They See Your Photos, Lost 401(k)s, Restoring Ukraine, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, Decem
NEW RESOURCES
Ars Technica: New website shows you how much Google AI can learn from your photos. “Last month, Ente launched … a website and marketing stunt designed to turn Google’s technology against itself. People can upload any photo to the website, which is then sent to a Google Cloud computer vision program that writes a startlingly thorough three-paragraph description of it. (Ente prompts the AI model to document small details in the uploaded images.)”
MarketWatch: Do you have a lost 401(k)? A new federal database will help you track it down.. “Under the federal SECURE 2.0 Act, which was signed into law in late 2022, the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) was directed to create a lost and found for retirement savings. The department is currently collecting data from retirement-plan administrators and authorized recordkeepers to supply the database, and the project is slated to go live by Dec. 29.”
EVENTS
Florida State University: FSU students collaborate with peers in Ukraine to develop real-life solutions for reconstruction efforts. “With both Ukraine and Florida experiencing catastrophic damage to cities from war and hurricanes, respectively, students at Florida State University joined forces with peers in Ukraine to develop real-life solutions for reconstruction efforts last month. This collaboration brought students together to address an urgent and tragic crisis - the destruction of cities. The event, ‘Hack Disaster: The International Hackathon to Rebuild Cities,’ was hosted by the FSU Innovation Hub in collaboration with FSU’s Ukraine Task Force and the Ukrainian-based organization Hackathon Expert Group.”
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
How-To Geek: Excel Is Introducing a Compatibility System for Old Spreadsheets. “Microsoft is adding a Compatibility Version system to Excel. This system should prevent new features and bugfixes from breaking old spreadsheets, though it may prove to be an annoyance for Office 2024 buyers.”
USEFUL STUFF
Hongkiat: 10 Free Tools For Digital Storytelling. “Digital storytelling is accomplished by combining narration with digital content such as animation, stills, audio, etc. It is very popular these days in schools and educational institutions around the globe. In this post, we discuss ten free tools for creating digital stories for your own purpose in the classroom.”
AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD
MIT Technology Review: The startup trying to turn the web into a database. “A startup called Exa is pitching a new spin on generative search. It uses the tech behind large language models to return lists of results that it claims are more on point than those from its rivals, including Google and OpenAI. The aim is to turn the internet’s chaotic tangle of web pages into a kind of directory, with results that are specific and precise.” I remember efforts like this dating back to the 1990s, but AI gives it a new spin.
TechCrunch: The race is on to make AI agents do your online shopping for you. “Just as AI chatbots have proven somewhat useful for surfacing information that’s hard to find through search engines, AI shopping agents have the potential to find products or deals that you might not otherwise have found on your own. In theory, these tools could save you hours when you need to book a cheap flight, or help you easily locate a good birthday present for your brother-in-law.” “In theory” doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
New York Times: Google Worried Israeli Contract Could Enable Human Rights Violations . This link goes to a gift article. “In May 2021, Google announced it had agreed to participate in a $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government and military, saying it was ‘delighted to have been chosen to help digitally transform’ the country. But four months earlier, officials at the company had worried that signing the deal, called Project Nimbus, would harm its reputation, according to documents prepared for executives that were reviewed by The New York Times.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
Krebs on Security: Why Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz. “Phishing attacks increased nearly 40 percent in the year ending August 2024, with much of that growth concentrated at a small number of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) - such as .shop, .top, .xyz - that attract scammers with rock-bottom prices and no meaningful registration requirements, new research finds. Meanwhile, the nonprofit entity that oversees the domain name industry is moving forward with plans to introduce a slew of new gTLDs.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
Louisiana State University: You Too Can Database: A Roadmap for Creating Specialty Databases & Web Portals. “Researchers from LIGO Livingston, Louisiana State University, and Texas State University have recently prepared a publication that presents a generalized roadmap for developing a specialty astronomy database. The approach is illustrated through the development of the Spectra of Exoplanet-forming Disks (SpExoDisks) database, which provides infrared spectra and data of protoplanetary disks.” Good afternoon, Internet…
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