afternoonbuzz

Women’s Music Oakland, Bing, Google, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, January 4, 2023

NEW RESOURCES

Bay Area Reporter: Because of a song: Holly Near celebrates Oakland’s women’s music scene with new online archive. “Music is one of the connecting forces for women in the Women’s Movement, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Women’s music legend Holly Near called the music made by women musicians at the time a lifeline…. Recently, the Bay Area Reporter spoke with Near about why she created the archive devoted to the Oakland women of the Women’s Music Movement and its importance.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Evening Standard: Microsoft’s Bing steps up battle with Google with plans to incorporate AI technology behind ChatGPT. “The Washington-based business plans to use the tools built by artificial intelligence research laboratory OpenAI, which created the ChatGPT service, to offer human-like answers to queries typed into its search engines rather than provide a list of websites as it does currently, and could have the functionality up and running as soon as March, according to IT news site The Information.”

Search Engine Roundtable: Google Search “Popular Next Steps” Option. “Google is testing or has launched a new search refinement or expansion feature named ‘popular next steps.’ If Google thinks your original query will lead to a new query in your research cycle, Google may show you this “popular next steps” option.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 8 Apps You Need When Visiting National and State Parks. “A trip to a national or state park can be pretty exciting, but you’ll want to make sure you’re well-equipped for the adventure. Navigating trails, finding campsites, and exploring dining options can get hectic, so you’ll need to prepare appropriately beforehand. Fortunately, there are a good number of apps that can help you plan a successful and enjoyable visit to a national or state park.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

The Verge: Bring back personal blogging. “If what is happening on Twitter hasn’t demonstrated it, our relationship with these social media platforms is tenuous at best. The thing we are using to build our popularity today could very well be destroyed and disappear from the internet tomorrow, and then what?… The answer is we don’t know because we don’t control Twitter (or Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or TikTok). If one of these companies decided to shut down their service permanently, there would be nothing we could do about it.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BNN Bloomberg: India Court Refuses Immediate Relief to Google on $162 Million Penalty. “An Indian appeals court refused to grant immediate relief to Alphabet Inc.’s Google over a $162 million antitrust fine for abusing the dominant position of its Android smartphone operating system in the country.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Wall Street Journal: Ukraine Has Digitized Its Fighting Forces on a Shoestring. “Ukraine has achieved a cut-price version of what the Pentagon has spent decades and billions of dollars striving to accomplish: digitally networked fighters, intelligence and weapons. Kyiv’s improvised web of drones, fighters and weapons, linked through satellite communications and custom software, is giving its soldiers a level of intelligence, coordination and accuracy that has allowed the initially outnumbered and outgunned forces to run circles around Russia’s massive but lumbering armies.”

New York Times: Your Memories. Their Cloud.. “As a child of the 1980s, I used to have physical constraints on how many photos, journals, VHS tapes and notes passed in seventh grade that I could reasonably keep. But the immense expanse and relatively cheap rent of the so-called cloud has made me a data hoarder. Heading into 2023, I set out to excavate everything I was storing on every service, and find somewhere to save it that I had control over. As I grappled with all the gigabytes, my concern morphed from losing it all to figuring out what was actually worth saving.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

Cracked: 5 Ways Libraries Used to Be Hardcore. I hate the intro to this one so let’s just say it’s about really tough cool librarians. Skip the intro. Good afternoon, Internet…

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Categories: afternoonbuzz

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