I am so sorry I vanished. I have been obsessed with this project I’ve been working on. It’s a new tool for searching Google News called Gossip Machine and I shared it with my Patreon last night. I’m 100% thrilled with how well it works!

My brain is buzzing with about a million other ideas so I’ll start tinkering with those shortly, but in the meantime I have a lot of email to answer and a lot of ResearchBuzz to do.

And hey, TOMORROW IS RESEARCHBUZZ’ 23rd ANNIVERSARY! I know some of you have been reading almost from the beginning. I’m so grateful to you and everyone else who takes the time to read. Thank you so much. And, of course, I love you.

Tara

NEW RESOURCES

StateScoop: California launches statewide homelessness data platform. “The Homeless Data Integration System integrates data maintained by the 44 state planning bodies that coordinate services for homeless people, also known as continuums of care. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a press release Wednesday that the new system, which was developed by the Homeless Coordinating and Financing Council, will help guide state policy.”

DigitalNC: The Commonwealth, a newspaper from Scotland Neck, now on DigitalNC. “Over 2000 issues of The Commonwealth, a paper published in Scotland Neck, are now on DigitalNC. The issues span 40 years, from 1882 to 1922, adding a lot of coverage in our newspaper collection from the coastal region of the state.”

Google Blog: Culture needs us, as much as we need culture. “On the occasion of World Heritage Day, UNESCO, Google Arts & Culture and our international partners are joining forces to promote access to and education around cultural and natural heritage through a new online resource, Explore UNESCO World Heritage. This is a unique opportunity to enjoy a virtual globetrotting tour of cultural landmarks and outstanding places of natural beauty, as well as to access accurate and reliable information on sites of outstanding universal value.”

EFF: Am I FLoCed? A New Site to Test Google’s Invasive Experiment. “Today we’re launching Am I FLoCed, a new site that will tell you whether your Chrome browser has been turned into a guinea pig for Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoC, Google’s latest targeted advertising experiment. If you are a subject, we will tell you how your browser is describing you to every website you visit. Am I FLoCed is one of an effort to bring to light the invasive practices of the adtech industry—Google included—with the hope we can create a better internet for all, where our privacy rights are respected regardless of how profitable they may be to tech companies.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

NPR: Success! NASA’s Ingenuity Makes First Powered Flight On Mars. “Orville and Wilbur would be proud. NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has made the first-ever powered flight on another planet, 117 years after the Wright Brothers’ historic flight on this planet. The flight itself was modest. The 4-pound helicopter rose 10 feet in the air, hovered briefly, and returned to the Martian surface. An images taken from the craft showed Ingenuity’s shadow on the surface and another taken from the Perseverance rover showed an airborne Ingenuity.”

ZDNet: WordPress could treat Google FloC as a security issue. “The backlash against Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) has continued, with a proposal raised in WordPress Core to block the controversial alternative identifier to third-party cookies by default. The WordPress proposal would see the blogging system use its weight to thwart FLoC.” WordPress powers a big chunk of the Web so this is important.

Ghacks: Firefox 90 won’t handle FTP sites anymore. “Mozilla announced today that Mozilla’s Firefox web browser won’t support the FTP protocol from Firefox 90 onward. It was clear that FTP support would be removed from the browser, but it was not clear until today when that would happen.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Courier: WATCH NOW: Haitian art collection is being ‘digitized’ for future at Waterloo Center for the Arts. “It’s roughly 2,000 miles between Waterloo and the island nation of Haiti, but the Waterloo Center for the Arts is the repository for the world’s largest and most significant public collection of Haitian art. There are more than 1,700 pieces in the collection, including colorful paintings by Haitian masters, metal sculptures, beaded and sequined flags and banners, mixed media and other objects representing Haiti’s creative and cultural past and present.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: New York State just passed a law requiring ISPs to offer $15 broadband For low-income households, which seems quite a thing to leave out of the headline. “According to NY Assembly member Amy Paulin (via Bloomberg), the average price of broadband in New York is currently $50. This new bill caps the price at $15 for regular broadband and $20 for high-speed broadband, but only for those who qualify as low income. That’s still over 7 million people in 2.7 million households according to a press release from Cuomo’s office.”

TASS: Google promises to remove all illegal content shortly, Russian lawmaker assures. “Google representatives promised to review a document from the State Duma’s commission on investigating facts of foreign interference in Russian affairs and vowed to soon remove all content violating Russian laws, head of the commission Vasily Piskarev told reporters on Friday after the meeting.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

InfoMigrants: Developing projects to improve psycholocial health of migrants and refugees. “The website is available in four languages (German, English, Dari and Arabic) and was supported by the German Ministry for Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.) The researchers found that the need for professional psychological help among migrants and refugees was greater than that of the general population…. That is why the website bundles together lots of different projects conducting research on and offering help in this area across Germany.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

NOLA Gambit: Shining down: Doreen Ketchens releases two new albums. “Clarinetist and vocalist Doreen Ketchens has aimed to release an album every year since the mid-’90s — and occasionally has hit two or even three releases. The plan going into 2020 was to keep up the pace when she and her band, Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans, booked studio time in February and started working on the new recordings. Of course, no one’s plans worked out in 2020.” The first time I heard Doreen Ketchens play clarinet was on a YouTube video. I wanted to run down the street and knock on people’s doors and tell them about this brilliant clarinetist. Do yourself a favor and listen to her play and sing “When the Saints Go Marching In”. Good morning, Internet…

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