NEW RESOURCES

Diverse Issues In Higher Education: College Promise Launches Searchable Nationwide Database for Promise Programs. “The tool, MyPromise, has information about the more than 350 local and state Promise programs in the U.S., including funding levels, eligibility requirements, and number of semesters the Promise covers. The tool offers an interactive map and a comparison tool.”

OpenAI: DALL·E Now Available in Beta. “DALL·E, the AI system that creates realistic images and art from a description in natural language, is now available in beta. Today we’re beginning the process of inviting 1 million people from our waitlist over the coming weeks.”

EVENTS

Informationsdienst Wissenschaft: Big data on small languages: Release of the DoReCo online database. “On July 29, linguists working all over the world will gather in Berlin at Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft to celebrate the online release of the DoReCo data base, which provides access to audio recordings from more than 50 languages, along with their transcriptions, translations, and detailed linguistic analyses. Admission to the hybrid event is free, but registration is required.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

9to5 Google: Google Search’s built-in timer and stopwatch have disappeared. “Google Search has long featured a collection of simple tools, but the stopwatch and timer has mysteriously disappeared in the past day or so. Searching for those terms today just returns a list of results, including a Knowledge Panel, for websites offering online timers and stopwatches. Previously, there would be a box underneath the search field with two tabs.”

MyHeritage Blog: 22 Historical Record Collections Added in June 2022. “We are proud to announce that we added 22 record collections with 12.8 million historical records from across the globe, including the U.S., Canada, Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Ukraine.”

USEFUL STUFF

The Conversation: Celebrity deepfakes are all over TikTok. Here’s why they’re becoming common – and how you can spot them. “Although deepfakes are often used creatively or for fun, they’re increasingly being deployed in disinformation campaigns, for identity fraud and to discredit public figures and celebrities. And while the technology needed to make them is sophisticated, it’s becoming increasingly accessible, leaving detection software and regulation lagging behind. One thing is for sure – deepfakes are here to stay. So what can we do about them?”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NilePost: UPPC to digitize Uganda’s national archive. “The Uganda Publishing and Printing Corporation (UPPC) has said it is in the process of digitizing the vast amount of information and documents in our stores and will build a national archive.”

Washington Post: Popular block game ‘Minecraft’ says no to NFTs and the blockchain. “Mojang Studios, the Microsoft-owned developer behind the wildly popular procedurally generated sandbox game “Minecraft,” announced Wednesday that NFTs and other blockchain products would not be supported by the studio or allowed in the game.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Doxxing: a new tool of repression against Arab women. “In Tunisia and other Arab states, the malicious posting of personal information on social media – known as doxxing – is increasingly being used to harass and intimidate women, anti-government protesters and LGBTQ+ activists.”

Bleeping Computer: Convincing ‘YouTube’ Google ads lead to Windows support scams. “A scarily realistic-looking Google Search YouTube advertisement is redirecting visitors to tech support scams pretending to be security alerts from Windows Defender.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Michigan: Open source platform enables research on privacy-preserving machine learning. “The biggest benchmarking data set to date for a machine learning technique designed with data privacy in mind has been released open source by researchers at the University of Michigan. Called federated learning, the approach trains learning models on end-user devices, like smartphones and laptops, rather than requiring the transfer of private data to central servers.”

Newswise: Which Companies Could Become Maestros of the Metaverse?. “IFI CLAIMS – a Digital Science company dedicated to providing the world’s most trusted patent data for research, innovation and technology – says patent applications provide telling insights into the leaders of innovation.” Good morning, Internet…

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