NEW RESOURCES

National Renewable Energy Laboratory: How Do We Inventory the Materials Needed To Build Wind and Solar Farms?. “Working with partners from other national laboratories, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have created a new database, the Renewable Energy Materials Properties Database (REMPD), which examines materials needs for both wind and solar power plants.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Boston University: Joan Donovan, Nationally Recognized Expert in Misinformation and Disinformation, Joins BU Faculty. “Joan Donovan, a renowned expert in online misinformation and disinformation campaigns, will join Boston University this fall as an assistant professor in the College of Communication. Donovan begins September 1 and will start teaching in the spring. She will hold joint appointments in the Division of Emerging Media Studies and in the journalism department.”

MyHeritage: Introducing PhotoDater™, an Exclusive, Free New Feature to Estimate When Old Photos Were Taken. “Using powerful technology developed by our AI team, PhotoDater™ gives its best guess when a photo was taken. This can help you unlock further clues about who appears in the photo and the event at which it was taken, to solve mysteries in your genealogy research. PhotoDater™ is completely free!”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Government Technology: Stanford Social Media Platform ‘Fizz’ Gaining Popularity. “Formerly known as Buzz, an anonymous social media platform created by Stanford students is gaining traction on college campuses, having expanded to at least 80 schools and brought in $41.5 million in total funding.”

Mashable: Snapchat’s My AI chatbot posted a Story then stopped responding. Users freaked out. . “Snapchat users have reported that the messaging app’s AI chatbot had a few issues on Tuesday night. Specifically, My AI posted a mysterious Story to its profile and no longer responded as usual in text chats, causing more than a few users unease.”

KRQE: Massive New Mexico film archive at risk of being lost. “[Bryan] Konefsky is the one who has been responsible for looking over more than 10,000 film reels for the last seven years. They have been housed in the basement of a University of New Mexico (UNM) Film Department building out in Mesa Del Sol for free, but that won’t be the case in the near future.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BBC: British Museum worker sacked over missing items. “The British Museum in London has sacked a member of staff and police are investigating after treasures were reported ‘missing, stolen or damaged’. Items including gold, jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones were among those found to be missing, stolen or damaged.”

Techdirt: Guinness World Records Did An Automated Copyright Strike Oopsie On YouTubers. “Apparently the wider world is okay with this kind of collateral damage clown show, since it sure doesn’t appear to be changing. The most recent example comes to us courtesy of the Guinness World Records company, which hit at least two YouTubers with copyright strikes for having the phrase ‘World Record’ on their videos. The first to note this publicly was a YouTuber going by ‘Ducky.'”

NBC News: Witnesses of Buffalo mass shooting file rare lawsuit against social media and gun companies. “In a rare legal move, more than a dozen people who last year witnessed a white gunman open fire and kill 10 Black people at a Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, have sued over the trauma they endured. The lawsuit, brought Tuesday by the nonprofit group Everytown for Gun Safety and exclusively obtained by NBC News, names multiple defendants, including YouTube and Reddit, online spaces where the shooter was allegedly radicalized, as well as the retailer that sold the shooter’s gun and the manufacturer of his body armor.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Oregon: UO researchers make waves by turning ocean data into sound. “For a three-year pilot project funded by the National Science Foundation, Bellona and a national team of researchers have transformed a year of carbon dioxide readings taken off the coast of New England into sound. Their audio exhibit is one of five case studies they created to help museums, aquariums and other informal learning environments make data more accessible.”

Newswise: Nearly 50% of environmentalists abandoned Twitter following Musk’s takeover. “In October 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter (recently renamed X), which had previously served as the leading social media platform for environmental discourse. Since then, reports a team of researchers in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution on August 15, there has been a mass exodus of environmental users on the platform—a phenomenon that could have serious implications for public communication surrounding topics like biodiversity, climate change, and natural disaster recovery.”

The Guardian: Chinese social media filled with anti-black racist content, says watchdog. “Chinese social media is littered with racist videos, particularly content that mocks black people or portrays them through offensive racial stereotypes, research by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has found.” Good morning, Internet…

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