NEW RESOURCES

MeriTalk: DHS Launches new Office of Homeland Security Statistics. “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Thursday unveiled its new Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS), which aims to advance DHS’s statistical reporting and analysis capabilities. The new office said on Nov. 9 it plans to begin releasing its initial sets of data in the coming weeks and throughout fiscal year 2024, including a report on Federal cybersecurity incidents.”

Fashion Institute of Technology: The Ruth Finley Collection: Digitizing 70 Years of the Fashion Calendar. “The Fashion Calendar, which was published by Ruth Finley from 1941-2014, has long been the premier event resource for fashion, beauty, media, and culture. … Every issue of The Fashion Calendar with its iconic pink pages was donated to FIT, and now the calendar — more than 3,000 issues and upwards of 30,000 pages of material — has been fully scanned and digitized, is searchable and downloadable for free, by anyone wherever they are.”

EVENTS

Smithsonian: Online Native Cinema Showcase Brings Indigenous Films to Audiences Worldwide. “The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian celebrates American Indian Heritage Month with its online Native Cinema Showcase Nov. 17–24…. All films [six features and 29 shorts] are free to watch and are available for streaming, worldwide and on demand, with the exception of The Legend of Molly Johnson, Powerlands and We Are Still Here, which are limited to viewing in the United States.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Snap’s latest version of its AR development tool includes a ChatGPT API, boosted productivity and more. “Snap is releasing a new version of its AR development tool, called the Lens Studio 5.0 Beta, to developers starting today. The new AR development tool is designed to support more advanced AR development with increased productivity and the addition of new AI capabilities, including one powered by OpenAI. Snap made the announcement at its sixth annual Lens Fest AR developer conference on Thursday.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Create a Digital Planner in Google Sheets. “Organizing your daily tasks and schedules can be simplified with a digital planner. Thankfully, you don’t need to pay for a specialized app or wrestle with an overly complicated program—Google Sheets can get the job done. Creating a digital planner in Google Sheets is both easy and straightforward. Whether you’re mapping out personal or work-related tasks, it’s got all the features you need to get organized and stay on top of your responsibilities.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

BBC: Ryanair: How a budget airline took off on TikTok. “If the best things in life are free, you won’t find many of them on a Ryanair flight – and its social media accounts aren’t shy to say so. On TikTok, Insta and X, the company’s become known for ripping into its passengers and its own reputation. Being rude and obnoxious to your customers might not seem like the best approach, but the brand’s viral burns have earned it 2.1 million followers on TikTok – half a million more than EasyJet, Jet2, Tui, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Etihad combined.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NBC News: How the GOP muzzled the quiet coalition that fought foreign propaganda. “A once-robust alliance of federal agencies, tech companies, election officials and researchers that worked together to thwart foreign propaganda and disinformation has fragmented after years of sustained Republican attacks. The GOP offensive started during the 2020 election as public critiques and has since escalated into lawsuits, governmental inquiries and public relations campaigns that have succeeded in stopping almost all coordination between the government and social media platforms.”

Reuters: Musk’s X has a fraction of rivals’ content moderators, EU says. “According to reports the companies submitted to the EU in September, X’s 2,294 EU content moderators compared with 16,974 at Google’s YouTube, 7,319 at Google Play and 6,125 at TikTok, the senior Commission official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.”

ABC News (Australia): Major Australian port operator shuts down amid cyber security incident, impacting goods in and out of the country. “Australia’s second largest port operator has shut down because of a cyber security incident, impacting the movement of goods in and out of the country. DP World Australia, which operates ports in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Fremantle, is responsible for 40 per cent of maritime freight said it began responding to a cybersecurity incident on Friday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Information Sciences Institute, USC: Cracking the Code of Content Moderation . “Flagging, demotion, and deletion of content; temporary or permanent suspension of users – these are some of the interventions used to keep social media platforms safe, trustworthy, and free from harmful content. But what is the best way for these interventions to be implemented? Luca Luceri, a research scientist at USC’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI), is part of a team that is using science to guide social media regulations.”

Mashable: 1,000 TikToks experiment confirms the app is mostly ads. “Two reporters from the publication took on the task of watching 500 TikToks each and tracking how many ads they saw throughout. The result ended up being about 30 percent for both of them. The majority of ad-related content were traditional ads, with the rest being a combination of affiliate content, sponsored content, self-promotion of a business or product, and product reviews (which was counted as an ad-related category because it’s referencing a certain product).”

Dartmouth University: AI Recognizes Faces but Not Like the Human Brain. “In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a Dartmouth research team, in collaboration with the University of Bologna, investigated whether [Deep convolutional neural networks] can model face processing in humans. The results show that AI is not a good model for understanding how the brain processes faces moving with changing expressions because at this time, AI is designed to recognize static images.” Good morning, Internet…

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