NEW RESOURCES

Herbert Smith Freehills: Delos Launches Open Access Arbitrator Database To Improve Diversity. “The database is open to all at no cost, and any arbitrator can post a profile – no previous appointments are required. Arbitrators can choose the information they enter, including gender, age, nationality, location, and cultural and ethnic background, alongside their experience as counsel, tribunal secretary and arbitrator, language skills, and regional, industry or other specialist expertise.”

University of Michigan: Body measurements for all 11,000 bird species released in open-access database. “For each individual bird, we measured nine ‘morphological’ traits, related to physical aspects of their bodies: four beak measurements, three wing measurements, tail length, and tarsus length (lower leg). AVONET also includes body mass and hand-wing index, which is calculated from three wing measurements to give an estimate of flight efficiency, and so the ability of a species to disperse or move across the landscape. The final version contains measurements from 90,020 individual birds at an average of around nine individuals per species.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tubefilter: YouTube is ‘really focused’ on helping users find live streams, says Neal Mohan. “YouTube is implementing a cosmetic change highly reminiscent of Instagram and TikTok to signify that a creator is live. Going forward, creators’ profile pictures will be encircled by rings when a creators is in the midst of a stream, with the word ‘Live’ written below. YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan announced the update on Twitter, explaining that the aim of the feature is to help viewers find more live streams.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Motherboard: Google Maps Live Traffic Showed the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. “At 3:15 AM local time, Jeffrey Lewis, an open source intelligence (OSINT) expert and professor at Middlebury Institute, saw a traffic jam in Belgorod, Russia, using the traffic layer of Google Maps. ‘Someone’s on the move,’ he tweeted.”

Utah State University: Bringing War Home Project Hits the Road. “It seems like every family has that box in the basement. The one with relics from a time and place we can’t quite imagine and collected from loved ones often no longer here. Utah State University’s Bringing War Home: Object Stories, Memory and Modern War project, a two-year community-facing endeavor, welcomes veterans, military families and other civilians to share the stories behind the artifacts of war at several upcoming roadshows in March and April.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

TechRadar: Google Drive is flagging some macOS files for copyright violation. “A disgruntled Reddit user recently reported that a ‘.DS_Store’ file on their Google Drive was flagged by the search giant for violating its copyright infringement policy. Apparently, this isn’t the first time this issue has been encountered as macOS users also reported experiencing similar problems last month.”

WIRED: How to Use Google Chrome’s Enhanced Safety Mode. “If Google Chrome is your browser of choice, you have access to an Enhanced Safe Browsing mode, which you might not be aware of: It’s essentially what it sounds like, an extra layer of protection that you’re able to switch on if you want to be as cautious as possible. Why wouldn’t it be on by default? Well, when it’s on, you’ll share more data with Google about where you go and what you do online—data that Google says is only kept temporarily before being anonymized, but you can’t be blamed for feeling like you’ve already given Google enough data as it is.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MIT Sloan Management Review: The Data Boom Is Here — It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed. “As Big Tech becomes evermore powerful thanks to the vast troves of data that the major platforms have collected, and innovation becomes increasingly data-driven, entrepreneurs and enterprises may find it difficult to seize new opportunities. Keeping the engine of innovation running will require access not only to capital but to data as well.”

NewScientist: It is only human to treat the metaverse with scepticism – here’s why. “When we look at the latest hype cycle, while cryptocurrency and metaverse advocates would like to paint sceptics as simply rooted in the past, at least some doubts are well founded. The reasons to be wary of the next wave of technology are manifold. One is simply whether the technologies in question are where they are claimed to be. [Elon] Musk, in particular, has a habit of overpromising, whether on travel to Mars, ultra-high-speed trains or self-driving cars. Few in the know take his claims for Neuralink seriously.” Good evening, Internet…

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