NEW RESOURCES

News@Northeastern: The Harriet Tubman House May Be Gone, But Its Legacy Is Preserved Forever Thanks To Northeastern’s Library. “The house was a fixture of Boston’s Black community, but its century-spanning history–the kind that doesn’t get told in museums or textbooks–was in danger of getting lost with the demolition too. Fortunately, the building’s history and the community’s memories were saved through the hard work of residents who banded together under the I Am Harriet coalition, USES itself and the resources and ingenuity of the Boston Research Center.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Gizmodo: Quecto, Ronna: Meet the Newest Metric Prefixes. “Four new metric prefixes got the official stamp of approval last week at the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures held at Versailles, the extravagant palace outside of Paris…. The new prefixes ronna and quetta refer to the largest numbers, while ronto and quecto apply to the smallest. Ronna is a 1 followed by 27 zeroes, and quetta is a 1 followed by 30 zeroes. Ronto is 10^-27, and quecto equates to 10^-30.”

Ars Technica: Twitter is now having trouble paying some employees on time. “Twitter staff in the UK received an email just before 1 pm London time on November 25 telling them their pay date would be November 28. Alongside the email, sent from the EMEA Payroll Team, staff received their usual monthly payslips. However, staff in the UK and Germany appear not to have been paid on time.”

NARA: National Archives Begins Work on 1960 Census Records Release. “Though genealogists and other researchers are still busy researching the 1950 U.S. Federal Census, which the National Archives released entirely online April 1, the agency is already preparing for the next launch: the 1960 population census. Almost as soon as the 1950 Census schedules went live, work began on digitizing approximately 41,000 rolls of the microfilmed 1960 Census, a notable increase from the 6,373 rolls of the 1950 Census. The 1960 Census records are scheduled to be released in April 2032.”

USEFUL STUFF

WIRED: Avoiding Twitter? Try These Interest-Based Discord Servers. “ARE YOU LOOKING for an alternative to Twitter since Elon Musk acquired it? Some social media users switched over to Mastodon, a decentralized option with similar structures. For anyone who’s retiring those Twitter fingers and feels open to trying something different, Discord is another great choice.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NiemanLab: Post, the latest Twitter alternative, is betting big on micropayments for news. “The ‘social platform for real people, real news, and civil conversations,’ was founded by former Waze CEO Noam Bardin. It counts Kara Swisher as an advisor and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as one of its two investors. The other investor is Scott Galloway, an NYU professor and cocohost of the Pivot podcast with Swisher.”

Variety: Musk Tweets Fake CNN Headline About Musk Threatening Free Speech on Twitter. “Musk — without any indication that it was a joke — posted an image that said, ‘CNN: Elon Musk could threaten free speech on Twitter by literally allowing people to speak freely.’ The post includes a photo of Lemon appearing to speak about Musk on air, with the made-up chyron below Lemon featuring the same text as the headline”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Google Settles FTC Charges About ‘Deceptive’ Pixel 4 Endorsements. “Google and iHeartMedia, a radio and podcasting company, on Monday agreed to pay $9.4 million to settle charges from the Federal Trade Commission and seven states that they were behind deceptive Pixel 4 ads.”

NJ .com: N.J. may soon set standards for students to learn how to separate fact from fiction on social media . “Though Garden State schools already have some requirements to teach the topic, the state Legislature has overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill (S588) that would mandate a state Department of Education committee to develop specific statewide guidelines for lessons on information literacy across digital, visual, and technological media.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Clemson News: Clemson Media Forensics Hub receives $3.8 million grant to study, fight online disinformation. “The fight against online disinformation is getting a boost thanks to a $3.8 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to support Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub at the Watt Family Innovation Center. Researchers with the Hub study disinformation and inauthenticity online and create tools to educate people and stop the spread of disinformation. Clemson University is matching the grant, making the total investment in the Hub $7.6 million over the next four years.”

Cornell Chronicle: Programming tool turns handwriting into computer code. “The pen-based interface, called Notate, lets users of computational, digital notebooks – such as Jupyter notebooks, which are web-based and interactive – to open drawing canvases and handwrite diagrams within lines of traditional, digitized computer code.”

Brigham Young University: Social media conversations are driven by those on the margins, says new BYU research . “The study found that most people – moderate Democrats and Republicans – are self-censoring their comments on social media to not create contention, lose friends online, or be perceived a certain way. Those on the margins, however, don’t fear backlash or retaliation from offering isolating opinions and are voicing viewpoints that go largely unchecked, fueling online dialogue that is becoming increasingly polarized.” 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.