 75-90% accuracy, whether prints from different fingers came from one person.”

Los Angeles Times: Opinion: I bought a flip phone and tried to get by without my smartphone. Here’s how that went. “When they were little, my sons loved to play a game in which they would hide under the covers while I wondered aloud, ‘Where is he?’ Then they would throw off the blankets and yell, ‘Here I am! I was here the whole time.’ How much of their lives have I missed while looking at my screen? Every year, I see kids get phones and disappear into them. I don’t want that to happen to mine. I don’t want that to have happened to me. So I quit. And now I have this flip phone.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at WikiTwister, SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Mastodon Gizmos, and MegaGladys.

January 15, 2024 at 01:52AM
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Scotland Spirituals, Elections Canada, OpenAI, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 14, 2024

Scotland Spirituals, Elections Canada, OpenAI, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, January 14, 2024
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

The Scotsman: Gaelic: ‘Sacred and spiritual’ songs of Highlands and Islands preserved for the future. “Dr Frances Wilkins, a Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology with the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen, has spent the last six years undertaking fieldwork in the Hebrides and West Highlands to explore and record sacred and spiritual singing from the region… Many of the sound recordings, photographs and videos made during the project can be found [online].”

CBC: Elections Canada launches online disinformation tool to prepare voters for next federal election. “Elections Canada is trying to insulate Canadian voters from false narratives and information during the next federal election by launching an online tool to help voters cut through misinformation and disinformation about the electoral process in Canada. The ElectoFacts website, launched this week, provides factual information to debunk the most common misconceptions observed by Elections Canada officials in recent years.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Futurism: OpenAI’s GPT Store Already Filling Up With “AI Girlfriends”. “The AI company’s equivalent of Apple’s App Store allows developers to share their own GPT models, from coding tutors to book recommendation bots, with other paying ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise users. At least, those are the examples OpenAI gives in its announcement. The reality looks considerably different.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Tablet: Pope Calls for Investing in Preservation of Church’s Audiovisual Archives. “There is a growing and urgent need to invest in and plan concrete initiatives to preserve and share the Catholic Church’s rich but fragile audiovisual heritage, Pope Francis said. By investing now, he said, ‘the economic costs will certainly be lower than those that will be paid from a historical, cultural and religious point of view with the irreparable loss of so much Catholic audiovisual heritage.'”

The Herald (Scotland): Final part of Alasdair Gray archive bought by National Library. “The National Library of Scotland has bought the last and final tranche of archive material by renowned author, artist and playwright, Alasdair Gray. The Library’s collection of Alasdair Gray material is the largest and most comprehensive collection of Gray’s literary and personal materials.”

The Independent: Formula E team ditches AI social media influencer ‘Ava’ after backlash. “Formula E team Mahindra Racing have been forced to discard a bizarre plunge into artificial intelligence whereby they created a fake social media influencer ahead of the new season. The team created a fake influencer powered by AI called ‘Ava’ to promote the team, their drivers and sustainability campaigns throughout the season, which starts this weekend in Mexico.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Sky News: Hundreds of items missing from English museums including Queen Victoria drawing and prehistoric jaw fragment . “The findings from Freedom of Information requests to museums and galleries receiving public money comes after a member of staff at the British Museum was sacked in August after jewellery and gems from its collection were found to be missing, stolen or damaged.”

ABC News (Australia): Legal experts warn naming and shaming alleged criminals on social media can itself be a crime. “Posting on social media about neighbourhood crime has become an increasingly popular trend, however experts have warned it can be risky. Online feeds and community pages are littered with images and videos of alleged criminals caught on CCTV, along with call-outs to identify them.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Android Police: Google is messing with Driving Mode again, and I’ve had enough of this nonsense. “Google doesn’t like me. That’s the only assumption I can make when it consistently finds ways to make my life more difficult. Google+, Inbox, Pixelbook, these are dead Google products that I love, but at least I could find alternatives for them easily enough. The same can’t be said for driving apps. Google has messed with its driving apps for the worse twice now, and it looks like it’s about to happen again.”

Diplomatic Courier: Preserving Institutional Democracy In The Age Of AI. “It is time for leaders to challenge and disrupt the status quo in their own ways and not be guided by the whims of technology. We must try to move faster than AI, or at least fast enough to ensure the healthy perseverance, yet improvement of democratic institutions and democratic resiliency.”

Business Insider: Putin’s social media ban cost Russia’s economy more than $4 billion last year. “Including time lost from social media bans in the first year of its war, Russia experienced 1,353 hours of internet shutdown in 2023, which affected 113 million of its internet users, according to a study from the VPN reviewer Top10VPN. The report found that cost its economy $4.02 billion last year, measuring the losses using the Cost of Shutdown Tool from the internet monitor NETBLOCKS.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Cultured: Are Artist-Produced Zines the Antidote to Social Media?. “Interest in zines—small, self-published printed texts and images—has ballooned in recent years. The spike can be attributed to young people’s growing disengagement with social media as a tool for political communication coupled with a renewed interest in community-based advocacy and tactile, IRL cultural objects.” Good morning, Internet…

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January 14, 2024 at 06:31PM
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