NEW RESOURCES

Parents: This Website Turns Your Child’s Artwork Into Music—Inspired by a Teen Who Is Nonverbal. “Many nonverbal people use art and music when they can’t express themselves verbally, but it goes beyond just communicating. From boosting self-esteem to improving depression and anxiety to stimulating the brain, there’s no doubting the benefits of art and music for a person’s health. For Riley, markers, paint, and paper are a go-to form of self-expression. By uploading a piece of her art to Unspoken Symphony, a unique melody can be created just for her.”

Albuquerque Journal: ‘From Ranches to Rockets’: Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum exhibit on Tularosa Basin goes online. “The New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum has moved the exhibit ‘Home on the Range: From Ranches to Rockets’ online. The exhibit explores the incredible transformation of the Tularosa Basin during World War II.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Sports Video Group News: MLB Film Room Powered by Google Cloud Adds 700,000 New Videos. “Major League Baseball today made over 700,000 new videos available on MLB Film Room powered by Google Cloud for fans and media to search through, watch, create their own highlight reels and easily share with their personal communities by embedding on their websites, posting to Twitter, Reddit and Facebook or sending via email and text.”

9to5 Google: Google Search adds 50 new 3D Animals, including many more dogs. “One highlight of this year has been the immense popularity of AR creatures from Google that helps replicate the great outdoors inside. Google Search has now added 50 new 3D animals in the biggest drop yet.”

The Grio: Obama partners with ATTN: for new Instagram series about presidency. “Barack Obama has a new series on Instagram. The 44th U.S. president is partnering with ATTN for a five-part video series based on his best seller, ‘A Promised Land.'”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

CNET: Google’s 2020: Search giant clashes with DC over antitrust, misinformation. “The year about to end will be remembered at Google for the federal government ratcheting up its fight with the tech giant. Long-standing antitrust woes coalesced into a once-in-a-generation lawsuit brought by the US Department of Justice. Lawmakers circled around the company as it failed to corral election misinformation running rampant on YouTube, Google’s video arm. An unprecedented pandemic spawned hoaxes that drew ire from all corners. Pichai was called to task in Washington. Google’s battles with the government didn’t prevent it from launching new products, including its flagship Pixel 5 phone and a next-generation Nest smart speaker. But those announcements were at times overshadowed by the controversy Google faced at a corporate level.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TRT World: Turkey fines social media giants for not complying with new law. “Turkey’s Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) slapped multiple social media giants with fines totalling $3.8 million each, for their continued failure to hire local representatives.”

London School of Economics: Book Review: Legal Protection for Traditional Knowledge: Towards A New Law for Indigenous Intellectual Property by Anindya Bhukta. “In Legal Protection for Traditional Knowledge: Towards A New Law for Indigenous Intellectual Property, Anindya Bhukta underscores the value of traditional knowledge and argues that legal systems need to ensure better protection of this knowledge, with a particular focus on India. This book is an ideal primer for readers looking to find out more about the laws concerning traditional knowledge, writes Gayathri D Naik, and Bhukta’s proposals for a new legal approach embody his in-depth research and knowledge of the subject.”

ZDNet: Microsoft exposes Adrozek, malware that hijacks Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. “Named Adrozek, the malware has been active since at least May 2020 and reached its absolute peak in August this year when it controlled more than 30,000 browsers each day. But in a report today, the Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team believes the number of infected users is much, much higher.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew: Social media continue to be important political outlets for Black Americans. “Across Pew Research Center surveys, Black social media users have been particularly likely to say that these sites are personally important to them for getting involved with issues they care about or finding like-minded people. They are also likely to express positive views about the impact of these platforms for holding powerful people accountable for their actions and giving a voice to underrepresented groups.”

Engadget: Google used a 64-camera rig to train its portrait lighting AI. “Google’s Portrait Light feature can make some of your more mediocre photos look a lot better by giving you a way to change their lighting direction and intensity. The tech giant launched the AI-based lighting feature in September for the Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 before giving older Pixel phones access to it. Now, Google has published a post on its AI blog explaining the technology behind Portrait Light, including how it trained its machine learning models.”

Washington Post: The lawsuits against Facebook don’t go far enough. “The problem is not that Facebook makes profit — even large profits. The problem is that its increasingly interconnected apps and interfaces work to reconfigure everyday flows of social information to suit a business model that treats all content suppliers the same. For sure, Facebook did not intend this consequence. But when its business model sought to maximize content traffic by whatever means, and there happened to exist disinformation merchants who also just wanted to maximize traffic, those goals were destined to interact in a marriage made in hell.” 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!