UC Irvine: Colonial Mexico’s forgotten history. “Trayectorias Afro is a digital database documenting the movement of enslaved Africans within colonial Mexico. Developed in collaboration with Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, the website launched publicly at UC Merced in March 2026, with an official event in Oaxaca planned for fall 2026. While the project is currently only available in Spanish, the 2026-27 grant will fund its English translation.”

Denver Gazette: New website tracks live music at bars, breweries, and more around Colorado. “I was browsing Reddit recently when I came across a user promoting a new website they’d put together – one that’s designed to track live music performances around the state of Colorado. It’s called Colorado Bar Music and for people looking for something to do, it seems like a resource worth bookmarking.”

American Ancestors: New Database—United States: Indenture and Manumission Records, 1780-1939. “We are excited to share that we have published a new database, United States: Indenture and Manumission Records, 1780-1939. This database adds 36,980 records and 28,740 names to the 10 Million Names Project. This collection contains records of indentures, apprenticeships, and manumissions from certain counties in Alabama, District of Columbia, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Data Rescue Project: Save Our Signs: New photos, new maps, and a renewed sense of purpose. “With the completion of this new backend database, we’ve begun processing and publishing the photos that volunteers have submitted since the initial September 2025 deadline. Today, we have published over 2,500 new photos to the SOS Archive, and are hard at work processing about 1,500 more that have been submitted over the past few months.”

Mashable: Google launches Gemma 4, a new open-source model: How to try it. “Google just released the latest version of its open AI model, Gemma 4, on Thursday. Crucially, Gemma 4 is a fully open-source model licensed under Apache 2.0, which is typically not the case with frontier models.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Majorca Daily Bulletin: Google Maps causes a stir by naming Mallorca party beach “Beach of the Drunks”. ” Google Maps lists the same area as Platja dels Borratxos (“Beach of the Drunks”) and a nearby street as Carrer dels Alemanys Borratxos (“Street of the Drunken Germans”). While Google allows users to add or edit locations with relative ease, Apple’s system is far more restrictive.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Honolulu Civil Beat: Teens Are Addicted To Social Media. Hawaiʻi Is Reluctant To Set Limits. “The addictiveness of social media, especially among teenagers, is a major concern for some Hawaiʻi lawmakers, who had been advancing Senate Bill 2761 that would limit the ability of kids 16 and under to use the online platforms. But Rep. David Tarnas, who is chair of the Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee, deferred the bill indefinitely Wednesday, putting it on hold because of concerns the proposal could conflict with the public’s right to free speech.”

The Guardian: Home of Indianapolis city councilor shot at over his support of datacenters. “An Indianapolis city councilor said his home was fired at on Monday, with a note left behind suggesting he had been targeted over his support of datacenters. The case involving Ron Gibson – a Democrat on Indianapolis’s city council – comes amid growing bipartisan concern in the US over political violence in the wake of cases such as the September murder of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: How Accurate Are Google’s A.I. Overviews? This link goes to a gift article. “A recent analysis of AI Overviews found that they were accurate approximately nine out of 10 times. But with Google processing more than five trillion searches a year, this means that it provides tens of millions of erroneous answers every hour (or hundreds of thousands of inaccuracies every minute), according to an analysis done by an A.I. start-up called Oumi.”

Google Blog: We’re creating a new satellite imagery map to help protect Brazil’s forests.. “To help the country continue protecting its forests, we partnered with the government to create the first highly detailed satellite imagery map of the country’s landscape, showing a snapshot from this period. This data gives local authorities a powerful new way to accurately measure their progress in fighting deforestation, and it’s now available for everyone to use in Google Earth and Earth Engine.” Good afternoon, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

TechCrunch: Google quietly launched an AI dictation app that works offline. “Google on Monday quietly released an offline-first dictation app called ‘Google AI Edge Eloquent’ on iOS to take on the likes of Wispr Flow, SuperWhisper, Willow, and others. The app is free to download, and once its Gemma-based automatic speech recognition (ASR) models are downloaded, you can start dictating on your phone.”

Bellingcat: When Satellite Imagery Goes Dark: New Tool Shows Damage in Iran and the Gulf. “Shortly after the war in Gaza began in 2023, Bellingcat introduced a free tool authored by University College London lecturer and Bellingcat contributor, Ollie Ballinger, that was able to estimate the number of damaged buildings in a given area. … Bellingcat is now introducing an updated version of the open source tool — called the Iran Conflict Damage Proxy Map — focused on destruction in Iran and the wider Gulf region.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Bleeping Computer: FBI: Americans lost a record $21 billion to cybercrime last year. “U.S. victims lost nearly $21 billion to cyber-enabled crimes last year, driven primarily by investment scams, business email compromise, tech support fraud, and data breaches, the Federal Bureau of Investigation says. The figure continues the year-over-year record trend as it is up 26% compared to 2024, when Americans lost $16.6 billion to cybercrime.”

ZDNet: Google Chrome’s vertical tabs are here: How to opt in and use the new Reading Mode. “Instead of forcing you to work with all your open pages at the top of the screen, the vertical tabs layout displays them in a sidebar. This means you can open and view more tabs without them getting lost in the shuffle. Plus, you can easily see the full titles of each page and quickly switch to a specific page.”

Gizmodo: Fake Videos Are Already Spreading After Two US Air Force Planes Go Down Near Iran. “Photos and videos circulating online show pieces of the wreckage from the first plane, reportedly an F-15E, that appear to be legitimate. But fake images and video about the downed jet are also starting to spread on social media, including one video that purports to show an American pilot captured by pro-Iran forces.” I know everybody’s been rescued, I just think the disinformation / deepfake angle is important.

USEFUL STUFF

It’s FOSS: I Found A Terminal Tool That Makes CSV Files Look Stunning. “You can totally read CSV files in the terminal. After all, it’s a text file. You can use cat and then parse it with the column command. That works. No doubt. But it is hard to scan and certainly not easy to follow. I came across a tool that made CSV files look surprisingly beautiful in the terminal.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

ABC News (Australia): Social media posts educating public about illicit drugs being removed by Meta, Australian health experts say. “Australian drug checking services say their Facebook and Instagram posts warning the community about dangerous substances are being removed by Meta. Organisations such as Canberra’s CanTEST use social media to distribute public health warnings when dangerous drug combinations are circulating.”

Lifehacker: I Tried ChatGPT in CarPlay, and It Immediately Hallucinated. “I don’t really have many more takeaways here, other than this: In my very short time testing the feature, the AI began hallucinating almost immediately. I asked if it knew what I was doing, and it said it didn’t. When I pressed that I thought it’d be able to guess given the context, it admitted it did know I was using CarPlay, so I was probably driving.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Historians, watchdog group sue Trump to preserve White House records. “The American Historical Association and ‌American Oversight on Monday asked the federal court in Washington to declare the nearly 50-year-old Presidential Records Act to be lawful ​and to bar federal agencies from relying on the Justice Department’s legal memo that deemed it illegal. The lawsuit also asked the court for an injunction that would require Trump to comply with the law after he leaves office.”

Politico: Wisconsin city passes nation’s first anti-data center referendum. “A small Wisconsin city home to a data center project backed by President Donald Trump voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to restrict future data centers, in a first-of-its-kind referendum that backers said could offer a blueprint for AI infrastructure opponents around the country.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Nature: Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real. “The problem was that the experiment worked too well. Within weeks of her uploading information about the condition, attributed to a fictional author, major artificial-intelligence systems began repeating the invented condition as if it were real. Even more troublingly, other researchers say, the fake papers were then cited in peer-reviewed literature. Osmanovic Thunström says this suggests that some researchers are relying on AI-generated references without reading the underlying papers.”

Harvard Gazette: ‘Vibe coding’ may offer insight into our AI future. “Among those exploring the new practice is Karen Brennan, Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Practice in Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who taught a six-week course on vibe coding beginning late last fall. In this edited interview, Brennan details what she tells students and insights she’s gained about what our future with AI may look like.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Spotted in my RSS feeds: BATH. “Welcome to BATH – BAlnea & THermae, an international research network of scholars specialising in ancient baths and bathing habits. This website introduces the network and its members, advertises news and events and offers research tools and resources useful to the study of ancient baths.”

EVENTS

Tubefilter: YouTube’s 2026 Coachella coverage includes its answer to FAST platforms. “This year, YouTube‘s coverage of the Coachella Music & Arts Festival is going to look a little bit different. The platform is continuing its 16-year tradition as the primary web video partner of the desert-set gathering, and the 2026 edition of Coachella will give many YouTube users their first look at a new feature called Stations.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

USGS: Land Treatment Digital Library Version 2.0 Launch. “The U.S. Geological Survey launched an updated version (2.0) of the LTDL to improve user experience, include additional data, and enhance BLM access. Notable additions to the website include interactive figures for each treatment polygon that display the monthly average temperature and precipitation from PRISM Climate Group at Oregon State University, and the annual vegetation cover from Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium.”

Engadget: Fan fiction website AO3 is finally coming out of beta. “The famous fan fiction website Archive of Our Own or AO3 has finally exited open beta, 17 years after it launched way back in 2009. … Upon launching the website on open beta, it only had 347 accounts and hosted 6,598 works. Now, it has 10 million registered users and is hosting 17 million fan-created works.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Daily Sabah: Türkiye receives 1st official repatriation of artifacts from Canada. “In a landmark development for the protection of cultural heritage, Türkiye received its first official repatriation of cultural artifacts from Canada on March 30. The items returned included seven manuscript pages, two rare printed work pages and two modern calligraphy pieces.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Conversation: Teenagers and younger kids are learning coded predator phrases like ‘MAP’ online, long before their parents have even heard of it. “In my broader research on online harms to children and teens, I examine how the design and governance of websites and apps influence real‑world safety outcomes. My forthcoming research explores how social media platforms, messaging apps and gaming communities succeed and fail at protecting young people from grooming attempts, unwanted contact and other forms of online exploitation.”

MinnPost: Students step up for bill that would promote media literacy among the TikTok generation. “The initiative is part of a broader voluntary program designed to recognize Minnesota high school students for excellence in civics courses and activities.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Nutrition Insight: UCL scientists’ new tool detects risk of online nutrition misinformation. “Researchers from the University College London (UCL), UK, have developed a Diet-Nutrition Misinformation Risk Assessment Tool (Diet-MisRAT) to detect and evaluate online nutrition misinformation’s potential harm.”

University of New Mexico: UNM researcher uses social media to map public perceptions of redlining across the U.S. . “A new study from The University of New Mexico offers a nationwide look at how Americans discuss one of the most enduring forms of housing discrimination — redlining — using more than a decade of social media data.”

University of British Columbia: Texting with a stranger beats a chatbot at easing loneliness. “Texting with a real person—even a stranger—may reduce loneliness more than chatting with a highly supportive AI chatbot, new UBC research suggests.” Good afternoon, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

CBC: How a virtual museum is preserving Igloolik culture from the 1960s and 70s. “From games for children to hunting equipment for men, a new interactive virtual museum is bringing Igloolik culture right to your phone with one click. ‘Inuit Worlds: From Past to Present’ is an online museum that features more than 50 objects collected by the late anthropologist Bernard Saladin d’Anglure in the 1960s and 70s.”

Amistad Research Center: Center Launches Digital Collection on Amistad Case. “This digital collection is comprised of correspondence, dating from 1839-1841, by abolitionists, pro-slavery advocates, government officials, and the Amistad Africans themselves, related to the development of efforts to provide legal assistance to the Africans.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Bluesky’s new AI is being rejected by users, blocked more than White House account . “Mere days after Bluesky announced its new AI product, Attie, the coding helper has already become the second most blocked account on the platform. The Attie profile was given the cold shoulder by 125,000 users already, TechCrunch reported. With just 1,500 followers, that means 83 times more users blocked Attie than followed it — that number is higher than the official White House account, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) profile, and is second only to Vice President JD Vance, according to open source data.”

Decaturish: Former CDC employees mark one-year anniversary of firings. “Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees and supporters gathered outside CDC headquarters March 31 to mark the one-year anniversary of the mass firings of hundreds of agency staff. About 150 people attended the rally on Clifton Road in Atlanta. Several former CDC staff members spoke, and Singing Resistance ATL led the group in song.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Tubefilter: 200 experts tell YouTube to stop recommending AI slop to kids. “Just a few weeks after a New York Times investigation found that YouTube’s algorithm is pushing AI-generated content targeting toddlers and preschoolers, 200 hundred organizations and experts have sent an open letter to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, asking them to crack down on AI kidslop.”

State of Hawaii: DAGS Receives Records of Portuguese Arrivals in Hawaiʻi. “The Department of Accounting and General Services (DAGS) Hawaiʻi State Archives division received a gift from the Consulate General of Portugal in San Francisco which contained several thousand immigration records of the Portuguese who migrated to Hawaiʻi from 1878 to 1934.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Deere settles US right-to-repair lawsuit with $99 million fund, repair commitments. “U.S. agriculture equipment maker Deere on Monday agreed to pay $99 million into a settlement fund for farms and farmers that are part ​of a class action over costs and ‌access to repairs.”

CNBC: OpenAI asks California, Delaware to investigate Musk’s ‘anti-competitive behavior’ ahead of April trial. “OpenAI on Monday sent a letter to the California and Delaware attorneys general, urging them to investigate ‘improper and anti-competitive behavior’ by Elon Musk and his associates, as a high-profile trial nears between the two sides.”

The Register:
Claude Code bypasses safety rule if given too many commands . “Claude Code will ignore its deny rules, used to block risky actions, if burdened with a sufficiently long chain of subcommands. This vuln leaves the bot open to prompt injection attacks.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

School Library Journal: Librarians Must Step Up As Data Disappears. “Public data underpins research, journalism, policy, and civic understanding. It functions much like a public library. Quiet. Foundational. Often unnoticed until constrained. If shared facts depend on institutional stability, then protecting public data is not a technical concern. It is a civic obligation. When the reference shelf goes dark, the response cannot be resignation. It must be stewardship.”

South Jersey Climate News: Jump in utility costs linked to boom in building AI data centers. “The main driver in the 20% jump in electricity costs New Jerseyans faced in June was attributable to data centers, according to a news study by New Jersey Policy Perspective. With 48 data centers already operating and 12 more in the works, the state has become a hot spot for data center construction.”

University of Texas at Dallas: Study: Elected Officials Tend To Discount Social Media Input. “A University of Texas at Dallas political scientist and his colleagues have found that elected officials put much more stock in in-person communication with their constituents than they do in messages conveyed via social media. The research, published in Public Opinion Quarterly, suggests that a social media message would have to be sent by more than 47 constituents for it to exceed the value of a single face-to-face meeting.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Spotted in my RSS feeds: ByeDoom. “Add any public account from Instagram, Facebook, Threads, X, TikTok or YouTube to quickly get a feed for your favorite reader.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Caliber: Iran’s internet blackout surpasses 720 hours, enters fifth week. “Iran’s nationwide internet outage, imposed by authorities, has now lasted 31 days, surpassing 720 hours, internet monitoring group NetBlocks confirmed. The prolonged blackout, continues to cut off most Iranians from access to the global internet, Caliber.Az reports, citing NetBlocks.”

TechSpot: GitHub pulls Copilot “feature” after it added advertising to more than 11,000 pull requests. “Microsoft’s GitHub is rolling back a controversial update after developers discovered that its AI assistant, Copilot, was quietly inserting promotional messages into user-generated pull requests, effectively turning collaborative coding spaces into ad placements.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Sentinel Colorado: A college instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work and teach life lessons. “The scene is right out of the 1950s with students pecking away at manual typewriters, the machines dinging at the end of each line. Once each semester, Grit Matthias Phelps, a German language instructor at Cornell University, introduces her students to the raw feeling of typing without online assistance. No screens, online dictionaries, spellcheckers or delete keys.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Register: European Commission admits attackers broke into public web systems, but says little else . “The European Commission has admitted that attackers broke into its public-facing web infrastructure and siphoned off data in a bare-bones disclosure that answers the what but ducks most of the how.”

Almanac News: Police investigate pepper spray incident linked to YouTube ‘auditors’ in Menlo Park. “On March 29, several people wearing black T-shirts and cowboy hats who are affiliated with the YouTube channels iiMPACT MEDIA and True North Transparency stood outside Ace Hardware and Draeger’s Market to record passersbys on the sidewalks. Videos posted to the channels and a report from the Menlo Park Police Department confirm that around 12:30 p.m., one of the videographers pepper-sprayed a man during an argument outside Ace Hardware.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

MinnPost: Counterpoint: Pine Island data center project is far from a gold standard. “Residents got four months of knowing about the project until final approval was voted on by the city. The city, Google and Ryan Companies got two years facilitated by NDAs. Pine Island and Ryan were warned they would be sued if they didn’t make environmental review changes. They ignored that warning, not only pushing the project forward but getting every project approval possible done as fast as they possibly could.”

Poynter: Fact-checking has to go where misinformation actually spreads. “In this environment, fact-checking remains indispensable, but its relevance can no longer be measured solely by the publication of articles. If it wants to continue to matter, fact-checking must stop imagining itself only as an editorial product and begin acting as a form of civic infrastructure. This shift begins with recognizing how profoundly the information ecosystem has changed.”

PsyPost: AI autocomplete suggestions covertly change how users think about important topics. “New research provides evidence that interacting with biased autocomplete suggestions can covertly shift a person’s underlying attitudes on important societal issues. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, suggest that the subtle influence of these everyday programs often bypasses our conscious awareness.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

New York Groove: Take inspiration from ‘70s New Yorkers and get really into trees this spring. “In 1976, a group of volunteers and block associations got together, taught themselves how to prune branches and fertilize tree beds, and told the city they would take over maintaining their local street trees…. That effort grew into the organization Trees New York, and its signature Citizen Pruners program, which celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this year.” Good afternoon, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Hellenic Survey of Geology and Mineral Exploration (HSGME): The library of the H.S.G.M.E. is being digitized. “[Researchers] have access to more than 88,000 titles — including 12,000 unpublished scientific and technical reports and studies, around 4,500 maps (dating back to 1891), and 40,000 issues of Greek and international scientific journals. Additionally, 277 books are classified as ‘Rare Editions,’ dating from the 19th century. The digitization of the library’s collection has already begun, allowing anyone — whether visiting in person or remotely — to ‘travel’ through time and explore key moments in the planet’s evolution.”

USGS: New AI Tool Forecasts Drought 90 Days Ahead Nationwide. “The USGS River DroughtCast uses machine learning models trained on data from thousands of USGS streamgages, some with more than 100 years of continuous records, to forecast when rivers and streams will drop to abnormally low levels.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Futurism: Almost Half of US Data Centers That Were Supposed to Open This Year Slated to Be Canceled or Delayed. “It’s not just a problem for data centers planned for 2026, either. Among data centers slated to open in 2027, only about 6.3 gigawatts worth of computing infrastructure are actually under construction, compared to 21.5 announced gigawatts.”

WordPress: Plugins, Global Styles, and More: Now on Every WordPress.com Paid Plan. “Plugins are now available on all paid WordPress.com plans, starting with Personal. And that’s just the start.”

Bing Blogs: Bing Maps Goes Global with TomTom Orbis Addresses. “We’ve completed the worldwide rollout of TomTom Orbis Maps Addresses — capping a nine-month effort that began in June 2025. This is the largest upgrade to Bing Maps address data in years!”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Poynter: An AI company set out to fix news deserts. Instead, it copied local journalists’ work. “Artificial intelligence company Nota — whose clients include organizations like The Boston Globe and the Institute for Nonprofit News — is scrapping its network of local news sites after learning that they contained dozens of instances of plagiarism.”

The Register: Even Microsoft knows Copilot shouldn’t be trusted with anything important. “Despite the last update taking place in late 2025, the document for Copilot for Individuals recently attracted new attention from netizens. It includes this gem: ‘Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Local News Matters Bay Area: 10 crypto firm execs, employees charged in alleged scheme to manipulate token prices. “Ten executives and employees from four cryptocurrency trading firms were charged Monday in federal court in Oakland in connection with alleged schemes to inflate digital token prices and trading activity through fraudulent ‘wash trading,’ federal prosecutors said.”

Tubefilter: Is TikTok trying to leverage #FinTok success to become an accredited lender?. “According to a report from Reuters, TikTok applied for two interesting licenses in Brazil. The first would allow it to operate as an ‘electronic money issuer,’ a la Venmo. Users would be able to obtain prepaid accounts they could use to make and receive payments on the app. The second license would position TikTok as a ‘direct credit company.'”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Search Engine Journal: AI Leads All Reasons For U.S. Job Cuts In March, Report Says. “Artificial intelligence led all employer-cited reasons for U.S. job cuts in March, accounting for 15,341 of the month’s 60,620 announced layoffs, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That’s 25% of all cuts for the month, up from roughly 10% in February.”

The Conversation: As a ‘book scientist’ I work with microscopes, imaging technologies and AI to preserve ancient texts. “Cultural heritage is constantly under threat. In recent years, we’ve witnessed the destruction of museums, archives and libraries around the world — from wildfires in California to bombing in Gaza and wars in Ukraine and Iran. Meanwhile, book scientists are working tirelessly with an array of technologies — including microscopes, multispectral imaging and artificial intelligence — to recover, understand and preserve many valuable ancient texts.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission: Rare Chance to Watch Barn Owls Hatch from Their Nest. “‘Barn Owlet Watch 2026’ is underway for a nest box with six barn owl eggs located in the North Carolina Mountains. And the public has 24-hour access to the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s (NCWRC) live cam WITH audio to watch all the action in real time! The expected ‘hatch’ date is between April 9 and 15.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Midcoast Villager: Lost Stories Found: 124 Years of Midcoast History, Online and At Your Fingertips. “Last week, 1,500 editions of the The Courier-Gazette — one of the four historic newspapers whose legacy is now carried forward by the Midcoast Villager — were uploaded to the Maine State Library’s DigitalMaine Repository, joining the existing historical archives which spanned from the paper’s earliest days in 1846 to 1960.”

Royal Irish Academy: The Butter Wrapper Collection. “The Butter Museum’s ‘butter wrapper’ collection showcases the array of wrappers that covered butter dairy produce, and date from the 1930s until around the 1980s. This collection highlights the evolution of butter packaging, featuring an array of vintage designs that reflect changing trends and cultural significance.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: WordPress Delays Release Of Version 7.0 To Focus On Stability. “WordPress 7.0, previously scheduled for an April 9th release, will be delayed in order to stabilize the Real-Time Collaboration feature and assure that the release, a major milestone, will ‘target extreme stability.’ Much is riding on WordPress 7.0 as it will ship with features that will usher in the age of AI-driven content management systems.”

USEFUL STUFF

Jens Oliver Meiert: Releasing Searcher, a Configurable, Privacy-Minded Chromium Extension to Trigger Random Searches. “As part of my brand-new IA Defensa family of mini defense tools, Searcher Chromium is a configurable and extensible browser extension that automatically enters and can trigger searches on Google, Amazon, and almost any other site with a search field. The capability makes it costlier to invade your privacy and harder to deduce something from your search behavior.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Politico: ‘Proactively fall in line:’ Holocaust Memorial Museum quietly changed content after Trump returned to office . “In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington quietly removed from its website educational resources about American racism and canceled a workshop about the ‘fragility of democracy.'”

WMBD: National Blues Museum in St. Louis to close after nearly a decade. “The National Blues Museum is closing its doors Friday after nearly 10 years in downtown St. Louis, due to ongoing economic challenges and a decline in visitors. The museum’s board of directors announced the decision, saying they can no longer continue as their visitor numbers continue to lag behind pre-pandemic amounts. The board also said that the loss of federal funding added to the strain on their finances.”

Middle Tennessee State University: Punk archive arrives at MTSU’s Center for Popular Music, launching major preservation effort. “The Maximum Rocknroll archive, long associated with the influential underground punk magazine of the same name, has been relocated from California to Murfreesboro and is now housed inside the Center for Popular Music within MTSU’s Scott Borchetta College of Media and Entertainment. The massive archive includes more than 50,000 vinyl records along with business papers and other ephemera documenting punk’s evolution.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NOTUS: The White House App Is Riddled With Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities. “The cybersecurity experts’ reviews of the app code turned up a host of issues that they say make data — for both users and some White House staffers — vulnerable. Several told NOTUS they were shocked by the slipshod approach to cybersecurity by the federal government, especially while the U.S. is engaged in war.”

Engadget: OkCupid settles FTC case on alleged misuse of its users’ personal data . “According to the lawsuit, the FTC accused OkCupid of inappropriately sharing personal user data that includes photos and location info with a third party company, Clarifai, which offers AI-powered software for uses like facial recognition and content moderation.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Associated Press: Eulogy for the CIA Factbook: The free standard for world facts, long an educational staple, is gone. “Its authors — some of the world’s best intelligence-gatherers, who contributed thousands of their own photos — kept the curated database updated and online for public use at no charge.” Good afternoon, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

I mentioned the grant for this project years ago but not when the project launched: HBCU Radio Preservation. From the Who We Are page: “HBCU radio stations train students entering broadcasting careers and provide an outlet for communities to engage on issues while reveling in the sounds of the Black diaspora. Their rhythms and stories demand to be heard. And yet, the original programming created at HBCU radio stations is at risk of being lost. Magnetic tape and other obsolete formats are deteriorating, along with primary sources documenting the history and diversity of the Black experience.”

CalMatters: Find a senior center near you in California. “California has hundreds of public senior centers and community spaces serving older adults across the state — but there isn’t an easy way to find one near you. We put together this map to help fill that gap. Senior centers are different from assisted living or adult day care programs. They’re community spaces where older adults can share meals, exercise, watch movies and find social connections.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Speedcafe: Supercars adding 400 races to free YouTube archive. “The championship launched its SuperArchive service back in 2018, initially as a privately hosted subscription platform showcasing full races from 1997-2014. It began uploading races onto YouTube during the COVID pandemic and subsequently transferred its archive onto the free-to-view platform. The project is now being expanded through to 2025 under the Supercars Throwback banner, with 400 more races to be uploaded this year.”

Search Engine Land: Google removes Search Engine Land article after false DMCA claim. “Google removed a Search Engine Land article (Report: Clickout Media turned news sites into AI gambling hubs, published March 26) from its search results after a copyright complaint (that appears, to us, to be entirely false). Meanwhile, a similar DMCA filing led to the takedown of the original Press Gazette investigation.”

AzerNews: Google removes Belarusian state media YouTube channels amid sanctions concerns. “Google has removed three state-affiliated YouTube channels belonging to Belarus, in a move linked to international sanctions, AzerNEWS reports. According to reports by the state news agency BELTA, the deleted accounts included its own channel, as well as those operated by the television broadcasters ONT and STV.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Lawrence Times: Some Kansas lawmakers use AI chatbots in the Statehouse — with no guidelines on responsible use. “The Kansas News Service interviewed several lawmakers on both sides of the aisle about their use of tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot in the legislative process. Some said they had used chatbots to summarize a bill ahead of a hearing or vote. Others said the tools helped provide quick background information on issues they weren’t familiar with. Yet Kansas lawmakers are still without a clear set of guidelines on how — or if — they should use AI chatbots in their day-to-day activities.”

The Independent (Singapore): Esquire Singapore under fire for using AI to create ‘interview’ with Mackenyu. “Esquire Singapore has been the subject of recent backlash due to an ‘interview’ it conducted with the Japanese-American actor Mackenyu Maeda, who plays Roronoa Zoro in One Piece on Netflix. The problem is that it wasn’t an interview at all.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Al Jazeera: US satellite firm Planet Labs announces blackout on war on Iran images. “Satellite imaging company Planet Labs has said it will indefinitely withhold visuals of Iran and the ⁠region of conflict in the Middle East to comply with a request from United States President Donald Trump’s administration.”

Colorado Newsline: Social media companies must respond to search warrants within 72 hours under new Colorado law. “Senate Bill 26-11 requires that online platforms staff a hotline with workers available to answer questions from Colorado law enforcement about search warrants. Companies must acknowledge they received a court-ordered search warrant within eight hours and must comply within 72 hours.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Brennan Day: Building the Good Web. “The Good Web already exists. It is full of people who built something rather than waited for permission. All of this—every personal blog, every federated timeline, every webring, every forum thread where strangers are kind to one another—is an argument made in practice that a better internet is possible. You don’t have to build it yourself, you just have to show up.”

National Security Archive: A Disappearing Data Chronology. “The Disappearing Data Chronology documents fundamental changes to the federal information landscape under the Trump administration, including major data losses and restorations, legal challenges to information takedowns, and threats to archival collections. The purpose of this chronology is to keep the public—including journalists, researchers, litigators, and anyone concerned about their right to know—up to date on the current state of data and archival access across the federal government.”

The Conversation: What we’ve learned from citizen science: 5 projects that made a difference. “Astronomers need more eyes to sift through vast databases of stellar explosions. Climate scientists can learn from our history, but deciphering the records takes time. Below we introduce five citizen science projects where large numbers of people have contributed impactful results, or yielded new knowledge. Some of them even have new project stages you may be able to participate in.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Chosun Daily: Yanghwajin Archives Digitizes Edith’s Handprint, 1910s Missionary Photos. “The Yanghwajin Archives recently created a digital archive of over 7,000 items donated by the family of Rosetta Hall, the Welbon (1866–1928, Korean name Oh Wol-beon) missionary who worked in the Andong region, and the family of Jeon Taek-bu (1915–2008), well-known by his pen name Ori.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tubefilter: Cameo is trying for a comeback with its new TikTok integration. “Back in late 2024, the platform looked to be in serious financial trouble. As The Guardian reported at the time, Cameo demonstrated that it couldn’t afford to pay a $600,000 FTC settlement for breaching rules on celebrity endorsements. Instead, it managed to hand over just $100,000. Now, though, Cameo is trying to resurge through a new strategy: partnering directly with TikTok and the millions of creators who post there.”

Gizmodo: VR Just Took Another Massive Body Blow. “This week, Rec Room, a popular VR meeting place and metaverse of sorts, announced that it would be shutting down on June 1. The reason? Business, of course.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Chapelboro: Town Of Chapel Hill Announces Departure From Social Media Site X. “The Town of Chapel Hill announced it will no longer post or monitor its accounts on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The local government shared the decision in its weekly ‘Our Town’ newsletter on Thursday.”

EBM.gr: Hybryds seek to rebuild lost Belgian industrial video archive after YouTube takedown. “Belgian ritual-industrial project Hybryds is trying to reconstruct the Belgian industrial archive on YouTube after the platform took it down. The band’s YouTube channel once held rare footage from Belgium’s industrial scene in the 1980s and 1990s, including material connected to artists such as Klinik and Dirk Ivens.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Times of India: Aravind Srinivas’s Perplexity AI faces lawsuit over sharing users’ data without consent; company responds. “Perplexity AI has been accused of sharing user data with major tech companies – Google and Meta without proper consent. According to a report by Bloomberg, a lawsuit has been filed against Perplexity AI, led by CEO Aravind Srinivas accusing the company of allowing third-party trackers to access sensitive user information.”

Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly courts will ban all smart eyeglasses starting next week. “Philly courtrooms are remaining friendly to the Luddites. At least with eyewear. The Philadelphia court system is implementing a ban on all forms of smart or AI-integrated eyewear, the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania announced this week.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Reuters: Belgian museum, US mining company at odds over colonial-era Congo archive. “A U.S. mining company backed by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates is in a tangle with Belgium’s AfricaMuseum over who should digitise antique maps of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo ‌in the museum’s archive.”

PsyPost: ChatGPT acts as a “cognitive crutch” that weakens memory, new research suggests. “A recent experiment provides evidence that relying on artificial intelligence to help study new material tends to reduce how much information students remember weeks later. The findings suggest that while these tools can speed up initial learning, they might actually weaken the deep mental processing required to store knowledge over the long term.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

In Depth NH: Bethlehem Woman Rows Across the Atlantic, Celebration Planned April 18. ” North Country rower Renee Blacken of Bethlehem has completed her quest to row the Atlantic Ocean covering 3,200 miles in 65 days, two hours and 51 minutes on Monday… This makes her the first woman to solo in Atlantic Dash history and first American to take on the challenge. The Atlantic Dash is an annual ocean rowing event that sees entrants rowing 3200 miles across the Atlantic Ocean.” Good afternoon, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.

Maps Mania: The IRL Streaming Map. “lucent.earth is essentially a 3D globe that lets you discover streams from Twitch, YouTube, and Kick. Kick was new to me, but based on my time with the map, it seems to be a platform primarily designed for boring men to record themselves walking around at night annoying strangers. Therein lies the problem.”

Erfurt University Library: “Theologie der Gegenwart” journals now available open access. “Theology needs public debate. Today, the digital space is particularly suitable for this. That is why the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the university is now taking a new approach: Its journals ‘Theologie der Gegenwart’ (ThG) are now available free of charge in open access.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

VentureBeat: Anthropic cuts off the ability to use Claude subscriptions with OpenClaw and third-party AI agents. “Anthropic announced a few hours ago that starting tomorrow, Saturday, April 4, 2026, at 12 pm PT/3 pm ET, it will no longer be possible for those Claude subscribers to use their subscriptions to hook Anthropic’s Claude models up to third-party agentic tools, citing the strain such usage was placing on Anthropic’s compute and engineering resources, and desire to serve a wide number of users reliably.”

Search Engine Land: ChatGPT ads are showing up – a lot. “In a test of 500 questions across the mobile app, roughly one in five questions in a new conversation thread triggered an ad at the bottom of ChatGPT’s response — always as a website link button, always tailored to the topic of the question.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Hill: Anthropic launches new corporate PAC to ramp up election spending. “Anthropic PBC filed a statement of organization Friday to form ‘AnthroPAC.’ The Hill has learned it will be funded exclusively and voluntarily by employees, a common strategy for technology companies to throw money into races. It is expected to be bipartisan and give money to candidates on both sides of the aisle and will be overseen by a bipartisan board of directors, The Hill learned.”

WFMY: High Point Museum had grant for HVAC improvements canceled after ChatGPT flagged proposal as DEI-related, lawsuit says. ” The High Point Museum was among more than 1,400 organizations nationwide that lost federal humanities funding last spring after two members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) used an AI chatbot to screen grants for elimination. According to court documents, ChatGPT flagged an HVAC preservation project at the High Point Museum as a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: The EU is investigating Snapchat over possible child protection breaches. “The European Union has opened a formal investigation into whether Snapchat has breached Digital Services Act (DSA) regulations regarding the safeguarding of children using its app.”

Reuters: French Senate debates social media ban for children under 15 . “French senators vote on Tuesday on a draft law that aims to ban social media access for children under the age of ‌15, joining countries around the world in considering a move unpopular with many teenagers but ‌supported by some parents and teachers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: Limiting social media to one hour a day reduces loneliness in distressed individuals. “A recent study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders suggests that limiting social media use to one hour per day can reduce feelings of loneliness among young adults experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety.”

University of Alberta: U of A linguist collaborates with community to preserve endangered language. “The structure of Sáliba, an Indigenous language spoken in Colombia, is still not well understood. But a number of audio recordings that include narratives, songs and procedural texts — along with handwritten annotations — made by Colombian linguist Jon Landaburu in the late 1960s could help in preserving the language and culture. To make these materials available to local communities, Jorge Rosés Labrada and his team are creating the first annotated digital archive of naturalistic speech data.”

CIDRAP: CDC, health groups spent millions to buy ads on websites flagged for misinformation. “In the new study, published this week in JAMA Network Open, researchers scrutinized advertising revenue from 11 news sites flagged for spreading health misinformation, including false claims about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.”

OTHER THINGS I THINK ARE COOL

The Register: Renewables reached nearly 50% of global electricity capacity last year. “The International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) 2026 Renewable Capacity Statistics report, published on Wednesday, found that renewables dominated new power additions last year, accounting for 85.6 percent of global capacity expansion. Solar, in turn, was the dominant renewable technology, accounting for nearly three-quarters of last year’s renewable capacity additions.” Good morning, Internet…

This newsletter is free but most of the things that go into making it aren’t! Help me afford new socks and fancier bean stew by supporting ResearchBuzz on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Don’t have any money but still want to support? I know how that feels. Share this newsletter or tell a friend about it. I live at Calishat. See my other nonsense at SearchTweaks, RSS Gizmos, Local Search America, WikiTwister, and MiniGladys.