NEW RESOURCES

Kind of a limited scope, but I wanted to include it here because it’s not something I’ve seen often: Online registry aims to crowdsource tracking of Toronto evictions for landlords’ personal use. “A new crowdsourced online database aimed at tracking one of the only ways Ontario tenants in good standing can be evicted is drawing praise from a prominent tenants’ advocate, who says it can help determine if a landlord is abusing the process to jack up rent. But it’s also causing some alarm among landlords who fear the unverified information could be misinterpreted or used, itself, in bad faith.”

Dani Gal has created quite a collection of spoken-word political vinyl records at https://historical-records.com/ . From the about page: “Historical Records is an ongoing project of collectin commercially released vinyl records that document political events of the twentieth century. The collection contains over 700 LP’s of speeches and interviews of those who were in power and others who objected this power, of wars and peace agreements, human rights struggles and other radio broadcasts, of the events that shaped history from the invention of the phonograph to the fall of the Berlin wall.” Worst timesink I’e seen in a loooong time….

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tubefilter: YouTube TV Rolls Out To Remaining U.S. Markets Ahead Of Super Bowl. “After having already rolled out to the top 100 markets in America — making it available in 85% of U.S. households — YouTube TV is now live all across the country. Today’s rollout will make YouTube TV available in 95 additional markets, covering 98% of U.S. households — with the remaining 2% ‘to follow shortly thereafter,’ according to the company.”

Ubergizmo: Instagram Denies They Are Limiting The Reach Of Posts. “Recently some of you might have noticed how some of the people you follow on Instagram might have been sharing a photo that claims that Instagram has been limiting the reach of their posts. These posts claim that Instagram has limited it so that only 7% of their followers can see their posts. It is unclear how this came about, but Instagram has since responded to these claims with a series of posts on Twitter where they deny that they have made any changes.”

The Register: Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently. “Google engineers have proposed changes to the open-source Chromium browser that will break content-blocking extensions, including various ad blockers. Adblock Plus will most likely not be affected, though similar third-party plugins will, for reasons we will explain. The drafted changes will also limit the capabilities available to extension developers, ostensibly for the sake of speed and safety. Chromium forms the central core of Google Chrome, and, soon, Microsoft Edge.”

The Verge: Twitter is rolling out a new web interface, including an emoji button. “Twitter has started to roll out a new interface for its web users that includes several key features, like a newly designed emoji button.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Herald-Tribune: Database prompted by Herald-Tribune reporting soon to go online. “The prototype of a first-of–its-kind database that could help Floridians track where crimes occur and how justice is meted out in counties across the state is expected to go public in coming weeks, officials said Tuesday. But plenty of hurdles still must be overcome by officials looking to enhance this initial Florida Department of Law Enforcement database, which was ordered by lawmakers last year after reporting by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune exposed rampant racial disparities in sentencing across the state.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Cyberscoop: DHS releases emergency order to prevent DNS hijacking . “he Department of Homeland Security has issued a rare ’emergency’ directive ordering federal civilian agencies to secure the login credentials for their internet domain records. DHS issued the order Tuesday afternoon out of concern that federal agencies could be vulnerable to cyberattacks intended to gain access to the platforms used to manage domain name system (DNS) records.”

TechCrunch: Police license plate readers are still exposed on the internet. “Considered a massive invasion of privacy by many and legally questionable by some, there are tens of thousands of ALPR readers across the U.S. collectively reading and recording thousand of license plates — and locations — every minute, the ACLU says, becoming one of the new and emerging forms of mass surveillance in the U.S. But some cameras are connected to the internet, and are easily identifiable. Worse, some are leaking sensitive data about vehicles and their drivers — and many have weak security protections that make them easily accessible.”

Techdirt: Oregon Lawmaker Wants Public Records Requesters To Tell Gov’t Agencies What They Plan To Do With Released Documents. “As if government agencies needed any new ways to thwart accountability and transparency. Oregon legislators are introducing a host of alterations to the state’s public records law, but one of those looks like nothing more than an easily-abusable tool to be wielded against public records requesters.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: Facial recognition tool tackles illegal chimp trade. “Wildlife criminals had better watch out! The same software that recognises you in a friend’s social media post is being adapted to tackle the illegal trade in chimpanzees.”

London School of Economics and Political Science: Differences in men’s and women’s academic productivity persist and are most pronounced for publications in top journals. “Sabrina Mayer & Justus Rathmann present statistical evidence indicating a persistent difference in research productivity between male and female professors in psychology. Examining the publication records of full psychology professors in Germany, they reveal that female professors are less likely to publish in top ranked journals and are more likely to adopt publication strategies that are focused on producing book chapters in edited collections.” Good morning, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. I love your comments, I love your site suggestions, and I love you. Feel free to comment on the blog, or @ResearchBuzz on Twitter. Thanks!